1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.
What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)
The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.
So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money. We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money. Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money. Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.
Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.
Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.
We have no money
Yet we are spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon. Billions on an armoured vehicle that literally makes the occupants chronically ill. We can’t find GPs, while we train GPs who can’t get jobs. We have no money to look after children with special needs, but councils are block booking taxis to send them to school - as opposed to a school bus.
It’s feast-or-famine mode spending. Often on insane things.
This is the fault of the Treasury - insane budget rules where we seem to look at today and don't worry about tomorrow. The GP issue is a perfect example - we can't afford to hire them full time, but we can afford emergency cover. Or transport - can't afford a bus but can afford emergency cover.
Do you get it yet? We cut because the Treasury says we must cut. But cuts to provision do not remove the need - which remains. And emergency provision must be done - from a separate budget - which costs more than the cut.
I keep saying we need to invest in this stuff and be told we have no money. We do - we're literally burning it. Will need a short transition where we both burn cash and invest cash, but then no more bonfires.
This post hits so hard. It seems like Westminster and Whitehall know it too, but won't do anything.
Politicians won’t think past the next election.
Cutting costs structurally benefits the next incumbent - either your political rival or an opponent.
Flicking through the last thread I noticed a few of the Reform Lite posters criticising Rachel for being photographed with a chess board on her desk and one of them suggested she was trying to make herself look clever. She was infact underr 14 chess champion.
I think there's a lot of misogyny when it comes to Rachel. Would people be so patronising if it was Gove for example?
Gove is another misfit who got plenty of personal flak. It's the game.
I don't really get the chess thing, she was clearly very good, probably top 1% of all players, but not elite. To get to that level demonstrates a decent level of logic, planning and reasoning skills. To get to elite, does the same, but also requires a level of obsession that is probably unhealthy for a national leader.
A bit of internet digging suggests that she did little chess other than schoolgirl competitions. She doesn’t have a public ELO (chess ranking).
Now if she could say she was 2,000 ELO, close to a Master ranking, then she might be taken seriously in the chess world.
Huh? Why is this relevant? She’s proud of what she’s done and rightly so. If a politician rugby player had some end of season award he won from the Old Rubberduckians RFC on his desk it wouldn’t even be mentioned. Certainly no one would go carp about “lack of representative honours”
When you’re making it the centerpiece of your pre-budget photo, one is entitled to investigate.
You’re entitled to “investigate” (although the word is overused - I once googled the late Stuart Dickson and made the mistake of outing myself by clicking his LinkedIn profile while logged into my own - you’d think I was stalking the fucker from the reaction) but your conclusion appears to be that she hadn’t earned it. Bollocks to that.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
The court hours and all the wasted time etc are horrendous, all down to feathering lawyers and judges pockets.
Yeah. We should abandon trial altogether. Waste of time.
I suggest a leg of darts to decide guilt or innocence and then a roll of the dice for the length of sentence. Stream it on netflix with decent product placement and we could not just save a fortune but get some revenue in too.
Nonsense.
Instead of trial and prison - a TV show where the suspects are hunted by the public/professional hunters.
If they are caught, they die. If they stay alive and free for 30 days, they get a cash prize.
Turn justice into a profit centre, with popular participation.
Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure.
You may not like it, that's fair enough, but it's a clear, objective, and widely used measure. Hardly something to criticise BBC Verify for.
Out of interest what would you propose as the measure of poverty? Does a child need to be starving, in rags, no shoes?
It is not legitimate. Using a relative measure means someone can be perfectly well-off but because others are even better off the former are deemed to be 'poor'. And if those even better off suddenly have a great downturn in fortune then the previously 'poor' magically becomes 'wealthy' despite having no extra money whatsoever.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
The court hours and all the wasted time etc are horrendous, all down to feathering lawyers and judges pockets.
Criminal lawyers aren’t earning big sums of money
Indeed, a pupil criminal barrister will be on minimum wage while their graduate contemporaries who are trainees in London corporate law firms or pupils in commercial barrister chambers will be starting on £50k plus.
After ten years commercial lawyers will also be earning about double their criminal counterparts. Only if they become KCs can criminal barristers make six figures but city law firm partners and commercial KCs can make seven figure salaries
Yes, criminal barristers are very poorly paid. On the evidence I have seen I should that whatever they are paid it is too much.
Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure.
You may not like it, that's fair enough, but it's a clear, objective, and widely used measure. Hardly something to criticise BBC Verify for.
Out of interest what would you propose as the measure of poverty? Does a child need to be starving, in rags, no shoes?
It is not legitimate. Using a relative measure means someone can be perfectly well-off but because others are even better off the former are deemed to be 'poor'. And if those even better off suddenly have a great downturn in fortune then the previously 'poor' magically becomes 'wealthy' despite having no extra money whatsoever.
Flicking through the last thread I noticed a few of the Reform Lite posters criticising Rachel for being photographed with a chess board on her desk and one of them suggested she was trying to make herself look clever. She was infact underr 14 chess champion.
I think there's a lot of misogyny when it comes to Rachel. Would people be so patronising if it was Gove for example?
Gove is another misfit who got plenty of personal flak. It's the game.
I don't really get the chess thing, she was clearly very good, probably top 1% of all players, but not elite. To get to that level demonstrates a decent level of logic, planning and reasoning skills. To get to elite, does the same, but also requires a level of obsession that is probably unhealthy for a national leader.
A bit of internet digging suggests that she did little chess other than schoolgirl competitions. She doesn’t have a public ELO (chess ranking).
Now if she could say she was 2,000 ELO, close to a Master ranking, then she might be taken seriously in the chess world.
Huh? Why is this relevant? She’s proud of what she’s done and rightly so. If a politician rugby player had some end of season award he won from the Old Rubberduckians RFC on his desk it wouldn’t even be mentioned. Certainly no one would go carp about “lack of representative honours”
When you’re making it the centerpiece of your pre-budget photo, one is entitled to investigate.
Pretty pathetic trying to prove how clever you are by sticking a chess board in teh picture, what a wally. She could not run a bath.
Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure.
You may not like it, that's fair enough, but it's a clear, objective, and widely used measure. Hardly something to criticise BBC Verify for.
Out of interest what would you propose as the measure of poverty? Does a child need to be starving, in rags, no shoes?
When we interrogate our idea of poverty it is always a relative concept at its core, because poverty is ultimately about being excluded from the normal patterns of consumption and participation in our current society. In my view it is so-called 'absolute' poverty measures that are bullshit.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.
What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)
The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.
So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money. We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money. Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money. Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.
Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.
Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.
We have no money
Yet we are spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon. Billions on an armoured vehicle that literally makes the occupants chronically ill. We can’t find GPs, while we train GPs who can’t get jobs. We have no money to look after children with special needs, but councils are block booking taxis to send them to school - as opposed to a school bus.
It’s feast-or-famine mode spending. Often on insane things.
This is the fault of the Treasury - insane budget rules where we seem to look at today and don't worry about tomorrow. The GP issue is a perfect example - we can't afford to hire them full time, but we can afford emergency cover. Or transport - can't afford a bus but can afford emergency cover.
Do you get it yet? We cut because the Treasury says we must cut. But cuts to provision do not remove the need - which remains. And emergency provision must be done - from a separate budget - which costs more than the cut.
I keep saying we need to invest in this stuff and be told we have no money. We do - we're literally burning it. Will need a short transition where we both burn cash and invest cash, but then no more bonfires.
This post hits so hard. It seems like Westminster and Whitehall know it too, but won't do anything.
I am utterly fucking sick of this stupidity. Its as bad up here as well. Winter snot season - schools asking parents to send their kids in with tissues as the school is running out. Teachers joking about wanting classroom supplies for presents from their kids instead of sweeties. There's literally no money at the front line - but we have schools with heating stuck on full so that everyone melts and windows need to keep being opened (in the summer as well!) because budget rules don't allow repairs when the school is scheduled for replacement in 2019.
Bureaucrats drown in the micro whilst missing the macro and strategic. You can't the detail because the structure is wrong, but you can't spend money on the structure because you're spending too much money in emergency micro fixes.
House building. Everyone agrees we need to build more houses but we're building less. Why? Land banking by developers Arcane endless planning regulations Housing Associations starved of resources A comprehensive lack of builders sparkies joiners plumbers plasterers etc etc - oh and we'd have to import much of the materiel because we've stopped making them because lack of money. But we can't import as we left the EU and they cost more. And we don't like all these forrin workers taking jobs from the untrained unwilling flag shagging fucks.
FFS. Start at the strategic. OK, we need to build 1.5m houses the fuck yesterday. So we need to train the people who will build them. FE colleges here is cash. And a marketing campaign to make building cool We need to invest in a brickworks and other stuff - tax incentives to get manufacturing here We need to allow LHAs to borrow to build We need to bonfire the planning barriers We need to give the land bankers 6 months to start or lose the land All to build a flood of apartments and starter homes at a social rent as never for sale. Which allows a significant drop in % of wages wasted on rent which allows more money to circulate in the economy which means jobs and more taxes which pays back the investment in skills etc
I’m glad we’re concentrating on the important things about the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The whereabouts of her chessboard and how she styles her hair. All of vast import.
All the budget measures are announced already; what else are we supposed to talk about while we wait to see if they change their minds again?
Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure.
You may not like it, that's fair enough, but it's a clear, objective, and widely used measure. Hardly something to criticise BBC Verify for.
Out of interest what would you propose as the measure of poverty? Does a child need to be starving, in rags, no shoes?
It is not legitimate. Using a relative measure means someone can be perfectly well-off but because others are even better off the former are deemed to be 'poor'. And if those even better off suddenly have a great downturn in fortune then the previously 'poor' magically becomes 'wealthy' despite having no extra money whatsoever.
An absolute measure is fairer.
An absolute measure at what level?
Enough to meet essentials, with a small amount left over for minor luxuries (meals out, cinema etc) and modest saving.
I am going out to lunch at a pub overlooking the estuary, while I still have the money to afford it.
The existence of jury trials is NOT the reason for court delays. The reasons are:
1. Reducing court sitting days even though the Lady Chief Justice has said judges can sit for more days so there is no lack of availability. 2. Closure and selling of courts. 3. A lack of sufficient funding for the justice system at every level.
1 and 2 are easily remediable. You do not abolish an 800 year old fundamental principle because of a lack of short-term funding. Unless you're an illiberal cretin, that is.
This is a power grab by the state of one of the few areas in British life which really is democratic, generally - though not invariably - works well and, crucially, is not controlled by the state and cannot be pressured by it. And can tell the state to get stuffed when it overreaches eg Ponting, the Colston Four. That is why authoritarians hate it and want to get rid of it. It must be resisted by all possible means.
This proposal shows how much contempt Labour has for us and our liberties.
Was Colston overreach? Not everyone agrees that its ok to vandalise things you don't like. I'd have preferred them found guilty but with a minimum penalty. I.e. they did the crime, but we understand and sympathise with why.
Indeed see also the Labour councillor who was acquitted of hate speech. I support juries overall but when they render not guilty verdicts for political reasons rather than on the law the case for judge led verdicts in middle ranked offences grows. The escort rider who killed an elderly lady crossing the road at speed escorting the Duchess of Edinburgh might also have been convicted of death by careless driving by a judge which a jury acquitted him of
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
The court hours and all the wasted time etc are horrendous, all down to feathering lawyers and judges pockets.
Yeah. We should abandon trial altogether. Waste of time.
I suggest a leg of darts to decide guilt or innocence and then a roll of the dice for the length of sentence. Stream it on netflix with decent product placement and we could not just save a fortune but get some revenue in too.
Nonsense.
Instead of trial and prison - a TV show where the suspects are hunted by the public/professional hunters.
If they are caught, they die. If they stay alive and free for 30 days, they get a cash prize.
Turn justice into a profit centre, with popular participation.
Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure.
You may not like it, that's fair enough, but it's a clear, objective, and widely used measure. Hardly something to criticise BBC Verify for.
Out of interest what would you propose as the measure of poverty? Does a child need to be starving, in rags, no shoes?
It is not legitimate. Using a relative measure means someone can be perfectly well-off but because others are even better off the former are deemed to be 'poor'. And if those even better off suddenly have a great downturn in fortune then the previously 'poor' magically becomes 'wealthy' despite having no extra money whatsoever.
An absolute measure is fairer.
Yep. Relative poverty is NOT a measure of individual circumstance, it is a measure of inequality. The left love it. Absolute poverty is whether you can heat your house, eat food etc. The almost universal adoption of relative poverty has not helped.
Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure.
You may not like it, that's fair enough, but it's a clear, objective, and widely used measure. Hardly something to criticise BBC Verify for.
Out of interest what would you propose as the measure of poverty? Does a child need to be starving, in rags, no shoes?
It is not legitimate. Using a relative measure means someone can be perfectly well-off but because others are even better off the former are deemed to be 'poor'. And if those even better off suddenly have a great downturn in fortune then the previously 'poor' magically becomes 'wealthy' despite having no extra money whatsoever.
An absolute measure is fairer.
An absolute measure at what level?
Enough to meet essentials, with a small amount left over for minor luxuries (meals out, cinema etc) and modest saving.
Well that puts most UC recipient working families in poverty then.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
The court hours and all the wasted time etc are horrendous, all down to feathering lawyers and judges pockets.
Yeah. We should abandon trial altogether. Waste of time.
I suggest a leg of darts to decide guilt or innocence and then a roll of the dice for the length of sentence. Stream it on netflix with decent product placement and we could not just save a fortune but get some revenue in too.
Nonsense.
Instead of trial and prison - a TV show where the suspects are hunted by the public/professional hunters.
If they are caught, they die. If they stay alive and free for 30 days, they get a cash prize.
Turn justice into a profit centre, with popular participation.
Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure.
You may not like it, that's fair enough, but it's a clear, objective, and widely used measure. Hardly something to criticise BBC Verify for.
Out of interest what would you propose as the measure of poverty? Does a child need to be starving, in rags, no shoes?
When we interrogate our idea of poverty it is always a relative concept at its core, because poverty is ultimately about being excluded from the normal patterns of consumption and participation in our current society. In my view it is so-called 'absolute' poverty measures that are bullshit.
Not being able to 'keep up with the Joneses' in a neighbourhood pissing contest doesn't make someone poor. It makes them unable to afford an unnecessary and 'fashionable' splurging of cash you don't have on things you don't need. And the idea that should be subsidised by the taxpayer is just another tier in the cake of relative poverty bullshit.
Edited: as an aside, I'll be AFK for the Budget, which is a shame but needs must.
Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure.
You may not like it, that's fair enough, but it's a clear, objective, and widely used measure. Hardly something to criticise BBC Verify for.
Out of interest what would you propose as the measure of poverty? Does a child need to be starving, in rags, no shoes?
It is not legitimate. Using a relative measure means someone can be perfectly well-off but because others are even better off the former are deemed to be 'poor'. And if those even better off suddenly have a great downturn in fortune then the previously 'poor' magically becomes 'wealthy' despite having no extra money whatsoever.
An absolute measure is fairer.
Yep. Relative poverty is NOT a measure of individual circumstance, it is a measure of inequality. The left love it. Absolute poverty is whether you can heat your house, eat food etc. The almost universal adoption of relative poverty has not helped.
So should someone win 150 million on the euro millions relative poverty increases slightly although no one is materially worse off ?
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
The court hours and all the wasted time etc are horrendous, all down to feathering lawyers and judges pockets.
Yeah. We should abandon trial altogether. Waste of time.
I suggest a leg of darts to decide guilt or innocence and then a roll of the dice for the length of sentence. Stream it on netflix with decent product placement and we could not just save a fortune but get some revenue in too.
Nonsense.
Instead of trial and prison - a TV show where the suspects are hunted by the public/professional hunters.
If they are caught, they die. If they stay alive and free for 30 days, they get a cash prize.
Turn justice into a profit centre, with popular participation.
Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure.
You may not like it, that's fair enough, but it's a clear, objective, and widely used measure. Hardly something to criticise BBC Verify for.
Out of interest what would you propose as the measure of poverty? Does a child need to be starving, in rags, no shoes?
It is not legitimate. Using a relative measure means someone can be perfectly well-off but because others are even better off the former are deemed to be 'poor'. And if those even better off suddenly have a great downturn in fortune then the previously 'poor' magically becomes 'wealthy' despite having no extra money whatsoever.
An absolute measure is fairer.
Yep. Relative poverty is NOT a measure of individual circumstance, it is a measure of inequality. The left love it. Absolute poverty is whether you can heat your house, eat food etc. The almost universal adoption of relative poverty has not helped.
So what? If the point of child benefit is to encourage people to have children and to ensure that children are in a position to feel safe, to learn, and to thrive, then relative poverty seems reasonable.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
The court hours and all the wasted time etc are horrendous, all down to feathering lawyers and judges pockets.
Yeah. We should abandon trial altogether. Waste of time.
I suggest a leg of darts to decide guilt or innocence and then a roll of the dice for the length of sentence. Stream it on netflix with decent product placement and we could not just save a fortune but get some revenue in too.
Nonsense.
Instead of trial and prison - a TV show where the suspects are hunted by the public/professional hunters.
If they are caught, they die. If they stay alive and free for 30 days, they get a cash prize.
Turn justice into a profit centre, with popular participation.
Been watching Running Man?
We went to see it yesterday. Hokum, but entertaining nonetheless
Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure.
You may not like it, that's fair enough, but it's a clear, objective, and widely used measure. Hardly something to criticise BBC Verify for.
Out of interest what would you propose as the measure of poverty? Does a child need to be starving, in rags, no shoes?
It is not legitimate. Using a relative measure means someone can be perfectly well-off but because others are even better off the former are deemed to be 'poor'. And if those even better off suddenly have a great downturn in fortune then the previously 'poor' magically becomes 'wealthy' despite having no extra money whatsoever.
An absolute measure is fairer.
Yep. Relative poverty is NOT a measure of individual circumstance, it is a measure of inequality. The left love it. Absolute poverty is whether you can heat your house, eat food etc. The almost universal adoption of relative poverty has not helped.
I can see it having some utility as a measure, but it is reported on as if it is like absolute poverty, which I think confuses what is being talked about as they are not the same thing and one is more vital a concern than the other.
Flicking through the last thread I noticed a few of the Reform Lite posters criticising Rachel for being photographed with a chess board on her desk and one of them suggested she was trying to make herself look clever. She was infact underr 14 chess champion.
I think there's a lot of misogyny when it comes to Rachel. Would people be so patronising if it was Gove for example?
As always, two things can be true at once.
Is some criticism of Reeves misogynistic? Yes, because misogyny exists and I don’t think it’s particularly controversial to say that woman are often held to different standards. If you accept that then it does of course naturally follow that some of the criticism she attracts comes from that place.
But let’s not conflate criticism of her as being a poor steward of the economy as being down to her gender. She’s a poor steward of the economy. Her decisions have been highly questionable. Her political tactics have all backfired. She has contributed to a significant amount of economic uncertainty and loss of confidence in the UK. Criticism does not always equal prejudice.
More fundamentally, chess champion/enthusiast or not, why would she have a chess set placed so prominently in front of her at her desk at work, if not for the photo op and to get people like us talking about her chess prowess?
Whenever I see a chess board strategically placed in a promotional photo I always check to see if it is correctly set up. You would be amazed how often the board is the wrong way round. Non-players might be surprised to know there is a right and wrong way. Regular players spot the mistake instantly.
I guess the job of placing the board is delegated to an oik and the chances of that person knowing about this is less than fifty-fifty.
Spot the deliberate mistake...
The king and queen on the top rank are on the wrong squares
Hmm, isn't it the lower rank K&Q, actually?
Yes I think you are right, assuming the bottom rank is white.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
The court hours and all the wasted time etc are horrendous, all down to feathering lawyers and judges pockets.
Yeah. We should abandon trial altogether. Waste of time.
I suggest a leg of darts to decide guilt or innocence and then a roll of the dice for the length of sentence. Stream it on netflix with decent product placement and we could not just save a fortune but get some revenue in too.
Nonsense.
Instead of trial and prison - a TV show where the suspects are hunted by the public/professional hunters.
If they are caught, they die. If they stay alive and free for 30 days, they get a cash prize.
Turn justice into a profit centre, with popular participation.
Been watching Running Man?
We went to see it yesterday. Hokum, but entertaining nonetheless
Yes we saw it at the weekend and found it surprisingly good and a more thoughtful version than the Arnie original. Stephen King also has said the new film is closer to his book
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
The court hours and all the wasted time etc are horrendous, all down to feathering lawyers and judges pockets.
Yeah. We should abandon trial altogether. Waste of time.
I suggest a leg of darts to decide guilt or innocence and then a roll of the dice for the length of sentence. Stream it on netflix with decent product placement and we could not just save a fortune but get some revenue in too.
Nonsense.
Instead of trial and prison - a TV show where the suspects are hunted by the public/professional hunters.
If they are caught, they die. If they stay alive and free for 30 days, they get a cash prize.
Turn justice into a profit centre, with popular participation.
Been watching Running Man?
We went to see it yesterday. Hokum, but entertaining nonetheless
Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure.
You may not like it, that's fair enough, but it's a clear, objective, and widely used measure. Hardly something to criticise BBC Verify for.
Out of interest what would you propose as the measure of poverty? Does a child need to be starving, in rags, no shoes?
When we interrogate our idea of poverty it is always a relative concept at its core, because poverty is ultimately about being excluded from the normal patterns of consumption and participation in our current society. In my view it is so-called 'absolute' poverty measures that are bullshit.
Not being able to 'keep up with the Joneses' in a neighbourhood pissing contest doesn't make someone poor. It makes them unable to afford an unnecessary and 'fashionable' splurging of cash you don't have on things you don't need. And the idea that should be subsidised by the taxpayer is just another tier in the cake of relative poverty bullshit.
Edited: as an aside, I'll be AFK for the Budget, which is a shame but needs must.
It's not about keeping up with Jones's. The point is that what we might consider an absolute poverty line now would be very different to the absolute poverty line 50 years ago, because we have different expectations about what constitutes a minimum standard of living, and these expectations are related to what we consider a normal standard of living. This is why I find the idea of some kind of objective and immutable poverty line fundamentally dishonest.
Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure.
You may not like it, that's fair enough, but it's a clear, objective, and widely used measure. Hardly something to criticise BBC Verify for.
Out of interest what would you propose as the measure of poverty? Does a child need to be starving, in rags, no shoes?
When we interrogate our idea of poverty it is always a relative concept at its core, because poverty is ultimately about being excluded from the normal patterns of consumption and participation in our current society. In my view it is so-called 'absolute' poverty measures that are bullshit.
Not being able to 'keep up with the Joneses' in a neighbourhood pissing contest doesn't make someone poor. It makes them unable to afford an unnecessary and 'fashionable' splurging of cash you don't have on things you don't need. And the idea that should be subsidised by the taxpayer is just another tier in the cake of relative poverty bullshit.
Edited: as an aside, I'll be AFK for the Budget, which is a shame but needs must.
It's not about keeping up with Jones's. The point is that what we might consider an absolute poverty line now would be very different to the absolute poverty line 50 years ago, because we have different expectations about what constitutes a minimum standard of living, and these expectations are related to what we consider a normal standard of living. This is why I find the idea of some kind of objective and immutable poverty line fundamentally dishonest.
Nobody said the absolute poverty line should never be changed.
Edited: On Jones: you said earlier "...because poverty is ultimately about being excluded from the normal patterns of consumption and participation in our current society....."
They are already doing a post-mortem on the budget that hasn't even happened yet. This from the 10AM news
"The Chancellor will drag a million more people into tax by raising the tax threshold though she herself criticised this in 2023..."
Freezing the basic rate threshold further beyond 2028 will be politically damaging to Reeves, the more so as she explicitly said in November 2024 that she would not do that and is also on record as you point out for criticising the current freeze previously. And that makes me wonder if it is really her intention to do so. Having ensured by either design or accident that all the attention is back on income tax thresholds, an unexpected decision to not extend the Conservatives' freeze on the basic rate tax threshold and to continue to apply the freeze only to the higher rate rate tax thresholds would I think be politically astute and (barring some other unexpected big nasties) allow the budget to be framed with justification as one protecting living standards of working people on average incomes while limiting the pain to those on higher incomes. There are votes to be gained from that, especially from those whose support Labour has lost since 2024.
That's not a prediction, because Reeves and Starmer have been so politically inept over the past 16 months that they may not appreciate both the danger and the opportunity. If they continue in that vein they really do deserve the boot from Labour MPs.
OK, but where’s the money coming from in that case?
She needs to raise much more, and only freezing the higher rate threshold won’t get her there.
She’s being forced into freezing the thresholds as a necessity because she shied away from increasing the rates. There’s no other fiscal lever other than VAT (which she won’t touch, for the same reason) which is open to her to get the money in she wants.
Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure.
You may not like it, that's fair enough, but it's a clear, objective, and widely used measure. Hardly something to criticise BBC Verify for.
Out of interest what would you propose as the measure of poverty? Does a child need to be starving, in rags, no shoes?
It is not legitimate. Using a relative measure means someone can be perfectly well-off but because others are even better off the former are deemed to be 'poor'. And if those even better off suddenly have a great downturn in fortune then the previously 'poor' magically becomes 'wealthy' despite having no extra money whatsoever.
An absolute measure is fairer.
An absolute measure at what level?
Enough to meet essentials, with a small amount left over for minor luxuries (meals out, cinema etc) and modest saving.
Closer but still relative not absolute poverty.
Absolute poverty is not having a roof over your head, not having enough food and not having enough to drink and not having enough clothing, especially to keep you warm in winter
Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure.
You may not like it, that's fair enough, but it's a clear, objective, and widely used measure. Hardly something to criticise BBC Verify for.
Out of interest what would you propose as the measure of poverty? Does a child need to be starving, in rags, no shoes?
It is not legitimate. Using a relative measure means someone can be perfectly well-off but because others are even better off the former are deemed to be 'poor'. And if those even better off suddenly have a great downturn in fortune then the previously 'poor' magically becomes 'wealthy' despite having no extra money whatsoever.
An absolute measure is fairer.
Yep. Relative poverty is NOT a measure of individual circumstance, it is a measure of inequality. The left love it. Absolute poverty is whether you can heat your house, eat food etc. The almost universal adoption of relative poverty has not helped.
So should someone win 150 million on the euro millions relative poverty increases slightly although no one is materially worse off ?
Stupid point but even then it's not really true. Where did that 150 million come from?
But how about sharing us what your definition of poverty would be?
@Morris_Dancer's was rather generous imo, including as it did "a small amount left over for minor luxuries (meals out, cinema etc) and modest saving". Try doing that on £80 per week, even if your full rent is separately covered (for most it isn't).
Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure.
You may not like it, that's fair enough, but it's a clear, objective, and widely used measure. Hardly something to criticise BBC Verify for.
Out of interest what would you propose as the measure of poverty? Does a child need to be starving, in rags, no shoes?
It is not legitimate. Using a relative measure means someone can be perfectly well-off but because others are even better off the former are deemed to be 'poor'. And if those even better off suddenly have a great downturn in fortune then the previously 'poor' magically becomes 'wealthy' despite having no extra money whatsoever.
An absolute measure is fairer.
An absolute measure at what level?
Enough to meet essentials, with a small amount left over for minor luxuries (meals out, cinema etc) and modest saving.
Closer but still relative not absolute poverty.
Absolute poverty is not having a roof over your head, not having enough food and not having enough to drink and not having enough clothing, especially to keep you warm in winter
'Absolute' in this context means a fixed, not relative, measure.
You are using it in the sense of extreme which is not where this discussion started.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
The court hours and all the wasted time etc are horrendous, all down to feathering lawyers and judges pockets.
Yeah. We should abandon trial altogether. Waste of time.
I suggest a leg of darts to decide guilt or innocence and then a roll of the dice for the length of sentence. Stream it on netflix with decent product placement and we could not just save a fortune but get some revenue in too.
Nonsense.
Instead of trial and prison - a TV show where the suspects are hunted by the public/professional hunters.
If they are caught, they die. If they stay alive and free for 30 days, they get a cash prize.
Turn justice into a profit centre, with popular participation.
Been watching Running Man?
We went to see it yesterday. Hokum, but entertaining nonetheless
Yes we saw it at the weekend and found it surprisingly good and a more thoughtful version than the Arnie original. Stephen King also has said the new film is closer to his book
A few messages in there. A little bit of anti capitalism and anti consumerism.
It held my interest for the whole time.
Sandra Dickinson in it too, my god, I know we all age but I would never have knew it was her until the titles rolled.
We ended up having a nice meal after at the Rabbit Hole in Durham.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
The court hours and all the wasted time etc are horrendous, all down to feathering lawyers and judges pockets.
Yeah. We should abandon trial altogether. Waste of time.
I suggest a leg of darts to decide guilt or innocence and then a roll of the dice for the length of sentence. Stream it on netflix with decent product placement and we could not just save a fortune but get some revenue in too.
Nonsense.
Instead of trial and prison - a TV show where the suspects are hunted by the public/professional hunters.
If they are caught, they die. If they stay alive and free for 30 days, they get a cash prize.
Turn justice into a profit centre, with popular participation.
My prevously mentioned suggestion was to put them all on an island with vast amounts of weapons. Last man standing gets the England manager job.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
The court hours and all the wasted time etc are horrendous, all down to feathering lawyers and judges pockets.
Yeah. We should abandon trial altogether. Waste of time.
I suggest a leg of darts to decide guilt or innocence and then a roll of the dice for the length of sentence. Stream it on netflix with decent product placement and we could not just save a fortune but get some revenue in too.
Nonsense.
Instead of trial and prison - a TV show where the suspects are hunted by the public/professional hunters.
If they are caught, they die. If they stay alive and free for 30 days, they get a cash prize.
Turn justice into a profit centre, with popular participation.
Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure.
You may not like it, that's fair enough, but it's a clear, objective, and widely used measure. Hardly something to criticise BBC Verify for.
Out of interest what would you propose as the measure of poverty? Does a child need to be starving, in rags, no shoes?
It is not legitimate. Using a relative measure means someone can be perfectly well-off but because others are even better off the former are deemed to be 'poor'. And if those even better off suddenly have a great downturn in fortune then the previously 'poor' magically becomes 'wealthy' despite having no extra money whatsoever.
An absolute measure is fairer.
Yep. Relative poverty is NOT a measure of individual circumstance, it is a measure of inequality. The left love it. Absolute poverty is whether you can heat your house, eat food etc. The almost universal adoption of relative poverty has not helped.
I can see it having some utility as a measure, but it is reported on as if it is like absolute poverty, which I think confuses what is being talked about as they are not the same thing and one is more vital a concern than the other.
I don't disagree with this but the conversation started with @Morris_Dancer: "Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure."
My point is that 'relative poverty' is not a 'bullshit measure', it's just one that MD doesn't like. No reason to criticise BBC Verify for using it.
Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure.
You may not like it, that's fair enough, but it's a clear, objective, and widely used measure. Hardly something to criticise BBC Verify for.
Out of interest what would you propose as the measure of poverty? Does a child need to be starving, in rags, no shoes?
It is not legitimate. Using a relative measure means someone can be perfectly well-off but because others are even better off the former are deemed to be 'poor'. And if those even better off suddenly have a great downturn in fortune then the previously 'poor' magically becomes 'wealthy' despite having no extra money whatsoever.
An absolute measure is fairer.
Relativity is important though. Take a person with an average standard living in olden times and transport them to today. Once they'd got over the shock and had the time to acclimatise they'd realise they were no longer doing ok because almost everybody else was better off. They'd have become poor, wouldn't they?
Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure.
You may not like it, that's fair enough, but it's a clear, objective, and widely used measure. Hardly something to criticise BBC Verify for.
Out of interest what would you propose as the measure of poverty? Does a child need to be starving, in rags, no shoes?
When we interrogate our idea of poverty it is always a relative concept at its core, because poverty is ultimately about being excluded from the normal patterns of consumption and participation in our current society. In my view it is so-called 'absolute' poverty measures that are bullshit.
Not being able to 'keep up with the Joneses' in a neighbourhood pissing contest doesn't make someone poor. It makes them unable to afford an unnecessary and 'fashionable' splurging of cash you don't have on things you don't need. And the idea that should be subsidised by the taxpayer is just another tier in the cake of relative poverty bullshit.
Edited: as an aside, I'll be AFK for the Budget, which is a shame but needs must.
It's not about keeping up with Jones's. The point is that what we might consider an absolute poverty line now would be very different to the absolute poverty line 50 years ago, because we have different expectations about what constitutes a minimum standard of living, and these expectations are related to what we consider a normal standard of living. This is why I find the idea of some kind of objective and immutable poverty line fundamentally dishonest.
As always it depends on what is done with the concept. Relative and absolute poverty are clearly different ideas. Relative poverty has the property of being more or less by definition ineradicable. Absolute poverty has the property of being a quantity of immiseration which is unacceptable when encountered, especially in children.
Damage is done by leftists who elide relative poverty into something self evidently bad, when it is not self evident. Rightists do harm by insisting the real measure should be more like absolute poverty, which we should not contemplate for anyone. Imprecision and ambiguity is the permanent friend of lobbyists.
Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure.
You may not like it, that's fair enough, but it's a clear, objective, and widely used measure. Hardly something to criticise BBC Verify for.
Out of interest what would you propose as the measure of poverty? Does a child need to be starving, in rags, no shoes?
It is not legitimate. Using a relative measure means someone can be perfectly well-off but because others are even better off the former are deemed to be 'poor'. And if those even better off suddenly have a great downturn in fortune then the previously 'poor' magically becomes 'wealthy' despite having no extra money whatsoever.
An absolute measure is fairer.
An absolute measure at what level?
Surely it wouldn't be beyond the whit of man to find a standardised measurement of what we think people should be able to afford to achieve a basic standard of living, and then link it to the ONS "basket of goods" inflation measure or similar?
A good part of the problem (at least from a technical point of view) is that the driver (or otherwise) of poverty is housing cost. My children may well be technically below the "child poverty" line based on income, but as we own our house mortgage free, and don't have tastes in things like cars, in reality we can live like kings.
Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure.
You may not like it, that's fair enough, but it's a clear, objective, and widely used measure. Hardly something to criticise BBC Verify for.
Out of interest what would you propose as the measure of poverty? Does a child need to be starving, in rags, no shoes?
It is not legitimate. Using a relative measure means someone can be perfectly well-off but because others are even better off the former are deemed to be 'poor'. And if those even better off suddenly have a great downturn in fortune then the previously 'poor' magically becomes 'wealthy' despite having no extra money whatsoever.
An absolute measure is fairer.
Relativity is important though. Take a person with an average standard living in olden times and transport them to today. Once they'd got over the shock and had the time to acclimatise they'd realise they were no longer doing ok because almost everybody else was better off. They'd have become poor, wouldn't they?
If they were below the absolute poverty line they would be
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.
What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)
The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.
So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money. We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money. Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money. Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.
Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.
Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.
We have no money
Yet we are spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon. Billions on an armoured vehicle that literally makes the occupants chronically ill. We can’t find GPs, while we train GPs who can’t get jobs. We have no money to look after children with special needs, but councils are block booking taxis to send them to school - as opposed to a school bus.
It’s feast-or-famine mode spending. Often on insane things.
This is the fault of the Treasury - insane budget rules where we seem to look at today and don't worry about tomorrow. The GP issue is a perfect example - we can't afford to hire them full time, but we can afford emergency cover. Or transport - can't afford a bus but can afford emergency cover.
Do you get it yet? We cut because the Treasury says we must cut. But cuts to provision do not remove the need - which remains. And emergency provision must be done - from a separate budget - which costs more than the cut.
I keep saying we need to invest in this stuff and be told we have no money. We do - we're literally burning it. Will need a short transition where we both burn cash and invest cash, but then no more bonfires.
This post hits so hard. It seems like Westminster and Whitehall know it too, but won't do anything.
I am utterly fucking sick of this stupidity. Its as bad up here as well. Winter snot season - schools asking parents to send their kids in with tissues as the school is running out. Teachers joking about wanting classroom supplies for presents from their kids instead of sweeties. There's literally no money at the front line - but we have schools with heating stuck on full so that everyone melts and windows need to keep being opened (in the summer as well!) because budget rules don't allow repairs when the school is scheduled for replacement in 2019.
Bureaucrats drown in the micro whilst missing the macro and strategic. You can't the detail because the structure is wrong, but you can't spend money on the structure because you're spending too much money in emergency micro fixes.
House building. Everyone agrees we need to build more houses but we're building less. Why? Land banking by developers Arcane endless planning regulations Housing Associations starved of resources A comprehensive lack of builders sparkies joiners plumbers plasterers etc etc - oh and we'd have to import much of the materiel because we've stopped making them because lack of money. But we can't import as we left the EU and they cost more. And we don't like all these forrin workers taking jobs from the untrained unwilling flag shagging fucks.
FFS. Start at the strategic. OK, we need to build 1.5m houses the fuck yesterday. So we need to train the people who will build them. FE colleges here is cash. And a marketing campaign to make building cool We need to invest in a brickworks and other stuff - tax incentives to get manufacturing here We need to allow LHAs to borrow to build We need to bonfire the planning barriers We need to give the land bankers 6 months to start or lose the land All to build a flood of apartments and starter homes at a social rent as never for sale. Which allows a significant drop in % of wages wasted on rent which allows more money to circulate in the economy which means jobs and more taxes which pays back the investment in skills etc
Will get any of that? Will we bollocks.
Does anyone have any idea of the real cost to the country of the post-Grenfell building regulations ?
Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure.
You may not like it, that's fair enough, but it's a clear, objective, and widely used measure. Hardly something to criticise BBC Verify for.
Out of interest what would you propose as the measure of poverty? Does a child need to be starving, in rags, no shoes?
It is not legitimate. Using a relative measure means someone can be perfectly well-off but because others are even better off the former are deemed to be 'poor'. And if those even better off suddenly have a great downturn in fortune then the previously 'poor' magically becomes 'wealthy' despite having no extra money whatsoever.
An absolute measure is fairer.
An absolute measure at what level?
Enough to meet essentials, with a small amount left over for minor luxuries (meals out, cinema etc) and modest saving.
Closer but still relative not absolute poverty.
Absolute poverty is not having a roof over your head, not having enough food and not having enough to drink and not having enough clothing, especially to keep you warm in winter
Absolute pov is not having a mobile. Just try functioning without one.
I am going out to lunch at a pub overlooking the estuary, while I still have the money to afford it.
The existence of jury trials is NOT the reason for court delays. The reasons are:
1. Reducing court sitting days even though the Lady Chief Justice has said judges can sit for more days so there is no lack of availability. 2. Closure and selling of courts. 3. A lack of sufficient funding for the justice system at every level.
1 and 2 are easily remediable. You do not abolish an 800 year old fundamental principle because of a lack of short-term funding. Unless you're an illiberal cretin, that is.
This is a power grab by the state of one of the few areas in British life which really is democratic, generally - though not invariably - works well and, crucially, is not controlled by the state and cannot be pressured by it. And can tell the state to get stuffed when it overreaches eg Ponting, the Colston Four. That is why authoritarians hate it and want to get rid of it. It must be resisted by all possible means.
This proposal shows how much contempt Labour has for us and our liberties.
Was Colston overreach? Not everyone agrees that its ok to vandalise things you don't like. I'd have preferred them found guilty but with a minimum penalty. I.e. they did the crime, but we understand and sympathise with why.
Indeed see also the Labour councillor who was acquitted of hate speech. I support juries overall but when they render not guilty verdicts for political reasons rather than on the law the case for judge led verdicts in middle ranked offences grows. The escort rider who killed an elderly lady crossing the road at speed escorting the Duchess of Edinburgh might also have been convicted of death by careless driving by a judge which a jury acquitted him of
Driving offences is an area where trial by jury is failing the victims, pick any 12 random people and there's probably 2 or 3 who think it's normal to text and speed.
I remember a lecturer at a (compulsory) criminal law class at law school asking those who were going on to practice it to put there hands up. No one did. That was in 1997/98. The number of criminal lawyers must therefore be a negative now.
Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure.
You may not like it, that's fair enough, but it's a clear, objective, and widely used measure. Hardly something to criticise BBC Verify for.
Out of interest what would you propose as the measure of poverty? Does a child need to be starving, in rags, no shoes?
It is not legitimate. Using a relative measure means someone can be perfectly well-off but because others are even better off the former are deemed to be 'poor'. And if those even better off suddenly have a great downturn in fortune then the previously 'poor' magically becomes 'wealthy' despite having no extra money whatsoever.
An absolute measure is fairer.
Yep. Relative poverty is NOT a measure of individual circumstance, it is a measure of inequality. The left love it. Absolute poverty is whether you can heat your house, eat food etc. The almost universal adoption of relative poverty has not helped.
I can see it having some utility as a measure, but it is reported on as if it is like absolute poverty, which I think confuses what is being talked about as they are not the same thing and one is more vital a concern than the other.
I don't disagree with this but the conversation started with @Morris_Dancer: "Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure."
My point is that 'relative poverty' is not a 'bullshit measure', it's just one that MD doesn't like. No reason to criticise BBC Verify for using it.
It doesn't matter much what measure you use, as long as you are clear you are using it and what it actually means. Eg use of 'relative poverty' really needs to explain that there is nothing necessarily wrong with being in 'relative poverty' and it is not obvious that anyone should do anything about it.
I am going out to lunch at a pub overlooking the estuary, while I still have the money to afford it.
The existence of jury trials is NOT the reason for court delays. The reasons are:
1. Reducing court sitting days even though the Lady Chief Justice has said judges can sit for more days so there is no lack of availability. 2. Closure and selling of courts. 3. A lack of sufficient funding for the justice system at every level.
1 and 2 are easily remediable. You do not abolish an 800 year old fundamental principle because of a lack of short-term funding. Unless you're an illiberal cretin, that is.
This is a power grab by the state of one of the few areas in British life which really is democratic, generally - though not invariably - works well and, crucially, is not controlled by the state and cannot be pressured by it. And can tell the state to get stuffed when it overreaches eg Ponting, the Colston Four. That is why authoritarians hate it and want to get rid of it. It must be resisted by all possible means.
This proposal shows how much contempt Labour has for us and our liberties.
Was Colston overreach? Not everyone agrees that its ok to vandalise things you don't like. I'd have preferred them found guilty but with a minimum penalty. I.e. they did the crime, but we understand and sympathise with why.
Indeed see also the Labour councillor who was acquitted of hate speech. I support juries overall but when they render not guilty verdicts for political reasons rather than on the law the case for judge led verdicts in middle ranked offences grows. The escort rider who killed an elderly lady crossing the road at speed escorting the Duchess of Edinburgh might also have been convicted of death by careless driving by a judge which a jury acquitted him of
Driving offences is an area where trial by jury is failing the victims, pick any 12 random people and there's probably 2 or 3 who think it's normal to text and speed.
If the public at large think that people should be able to text and speed and that this is just an inherent risk of life, then that’s the jury system working as intended.
Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure.
You may not like it, that's fair enough, but it's a clear, objective, and widely used measure. Hardly something to criticise BBC Verify for.
Out of interest what would you propose as the measure of poverty? Does a child need to be starving, in rags, no shoes?
When we interrogate our idea of poverty it is always a relative concept at its core, because poverty is ultimately about being excluded from the normal patterns of consumption and participation in our current society. In my view it is so-called 'absolute' poverty measures that are bullshit.
Not being able to 'keep up with the Joneses' in a neighbourhood pissing contest doesn't make someone poor. It makes them unable to afford an unnecessary and 'fashionable' splurging of cash you don't have on things you don't need. And the idea that should be subsidised by the taxpayer is just another tier in the cake of relative poverty bullshit.
Edited: as an aside, I'll be AFK for the Budget, which is a shame but needs must.
It's not about keeping up with Jones's. The point is that what we might consider an absolute poverty line now would be very different to the absolute poverty line 50 years ago, because we have different expectations about what constitutes a minimum standard of living, and these expectations are related to what we consider a normal standard of living. This is why I find the idea of some kind of objective and immutable poverty line fundamentally dishonest.
Nobody said the absolute poverty line should never be changed.
Edited: On Jones: you said earlier "...because poverty is ultimately about being excluded from the normal patterns of consumption and participation in our current society....."
I associate "keeping up with the Joneses" with having the latest fashionable things or status goods, not with being able to sustain something close to a normal, basic kind of standard of living. Of course the absolute poverty line has to be changed, as the normal standard of living changes... in other words it becomes a relative measure.
I remember a lecturer at a (compulsory) criminal law class at law school asking those who were going on to practice it to put there hands up. No one did. That was in 1997/98. The number of criminal lawyers must therefore be a negative now.
I spent days writing a training contract application with the CPS in Newcastle only for Newcastle to be removed as a location at the last minute before the deadline. 🤷♂️
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
The court hours and all the wasted time etc are horrendous, all down to feathering lawyers and judges pockets.
Yeah. We should abandon trial altogether. Waste of time.
I suggest a leg of darts to decide guilt or innocence and then a roll of the dice for the length of sentence. Stream it on netflix with decent product placement and we could not just save a fortune but get some revenue in too.
Nonsense.
Instead of trial and prison - a TV show where the suspects are hunted by the public/professional hunters.
If they are caught, they die. If they stay alive and free for 30 days, they get a cash prize.
Turn justice into a profit centre, with popular participation.
Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure.
You may not like it, that's fair enough, but it's a clear, objective, and widely used measure. Hardly something to criticise BBC Verify for.
Out of interest what would you propose as the measure of poverty? Does a child need to be starving, in rags, no shoes?
It is not legitimate. Using a relative measure means someone can be perfectly well-off but because others are even better off the former are deemed to be 'poor'. And if those even better off suddenly have a great downturn in fortune then the previously 'poor' magically becomes 'wealthy' despite having no extra money whatsoever.
An absolute measure is fairer.
Relativity is important though. Take a person with an average standard living in olden times and transport them to today. Once they'd got over the shock and had the time to acclimatise they'd realise they were no longer doing ok because almost everybody else was better off. They'd have become poor, wouldn't they?
If they were below the absolute poverty line they would be
But regardless they'd have become poorER, wouldn't they? - ie relativity is meaningful.
Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure.
You may not like it, that's fair enough, but it's a clear, objective, and widely used measure. Hardly something to criticise BBC Verify for.
Out of interest what would you propose as the measure of poverty? Does a child need to be starving, in rags, no shoes?
It is not legitimate. Using a relative measure means someone can be perfectly well-off but because others are even better off the former are deemed to be 'poor'. And if those even better off suddenly have a great downturn in fortune then the previously 'poor' magically becomes 'wealthy' despite having no extra money whatsoever.
An absolute measure is fairer.
Yep. Relative poverty is NOT a measure of individual circumstance, it is a measure of inequality. The left love it. Absolute poverty is whether you can heat your house, eat food etc. The almost universal adoption of relative poverty has not helped.
So should someone win 150 million on the euro millions relative poverty increases slightly although no one is materially worse off ?
Stupid point but even then it's not really true. Where did that 150 million come from?
But how about sharing us what your definition of poverty would be?
@Morris_Dancer's was rather generous imo, including as it did "a small amount left over for minor luxuries (meals out, cinema etc) and modest saving". Try doing that on £80 per week, even if your full rent is separately covered (for most it isn't).
It’s not a ‘stupid point’ it’s a question. Hence the question mark old chap 😘
I don’t have a definition and am not overly invested in one, just think ‘relative’ poverty makes no sense although I will take lectures on poverty from someone building a massive house with a load of. land in Dorset.😉
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.
What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)
The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.
So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money. We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money. Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money. Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.
Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.
Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.
We have no money
Yet we are spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon. Billions on an armoured vehicle that literally makes the occupants chronically ill. We can’t find GPs, while we train GPs who can’t get jobs. We have no money to look after children with special needs, but councils are block booking taxis to send them to school - as opposed to a school bus.
It’s feast-or-famine mode spending. Often on insane things.
This is the fault of the Treasury - insane budget rules where we seem to look at today and don't worry about tomorrow. The GP issue is a perfect example - we can't afford to hire them full time, but we can afford emergency cover. Or transport - can't afford a bus but can afford emergency cover.
Do you get it yet? We cut because the Treasury says we must cut. But cuts to provision do not remove the need - which remains. And emergency provision must be done - from a separate budget - which costs more than the cut.
I keep saying we need to invest in this stuff and be told we have no money. We do - we're literally burning it. Will need a short transition where we both burn cash and invest cash, but then no more bonfires.
This post hits so hard. It seems like Westminster and Whitehall know it too, but won't do anything.
I am utterly fucking sick of this stupidity. Its as bad up here as well. Winter snot season - schools asking parents to send their kids in with tissues as the school is running out. Teachers joking about wanting classroom supplies for presents from their kids instead of sweeties. There's literally no money at the front line - but we have schools with heating stuck on full so that everyone melts and windows need to keep being opened (in the summer as well!) because budget rules don't allow repairs when the school is scheduled for replacement in 2019.
Bureaucrats drown in the micro whilst missing the macro and strategic. You can't the detail because the structure is wrong, but you can't spend money on the structure because you're spending too much money in emergency micro fixes.
House building. Everyone agrees we need to build more houses but we're building less. Why? Land banking by developers Arcane endless planning regulations Housing Associations starved of resources A comprehensive lack of builders sparkies joiners plumbers plasterers etc etc - oh and we'd have to import much of the materiel because we've stopped making them because lack of money. But we can't import as we left the EU and they cost more. And we don't like all these forrin workers taking jobs from the untrained unwilling flag shagging fucks.
FFS. Start at the strategic. OK, we need to build 1.5m houses the fuck yesterday. So we need to train the people who will build them. FE colleges here is cash. And a marketing campaign to make building cool We need to invest in a brickworks and other stuff - tax incentives to get manufacturing here We need to allow LHAs to borrow to build We need to bonfire the planning barriers We need to give the land bankers 6 months to start or lose the land All to build a flood of apartments and starter homes at a social rent as never for sale. Which allows a significant drop in % of wages wasted on rent which allows more money to circulate in the economy which means jobs and more taxes which pays back the investment in skills etc
Will get any of that? Will we bollocks.
Does anyone have any idea of the real cost to the country of the post-Grenfell building regulations ?
But if we don’t triple the cost of replacing windows, by needing plan application consultants, because the forms are so complex… how will the consultants eat?
Plus it will breach international law, human rights law, law of the sea, NATO, SEATO….
Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure.
You may not like it, that's fair enough, but it's a clear, objective, and widely used measure. Hardly something to criticise BBC Verify for.
Out of interest what would you propose as the measure of poverty? Does a child need to be starving, in rags, no shoes?
When we interrogate our idea of poverty it is always a relative concept at its core, because poverty is ultimately about being excluded from the normal patterns of consumption and participation in our current society. In my view it is so-called 'absolute' poverty measures that are bullshit.
Not being able to 'keep up with the Joneses' in a neighbourhood pissing contest doesn't make someone poor. It makes them unable to afford an unnecessary and 'fashionable' splurging of cash you don't have on things you don't need. And the idea that should be subsidised by the taxpayer is just another tier in the cake of relative poverty bullshit.
Edited: as an aside, I'll be AFK for the Budget, which is a shame but needs must.
It's not about keeping up with Jones's. The point is that what we might consider an absolute poverty line now would be very different to the absolute poverty line 50 years ago, because we have different expectations about what constitutes a minimum standard of living, and these expectations are related to what we consider a normal standard of living. This is why I find the idea of some kind of objective and immutable poverty line fundamentally dishonest.
As always it depends on what is done with the concept. Relative and absolute poverty are clearly different ideas. Relative poverty has the property of being more or less by definition ineradicable. Absolute poverty has the property of being a quantity of immiseration which is unacceptable when encountered, especially in children.
Damage is done by leftists who elide relative poverty into something self evidently bad, when it is not self evident. Rightists do harm by insisting the real measure should be more like absolute poverty, which we should not contemplate for anyone. Imprecision and ambiguity is the permanent friend of lobbyists.
Relative poverty and absolute poverty numbers map to actual numbers under official definitions.
The proportion of children living in absolute poverty has increased in recent years in part because of the two child cap. That measure doesn't take into account rising prosperity in society.
I remember a lecturer at a (compulsory) criminal law class at law school asking those who were going on to practice it to put there hands up. No one did. That was in 1997/98. The number of criminal lawyers must therefore be a negative now.
I spent days writing a training contract application with the CPS in Newcastle only for Newcastle to be removed as a location at the last minute before the deadline. 🤷♂️
That's shoddy of them.
I once prepared a pitch at a trainee interview in the City saying how excited I was that the firm in question was going to be one of the first to open an office in Delhi as I'd spent my gap year there and loved it only to be told in the first 30 seconds that the Indian Bar had announced earlier that week that they were not going to allow foreign firms to practice there after all. I didn't get the job.
Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure.
You may not like it, that's fair enough, but it's a clear, objective, and widely used measure. Hardly something to criticise BBC Verify for.
Out of interest what would you propose as the measure of poverty? Does a child need to be starving, in rags, no shoes?
When we interrogate our idea of poverty it is always a relative concept at its core, because poverty is ultimately about being excluded from the normal patterns of consumption and participation in our current society. In my view it is so-called 'absolute' poverty measures that are bullshit.
Not being able to 'keep up with the Joneses' in a neighbourhood pissing contest doesn't make someone poor. It makes them unable to afford an unnecessary and 'fashionable' splurging of cash you don't have on things you don't need. And the idea that should be subsidised by the taxpayer is just another tier in the cake of relative poverty bullshit.
Edited: as an aside, I'll be AFK for the Budget, which is a shame but needs must.
It's not about keeping up with Jones's. The point is that what we might consider an absolute poverty line now would be very different to the absolute poverty line 50 years ago, because we have different expectations about what constitutes a minimum standard of living, and these expectations are related to what we consider a normal standard of living. This is why I find the idea of some kind of objective and immutable poverty line fundamentally dishonest.
As always it depends on what is done with the concept. Relative and absolute poverty are clearly different ideas. Relative poverty has the property of being more or less by definition ineradicable. Absolute poverty has the property of being a quantity of immiseration which is unacceptable when encountered, especially in children.
Damage is done by leftists who elide relative poverty into something self evidently bad, when it is not self evident. Rightists do harm by insisting the real measure should be more like absolute poverty, which we should not contemplate for anyone. Imprecision and ambiguity is the permanent friend of lobbyists.
If you define relative poverty as some fraction of median income then it needn't be ineradicable as long as the fraction is not too close to 1. This doesn't mean that we should necessarily seek to eradicate it - like any policy we should consider the balance of costs and benefits. Most likely the poor will always be with us. Personally I just think that people who advocate for 'absolute' poverty measures just haven't thought very deeply about what poverty really is or how we define it.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.
What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)
The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.
So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money. We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money. Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money. Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.
Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.
Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.
We have no money
Yet we are spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon. Billions on an armoured vehicle that literally makes the occupants chronically ill. We can’t find GPs, while we train GPs who can’t get jobs. We have no money to look after children with special needs, but councils are block booking taxis to send them to school - as opposed to a school bus.
It’s feast-or-famine mode spending. Often on insane things.
This is the fault of the Treasury - insane budget rules where we seem to look at today and don't worry about tomorrow. The GP issue is a perfect example - we can't afford to hire them full time, but we can afford emergency cover. Or transport - can't afford a bus but can afford emergency cover.
Do you get it yet? We cut because the Treasury says we must cut. But cuts to provision do not remove the need - which remains. And emergency provision must be done - from a separate budget - which costs more than the cut.
I keep saying we need to invest in this stuff and be told we have no money. We do - we're literally burning it. Will need a short transition where we both burn cash and invest cash, but then no more bonfires.
This post hits so hard. It seems like Westminster and Whitehall know it too, but won't do anything.
I am utterly fucking sick of this stupidity. Its as bad up here as well. Winter snot season - schools asking parents to send their kids in with tissues as the school is running out. Teachers joking about wanting classroom supplies for presents from their kids instead of sweeties. There's literally no money at the front line - but we have schools with heating stuck on full so that everyone melts and windows need to keep being opened (in the summer as well!) because budget rules don't allow repairs when the school is scheduled for replacement in 2019.
Bureaucrats drown in the micro whilst missing the macro and strategic. You can't the detail because the structure is wrong, but you can't spend money on the structure because you're spending too much money in emergency micro fixes.
House building. Everyone agrees we need to build more houses but we're building less. Why? Land banking by developers Arcane endless planning regulations Housing Associations starved of resources A comprehensive lack of builders sparkies joiners plumbers plasterers etc etc - oh and we'd have to import much of the materiel because we've stopped making them because lack of money. But we can't import as we left the EU and they cost more. And we don't like all these forrin workers taking jobs from the untrained unwilling flag shagging fucks.
FFS. Start at the strategic. OK, we need to build 1.5m houses the fuck yesterday. So we need to train the people who will build them. FE colleges here is cash. And a marketing campaign to make building cool We need to invest in a brickworks and other stuff - tax incentives to get manufacturing here We need to allow LHAs to borrow to build We need to bonfire the planning barriers We need to give the land bankers 6 months to start or lose the land All to build a flood of apartments and starter homes at a social rent as never for sale. Which allows a significant drop in % of wages wasted on rent which allows more money to circulate in the economy which means jobs and more taxes which pays back the investment in skills etc
Will get any of that? Will we bollocks.
Does anyone have any idea of the real cost to the country of the post-Grenfell building regulations ?
My house is 230 years old and listed - believe me I know the cost!
Out front of the commercial part of the building is an iron fence which is literally rusted away in a few places. Really needs replacing, but the planning officer refused to consider a non-LFL alternative. Despite this fence not being original or actually part of the listing.
So the plan is to literally let it rust away to nothing. I will keep repairing and repainting it. Until part of it breaks off then I'll be allowed to remove it because dangerous.
Some of the issues: This is a systemic problem that cannot be attributed to any single entity. The issues span regulators, government, and industry, creating a cycle of inefficiency, delay, and excessive cost. This is deeply rooted and embedded in the sector’s culture. Interconnected failures feed on each other, acting as bottlenecks that prevent the effective delivery of critical nuclear projects. The five primary regulatory problems are as follows: 1) Fragmented Oversight: A single project faces multiple regulators, sometimes as many as six on a single defence project, with no single designated lead. This results in misalignment, inconsistency, and delay. 2) Disproportionate Decisions: Regulators frequently make overly conservative and costly decisions that are not proportionate to the actual risk being managed. 3) Flawed Legislation: Underlying laws and regulations prioritise process over outcomes, leading to time-consuming delays and suboptimal decisions. 4) Government Indecision: Government departments are often slow and indecisive in their roles as policymakers and regulators, failing to provide clear direction. 5) Weak Industry Incentives: The near-monopolistic status of much of the industry provides weak financial incentives to reduce costs or challenge disproportionate regulatory decisions...
A recommended approach to reform: Simpler regulation can deliver safety at lower cost;
Regulatory processes should not trump outcomes;
A regulatory system must acknowledge trade-offs; ...etc
There is a huge about in the report specific to the nuclear industry, but it is not hard to imagine a similar approach being taken towards housebuilding and general infrastructure construction.
A recommended read for those with the time to do so.
The idea that the report be litigated on the basis of breach of human rights, as has been suggested, rather than implemented in full with the greatest possible dispatch, seems completely nuts to me, and is a perfect example of the mindset which makes getting anything done in this country at least twice as expensive as it needs to be.
Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure.
You may not like it, that's fair enough, but it's a clear, objective, and widely used measure. Hardly something to criticise BBC Verify for.
Out of interest what would you propose as the measure of poverty? Does a child need to be starving, in rags, no shoes?
It is not legitimate. Using a relative measure means someone can be perfectly well-off but because others are even better off the former are deemed to be 'poor'. And if those even better off suddenly have a great downturn in fortune then the previously 'poor' magically becomes 'wealthy' despite having no extra money whatsoever.
An absolute measure is fairer.
Yep. Relative poverty is NOT a measure of individual circumstance, it is a measure of inequality. The left love it. Absolute poverty is whether you can heat your house, eat food etc. The almost universal adoption of relative poverty has not helped.
I can see it having some utility as a measure, but it is reported on as if it is like absolute poverty, which I think confuses what is being talked about as they are not the same thing and one is more vital a concern than the other.
I don't disagree with this but the conversation started with @Morris_Dancer: "Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure."
My point is that 'relative poverty' is not a 'bullshit measure', it's just one that MD doesn't like. No reason to criticise BBC Verify for using it.
It doesn't matter much what measure you use, as long as you are clear you are using it and what it actually means. Eg use of 'relative poverty' really needs to explain that there is nothing necessarily wrong with being in 'relative poverty' and it is not obvious that anyone should do anything about it.
(Even though I think we should!)
The argument for why relative poverty matters is that the price of most things in the economy are set by aggregate demand - e.g. energy. You get some price differentiation like the value in range in Morrisons, but it's not enough to offset the effect.
It's a bit academic - other measures like absolute or material deprivation, SIMD etc have significant overlap with relative poverty, so it works reasonably well as a measure. And absolute poverty is a construction anyway - it's based on relative poverty in 2010/11.
Lawyering, AI and rainbow flags in a couple of tweets. Presumably the poor soul was frightened by a bumless leather chaps wearing Pride marcher at an early age.
Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure.
You may not like it, that's fair enough, but it's a clear, objective, and widely used measure. Hardly something to criticise BBC Verify for.
Out of interest what would you propose as the measure of poverty? Does a child need to be starving, in rags, no shoes?
It is not legitimate. Using a relative measure means someone can be perfectly well-off but because others are even better off the former are deemed to be 'poor'. And if those even better off suddenly have a great downturn in fortune then the previously 'poor' magically becomes 'wealthy' despite having no extra money whatsoever.
An absolute measure is fairer.
An absolute measure at what level?
Enough to meet essentials, with a small amount left over for minor luxuries (meals out, cinema etc) and modest saving.
Closer but still relative not absolute poverty.
Absolute poverty is not having a roof over your head, not having enough food and not having enough to drink and not having enough clothing, especially to keep you warm in winter
Absolute pov is not having a mobile. Just try functioning without one.
That's horribly true. Businesses and shops are increasingly reliant on apps: my bank gets very upset when I refuse to download their app, and my GP just sent my test results to me via a NHS account (I don't have one), so I don't know if I'm going blind or not. I am slightly annoyed by this.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.
What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)
The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.
So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money. We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money. Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money. Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.
Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.
Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.
We have no money
Yet we are spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon. Billions on an armoured vehicle that literally makes the occupants chronically ill. We can’t find GPs, while we train GPs who can’t get jobs. We have no money to look after children with special needs, but councils are block booking taxis to send them to school - as opposed to a school bus.
It’s feast-or-famine mode spending. Often on insane things.
This is the fault of the Treasury - insane budget rules where we seem to look at today and don't worry about tomorrow. The GP issue is a perfect example - we can't afford to hire them full time, but we can afford emergency cover. Or transport - can't afford a bus but can afford emergency cover.
Do you get it yet? We cut because the Treasury says we must cut. But cuts to provision do not remove the need - which remains. And emergency provision must be done - from a separate budget - which costs more than the cut.
I keep saying we need to invest in this stuff and be told we have no money. We do - we're literally burning it. Will need a short transition where we both burn cash and invest cash, but then no more bonfires.
This post hits so hard. It seems like Westminster and Whitehall know it too, but won't do anything.
I am utterly fucking sick of this stupidity. Its as bad up here as well. Winter snot season - schools asking parents to send their kids in with tissues as the school is running out. Teachers joking about wanting classroom supplies for presents from their kids instead of sweeties. There's literally no money at the front line - but we have schools with heating stuck on full so that everyone melts and windows need to keep being opened (in the summer as well!) because budget rules don't allow repairs when the school is scheduled for replacement in 2019.
Bureaucrats drown in the micro whilst missing the macro and strategic. You can't the detail because the structure is wrong, but you can't spend money on the structure because you're spending too much money in emergency micro fixes.
House building. Everyone agrees we need to build more houses but we're building less. Why? Land banking by developers Arcane endless planning regulations Housing Associations starved of resources A comprehensive lack of builders sparkies joiners plumbers plasterers etc etc - oh and we'd have to import much of the materiel because we've stopped making them because lack of money. But we can't import as we left the EU and they cost more. And we don't like all these forrin workers taking jobs from the untrained unwilling flag shagging fucks.
FFS. Start at the strategic. OK, we need to build 1.5m houses the fuck yesterday. So we need to train the people who will build them. FE colleges here is cash. And a marketing campaign to make building cool We need to invest in a brickworks and other stuff - tax incentives to get manufacturing here We need to allow LHAs to borrow to build We need to bonfire the planning barriers We need to give the land bankers 6 months to start or lose the land All to build a flood of apartments and starter homes at a social rent as never for sale. Which allows a significant drop in % of wages wasted on rent which allows more money to circulate in the economy which means jobs and more taxes which pays back the investment in skills etc
Will get any of that? Will we bollocks.
Does anyone have any idea of the real cost to the country of the post-Grenfell building regulations ?
But if we don’t triple the cost of replacing windows, by needing plan application consultants, because the forms are so complex… how will the consultants eat?
Plus it will breach international law, human rights law, law of the sea, NATO, SEATO….
The regulators, and the industry which exists to navigate the mazes they construct, are arguably the new parasite class. Having cleverly adopted the guise of tribunes of the people.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.
What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)
The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.
So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money. We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money. Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money. Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.
Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.
Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.
We have no money
Yet we are spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon. Billions on an armoured vehicle that literally makes the occupants chronically ill. We can’t find GPs, while we train GPs who can’t get jobs. We have no money to look after children with special needs, but councils are block booking taxis to send them to school - as opposed to a school bus.
It’s feast-or-famine mode spending. Often on insane things.
This is the fault of the Treasury - insane budget rules where we seem to look at today and don't worry about tomorrow. The GP issue is a perfect example - we can't afford to hire them full time, but we can afford emergency cover. Or transport - can't afford a bus but can afford emergency cover.
Do you get it yet? We cut because the Treasury says we must cut. But cuts to provision do not remove the need - which remains. And emergency provision must be done - from a separate budget - which costs more than the cut.
I keep saying we need to invest in this stuff and be told we have no money. We do - we're literally burning it. Will need a short transition where we both burn cash and invest cash, but then no more bonfires.
This post hits so hard. It seems like Westminster and Whitehall know it too, but won't do anything.
I am utterly fucking sick of this stupidity. Its as bad up here as well. Winter snot season - schools asking parents to send their kids in with tissues as the school is running out. Teachers joking about wanting classroom supplies for presents from their kids instead of sweeties. There's literally no money at the front line - but we have schools with heating stuck on full so that everyone melts and windows need to keep being opened (in the summer as well!) because budget rules don't allow repairs when the school is scheduled for replacement in 2019.
Bureaucrats drown in the micro whilst missing the macro and strategic. You can't the detail because the structure is wrong, but you can't spend money on the structure because you're spending too much money in emergency micro fixes.
House building. Everyone agrees we need to build more houses but we're building less. Why? Land banking by developers Arcane endless planning regulations Housing Associations starved of resources A comprehensive lack of builders sparkies joiners plumbers plasterers etc etc - oh and we'd have to import much of the materiel because we've stopped making them because lack of money. But we can't import as we left the EU and they cost more. And we don't like all these forrin workers taking jobs from the untrained unwilling flag shagging fucks.
FFS. Start at the strategic. OK, we need to build 1.5m houses the fuck yesterday. So we need to train the people who will build them. FE colleges here is cash. And a marketing campaign to make building cool We need to invest in a brickworks and other stuff - tax incentives to get manufacturing here We need to allow LHAs to borrow to build We need to bonfire the planning barriers We need to give the land bankers 6 months to start or lose the land All to build a flood of apartments and starter homes at a social rent as never for sale. Which allows a significant drop in % of wages wasted on rent which allows more money to circulate in the economy which means jobs and more taxes which pays back the investment in skills etc
Will get any of that? Will we bollocks.
Does anyone have any idea of the real cost to the country of the post-Grenfell building regulations ?
But if we don’t triple the cost of replacing windows, by needing plan application consultants, because the forms are so complex… how will the consultants eat?
Plus it will breach international law, human rights law, law of the sea, NATO, SEATO….
Do the planning consultants actually want this work?
It looks like tedious b*llocks that you charge silly money for because you don't really want to waste your life filling in stupid forms.
If someone is desperate enough to pay you £1k+/day for it then you might reluctantly get out of bed.
It makes sense though. Sheffield can't sustain two clubs other than bouncing around the Championship/Division 1. A single team might keep in the Premiership.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.
What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)
The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.
So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money. We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money. Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money. Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.
Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.
Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.
We have no money
Yet we are spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon. Billions on an armoured vehicle that literally makes the occupants chronically ill. We can’t find GPs, while we train GPs who can’t get jobs. We have no money to look after children with special needs, but councils are block booking taxis to send them to school - as opposed to a school bus.
It’s feast-or-famine mode spending. Often on insane things.
This is the fault of the Treasury - insane budget rules where we seem to look at today and don't worry about tomorrow. The GP issue is a perfect example - we can't afford to hire them full time, but we can afford emergency cover. Or transport - can't afford a bus but can afford emergency cover.
Do you get it yet? We cut because the Treasury says we must cut. But cuts to provision do not remove the need - which remains. And emergency provision must be done - from a separate budget - which costs more than the cut.
I keep saying we need to invest in this stuff and be told we have no money. We do - we're literally burning it. Will need a short transition where we both burn cash and invest cash, but then no more bonfires.
This post hits so hard. It seems like Westminster and Whitehall know it too, but won't do anything.
I am utterly fucking sick of this stupidity. Its as bad up here as well. Winter snot season - schools asking parents to send their kids in with tissues as the school is running out. Teachers joking about wanting classroom supplies for presents from their kids instead of sweeties. There's literally no money at the front line - but we have schools with heating stuck on full so that everyone melts and windows need to keep being opened (in the summer as well!) because budget rules don't allow repairs when the school is scheduled for replacement in 2019.
Bureaucrats drown in the micro whilst missing the macro and strategic. You can't the detail because the structure is wrong, but you can't spend money on the structure because you're spending too much money in emergency micro fixes.
House building. Everyone agrees we need to build more houses but we're building less. Why? Land banking by developers Arcane endless planning regulations Housing Associations starved of resources A comprehensive lack of builders sparkies joiners plumbers plasterers etc etc - oh and we'd have to import much of the materiel because we've stopped making them because lack of money. But we can't import as we left the EU and they cost more. And we don't like all these forrin workers taking jobs from the untrained unwilling flag shagging fucks.
FFS. Start at the strategic. OK, we need to build 1.5m houses the fuck yesterday. So we need to train the people who will build them. FE colleges here is cash. And a marketing campaign to make building cool We need to invest in a brickworks and other stuff - tax incentives to get manufacturing here We need to allow LHAs to borrow to build We need to bonfire the planning barriers We need to give the land bankers 6 months to start or lose the land All to build a flood of apartments and starter homes at a social rent as never for sale. Which allows a significant drop in % of wages wasted on rent which allows more money to circulate in the economy which means jobs and more taxes which pays back the investment in skills etc
Will get any of that? Will we bollocks.
Does anyone have any idea of the real cost to the country of the post-Grenfell building regulations ?
But if we don’t triple the cost of replacing windows, by needing plan application consultants, because the forms are so complex… how will the consultants eat?
Plus it will breach international law, human rights law, law of the sea, NATO, SEATO….
The regulators, and the industry which exists to navigate the mazes they construct, are arguably the new parasite class. Having cleverly adopted the guise of tribunes of the people.
Compliance costs are now a very significant proportion of total build costs.
It makes sense though. Sheffield can't sustain two clubs other than bouncing around the Championship/Division 1. A single team might keep in the Premiership.
The same should apply to Liverpool.
And Manchester.
What about Nottingham Forest and Notts County? There's only the River Trent between them. They could fill it in and merge the two grounds.
Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure.
You may not like it, that's fair enough, but it's a clear, objective, and widely used measure. Hardly something to criticise BBC Verify for.
Out of interest what would you propose as the measure of poverty? Does a child need to be starving, in rags, no shoes?
It is not legitimate. Using a relative measure means someone can be perfectly well-off but because others are even better off the former are deemed to be 'poor'. And if those even better off suddenly have a great downturn in fortune then the previously 'poor' magically becomes 'wealthy' despite having no extra money whatsoever.
An absolute measure is fairer.
An absolute measure at what level?
Enough to meet essentials, with a small amount left over for minor luxuries (meals out, cinema etc) and modest saving.
Closer but still relative not absolute poverty.
Absolute poverty is not having a roof over your head, not having enough food and not having enough to drink and not having enough clothing, especially to keep you warm in winter
Absolute pov is not having a mobile. Just try functioning without one.
That's horribly true. Businesses and shops are increasingly reliant on apps: my bank gets very upset when I refuse to download their app, and my GP just sent my test results to me via a NHS account (I don't have one), so I don't know if I'm going blind or not. I am slightly annoyed by this.
Also, increasingly, even more urgent stuff if one is poor. Claiming the dole (in whatever modern form). Finding jobs, dealing with the DWP, and so on.
As for your example: I paid in a cheque at my bank's local branch the other day. Got asked twice by staff if I really needed to see the cashier etc. before I got to the desk and had my receipt. The online banking has no provision for cheques, and I don't want a mobile app as well, it's hard enough keeping mental track as it is. Lucky to have a branch within walking distance ...)
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.
What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)
The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.
So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money. We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money. Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money. Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.
Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.
Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.
We have no money
Yet we are spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon. Billions on an armoured vehicle that literally makes the occupants chronically ill. We can’t find GPs, while we train GPs who can’t get jobs. We have no money to look after children with special needs, but councils are block booking taxis to send them to school - as opposed to a school bus.
It’s feast-or-famine mode spending. Often on insane things.
This is the fault of the Treasury - insane budget rules where we seem to look at today and don't worry about tomorrow. The GP issue is a perfect example - we can't afford to hire them full time, but we can afford emergency cover. Or transport - can't afford a bus but can afford emergency cover.
Do you get it yet? We cut because the Treasury says we must cut. But cuts to provision do not remove the need - which remains. And emergency provision must be done - from a separate budget - which costs more than the cut.
I keep saying we need to invest in this stuff and be told we have no money. We do - we're literally burning it. Will need a short transition where we both burn cash and invest cash, but then no more bonfires.
This post hits so hard. It seems like Westminster and Whitehall know it too, but won't do anything.
I am utterly fucking sick of this stupidity. Its as bad up here as well. Winter snot season - schools asking parents to send their kids in with tissues as the school is running out. Teachers joking about wanting classroom supplies for presents from their kids instead of sweeties. There's literally no money at the front line - but we have schools with heating stuck on full so that everyone melts and windows need to keep being opened (in the summer as well!) because budget rules don't allow repairs when the school is scheduled for replacement in 2019.
Bureaucrats drown in the micro whilst missing the macro and strategic. You can't the detail because the structure is wrong, but you can't spend money on the structure because you're spending too much money in emergency micro fixes.
House building. Everyone agrees we need to build more houses but we're building less. Why? Land banking by developers Arcane endless planning regulations Housing Associations starved of resources A comprehensive lack of builders sparkies joiners plumbers plasterers etc etc - oh and we'd have to import much of the materiel because we've stopped making them because lack of money. But we can't import as we left the EU and they cost more. And we don't like all these forrin workers taking jobs from the untrained unwilling flag shagging fucks.
FFS. Start at the strategic. OK, we need to build 1.5m houses the fuck yesterday. So we need to train the people who will build them. FE colleges here is cash. And a marketing campaign to make building cool We need to invest in a brickworks and other stuff - tax incentives to get manufacturing here We need to allow LHAs to borrow to build We need to bonfire the planning barriers We need to give the land bankers 6 months to start or lose the land All to build a flood of apartments and starter homes at a social rent as never for sale. Which allows a significant drop in % of wages wasted on rent which allows more money to circulate in the economy which means jobs and more taxes which pays back the investment in skills etc
Will get any of that? Will we bollocks.
Does anyone have any idea of the real cost to the country of the post-Grenfell building regulations ?
But if we don’t triple the cost of replacing windows, by needing plan application consultants, because the forms are so complex… how will the consultants eat?
Plus it will breach international law, human rights law, law of the sea, NATO, SEATO….
I think horrors often trigger overreactions and it doesn't surprise me that Grenfell did. Much of what ensued seemed driven by a mixture of panic and cya.
Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure.
You may not like it, that's fair enough, but it's a clear, objective, and widely used measure. Hardly something to criticise BBC Verify for.
Out of interest what would you propose as the measure of poverty? Does a child need to be starving, in rags, no shoes?
When we interrogate our idea of poverty it is always a relative concept at its core, because poverty is ultimately about being excluded from the normal patterns of consumption and participation in our current society. In my view it is so-called 'absolute' poverty measures that are bullshit.
Not being able to 'keep up with the Joneses' in a neighbourhood pissing contest doesn't make someone poor. It makes them unable to afford an unnecessary and 'fashionable' splurging of cash you don't have on things you don't need. And the idea that should be subsidised by the taxpayer is just another tier in the cake of relative poverty bullshit.
Edited: as an aside, I'll be AFK for the Budget, which is a shame but needs must.
It's not about keeping up with Jones's. The point is that what we might consider an absolute poverty line now would be very different to the absolute poverty line 50 years ago, because we have different expectations about what constitutes a minimum standard of living, and these expectations are related to what we consider a normal standard of living. This is why I find the idea of some kind of objective and immutable poverty line fundamentally dishonest.
As always it depends on what is done with the concept. Relative and absolute poverty are clearly different ideas. Relative poverty has the property of being more or less by definition ineradicable. Absolute poverty has the property of being a quantity of immiseration which is unacceptable when encountered, especially in children.
Damage is done by leftists who elide relative poverty into something self evidently bad, when it is not self evident. Rightists do harm by insisting the real measure should be more like absolute poverty, which we should not contemplate for anyone. Imprecision and ambiguity is the permanent friend of lobbyists.
If you define relative poverty as some fraction of median income then it needn't be ineradicable as long as the fraction is not too close to 1. This doesn't mean that we should necessarily seek to eradicate it - like any policy we should consider the balance of costs and benefits. Most likely the poor will always be with us. Personally I just think that people who advocate for 'absolute' poverty measures just haven't thought very deeply about what poverty really is or how we define it.
I think that defining poverty as a % of median income is pretty meaningless.
But, I would agree that definitions of poverty can and should rise over time. Subsistence is $3 per day, per person, but in a rich world country, you would want to define poverty well above that figure.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.
What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)
The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.
So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money. We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money. Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money. Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.
Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.
Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.
We have no money
Yet we are spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon. Billions on an armoured vehicle that literally makes the occupants chronically ill. We can’t find GPs, while we train GPs who can’t get jobs. We have no money to look after children with special needs, but councils are block booking taxis to send them to school - as opposed to a school bus.
It’s feast-or-famine mode spending. Often on insane things.
This is the fault of the Treasury - insane budget rules where we seem to look at today and don't worry about tomorrow. The GP issue is a perfect example - we can't afford to hire them full time, but we can afford emergency cover. Or transport - can't afford a bus but can afford emergency cover.
Do you get it yet? We cut because the Treasury says we must cut. But cuts to provision do not remove the need - which remains. And emergency provision must be done - from a separate budget - which costs more than the cut.
I keep saying we need to invest in this stuff and be told we have no money. We do - we're literally burning it. Will need a short transition where we both burn cash and invest cash, but then no more bonfires.
This post hits so hard. It seems like Westminster and Whitehall know it too, but won't do anything.
I am utterly fucking sick of this stupidity. Its as bad up here as well. Winter snot season - schools asking parents to send their kids in with tissues as the school is running out. Teachers joking about wanting classroom supplies for presents from their kids instead of sweeties. There's literally no money at the front line - but we have schools with heating stuck on full so that everyone melts and windows need to keep being opened (in the summer as well!) because budget rules don't allow repairs when the school is scheduled for replacement in 2019.
Bureaucrats drown in the micro whilst missing the macro and strategic. You can't the detail because the structure is wrong, but you can't spend money on the structure because you're spending too much money in emergency micro fixes.
House building. Everyone agrees we need to build more houses but we're building less. Why? Land banking by developers Arcane endless planning regulations Housing Associations starved of resources A comprehensive lack of builders sparkies joiners plumbers plasterers etc etc - oh and we'd have to import much of the materiel because we've stopped making them because lack of money. But we can't import as we left the EU and they cost more. And we don't like all these forrin workers taking jobs from the untrained unwilling flag shagging fucks.
FFS. Start at the strategic. OK, we need to build 1.5m houses the fuck yesterday. So we need to train the people who will build them. FE colleges here is cash. And a marketing campaign to make building cool We need to invest in a brickworks and other stuff - tax incentives to get manufacturing here We need to allow LHAs to borrow to build We need to bonfire the planning barriers We need to give the land bankers 6 months to start or lose the land All to build a flood of apartments and starter homes at a social rent as never for sale. Which allows a significant drop in % of wages wasted on rent which allows more money to circulate in the economy which means jobs and more taxes which pays back the investment in skills etc
Will get any of that? Will we bollocks.
Does anyone have any idea of the real cost to the country of the post-Grenfell building regulations ?
But if we don’t triple the cost of replacing windows, by needing plan application consultants, because the forms are so complex… how will the consultants eat?
Plus it will breach international law, human rights law, law of the sea, NATO, SEATO….
Do the planning consultants actually want this work?
It looks like tedious b*llocks that you charge silly money for because you don't really want to waste your life filling in stupid forms.
If someone is desperate enough to pay you £1k+/day for it then you might reluctantly get out of bed.
That is part of the problem. People just get stuck, without anyone offering a solution.
The unfortunate chap here is living in a building slightly over 18m tall, which means special regulations apply, even to changing your window. ...the story doesn’t end there. Chris lives in what is known as a ‘Higher Risk Building’. This was a category created by the Building Safety Act and includes all buildings 18m or higher. The block of flats Chris lives in is slightly taller than 18m so any major works in his building need special approval.
In theory, this should be easy. The system was meant to outsource approvals for things like window replacements to a ‘Competent Persons Schemes’. In other words, have your window installed by a regulated professional and they can sign-off on building control. Easy peasy.
The problem is Chris asked every single scheme qualified to sign-off the works (there are three) and they all told him the same thing: they won’t sign off any work on a higher risk building. It is not clear why or if the Government engaged with the schemes...
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.
What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)
The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.
So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money. We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money. Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money. Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.
Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.
Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.
We have no money
Yet we are spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon. Billions on an armoured vehicle that literally makes the occupants chronically ill. We can’t find GPs, while we train GPs who can’t get jobs. We have no money to look after children with special needs, but councils are block booking taxis to send them to school - as opposed to a school bus.
It’s feast-or-famine mode spending. Often on insane things.
This is the fault of the Treasury - insane budget rules where we seem to look at today and don't worry about tomorrow. The GP issue is a perfect example - we can't afford to hire them full time, but we can afford emergency cover. Or transport - can't afford a bus but can afford emergency cover.
Do you get it yet? We cut because the Treasury says we must cut. But cuts to provision do not remove the need - which remains. And emergency provision must be done - from a separate budget - which costs more than the cut.
I keep saying we need to invest in this stuff and be told we have no money. We do - we're literally burning it. Will need a short transition where we both burn cash and invest cash, but then no more bonfires.
This post hits so hard. It seems like Westminster and Whitehall know it too, but won't do anything.
I am utterly fucking sick of this stupidity. Its as bad up here as well. Winter snot season - schools asking parents to send their kids in with tissues as the school is running out. Teachers joking about wanting classroom supplies for presents from their kids instead of sweeties. There's literally no money at the front line - but we have schools with heating stuck on full so that everyone melts and windows need to keep being opened (in the summer as well!) because budget rules don't allow repairs when the school is scheduled for replacement in 2019.
Bureaucrats drown in the micro whilst missing the macro and strategic. You can't the detail because the structure is wrong, but you can't spend money on the structure because you're spending too much money in emergency micro fixes.
House building. Everyone agrees we need to build more houses but we're building less. Why? Land banking by developers Arcane endless planning regulations Housing Associations starved of resources A comprehensive lack of builders sparkies joiners plumbers plasterers etc etc - oh and we'd have to import much of the materiel because we've stopped making them because lack of money. But we can't import as we left the EU and they cost more. And we don't like all these forrin workers taking jobs from the untrained unwilling flag shagging fucks.
FFS. Start at the strategic. OK, we need to build 1.5m houses the fuck yesterday. So we need to train the people who will build them. FE colleges here is cash. And a marketing campaign to make building cool We need to invest in a brickworks and other stuff - tax incentives to get manufacturing here We need to allow LHAs to borrow to build We need to bonfire the planning barriers We need to give the land bankers 6 months to start or lose the land All to build a flood of apartments and starter homes at a social rent as never for sale. Which allows a significant drop in % of wages wasted on rent which allows more money to circulate in the economy which means jobs and more taxes which pays back the investment in skills etc
Will get any of that? Will we bollocks.
Does anyone have any idea of the real cost to the country of the post-Grenfell building regulations ?
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
What utter twaddle. I have been consistent in my opposition to this proposal and have suggested both above and BTL ways to raise money.
The justice system is the first and most fundamental duty of the state. This is not about saving money or not having the money to spend. It is a power grab by an illiberal and authoritarian minded bunch of third rate politicians with little understanding of or appreciation for our history, our freedoms and the fundamentals of a truly liberal democracy.
Lawyer says the justice system is the first and most fundamental duty of the state! I bet we can find an army person to say that defence is the first and most fundamental duty of the state. One could argue from a study of history that keeping people fed is the first and most fundamental duty of the state. I work on pandemics sometimes, so I'm going to argue that protecting us from pandemics is the first and most fundamental duty of the state.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.
What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)
The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.
So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money. We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money. Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money. Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.
Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.
Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.
We have no money
Yet we are spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon. Billions on an armoured vehicle that literally makes the occupants chronically ill. We can’t find GPs, while we train GPs who can’t get jobs. We have no money to look after children with special needs, but councils are block booking taxis to send them to school - as opposed to a school bus.
It’s feast-or-famine mode spending. Often on insane things.
This is the fault of the Treasury - insane budget rules where we seem to look at today and don't worry about tomorrow. The GP issue is a perfect example - we can't afford to hire them full time, but we can afford emergency cover. Or transport - can't afford a bus but can afford emergency cover.
Do you get it yet? We cut because the Treasury says we must cut. But cuts to provision do not remove the need - which remains. And emergency provision must be done - from a separate budget - which costs more than the cut.
I keep saying we need to invest in this stuff and be told we have no money. We do - we're literally burning it. Will need a short transition where we both burn cash and invest cash, but then no more bonfires.
This post hits so hard. It seems like Westminster and Whitehall know it too, but won't do anything.
I am utterly fucking sick of this stupidity. Its as bad up here as well. Winter snot season - schools asking parents to send their kids in with tissues as the school is running out. Teachers joking about wanting classroom supplies for presents from their kids instead of sweeties. There's literally no money at the front line - but we have schools with heating stuck on full so that everyone melts and windows need to keep being opened (in the summer as well!) because budget rules don't allow repairs when the school is scheduled for replacement in 2019.
Bureaucrats drown in the micro whilst missing the macro and strategic. You can't the detail because the structure is wrong, but you can't spend money on the structure because you're spending too much money in emergency micro fixes.
House building. Everyone agrees we need to build more houses but we're building less. Why? Land banking by developers Arcane endless planning regulations Housing Associations starved of resources A comprehensive lack of builders sparkies joiners plumbers plasterers etc etc - oh and we'd have to import much of the materiel because we've stopped making them because lack of money. But we can't import as we left the EU and they cost more. And we don't like all these forrin workers taking jobs from the untrained unwilling flag shagging fucks.
FFS. Start at the strategic. OK, we need to build 1.5m houses the fuck yesterday. So we need to train the people who will build them. FE colleges here is cash. And a marketing campaign to make building cool We need to invest in a brickworks and other stuff - tax incentives to get manufacturing here We need to allow LHAs to borrow to build We need to bonfire the planning barriers We need to give the land bankers 6 months to start or lose the land All to build a flood of apartments and starter homes at a social rent as never for sale. Which allows a significant drop in % of wages wasted on rent which allows more money to circulate in the economy which means jobs and more taxes which pays back the investment in skills etc
Will get any of that? Will we bollocks.
Does anyone have any idea of the real cost to the country of the post-Grenfell building regulations ?
But if we don’t triple the cost of replacing windows, by needing plan application consultants, because the forms are so complex… how will the consultants eat?
Plus it will breach international law, human rights law, law of the sea, NATO, SEATO….
Do the planning consultants actually want this work?
It looks like tedious b*llocks that you charge silly money for because you don't really want to waste your life filling in stupid forms.
If someone is desperate enough to pay you £1k+/day for it then you might reluctantly get out of bed.
Planning Consultant - “Hmmm… this is boring shit. But I’ve paid off the mortgage. 2 days a week plus early retirement means endless holidays.”
Lawyering, AI and rainbow flags in a couple of tweets. Presumably the poor soul was frightened by a bumless leather chaps wearing Pride marcher at an early age.
That is a case brought in Scotland in re a bank branch in Herne Bay, too ... and, just for topicality as PW notes, using AI in the submission with the usual consequences.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.
What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)
The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.
So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money. We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money. Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money. Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.
Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.
Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.
We have no money
Yet we are spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon. Billions on an armoured vehicle that literally makes the occupants chronically ill. We can’t find GPs, while we train GPs who can’t get jobs. We have no money to look after children with special needs, but councils are block booking taxis to send them to school - as opposed to a school bus.
It’s feast-or-famine mode spending. Often on insane things.
This is the fault of the Treasury - insane budget rules where we seem to look at today and don't worry about tomorrow. The GP issue is a perfect example - we can't afford to hire them full time, but we can afford emergency cover. Or transport - can't afford a bus but can afford emergency cover.
Do you get it yet? We cut because the Treasury says we must cut. But cuts to provision do not remove the need - which remains. And emergency provision must be done - from a separate budget - which costs more than the cut.
I keep saying we need to invest in this stuff and be told we have no money. We do - we're literally burning it. Will need a short transition where we both burn cash and invest cash, but then no more bonfires.
This post hits so hard. It seems like Westminster and Whitehall know it too, but won't do anything.
I am utterly fucking sick of this stupidity. Its as bad up here as well. Winter snot season - schools asking parents to send their kids in with tissues as the school is running out. Teachers joking about wanting classroom supplies for presents from their kids instead of sweeties. There's literally no money at the front line - but we have schools with heating stuck on full so that everyone melts and windows need to keep being opened (in the summer as well!) because budget rules don't allow repairs when the school is scheduled for replacement in 2019.
Bureaucrats drown in the micro whilst missing the macro and strategic. You can't the detail because the structure is wrong, but you can't spend money on the structure because you're spending too much money in emergency micro fixes.
House building. Everyone agrees we need to build more houses but we're building less. Why? Land banking by developers Arcane endless planning regulations Housing Associations starved of resources A comprehensive lack of builders sparkies joiners plumbers plasterers etc etc - oh and we'd have to import much of the materiel because we've stopped making them because lack of money. But we can't import as we left the EU and they cost more. And we don't like all these forrin workers taking jobs from the untrained unwilling flag shagging fucks.
FFS. Start at the strategic. OK, we need to build 1.5m houses the fuck yesterday. So we need to train the people who will build them. FE colleges here is cash. And a marketing campaign to make building cool We need to invest in a brickworks and other stuff - tax incentives to get manufacturing here We need to allow LHAs to borrow to build We need to bonfire the planning barriers We need to give the land bankers 6 months to start or lose the land All to build a flood of apartments and starter homes at a social rent as never for sale. Which allows a significant drop in % of wages wasted on rent which allows more money to circulate in the economy which means jobs and more taxes which pays back the investment in skills etc
Will get any of that? Will we bollocks.
Does anyone have any idea of the real cost to the country of the post-Grenfell building regulations ?
Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure.
You may not like it, that's fair enough, but it's a clear, objective, and widely used measure. Hardly something to criticise BBC Verify for.
Out of interest what would you propose as the measure of poverty? Does a child need to be starving, in rags, no shoes?
When we interrogate our idea of poverty it is always a relative concept at its core, because poverty is ultimately about being excluded from the normal patterns of consumption and participation in our current society. In my view it is so-called 'absolute' poverty measures that are bullshit.
Not being able to 'keep up with the Joneses' in a neighbourhood pissing contest doesn't make someone poor. It makes them unable to afford an unnecessary and 'fashionable' splurging of cash you don't have on things you don't need. And the idea that should be subsidised by the taxpayer is just another tier in the cake of relative poverty bullshit.
Edited: as an aside, I'll be AFK for the Budget, which is a shame but needs must.
It's not about keeping up with Jones's. The point is that what we might consider an absolute poverty line now would be very different to the absolute poverty line 50 years ago, because we have different expectations about what constitutes a minimum standard of living, and these expectations are related to what we consider a normal standard of living. This is why I find the idea of some kind of objective and immutable poverty line fundamentally dishonest.
As always it depends on what is done with the concept. Relative and absolute poverty are clearly different ideas. Relative poverty has the property of being more or less by definition ineradicable. Absolute poverty has the property of being a quantity of immiseration which is unacceptable when encountered, especially in children.
Damage is done by leftists who elide relative poverty into something self evidently bad, when it is not self evident. Rightists do harm by insisting the real measure should be more like absolute poverty, which we should not contemplate for anyone. Imprecision and ambiguity is the permanent friend of lobbyists.
If you define relative poverty as some fraction of median income then it needn't be ineradicable as long as the fraction is not too close to 1. This doesn't mean that we should necessarily seek to eradicate it - like any policy we should consider the balance of costs and benefits. Most likely the poor will always be with us. Personally I just think that people who advocate for 'absolute' poverty measures just haven't thought very deeply about what poverty really is or how we define it.
I think that defining poverty as a % of median income is pretty meaningless.
But, I would agree that definitions of poverty can and should rise over time. Subsistence is $3 per day, per person, but in a rich world country, you would want to define poverty well above that figure.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.
What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)
The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.
So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money. We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money. Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money. Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.
Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.
Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.
We have no money
Yet we are spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon. Billions on an armoured vehicle that literally makes the occupants chronically ill. We can’t find GPs, while we train GPs who can’t get jobs. We have no money to look after children with special needs, but councils are block booking taxis to send them to school - as opposed to a school bus.
It’s feast-or-famine mode spending. Often on insane things.
This is the fault of the Treasury - insane budget rules where we seem to look at today and don't worry about tomorrow. The GP issue is a perfect example - we can't afford to hire them full time, but we can afford emergency cover. Or transport - can't afford a bus but can afford emergency cover.
Do you get it yet? We cut because the Treasury says we must cut. But cuts to provision do not remove the need - which remains. And emergency provision must be done - from a separate budget - which costs more than the cut.
I keep saying we need to invest in this stuff and be told we have no money. We do - we're literally burning it. Will need a short transition where we both burn cash and invest cash, but then no more bonfires.
This post hits so hard. It seems like Westminster and Whitehall know it too, but won't do anything.
I am utterly fucking sick of this stupidity. Its as bad up here as well. Winter snot season - schools asking parents to send their kids in with tissues as the school is running out. Teachers joking about wanting classroom supplies for presents from their kids instead of sweeties. There's literally no money at the front line - but we have schools with heating stuck on full so that everyone melts and windows need to keep being opened (in the summer as well!) because budget rules don't allow repairs when the school is scheduled for replacement in 2019.
Bureaucrats drown in the micro whilst missing the macro and strategic. You can't the detail because the structure is wrong, but you can't spend money on the structure because you're spending too much money in emergency micro fixes.
House building. Everyone agrees we need to build more houses but we're building less. Why? Land banking by developers Arcane endless planning regulations Housing Associations starved of resources A comprehensive lack of builders sparkies joiners plumbers plasterers etc etc - oh and we'd have to import much of the materiel because we've stopped making them because lack of money. But we can't import as we left the EU and they cost more. And we don't like all these forrin workers taking jobs from the untrained unwilling flag shagging fucks.
FFS. Start at the strategic. OK, we need to build 1.5m houses the fuck yesterday. So we need to train the people who will build them. FE colleges here is cash. And a marketing campaign to make building cool We need to invest in a brickworks and other stuff - tax incentives to get manufacturing here We need to allow LHAs to borrow to build We need to bonfire the planning barriers We need to give the land bankers 6 months to start or lose the land All to build a flood of apartments and starter homes at a social rent as never for sale. Which allows a significant drop in % of wages wasted on rent which allows more money to circulate in the economy which means jobs and more taxes which pays back the investment in skills etc
Will get any of that? Will we bollocks.
Does anyone have any idea of the real cost to the country of the post-Grenfell building regulations ?
How did that get through the Commons, and why isn't Parliament fixing it?
"Something must be done", post Grenfell, and it was something.
It has greatly increased the building costs for everyone, and in many cases made little or no difference to actual building safety. A classic example of unnecessarily prescriptive rules-based regulation.
They are already doing a post-mortem on the budget that hasn't even happened yet. This from the 10AM news
"The Chancellor will drag a million more people into tax by raising the tax threshold though she herself criticised this in 2023..."
Freezing the basic rate threshold further beyond 2028 will be politically damaging to Reeves, the more so as she explicitly said in November 2024 that she would not do that and is also on record as you point out for criticising the current freeze previously. And that makes me wonder if it is really her intention to do so. Having ensured by either design or accident that all the attention is back on income tax thresholds, an unexpected decision to not extend the Conservatives' freeze on the basic rate tax threshold and to continue to apply the freeze only to the higher rate rate tax thresholds would I think be politically astute and (barring some other unexpected big nasties) allow the budget to be framed with justification as one protecting living standards of working people on average incomes while limiting the pain to those on higher incomes. There are votes to be gained from that, especially from those whose support Labour has lost since 2024.
That's not a prediction, because Reeves and Starmer have been so politically inept over the past 16 months that they may not appreciate both the danger and the opportunity. If they continue in that vein they really do deserve the boot from Labour MPs.
OK, but where’s the money coming from in that case?
She needs to raise much more, and only freezing the higher rate threshold won’t get her there.
She’s being forced into freezing the thresholds as a necessity because she shied away from increasing the rates. There’s no other fiscal lever other than VAT (which she won’t touch, for the same reason) which is open to her to get the money in she wants.
Two points in response.
The initial cost to the Exchequer isn't as great as is being touted once you get past the rather silly convention of counting costs cumulatively over a period of several years. What we're talking about here is the extra cost of not extending the basic rate freeze only beyond 2028, presumably on the basis of inflation rates far lower than now. So in the first year that's a difference in the basic rate threshold of something in the ball park of £300, on which £60 tax would be paid at 20%. So with 37 million or so basic rate taxpayers the first year annual cost would be £2.2 billion. 2nd year annual cost £4.4.billion, 3rd year annual cost £6.6 billion. Reeves will not need to look much beyond that by the time of the next general election. So the cost isn't crippling to the Exchequer.
There are plenty of other levers capable of raising £6bn or so annually by 2031. I'd start by looking at the scope of higher rate tax relief on pension contributions and/or CGT loopholes and rates. Not something to stir the loins of the average voter yet capable of raising far more over several years than the sums raised from a not-so-stealthy freeze of basic rate income tax thresholds.
I am going out to lunch at a pub overlooking the estuary, while I still have the money to afford it.
The existence of jury trials is NOT the reason for court delays. The reasons are:
1. Reducing court sitting days even though the Lady Chief Justice has said judges can sit for more days so there is no lack of availability. 2. Closure and selling of courts. 3. A lack of sufficient funding for the justice system at every level.
1 and 2 are easily remediable. You do not abolish an 800 year old fundamental principle because of a lack of short-term funding. Unless you're an illiberal cretin, that is.
This is a power grab by the state of one of the few areas in British life which really is democratic, generally - though not invariably - works well and, crucially, is not controlled by the state and cannot be pressured by it. And can tell the state to get stuffed when it overreaches eg Ponting, the Colston Four. That is why authoritarians hate it and want to get rid of it. It must be resisted by all possible means.
This proposal shows how much contempt Labour has for us and our liberties.
Was Colston overreach? Not everyone agrees that its ok to vandalise things you don't like. I'd have preferred them found guilty but with a minimum penalty. I.e. they did the crime, but we understand and sympathise with why.
Indeed see also the Labour councillor who was acquitted of hate speech. I support juries overall but when they render not guilty verdicts for political reasons rather than on the law the case for judge led verdicts in middle ranked offences grows. The escort rider who killed an elderly lady crossing the road at speed escorting the Duchess of Edinburgh might also have been convicted of death by careless driving by a judge which a jury acquitted him of
Driving offences is an area where trial by jury is failing the victims, pick any 12 random people and there's probably 2 or 3 who think it's normal to text and speed.
If the public at large think that people should be able to text and speed and that this is just an inherent risk of life, then that’s the jury system working as intended.
Yes, in a democracy, you can't impose a law that the population (or a significantly large minority of the population) is opposed to. You have to change minds. The jury system is one of those backstops that prevents authoritarianism by requiring consent from the population for criminal law.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.
What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)
The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.
So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money. We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money. Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money. Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.
Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.
Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.
We have no money
Yet we are spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon. Billions on an armoured vehicle that literally makes the occupants chronically ill. We can’t find GPs, while we train GPs who can’t get jobs. We have no money to look after children with special needs, but councils are block booking taxis to send them to school - as opposed to a school bus.
It’s feast-or-famine mode spending. Often on insane things.
This is the fault of the Treasury - insane budget rules where we seem to look at today and don't worry about tomorrow. The GP issue is a perfect example - we can't afford to hire them full time, but we can afford emergency cover. Or transport - can't afford a bus but can afford emergency cover.
Do you get it yet? We cut because the Treasury says we must cut. But cuts to provision do not remove the need - which remains. And emergency provision must be done - from a separate budget - which costs more than the cut.
I keep saying we need to invest in this stuff and be told we have no money. We do - we're literally burning it. Will need a short transition where we both burn cash and invest cash, but then no more bonfires.
This post hits so hard. It seems like Westminster and Whitehall know it too, but won't do anything.
I am utterly fucking sick of this stupidity. Its as bad up here as well. Winter snot season - schools asking parents to send their kids in with tissues as the school is running out. Teachers joking about wanting classroom supplies for presents from their kids instead of sweeties. There's literally no money at the front line - but we have schools with heating stuck on full so that everyone melts and windows need to keep being opened (in the summer as well!) because budget rules don't allow repairs when the school is scheduled for replacement in 2019.
Bureaucrats drown in the micro whilst missing the macro and strategic. You can't the detail because the structure is wrong, but you can't spend money on the structure because you're spending too much money in emergency micro fixes.
House building. Everyone agrees we need to build more houses but we're building less. Why? Land banking by developers Arcane endless planning regulations Housing Associations starved of resources A comprehensive lack of builders sparkies joiners plumbers plasterers etc etc - oh and we'd have to import much of the materiel because we've stopped making them because lack of money. But we can't import as we left the EU and they cost more. And we don't like all these forrin workers taking jobs from the untrained unwilling flag shagging fucks.
FFS. Start at the strategic. OK, we need to build 1.5m houses the fuck yesterday. So we need to train the people who will build them. FE colleges here is cash. And a marketing campaign to make building cool We need to invest in a brickworks and other stuff - tax incentives to get manufacturing here We need to allow LHAs to borrow to build We need to bonfire the planning barriers We need to give the land bankers 6 months to start or lose the land All to build a flood of apartments and starter homes at a social rent as never for sale. Which allows a significant drop in % of wages wasted on rent which allows more money to circulate in the economy which means jobs and more taxes which pays back the investment in skills etc
Will get any of that? Will we bollocks.
Does anyone have any idea of the real cost to the country of the post-Grenfell building regulations ?
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.
What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)
The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.
So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money. We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money. Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money. Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.
Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.
Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.
We have no money
Yet we are spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon. Billions on an armoured vehicle that literally makes the occupants chronically ill. We can’t find GPs, while we train GPs who can’t get jobs. We have no money to look after children with special needs, but councils are block booking taxis to send them to school - as opposed to a school bus.
It’s feast-or-famine mode spending. Often on insane things.
I had multiple encounters with primary care services yesterday, going with a friend and then needing to go myself. Not perfect, but I thought pretty good service all round!
Anyway, I wanted to argue with your claim that "We have no money". We do have money. We could readily afford to pay 2p more in income tax. Whether that is a good policy and whether the government would spend the increased revenue responsibly is, of course, a matter of much debate. But it's possible. The nation isn't broke. It's not 1946.
Lawyering, AI and rainbow flags in a couple of tweets. Presumably the poor soul was frightened by a bumless leather chaps wearing Pride marcher at an early age.
Ironically the use of AI like this is increasing, not decreasing, work for lawyers. I'm seeing more and more persuasive sounding but ultimately bollocks submissions from litigants in person.
It makes sense though. Sheffield can't sustain two clubs other than bouncing around the Championship/Division 1. A single team might keep in the Premiership.
The same should apply to Liverpool.
And Manchester.
What about Nottingham Forest and Notts County? There's only the River Trent between them. They could fill it in and merge the two grounds.
Might as well be the Gulf between us, such is the gulf....
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.
What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)
The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.
So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money. We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money. Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money. Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.
Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.
Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.
We have no money
Yet we are spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon. Billions on an armoured vehicle that literally makes the occupants chronically ill. We can’t find GPs, while we train GPs who can’t get jobs. We have no money to look after children with special needs, but councils are block booking taxis to send them to school - as opposed to a school bus.
It’s feast-or-famine mode spending. Often on insane things.
This is the fault of the Treasury - insane budget rules where we seem to look at today and don't worry about tomorrow. The GP issue is a perfect example - we can't afford to hire them full time, but we can afford emergency cover. Or transport - can't afford a bus but can afford emergency cover.
Do you get it yet? We cut because the Treasury says we must cut. But cuts to provision do not remove the need - which remains. And emergency provision must be done - from a separate budget - which costs more than the cut.
I keep saying we need to invest in this stuff and be told we have no money. We do - we're literally burning it. Will need a short transition where we both burn cash and invest cash, but then no more bonfires.
This post hits so hard. It seems like Westminster and Whitehall know it too, but won't do anything.
I am utterly fucking sick of this stupidity. Its as bad up here as well. Winter snot season - schools asking parents to send their kids in with tissues as the school is running out. Teachers joking about wanting classroom supplies for presents from their kids instead of sweeties. There's literally no money at the front line - but we have schools with heating stuck on full so that everyone melts and windows need to keep being opened (in the summer as well!) because budget rules don't allow repairs when the school is scheduled for replacement in 2019.
Bureaucrats drown in the micro whilst missing the macro and strategic. You can't the detail because the structure is wrong, but you can't spend money on the structure because you're spending too much money in emergency micro fixes.
House building. Everyone agrees we need to build more houses but we're building less. Why? Land banking by developers Arcane endless planning regulations Housing Associations starved of resources A comprehensive lack of builders sparkies joiners plumbers plasterers etc etc - oh and we'd have to import much of the materiel because we've stopped making them because lack of money. But we can't import as we left the EU and they cost more. And we don't like all these forrin workers taking jobs from the untrained unwilling flag shagging fucks.
FFS. Start at the strategic. OK, we need to build 1.5m houses the fuck yesterday. So we need to train the people who will build them. FE colleges here is cash. And a marketing campaign to make building cool We need to invest in a brickworks and other stuff - tax incentives to get manufacturing here We need to allow LHAs to borrow to build We need to bonfire the planning barriers We need to give the land bankers 6 months to start or lose the land All to build a flood of apartments and starter homes at a social rent as never for sale. Which allows a significant drop in % of wages wasted on rent which allows more money to circulate in the economy which means jobs and more taxes which pays back the investment in skills etc
Will get any of that? Will we bollocks.
Does anyone have any idea of the real cost to the country of the post-Grenfell building regulations ?
"The cost of replacing two-windows in Westminster in 2025
Add it all together and the cost of replacing two rotten windows with new double-glazed windows is £15,816.
That’s £5,000 for the windows themselves and just over £10,000 spent on persuading the state to let him put them in."
Of course he could simply have ignored the while lot and replaced the windows anyway - but if it then came to someone's notice, that might have proved even more expensive.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.
What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)
The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.
So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money. We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money. Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money. Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.
Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.
Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.
We have no money
Yet we are spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon. Billions on an armoured vehicle that literally makes the occupants chronically ill. We can’t find GPs, while we train GPs who can’t get jobs. We have no money to look after children with special needs, but councils are block booking taxis to send them to school - as opposed to a school bus.
It’s feast-or-famine mode spending. Often on insane things.
This is the fault of the Treasury - insane budget rules where we seem to look at today and don't worry about tomorrow. The GP issue is a perfect example - we can't afford to hire them full time, but we can afford emergency cover. Or transport - can't afford a bus but can afford emergency cover.
Do you get it yet? We cut because the Treasury says we must cut. But cuts to provision do not remove the need - which remains. And emergency provision must be done - from a separate budget - which costs more than the cut.
I keep saying we need to invest in this stuff and be told we have no money. We do - we're literally burning it. Will need a short transition where we both burn cash and invest cash, but then no more bonfires.
This post hits so hard. It seems like Westminster and Whitehall know it too, but won't do anything.
I am utterly fucking sick of this stupidity. Its as bad up here as well. Winter snot season - schools asking parents to send their kids in with tissues as the school is running out. Teachers joking about wanting classroom supplies for presents from their kids instead of sweeties. There's literally no money at the front line - but we have schools with heating stuck on full so that everyone melts and windows need to keep being opened (in the summer as well!) because budget rules don't allow repairs when the school is scheduled for replacement in 2019.
Bureaucrats drown in the micro whilst missing the macro and strategic. You can't the detail because the structure is wrong, but you can't spend money on the structure because you're spending too much money in emergency micro fixes.
House building. Everyone agrees we need to build more houses but we're building less. Why? Land banking by developers Arcane endless planning regulations Housing Associations starved of resources A comprehensive lack of builders sparkies joiners plumbers plasterers etc etc - oh and we'd have to import much of the materiel because we've stopped making them because lack of money. But we can't import as we left the EU and they cost more. And we don't like all these forrin workers taking jobs from the untrained unwilling flag shagging fucks.
FFS. Start at the strategic. OK, we need to build 1.5m houses the fuck yesterday. So we need to train the people who will build them. FE colleges here is cash. And a marketing campaign to make building cool We need to invest in a brickworks and other stuff - tax incentives to get manufacturing here We need to allow LHAs to borrow to build We need to bonfire the planning barriers We need to give the land bankers 6 months to start or lose the land All to build a flood of apartments and starter homes at a social rent as never for sale. Which allows a significant drop in % of wages wasted on rent which allows more money to circulate in the economy which means jobs and more taxes which pays back the investment in skills etc
Will get any of that? Will we bollocks.
Does anyone have any idea of the real cost to the country of the post-Grenfell building regulations ?
But if we don’t triple the cost of replacing windows, by needing plan application consultants, because the forms are so complex… how will the consultants eat?
Plus it will breach international law, human rights law, law of the sea, NATO, SEATO….
None of the individual steps are necessarily that objectionable, but the implementation is shockingly poor, and there seems to be no oversight to see whether the system is working as intended or needs to be amended.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
What utter twaddle. I have been consistent in my opposition to this proposal and have suggested both above and BTL ways to raise money.
The justice system is the first and most fundamental duty of the state. This is not about saving money or not having the money to spend. It is a power grab by an illiberal and authoritarian minded bunch of third rate politicians with little understanding of or appreciation for our history, our freedoms and the fundamentals of a truly liberal democracy.
Lawyer says the justice system is the first and most fundamental duty of the state! I bet we can find an army person to say that defence is the first and most fundamental duty of the state. One could argue from a study of history that keeping people fed is the first and most fundamental duty of the state. I work on pandemics sometimes, so I'm going to argue that protecting us from pandemics is the first and most fundamental duty of the state.
Historically, most governments took the view that if the peasants suffered in famines, well, the population would always bounce back (although, they made an effort to keep people fed in the capital). But, internal and external security was always a priority.
Comments
Cutting costs structurally benefits the next incumbent - either your political rival or an opponent.
Mostly - Thatcher and Blair did.
An absolute measure is fairer.
Bureaucrats drown in the micro whilst missing the macro and strategic. You can't the detail because the structure is wrong, but you can't spend money on the structure because you're spending too much money in emergency micro fixes.
House building. Everyone agrees we need to build more houses but we're building less. Why?
Land banking by developers
Arcane endless planning regulations
Housing Associations starved of resources
A comprehensive lack of builders sparkies joiners plumbers plasterers etc etc - oh and we'd have to import much of the materiel because we've stopped making them because lack of money.
But we can't import as we left the EU and they cost more. And we don't like all these forrin workers taking jobs from the untrained unwilling flag shagging fucks.
FFS. Start at the strategic. OK, we need to build 1.5m houses the fuck yesterday.
So we need to train the people who will build them. FE colleges here is cash. And a marketing campaign to make building cool
We need to invest in a brickworks and other stuff - tax incentives to get manufacturing here
We need to allow LHAs to borrow to build
We need to bonfire the planning barriers
We need to give the land bankers 6 months to start or lose the land
All to build a flood of apartments and starter homes at a social rent as never for sale. Which allows a significant drop in % of wages wasted on rent which allows more money to circulate in the economy which means jobs and more taxes which pays back the investment in skills etc
Will get any of that? Will we bollocks.
https://x.com/richardburgon/status/1993622970003288468
If you want to do that use a random island in the Pacific
Edited: as an aside, I'll be AFK for the Budget, which is a shame but needs must.
On second thought, better not give them any ideas...
Edited: On Jones: you said earlier "...because poverty is ultimately about being excluded from the normal patterns of consumption and participation in our current society....."
She needs to raise much more, and only freezing the higher rate threshold won’t get her there.
She’s being forced into freezing the thresholds as a necessity because she shied away from increasing the rates. There’s no other fiscal lever other than VAT (which she won’t touch, for the same reason) which is open to her to get the money in she wants.
Absolute poverty is not having a roof over your head, not having enough food and not having enough to drink and not having enough clothing, especially to keep you warm in winter
But how about sharing us what your definition of poverty would be?
@Morris_Dancer's was rather generous imo, including as it did "a small amount left over for minor luxuries (meals out, cinema etc) and modest saving". Try doing that on £80 per week, even if your full rent is separately covered (for most it isn't).
You are using it in the sense of extreme which is not where this discussion started.
It held my interest for the whole time.
Sandra Dickinson in it too, my god, I know we all age but I would never have knew it was her until the titles rolled.
We ended up having a nice meal after at the Rabbit Hole in Durham.
My point is that 'relative poverty' is not a 'bullshit measure', it's just one that MD doesn't like. No reason to criticise BBC Verify for using it.
Damage is done by leftists who elide relative poverty into something self evidently bad, when it is not self evident. Rightists do harm by insisting the real measure should be more like absolute poverty, which we should not contemplate for anyone. Imprecision and ambiguity is the permanent friend of lobbyists.
A good part of the problem (at least from a technical point of view) is that the driver (or otherwise) of poverty is housing cost. My children may well be technically below the "child poverty" line based on income, but as we own our house mortgage free, and don't have tastes in things like cars, in reality we can live like kings.
A minor example:
How much does it cost to replace two rotting windows in Britain in 2025?
More than you might think
https://www.samdumitriu.com/p/how-much-does-it-cost-to-replace
https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/family-hearing-abandoned-over-fathers-death-threats-to-barrister/5125225.article
I remember a lecturer at a (compulsory) criminal law class at law school asking those who were going on to practice it to put there hands up. No one did. That was in 1997/98. The number of criminal lawyers must therefore be a negative now.
(Even though I think we should!)
Of course the absolute poverty line has to be changed, as the normal standard of living changes... in other words it becomes a relative measure.
I don’t have a definition and am not overly invested in one, just think ‘relative’ poverty makes no sense although I will take lectures on poverty from someone building a massive house with a load of. land in Dorset.😉
Glad he’s not with the angels.
👍
Plus it will breach international law, human rights law, law of the sea, NATO, SEATO….
The proportion of children living in absolute poverty has increased in recent years in part because of the two child cap. That measure doesn't take into account rising prosperity in society.
I once prepared a pitch at a trainee interview in the City saying how excited I was that the firm in question was going to be one of the first to open an office in Delhi as I'd spent my gap year there and loved it only to be told in the first 30 seconds that the Indian Bar had announced earlier that week that they were not going to allow foreign firms to practice there after all. I didn't get the job.
Personally I just think that people who advocate for 'absolute' poverty measures just haven't thought very deeply about what poverty really is or how we define it.
Out front of the commercial part of the building is an iron fence which is literally rusted away in a few places. Really needs replacing, but the planning officer refused to consider a non-LFL alternative. Despite this fence not being original or actually part of the listing.
So the plan is to literally let it rust away to nothing. I will keep repairing and repainting it. Until part of it breaks off then I'll be allowed to remove it because dangerous.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/692080f75c394e481336ab89/nuclear-regulatory-review-2025.pdf
Some of the issues:
This is a systemic problem that cannot be attributed to any single entity. The issues span regulators,
government, and industry, creating a cycle of inefficiency, delay, and excessive cost. This is deeply
rooted and embedded in the sector’s culture. Interconnected failures feed on each other, acting as
bottlenecks that prevent the effective delivery of critical nuclear projects.
The five primary regulatory problems are as follows:
1) Fragmented Oversight: A single project faces multiple regulators, sometimes as
many as six on a single defence project, with no single designated lead. This results in
misalignment, inconsistency, and delay.
2) Disproportionate Decisions: Regulators frequently make overly conservative and
costly decisions that are not proportionate to the actual risk being managed.
3) Flawed Legislation: Underlying laws and regulations prioritise process over outcomes,
leading to time-consuming delays and suboptimal decisions.
4) Government Indecision: Government departments are often slow and indecisive in
their roles as policymakers and regulators, failing to provide clear direction.
5) Weak Industry Incentives: The near-monopolistic status of much of the industry
provides weak financial incentives to reduce costs or challenge disproportionate
regulatory decisions...
A recommended approach to reform:
Simpler regulation can deliver safety at lower cost;
Regulatory processes should not trump outcomes;
A regulatory system must acknowledge trade-offs;
...etc
There is a huge about in the report specific to the nuclear industry, but it is not hard to imagine a similar approach being taken towards housebuilding and general infrastructure construction.
A recommended read for those with the time to do so.
The idea that the report be litigated on the basis of breach of human rights, as has been suggested, rather than implemented in full with the greatest possible dispatch, seems completely nuts to me, and is a perfect example of the mindset which makes getting anything done in this country at least twice as expensive as it needs to be.
‘ Sheffield United’s American owners made an enquiry in the sale of rivals Sheffield Wednesday
It’s believed they wanted to explore a merger between the two clubs ⚔️🇺🇸🦉
Sickening stuff🤢🤮’
https://x.com/the_forty_four/status/1993436096848707966?s=61
It's a bit academic - other measures like absolute or material deprivation, SIMD etc have significant overlap with relative poverty, so it works reasonably well as a measure. And absolute poverty is a construction anyway - it's based on relative poverty in 2010/11.
https://x.com/peatworrier/status/1993329754791899420?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
https://x.com/peatworrier/status/1993332238650577213?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
Having cleverly adopted the guise of tribunes of the people.
It looks like tedious b*llocks that you charge silly money for because you don't really want to waste your life filling in stupid forms.
If someone is desperate enough to pay you £1k+/day for it then you might reluctantly get out of bed.
The same should apply to Liverpool.
And Manchester.
As for your example: I paid in a cheque at my bank's local branch the other day. Got asked twice by staff if I really needed to see the cashier etc. before I got to the desk and had my receipt. The online banking has no provision for cheques, and I don't want a mobile app as well, it's hard enough keeping mental track as it is. Lucky to have a branch within walking distance ...)
But, I would agree that definitions of poverty can and should rise over time. Subsistence is $3 per day, per person, but in a rich world country, you would want to define poverty well above that figure.
People just get stuck, without anyone offering a solution.
The unfortunate chap here is living in a building slightly over 18m tall, which means special regulations apply, even to changing your window.
...the story doesn’t end there. Chris lives in what is known as a ‘Higher Risk Building’. This was a category created by the Building Safety Act and includes all buildings 18m or higher. The block of flats Chris lives in is slightly taller than 18m so any major works in his building need special approval.
In theory, this should be easy. The system was meant to outsource approvals for things like window replacements to a ‘Competent Persons Schemes’. In other words, have your window installed by a regulated professional and they can sign-off on building control. Easy peasy.
The problem is Chris asked every single scheme qualified to sign-off the works (there are three) and they all told him the same thing: they won’t sign off any work on a higher risk building. It is not clear why or if the Government engaged with the schemes...
I think I'll go out for a walk in the sun instead.
I will face the Fiscal Drag Queen's mutterings later.
Judgement: https://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/media/ygvbuemr/2025sacciv41-mark-jennings-v-natwest-group-plc.pdf
It has greatly increased the building costs for everyone, and in many cases made little or no difference to actual building safety.
A classic example of unnecessarily prescriptive rules-based regulation.
The initial cost to the Exchequer isn't as great as is being touted once you get past the rather silly convention of counting costs cumulatively over a period of several years. What we're talking about here is the extra cost of not extending the basic rate freeze only beyond 2028, presumably on the basis of inflation rates far lower than now. So in the first year that's a difference in the basic rate threshold of something in the ball park of £300, on which £60 tax would be paid at 20%. So with 37 million or so basic rate taxpayers the first year annual cost would be £2.2 billion. 2nd year annual cost £4.4.billion, 3rd year annual cost £6.6 billion. Reeves will not need to look much beyond that by the time of the next general election. So the cost isn't crippling to the Exchequer.
There are plenty of other levers capable of raising £6bn or so annually by 2031. I'd start by looking at the scope of higher rate tax relief on pension contributions and/or CGT loopholes and rates. Not something to stir the loins of the average voter yet capable of raising far more over several years than the sums raised from a not-so-stealthy freeze of basic rate income tax thresholds.
Add it all together and the cost of replacing two rotten windows with new double-glazed windows is £15,816.
That’s £5,000 for the windows themselves and just over £10,000 spent on persuading the state to let him put them in."
Anyway, I wanted to argue with your claim that "We have no money". We do have money. We could readily afford to pay 2p more in income tax. Whether that is a good policy and whether the government would spend the increased revenue responsibly is, of course, a matter of much debate. But it's possible. The nation isn't broke. It's not 1946.
Sky extraordinary move and never happened before
Markets are responding accordingly
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cy8vz032qgpt#player
Shocking leak apparently