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.
Glasgow too when it comes to succeeding in Europe.
Rivers of blood might be the most optimistic scenario if you proposed a merger between those two clubs.
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.
That is not "just a little short of the highest in Europe". It's 57% in France, with other European countries above 44% including Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Spain, Croatia, Italy, Luxembourg, Hungary, Austria, Poland, Finland, Iceland, Sweden, Norway and Slovenia/-akia.
So not Ireland, Switzerland, Iceland, the Czech Republic, Portugal etc who spend less than the UK as does Canada, Australia and the USA and New Zealand, Singapore etc. France spends more than all of them and has a massive deficit its governments seem incapable of getting to grips with, the left wanting no spending cuts at all just yet higher taxes on the rich
We're not the lowest in Europe either, no.
There's also the difficulty with making figures comparable. The Swiss figure is low, but I think that's because it excludes healthcare. Switzerland has a system of mandatory healthcare insurance, so that counts as not being government expenditure, and yet it's mandatory for everyone and legislated for, so it kinda works the same as countries where it is counted as being government expenditure. You are required by law to pay a fee to a cross-subsidised system, rather than being required by law to pay a tax to a cross-subsidised system.
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?
Anyone who thinks welfare in the UK is linked to relative measures of prosperity has little idea of how a large part of society lives. Only pensioners get that consideration. Welfare is issued on the necessary minimum - maybe that's all a safety net should provide. But it means if you cut below that minimum for essentially ideological reasons as with the two child cap, you are creating new and genuine hardship.
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 has probably always happened. Citing examples of "waste" is only one side of the argument. A lot of people have their lives helped if not enhanced by what Government and its agencies do and to simply and perpetually highlight the faults misses the point.
When I was in local Government, there was this paradox of apparent waste (though tens of thousands against a total budget of more than a £1 billion isn't that significant) but you knew what the council was providing in terms of libraries, youth centres and social care and the people providing it was making a difference to people's lives.
The problem is the pattern - we have lost control of public spending. Which results in starving spending on needed things.
Spend £700 million on court infrastructure and staff, say. Rather than saving a shop windows worth of salmon. Think how many clerks you could hire to prepare juries for the courts.
Merge NI & IT to reduce the admin overhead.
Buy the “world beating” ACV that actually exists - CV-90. Aside from it actually working, costing a fraction of what Ajax does, it will reduce the burden on the NHS.
Train U.K. medics overseas. Using the overseas aid budget - it will be supporting developing world health systems, after all. Then we have more medics - so less agency staff on the NHS (cheaper), less stress on the existing NHS staff (retainment), more U.K. citizens with qualifications for jobs which are in high demand…
This is about running procurement and government intelligently. Cost control and productivity - both are not being done.
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.
Mostly - Thatcher and Blair did.
They prefer 'bear traps' like the NI reduction and the Boris Wave. The BW is going to cost a huge wedge when the Wave hits the ILR and Citizenship triggers.
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?
1) piece by piece. A regulation here, a law there 2) because laws and regulations are only added to. 3) because they cost nothing (to the politicians) and mean They Are Doing Something. 4) so they can tell all the special interest groups that They Have Done Something.
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."
The introduction of the BSR has been a total shitshow.
I suspect there’s no way they’d approve PVC windows in a high rise building due to the fire risk, but there ought to be a blanket tick-box approval for replacement windows made of non-combustible material.
Indeed, the BSR apparently thinks that there /is/ a tick-box approval for replacement metal framed double-glazing, but they have neglected to tell the organisations that could issue this tick-box approval (FENSA etc) this & everybody involved is just sitting on their hands instead of doing anything at all to fix the problem.
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.
The system fails badly.
It has no real oversight or review (otherwise government would long since have looking at how to reform it). It is not proportionate what is needed to achieve its aims (building safety) at a reasonable cost. It is not timely: even the best managed schemes face significant delays on getting anything signed off. It is overly complex, and inflexible.
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 has probably always happened. Citing examples of "waste" is only one side of the argument. A lot of people have their lives helped if not enhanced by what Government and its agencies do and to simply and perpetually highlight the faults misses the point.
When I was in local Government, there was this paradox of apparent waste (though tens of thousands against a total budget of more than a £1 billion isn't that significant) but you knew what the council was providing in terms of libraries, youth centres and social care and the people providing it was making a difference to people's lives.
The problem is the pattern - we have lost control of public spending. Which results in starving spending on needed things.
Spend £700 million on court infrastructure and staff, say. Rather than saving a shop windows worth of salmon. Think how many clerks you could hire to prepare juries for the courts.
Merge NI & IT to reduce the admin overhead.
Buy the “world beating” ACV that actually exists - CV-90. Aside from it actually working, costing a fraction of what Ajax does, it will reduce the burden on the NHS.
Train U.K. medics overseas. Using the overseas aid budget - it will be supporting developing world health systems, after all. Then we have more medics - so less agency staff on the NHS (cheaper), less stress on the existing NHS staff (retainment), more U.K. citizens with qualifications for jobs which are in high demand…
This is about running procurement and government intelligently. Cost control and productivity - both are not being done.
Plenty of places where we recognise their pill-rolling certificates. If they are good enough to train their own people to our standards, why not train our people to the same standard?
Tax thresholds frozen for a further THREE years until 2031?!?
I’d like to see the press call this what it is - an income tax rise. Just say it & dare the government to contradict them.
The press always ignore the inflation/real value issue when it suits them, like that story we discussed the other day about the house which increased in value from 22K to 1.2m coconuts, wringing the withers of the reader without pointing out that much of that value is only due to inflation.
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 is not ineradicable. If you define relative poverty as, say, 60% of the median wage, then it is straightforward (in mathematical terms) to have a distribution with no-one in relative poverty.
"This is a totally surreal session of PMQs. Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch are going through the motions of a PMQs before the Budget. The prime minister just said that it’s “literally 25 minutes” until the measures will be unveiled.
Not so.
The Budget is already out there thanks to the Office for Budget Responsibility’s error. This is truly extraordinary. An hour ago it would have been unimaginable.
It’s hard to find the right adjectives to do it justice.
There will be total fury at the top of government right now and, presumably, a reckoning of some sort for the OBR."
BBC chief political correspondent.
Perhaps over egging the pudding, but adds some interest.
I wonder if any financial firms had automated systems looking for an early OBR report...
Faisal Islam @faisalislam · 8m Absolutely extraordinary that the OBR report has been accidentally published with ALL the details of the Budget before the speech….
The most important number… headroom has more than doubled to £22bn from 9.9bn…
Kemi beats him up every week now. She has a better chance of being PM after the next GE than a lot of people think. If Farage can come to a deal with her it could dampen the accusations of racism he faces, and unite the right. Do it Nige
"This is a totally surreal session of PMQs. Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch are going through the motions of a PMQs before the Budget. The prime minister just said that it’s “literally 25 minutes” until the measures will be unveiled.
Not so.
The Budget is already out there thanks to the Office for Budget Responsibility’s error. This is truly extraordinary. An hour ago it would have been unimaginable.
It’s hard to find the right adjectives to do it justice.
There will be total fury at the top of government right now and, presumably, a reckoning of some sort for the OBR."
BBC chief political correspondent.
Perhaps over egging the pudding, but adds some interest.
I wonder if any financial firms had automated systems looking for an early OBR report...
Surely the end of the OBR?
It was already on death watch or at least massive reform???
Faisal Islam @faisalislam · 8m Absolutely extraordinary that the OBR report has been accidentally published with ALL the details of the Budget before the speech….
The most important number… headroom has more than doubled to £22bn from 9.9bn…
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 is not ineradicable. If you define relative poverty as, say, 60% of the median wage, then it is straightforward (in mathematical terms) to have a distribution with no-one in relative poverty.
And the Nordic countries have nearly achieved that.
Faisal Islam @faisalislam · 8m Absolutely extraordinary that the OBR report has been accidentally published with ALL the details of the Budget before the speech….
The most important number… headroom has more than doubled to £22bn from 9.9bn…
What does headroom mean?
Spare cash in reserve for fluctuations e.g. less vat tax comes in than predicted (in theory - if all the central forecasts are right etc etc. so just basically)
Faisal Islam @faisalislam · 8m Absolutely extraordinary that the OBR report has been accidentally published with ALL the details of the Budget before the speech….
The most important number… headroom has more than doubled to £22bn from 9.9bn…
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.
If you define relative poverty as some fraction of median income, then it can be eradicated for any fraction less than 1.
Let the defined fraction be f, f < 1.
If everyone in the distribution has the same income, x, then the median is x and no-one has an income that is less than xf.
Faisal Islam @faisalislam · 8m Absolutely extraordinary that the OBR report has been accidentally published with ALL the details of the Budget before the speech….
The most important number… headroom has more than doubled to £22bn from 9.9bn…
What does headroom mean?
Todays guess of how much extra spending the govt can do within their own arbitrary rules that they can change anyway, based on numbers no-one expects them to stick to anyway.
Kemi beats him up every week now. She has a better chance of being PM after the next GE than a lot of people think. If Farage can come to a deal with her it could dampen the accusations of racism he faces, and unite the right. Do it Nige
She's certainly learning on the job and improving.
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.
Disagree with this. I don't like the idea of relative poverty.
Faisal Islam @faisalislam · 8m Absolutely extraordinary that the OBR report has been accidentally published with ALL the details of the Budget before the speech….
The most important number… headroom has more than doubled to £22bn from 9.9bn…
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.
The system fails badly.
It has no real oversight or review (otherwise government would long since have looking at how to reform it). It is not proportionate what is needed to achieve its aims (building safety) at a reasonable cost. It is not timely: even the best managed schemes face significant delays on getting anything signed off. It is overly complex, and inflexible.
The grotesque chaos of a Labour budget, a LABOUR budget being published before it is announced so the media and the markets can rip it apart before the speech.
The grotesque chaos of a Labour budget, a LABOUR budget being published before it is announced so the media and the markets can rip it apart before the speech.
The grotesque chaos of a Labour budget, a LABOUR budget being published before it is announced so the media and the markets can rip it apart before the speech.
Chancellors have had to resign for less.
Reeves should go. But she has no shame. So she won’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.
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 ?
The grotesque chaos of a Labour budget, a LABOUR budget being published before it is announced so the media and the markets can rip it apart before the speech.
Chancellors have had to resign for less.
Head of OBR 'aint getting a knighthood that's for sure.
The grotesque chaos of a Labour budget, a LABOUR budget being published before it is announced so the media and the markets can rip it apart before the speech.
Chancellors have had to resign for less.
I can't watch. She's going to cry, isn't she?
Hopefully. Screw it, we may as well have entertainment as the ship sinks.
The grotesque chaos of a Labour budget, a LABOUR budget being published before it is announced so the media and the markets can rip it apart before the speech.
And indeed there may be other parallels. His biographer Ben Pimlott characterised Dalton as peevish, irascible, given to poor judgment and lacking administrative talent...
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 has probably always happened. Citing examples of "waste" is only one side of the argument. A lot of people have their lives helped if not enhanced by what Government and its agencies do and to simply and perpetually highlight the faults misses the point.
When I was in local Government, there was this paradox of apparent waste (though tens of thousands against a total budget of more than a £1 billion isn't that significant) but you knew what the council was providing in terms of libraries, youth centres and social care and the people providing it was making a difference to people's lives.
The problem is the pattern - we have lost control of public spending. Which results in starving spending on needed things.
Spend £700 million on court infrastructure and staff, say. Rather than saving a shop windows worth of salmon. Think how many clerks you could hire to prepare juries for the courts.
Merge NI & IT to reduce the admin overhead.
Buy the “world beating” ACV that actually exists - CV-90. Aside from it actually working, costing a fraction of what Ajax does, it will reduce the burden on the NHS.
Train U.K. medics overseas. Using the overseas aid budget - it will be supporting developing world health systems, after all. Then we have more medics - so less agency staff on the NHS (cheaper), less stress on the existing NHS staff (retainment), more U.K. citizens with qualifications for jobs which are in high demand…
This is about running procurement and government intelligently. Cost control and productivity - both are not being done.
Plenty of places where we recognise their pill-rolling certificates. If they are good enough to train their own people to our standards, why not train our people to the same standard?
The grotesque chaos of a Labour budget, a LABOUR budget being published before it is announced so the media and the markets can rip it apart before the speech.
Chancellors have had to resign for less.
Head of OBR 'aint getting a knighthood that's for sure.
Interview without coffee, or indeed chair for sure.
The grotesque chaos of a Labour budget, a LABOUR budget being published before it is announced so the media and the markets can rip it apart before the speech.
Chancellors have had to resign for less.
It is JUST possible that she will resign immediately after the Budget speech
Faisal Islam @faisalislam · 8m Absolutely extraordinary that the OBR report has been accidentally published with ALL the details of the Budget before the speech….
The most important number… headroom has more than doubled to £22bn from 9.9bn…
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.
Could make a good ice hockey stadium in the winter? And water polo in the summer?
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 is not ineradicable. If you define relative poverty as, say, 60% of the median wage, then it is straightforward (in mathematical terms) to have a distribution with no-one in relative poverty.
And the Nordic countries have nearly achieved that.
Hmm. No they haven't.
I mean yes, they are miles better than the UK but Norway still has 10% of children living in relative poverty using the measure you mention. Sweden has over 13% and rising.
Italy, for all its other faults, is as good as the Nordic countries by this measure.
In my young days I recall a Chancellor getting sacked ....'offering his resignation' ...... after a major Budget leak.
Creating the OBR was a mistake, but now it’s there no government can get rid of it, because the optics would be terrible when we depend on the kindness of strangers to fund our day to day running costs.
The grotesque chaos of a Labour budget, a LABOUR budget being published before it is announced so the media and the markets can rip it apart before the speech.
Chancellors have had to resign for less.
Reeves should go. But she has no shame. So she won’t.
Reeves will have the same level of responsibility for the OBR releasing their report early as Theresa May had for the letters falling off the podium when she was giving a speech. Both deserved to go because of their carelessness
OBR says it will never happen again. No, because it won't exist this time next year.
The VOA which has a lot of reasons for being separate from HMRC has been merged into HMRC. There is no reason why the OBR exists beyond political point scoring by the Tories a decade ago - it does more harm than good and it's processes created all the leaks in the first place.
Steven Swinford @Steven_Swinford · 27m The OBR has broken **the entire Budget**. It's extraordinary. Completely unprecedented. Hyperbole doesn't do it justice
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.
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.
Disagree with this. I don't like the idea of relative poverty.
Not least because you can bring people out of relative poverty by simply making rich people poorer.
OBR says it will never happen again. No, because it won't exist this time next year.
The VOA which has a lot of reasons for being separate from HMRC has been merged into HMRC. There is no reason why the OBR exists beyond political point scoring by the Tories a decade ago - it does more harm than good and it's processes created all the leaks in the first place.
The VOA is notably worse to deal with, since it was absorbed.
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 has probably always happened. Citing examples of "waste" is only one side of the argument. A lot of people have their lives helped if not enhanced by what Government and its agencies do and to simply and perpetually highlight the faults misses the point.
When I was in local Government, there was this paradox of apparent waste (though tens of thousands against a total budget of more than a £1 billion isn't that significant) but you knew what the council was providing in terms of libraries, youth centres and social care and the people providing it was making a difference to people's lives.
The problem is the pattern - we have lost control of public spending. Which results in starving spending on needed things.
Spend £700 million on court infrastructure and staff, say. Rather than saving a shop windows worth of salmon. Think how many clerks you could hire to prepare juries for the courts.
Merge NI & IT to reduce the admin overhead.
Buy the “world beating” ACV that actually exists - CV-90. Aside from it actually working, costing a fraction of what Ajax does, it will reduce the burden on the NHS.
Train U.K. medics overseas. Using the overseas aid budget - it will be supporting developing world health systems, after all. Then we have more medics - so less agency staff on the NHS (cheaper), less stress on the existing NHS staff (retainment), more U.K. citizens with qualifications for jobs which are in high demand…
This is about running procurement and government intelligently. Cost control and productivity - both are not being done.
Plenty of places where we recognise their pill-rolling certificates. If they are good enough to train their own people to our standards, why not train our people to the same standard?
“ Part 1: Consists of a multiple choice format examination paper with 180 SBA's (One Hundred Eighty Single Best Answer questions with 5 options and one SBA) lasting 3 hours. This is a paper-based exam which is answered on a sheet provided by the invigilator (not computer-based). This part is conducted in a number of countries including Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Pakistan, Nigeria and Sri Lanka.[2] Part 2: Consists of an objective structured clinical examination (OSCE). This part is only available in Manchester.[citation needed] It consists of 16 clinical stations. All the stations are eight minutes long, plus two minutes reading time. The standard of both parts of the PLAB exam is set at the level of competence of a doctor at the start of Foundation Year 2 (F2) in the Foundation Programme.”
So overseas trained UK doctors need to do an exam and 160 minutes of OCSE?
One of my longest rants when I was stuck in the toilets was about the stupidity of abandoning the Warrior update programme and going all-in on Ajax, which was shit even then. But that was five years ago. They just keep throwing money at it and it keeps going wrong. It's too heavy for the suspension. They can't fix that.
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.
Faisal Islam @faisalislam · 8m Absolutely extraordinary that the OBR report has been accidentally published with ALL the details of the Budget before the speech….
The most important number… headroom has more than doubled to £22bn from 9.9bn…
What does headroom mean?
She's missed a trick by not introducing a headroom tax on SUVs.
Comments
Rivers of blood might be the most optimistic scenario if you proposed a merger between those two clubs.
The budget has been published and Sky have all the details
There's also the difficulty with making figures comparable. The Swiss figure is low, but I think that's because it excludes healthcare. Switzerland has a system of mandatory healthcare insurance, so that counts as not being government expenditure, and yet it's mandatory for everyone and legislated for, so it kinda works the same as countries where it is counted as being government expenditure. You are required by law to pay a fee to a cross-subsidised system, rather than being required by law to pay a tax to a cross-subsidised system.
2) because laws and regulations are only added to.
3) because they cost nothing (to the politicians) and mean They Are Doing Something.
4) so they can tell all the special interest groups that They Have Done Something.
I suspect there’s no way they’d approve PVC windows in a high rise building due to the fire risk, but there ought to be a blanket tick-box approval for replacement windows made of non-combustible material.
Indeed, the BSR apparently thinks that there /is/ a tick-box approval for replacement metal framed double-glazing, but they have neglected to tell the organisations that could issue this tick-box approval (FENSA etc) this & everybody involved is just sitting on their hands instead of doing anything at all to fix the problem.
Total bureaucratic victory.
It has no real oversight or review (otherwise government would long since have looking at how to reform it).
It is not proportionate what is needed to achieve its aims (building safety) at a reasonable cost.
It is not timely: even the best managed schemes face significant delays on getting anything signed off.
It is overly complex, and inflexible.
Some places are problematic - don’t use them.
Plenty of places where we recognise their pill-rolling certificates. If they are good enough to train their own people to our standards, why not train our people to the same standard?
Beth Rigby delivered this year's budget before Reeves stood up
Prime Minister’s Chief Secretary argues charter establishes right to ‘timely’ justice
Charles Hymas
Home Affairs Editor"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/26/magna-carta-justifies-scrap-jury-trials
Bye.
(((Dan Hodges)))
@DPJHodges
·
1m
Pre-Budget PMQs normally a non-event. Not this year. Kemi Badenoch’s just ripped Keir Starmer apart.
Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch are going through the motions of a PMQs before the Budget. The prime minister just said that it’s “literally 25 minutes” until the measures will be unveiled.
Not so.
The Budget is already out there thanks to the Office for Budget Responsibility’s error.
This is truly extraordinary. An hour ago it would have been unimaginable.
It’s hard to find the right adjectives to do it justice.
There will be total fury at the top of government right now and, presumably, a reckoning of some sort for the OBR."
BBC chief political correspondent.
Perhaps over egging the pudding, but adds some interest.
I wonder if any financial firms had automated systems looking for an early OBR report...
Faisal Islam
@faisalislam
·
8m
Absolutely extraordinary that the OBR report has been accidentally published with ALL the details of the Budget before the speech….
The most important number… headroom has more than doubled to £22bn from 9.9bn…
Starmer just waffles about Reform.
It was already on death watch or at least massive reform???
Here scout unit is regarded by scouts as the 4th most deprived in the UK - so that should tell you the area she's in.
“Sheer absurdity” says Chris Mason
£2m+ homes getting mansion taxed from 2028
Freezing tax thresholds for 3 years (IT & NI)
Salary sacrifice on pensions NI’d
2% raise on savings, dividends and property income
Tax on electric cars
Tax on Gambling
CGT relief cut
5 month freeze on fuel duty
(Which it would be sensible to anticipate.)
Let the defined fraction be f, f < 1.
If everyone in the distribution has the same income, x, then the median is x and no-one has an income that is less than xf.
Fuel duty to rise from next September - that will be an interesting one.
As today's news reminds us, we absolutely do:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c2emg1kj1klt
We just need to do it a LOT better.
Chancellors have had to resign for less.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c2emg1kj1klt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Dalton
And indeed there may be other parallels.
His biographer Ben Pimlott characterised Dalton as peevish, irascible, given to poor judgment and lacking administrative talent...
Surreal but heads must roll over this
OBR apologies for leaking of documents
Bring it back into the Treasury?
If the Tory whips aren't messaging their MPs to respond to every announcement with "WE KNOW" then what are they even for? #Budget25
I mean yes, they are miles better than the UK but Norway still has 10% of children living in relative poverty using the measure you mention. Sweden has over 13% and rising.
Italy, for all its other faults, is as good as the Nordic countries by this measure.
https://x.com/georgewparker/status/1993657558045950161?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
Steven Swinford
@Steven_Swinford
·
27m
The OBR has broken **the entire Budget**. It's extraordinary. Completely unprecedented. Hyperbole doesn't do it justice
https://x.com/Steven_Swinford/status/1993651326962569596
I know everyone likes to trash the government but this isn’t their error .
Part 2: Consists of an objective structured clinical examination (OSCE). This part is only available in Manchester.[citation needed] It consists of 16 clinical stations. All the stations are eight minutes long, plus two minutes reading time. The standard of both parts of the PLAB exam is set at the level of competence of a doctor at the start of Foundation Year 2 (F2) in the Foundation Programme.”
So overseas trained UK doctors need to do an exam and 160 minutes of OCSE?
That doesn’t sound like a show stopper.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj9y0l7j1nwo
One of my longest rants when I was stuck in the toilets was about the stupidity of abandoning the Warrior update programme and going all-in on Ajax, which was shit even then. But that was five years ago. They just keep throwing money at it and it keeps going wrong. It's too heavy for the suspension. They can't fix that.
Piss funny.