snowychap

46 minutes ago, colhint said:

the UK deal will increase trade with us by about £15

Maybe the headline claim doesn't stand up to proper scrutiny.

Quote

Ms Truss has also claimed a boost to trade with Japan worth £15.7bn over the next 15 years – but that is in comparison with no deal, not with the EU deal.

The government then acknowledged that 83 per cent of those gains would go to Japanese exporters, with only 17 per cent to the UK’s.

...

Professor Winters said that “to all intents and purposes in terms of tariffs, there is almost no difference between the UK-Japan and EU-Japan free trade agreements”.

Link

2 hours ago, limpid said:

How would employers protect their staff who cannot take the vaccine?

As the employer (in the UK/EU) does not have the right to ask whether someone hasn't had the vaccine for medical reasons, their only option is to ask for proof of vaccination (or proof of exemption) for all staff. Failing to do this opens the possibility that they get sued in future for failing to protect all of their staff. If they could ask, then those staff could be provided additional protective accommodations.

As current government advice is completely clear that there is no good reason (other than medical) to not be vaccinated I don't think that employers realistically have any choice and I'm surprised this isn't much more widespread. I think that failure to prove vaccination status could be considered gross negligence as it endangers others in the workplace.

IANAL (obvs)

I think there are, at least, a couple of things, here:

It's not about asking in order to make accommodations for those who are medically unable to get the vaccine, it's about asking in order to dispense with the services of those who are unvaccinated. If it was just about asking in order to accommodate everyone currently employed (as we're potentially talking about dismissing people for being unvaccinated) then that might be a different argument.

On the negligence angle, I'd have thought that it's about the assessment of the level of risk to others, i.e. what level of 'endangerment' there is and how serious the potential effects might be. If the vaccines prevented catching the virus and the transmission of it (rather than mostly reducing the likelihood of developing a serious condition oneself as well as helping to reduce transmission - by an uncertain amount) then I think there would be a stronger case for talking about gross negligence but this isn't the case, is it? Also, one needs to factor in the demographic of the average workforce and thus the inherently lower risk profile, no?

IANAL (obvs, too)

1 hour ago, fruitvilla said:

We're in the strange position here, where if I go to my local restaurant, I have to show proof of my double vaxx. Teachers do not have to get vaccinated to teach in a classroom and the union currently is backing them.

I'm not sure the silly situation of having to show 'proof' of vaccination status to eat in your local restaurant is the ideal benchmark against which to measure other things.

Liz Truss new Foreign Secretary.

10 hours ago, stuart_75 said:

I just replied, "it's a good idea to have it, the experts and evidence says so"

Do they?

On 24/08/2021 at 16:47, HanoiVillan said:

I don't know, maybe I just live a charmed life or something, but I haven't really seen any evidence of these shortages yet.

Loads of empty shelves in the Morrisons/Asda/Tesco shops in Malvern/Worcester/Bromsgrove over the past couple of weeks.

4 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

So per Starmer's LBC phone in, they favour an approach where you won't be able to go to eg a football match unless you are both double-vaccinated *and* have got a negative test. How long do they envisage this lasting for? Genuinely quite concerned about this becoming a 'new normal'.

Yes, very worrying stuff.

They'll be wheeling out David Blunkett and Vernon Coaker next to tell us how we should have had ID cards all along.

Dieter Brummer, 45 - ex Home and Away actor.

3 hours ago, Mark Albrighton said:

US stand up Jackie Mason, gone at 93.

That might be the first person ever to go from one of my lists - apart from Bruce Forsyth, perhaps (though I may have dropped him for 2017).

2 hours ago, Straggler said:

Maybe he spent 10 minutes in the toilet with someone else...?

25 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

The email scandal deserves more scrutiny than it's getting. His devices should be seized and examined for a criminal investigation into corruption.

See Chris Cook v Gove and Cummings 2011.

Link

Quote

If you publish a story implying that a cabinet minister committed a criminal offence, you should expect some serious blow-back,” my editor drily told me. But I didn’t. Not really. I also didn’t expect a year of lawfare. I didn’t foresee thousands of civil service hours spent on my articles. I didn’t imagine £12,000 of public money would be spent on barristers. I didn’t expect the vitriol.

In short, I didn’t expect Dominic Cummings, now the man behind Boris Johnson’s premiership.

....

It all began when I was education correspondent at the Financial Times. I was handed a trove of documents by a source, including print-outs of emails sent by Cummings and Gove, then education secretary. These were government messages – concerning official business – but were sent using a network of private email accounts. In other words, it was a back-channel system of communications, kept secret from untrusted officials.

...

I had a hunch: I suspected that if I requested an email sent privately by Gove under the Freedom of Information Act, a transparency law, they would deny it existed. The act can – subject to some safeguards – compel the disclosure of government business, and concealing information requested is a crime. But since I had a copy, I could prove they’d broken the law.

It all went to plan. I published my story on the front page of the FT in September 2011. And after a year of legal wrangling, in which they mounted increasingly baffling arguments disputing whether emails sent by ministers to civil servants were really government business, they conceded I was right. They had broken the law. But there was no penalty – either legal or political.

... more

4 hours ago, Cosmik Debris said:

shows what a terrible state the CPS ... [is in]

How do you figure that?

Can the Attorney General ask for a sentence to be reviewed if she thinks it's too high?

Will the current government (seek to) introduce a law to reduce the criminal penalty for (murder or) manslaughter if committed in similar circumstances by police officers in the future?

Obon?

Only one letter away from lob on, which is probably what'Nick' for when listening to that song.

On 15/06/2021 at 19:52, PaulC said:

Only just got around to watching the 90s series 'Our friends in the North' on Britbox. Absolutely brilliant. Great acting!

It is utterly superb.

Peter Vaughan was brilliant in it.

Edit: Strong, McKee, Craig, Ecclestone, &c. obviously terrific.

Thread:

2 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

Trying to do some basic back garden tidying up today

10 minutes ago, Genie said:

People expect it now, it will surprise nobody.

People won’t turn on Boris because for a lot of them it’s admitting Brexit was a bad idea / Boris was lying all along. 

It is much, much deeper than that.

55 minutes ago, blandy said:

He did mention it last year, though today he claims he didn’t. Which pretty much is yet another indication that he’s an untrustworthy scrote. He thinks he’s Machiavelli, but he’s a second rate numpty with a blog and Laura K’s phone number.

Except, he isn't. For all the 'Barnard Castle' shit, he has been much more important than 'second rate numpty'.

3 hours ago, Davkaus said:

it's firstly only for his own benefit

Absolutely. Johnson and him, both. Peas. Pod.

6 hours ago, StefanAVFC said:

'

The issue with Cummings saying it, is that he, himself, always appears to be very happy with chaos as it brings about opportunities for him, too.

For Johnson it may be adoration and adulation; for Cummings it may be other things (and there might be an argument - a very sketchy one - that it's just/mainly for improvement [of systems, processes, &c.]). Either way, neither of them could give two shits about any suffering that emanates from that chaos (unless they are the ones to suffer).