Westminstenders: Tachographs and Empty Shelves

[pointythings]

So Grant Shapps' solution to the shortage of lorry drivers is to allow them to drive longer hours.

Leading to more accidents and deaths on the UK's roads. But Brexit is Job Done and all is well - isn't it?

The serial ejaculator ("Job done!" 💦🍆) is impervious to factual discussion, all they're doing is making the thread kind of sticky 🤮

Bears many similarities to BJ

Well, I really wish that the UK's trade needs were being respresented by those experienced and knowledable EU diplomatic and trade negotiators even if paying for their children's school fees rather than Liz Truss going by the fabulous 'deals' that she's negotiated so far. Can only imagine what it'd be like when the US finally turns its attention to a trade deal with the UK

Anyhow, good to know what we can look forward to as the government takes more control of the NHS... When the NHS had to go from paying 70p for a single pack of 10mg tablets in April 2008 to £88 by March 2016 thanks to the involvement of US drug companies.

@Peregrina

mathanxiety, FrankieStein - logical arguments don't cut it with the TrueBelieving Brexiters.

Just maybe, for example, if we'd been fully committed to the EU our one time pragmatism might have stopped the shuffling round between buildings, but instead we were more concerned about getting special deals for ourselves. Once we had done that the ERG types were still not happy. As they are still not happy - those that haven't gone strangely quiet, it's all the EU's fault.

No chance IMO. Macron, or indeed any other French President would veto any move to relocate the only EU institution on French soil. No doubt whatsover.

www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/faq/20/why-was-strasbourg-designated-the-official-seat-of-the-european-parliament

History of the current arrangement. It would be very expensive and would be environmentally irresponsible to build new.

When the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was set up a few years after WWII, in 1952, establishing joint management of the steel and coal reserves of six countries, including Germany and France, its institutions were located in Luxembourg. The Council of Europe (an intergovernmental body made up of 47 countries championing human rights and culture was also set up in the immediate post-WW2 period), was already based in Strasbourg and it offered its plenary chamber for meetings of the ECSC's "Common Assembly", which was to develop into the European Parliament. Strasbourg gradually became the main home of plenary sessions of the Parliament, though additional sessions were also held in Luxembourg in the 1960s and 1970s.

After the creation of the European Economic Community in 1958, much of the work done by the European Commission and the Council of Ministers came to be concentrated in Brussels. Since Parliament's work involves closely monitoring and interacting with both these institutions, over time Members decided to organise more of their work in Brussels. By the early nineties, the present arrangement was more or less in place, with committees and political groups meeting in Brussels and the main plenary sessions taking place in Strasbourg. A major part of Parliament's staff is based in Luxembourg.

I was watching BJ doing his “levelling up” thing while on the bike in the gym (me on bike obv) yesterday (the phrase is genius, as usual, someone must have said “how can we express trickle down economics differently as it’s got such a bad rep”). The problem is the Conservative propensity for wanting two diametrically opposed things at the same time - for example, with regard to education, they simultaneously want obedience and uniformity alongside independence of thought.
Anyway, you can either have a low cost, lowish tax economy where you import (or outsource) cheap labour, and goods and services are inexpensive, or you have a high tax, high cost economy where you invest a great deal in training and properly paying your workforce, and goods and services are relatively expensive, but you really can’t have both, especially if you want to retain free healthcare and education.
Actually membership of the EU was probably the nearest we will ever get to solving the problem, because free movement at least gave us some flexibility as far as workforce was concerned. A growing economy meant that even if immigrant wages impacted on native wages, it was by very little and only in certain very poorly paid sectors. But if we really want to train and pay our homegrown workforce properly, it’s going to cost us, and I can’t see that happening.

Yes so did i and reports made later.

So, more regional representation (i.e. Mayors) will get a new local by-pass but no new monies announced and wealthier areas will not lose out.

It doesn't add up but then when did any bojo policy make sense?

I wonder how many more stories the BBC will be forced to run that will remind folk daily what being out of the EU means ...

www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-57665765

The EU vaccine 'passport' and what it means for travel

@DGRossetti

I wonder how many more stories the BBC will be forced to run that will remind folk daily what being out of the EU means ...

www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-57665765

The EU vaccine 'passport' and what it means for travel

Bad form to quote oneself, but I wonder how Irish nationals who may have received the UK jab(s) fare ?

When you talk about a high tax, high cost economy born you could be talking about Canada. I was shocked when I first arrived on these shored (20+ years ago) to hear my English cousin bitterly complaining about his 22% tax bracket given that my dear BiL was in a 60% tax bracket back home.

Of course there is poverty with high prices in Canada (food especially), but on average people are paid high wages. Nurses, teachers, fire fighters earn $70-90K+ and live good lives. In contrast, prices are low in the UK. Or were low in the UK but now seems that prices and inflation are beginning to creep up. Shame that wages won't be able to / have not keep pace.

Meanwhile, GB News viewing numbers recently took a hit with a viewer boycott i.e. none because locals viewers were so outraged that one of its presenters 'took the knee' in solidarity with recent events but Brexit had absolutely nothing to do with racist attitudes to immigrants and we can all be reassured that the committee on standards in public life will hold our politicians especially Johnson to the highest level with its newest member.

The problem is the Conservative propensity for wanting two diametrically opposed things at the same time - for example, with regard to education, they simultaneously want obedience and uniformity alongside independence of thought.

So they solve this quite nicely by having two education systems - the Public schools where, predominantly still, boys are trained to have independence of thought and still have rich curricula including the arts and sport, and the dumbed down fronted adverbial Gradgrind curriculum for the plebs.

One potential problem is that the top Independent schools are now too pricey for middle class people. Despite what you would think reading MN education forums, where there are good comprehensives, there is no real appetite for bringing back the Grammar School system, which was the middle class option in the 1950s.

It doesn't add up but then when did any bojo policy make sense?

David Allen Green has some pithy comments on this.
As he points out

Sorry pressed enter too soon.

As DAG points out "There are prisoners in Belmarsh with shorter sentences."

"The speech is gibberish, for sentence-after-sentence and paragraph-after-paragraph."

Johnson could craft a proper sentence if he chose, but this twaddle is good enough for the plebs.

Of course there is poverty with high prices in Canada (food especially)

Food in this country is ridiculously cheap. I seem to pay similar prices for many food items as I did 20-25 years ago. I’m surprised that fresh food is characterised as expensive. What many are poor in (and women especially) is time to prep and cook the fresh food. Some don’t have proper storage and cooking facilities either, or haven’t been taught how to cook. (I remember covering Food Tech lessons before the days of cover supervisors. Lessons were always Design a Pizza, and didn’t include any discussion of actual cooking, though TBF some actual cookery was done in normal lessons.)
There’s another contradiction in food and agriculture policy. Agricultural systems that protect and enhance the environment (which this government says it wants) don’t produce cheap food. It seems that traditional mixed small farms, growing some crops but also grazing cattle and sheep are best for the environment in this country, and result in high quality produce. But they’re expensive to run, so we would also need to import vast quantities of cheap food from elsewhere, undercutting the local farmers. Result: niche, expensive, high-quality food for the well off, poor quality food produced to lower standards for the rest. Hooray (again) for Brexit.

OK, now the Express is really taking the piss...

The Express really has "jumped the shark" even for it if it is blaming the EU for the red tape to allow workers to come into the UK

I thought we were now in charge of our own immigration rules? After all, isn't it Job Done ? as our serial ejaculator keeps telling us

That headline is a cunning and duplicitous squirrel of a rather larger kind ... 'look over there! Nasty EU! Stopping us from using our as pointed out by numerous posters excellent new points based immigration system to let in the seasonal workers that british farmers have relied on for decades!!'

The Express is oh so helpfully using misdirection to convince the great British public to look the other way so we won't notice our current gov't wilful and deliberate incompetence in placing their mythical only-in-relation-to-the-EU sovereignty above people's lives and livelihoods and it's increasingly blatant chumocracy.

Whilst hundreds of millions of ££ contracts are handed out to Tory friends and families, Sunak begins to raise the spectre of austerity again because of "increasing gov't debt". Yes, he's quite right that gov't borrowing is at an all time high. Yet, it's plus ca change in that somehow there's always been sufficient tax payer's ££ for the causes near and dear to the Tory heart and everyone else's gets verbiage.

Johnson is our very own Trump in that there is nothing he could that would ever dissuade his voting loving public in believing he walks on water. I despair. I really do.

Andrea Jenkyns is blaming the shortage of HGV drivers on cancellations of thousands of driving tests due to Covid, no mentioning of our fair immigration process

Yes, funny how there's no shortage of drivers on the continent...

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You couldn't make it up.....

https://news.sky.com/story/amp/health-secretary-sajid-javid-tests-positive-for-coronavirus-and-has-mild-symptoms-12357736

And without prejudging the cause of this accident, the proposed relaxation of the HGV driver hours limits will mean that the probability of incidents such as this will increase And yes, I do blame Brexit and those who voted for Brexit for the increased risk on our roads

And no, I don't believe that the relaxation in the driver hour limits will be temporary - not with this government

Durham A1 crash: Three killed in six-vehicle collision https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-57860919

www.theguardian.com/media/2021/jul/17/gb-news-turns-to-nigel-farage-as-its-saviour-after-ratings-freefall

another reason not to watch GB news...

@GaspodeWonderCat

www.theguardian.com/media/2021/jul/17/gb-news-turns-to-nigel-farage-as-its-saviour-after-ratings-freefall

another reason not to watch GB news...

Wetherspoons TV or GBeeBies - either cap fits.

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