[Youngian]

How did this Columbian scab force obtain visas without prior Home Office knowledge of P&O’s plans? Or is there some kind of mariner’s passport that allows easy access if you’re joining a ship?

[Boiler]

What?!

[kreuzberger]

Every time Brexit blows up in the face of these braying, jubilant, hubristic vandals, my heart flutters with joy.

There is no way of knowing how the P&O 800 voted but the numbers in those parts of the world suggest it is odds-on that they are complicit in their own descent in to utter penury.

Fuck them.

[davidjay]

Every time Brexit blows up in the face of these braying, jubilant, hubristic vandals, my heart flutters with joy.

There is no way of knowing how the P&O 800 voted but the numbers in those parts of the world suggest it is odds-on that they are complicit in their own descent in to utter penury.

Fuck them.

And let's also be under no illusions that the driving force behind their vote was anything other than the forrins.

[Oboogie]

I think that encouraging it's members to damage their employer's industry and sacrifice their own employment protections was a peculiar decision for the RMT to make.
But, look on the bright side, it finally gives Rees-Mogg an elusive benefit of Brexit to boast about - no more nasty EU red tape* to worry about!
I'm sure the replacement Columbian workforce will be welcomed with open arms at the Festival of Brexit.

*aka employment rights.

[Oboogie]

How did this Columbian scab force obtain visas without prior Home Office knowledge of P&O’s plans? Or is there some kind of mariner’s passport that allows easy access if you’re joining a ship?

That's a very good point, for all their feigned surprise, the government must have known about, and approved, this move a long time ago.

[Youngian]

Not sure if its any EU law (TUPE maybe?) that prevents French workers being fired but better domestic labour law than the UK. Mariners haven’t been served well by EU law ( https://www.thompsonstradeunion.law/new ... -and-laval ).
But Brexit was never about facts and figures but the refusal to believe that politicians who treat immigrants like scum will do the same to you when they can get away with it.

[Abernathy]

I know it's fashionable to slag off unions on here (funny, you wouldn't have your precious Labour Party without them) but not all Union members follow the advice of their union leaders.

Eh?When was it ever "fashionable on here" to slag off unions? What a fatuously inaccurate generalisation.. No-one on thid bosrd has ever "slagged off" unions for being unions. Acts of egregiously poor union leadership, however, like the RMT's kamikaze stance on Brexit, or McCluskey'e corrupt conference centre build st UNISON, are fair game.

Again, you should be looking at a party that effectively allowed "fire and rehire".

Labour has been pressing for legislation to outlaw the practice of "fire and re-hire" for many years. Barry Gardiner MP tabled a private members' bill on it just 12 months ago.

I say you're wrong, Abers.
[/quote]

[Cyclist]

Even if RMT members*did* follow the sage advice from their union leaders it's still unfair to blame them for the Tory shitshow Brexit we have been saddled with. After all, the Tories treated it as an internal party-political exercise and consulted nobody but themselves (and, possibly, Moscow).

[Watchman]

Re the P&O 800, am I right in thinking that masters of ships (who I assume have also been sacked), have to have certain certification to carry out their duties, one can only hope the”replacements are suitably qualified

[Boiler]

Interested to note my MP is making noises about this:

Former transport minister Sir John Hayes also criticised the "capricious, careless, callous" decision, and suggested the government should "recover any monies granted to P&O during the pandemic" in a bid to reverse it.

P&O Ferries claimed almost £15m in government grants in 2020, which included furlough payments for its employees.

Sir John added: "Don't let anyone tell me this is the free market. The free market put little girls in factories and boys down mines, and both at risk on the high seas; we thought those dark days had gone - P&O are either too dim to see that or too dastardly to know it."

Credit where it's due to John Hayes: time and time again I've seen him go into bat for workers which has earned him a good deal of respect around here. He even successfully lobbied to keep the Land Registry open round here.

I'm not so sure about the rest of his views, mind.

[Abernathy]

Even if RMT members*did* follow the sage advice from their union leaders it's still unfair to blame them for the Tory shitshow Brexit we have been saddled with. After all, the Tories treated it as an internal party-political exercise and consulted nobody but themselves (and, possibly, Moscow).

Rather odd logic, there. If they voted for it, and remember, they "knew exactly what they were voting for", then they got what they voted for, surely?

[Oboogie]

They voted for Brexit and trusted the Tories to deliver the Brexit which they promised. They may be reflecting on the wisdom of those choices now.

[Cyclist]

Rather odd logic, there. If they voted for it, and remember, they "knew exactly what they were voting for", then they got what they voted for, surely?

Not odd, unless you believe their lies about knowing what they were voting for. They knew what they were hoping for. That's all.

Yes, they have stupidly voted for something made of shiny unobtanium, a nebulous promise based on lies, deliberately left vague so each brexiteer could read whatever they wanted into it. But the real villains are the Tory Party, starting with one Cameron D, who called the referendum in the first place and then fucked off when he didn't get the vote he wanted, followed by his heirs and successors who took the slimmest majority in an advisory referendum to be The Will Of The People ™ and The Biggest Mandate Ever™ and used that as their justification for turning their personal crusade against the EU* into the horrific reality we have today.

They thought the Tories would deliver, not realising that the party of government aren't Tories, but self-serving egotists without a set of values above "What can I get out of this?". We knew they couldn't be trusted, but nobody could predict the actual self-destructive course the not-Tories took. The ordinary people who stupidly voted to leave are just as much victims of the ERG wankfest as the rest of us.


*Personal crusade against th EU in as much as the Conservatives have always served the interests of big business. This particular Brexit was pursued counter to the wishes of business. "Fuck business", as the poundshop Churchill said. Further proof that these cunts are not Conservatives - they don't even hold the same values as the Party we've come to know and hate.


I have deliberately left Farage out because while he was central to the festival of lies that was the leave campaign, he was shunted aside as soon as possible and left gibbering in the wilderness, as befits a useful idiot who has served his purpose.

[Nigredo]

In more local happenings, I have spent my afternoon writing up an incident report for the powers that be because a couple of hoopleheads decided that Brexit means we don't have to follow EU elfin safety fascism and went ahead with stripping out a retail unit before the asbestos report came back. Things that are now contaminated with asbestos are the unit itself, their van, their work clothes and most probably their lungs.

[Abernathy]

Yes, I broadly agree with all of that. As James O’Brien is fond of putting it, “condemnation of the con-merchants, sympathy for the victims of the con”, and certainly there is the ineluctable logic of necessarily seeking the electoral support of those now regretting at leisure what their choices have inflicted on all of us. However, at the same time, I cannot but help share Kreuzberger’s delicious schadenfreude at seeing the consequences of often idiotic gullibility rise up and bite the idiotically gullible agents of those consequential choices. The bottom line is that hopefully, lessons have been learned, small consolation for the virtually irreversible changes that we now have to live with though that is.

[Cyclist]

Oh, I share that schadenfreude too, but retain some sympathy for the poor deluded turkeys who blindly voted for Christmas on the say-so of a bunch of slick, glib con-artists.

Don't forget, to most people we Mail Watchers are the weirdos, what with being interested in politics an' all.

Our splendid Fourth Estate has a *lot* to answer for.

[Andy McDandy]

Over the last 2 days I've been at a local government conference (Sc**thorpe, not recommended), and a discussion about data security touched on the post office software scandal, and its causes. The belief that a system must be right, therefore any criticism of it must be wrong, as the speaker said.

I disagreed. It was more likely a simple sunk cost fallacy. With the post office, there was a choice - admit that the system they'd paid handsomely for was crap and replace it (for more money), or look for some scapegoats and hope that the horse learned to talk.

That's where I think we are with Brexit. It's shit, there are no upsides (turns out that being the only fish in your pond is pretty meaningless), and all the Brexiteers have left is "we won, you lost, nyaah nyahh". Not even "give it time", or "yes but Covid happened". Just "live with it". Because that sense of victory, of getting one over on the clever bastards, is all they have left.

[Boiler]

I can't share in that schadenfreude.

Having been booted out of a job and then cast adrift (no pun intended) into one of the most casualised industries in the UK, I can assure you that I am delighted to spend every week wondering if this particular 'gig' is going to be the last one I get.

[Boiler]

In more local happenings, I have spent my afternoon writing up an incident report for the powers that be because a couple of hoopleheads decided that Brexit means we don't have to follow EU elfin safety fascism and went ahead with stripping out a retail unit before the asbestos report came back. Things that are now contaminated with asbestos are the unit itself, their van, their work clothes and most probably their lungs.

Dafuq...?

Seriously? Do you know what type of asbestos they were exposed to?