[Youngian]

No idea who he is but up there with Hannan for weapons grade bollocks. How do you even debate this nonsense?

[Cyclist]

A million job opportunities post-Brexit. Most of which are in care homes, hospitality, and agriculture, with some lorry-dri ing opportunities too.

When you make it perfectly clear to your workforce that they're not wanted, and make it well-nigh impossible for them to come back if you change your mind, you *will* have a lot of vacancies to fill.

[Youngian]

An unintended consequence of this debacle is a more mechanized high productivity workforce. UK got lucky but having a young skilled labour pool on the doorstep but labour shortages in the Western world are a long term problem. I don’t want a Japanese robot looking after me in my old age. Unless it looks like Kelly Le Brock.

[Crabcakes]

Poor man's Dominic Cummings.

What a strange meeting - his phone is on, but not facing him, and his laptop screen is clearly off as there’s no light from it reflecting on him. Almost like it’s entirely staged…

[Malcolm Armsteen]

I think you can just see the photographer reflected in the Bodium teapot...

[Cyclist]

From a tweet a couple of posts ago.

Michael Ellis - The UK is the No.1 country, in the G7, for economic growth & we have a million job opportunities... those have been delivered post brexit.

Clever use of language there, giving the impression Brexit has created a million jobs, when all that's happened is a million vacancies suddenly appeared when a million (forrin) people lost their jobs because of Brexit.

Now UK employers face the double-whammy of having to pay to train new staff (something many of them have been reluctant to do for at least the last 30 years), and offer better pay to get the "lazy" British workforce off their arses and applying for these jobs.

Example: it was legal for British farmers to pay EU temporary seasonal workers less than national minimum wage. Will the government make it legal to pay British temporary seasonal workers less than minimum wage? If so, how is this going to attract the people the farmers need to pick their crops? Picking fruit and vegetables by hand is actually quite a skilled job. I know, I've been pea picking and potato picking as a teenager.

[Andy McDandy]

Shades of "Shares have become more affordable" in the wake of the post-referendum market slump.

Or "Good news for glaziers as IRA resume campaigning".

[Tubby Isaacs]

From a tweet a couple of posts ago.

Michael Ellis - The UK is the No.1 country, in the G7, for economic growth & we have a million job opportunities... those have been delivered post brexit.

Clever use of language there, giving the impression Brexit has created a million jobs, when all that's happened is a million vacancies suddenly appeared when a million (forrin) people lost their jobs because of Brexit.

Now UK employers face the double-whammy of having to pay to train new staff (something many of them have been reluctant to do for at least the last 30 years), and offer better pay to get the "lazy" British workforce off their arses and applying for these jobs.

Example: it was legal for British farmers to pay EU temporary seasonal workers less than national minimum wage. Will the government make it legal to pay British temporary seasonal workers less than minimum wage? If so, how is this going to attract the people the farmers need to pick their crops? Picking fruit and vegetables by hand is actually quite a skilled job. I know, I've been pea picking and potato picking as a teenager.

There was a good documentary a while ago where some unemployed British workers tried doing potato picking (I think). They couldn't do it fast enough for the farmer to make any money.

Michael Ellis not mentioning that we had the worst economic fall before this bounceback.

[Nigredo]

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... isis-talks

My dad was around my age during the first one and still trots out the line about the dead piling up in the street, I wonder if this one will stick as much in the memory now that he's an old man living alone in a poorly insulated house.

[davidjay]

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... isis-talks

My dad was around my age during the first one and still trots out the line about the dead piling up in the street, I wonder if this one will stick as much in the memory now that he's an old man living alone in a poorly insulated house.

Probably not because, and I'm sorry if this sounds like disrespect, we're at the stage now where the little old lady living in a Moscow apartment block will denounce her counter-revolutionary neighbours to the NKVD but go to the firing squad convinced that in her case Uncle Joe made an honest mistake.

[Nigredo]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58629592

Just casually endangering the lives of Afghan interpreters.

[Youngian]

Bozo might be doing something right if he's sending headbangers like Allister Heath into a big tizzy. Its not as if Tory governments haven't raised taxes before. Another Brexiter who painted his dreams on Boris and was handed a shit sandwich.

Boris's shameful Tory betrayal guarantees the total victory of socialism in Britain

Shame on Boris Johnson, and shame on the Conservative Party. They have disgraced themselves, lied to their voters, repudiated their principles and treated millions of their supporters with utter contempt. And for what?

To momentarily wrong-foot Sir Keir Starmer? To steal Labour’s clothes, not for a greater purpose but because it’s easier than actually devising their own conservative policies to improve Britain? To pat themselves on the back, and boast of how brilliant they are at the Machiavellian, unprincipled game of Blair or Osborne-style triangulation politics? To further convince the electorate that every politician is only in it for themselves, for their ministerial cars, for the pathetic pretend power? Is this why all those Cabinet ministers joined the Tory party, and penned all those paeans to free enterprise and low taxes? To be complicit in the moral destruction of the Conservative Party?

This is a seminal moment in British politics, one that could turn out to be as toxic, as poisonous and as destructive as the ERM crisis, the Iraq dossier or the bank bailouts. The damage wreaked by the Government’s juvenile approach to policymaking will be immense and long-lasting, even if it doesn’t immediately register in opinion polls. Promising not to raise or to cut taxes was always the one weapon Labour couldn’t match, the most powerful way to remind voters that the socialists would steal their money; now any such pledge would remind voters that the Tories are utterly untrustworthy.

The scale of Johnson’s shift to the Left is staggering: his tax increases combined are the largest in half a century. The Treasury’s claim that it is hiking National Insurance by 1.25 percentage points is sub-Brownite spin: the tax rate on labour income has actually jumped by 2.5 percentage points. Combined with frozen income and other tax thresholds and the raid on corporation tax, total tax rises will be worth 1.6 per cent of GDP. The tax burden will hit its “highest-ever sustained level”, the Institute for Fiscal Studies calculates. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/0 ... ue-labour/

[Samanfur]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58629592

Just casually endangering the lives of Afghan interpreters.

My husband - software QA tester and former insurance claims handler, so he's familiar with this stuff both in terms of software and legislation - heard Wallace's statement, and instantly started rattling off ways that could've been built into the MoD system that were more idiot proof than BCC.

I know he's a layman and doesn't know their systems, but if they're relying on BCC, it does seem as though they've got some glaring problems.

[Nigredo]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58629592

Just casually endangering the lives of Afghan interpreters.

My husband - software QA tester and former insurance claims handler, so he's familiar with this stuff both in terms of software and legislation - heard Wallace's statement, and instantly started rattling off ways that could've been built into the MoD system that were more idiot proof than BCC.

I know he's a layman and doesn't know their systems, but if they're relying on BCC, it does seem as though they've got some glaring problems.

Shades of last year when tens of thousands of test results were lost because they were (needlessly) using an archaic version of Excel.

Intricate cyber security being breached by clever people in other nations is one concern, this shower of shite can't even handle basic enterprise software.

The kakistocracy is confirmed when the majority of ministers wouldn't pass a skills test for an entry level office job.

[Andy McDandy]

There's a certain level of management where technical or even job-specific knowledge isn't necessary - just an ability and willingness to treat people like shit until the results you want occur.

As I said ages ago, they don't care how things work, just that they work.

[Abernathy]

Boris's shameful Tory betrayal guarantees the total victory of socialism in Britain

Guarantees ? Someone should tell the Corbyn cranks. They will be pleased.

[Crabcakes]

Promising not to raise or to cut taxes was always the one weapon Labour couldn’t match, the most powerful way to remind voters that the socialists would steal their money; now any such pledge would remind voters that the Tories are utterly untrustworthy.

This is saying the quiet part out loud - vote Tory, and we'll make sure you don't have to pay your fair share. And to add insult to injury, Johnson has done his tax raise in the way that puts the least burden on the well off as it is and he's STILL unhappy.

[RedSparrows]

I wish, just once, someone in the Torygraph or other fount of idiocy could open a philosophical dictionary and check what 'socialism' actually is.

[Nigredo]

Promising not to raise or to cut taxes was always the one weapon Labour couldn’t match, the most powerful way to remind voters that the socialists would steal their money; now any such pledge would remind voters that the Tories are utterly untrustworthy.

This is saying the quiet part out loud - vote Tory, and we'll make sure you don't have to pay your fair share. And to add insult to injury, Johnson has done his tax raise in the way that puts the least burden on the well off as it is and he's STILL unhappy.

I am going to have some interesting conversations with my brother about this, as his only reason for (unthinkingly) voting Tory is dogmatic belief in them keeping his tax commitments low.

[Andy McDandy]

A few years ago there was a reality-style show in which people tried living without council services for a week or two, in return for paying no council tax. Several people involved seemed to be of the "empty the bins, keep the street lights on" mindset; they were to be cruelly disappointed.

They learned very quickly that getting someone to remove your rubbish is only the first step in a chain, and not that easy to organise. That councils do an awful lot more than the front line services we see. That - surprise, surprise - life is rather more complex than we might think.

Ultimately it seems to come down to a choice of which society people want to live in - a frontier one in which everyone stands alone and is responsible for themselves, and any decision to help someone or cooperate is a conscious one that can be broken at any time; or a civilised society where there exist multiple mutual bonds of respect, duty and trust. In one of those, you get all the luxuries of modern life, but plenty of people seem to think that they can get the best of both for the cost of neither.

Also, something I've noticed over the years from the "PC gornmaaad" brigade is the belief that if only The Caahncil would stop tellin' us what to do, everything would be fine and harmonious. That by defining racism, society creates racial tension. That by supplying a grievance procedure, it encourages vexatious whingeing. That any conflict in society is in effect a protest at being told how to behave. That essentially, the problem with people living in shit is that people will tell them that there's an alternative.

Or maybe I'm over-complicating things and the basic reality is that we've somehow created a society in which instant gratification is the only thing that matters, and fuck anyone in my way.