Westministenders: Canada Plus and the Transition Phase

[RedToothBrush]

As we approach the 31st January, we slowly tick towards exit and transition.

Things are not yet signed off though the No Deal planning has quietly been stood down with no press release and the government have said they won't talk about trade deals post 31st Jan because the public are bored of them and don't understand.

The new EU president has said that the UK doesn't have time to make a full deal with the EU before 31st December with a deadline which isn't flexible.

We still have no idea what the government plans are. We still have many EU citizens feeling very vulnerable.

Perhaps we should start talking about this rather than Royals for a couple of weeks...

Or just old fashioned buses, trams and trains, with one driver for lots of people.

People cost money. Also why do you need a driver for a bus, but are quite happy with an autonomous lift ?

Loads of homeworkers relocating to the Highlands and Islands of Scotland

HIE seem to think it’s not as de rigeur as it could be:

In the UK around 3.5m people work from home. In Scotland, this is 9.4% of the workforce. This is the lowest percentage penetration in the UK which suggests there is scope for increased homeworking.

Interesting that it's the over 50s apparently moving to the Highlands. More and more services are being centralised, including maternity units which have access to consultants. This means that many many mums have to travel more then 100 miles to have their babies. Sometimes while in labour. There's only one, twisty, difficult road to the maternity unit in Inverness. Because of this, pregnant mums often have to travel to Inverness before the birth, leaving their little children at home.

As for internet and mobile phone provision....

howabout Sounds like your over-50 circle is an mc bubble and a specialised one at that - geoggraphical maybe ?
I don't know anyone who works remotely most of the time, except a handful of senior who log in after hours to monitor projects

There is a big difference between going down the pit
and having one of the wide range of traditional manual jobs that were not dangerous, but paid decent regular wages for those not academically inclined

A lot of people don't want / are not fitted for high tech jobs, remote working etc

Not all traditional wc aspire to be mc
e.g. My wc NE family & friends want "proper traditional jobs" to come back for themselves and their kids, not "poncy" ones and would never leave the NE

Public transport in the Highlands is also lamentably scarce. Delivery costs much more than the rest of the UK too. And some firms won't deliver to the Highlands and Islands full stop.

It's the divide again:
some of those in a high tech bubble have no idea how much of the population works - and wants to stay working

Massive changes are inevitable, because of automation and globalisation, but the speed of change determines how well society will cope

... and a lot of people who don't like or want these changes voted Brexit and Tory to return to more traditional ways

As someone who self identifies with OCD it has irked me that the Tories can't even stick to alphabetical order when it comes to shafting various communities in the UK.

Really 'farmers' come before 'fishermen'.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-51128709

...
Already there is disquiet from farmers and environmentalists alike that the government has not set in law its promise that UK food standards will not be lowered in any post-Brexit deal with the US.

Minette Batters from the NFU said: “This bill is one of the most significant pieces of legislation for farmers in England for over 70 years.

“However, farmers across the country will still want to see legislation underpinning government assurances that they won't allow imports of food produced to standards that would be illegal here.
...

farmers across the country will be disappointed then.

Already there is disquiet from farmers and environmentalists alike that the government has not set in law its promise that UK food standards will not be lowered in any post-Brexit deal with the US

Nah, it’ll all be fiiiiine. After all, Theresa Cruella de Vil Villiers has said the UK won’t drop its food standards.

Mind you, as Northern Ireland Secretary she also told everyone that the NI border wouldn’t be affected by leaving the EU.

What could possibly go wrong ...

Meanwhile, here is another example of a thing which is the fault of Remainers cruelly oppressing life’s Winners. Is there no limit to our nefarious creativity?

DGR exactly as you outline on autonomous vehicles - was Fleetstreetfox who I sometimes agree with and often don't. The newspaper was worrying about how the National Grid will cope if everything goes electric but she broadened the discussion somewhat.

I am as sceptical as you DGR but Glasgow and Edinburgh are both making it very difficult and expensive to drive in the City Centre and some Councils are phasing in banning cars driving around primary schools at pick up and drop off time. Given how many short journeys there are and how exponentially they have grown I do think that the right level of nudge could reverse behaviour.

Tam Dayell represented a mining constituency, having taught in the local school prior to becoming an MP. He was speaking from his dealings with literally thousands and thousands of mining parents. The other example I can think of locally is Prince Charles' Dumfries House project.

Interestingly low level of homeworking stats for Scotland. My DH works from home permanently but I am not sure he appears in the stats as officially he has an office. I have a completely different area of expertise but again pioneered homeworking 20 years ago in a one to one negotiation with my employer. It is now standard for everyone. We are both "professionals" but a great deal of telesales, marketing and support is homeworking now.

I agree with the pp about the woeful provision of Mat services in the Highlands. There are similar issues with education - again technology is going some way to address this. Orkney is regularly listed as a top place to raise families despite this. Two of my DDs' teachers have just semi-retired up North now that they are empty nesters. They are in their 50s. A decade ago they would have retired properly under the old teacher pension age 50 option. Now they are looking forward to a "3rd age" and the tiny Highland school they are going to will reap the benefit.

I am as sceptical as you DGR but Glasgow and Edinburgh are both making it very difficult and expensive to drive in the City Centre and some Councils are phasing in banning cars driving around primary schools at pick up and drop off time. Given how many short journeys there are and how exponentially they have grown I do think that the right level of nudge could reverse behaviour.

Whenever the subject is allowed into the wider reaches of mumsnet, there's a good metric to use to help gauge where the country is on the matter. And that's the number of posts from the OP before somebody wades it with their incredibly unique reasons why they could never live in a JohnnyCab type society. The lower the number, the less chance of it happening. (It's only a theory, but it has some validity).

However, as Arthur C. Clarke pointed out when asked what prompted new ways of thinking: old people die.

Speaking of city centres, Birmingham is causing a stir with proposals to block off the city centre to through traffic. I would be ambivalent about such an initiative, but as someone whose other half is wheelchair bound, all I took away from the 3 hour discussion on local radio was the fact that accessibility wasn't mentioned once.

Interestingly low level of homeworking stats for Scotland. My DH works from home permanently but I am not sure he appears in the stats as officially he has an office.

Stats are from the ONS Labour Survey, which looks at home working locations under different categories (HOME Whether mainly work from home (main job): own home, same grounds or building, different places with home as a base, separate from home).

BigChocFrenzy
I see you came back just before midnight.

My link was from CNBC

Yes, you did link to CNBC at 13.07 yesterday - but you also linked to Auto Express Magazine at 13.25 - which is why I referred to 'your link' - not sure why you disowned the link last night.

but they had a little dig over Brexit, as many foreign news organisations do

There is a link to the journalist's twitter account at the top of the CNBC article - he works for CNBC in London.Thirty seconds on LinkedIn reveals that he went to school in Lambeth - less than 3 years ago he was an intern at the Barking and Dagenham Post.

The CNBC article also links to Auto Express.

Auto Express went with the current statement, not with old plans from several years ago

The current 'statement' appears to have been a private, 'off the cuff remark' -('quick chat' to quote the editor). We don't know what question was asked or what else was said by Elon Musk.

That's a lot more recent than the June 2014 article saying Britain would only be the choice for the 2nd factory. Plans and priorities have probably changed in those 4.5 years.

And yet, Auto Express link to their 2014 article as their main evidence that Elon Musk was going to build a factory in the UK. What else have you got? There is mention of the UK as a 'possible' location for an R&D centre in 2016 - but not a factory.

Auto Express (the editor) also broke the bad news on twitter (Nov 2019) - the 3rd reply down (and copying in Elon Musk) says:

"10 Europeans put forward official offers to musk.The UK wasn’t one of them."

He might be referring to this wiki page;
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Gigafactory_Europe

"More than ten European countries had campaigned to have the factory located within their jurisdictions,"

France, the Netherlands, Czech Republic, Germany, Poland and Hungary, Portugal, Spain, Finland, Lithuania, Estonia...

Oh wait, is someone missing? The country that narrowly lost out to Germany because of Brexit??

James Moore of the Independent ran with;
"Tesla's sudden back out tells you what Brexit will do to Britain."

What sudden back out from the UK?

"2015 Tesla in talks with Germany over possible battery factory."

"Tesla Motors Inc. is in discussions with the German government over the prospect of building a battery factory in the country, Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel said Tuesday."

"Gabriel didn’t provide details about the proposed plant or timing of a decision."

^“We’re in talks” with the Tesla CEO about a possible plant, Gabriel said. “I assume he will want public funds.”"

www.renewableenergyworld.com/2015/11/17/tesla-in-talks-with-germany-over-possible-battery-factory/#gref

Is it just me, or has Clavinova reduced Brexit to a single issue ?

Clavinova's cut and pastes - yawn.

Clavinova's cut and pastes - yawn.
No, that was probably BigChocFrenzy replying to me just before midnight.

I've looked at electric vehicles
but as I regularly drive in very rural areas that have no mobile phone coverage at all
and my destinations do not have charging points
I'll stick to internal combustion where I decide how much fuel to put in it (Tesla control how much range cars have, not the "owners")

and remote working is pointless for anything that involves actually getting feedback from people in their body language and tone

and remote working is pointless for anything that involves actually getting feedback from people in their body language and tone

A huge amount of body language is actually invisible and attitude driven. It therefore does largely transmit down phone lines ime.

Written tone is harder to judge but I can usually spot namechangers very quickly just from their style of writing so perhaps not that different.

Do you have a link Continuity? I do use the stats but not sure which of the many similar reports I want?

clavinova Why not believe the most recent statements - Nov 2019 - from the man himself ?
If he makes a new statement saying it wasn't Brexit after all, I'd accept that

Why do you think Musk is lying ?

"but they had a little dig over Brexit, as many foreign news organisations do"

Regardless of where the journos come from, the organisation sets the ethos
Most articles mentioning Brexit in the foreign press are critical or mocking

"Auto Express link to their 2014 article as their main evidence that Elon Musk was going to build a factory in the UK"

No, Musk says in Nov 2019 that Brexit ruled out the UK

• if he hadn't planned a factory, then ntbo, there would be nothing to rule out

In Germany, people said Brexit left the field wide open for us
Many German firms have removed British suppliers from consideration, even longstanding ones
Is it so unbelievable that a US business would also exclude Britain ?

Do you also think the PSA chief was lying the other day when he said Vauxhall would be closed down if Brexit makes it unprofitable ?

ListeningQuietly as a Tesla owner/driver of now 3 different models living rurally, I am intrigued by your comment "Tesla control how much range cars have, not the "owners"". Are you suggesting that the car's range is not as shown when you get in to said vehicle, but externally manipulated by Tesla? That is not my experience. The range capability is as shown on the vehicle dashboard when I drive. The Tesla charging network is also much more reliable and quicker than any of the many other options. Generally electric car charging infrastructure is yet another UK Gov't fail.

Does WFH statistics also include those self-employed at home, or just employees?

Someone with their own project or chunk of work to do, could work from home - if their employer trusts them sufficiently

Skype / Video conferencing could be used more to cut down driving & flying - costs are finally forcing most firms to do this when possible.
It is fine for formal presentations when not much interaction is required

There are still a lot of areas when WFH doesn't work as well, though, where a lot of interaction is required.
Working in R&D, all firms I know have found that brainstorming needs everyone present
Video presence doesn't cut it
Also not for a work meeting to develop a project

Almost noone at my v large tech firm does the kind of work possible with WFH; a handful do a few quick checks from home

Electric cars are regarded as the future in Germany, with a few hedging their bets with fuel cells.

Some saying all new cars will be electric by 2030 .... which imo is seriously over-egging it

There is far more infrastructure, plug in stations etc here over the last 3-4 years, but I'd say 20 years is more realistic for all new cars in Germany

Unless of course some climate change events push legislation to move much more quickly

Polyanna
Are you suggesting that the car's range is not as shown when you get in to said vehicle, but externally manipulated by Tesla?
Yup.
Tesla's software determines how much your battery can charge.
When there were storm warnings in the US they released a patch to increase range for cheaper models
www.digitaljournal.com/tech-and-science/technology/tesla-s-software-update-for-batteries-may-have-reduced-range/article/559204
You may have bought the car, but the Tesla Factory control it.

PS in my work I encourage communities to install electric charging points everywhere they can
as they drive business to rural communities