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Re: Politics

Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2017 11:31 am
by J.R.
rockfreak wrote: Wed Apr 12, 2017 8:23 pm More on Steve Hilton this week. His missus is the well-heeled Rachel Whetstone who is a vice president at Uber. Uber have been getting all sorts of bad publicity recently and Hilto does seem to have a habit of getting involved with dodgy people of one sort or another. Whatever benefits he was charged with spreading around at the CH leaving service he doesn't seem to have, according to his means, spread them back to society in general. Has he ever had a job that the rest of us would describe as work? I wonder what his next move will be.

PR for Vladimir Putin perhaps.

I thought that was Assad''s job !
:oops:

Re: Politics

Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2017 5:48 pm
by rockfreak
Easter Naus-ratings are topped by Theresa May who is quoted in today's Guardian as saying how her Christian religion inspires her. Perhaps particularly that bit in the Bible that says : "To him that hath, more shall be given, but to to him that hath little, that which he hath shall be taken away".

Re: Politics

Posted: Fri Apr 21, 2017 12:46 pm
by sejintenej
I wrote the following in 2005 and how wrong I turned out to be.
sejintenej wrote: Sun Oct 26, 2014 5:45 pm
Yes, teachers do long hours but at least they can go home every night and they know from one day to the next what to expect.
My next door neighbour, in his forties, used to work in the City but went back, got his exams and is now a teacher in a Comp or Secondary (or whatever the current word is) school. He describes teaching as a doddle with little work compared to his previous job, shorter hours, longer holidays and says that teachers' complaints about overwork are rubbish - lazy would be my word.

Re: Politics

Posted: Fri Apr 21, 2017 7:34 pm
by LongGone
sejintenej wrote: Fri Apr 21, 2017 12:46 pm I wrote the following in 2005 and how wrong I turned out to be.
sejintenej wrote: Sun Oct 26, 2014 5:45 pm
Yes, teachers do long hours but at least they can go home every night and they know from one day to the next what to expect.
My next door neighbour, in his forties, used to work in the City but went back, got his exams and is now a teacher in a Comp or Secondary (or whatever the current word is) school. He describes teaching as a doddle with little work compared to his previous job, shorter hours, longer holidays and says that teachers' complaints about overwork are rubbish - lazy would be my word.
Then I fear he is probably not a very good teacher. With 50 years experience I have found that the great teachers are generally overworked and the slackers really don't care for their students or their job.

Re: Politics

Posted: Fri Apr 21, 2017 7:52 pm
by Katharine
LongGone, I'd agree with that comment about teaching!

Re: Politics

Posted: Fri Apr 21, 2017 9:45 pm
by rockfreak
Right on cue with my poem Vitae LamBrexit a German EU negotiator complains that Britain seems to be treating these negotiations as a game. Well of course. Look who's in charge. Bumbling Bozza the toast of the Bullingdon. It's all down to plucky Brits dodging bouncers hurled down by dastardly foreigners. Eighty years ago George Orwell observed that this country was like a decrepit old family with the wrong people in charge. I don't think anything's changed. Theresa May (the Maybot spouting meaningless platitudes), Bozza, Liam Fox (whom we thought had retired in disgrace after the Adam Werrity affair), Dodgy Dave Cameron and his dodgy father. I don't see how the EU has caused any of this. They're our people. Oh yes, and Steve "Blue Skies" Hilton.

Re: Politics

Posted: Sat Apr 22, 2017 8:24 pm
by sejintenej
LongGone wrote: Fri Apr 21, 2017 7:34 pm
Then I fear he is probably not a very good teacher. With 50 years experience I have found that the great teachers are generally overworked and the slackers really don't care for their students or their job.
Remember please, Mike, that he was COMPARING different jobs, different industries, different norms.

In the City Isometimes had to work 9am to 11pmfor weeks on end and even ghosted. That was the commitment which allowed industry to continue. By contrast teachers should not be allowing pupils to leave school with GCSEs when they cannot do basic addition and subtraction

Re: Politics

Posted: Sat Apr 22, 2017 10:47 pm
by rockfreak
What a strange idea of Banker Brown's that the City is the saviour of British industry. Immediately after WW2 Churchill fretted about "proud finance", the way the City of London coralled so much of its wealth into its own coffers rather than bankrolling other more kosher and useful sectors of the economy. After Nigel Lawson deregulated the City in 1986 things got a whole lot worse. Hedge funds have a limited life; they tend to speculate and burn themselves out after a few years. Private equity has been described as being "the next big scandal that needs exposing after tax havens", indeed a few years ago it was revealed that whenever private equity (and its tax haven bosses) take over a company there are an average of 17% redundancies, although I don't remember what the figures were for the eventual liquidation of these companies after they'd been asset stripped. And investment bankers are still being fined huge sums of money to this day as their devious antics continue to be revealed.
Whatever you may say about the teaching profession and British industry I don't recall them collapsing our economy in 2007.

Re: Politics

Posted: Tue May 02, 2017 7:52 pm
by rockfreak
So the Maybot is still on the TV news every night spouting strong and stable platitudes. Getting on for a year after the referendum and she and the Three Musketeers still haven't got down to serious negotiation with the EU. I'm currently sticking my neck out by questioning whether Brexit is actually going to happen. Obviously by saying that I realise that I shall in due course look either like the Oracle at Delphi or a complete tit. But somehow I don't think entirely the latter. It's not in our hands. Companies may start defecting to the EU in droves in order to keep the advantages of free access (banks and financial firms are already starting to make plans because they need to do so in advance), and then there's the investors and speculators. As Thatcher observed, you can't buck the market. We saw what happened when Soros and co attacked the pound in 1992. No government can just sit there and ignore their currency being devalued and raging inflation setting in. Even CH could end up on a three-day week.

Re: Politics

Posted: Tue May 02, 2017 8:34 pm
by sejintenej
rockfreak wrote: Sat Apr 22, 2017 10:47 pm What a strange idea of Banker Brown's that the City is the saviour of British industry. Immediately after WW2 Churchill fretted about "proud finance", the way the City of London coralled so much of its wealth into its own coffers rather than bankrolling other more kosher and useful sectors of the economy.
What a load of absolute codswallop. The ONE SQUARE MILE was responsible for exports equal to about 30% of the entire nation's trade deficit. Without the City's contribution the country would have been in sh1t. The city financed industry and trade and occasionally made losses - the first big failure I was involved in was Rolls Royce; are you saying that we should not have financed one third of all the aircraft engines produced in the western world?
rockfreak wrote: Sat Apr 22, 2017 10:47 pm After Nigel Lawson deregulated the City in 1986 things got a whole lot worse. Hedge funds have a limited life; they tend to speculate and burn themselves out after a few years. Private equity has been described as being "the next big scandal that needs exposing after tax havens", indeed a few years ago it was revealed that whenever which ensued.private equity (and its tax haven bosses) take over a company there are an average of 17% redundancies, although I don't remember what the figures were for the eventual liquidation of these companies after they'd been asset stripped. And investment bankers are still being fined huge sums of money to this day as their devious antics continue to be revealed.
Whatever you may say about the teaching profession and British industry I don't recall them collapsing our economy in 2007.
If your refetrence to 2007 is to Northern Rock then the blame falls totally on the cabinet at that time; if they had allowed the B of E to act then there would not have been the world wide panic which ensued.

Interesting note about the Brexit vote. There was a Labour MP on LBC pointing out that people were worried about the influx of Eastern Europeans etc and he claimed that it was nonsense. He pointed out correctly that people from the EU are allowed into Britain ONLY if they hold EU nations passports (he didn't mention them but EU ID cards are also allowed). He then went on to state that Germany only gives ID or passports to refugees after they have been in the county for eight years and that for France it is seven years. "Therefore the UK has no reason to worry."
He did not admit that some eastern EU countries give their passports to refugees as they crossed the border into those countries. Ergo politicians will tell you a part of the story and omit the truth.

Re: Politics

Posted: Sat May 06, 2017 4:40 pm
by rockfreak
Freaky gets a letter in today's FT - "Challenge politicians who fog employment figures" (May 6, P10). About how the Tories have deviously changed the system of measuring the figures in recent years.
So the nation is electing local councils on the basis of their own views of Brexit and the idiot grandstanding of the Maybot. Let's hope that these meatheads are rewarded with Tory councils that close down their local libraries, ignore the old and bedridden and fail to fill in even more potholes. But if there's any extra central government grant going you can bet your life it will go to Tory councils.

Re: Politics

Posted: Sat May 06, 2017 5:17 pm
by Katharine
I'd love to know how many Councils are like ours, Gwynedd, not a single Tory amongst the 75 of them! There were more than 20 seats uncontested which is a bit disappointing for democracy.

Re: Politics

Posted: Sun May 07, 2017 4:50 pm
by michael scuffil
rockfreak wrote: Tue May 02, 2017 7:52 pm So the Maybot is still on the TV news every night spouting strong and stable platitudes. Getting on for a year after the referendum and she and the Three Musketeers still haven't got down to serious negotiation with the EU. I'm currently sticking my neck out by questioning whether Brexit is actually going to happen. Obviously by saying that I realise that I shall in due course look either like the Oracle at Delphi or a complete tit. But somehow I don't think entirely the latter. It's not in our hands. Companies may start defecting to the EU in droves in order to keep the advantages of free access (banks and financial firms are already starting to make plans because they need to do so in advance), and then there's the investors and speculators. As Thatcher observed, you can't buck the market. We saw what happened when Soros and co attacked the pound in 1992. No government can just sit there and ignore their currency being devalued and raging inflation setting in. Even CH could end up on a three-day week.
Why does anyone think this election is being held? Certainly not to strengthen May's hand in Europe -- they negotiate with governments, not with 'mandates'. The UK already has a government, it doesn't need another one for EU negotiation purposes. May wants an election for two reasons: (1) to bury UKIP (mission accomplished) (2) to marginalize her ultra-Brexiteers. She has John Major's 1990s nightmare in mind. He had to get his Maastricht deal through with a majority of 17. It was a hugely favourable deal, but he still found it difficult. May has a majority of 12: she will have to accept a much worse deal from the Brexiteers' point of view. Answer: hold an election, get majority of 100 or so, raise two fingers to the Brexiteers. And just possibly go on TV in two years' time, put on most solemn suit and most solemn voice, and say 'Sorry folks, I've done my best, but it just ain't worth it.' She's (very wisely) ruled out a second referendum (just in case the crowd shouts 'Barabbas!' again), and parliament will support her by about 600 votes to 50.

Re: Politics

Posted: Sun May 07, 2017 7:33 pm
by rockfreak
One of our problems over here Michael, which you may already have deciphered, is that if we flounce out of the EU and the single market, customs union, financial passport without an interim EU deal, we shall then be thrown onto WTO rules. This means, from what I've read that, until we can negotiate new deals with the EU and other territories (which could take years), we shall have tariffs ranging from 10% to 30% levied on all export and import comings and goings. It goes without saying that this will bring our economy down around our ears overnight. Since the EU is part of the WTO (the World Trade Organisation is merely composed of the major trading blocs of the world, of which the EU is biggest), the EU will still be in a position to put the arm on us. A bit sobering. Unfortunately these drawbacks haven't been spelled out to the electorate because the Remainers have got fed up with being tagged Remoaners by an overwhelmingly hysterical rightwing and Europhobic press.

Re: Politics

Posted: Sun May 07, 2017 10:53 pm
by jhopgood
Currently reading

Brexit: What the Hell Happens Now?: Everything You Need to Know about Britain's Divorce from Europe
Ian Dunt

Which so far has set out some of the problems of WTO etc