[Dalem Lake]

Will anyone under the age of 45 go for this, seeing as feet and inches and pounds and ounces haven't been taught in schools for at least 40 years?


And the replies to that tweet are right - the questionnaire doesn't work on mobile phones.

Last time I used ounces as a measure of weight was when I bought weed...and that was 20 years ago.

[Boiler]

How many of us measure ourselves in Imperial units? I still say five/nine and nineteen stone...

[Cyclist]

Like I said: "Anyone under the age of 45".

[Youngian]

Like I said: "Anyone under the age of 45".

Da yoof have no problem converting. An eighth is 3.54 grams, bruv.

[Cyclist]

Someone should tell the Minister for Government Efficiency

Boris Johnson’s plans to slash the number of civil servants by 91,000 – around 20% – within three years, will leave Whitehall unable to handle the huge extra workload caused by Brexit, independent experts and unions have warned the government.

They say such a reduction would leave the state too small to cope with the added responsibilities taken on by officials in Whitehall since the UK left the EU, including in areas of trade, agriculture, immigration and business regulation...

https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... t-workload

[Andy McDandy]

Like he cares. He aims to be on a beach, away from us ungrateful turds by that point.

[satnav]

Six years after the referendum the penny has finally dropped at the Daily Express where they have finally admitted that axing EU rules and regulations will make it increasingly difficult to export good to EU countries.

[Boiler]

Someone should tell the Minister for Government Efficiency

Boris Johnson’s plans to slash the number of civil servants by 91,000 – around 20% – within three years, will leave Whitehall unable to handle the huge extra workload caused by Brexit, independent experts and unions have warned the government.

They say such a reduction would leave the state too small to cope with the added responsibilities taken on by officials in Whitehall since the UK left the EU, including in areas of trade, agriculture, immigration and business regulation...

https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... t-workload

There is a view that a small engine being thrashed to within an inch of its life is more efficient than a larger, lazy engine worked within its limits. This is why modern motor vehicles have tiny engines with one or two turbochargers all screaming away in the interest of efficiency. How long they will last is another guess.

Maybe this is how the Civil Service is now viewed...

[davidjay]

The Civil Service is the enemy of Brexit and must be destroyed.

[Boiler]

I know of someone who genuinely believes the Civil Service does everything it can to thwart government policy.

[Andy McDandy]

Up to a point, yes. The civil service is permanent, and has to deal with the long term effects of any policy or new law. So they do try to thwart bad policies, and of course there are more bad policies than good ones.

[Spoonman]

Meanwhile at the E*press, the penny is dropping...


Rage as Brits stuck in airport queue for 3h - EU travellers 'given looks that could kill'

BRITONS have taken to social media to share their frustration as they are forced to queue for hours at EU airports while other passengers fly through arrivals.

British tourists had to wait up to three hours to get through passport control in countries like Spain, as e-gates are no longer available for Britons after Brexit.

British passengers have to get their passports inspected manually and stamped by police upon arrival.

Long queues have been seen at airports such as Majorca, Alicante and Malaga.

This is while passengers from the EU get “preferential treatment” with an “EU fast lane” and using e-gates, according to social media users who shared their experience.

Passengers also shared pictures of Malaga Airport on social media, where two separate passport queues can be spotted.

One is sealed off with black tape and a union jack flag labelled for "all passengers".

The other queue, enclosed with green tape, has an Irish tricolour and EU flag and is labelled for "EU citizens".

One British passenger explained: “Four hours queue in Malaga airport for non-EU passport holders, meanwhile everyone else walking on."

https://www.express.co.uk/travel/articl ... eues-Spain

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Up to a point, yes. The civil service is permanent, and has to deal with the long term effects of any policy or new law. So they do try to thwart bad policies, and of course there are more bad policies than good ones.

At the DfE one of my jobs was policy analyst. Ministers would announce a policy and we had to

a) Work out what, if anything it meant and if the policy meant action
b) Check whether or not we were doing it already (often the case)
c) Try to discern any over-arching themes (to link it with existing programmes if possible)
d) make some concrete proposals for doing it.

I was useless at it...

[mattomac]

Like I said: "Anyone under the age of 45".

I’ve always gone by feet and inches as a 39 year old. You have to remember growing up you’ll be measured by your mum and dad who would have used feet and inches.

[Nigredo]

https://www.ft.com/content/ee2ce542-eb1 ... a8200a47ae

UK economy is predicted to have the slowest growth of the G20 nations, on a par with Russia (which currently has a quarter of the world imposing sanctions on it.)

[Boiler]

"But Boris says we're the fastest in the G7. It must be true, he says it every week in Parliament and they don't lie in Parliament."

[Nigredo]

Oh.

[Spoonman]

Meanwhile across the Irish Sea...

Applications from Britons for Irish citizenship soar by almost 1,200% since Brexit
Film-maker David Puttnam, who became an Irish citizen last week, says UK is no longer ‘the country I was born into’

Records released to The Irish Times by the Department of Justice show that in 2015 there were just 54 people from Britain granted Irish citizenship. The following year, when the UK voted to leave the EU, the figure almost doubled to 98. This then increased to 525 in 2017 and 685 in 2018, with a slight dip to 664 in 2019 before rising to 945 in 2020 and 1,191 last year.

In 2015, successful British applications accounted for 0.4 per cent of the 13,543 total applications from about 180 countries across the globe. This increased to 12 per cent of last year’s total of 9,788.

https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2022 ... ce-brexit/

[Nigredo]

https://archive.ph/9l67C

Britain’s Battered Economy Is Sliding Toward a Breaking Point, sayeth Bloomberg

[Youngian]

Golf club bore English exceptionalism got the better of a lot of City numbers people, who should have known better. LBC City correspondent Buick says everything with great confidence including six years of what a brilliant idea Brexit is. Fair play to admit the game’s up. Especially as financial services is the one sector that’s returned a respectable growth figure.