If you're going to do unpopular things do them first. They've five years to manage expectations.
That strategy didn't exactly go well for the Tories, did it?
You would have won, or at least been in with a shout of winning, the last election but for Truss. Sure, Johnson was lagging in the polls, but if he had passed the baton to nearly anyone else (or had the moral compass to make him fit to continue in office) the gap could have been closed. As it was you guys shat the bed 2/3 of the way through the Parliament, leaving you no time to recover.
Mrs Thatch made her unpopular decisions first. She also had Galtieri inadvertently on her side of course…
7 weeks in, and years away from an election. The country is in a parlous state, needs some hard decisions taking and the public need to come to terms with them. Telling us it's all sunlit uplands isn't going to cut it.
Snatching the coals from the winter fires of the old folk has gone well then.
Very poor start from Reeves frankly.
Interesting age profile in the change.
Go on, guess.
That's right, the increased disapproval is dominated by the 65+ age range, where disapproval is leading 72-16. By the time you get down to the 25-49 bracket, the disapproval lead is only 41-26.
And given where boosterism got us under Boris, a cold shower of reality may be what we need.
(And for context, the overall YouGov approve/disapprove scores are roughly where they were during the vaccine bounce. The YouGov panel really are ungrateful so-and-sos.)
Talking of old films, I went to see Pulp Fiction at the cinema last night. At the risk of making many of you feel old it was the 30th anniversary of its release.
It stood up pretty well. The music was excellent and the conversational parts were still hilarious. Rather more casual racism than you would get these days. There was a bit where they were driving in a car and it was incredibly obvious that it was a movie out the back window and they were not actually driving but I suspect that was Tarentino's joke/homage to earlier films.
Well worth a watch if you can catch it.
Going to watch Pulp Fiction at the Phoenix in Oxford in Oct 94 and then going for Chinese food afterwards with a group of about 10 from college was my No.1 Gen X zeitgeist moment of the 90s.
Is the mid-1990s the last "previous era"?
DavidL's post got me thinking about how the passage of time is not linear. 1970s television series Happy Days looked back only 20 years but it was another world. 20 years before now, 2004, is merely a primitive version of now, with mobile but not quite smart phones, and the web just before Twitter and YouTube.
1994 had mobile phones but they were status items. Rich people with teenage children had home computers but they were by no means universal. PCs were, however, taking over offices. Britpop. Cool Britannia. Whatever happened to Oasis? Tbh in the course of writing this paragraph, I've changed my mind. 1994 was not qualitatively different from now.
Partially that's you showing your age though.
My kids see things from the 90s or hear things described from the 90s and its utterly alien to them and sounds like the 50s would have to me.
The idea of only watching what's being broadcast, everyone watching the same thing or not watching anything at all; the idea of live TV broadcasts let alone the idea of being unable to pause/rewind live TV; the lack of streaming; the lack of YouTube and self-broadcasts.
When I watched TV in the 80s I'd watch cartoons made for then like He Man or Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles (not allowed to use the word Ninja in the UK), as well as cartoons from my parents generation like Flintstones, Scooby Doo, Tom & Jerry etc.
When my kids watch "TV" now they go on Kids YouTube and watch streamers like Mariah Elizabeth or Aphmau.
The cultural change from then to now is leaps and bounds.
The telly hasn't got any better though. It's still 99% shite. Arguably 1990s telly was of a higher standard.
I think British TV was starting to decline in the 90s. Its high water mark was the 80s.
The 90s was a golden era for British TV - especially for comedy but also lots of great drama. I think because lots of barriers were broken down in the 80s and so commissioning editors would pretty much allow talent to go off and do what it wanted.
Reality TV and digitalisation arguably ended that in the 2000s. Once ratings begun to go into permanent decline and programmers had lots of data on hand they began producing the same old mush plus the odd prestige show.
TV comedy in particular has been killed by the panel show - as they're so cheap to make and inoffensive. No one's going to give a couple of people with a weird but possibly hilarious idea for a sitcom a load of money to make it when they can have several series of a panel show for the same cost.
You also have the growth of daytime TV and the costs associated with making programmes for that. Although they may be cheap,to make, in general, they still take a chunk from the budget,
Channel 4 was a real innovator on comedy many years ago. New comedy is rare now due to the rise in the panel show.
A company as badly run as that with so many questions over where the money has gone should not be asking for hiked bills in a monopoly they have mismanaged to survive.
Not, at least, until they have explained how debts ballooned while they were paying dividends claiming large profits - and recovered that money....
Indeed and wipe out the shareholders and not just at Thames but apparently virtually all of them who say the same
I want a list of the reason why not - the permanent system of government is violently against letting the market do it's thing (AKA fuck around and find out)
So far we have
- But the suppliers to Thames Water... (simples - if you are a supplier of pipe, valves and the like, you will get paid. If you are a shareholder, or bond holder, FU) - But the pension funds... (Ha Ha) - But the foreign pension funds.... (Ha Ha Ha Ha) - But the UK market reputation... (Fuck off and die horribly).
Unsecured suppliers of pipes and valves will get pennies in the pound. Otherwise agree (but without the vitriol, there's nothing inherently evil about owning waterco debt or equity)
There must be a way of buying it for £1, wiping out the shareholders and bond holders, but taking on and paying suppliers’ debts. It would demonstrate that the Government won’t continue Tory policy of supporting the big guys at the expense of the small guys.
Talking of old films, I went to see Pulp Fiction at the cinema last night. At the risk of making many of you feel old it was the 30th anniversary of its release.
It stood up pretty well. The music was excellent and the conversational parts were still hilarious. Rather more casual racism than you would get these days. There was a bit where they were driving in a car and it was incredibly obvious that it was a movie out the back window and they were not actually driving but I suspect that was Tarentino's joke/homage to earlier films.
Well worth a watch if you can catch it.
Going to watch Pulp Fiction at the Phoenix in Oxford in Oct 94 and then going for Chinese food afterwards with a group of about 10 from college was my No.1 Gen X zeitgeist moment of the 90s.
Is the mid-1990s the last "previous era"?
DavidL's post got me thinking about how the passage of time is not linear. 1970s television series Happy Days looked back only 20 years but it was another world. 20 years before now, 2004, is merely a primitive version of now, with mobile but not quite smart phones, and the web just before Twitter and YouTube.
1994 had mobile phones but they were status items. Rich people with teenage children had home computers but they were by no means universal. PCs were, however, taking over offices. Britpop. Cool Britannia. Whatever happened to Oasis? Tbh in the course of writing this paragraph, I've changed my mind. 1994 was not qualitatively different from now.
I agree, it's stepwise. Things jumped from 1870-1900, 1914-1918, 1939-1945, 1955-1970, 1986-1993, 2007-2021, and stayed fairly stable in the intervening years.
Culturally, I expect that the 20s will be noted for the total collapse of traditional broadcasters amongst the working age and youth.
Twitter is already better for live news, so it’s now just sports keeping people to linear programming.
Netflix have done a couple of very successful live broadcast comedy shows this year, but they’re inevitably picking a time slot for the larger US audience.
Yes, and streaming does a lousy job of streaming sports – it is often 120 seconds behind. The lag is prohibitive during major live events. If that can be fixed, reliably, it might eventually take over. But, for now, proper TV has an unbeatable edge on sports – and streaming a fatal flaw.
So what you want to do is to ban the terrestrial TV from showing live sports, then arrange for a friend courtsiding while you slam Betfair during the delay.
This is a betting site after all!
Nah, you set up your own live video feed ahead of broadcast...and sell that to punters.
Someone is paying for that £10k drone that appears over Doncaster Common during racing...
That would be a cool job to do if I was in the UK.
There was a time when you could go racing and there would be a room set aside for traders who wanted to play the exchanges using real time data from the track comparted with the delays on SIS (into betting shops) and the specialist racing channels (RUK and at the time ATR nor Sky Sports Racing) which were up to five seconds.
There is even a fractional delay on pictures broadcast at the track - the only real way was to have someone on course with a mobile or a laptop for in-running trading.
I'm not sure how or even if that has been resolved. The amounts traded on Betfair have fallen a lot in recent times and it may just be the end of the line for that form of in-running betting.
7 weeks in, and years away from an election. The country is in a parlous state, needs some hard decisions taking and the public need to come to terms with them. Telling us it's all sunlit uplands isn't going to cut it.
Talking of old films, I went to see Pulp Fiction at the cinema last night. At the risk of making many of you feel old it was the 30th anniversary of its release.
It stood up pretty well. The music was excellent and the conversational parts were still hilarious. Rather more casual racism than you would get these days. There was a bit where they were driving in a car and it was incredibly obvious that it was a movie out the back window and they were not actually driving but I suspect that was Tarentino's joke/homage to earlier films.
Well worth a watch if you can catch it.
Going to watch Pulp Fiction at the Phoenix in Oxford in Oct 94 and then going for Chinese food afterwards with a group of about 10 from college was my No.1 Gen X zeitgeist moment of the 90s.
Is the mid-1990s the last "previous era"?
DavidL's post got me thinking about how the passage of time is not linear. 1970s television series Happy Days looked back only 20 years but it was another world. 20 years before now, 2004, is merely a primitive version of now, with mobile but not quite smart phones, and the web just before Twitter and YouTube.
1994 had mobile phones but they were status items. Rich people with teenage children had home computers but they were by no means universal. PCs were, however, taking over offices. Britpop. Cool Britannia. Whatever happened to Oasis? Tbh in the course of writing this paragraph, I've changed my mind. 1994 was not qualitatively different from now.
I agree, it's stepwise. Things jumped from 1870-1900, 1914-1918, 1939-1945, 1955-1970, 1986-1993, 2007-2021, and stayed fairly stable in the intervening years.
Culturally, I expect that the 20s will be noted for the total collapse of traditional broadcasters amongst the working age and youth.
Twitter is already better for live news, so it’s now just sports keeping people to linear programming.
Netflix have done a couple of very successful live broadcast comedy shows this year, but they’re inevitably picking a time slot for the larger US audience.
Yes, and streaming does a lousy job of streaming sports – it is often 120 seconds behind. The lag is prohibitive during major live events. If that can be fixed, reliably, it might eventually take over. But, for now, proper TV has an unbeatable edge on sports – and streaming a fatal flaw.
Amazon claiming their new CL coverage this season will be 10 seconds delay on any modern device including phone. They have one group match per week.
Well, we shall see!
Sounds optimistic but if they are trailing 10 seconds imagine it is less than 20. And will come down further in time.
As opposed to 1-2s delay on a Signal message from your courtsider in the ground.
If its genuinely 10 seconds and you are betting on football with an approx 5 second delay and where major events trigger a suspension from the site as on Betfair its not going to make a big difference for anyone bar ultra high volume, ultra low margin bots. Very different from a sport like tennis where the odds swing dramatically without protection for those on slower feeds.
I had some bad news today. As you know earlier in the year I complained about tooth loss with two extracted in Q1 and a third planned for Q3/4. I planned to handle this by going abroad to get implants.
Unfortunately the situation has accelerated and it appears that two, not one, will need to be extracted in Q3/Q4 and ongoing gum disease and bone loss (yes, really) bring into question my suitability for implants
The minimum treatment now required is surgery and the use of bone cement/grafts to reinforce the vanishing bone. This is beyond the capacity of the average dentist and will require the services of a more advanced one, such as a periodontist or a dental reconstruction dentist.
My question to the PB brains trust is: what qualification or job title or membership should I look for? For example, the Dip Impl Dent RCSEd is a qualification, The British Society of Peridontology and Implant Dentistry is a society, a "periodontist" is a job title.
Don't know what it's like at your ends, but have twice had occasion just to rock up at the Dental Hospital* and ask for an emergency appointment. They were great on both occasions. If they won't see you they could at least point you in the right direction.
* These were teaching hospitals, so in both cases the rare condition of my eldest was seen as an opportunity to teach. * Expect a lot of people looking in your mouth.
7 weeks in, and years away from an election. The country is in a parlous state, needs some hard decisions taking and the public need to come to terms with them. Telling us it's all sunlit uplands isn't going to cut it.
There is a balance and Blair knew how to do it
Blair took over a decent economy and legacy from Major, that iteration of the Tory party had just run out of ideas. Completely different to the destructive last few years and tough economy and demographics.
7 weeks in, and years away from an election. The country is in a parlous state, needs some hard decisions taking and the public need to come to terms with them. Telling us it's all sunlit uplands isn't going to cut it.
There is a balance and Blair knew how to do it
So does Starmer it seems.
Self-entitled whinging shits complaining they're losing their goodies need to be ignored.
If you're going to do unpopular things do them first. They've five years to manage expectations.
That strategy didn't exactly go well for the Tories, did it?
You would have won, or at least been in with a shout of winning, the last election but for Truss. Sure, Johnson was lagging in the polls, but if he had passed the baton to nearly anyone else (or had the moral compass to make him fit to continue in office) the gap could have been closed. As it was you guys shat the bed 2/3 of the way through the Parliament, leaving you no time to recover.
Mrs Thatch made her unpopular decisions first. She also had Galtieri inadvertently on her side of course…
No way the Tories deserved anything other than a shellacking after making Truss PM.
Idiot MPs who put her to the members, idiot members for backing her over Rishi.
Talking of old films, I went to see Pulp Fiction at the cinema last night. At the risk of making many of you feel old it was the 30th anniversary of its release.
It stood up pretty well. The music was excellent and the conversational parts were still hilarious. Rather more casual racism than you would get these days. There was a bit where they were driving in a car and it was incredibly obvious that it was a movie out the back window and they were not actually driving but I suspect that was Tarentino's joke/homage to earlier films.
Well worth a watch if you can catch it.
Going to watch Pulp Fiction at the Phoenix in Oxford in Oct 94 and then going for Chinese food afterwards with a group of about 10 from college was my No.1 Gen X zeitgeist moment of the 90s.
Is the mid-1990s the last "previous era"?
DavidL's post got me thinking about how the passage of time is not linear. 1970s television series Happy Days looked back only 20 years but it was another world. 20 years before now, 2004, is merely a primitive version of now, with mobile but not quite smart phones, and the web just before Twitter and YouTube.
1994 had mobile phones but they were status items. Rich people with teenage children had home computers but they were by no means universal. PCs were, however, taking over offices. Britpop. Cool Britannia. Whatever happened to Oasis? Tbh in the course of writing this paragraph, I've changed my mind. 1994 was not qualitatively different from now.
I agree, it's stepwise. Things jumped from 1870-1900, 1914-1918, 1939-1945, 1955-1970, 1986-1993, 2007-2021, and stayed fairly stable in the intervening years.
Culturally, I expect that the 20s will be noted for the total collapse of traditional broadcasters amongst the working age and youth.
Twitter is already better for live news, so it’s now just sports keeping people to linear programming.
Netflix have done a couple of very successful live broadcast comedy shows this year, but they’re inevitably picking a time slot for the larger US audience.
Yes, and streaming does a lousy job of streaming sports – it is often 120 seconds behind. The lag is prohibitive during major live events. If that can be fixed, reliably, it might eventually take over. But, for now, proper TV has an unbeatable edge on sports – and streaming a fatal flaw.
So what you want to do is to ban the terrestrial TV from showing live sports, then arrange for a friend courtsiding while you slam Betfair during the delay.
This is a betting site after all!
Nah, you set up your own live video feed ahead of broadcast...and sell that to punters.
Someone is paying for that £10k drone that appears over Doncaster Common during racing...
That would be a cool job to do if I was in the UK.
I had a brief word with the perp last time.
Seemed to be an amusement on the side for a surveyor with a legitimate job, although I'm not totally convinced he was sticking to the flight rules for a large UAV. I suppose he could have had a written risk assessment, flight plan and insurance but I'm not sure he had the permission of the landowner for where he took off from...
I'm surprised he wasn't using a Mini (under 250g) as they get round 99% of the rules and are almost invisible but I guess they want something that will cope in any wind and produce a 4K feed.
This is trending on an American pop culture gossip site. Guess the name of the band. 🎸 🥁 🎤
Apparently, insurance companies don't think the reunion of this foreign group is 100% certain and are charging the promoter about ten times the going rate for premiums because they seem sure there will be cancellations.
7 weeks in, and years away from an election. The country is in a parlous state, needs some hard decisions taking and the public need to come to terms with them. Telling us it's all sunlit uplands isn't going to cut it.
There is a balance and Blair knew how to do it
So does Starmer it seems.
Self-entitled whinging shits complaining they're losing their goodies need to be ignored.
Quit whinging.
The WFA is one issue which is controversial, but Starmer's negativity and doom and gloom is over egging the politics and generally people want to hear an upbeat tone - Blair would not have delivered the speech yesterday that Starmer did
If you're going to do unpopular things do them first. They've five years to manage expectations.
That strategy didn't exactly go well for the Tories, did it?
You would have won, or at least been in with a shout of winning, the last election but for Truss. Sure, Johnson was lagging in the polls, but if he had passed the baton to nearly anyone else (or had the moral compass to make him fit to continue in office) the gap could have been closed. As it was you guys shat the bed 2/3 of the way through the Parliament, leaving you no time to recover.
Mrs Thatch made her unpopular decisions first. She also had Galtieri inadvertently on her side of course…
Well, this is shite really isn't it? The polls are quite clear. They went into the floor with Truss and the minibudget, they recovered a smidge when Sunak took over, and they then continued a steady downward trajectory that he owns completely. The fictional phenomenon you've just invented would show a completely different polling trajectory. Starmer’s polling will be the same - a brief (already over afaics) boost of relief that we now have a competent outfit in charge, followed by increasing disillusionment as they realise he plans to do nothing about the issues Britain faces expect make them worse.
A company as badly run as that with so many questions over where the money has gone should not be asking for hiked bills in a monopoly they have mismanaged to survive.
Not, at least, until they have explained how debts ballooned while they were paying dividends claiming large profits - and recovered that money....
Indeed and wipe out the shareholders and not just at Thames but apparently virtually all of them who say the same
I want a list of the reason why not - the permanent system of government is violently against letting the market do it's thing (AKA fuck around and find out)
So far we have
- But the suppliers to Thames Water... (simples - if you are a supplier of pipe, valves and the like, you will get paid. If you are a shareholder, or bond holder, FU) - But the pension funds... (Ha Ha) - But the foreign pension funds.... (Ha Ha Ha Ha) - But the UK market reputation... (Fuck off and die horribly).
Unsecured suppliers of pipes and valves will get pennies in the pound. Otherwise agree (but without the vitriol, there's nothing inherently evil about owning waterco debt or equity)
There must be a way of buying it for £1, wiping out the shareholders and bond holders, but taking on and paying suppliers’ debts. It would demonstrate that the Government won’t continue Tory policy of supporting the big guys at the expense of the small guys.
Bankruptcy combined with a loan guarantee for suppliers bills backed by the government should do that.
Without the debt, Thames Water is a very profitable business. The risk for the suppliers is x months of not getting paid as the bankruptcy gets sorted out.
Edit: smart would be for the government to charge a healthy rate of interest to the relaunched company for the loans to secure the suppliers bills. Could easily turn a profit.
7 weeks in, and years away from an election. The country is in a parlous state, needs some hard decisions taking and the public need to come to terms with them. Telling us it's all sunlit uplands isn't going to cut it.
The PB Tory strategy is the opposite - keep giving away free stuff and pretend everything is great. Bizarre, but there it is.
7 weeks in, and years away from an election. The country is in a parlous state, needs some hard decisions taking and the public need to come to terms with them. Telling us it's all sunlit uplands isn't going to cut it.
There is a balance and Blair knew how to do it
Blair took over a decent economy and legacy from Major, that iteration of the Tory party had just run out of ideas. Completely different to the destructive last few years and tough economy and demographics.
And, ultimately, Blair's government was a wasted opportunity. Not in the sense of achieving nothing, but there was political and fiscal space to put life in the UK on a more sustainable path... and a lot of that was fluffed.
Look at his lack of mid-term blues. Nature's way of saying you aren't governing radically enough.
Talking of old films, I went to see Pulp Fiction at the cinema last night. At the risk of making many of you feel old it was the 30th anniversary of its release.
It stood up pretty well. The music was excellent and the conversational parts were still hilarious. Rather more casual racism than you would get these days. There was a bit where they were driving in a car and it was incredibly obvious that it was a movie out the back window and they were not actually driving but I suspect that was Tarentino's joke/homage to earlier films.
Well worth a watch if you can catch it.
Going to watch Pulp Fiction at the Phoenix in Oxford in Oct 94 and then going for Chinese food afterwards with a group of about 10 from college was my No.1 Gen X zeitgeist moment of the 90s.
Is the mid-1990s the last "previous era"?
DavidL's post got me thinking about how the passage of time is not linear. 1970s television series Happy Days looked back only 20 years but it was another world. 20 years before now, 2004, is merely a primitive version of now, with mobile but not quite smart phones, and the web just before Twitter and YouTube.
1994 had mobile phones but they were status items. Rich people with teenage children had home computers but they were by no means universal. PCs were, however, taking over offices. Britpop. Cool Britannia. Whatever happened to Oasis? Tbh in the course of writing this paragraph, I've changed my mind. 1994 was not qualitatively different from now.
Partially that's you showing your age though.
My kids see things from the 90s or hear things described from the 90s and its utterly alien to them and sounds like the 50s would have to me.
The idea of only watching what's being broadcast, everyone watching the same thing or not watching anything at all; the idea of live TV broadcasts let alone the idea of being unable to pause/rewind live TV; the lack of streaming; the lack of YouTube and self-broadcasts.
When I watched TV in the 80s I'd watch cartoons made for then like He Man or Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles (not allowed to use the word Ninja in the UK), as well as cartoons from my parents generation like Flintstones, Scooby Doo, Tom & Jerry etc.
When my kids watch "TV" now they go on Kids YouTube and watch streamers like Mariah Elizabeth or Aphmau.
The cultural change from then to now is leaps and bounds.
The telly hasn't got any better though. It's still 99% shite. Arguably 1990s telly was of a higher standard.
Because telly is for old farts now.
Everyone else is spending time online, as we are here, not watching the telly.
And streaming means it doesn't matter if its 99% shit as there's so many things out there there's something for everyone.
If you're going to do unpopular things do them first. They've five years to manage expectations.
That strategy didn't exactly go well for the Tories, did it?
You would have won, or at least been in with a shout of winning, the last election but for Truss. Sure, Johnson was lagging in the polls, but if he had passed the baton to nearly anyone else (or had the moral compass to make him fit to continue in office) the gap could have been closed. As it was you guys shat the bed 2/3 of the way through the Parliament, leaving you no time to recover.
Mrs Thatch made her unpopular decisions first. She also had Galtieri inadvertently on her side of course…
No way the Tories deserved anything other than a shellacking after making Truss PM.
Idiot MPs who put her to the members, idiot members for backing her over Rishi.
Idiot MPs giving them Sunak and Truss - two less suited people to lead the country could hardly be found.
Talking of old films, I went to see Pulp Fiction at the cinema last night. At the risk of making many of you feel old it was the 30th anniversary of its release.
It stood up pretty well. The music was excellent and the conversational parts were still hilarious. Rather more casual racism than you would get these days. There was a bit where they were driving in a car and it was incredibly obvious that it was a movie out the back window and they were not actually driving but I suspect that was Tarentino's joke/homage to earlier films.
Well worth a watch if you can catch it.
Going to watch Pulp Fiction at the Phoenix in Oxford in Oct 94 and then going for Chinese food afterwards with a group of about 10 from college was my No.1 Gen X zeitgeist moment of the 90s.
Is the mid-1990s the last "previous era"?
DavidL's post got me thinking about how the passage of time is not linear. 1970s television series Happy Days looked back only 20 years but it was another world. 20 years before now, 2004, is merely a primitive version of now, with mobile but not quite smart phones, and the web just before Twitter and YouTube.
1994 had mobile phones but they were status items. Rich people with teenage children had home computers but they were by no means universal. PCs were, however, taking over offices. Britpop. Cool Britannia. Whatever happened to Oasis? Tbh in the course of writing this paragraph, I've changed my mind. 1994 was not qualitatively different from now.
Partially that's you showing your age though.
My kids see things from the 90s or hear things described from the 90s and its utterly alien to them and sounds like the 50s would have to me.
The idea of only watching what's being broadcast, everyone watching the same thing or not watching anything at all; the idea of live TV broadcasts let alone the idea of being unable to pause/rewind live TV; the lack of streaming; the lack of YouTube and self-broadcasts.
When I watched TV in the 80s I'd watch cartoons made for then like He Man or Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles (not allowed to use the word Ninja in the UK), as well as cartoons from my parents generation like Flintstones, Scooby Doo, Tom & Jerry etc.
When my kids watch "TV" now they go on Kids YouTube and watch streamers like Mariah Elizabeth or Aphmau.
The cultural change from then to now is leaps and bounds.
The telly hasn't got any better though. It's still 99% shite. Arguably 1990s telly was of a higher standard.
I think British TV was starting to decline in the 90s. Its high water mark was the 80s.
The 90s was a golden era for British TV - especially for comedy but also lots of great drama. I think because lots of barriers were broken down in the 80s and so commissioning editors would pretty much allow talent to go off and do what it wanted.
Reality TV and digitalisation arguably ended that in the 2000s. Once ratings begun to go into permanent decline and programmers had lots of data on hand they began producing the same old mush plus the odd prestige show.
TV comedy in particular has been killed by the panel show - as they're so cheap to make and inoffensive. No one's going to give a couple of people with a weird but possibly hilarious idea for a sitcom a load of money to make it when they can have several series of a panel show for the same cost.
You also have the growth of daytime TV and the costs associated with making programmes for that. Although they may be cheap,to make, in general, they still take a chunk from the budget,
Channel 4 was a real innovator on comedy many years ago. New comedy is rare now due to the rise in the panel show.
The panel show did however give us Carrot in a Box and Carrot in a Box: the Rematch though.
Snatching the coals from the winter fires of the old folk has gone well then.
Very poor start from Reeves frankly.
Interesting age profile in the change.
Go on, guess.
That's right, the increased disapproval is dominated by the 65+ age range, where disapproval is leading 72-16. By the time you get down to the 25-49 bracket, the disapproval lead is only 41-26.
And given where boosterism got us under Boris, a cold shower of reality may be what we need.
(And for context, the overall YouGov approve/disapprove scores are roughly where they were during the vaccine bounce. The YouGov panel really are ungrateful so-and-sos.)
There is a need to give a bit of hope. People tolerate a bit of blood, toil, sweat and tears if they expect sunny uplands.
Taking sweeties off the oldies was never going to be popular. Go the whole hog and scrap the triple lock for next year, the buggers aren't going to vote Labour anyway.
Tell them that it is the price of the Brexit that they voted for.
Talking of old films, I went to see Pulp Fiction at the cinema last night. At the risk of making many of you feel old it was the 30th anniversary of its release.
It stood up pretty well. The music was excellent and the conversational parts were still hilarious. Rather more casual racism than you would get these days. There was a bit where they were driving in a car and it was incredibly obvious that it was a movie out the back window and they were not actually driving but I suspect that was Tarentino's joke/homage to earlier films.
Well worth a watch if you can catch it.
Going to watch Pulp Fiction at the Phoenix in Oxford in Oct 94 and then going for Chinese food afterwards with a group of about 10 from college was my No.1 Gen X zeitgeist moment of the 90s.
Is the mid-1990s the last "previous era"?
DavidL's post got me thinking about how the passage of time is not linear. 1970s television series Happy Days looked back only 20 years but it was another world. 20 years before now, 2004, is merely a primitive version of now, with mobile but not quite smart phones, and the web just before Twitter and YouTube.
1994 had mobile phones but they were status items. Rich people with teenage children had home computers but they were by no means universal. PCs were, however, taking over offices. Britpop. Cool Britannia. Whatever happened to Oasis? Tbh in the course of writing this paragraph, I've changed my mind. 1994 was not qualitatively different from now.
Partially that's you showing your age though.
My kids see things from the 90s or hear things described from the 90s and its utterly alien to them and sounds like the 50s would have to me.
The idea of only watching what's being broadcast, everyone watching the same thing or not watching anything at all; the idea of live TV broadcasts let alone the idea of being unable to pause/rewind live TV; the lack of streaming; the lack of YouTube and self-broadcasts.
When I watched TV in the 80s I'd watch cartoons made for then like He Man or Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles (not allowed to use the word Ninja in the UK), as well as cartoons from my parents generation like Flintstones, Scooby Doo, Tom & Jerry etc.
When my kids watch "TV" now they go on Kids YouTube and watch streamers like Mariah Elizabeth or Aphmau.
The cultural change from then to now is leaps and bounds.
The telly hasn't got any better though. It's still 99% shite. Arguably 1990s telly was of a higher standard.
I think British TV was starting to decline in the 90s. Its high water mark was the 80s.
The 90s was a golden era for British TV - especially for comedy but also lots of great drama. I think because lots of barriers were broken down in the 80s and so commissioning editors would pretty much allow talent to go off and do what it wanted.
Reality TV and digitalisation arguably ended that in the 2000s. Once ratings begun to go into permanent decline and programmers had lots of data on hand they began producing the same old mush plus the odd prestige show.
TV comedy in particular has been killed by the panel show - as they're so cheap to make and inoffensive. No one's going to give a couple of people with a weird but possibly hilarious idea for a sitcom a load of money to make it when they can have several series of a panel show for the same cost.
You also have the growth of daytime TV and the costs associated with making programmes for that. Although they may be cheap,to make, in general, they still take a chunk from the budget,
Channel 4 was a real innovator on comedy many years ago. New comedy is rare now due to the rise in the panel show.
New comedy is rare due to the expense of it relative to other formats and the inability for comedy to travel so the costs need to be fully covered within the UK market.
It’s also the case that even panel shows are getting rarer as even the economics of that type of show doesn’t work nowadays
Talking of old films, I went to see Pulp Fiction at the cinema last night. At the risk of making many of you feel old it was the 30th anniversary of its release.
It stood up pretty well. The music was excellent and the conversational parts were still hilarious. Rather more casual racism than you would get these days. There was a bit where they were driving in a car and it was incredibly obvious that it was a movie out the back window and they were not actually driving but I suspect that was Tarentino's joke/homage to earlier films.
Well worth a watch if you can catch it.
Going to watch Pulp Fiction at the Phoenix in Oxford in Oct 94 and then going for Chinese food afterwards with a group of about 10 from college was my No.1 Gen X zeitgeist moment of the 90s.
Is the mid-1990s the last "previous era"?
DavidL's post got me thinking about how the passage of time is not linear. 1970s television series Happy Days looked back only 20 years but it was another world. 20 years before now, 2004, is merely a primitive version of now, with mobile but not quite smart phones, and the web just before Twitter and YouTube.
1994 had mobile phones but they were status items. Rich people with teenage children had home computers but they were by no means universal. PCs were, however, taking over offices. Britpop. Cool Britannia. Whatever happened to Oasis? Tbh in the course of writing this paragraph, I've changed my mind. 1994 was not qualitatively different from now.
Partially that's you showing your age though.
My kids see things from the 90s or hear things described from the 90s and its utterly alien to them and sounds like the 50s would have to me.
The idea of only watching what's being broadcast, everyone watching the same thing or not watching anything at all; the idea of live TV broadcasts let alone the idea of being unable to pause/rewind live TV; the lack of streaming; the lack of YouTube and self-broadcasts.
When I watched TV in the 80s I'd watch cartoons made for then like He Man or Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles (not allowed to use the word Ninja in the UK), as well as cartoons from my parents generation like Flintstones, Scooby Doo, Tom & Jerry etc.
When my kids watch "TV" now they go on Kids YouTube and watch streamers like Mariah Elizabeth or Aphmau.
The cultural change from then to now is leaps and bounds.
The telly hasn't got any better though. It's still 99% shite. Arguably 1990s telly was of a higher standard.
I think British TV was starting to decline in the 90s. Its high water mark was the 80s.
The 90s was a golden era for British TV - especially for comedy but also lots of great drama. I think because lots of barriers were broken down in the 80s and so commissioning editors would pretty much allow talent to go off and do what it wanted.
Reality TV and digitalisation arguably ended that in the 2000s. Once ratings begun to go into permanent decline and programmers had lots of data on hand they began producing the same old mush plus the odd prestige show.
TV comedy in particular has been killed by the panel show - as they're so cheap to make and inoffensive. No one's going to give a couple of people with a weird but possibly hilarious idea for a sitcom a load of money to make it when they can have several series of a panel show for the same cost.
You also have the growth of daytime TV and the costs associated with making programmes for that. Although they may be cheap,to make, in general, they still take a chunk from the budget,
Channel 4 was a real innovator on comedy many years ago. New comedy is rare now due to the rise in the panel show.
The panel show did however give us Carrot in a Box and Carrot in a Box: the Rematch though.
That comedy Countdown show was one of the funniest things on TV for years. Originally it was a one-off for a Telethon charity thingy, and has run for over 100 shows.
Talking of old films, I went to see Pulp Fiction at the cinema last night. At the risk of making many of you feel old it was the 30th anniversary of its release.
It stood up pretty well. The music was excellent and the conversational parts were still hilarious. Rather more casual racism than you would get these days. There was a bit where they were driving in a car and it was incredibly obvious that it was a movie out the back window and they were not actually driving but I suspect that was Tarentino's joke/homage to earlier films.
Well worth a watch if you can catch it.
Going to watch Pulp Fiction at the Phoenix in Oxford in Oct 94 and then going for Chinese food afterwards with a group of about 10 from college was my No.1 Gen X zeitgeist moment of the 90s.
Is the mid-1990s the last "previous era"?
DavidL's post got me thinking about how the passage of time is not linear. 1970s television series Happy Days looked back only 20 years but it was another world. 20 years before now, 2004, is merely a primitive version of now, with mobile but not quite smart phones, and the web just before Twitter and YouTube.
1994 had mobile phones but they were status items. Rich people with teenage children had home computers but they were by no means universal. PCs were, however, taking over offices. Britpop. Cool Britannia. Whatever happened to Oasis? Tbh in the course of writing this paragraph, I've changed my mind. 1994 was not qualitatively different from now.
Partially that's you showing your age though.
My kids see things from the 90s or hear things described from the 90s and its utterly alien to them and sounds like the 50s would have to me.
The idea of only watching what's being broadcast, everyone watching the same thing or not watching anything at all; the idea of live TV broadcasts let alone the idea of being unable to pause/rewind live TV; the lack of streaming; the lack of YouTube and self-broadcasts.
When I watched TV in the 80s I'd watch cartoons made for then like He Man or Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles (not allowed to use the word Ninja in the UK), as well as cartoons from my parents generation like Flintstones, Scooby Doo, Tom & Jerry etc.
When my kids watch "TV" now they go on Kids YouTube and watch streamers like Mariah Elizabeth or Aphmau.
The cultural change from then to now is leaps and bounds.
The telly hasn't got any better though. It's still 99% shite. Arguably 1990s telly was of a higher standard.
Because telly is for old farts now.
Everyone else is spending time online, as we are here, not watching the telly.
And streaming means it doesn't matter if its 99% shit as there's so many things out there there's something for everyone.
It isn't for old farts. I still watch telly.
I have both Sky an BT sports packages and watch many hours of sport
For news it is generally Sky and occasionally BBC
The only other programme I watch would you believe is 'Emmerdale'
I read the mail, telegraph, and guardian on line together with North Wales live
7 weeks in, and years away from an election. The country is in a parlous state, needs some hard decisions taking and the public need to come to terms with them. Telling us it's all sunlit uplands isn't going to cut it.
There is a balance and Blair knew how to do it
So does Starmer it seems.
Self-entitled whinging shits complaining they're losing their goodies need to be ignored.
Quit whinging.
The WFA is one issue which is controversial, but Starmer's negativity and doom and gloom is over egging the politics and generally people want to hear an upbeat tone - Blair would not have delivered the speech yesterday that Starmer did
7 weeks in, and years away from an election. The country is in a parlous state, needs some hard decisions taking and the public need to come to terms with them. Telling us it's all sunlit uplands isn't going to cut it.
The PB Tory strategy is the opposite - keep giving away free stuff and pretend everything is great. Bizarre, but there it is.
Once upon a time the phrase 'PB Tory' meant something. There was undoubtedly a strong Tory bias here, and understandably so because that represented the most sensible view. I think that's long gone though. Despite high hopes nothing much that equates to sense ever came out of the Johnson government, and when Truss lurched into the picture in a way that'd give broken down evil witches of all directions nightmares, well then it was all over.
I think it's much more 'PB lost-in-the-woods' people nowadays. That certainly describes me. I don't mind being lost and I will find my way back, but I can tell you here and now that if the shelter ahead has a Farage brand then I'm turning back to the woods.
Talking of old films, I went to see Pulp Fiction at the cinema last night. At the risk of making many of you feel old it was the 30th anniversary of its release.
It stood up pretty well. The music was excellent and the conversational parts were still hilarious. Rather more casual racism than you would get these days. There was a bit where they were driving in a car and it was incredibly obvious that it was a movie out the back window and they were not actually driving but I suspect that was Tarentino's joke/homage to earlier films.
Well worth a watch if you can catch it.
Going to watch Pulp Fiction at the Phoenix in Oxford in Oct 94 and then going for Chinese food afterwards with a group of about 10 from college was my No.1 Gen X zeitgeist moment of the 90s.
Is the mid-1990s the last "previous era"?
DavidL's post got me thinking about how the passage of time is not linear. 1970s television series Happy Days looked back only 20 years but it was another world. 20 years before now, 2004, is merely a primitive version of now, with mobile but not quite smart phones, and the web just before Twitter and YouTube.
1994 had mobile phones but they were status items. Rich people with teenage children had home computers but they were by no means universal. PCs were, however, taking over offices. Britpop. Cool Britannia. Whatever happened to Oasis? Tbh in the course of writing this paragraph, I've changed my mind. 1994 was not qualitatively different from now.
Partially that's you showing your age though.
My kids see things from the 90s or hear things described from the 90s and its utterly alien to them and sounds like the 50s would have to me.
The idea of only watching what's being broadcast, everyone watching the same thing or not watching anything at all; the idea of live TV broadcasts let alone the idea of being unable to pause/rewind live TV; the lack of streaming; the lack of YouTube and self-broadcasts.
When I watched TV in the 80s I'd watch cartoons made for then like He Man or Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles (not allowed to use the word Ninja in the UK), as well as cartoons from my parents generation like Flintstones, Scooby Doo, Tom & Jerry etc.
When my kids watch "TV" now they go on Kids YouTube and watch streamers like Mariah Elizabeth or Aphmau.
The cultural change from then to now is leaps and bounds.
The telly hasn't got any better though. It's still 99% shite. Arguably 1990s telly was of a higher standard.
I think British TV was starting to decline in the 90s. Its high water mark was the 80s.
The 90s was a golden era for British TV - especially for comedy but also lots of great drama. I think because lots of barriers were broken down in the 80s and so commissioning editors would pretty much allow talent to go off and do what it wanted.
Reality TV and digitalisation arguably ended that in the 2000s. Once ratings begun to go into permanent decline and programmers had lots of data on hand they began producing the same old mush plus the odd prestige show.
TV comedy in particular has been killed by the panel show - as they're so cheap to make and inoffensive. No one's going to give a couple of people with a weird but possibly hilarious idea for a sitcom a load of money to make it when they can have several series of a panel show for the same cost.
You also have the growth of daytime TV and the costs associated with making programmes for that. Although they may be cheap,to make, in general, they still take a chunk from the budget,
Channel 4 was a real innovator on comedy many years ago. New comedy is rare now due to the rise in the panel show.
The panel show did however give us Carrot in a Box and Carrot in a Box: the Rematch though.
That comedy Countdown show was one of the funniest things on TV for years. Originally it was a one-off for a Telethon charity thingy, and has run for over 100 shows.
It has had some brilliant moments of comedy gold. There are hours of clips on youtube.
7 weeks in, and years away from an election. The country is in a parlous state, needs some hard decisions taking and the public need to come to terms with them. Telling us it's all sunlit uplands isn't going to cut it.
res The PB Tory strategy is the opposite - keep giving away free stuff and pretend everything is great. Bizarre, but there it is.
Have you considered the context of the original "sunlit uplands" speech? France's capitulation to Hitler created a situation which was arguably almost as serious as 14 years of Tory misrule. There's a serious straw manning going on here. Nobody says anyone should be promising only sunlit uplands, but leadership requires a belief and an assurance that that's the ultimate target even if it's a long way off. SKS does self advancement, not leadership.
Talking of old films, I went to see Pulp Fiction at the cinema last night. At the risk of making many of you feel old it was the 30th anniversary of its release.
It stood up pretty well. The music was excellent and the conversational parts were still hilarious. Rather more casual racism than you would get these days. There was a bit where they were driving in a car and it was incredibly obvious that it was a movie out the back window and they were not actually driving but I suspect that was Tarentino's joke/homage to earlier films.
Well worth a watch if you can catch it.
Going to watch Pulp Fiction at the Phoenix in Oxford in Oct 94 and then going for Chinese food afterwards with a group of about 10 from college was my No.1 Gen X zeitgeist moment of the 90s.
Is the mid-1990s the last "previous era"?
DavidL's post got me thinking about how the passage of time is not linear. 1970s television series Happy Days looked back only 20 years but it was another world. 20 years before now, 2004, is merely a primitive version of now, with mobile but not quite smart phones, and the web just before Twitter and YouTube.
1994 had mobile phones but they were status items. Rich people with teenage children had home computers but they were by no means universal. PCs were, however, taking over offices. Britpop. Cool Britannia. Whatever happened to Oasis? Tbh in the course of writing this paragraph, I've changed my mind. 1994 was not qualitatively different from now.
Partially that's you showing your age though.
My kids see things from the 90s or hear things described from the 90s and its utterly alien to them and sounds like the 50s would have to me.
The idea of only watching what's being broadcast, everyone watching the same thing or not watching anything at all; the idea of live TV broadcasts let alone the idea of being unable to pause/rewind live TV; the lack of streaming; the lack of YouTube and self-broadcasts.
When I watched TV in the 80s I'd watch cartoons made for then like He Man or Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles (not allowed to use the word Ninja in the UK), as well as cartoons from my parents generation like Flintstones, Scooby Doo, Tom & Jerry etc.
When my kids watch "TV" now they go on Kids YouTube and watch streamers like Mariah Elizabeth or Aphmau.
The cultural change from then to now is leaps and bounds.
The telly hasn't got any better though. It's still 99% shite. Arguably 1990s telly was of a higher standard.
I think British TV was starting to decline in the 90s. Its high water mark was the 80s.
The 90s was a golden era for British TV - especially for comedy but also lots of great drama. I think because lots of barriers were broken down in the 80s and so commissioning editors would pretty much allow talent to go off and do what it wanted.
Reality TV and digitalisation arguably ended that in the 2000s. Once ratings begun to go into permanent decline and programmers had lots of data on hand they began producing the same old mush plus the odd prestige show.
TV comedy in particular has been killed by the panel show - as they're so cheap to make and inoffensive. No one's going to give a couple of people with a weird but possibly hilarious idea for a sitcom a load of money to make it when they can have several series of a panel show for the same cost.
You also have the growth of daytime TV and the costs associated with making programmes for that. Although they may be cheap,to make, in general, they still take a chunk from the budget,
Channel 4 was a real innovator on comedy many years ago. New comedy is rare now due to the rise in the panel show.
The panel show did however give us Carrot in a Box and Carrot in a Box: the Rematch though.
Talking of old films, I went to see Pulp Fiction at the cinema last night. At the risk of making many of you feel old it was the 30th anniversary of its release.
It stood up pretty well. The music was excellent and the conversational parts were still hilarious. Rather more casual racism than you would get these days. There was a bit where they were driving in a car and it was incredibly obvious that it was a movie out the back window and they were not actually driving but I suspect that was Tarentino's joke/homage to earlier films.
Well worth a watch if you can catch it.
Going to watch Pulp Fiction at the Phoenix in Oxford in Oct 94 and then going for Chinese food afterwards with a group of about 10 from college was my No.1 Gen X zeitgeist moment of the 90s.
Is the mid-1990s the last "previous era"?
DavidL's post got me thinking about how the passage of time is not linear. 1970s television series Happy Days looked back only 20 years but it was another world. 20 years before now, 2004, is merely a primitive version of now, with mobile but not quite smart phones, and the web just before Twitter and YouTube.
1994 had mobile phones but they were status items. Rich people with teenage children had home computers but they were by no means universal. PCs were, however, taking over offices. Britpop. Cool Britannia. Whatever happened to Oasis? Tbh in the course of writing this paragraph, I've changed my mind. 1994 was not qualitatively different from now.
Partially that's you showing your age though.
My kids see things from the 90s or hear things described from the 90s and its utterly alien to them and sounds like the 50s would have to me.
The idea of only watching what's being broadcast, everyone watching the same thing or not watching anything at all; the idea of live TV broadcasts let alone the idea of being unable to pause/rewind live TV; the lack of streaming; the lack of YouTube and self-broadcasts.
When I watched TV in the 80s I'd watch cartoons made for then like He Man or Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles (not allowed to use the word Ninja in the UK), as well as cartoons from my parents generation like Flintstones, Scooby Doo, Tom & Jerry etc.
When my kids watch "TV" now they go on Kids YouTube and watch streamers like Mariah Elizabeth or Aphmau.
The cultural change from then to now is leaps and bounds.
The telly hasn't got any better though. It's still 99% shite. Arguably 1990s telly was of a higher standard.
I think British TV was starting to decline in the 90s. Its high water mark was the 80s.
The 90s was a golden era for British TV - especially for comedy but also lots of great drama. I think because lots of barriers were broken down in the 80s and so commissioning editors would pretty much allow talent to go off and do what it wanted.
Reality TV and digitalisation arguably ended that in the 2000s. Once ratings begun to go into permanent decline and programmers had lots of data on hand they began producing the same old mush plus the odd prestige show.
TV comedy in particular has been killed by the panel show - as they're so cheap to make and inoffensive. No one's going to give a couple of people with a weird but possibly hilarious idea for a sitcom a load of money to make it when they can have several series of a panel show for the same cost.
You also have the growth of daytime TV and the costs associated with making programmes for that. Although they may be cheap,to make, in general, they still take a chunk from the budget,
Channel 4 was a real innovator on comedy many years ago. New comedy is rare now due to the rise in the panel show.
The panel show did however give us Carrot in a Box and Carrot in a Box: the Rematch though.
That comedy Countdown show was one of the funniest things on TV for years. Originally it was a one-off for a Telethon charity thingy, and has run for over 100 shows.
It has had some brilliant moments of comedy gold. There are hours of clips on youtube.
Yes you can end up looking into some real glory rabbit holes.
If you're going to do unpopular things do them first. They've five years to manage expectations.
That strategy didn't exactly go well for the Tories, did it?
You would have won, or at least been in with a shout of winning, the last election but for Truss. Sure, Johnson was lagging in the polls, but if he had passed the baton to nearly anyone else (or had the moral compass to make him fit to continue in office) the gap could have been closed. As it was you guys shat the bed 2/3 of the way through the Parliament, leaving you no time to recover.
Mrs Thatch made her unpopular decisions first. She also had Galtieri inadvertently on her side of course…
No way the Tories deserved anything other than a shellacking after making Truss PM.
Idiot MPs who put her to the members, idiot members for backing her over Rishi.
Idiot MPs giving them Sunak and Truss - two less suited people to lead the country could hardly be found.
Did you rate the other candidates ? Do you reckon any of them would have done better ?
7 weeks in, and years away from an election. The country is in a parlous state, needs some hard decisions taking and the public need to come to terms with them. Telling us it's all sunlit uplands isn't going to cut it.
The PB Tory strategy is the opposite - keep giving away free stuff and pretend everything is great. Bizarre, but there it is.
Once upon a time the phrase 'PB Tory' meant something. There was undoubtedly a strong Tory bias here, and understandably so because that represented the most sensible view. I think that's long gone though. Despite high hopes nothing much that equates to sense ever came out of the Johnson government, and when Truss lurched into the picture in a way that'd give broken down evil witches of all directions nightmares, well then it was all over.
I think it's much more 'PB lost-in-the-woods' people nowadays. That certainly describes me. I don't mind being lost and I will find my way back, but I can tell you here and now that if the shelter ahead has a Farage brand then I'm turning back to the woods.
I had some bad news today. As you know earlier in the year I complained about tooth loss with two extracted in Q1 and a third planned for Q3/4. I planned to handle this by going abroad to get implants.
Unfortunately the situation has accelerated and it appears that two, not one, will need to be extracted in Q3/Q4 and ongoing gum disease and bone loss (yes, really) bring into question my suitability for implants
The minimum treatment now required is surgery and the use of bone cement/grafts to reinforce the vanishing bone. This is beyond the capacity of the average dentist and will require the services of a more advanced one, such as a periodontist or a dental reconstruction dentist.
My question to the PB brains trust is: what qualification or job title or membership should I look for? For example, the Dip Impl Dent RCSEd is a qualification, The British Society of Peridontology and Implant Dentistry is a society, a "periodontist" is a job title.
Don't know what it's like at your ends, but have twice had occasion just to rock up at the Dental Hospital* and ask for an emergency appointment. They were great on both occasions. If they won't see you they could at least point you in the right direction.
* These were teaching hospitals, so in both cases the rare condition of my eldest was seen as an opportunity to teach. * Expect a lot of people looking in your mouth.
@viewcode that sounds awful. My dentist cocked up a root canal and perforated my tooth and I got referred to UCL. I had to wait 6 months, which wasn't an issue as I wasn't in pain. I had a review there which was impressive and I am waiting to go back for treatment. I'd ask for a referral to specialist hospital who knows what they are doing. Significantly more impressive than my dentist
If you're going to do unpopular things do them first. They've five years to manage expectations.
That strategy didn't exactly go well for the Tories, did it?
You would have won, or at least been in with a shout of winning, the last election but for Truss. Sure, Johnson was lagging in the polls, but if he had passed the baton to nearly anyone else (or had the moral compass to make him fit to continue in office) the gap could have been closed. As it was you guys shat the bed 2/3 of the way through the Parliament, leaving you no time to recover.
Mrs Thatch made her unpopular decisions first. She also had Galtieri inadvertently on her side of course…
Well, this is shite really isn't it? The polls are quite clear. They went into the floor with Truss and the minibudget, they recovered a smidge when Sunak took over, and they then continued a steady downward trajectory that he owns completely. The fictional phenomenon you've just invented would show a completely different polling trajectory. Starmer’s polling will be the same - a brief (already over afaics) boost of relief that we now have a competent outfit in charge, followed by increasing disillusionment as they realise he plans to do nothing about the issues Britain faces expect make them worse.
That is an incredibly brave attempt to polish a turd but, simply put…no.
Truss dug an hole so deep for Sunak that Good Lord himself could not have got out of with a heavenly ladder. There was nothing Sunak, or anyone, could do after October ‘22 to fix the problem she created. Had Sunak started from the place Johnson ended, it would have been manageable for him, but the Tory reputation was trashed irredeemably by Truss’ economic stupidity and pig headedness. Your stout defence of her is admirable, but lonely, and frankly a little bizarre.
Snatching the coals from the winter fires of the old folk has gone well then.
Very poor start from Reeves frankly.
Interesting age profile in the change.
Go on, guess.
That's right, the increased disapproval is dominated by the 65+ age range, where disapproval is leading 72-16. By the time you get down to the 25-49 bracket, the disapproval lead is only 41-26.
And given where boosterism got us under Boris, a cold shower of reality may be what we need.
(And for context, the overall YouGov approve/disapprove scores are roughly where they were during the vaccine bounce. The YouGov panel really are ungrateful so-and-sos.)
There is a need to give a bit of hope. People tolerate a bit of blood, toil, sweat and tears if they expect sunny uplands.
Taking sweeties off the oldies was never going to be popular. Go the whole hog and scrap the triple lock for next year, the buggers aren't going to vote Labour anyway.
Tell them that it is the price of the Brexit that they voted for.
There is a diminishing marginal return to unpopular decisions; if you're pissing off pensioners, might as well get the everything out the way in this budget.
Sunlit uplands can happen in Spring '25. Or '26...
If you're going to do unpopular things do them first. They've five years to manage expectations.
That strategy didn't exactly go well for the Tories, did it?
You would have won, or at least been in with a shout of winning, the last election but for Truss. Sure, Johnson was lagging in the polls, but if he had passed the baton to nearly anyone else (or had the moral compass to make him fit to continue in office) the gap could have been closed. As it was you guys shat the bed 2/3 of the way through the Parliament, leaving you no time to recover.
Mrs Thatch made her unpopular decisions first. She also had Galtieri inadvertently on her side of course…
No way the Tories deserved anything other than a shellacking after making Truss PM.
Idiot MPs who put her to the members, idiot members for backing her over Rishi.
Idiot MPs giving them Sunak and Truss - two less suited people to lead the country could hardly be found.
Sunak would have done better had he received only Johnson’s poisoned chalice rather than Truss’ ocean of shite.
Talking of old films, I went to see Pulp Fiction at the cinema last night. At the risk of making many of you feel old it was the 30th anniversary of its release.
It stood up pretty well. The music was excellent and the conversational parts were still hilarious. Rather more casual racism than you would get these days. There was a bit where they were driving in a car and it was incredibly obvious that it was a movie out the back window and they were not actually driving but I suspect that was Tarentino's joke/homage to earlier films.
Well worth a watch if you can catch it.
Going to watch Pulp Fiction at the Phoenix in Oxford in Oct 94 and then going for Chinese food afterwards with a group of about 10 from college was my No.1 Gen X zeitgeist moment of the 90s.
Is the mid-1990s the last "previous era"?
DavidL's post got me thinking about how the passage of time is not linear. 1970s television series Happy Days looked back only 20 years but it was another world. 20 years before now, 2004, is merely a primitive version of now, with mobile but not quite smart phones, and the web just before Twitter and YouTube.
1994 had mobile phones but they were status items. Rich people with teenage children had home computers but they were by no means universal. PCs were, however, taking over offices. Britpop. Cool Britannia. Whatever happened to Oasis? Tbh in the course of writing this paragraph, I've changed my mind. 1994 was not qualitatively different from now.
Partially that's you showing your age though.
My kids see things from the 90s or hear things described from the 90s and its utterly alien to them and sounds like the 50s would have to me.
The idea of only watching what's being broadcast, everyone watching the same thing or not watching anything at all; the idea of live TV broadcasts let alone the idea of being unable to pause/rewind live TV; the lack of streaming; the lack of YouTube and self-broadcasts.
When I watched TV in the 80s I'd watch cartoons made for then like He Man or Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles (not allowed to use the word Ninja in the UK), as well as cartoons from my parents generation like Flintstones, Scooby Doo, Tom & Jerry etc.
When my kids watch "TV" now they go on Kids YouTube and watch streamers like Mariah Elizabeth or Aphmau.
The cultural change from then to now is leaps and bounds.
The telly hasn't got any better though. It's still 99% shite. Arguably 1990s telly was of a higher standard.
I think British TV was starting to decline in the 90s. Its high water mark was the 80s.
The 90s was a golden era for British TV - especially for comedy but also lots of great drama. I think because lots of barriers were broken down in the 80s and so commissioning editors would pretty much allow talent to go off and do what it wanted.
Reality TV and digitalisation arguably ended that in the 2000s. Once ratings begun to go into permanent decline and programmers had lots of data on hand they began producing the same old mush plus the odd prestige show.
TV comedy in particular has been killed by the panel show - as they're so cheap to make and inoffensive. No one's going to give a couple of people with a weird but possibly hilarious idea for a sitcom a load of money to make it when they can have several series of a panel show for the same cost.
You also have the growth of daytime TV and the costs associated with making programmes for that. Although they may be cheap,to make, in general, they still take a chunk from the budget,
Channel 4 was a real innovator on comedy many years ago. New comedy is rare now due to the rise in the panel show.
New comedy is rare due to the expense of it relative to other formats and the inability for comedy to travel so the costs need to be fully covered within the UK market.
It’s also the case that even panel shows are getting rarer as even the economics of that type of show doesn’t work nowadays
And panel games are a relatively frugal form of comedy. As Bill Oddie said to Graeme Garden as I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again regenerated into ...I Haven't A Clue, "you idiot, you've done us out of the writers' fee."
Talking of old films, I went to see Pulp Fiction at the cinema last night. At the risk of making many of you feel old it was the 30th anniversary of its release.
It stood up pretty well. The music was excellent and the conversational parts were still hilarious. Rather more casual racism than you would get these days. There was a bit where they were driving in a car and it was incredibly obvious that it was a movie out the back window and they were not actually driving but I suspect that was Tarentino's joke/homage to earlier films.
Well worth a watch if you can catch it.
Going to watch Pulp Fiction at the Phoenix in Oxford in Oct 94 and then going for Chinese food afterwards with a group of about 10 from college was my No.1 Gen X zeitgeist moment of the 90s.
Is the mid-1990s the last "previous era"?
DavidL's post got me thinking about how the passage of time is not linear. 1970s television series Happy Days looked back only 20 years but it was another world. 20 years before now, 2004, is merely a primitive version of now, with mobile but not quite smart phones, and the web just before Twitter and YouTube.
1994 had mobile phones but they were status items. Rich people with teenage children had home computers but they were by no means universal. PCs were, however, taking over offices. Britpop. Cool Britannia. Whatever happened to Oasis? Tbh in the course of writing this paragraph, I've changed my mind. 1994 was not qualitatively different from now.
Partially that's you showing your age though.
My kids see things from the 90s or hear things described from the 90s and its utterly alien to them and sounds like the 50s would have to me.
The idea of only watching what's being broadcast, everyone watching the same thing or not watching anything at all; the idea of live TV broadcasts let alone the idea of being unable to pause/rewind live TV; the lack of streaming; the lack of YouTube and self-broadcasts.
When I watched TV in the 80s I'd watch cartoons made for then like He Man or Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles (not allowed to use the word Ninja in the UK), as well as cartoons from my parents generation like Flintstones, Scooby Doo, Tom & Jerry etc.
When my kids watch "TV" now they go on Kids YouTube and watch streamers like Mariah Elizabeth or Aphmau.
The cultural change from then to now is leaps and bounds.
The telly hasn't got any better though. It's still 99% shite. Arguably 1990s telly was of a higher standard.
I think British TV was starting to decline in the 90s. Its high water mark was the 80s.
The 90s was a golden era for British TV - especially for comedy but also lots of great drama. I think because lots of barriers were broken down in the 80s and so commissioning editors would pretty much allow talent to go off and do what it wanted.
Reality TV and digitalisation arguably ended that in the 2000s. Once ratings begun to go into permanent decline and programmers had lots of data on hand they began producing the same old mush plus the odd prestige show.
TV comedy in particular has been killed by the panel show - as they're so cheap to make and inoffensive. No one's going to give a couple of people with a weird but possibly hilarious idea for a sitcom a load of money to make it when they can have several series of a panel show for the same cost.
You also have the growth of daytime TV and the costs associated with making programmes for that. Although they may be cheap,to make, in general, they still take a chunk from the budget,
Channel 4 was a real innovator on comedy many years ago. New comedy is rare now due to the rise in the panel show.
The panel show did however give us Carrot in a Box and Carrot in a Box: the Rematch though.
That comedy Countdown show was one of the funniest things on TV for years. Originally it was a one-off for a Telethon charity thingy, and has run for over 100 shows.
It has had some brilliant moments of comedy gold. There are hours of clips on youtube.
Yes you can end up looking into some real glory rabbit holes.
If you're going to do unpopular things do them first. They've five years to manage expectations.
That strategy didn't exactly go well for the Tories, did it?
You would have won, or at least been in with a shout of winning, the last election but for Truss. Sure, Johnson was lagging in the polls, but if he had passed the baton to nearly anyone else (or had the moral compass to make him fit to continue in office) the gap could have been closed. As it was you guys shat the bed 2/3 of the way through the Parliament, leaving you no time to recover.
Mrs Thatch made her unpopular decisions first. She also had Galtieri inadvertently on her side of course…
No way the Tories deserved anything other than a shellacking after making Truss PM.
Idiot MPs who put her to the members, idiot members for backing her over Rishi.
Idiot MPs giving them Sunak and Truss - two less suited people to lead the country could hardly be found.
Did you rate the other candidates ? Do you reckon any of them would have done better ?
Or more importantly does any of the 6 numpties look like they could beat dismal Starmer?
JD Vance would have been my bet for 2028. Tbh I'm not sure the cat lady thing is that harmful. Fair-minded spectators know what he meant but FFS man, stop digging.
The 'childless cat ladies' have produced numerous memes. JD Vance is known almost exclusively for that comment - and the couch, of course.
Talking of old films, I went to see Pulp Fiction at the cinema last night. At the risk of making many of you feel old it was the 30th anniversary of its release.
It stood up pretty well. The music was excellent and the conversational parts were still hilarious. Rather more casual racism than you would get these days. There was a bit where they were driving in a car and it was incredibly obvious that it was a movie out the back window and they were not actually driving but I suspect that was Tarentino's joke/homage to earlier films.
Well worth a watch if you can catch it.
Going to watch Pulp Fiction at the Phoenix in Oxford in Oct 94 and then going for Chinese food afterwards with a group of about 10 from college was my No.1 Gen X zeitgeist moment of the 90s.
Is the mid-1990s the last "previous era"?
DavidL's post got me thinking about how the passage of time is not linear. 1970s television series Happy Days looked back only 20 years but it was another world. 20 years before now, 2004, is merely a primitive version of now, with mobile but not quite smart phones, and the web just before Twitter and YouTube.
1994 had mobile phones but they were status items. Rich people with teenage children had home computers but they were by no means universal. PCs were, however, taking over offices. Britpop. Cool Britannia. Whatever happened to Oasis? Tbh in the course of writing this paragraph, I've changed my mind. 1994 was not qualitatively different from now.
Partially that's you showing your age though.
My kids see things from the 90s or hear things described from the 90s and its utterly alien to them and sounds like the 50s would have to me.
The idea of only watching what's being broadcast, everyone watching the same thing or not watching anything at all; the idea of live TV broadcasts let alone the idea of being unable to pause/rewind live TV; the lack of streaming; the lack of YouTube and self-broadcasts.
When I watched TV in the 80s I'd watch cartoons made for then like He Man or Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles (not allowed to use the word Ninja in the UK), as well as cartoons from my parents generation like Flintstones, Scooby Doo, Tom & Jerry etc.
When my kids watch "TV" now they go on Kids YouTube and watch streamers like Mariah Elizabeth or Aphmau.
The cultural change from then to now is leaps and bounds.
The telly hasn't got any better though. It's still 99% shite. Arguably 1990s telly was of a higher standard.
I think British TV was starting to decline in the 90s. Its high water mark was the 80s.
The 90s was a golden era for British TV - especially for comedy but also lots of great drama. I think because lots of barriers were broken down in the 80s and so commissioning editors would pretty much allow talent to go off and do what it wanted.
Reality TV and digitalisation arguably ended that in the 2000s. Once ratings begun to go into permanent decline and programmers had lots of data on hand they began producing the same old mush plus the odd prestige show.
TV comedy in particular has been killed by the panel show - as they're so cheap to make and inoffensive. No one's going to give a couple of people with a weird but possibly hilarious idea for a sitcom a load of money to make it when they can have several series of a panel show for the same cost.
You also have the growth of daytime TV and the costs associated with making programmes for that. Although they may be cheap,to make, in general, they still take a chunk from the budget,
Channel 4 was a real innovator on comedy many years ago. New comedy is rare now due to the rise in the panel show.
New comedy is rare due to the expense of it relative to other formats and the inability for comedy to travel so the costs need to be fully covered within the UK market.
It’s also the case that even panel shows are getting rarer as even the economics of that type of show doesn’t work nowadays
And panel games are a relatively frugal form of comedy. As Bill Oddie said to Graeme Garden as I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again regenerated into ...I Haven't A Clue, "you idiot, you've done us out of the writers' fee."
From what I gather Mock the Week employed 80 people every week for each episode - so TV panel shows are more expensive than you think, especially if you don't record them in bulk...
If you're going to do unpopular things do them first. They've five years to manage expectations.
That strategy didn't exactly go well for the Tories, did it?
You would have won, or at least been in with a shout of winning, the last election but for Truss. Sure, Johnson was lagging in the polls, but if he had passed the baton to nearly anyone else (or had the moral compass to make him fit to continue in office) the gap could have been closed. As it was you guys shat the bed 2/3 of the way through the Parliament, leaving you no time to recover.
Mrs Thatch made her unpopular decisions first. She also had Galtieri inadvertently on her side of course…
No way the Tories deserved anything other than a shellacking after making Truss PM.
Idiot MPs who put her to the members, idiot members for backing her over Rishi.
Idiot MPs giving them Sunak and Truss - two less suited people to lead the country could hardly be found.
Did you rate the other candidates ? Do you reckon any of them would have done better ?
Or more importantly does any of the 6 numpties look like they could beat dismal Starmer?
No.
But they may surprise on the upside if elected leader.
If you're going to do unpopular things do them first. They've five years to manage expectations.
That strategy didn't exactly go well for the Tories, did it?
You would have won, or at least been in with a shout of winning, the last election but for Truss. Sure, Johnson was lagging in the polls, but if he had passed the baton to nearly anyone else (or had the moral compass to make him fit to continue in office) the gap could have been closed. As it was you guys shat the bed 2/3 of the way through the Parliament, leaving you no time to recover.
Mrs Thatch made her unpopular decisions first. She also had Galtieri inadvertently on her side of course…
No way the Tories deserved anything other than a shellacking after making Truss PM.
Idiot MPs who put her to the members, idiot members for backing her over Rishi.
Idiot MPs giving them Sunak and Truss - two less suited people to lead the country could hardly be found.
Sunak would have done better had he received only Johnson’s poisoned chalice rather than Truss’ ocean of shite.
It's hard to say - interest rates would have still had to rise to about the current levels but without the mad panic it may not have had the same impact on Tory voters...
Has PB discussed this excellent decision by Tesco? I may even do a thread on it.
Tesco ditches cash payments at 40 cafes
Retailer says the move has improved the cafe experience by cutting waiting times
Tesco has ditched cash at 40 of its cafes with customers forced to pay by card at self-service machines.
The supermarket giant says the overhaul has boosted the customer experience and the changes have been well-received, but critics said it was “bonkers” and risked alienating elderly customers.
Martin Quinn, of Campaign for Cash, branded the change a “mad decision”.
He said: “Many of the customers will be elderly or retirees who want to order in person, not press a computer screen. This is a mad decision.”
So far, 40 cafes have been redesigned and more are thought to be in the pipeline.
If you're going to do unpopular things do them first. They've five years to manage expectations.
That strategy didn't exactly go well for the Tories, did it?
You would have won, or at least been in with a shout of winning, the last election but for Truss. Sure, Johnson was lagging in the polls, but if he had passed the baton to nearly anyone else (or had the moral compass to make him fit to continue in office) the gap could have been closed. As it was you guys shat the bed 2/3 of the way through the Parliament, leaving you no time to recover.
Mrs Thatch made her unpopular decisions first. She also had Galtieri inadvertently on her side of course…
Well, this is shite really isn't it? The polls are quite clear. They went into the floor with Truss and the minibudget, they recovered a smidge when Sunak took over, and they then continued a steady downward trajectory that he owns completely. The fictional phenomenon you've just invented would show a completely different polling trajectory. Starmer’s polling will be the same - a brief (already over afaics) boost of relief that we now have a competent outfit in charge, followed by increasing disillusionment as they realise he plans to do nothing about the issues Britain faces expect make them worse.
That is an incredibly brave attempt to polish a turd but, simply put…no.
Truss dug an hole so deep for Sunak that Good Lord himself could not have got out of with a heavenly ladder. There was nothing Sunak, or anyone, could do after October ‘22 to fix the problem she created. Had Sunak started from the place Johnson ended, it would have been manageable for him, but the Tory reputation was trashed irredeemably by Truss’ economic stupidity and pig headedness. Your stout defence of her is admirable, but lonely, and frankly a little bizarre.
I don't think you are actually disagreeing with the post you think you are disagreeing with. Truss was in a class of her own. Sunak was meh on a good day. SKS has had the time and the opportunity to prove that he is better than meh, and flunked it. The only things he is better than are Truss, and his chancellor.
The problem is largely the messaging. Everyone knows Labour have tough decisions to make, it’s time for them to talk about what their vision is. Managerial stuff isn’t very inspiring. A government that puts its people through more financial pain absolutely needs to be able to sell the “why” and the hope piece.
The problem is largely the messaging. Everyone knows Labour have tough decisions to make, it’s time for them to talk about what their vision is. Managerial stuff isn’t very inspiring. A government that puts its people through more financial pain absolutely needs to be able to sell the “why” and the hope piece.
But timing wise surely that comes in the budget, not before? We are so used to a government scoring own goals people seem to have forgotten the basics.
Talking of old films, I went to see Pulp Fiction at the cinema last night. At the risk of making many of you feel old it was the 30th anniversary of its release.
It stood up pretty well. The music was excellent and the conversational parts were still hilarious. Rather more casual racism than you would get these days. There was a bit where they were driving in a car and it was incredibly obvious that it was a movie out the back window and they were not actually driving but I suspect that was Tarentino's joke/homage to earlier films.
Well worth a watch if you can catch it.
Going to watch Pulp Fiction at the Phoenix in Oxford in Oct 94 and then going for Chinese food afterwards with a group of about 10 from college was my No.1 Gen X zeitgeist moment of the 90s.
Is the mid-1990s the last "previous era"?
DavidL's post got me thinking about how the passage of time is not linear. 1970s television series Happy Days looked back only 20 years but it was another world. 20 years before now, 2004, is merely a primitive version of now, with mobile but not quite smart phones, and the web just before Twitter and YouTube.
1994 had mobile phones but they were status items. Rich people with teenage children had home computers but they were by no means universal. PCs were, however, taking over offices. Britpop. Cool Britannia. Whatever happened to Oasis? Tbh in the course of writing this paragraph, I've changed my mind. 1994 was not qualitatively different from now.
Partially that's you showing your age though.
My kids see things from the 90s or hear things described from the 90s and its utterly alien to them and sounds like the 50s would have to me.
The idea of only watching what's being broadcast, everyone watching the same thing or not watching anything at all; the idea of live TV broadcasts let alone the idea of being unable to pause/rewind live TV; the lack of streaming; the lack of YouTube and self-broadcasts.
When I watched TV in the 80s I'd watch cartoons made for then like He Man or Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles (not allowed to use the word Ninja in the UK), as well as cartoons from my parents generation like Flintstones, Scooby Doo, Tom & Jerry etc.
When my kids watch "TV" now they go on Kids YouTube and watch streamers like Mariah Elizabeth or Aphmau.
The cultural change from then to now is leaps and bounds.
The telly hasn't got any better though. It's still 99% shite. Arguably 1990s telly was of a higher standard.
I think British TV was starting to decline in the 90s. Its high water mark was the 80s.
The 90s was a golden era for British TV - especially for comedy but also lots of great drama. I think because lots of barriers were broken down in the 80s and so commissioning editors would pretty much allow talent to go off and do what it wanted.
Reality TV and digitalisation arguably ended that in the 2000s. Once ratings begun to go into permanent decline and programmers had lots of data on hand they began producing the same old mush plus the odd prestige show.
TV comedy in particular has been killed by the panel show - as they're so cheap to make and inoffensive. No one's going to give a couple of people with a weird but possibly hilarious idea for a sitcom a load of money to make it when they can have several series of a panel show for the same cost.
You also have the growth of daytime TV and the costs associated with making programmes for that. Although they may be cheap,to make, in general, they still take a chunk from the budget,
Channel 4 was a real innovator on comedy many years ago. New comedy is rare now due to the rise in the panel show.
The panel show did however give us Carrot in a Box and Carrot in a Box: the Rematch though.
That comedy Countdown show was one of the funniest things on TV for years. Originally it was a one-off for a Telethon charity thingy, and has run for over 100 shows.
It has had some brilliant moments of comedy gold. There are hours of clips on youtube.
Yes you can end up looking into some real glory rabbit holes.
"glory holes" was a special moment....
The only time we ever saw Joe Wilkinson unintentially break character, despite the dozens of stupid and pointless stunts he did on that show.
JD Vance would have been my bet for 2028. Tbh I'm not sure the cat lady thing is that harmful. Fair-minded spectators know what he meant but FFS man, stop digging.
The 'childless cat ladies' have produced numerous memes. JD Vance is known almost exclusively for that comment - and the couch, of course.
As for Republican 2028 candidate, maybe DJT? Seriously, if Kamala wins the Republicans may switch away from MAGA and go for Haley?
Has PB discussed this excellent decision by Tesco? I may even do a thread on it.
Tesco ditches cash payments at 40 cafes
Retailer says the move has improved the cafe experience by cutting waiting times
Tesco has ditched cash at 40 of its cafes with customers forced to pay by card at self-service machines.
The supermarket giant says the overhaul has boosted the customer experience and the changes have been well-received, but critics said it was “bonkers” and risked alienating elderly customers.
Martin Quinn, of Campaign for Cash, branded the change a “mad decision”.
He said: “Many of the customers will be elderly or retirees who want to order in person, not press a computer screen. This is a mad decision.”
So far, 40 cafes have been redesigned and more are thought to be in the pipeline.
Has PB discussed this excellent decision by Tesco? I may even do a thread on it.
Tesco ditches cash payments at 40 cafes
Retailer says the move has improved the cafe experience by cutting waiting times
Tesco has ditched cash at 40 of its cafes with customers forced to pay by card at self-service machines.
The supermarket giant says the overhaul has boosted the customer experience and the changes have been well-received, but critics said it was “bonkers” and risked alienating elderly customers.
Martin Quinn, of Campaign for Cash, branded the change a “mad decision”.
He said: “Many of the customers will be elderly or retirees who want to order in person, not press a computer screen. This is a mad decision.”
So far, 40 cafes have been redesigned and more are thought to be in the pipeline.
Has PB discussed this excellent decision by Tesco? I may even do a thread on it.
Tesco ditches cash payments at 40 cafes
Retailer says the move has improved the cafe experience by cutting waiting times
Tesco has ditched cash at 40 of its cafes with customers forced to pay by card at self-service machines.
The supermarket giant says the overhaul has boosted the customer experience and the changes have been well-received, but critics said it was “bonkers” and risked alienating elderly customers.
Martin Quinn, of Campaign for Cash, branded the change a “mad decision”.
He said: “Many of the customers will be elderly or retirees who want to order in person, not press a computer screen. This is a mad decision.”
So far, 40 cafes have been redesigned and more are thought to be in the pipeline.
Has PB discussed this excellent decision by Tesco? I may even do a thread on it.
Tesco ditches cash payments at 40 cafes
Retailer says the move has improved the cafe experience by cutting waiting times
Tesco has ditched cash at 40 of its cafes with customers forced to pay by card at self-service machines.
The supermarket giant says the overhaul has boosted the customer experience and the changes have been well-received, but critics said it was “bonkers” and risked alienating elderly customers.
Martin Quinn, of Campaign for Cash, branded the change a “mad decision”.
He said: “Many of the customers will be elderly or retirees who want to order in person, not press a computer screen. This is a mad decision.”
So far, 40 cafes have been redesigned and more are thought to be in the pipeline.
Has PB discussed this excellent decision by Tesco? I may even do a thread on it.
Tesco ditches cash payments at 40 cafes
Retailer says the move has improved the cafe experience by cutting waiting times
Tesco has ditched cash at 40 of its cafes with customers forced to pay by card at self-service machines.
The supermarket giant says the overhaul has boosted the customer experience and the changes have been well-received, but critics said it was “bonkers” and risked alienating elderly customers.
Martin Quinn, of Campaign for Cash, branded the change a “mad decision”.
He said: “Many of the customers will be elderly or retirees who want to order in person, not press a computer screen. This is a mad decision.”
So far, 40 cafes have been redesigned and more are thought to be in the pipeline.
I had some bad news today. As you know earlier in the year I complained about tooth loss with two extracted in Q1 and a third planned for Q3/4. I planned to handle this by going abroad to get implants.
Unfortunately the situation has accelerated and it appears that two, not one, will need to be extracted in Q3/Q4 and ongoing gum disease and bone loss (yes, really) bring into question my suitability for implants
The minimum treatment now required is surgery and the use of bone cement/grafts to reinforce the vanishing bone. This is beyond the capacity of the average dentist and will require the services of a more advanced one, such as a periodontist or a dental reconstruction dentist.
My question to the PB brains trust is: what qualification or job title or membership should I look for? For example, the Dip Impl Dent RCSEd is a qualification, The British Society of Peridontology and Implant Dentistry is a society, a "periodontist" is a job title.
Probably best is to see either a Maxilo-Facial surgeon (these are both medically and dentally trained) or possibly a Restorative dentist.
Go for the first if you can, but it won't be cheap.
Incidentally probably a good idea to get investigated as to the cause of the accelerated bone loss, such as calcium and magnesium levels, as well as Vit D etc.
Talking of old films, I went to see Pulp Fiction at the cinema last night. At the risk of making many of you feel old it was the 30th anniversary of its release.
It stood up pretty well. The music was excellent and the conversational parts were still hilarious. Rather more casual racism than you would get these days. There was a bit where they were driving in a car and it was incredibly obvious that it was a movie out the back window and they were not actually driving but I suspect that was Tarentino's joke/homage to earlier films.
Well worth a watch if you can catch it.
Going to watch Pulp Fiction at the Phoenix in Oxford in Oct 94 and then going for Chinese food afterwards with a group of about 10 from college was my No.1 Gen X zeitgeist moment of the 90s.
Is the mid-1990s the last "previous era"?
DavidL's post got me thinking about how the passage of time is not linear. 1970s television series Happy Days looked back only 20 years but it was another world. 20 years before now, 2004, is merely a primitive version of now, with mobile but not quite smart phones, and the web just before Twitter and YouTube.
1994 had mobile phones but they were status items. Rich people with teenage children had home computers but they were by no means universal. PCs were, however, taking over offices. Britpop. Cool Britannia. Whatever happened to Oasis? Tbh in the course of writing this paragraph, I've changed my mind. 1994 was not qualitatively different from now.
Partially that's you showing your age though.
My kids see things from the 90s or hear things described from the 90s and its utterly alien to them and sounds like the 50s would have to me.
The idea of only watching what's being broadcast, everyone watching the same thing or not watching anything at all; the idea of live TV broadcasts let alone the idea of being unable to pause/rewind live TV; the lack of streaming; the lack of YouTube and self-broadcasts.
When I watched TV in the 80s I'd watch cartoons made for then like He Man or Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles (not allowed to use the word Ninja in the UK), as well as cartoons from my parents generation like Flintstones, Scooby Doo, Tom & Jerry etc.
When my kids watch "TV" now they go on Kids YouTube and watch streamers like Mariah Elizabeth or Aphmau.
The cultural change from then to now is leaps and bounds.
The telly hasn't got any better though. It's still 99% shite. Arguably 1990s telly was of a higher standard.
I think British TV was starting to decline in the 90s. Its high water mark was the 80s.
The 90s was a golden era for British TV - especially for comedy but also lots of great drama. I think because lots of barriers were broken down in the 80s and so commissioning editors would pretty much allow talent to go off and do what it wanted.
Reality TV and digitalisation arguably ended that in the 2000s. Once ratings begun to go into permanent decline and programmers had lots of data on hand they began producing the same old mush plus the odd prestige show.
TV comedy in particular has been killed by the panel show - as they're so cheap to make and inoffensive. No one's going to give a couple of people with a weird but possibly hilarious idea for a sitcom a load of money to make it when they can have several series of a panel show for the same cost.
You also have the growth of daytime TV and the costs associated with making programmes for that. Although they may be cheap,to make, in general, they still take a chunk from the budget,
Channel 4 was a real innovator on comedy many years ago. New comedy is rare now due to the rise in the panel show.
New comedy is rare due to the expense of it relative to other formats and the inability for comedy to travel so the costs need to be fully covered within the UK market.
It’s also the case that even panel shows are getting rarer as even the economics of that type of show doesn’t work nowadays
And panel games are a relatively frugal form of comedy. As Bill Oddie said to Graeme Garden as I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again regenerated into ...I Haven't A Clue, "you idiot, you've done us out of the writers' fee."
From what I gather Mock the Week employed 80 people every week for each episode - so TV panel shows are more expensive than you think, especially if you don't record them in bulk...
Yes, MTW and HIGNFY are a lot more expensive than your usual panel show, because you’re running a full-time crew and a decent share in a studio for weeks on end. Plus all of the lawyers.
Something like Countdown they film a week’s worth of shows in a day, and film one week a month for three or four months for a whole season. The comedy Countdown would actually be a lot more expensive than the regular Countdown, because you also have have writers and sketch performers that don’t appear in the ‘regular’ show, and probably can’t do the efficiency of studio time.
Has PB discussed this excellent decision by Tesco? I may even do a thread on it.
Tesco ditches cash payments at 40 cafes
Retailer says the move has improved the cafe experience by cutting waiting times
Tesco has ditched cash at 40 of its cafes with customers forced to pay by card at self-service machines.
The supermarket giant says the overhaul has boosted the customer experience and the changes have been well-received, but critics said it was “bonkers” and risked alienating elderly customers.
Martin Quinn, of Campaign for Cash, branded the change a “mad decision”.
He said: “Many of the customers will be elderly or retirees who want to order in person, not press a computer screen. This is a mad decision.”
So far, 40 cafes have been redesigned and more are thought to be in the pipeline.
Has PB discussed this excellent decision by Tesco? I may even do a thread on it.
Tesco ditches cash payments at 40 cafes
Retailer says the move has improved the cafe experience by cutting waiting times
Tesco has ditched cash at 40 of its cafes with customers forced to pay by card at self-service machines.
The supermarket giant says the overhaul has boosted the customer experience and the changes have been well-received, but critics said it was “bonkers” and risked alienating elderly customers.
Martin Quinn, of Campaign for Cash, branded the change a “mad decision”.
He said: “Many of the customers will be elderly or retirees who want to order in person, not press a computer screen. This is a mad decision.”
So far, 40 cafes have been redesigned and more are thought to be in the pipeline.
Has PB discussed this excellent decision by Tesco? I may even do a thread on it.
Tesco ditches cash payments at 40 cafes
Retailer says the move has improved the cafe experience by cutting waiting times
Tesco has ditched cash at 40 of its cafes with customers forced to pay by card at self-service machines.
The supermarket giant says the overhaul has boosted the customer experience and the changes have been well-received, but critics said it was “bonkers” and risked alienating elderly customers.
Martin Quinn, of Campaign for Cash, branded the change a “mad decision”.
He said: “Many of the customers will be elderly or retirees who want to order in person, not press a computer screen. This is a mad decision.”
So far, 40 cafes have been redesigned and more are thought to be in the pipeline.
Very wise move by Tesco. Part of a growing trend for cafes to get rid of cash: a pointless waste of time and materials. Makes great sense.
I wish places would ditch payments by phone. There is nothing worse than bring stuck in a queue behind someone who wants to pay using their phone but their battery has run out. Cash is less of a problem but I think it is time we phased out coins less than 10 pence denomination, I can't see they serve any useful purpose. Correct me if I am wrong as I was quite young but I think when we stopped using farthings and then hapennies (1967?) they actually were worth more than 1 penny now.
Has PB discussed this excellent decision by Tesco? I may even do a thread on it.
Tesco ditches cash payments at 40 cafes
Retailer says the move has improved the cafe experience by cutting waiting times
Tesco has ditched cash at 40 of its cafes with customers forced to pay by card at self-service machines.
The supermarket giant says the overhaul has boosted the customer experience and the changes have been well-received, but critics said it was “bonkers” and risked alienating elderly customers.
Martin Quinn, of Campaign for Cash, branded the change a “mad decision”.
He said: “Many of the customers will be elderly or retirees who want to order in person, not press a computer screen. This is a mad decision.”
So far, 40 cafes have been redesigned and more are thought to be in the pipeline.
Has PB discussed this excellent decision by Tesco? I may even do a thread on it.
Tesco ditches cash payments at 40 cafes
Retailer says the move has improved the cafe experience by cutting waiting times
Tesco has ditched cash at 40 of its cafes with customers forced to pay by card at self-service machines.
The supermarket giant says the overhaul has boosted the customer experience and the changes have been well-received, but critics said it was “bonkers” and risked alienating elderly customers.
Martin Quinn, of Campaign for Cash, branded the change a “mad decision”.
He said: “Many of the customers will be elderly or retirees who want to order in person, not press a computer screen. This is a mad decision.”
So far, 40 cafes have been redesigned and more are thought to be in the pipeline.
Talking of old films, I went to see Pulp Fiction at the cinema last night. At the risk of making many of you feel old it was the 30th anniversary of its release.
It stood up pretty well. The music was excellent and the conversational parts were still hilarious. Rather more casual racism than you would get these days. There was a bit where they were driving in a car and it was incredibly obvious that it was a movie out the back window and they were not actually driving but I suspect that was Tarentino's joke/homage to earlier films.
Well worth a watch if you can catch it.
Going to watch Pulp Fiction at the Phoenix in Oxford in Oct 94 and then going for Chinese food afterwards with a group of about 10 from college was my No.1 Gen X zeitgeist moment of the 90s.
Is the mid-1990s the last "previous era"?
DavidL's post got me thinking about how the passage of time is not linear. 1970s television series Happy Days looked back only 20 years but it was another world. 20 years before now, 2004, is merely a primitive version of now, with mobile but not quite smart phones, and the web just before Twitter and YouTube.
1994 had mobile phones but they were status items. Rich people with teenage children had home computers but they were by no means universal. PCs were, however, taking over offices. Britpop. Cool Britannia. Whatever happened to Oasis? Tbh in the course of writing this paragraph, I've changed my mind. 1994 was not qualitatively different from now.
Partially that's you showing your age though.
My kids see things from the 90s or hear things described from the 90s and its utterly alien to them and sounds like the 50s would have to me.
The idea of only watching what's being broadcast, everyone watching the same thing or not watching anything at all; the idea of live TV broadcasts let alone the idea of being unable to pause/rewind live TV; the lack of streaming; the lack of YouTube and self-broadcasts.
When I watched TV in the 80s I'd watch cartoons made for then like He Man or Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles (not allowed to use the word Ninja in the UK), as well as cartoons from my parents generation like Flintstones, Scooby Doo, Tom & Jerry etc.
When my kids watch "TV" now they go on Kids YouTube and watch streamers like Mariah Elizabeth or Aphmau.
The cultural change from then to now is leaps and bounds.
The telly hasn't got any better though. It's still 99% shite. Arguably 1990s telly was of a higher standard.
I think British TV was starting to decline in the 90s. Its high water mark was the 80s.
The 90s was a golden era for British TV - especially for comedy but also lots of great drama. I think because lots of barriers were broken down in the 80s and so commissioning editors would pretty much allow talent to go off and do what it wanted.
Reality TV and digitalisation arguably ended that in the 2000s. Once ratings begun to go into permanent decline and programmers had lots of data on hand they began producing the same old mush plus the odd prestige show.
TV comedy in particular has been killed by the panel show - as they're so cheap to make and inoffensive. No one's going to give a couple of people with a weird but possibly hilarious idea for a sitcom a load of money to make it when they can have several series of a panel show for the same cost.
You also have the growth of daytime TV and the costs associated with making programmes for that. Although they may be cheap,to make, in general, they still take a chunk from the budget,
Channel 4 was a real innovator on comedy many years ago. New comedy is rare now due to the rise in the panel show.
New comedy is rare due to the expense of it relative to other formats and the inability for comedy to travel so the costs need to be fully covered within the UK market.
It’s also the case that even panel shows are getting rarer as even the economics of that type of show doesn’t work nowadays
And panel games are a relatively frugal form of comedy. As Bill Oddie said to Graeme Garden as I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again regenerated into ...I Haven't A Clue, "you idiot, you've done us out of the writers' fee."
I'm not sure it is economics that killed panel shows so much as the idea they were somehow toxic and discriminated against female panellists.
The other big change is stand-up tours are so lucrative these days and promoted by (as TRiE noted) comedians posting not their jokes but their banter with the audience on YouTube and TikTok. There's no band or actors to split the ticket take with, the only expense is the hire of the theatre and a night in a cheap-ish hotel 1am (after the gig) to 10am then drive to the next venue.
Has PB discussed this excellent decision by Tesco? I may even do a thread on it.
Tesco ditches cash payments at 40 cafes
Retailer says the move has improved the cafe experience by cutting waiting times
Tesco has ditched cash at 40 of its cafes with customers forced to pay by card at self-service machines.
The supermarket giant says the overhaul has boosted the customer experience and the changes have been well-received, but critics said it was “bonkers” and risked alienating elderly customers.
Martin Quinn, of Campaign for Cash, branded the change a “mad decision”.
He said: “Many of the customers will be elderly or retirees who want to order in person, not press a computer screen. This is a mad decision.”
So far, 40 cafes have been redesigned and more are thought to be in the pipeline.
A company as badly run as that with so many questions over where the money has gone should not be asking for hiked bills in a monopoly they have mismanaged to survive.
Not, at least, until they have explained how debts ballooned while they were paying dividends claiming large profits - and recovered that money....
The worst of the rot took place long before the current management. And the current shareholders are the suckers who ended up holding the debt ridden organisation that Macquarie created in order to enrich themselves.
There’s really no good reason why the U.K. government/taxpayer should make them whole again, though. Not least as the cycle is likely to start all over again.
The problem is largely the messaging. Everyone knows Labour have tough decisions to make, it’s time for them to talk about what their vision is. Managerial stuff isn’t very inspiring. A government that puts its people through more financial pain absolutely needs to be able to sell the “why” and the hope piece.
But timing wise surely that comes in the budget, not before? We are so used to a government scoring own goals people seem to have forgotten the basics.
No, I think it comes now - they have already made some decisions like the WFA.
All we are hearing is how awful everything is and how awful everything is going to be. I get the tactic behind that, but the government creates a rod for its own back if it can’t sell the decisions it is taking. People don’t care about the “national interest” or that it’s being done in “service” to the nation. They want to say if I pay more this year, what are you promising me. It doesn’t have to be specifics, but the direction of travel needs to be set. Once people fall out with a government, it becomes harder for them to make up later.
Has PB discussed this excellent decision by Tesco? I may even do a thread on it.
Tesco ditches cash payments at 40 cafes
Retailer says the move has improved the cafe experience by cutting waiting times
Tesco has ditched cash at 40 of its cafes with customers forced to pay by card at self-service machines.
The supermarket giant says the overhaul has boosted the customer experience and the changes have been well-received, but critics said it was “bonkers” and risked alienating elderly customers.
Martin Quinn, of Campaign for Cash, branded the change a “mad decision”.
He said: “Many of the customers will be elderly or retirees who want to order in person, not press a computer screen. This is a mad decision.”
So far, 40 cafes have been redesigned and more are thought to be in the pipeline.
Very wise move by Tesco. Part of a growing trend for cafes to get rid of cash: a pointless waste of time and materials. Makes great sense.
I wish places would ditch payments by phone. There is nothing worse than bring stuck in a queue behind someone who wants to pay using their phone but their battery has run out. Cash is less of a problem but I think it is time we phased out coins less than 10 pence denomination, I can't see they serve any useful purpose. Correct me if I am wrong as I was quite young but I think when we stopped using farthings and then hapennies (1967?) they actually were worth more than 1 penny now.
Much better than people insisting on paying over the phone. That's very a very painful process, and I presume those who do it are sadists.
Has PB discussed this excellent decision by Tesco? I may even do a thread on it.
Tesco ditches cash payments at 40 cafes
Retailer says the move has improved the cafe experience by cutting waiting times
Tesco has ditched cash at 40 of its cafes with customers forced to pay by card at self-service machines.
The supermarket giant says the overhaul has boosted the customer experience and the changes have been well-received, but critics said it was “bonkers” and risked alienating elderly customers.
Martin Quinn, of Campaign for Cash, branded the change a “mad decision”.
He said: “Many of the customers will be elderly or retirees who want to order in person, not press a computer screen. This is a mad decision.”
So far, 40 cafes have been redesigned and more are thought to be in the pipeline.
I had some bad news today. As you know earlier in the year I complained about tooth loss with two extracted in Q1 and a third planned for Q3/4. I planned to handle this by going abroad to get implants.
Unfortunately the situation has accelerated and it appears that two, not one, will need to be extracted in Q3/Q4 and ongoing gum disease and bone loss (yes, really) bring into question my suitability for implants
The minimum treatment now required is surgery and the use of bone cement/grafts to reinforce the vanishing bone. This is beyond the capacity of the average dentist and will require the services of a more advanced one, such as a periodontist or a dental reconstruction dentist.
My question to the PB brains trust is: what qualification or job title or membership should I look for? For example, the Dip Impl Dent RCSEd is a qualification, The British Society of Peridontology and Implant Dentistry is a society, a "periodontist" is a job title.
Has PB discussed this excellent decision by Tesco? I may even do a thread on it.
Tesco ditches cash payments at 40 cafes
Retailer says the move has improved the cafe experience by cutting waiting times
Tesco has ditched cash at 40 of its cafes with customers forced to pay by card at self-service machines.
The supermarket giant says the overhaul has boosted the customer experience and the changes have been well-received, but critics said it was “bonkers” and risked alienating elderly customers.
Martin Quinn, of Campaign for Cash, branded the change a “mad decision”.
He said: “Many of the customers will be elderly or retirees who want to order in person, not press a computer screen. This is a mad decision.”
So far, 40 cafes have been redesigned and more are thought to be in the pipeline.
Has PB discussed this excellent decision by Tesco? I may even do a thread on it.
Tesco ditches cash payments at 40 cafes
Retailer says the move has improved the cafe experience by cutting waiting times
Tesco has ditched cash at 40 of its cafes with customers forced to pay by card at self-service machines.
The supermarket giant says the overhaul has boosted the customer experience and the changes have been well-received, but critics said it was “bonkers” and risked alienating elderly customers.
Martin Quinn, of Campaign for Cash, branded the change a “mad decision”.
He said: “Many of the customers will be elderly or retirees who want to order in person, not press a computer screen. This is a mad decision.”
So far, 40 cafes have been redesigned and more are thought to be in the pipeline.
1. WFA is restored, but it must be claimed cashlessly at a touch screen terminal.
2. WFA is restored at €200 per pensioner household, so it can only be claimed post-Brejoin.
What's WFA?
Winter Fuel Allowance
Yes. Alas everyone knows but me
It could also be the Windsor Framework Agreement maybe ?
Ah, you're very kind BigG, but I think I've clearly failed to be up-to-date! As I get all my news from PB I have only myself to blame. The baked beans of nutrition.
I had some bad news today. As you know earlier in the year I complained about tooth loss with two extracted in Q1 and a third planned for Q3/4. I planned to handle this by going abroad to get implants.
Unfortunately the situation has accelerated and it appears that two, not one, will need to be extracted in Q3/Q4 and ongoing gum disease and bone loss (yes, really) bring into question my suitability for implants
The minimum treatment now required is surgery and the use of bone cement/grafts to reinforce the vanishing bone. This is beyond the capacity of the average dentist and will require the services of a more advanced one, such as a periodontist or a dental reconstruction dentist.
My question to the PB brains trust is: what qualification or job title or membership should I look for? For example, the Dip Impl Dent RCSEd is a qualification, The British Society of Peridontology and Implant Dentistry is a society, a "periodontist" is a job title.
Has PB discussed this excellent decision by Tesco? I may even do a thread on it.
Tesco ditches cash payments at 40 cafes
Retailer says the move has improved the cafe experience by cutting waiting times
Tesco has ditched cash at 40 of its cafes with customers forced to pay by card at self-service machines.
The supermarket giant says the overhaul has boosted the customer experience and the changes have been well-received, but critics said it was “bonkers” and risked alienating elderly customers.
Martin Quinn, of Campaign for Cash, branded the change a “mad decision”.
He said: “Many of the customers will be elderly or retirees who want to order in person, not press a computer screen. This is a mad decision.”
So far, 40 cafes have been redesigned and more are thought to be in the pipeline.
My Great-Grandfather worked for National Benzole during the Second World War and was, as a result, one of the few people allowed a petrol ration. During the late autumn 1940 his car was strafed on the road from Felixstowe to Ipswich by one of the small detachment of the Italian Air Force Mussolini sent over to carry out fighter sweeps - doubtless they thought he must have been some big military cheese in a staff car. No real harm done was but he ran off the road and had to put in an insurance claim for the damage. My grandmother delighted in recounting the answers he had to give.
Q: “Who was the owner of the other vehicle involved” A: “The Government of Italy”. Q: “Approximately how fast was the other vehicle travelling” A: “Somewhere in the region of 200-300 miles per hour”
🧵Following Starmer's speech I think the Budget will be key to how early public opinion crystallises around this Government & landing it needs two things First - showing those with broadest shoulders really are bearing burden Second - to steal from Chicago - finding some joy
This point has been made many, many times on PB...
Luke Tryl @LukeTryl · 7h This is why I treat polling that shows people are willing to support higher taxes. In the abstract this is true, but dig deeper and what that really means is they are willing to support higher taxes on other people or and particularly businesses.
Has PB discussed this excellent decision by Tesco? I may even do a thread on it.
Tesco ditches cash payments at 40 cafes
Retailer says the move has improved the cafe experience by cutting waiting times
Tesco has ditched cash at 40 of its cafes with customers forced to pay by card at self-service machines.
The supermarket giant says the overhaul has boosted the customer experience and the changes have been well-received, but critics said it was “bonkers” and risked alienating elderly customers.
Martin Quinn, of Campaign for Cash, branded the change a “mad decision”.
He said: “Many of the customers will be elderly or retirees who want to order in person, not press a computer screen. This is a mad decision.”
So far, 40 cafes have been redesigned and more are thought to be in the pipeline.
As ever, the move is more to the advantage of the retailer - who has to deal with all that cash - than the customer.
I wish, for once, retailers (and banks!) were honest about this, instead of the 'quicker' excuse.
This is what a productivity gain looks like. In the long-run it improves life for everyone.
My big Tesco has a slow till for people with disabilities and so. Often a long queue for it, but that gives people time to count their change.
What are we all in the long run?
Commentators here and elsewhere seem never to have had elderly parents or grandparents, and to expect never to be elderly themselves. I personally doubt whether a significant percentage of Tesco cup of tea ers are hard drug dealers cynically recycling their takings.
Has PB discussed this excellent decision by Tesco? I may even do a thread on it.
Tesco ditches cash payments at 40 cafes
Retailer says the move has improved the cafe experience by cutting waiting times
Tesco has ditched cash at 40 of its cafes with customers forced to pay by card at self-service machines.
The supermarket giant says the overhaul has boosted the customer experience and the changes have been well-received, but critics said it was “bonkers” and risked alienating elderly customers.
Martin Quinn, of Campaign for Cash, branded the change a “mad decision”.
He said: “Many of the customers will be elderly or retirees who want to order in person, not press a computer screen. This is a mad decision.”
So far, 40 cafes have been redesigned and more are thought to be in the pipeline.
As ever, the move is more to the advantage of the retailer - who has to deal with all that cash - than the customer.
I wish, for once, retailers (and banks!) were honest about this, instead of the 'quicker' excuse.
Quicker too because it cuts out staff's walk to the till and search for change that doubled the time taken for traditional payment.
Not really. Generally payment is made to a staff member standing behìnd a till. Not much in it whether they deal in cash or electronic payment. Making change takes just as long, on average, as faffing about with electronic payment.
Has PB discussed this excellent decision by Tesco? I may even do a thread on it.
Tesco ditches cash payments at 40 cafes
Retailer says the move has improved the cafe experience by cutting waiting times
Tesco has ditched cash at 40 of its cafes with customers forced to pay by card at self-service machines.
The supermarket giant says the overhaul has boosted the customer experience and the changes have been well-received, but critics said it was “bonkers” and risked alienating elderly customers.
Martin Quinn, of Campaign for Cash, branded the change a “mad decision”.
He said: “Many of the customers will be elderly or retirees who want to order in person, not press a computer screen. This is a mad decision.”
So far, 40 cafes have been redesigned and more are thought to be in the pipeline.
Disgraceful decision which will victimise the mostly pensioner customer base they have.
If so, then surely they will reverse the decision as it will provide to be a disaster?
If it does not and in fact they do just fine, then I cannot really get that worked up about it unless they are breaking some requirement to accept cash - if it is purely a business decision it's simply a question of whether it helps or hinders the business, not one of disgrace or lack thereof.
Personally I'd assume giving people more ways to pay then less would be better, with impact on wait times not that significant, but that's their choice.
Has PB discussed this excellent decision by Tesco? I may even do a thread on it.
Tesco ditches cash payments at 40 cafes
Retailer says the move has improved the cafe experience by cutting waiting times
Tesco has ditched cash at 40 of its cafes with customers forced to pay by card at self-service machines.
The supermarket giant says the overhaul has boosted the customer experience and the changes have been well-received, but critics said it was “bonkers” and risked alienating elderly customers.
Martin Quinn, of Campaign for Cash, branded the change a “mad decision”.
He said: “Many of the customers will be elderly or retirees who want to order in person, not press a computer screen. This is a mad decision.”
So far, 40 cafes have been redesigned and more are thought to be in the pipeline.
Has PB discussed this excellent decision by Tesco? I may even do a thread on it.
Tesco ditches cash payments at 40 cafes
Retailer says the move has improved the cafe experience by cutting waiting times
Tesco has ditched cash at 40 of its cafes with customers forced to pay by card at self-service machines.
The supermarket giant says the overhaul has boosted the customer experience and the changes have been well-received, but critics said it was “bonkers” and risked alienating elderly customers.
Martin Quinn, of Campaign for Cash, branded the change a “mad decision”.
He said: “Many of the customers will be elderly or retirees who want to order in person, not press a computer screen. This is a mad decision.”
So far, 40 cafes have been redesigned and more are thought to be in the pipeline.
Has PB discussed this excellent decision by Tesco? I may even do a thread on it.
Tesco ditches cash payments at 40 cafes
Retailer says the move has improved the cafe experience by cutting waiting times
Tesco has ditched cash at 40 of its cafes with customers forced to pay by card at self-service machines.
The supermarket giant says the overhaul has boosted the customer experience and the changes have been well-received, but critics said it was “bonkers” and risked alienating elderly customers.
Martin Quinn, of Campaign for Cash, branded the change a “mad decision”.
He said: “Many of the customers will be elderly or retirees who want to order in person, not press a computer screen. This is a mad decision.”
So far, 40 cafes have been redesigned and more are thought to be in the pipeline.
Has PB discussed this excellent decision by Tesco? I may even do a thread on it.
Tesco ditches cash payments at 40 cafes
Retailer says the move has improved the cafe experience by cutting waiting times
Tesco has ditched cash at 40 of its cafes with customers forced to pay by card at self-service machines.
The supermarket giant says the overhaul has boosted the customer experience and the changes have been well-received, but critics said it was “bonkers” and risked alienating elderly customers.
Martin Quinn, of Campaign for Cash, branded the change a “mad decision”.
He said: “Many of the customers will be elderly or retirees who want to order in person, not press a computer screen. This is a mad decision.”
So far, 40 cafes have been redesigned and more are thought to be in the pipeline.
As ever, the move is more to the advantage of the retailer - who has to deal with all that cash - than the customer.
I wish, for once, retailers (and banks!) were honest about this, instead of the 'quicker' excuse.
This is what a productivity gain looks like. In the long-run it improves life for everyone.
My big Tesco has a slow till for people with disabilities and so. Often a long queue for it, but that gives people time to count their change.
What are we all in the long run?
Commentators here and elsewhere seem never to have had elderly parents or grandparents, and to expect never to be elderly themselves. I personally doubt whether a significant percentage of Tesco cup of tea ers are hard drug dealers cynically recycling their takings.
I don't really get why it would be such an improvement to remove the option of cash, even if you prioritise other payment options, but I also don't get the outrage if it is up to the company, since if it is a bad idea for their customers that will provide itself in short order. And likewise if it is not in fact a bad idea.
Has PB discussed this excellent decision by Tesco? I may even do a thread on it.
Tesco ditches cash payments at 40 cafes
Retailer says the move has improved the cafe experience by cutting waiting times
Tesco has ditched cash at 40 of its cafes with customers forced to pay by card at self-service machines.
The supermarket giant says the overhaul has boosted the customer experience and the changes have been well-received, but critics said it was “bonkers” and risked alienating elderly customers.
Martin Quinn, of Campaign for Cash, branded the change a “mad decision”.
He said: “Many of the customers will be elderly or retirees who want to order in person, not press a computer screen. This is a mad decision.”
So far, 40 cafes have been redesigned and more are thought to be in the pipeline.
Disgraceful decision which will victimise the mostly pensioner customer base they have.
People have an odd view of what a pensioner is, I think normally based on what one was when the person doing the imagining was much younger.
Someone who is 80 now was born in 1944, was a youth in the swinging 60s, and retired well into this century when offices were packed with computers, mobile phone use was near universal etc.
This idea that there are many pensioners knocking about who are anachronistic figures from some long forgotten age, who can't get their head around chip'n'pin is fanciful.
Has PB discussed this excellent decision by Tesco? I may even do a thread on it.
Tesco ditches cash payments at 40 cafes
Retailer says the move has improved the cafe experience by cutting waiting times
Tesco has ditched cash at 40 of its cafes with customers forced to pay by card at self-service machines.
The supermarket giant says the overhaul has boosted the customer experience and the changes have been well-received, but critics said it was “bonkers” and risked alienating elderly customers.
Martin Quinn, of Campaign for Cash, branded the change a “mad decision”.
He said: “Many of the customers will be elderly or retirees who want to order in person, not press a computer screen. This is a mad decision.”
So far, 40 cafes have been redesigned and more are thought to be in the pipeline.
Has PB discussed this excellent decision by Tesco? I may even do a thread on it.
Tesco ditches cash payments at 40 cafes
Retailer says the move has improved the cafe experience by cutting waiting times
Tesco has ditched cash at 40 of its cafes with customers forced to pay by card at self-service machines.
The supermarket giant says the overhaul has boosted the customer experience and the changes have been well-received, but critics said it was “bonkers” and risked alienating elderly customers.
Martin Quinn, of Campaign for Cash, branded the change a “mad decision”.
He said: “Many of the customers will be elderly or retirees who want to order in person, not press a computer screen. This is a mad decision.”
So far, 40 cafes have been redesigned and more are thought to be in the pipeline.
As ever, the move is more to the advantage of the retailer - who has to deal with all that cash - than the customer.
I wish, for once, retailers (and banks!) were honest about this, instead of the 'quicker' excuse.
Quicker too because it cuts out staff's walk to the till and search for change that doubled the time taken for traditional payment.
Not really. Generally payment is made to a staff member standing behìnd a till. Not much in it whether they deal in cash or electronic payment. Making change takes just as long, on average, as faffing about with electronic payment.
Has PB discussed this excellent decision by Tesco? I may even do a thread on it.
Tesco ditches cash payments at 40 cafes
Retailer says the move has improved the cafe experience by cutting waiting times
Tesco has ditched cash at 40 of its cafes with customers forced to pay by card at self-service machines.
The supermarket giant says the overhaul has boosted the customer experience and the changes have been well-received, but critics said it was “bonkers” and risked alienating elderly customers.
Martin Quinn, of Campaign for Cash, branded the change a “mad decision”.
He said: “Many of the customers will be elderly or retirees who want to order in person, not press a computer screen. This is a mad decision.”
So far, 40 cafes have been redesigned and more are thought to be in the pipeline.
Disgraceful decision which will victimise the mostly pensioner customer base they have.
If so, then surely they will reverse the decision as it will provide to be a disaster?
If it does not and in fact they do just fine, then I cannot really get that worked up about it unless they are breaking some requirement to accept cash - if it is purely a business decision it's simply a question of whether it helps or hinders the business, not one of disgrace or lack thereof.
Personally I'd assume giving people more ways to pay then less would be better, with impact on wait times not that significant, but that's their choice.
Loads of cafes, coffee shops and even pubs around me are cashless and have been for years. Ditto the entire London bus network.
This point has been made many, many times on PB...
Luke Tryl @LukeTryl · 7h This is why I treat polling that shows people are willing to support higher taxes. In the abstract this is true, but dig deeper and what that really means is they are willing to support higher taxes on other people or and particularly businesses.
There were a couple of phone ins on LBC like that the other day. People can pay more in tax and they should pay more in tax, but those people aren’t the dear caller, oh no, it’s some other nebulous group of people.
Has PB discussed this excellent decision by Tesco? I may even do a thread on it.
Tesco ditches cash payments at 40 cafes
Retailer says the move has improved the cafe experience by cutting waiting times
Tesco has ditched cash at 40 of its cafes with customers forced to pay by card at self-service machines.
The supermarket giant says the overhaul has boosted the customer experience and the changes have been well-received, but critics said it was “bonkers” and risked alienating elderly customers.
Martin Quinn, of Campaign for Cash, branded the change a “mad decision”.
He said: “Many of the customers will be elderly or retirees who want to order in person, not press a computer screen. This is a mad decision.”
So far, 40 cafes have been redesigned and more are thought to be in the pipeline.
As ever, the move is more to the advantage of the retailer - who has to deal with all that cash - than the customer.
I wish, for once, retailers (and banks!) were honest about this, instead of the 'quicker' excuse.
Quicker too because it cuts out staff's walk to the till and search for change that doubled the time taken for traditional payment.
Yep. Handling cash and change is painfully slow. No wonder many businesses are getting rid of it.
And the criminals have just decided that shoplifting is the way to go. The police need to really clamp down on this - all of us are paying for it in that the shops just add the cost to their prices.
Comments
Mrs Thatch made her unpopular decisions first. She also had Galtieri inadvertently on her side of course…
Go on, guess.
That's right, the increased disapproval is dominated by the 65+ age range, where disapproval is leading 72-16. By the time you get down to the 25-49 bracket, the disapproval lead is only 41-26.
And given where boosterism got us under Boris, a cold shower of reality may be what we need.
(And for context, the overall YouGov approve/disapprove scores are roughly where they were during the vaccine bounce. The YouGov panel really are ungrateful so-and-sos.)
Full data set here:
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/trackers/government-approval
Channel 4 was a real innovator on comedy many years ago. New comedy is rare now due to the rise in the panel show.
There is even a fractional delay on pictures broadcast at the track - the only real way was to have someone on course with a mobile or a laptop for in-running trading.
I'm not sure how or even if that has been resolved. The amounts traded on Betfair have fallen a lot in recent times and it may just be the end of the line for that form of in-running betting.
Trump +7 to now Harris +1
Independent voters Trump +4 to now Harris +9
* These were teaching hospitals, so in both cases the rare condition of my eldest was seen as an opportunity to teach.
* Expect a lot of people looking in your mouth.
Self-entitled whinging shits complaining they're losing their goodies need to be ignored.
Quit whinging.
Idiot MPs who put her to the members, idiot members for backing her over Rishi.
Seemed to be an amusement on the side for a surveyor with a legitimate job, although I'm not totally convinced he was sticking to the flight rules for a large UAV. I suppose he could have had a written risk assessment, flight plan and insurance but I'm not sure he had the permission of the landowner for where he took off from...
I'm surprised he wasn't using a Mini (under 250g) as they get round 99% of the rules and are almost invisible but I guess they want something that will cope in any wind and produce a 4K feed.
Apparently, insurance companies don't think the reunion of this foreign group is 100% certain and are charging the promoter about ten times the going rate for premiums because they seem sure there will be cancellations.
https://www.crazydaysandnights.net/2024/08/blind-item-5_28.html
Without the debt, Thames Water is a very profitable business. The risk for the suppliers is x months of not getting paid as the bankruptcy gets sorted out.
Edit: smart would be for the government to charge a healthy rate of interest to the relaunched company for the loans to secure the suppliers bills. Could easily turn a profit.
Look at his lack of mid-term blues. Nature's way of saying you aren't governing radically enough.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UGuPvrsG3E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bp04HZDCELw
Taking sweeties off the oldies was never going to be popular. Go the whole hog and scrap the triple lock for next year, the buggers aren't going to vote Labour anyway.
Tell them that it is the price of the Brexit that they voted for.
It’s also the case that even panel shows are getting rarer as even the economics of that type of show doesn’t work nowadays
That comedy Countdown show was one of the funniest things on TV for years. Originally it was a one-off for a Telethon charity thingy, and has run for over 100 shows.
For news it is generally Sky and occasionally BBC
The only other programme I watch would you believe is 'Emmerdale'
I read the mail, telegraph, and guardian on line together with North Wales live
I have no interest in anything else on TV at all
Total support 47%
Total oppose 38%
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2024/07/30/65187/1
Most policies would give their eye teeth for those figures. (The age profile of opposition is left as a very easy exercise for the reader.)
I think it's much more 'PB lost-in-the-woods' people nowadays. That certainly describes me. I don't mind being lost and I will find my way back, but I can tell you here and now that if the shelter ahead has a Farage brand then I'm turning back to the woods.
Truss dug an hole so deep for Sunak that Good Lord himself could not have got out of with a heavenly ladder. There was nothing Sunak, or anyone, could do after October ‘22 to fix the problem she created. Had Sunak started from the place Johnson ended, it would have been manageable for him, but the Tory reputation was trashed irredeemably by Truss’ economic stupidity and pig headedness. Your stout defence of her is admirable, but lonely, and frankly a little bizarre.
Sunlit uplands can happen in Spring '25. Or '26...
But they may surprise on the upside if elected leader.
Can’t see it. But you never know.
Tesco ditches cash payments at 40 cafes
Retailer says the move has improved the cafe experience by cutting waiting times
Tesco has ditched cash at 40 of its cafes with customers forced to pay by card at self-service machines.
The supermarket giant says the overhaul has boosted the customer experience and the changes have been well-received, but critics said it was “bonkers” and risked alienating elderly customers.
Martin Quinn, of Campaign for Cash, branded the change a “mad decision”.
He said: “Many of the customers will be elderly or retirees who want to order in person, not press a computer screen. This is a mad decision.”
So far, 40 cafes have been redesigned and more are thought to be in the pipeline.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs/tesco-ditches-cash-at-cafes/
Seriously, if Kamala wins the Republicans may switch away from MAGA and go for Haley?
1. WFA is restored, but it must be claimed cashlessly at a touch screen terminal.
2. WFA is restored at €200 per pensioner household, so it can only be claimed post-Brejoin.
(Which might or might not be appropriate.)
https://theros.org.uk/information-and-support/osteoporosis/treatment/
Something like Countdown they film a week’s worth of shows in a day, and film one week a month for three or four months for a whole season. The comedy Countdown would actually be a lot more expensive than the regular Countdown, because you also have have writers and sketch performers that don’t appear in the ‘regular’ show, and probably can’t do the efficiency of studio time.
Cash is less of a problem but I think it is time we phased out coins less than 10 pence denomination, I can't see they serve any useful purpose. Correct me if I am wrong as I was quite young but I think when we stopped using farthings and then hapennies (1967?) they actually were worth more than 1 penny now.
I wish, for once, retailers (and banks!) were honest about this, instead of the 'quicker' excuse.
The other big change is stand-up tours are so lucrative these days and promoted by (as TRiE noted) comedians posting not their jokes but their banter with the audience on YouTube and TikTok. There's no band or actors to split the ticket take with, the only expense is the hire of the theatre and a night in a cheap-ish hotel 1am (after the gig) to 10am then drive to the next venue.
And the current shareholders are the suckers who ended up holding the debt ridden organisation that Macquarie created in order to enrich themselves.
There’s really no good reason why the U.K. government/taxpayer should make them whole again, though. Not least as the cycle is likely to start all over again.
All we are hearing is how awful everything is and how awful everything is going to be. I get the tactic behind that, but the government creates a rod for its own back if it can’t sell the decisions it is taking. People don’t care about the “national interest” or that it’s being done in “service” to the nation. They want to say if I pay more this year, what are you promising me. It doesn’t have to be specifics, but the direction of travel needs to be set. Once people fall out with a government, it becomes harder for them to make up later.
My big Tesco has a slow till for people with disabilities and so. Often a long queue for it, but that gives people time to count their change.
Q: “Who was the owner of the other vehicle involved” A: “The Government of Italy”. Q: “Approximately how fast was the other vehicle travelling” A: “Somewhere in the region of 200-300 miles per hour”
Don't know what they think they'll achieve with this. The Tories and Reform are both Boomer parties. And they're not making new Boomers anymore.
They will, at some point, have to acknowledge the existence of people born after 1965.
https://order-order.com/2024/08/27/tory-members-demand-reform-merger-to-win-next-election/
https://nitter.poast.org/K_Niemietz/status/1828512413131423843#m
Luke Tryl
@LukeTryl
🧵Following Starmer's speech I think the Budget will be key to how early public opinion crystallises around this Government & landing it needs two things
First - showing those with broadest shoulders really are bearing burden
Second - to steal from Chicago - finding some joy
Luke Tryl
@LukeTryl
·
7h
This is why I treat polling that shows people are willing to support higher taxes. In the abstract this is true, but dig deeper and what that really means is they are willing to support higher taxes on other people or and particularly businesses.
https://x.com/LukeTryl/status/1828753896560574649
Commentators here and elsewhere seem never to have had elderly parents or grandparents, and to expect never to be elderly themselves. I personally doubt whether a significant percentage of Tesco cup of tea ers are hard drug dealers cynically recycling their takings.
If it does not and in fact they do just fine, then I cannot really get that worked up about it unless they are breaking some requirement to accept cash - if it is purely a business decision it's simply a question of whether it helps or hinders the business, not one of disgrace or lack thereof.
Personally I'd assume giving people more ways to pay then less would be better, with impact on wait times not that significant, but that's their choice.
And safer.
And less wasteful.
Cash is a pointless pain.
Someone who is 80 now was born in 1944, was a youth in the swinging 60s, and retired well into this century when offices were packed with computers, mobile phone use was near universal etc.
This idea that there are many pensioners knocking about who are anachronistic figures from some long forgotten age, who can't get their head around chip'n'pin is fanciful.
LOL.