darrenm

Meanwhile, a Stalinist purge has commenced. The hard left must be in charge.

Twatwell

1 hour ago, bickster said:

I've been to the supermarket, a petrol station and a garden centre. Mask wearing was still about 80%+ I was quite surprised at how many were

A few weeks back my local Morrisons was almost 100% mask free.

Now it's roughly 80-85% of people wearing masks.

On 08/09/2021 at 21:37, Davkaus said:

I did the same. My employer told me to come in twice a week, I said "lol, no".

I've been doing my job for 18 months fully from home. Productivity is up. Profits are at a record high. Why the **** would I go back to a daily commute that costs me 40 hours and a couple of hundred quid a month? I've since quit, and they rolled it back after another 15 or so people in my department did the same.

This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for a large portion of workers to establish better flexibility around work, and we shouldn't give it up without a fight.

It's not perfect for everyone, and I know some individuals either want a hybrid scheme or just don't have the home setup so would rather work from the office, but companies that insist on office working when remote is perfectly possible are going to lose staff and find it much harder to attract recruits. 

My part of the industry (cloud Ops) is very different now. It was already starting to go WFH just before the pandemic and when it started it tipped it over the edge. The company I was with at the time just said we'll probably close all the regional offices, is everyone ok with that? So they did. Everyone who wasn't already at the head office moved to WFH contract. It suits everyone all round, the business moves the costs of utilities onto the employee who doesn't have to pay to commute. I've since moved company and there was never any question that it would be anything but WFH. With the industry so desperate for skilled personnel now, companies who don't let people work when and where they like should know they're going to struggle.

5 hours ago, AJ said:

Also, Coming to America.

Also, Morpheus in The Matrix

Mandy Patinkin as Inigo Montoya in the Princess Bride

Mandy Patinkin as Saul Berenson in Homeland

1 hour ago, Genie said:

or I’m being far too naive!

I'm afraid so

20 hours ago, BOF said:

I've heard this before and it's what put it on my to do list in the first place. I have this prejudice about spin-offs, by default, being worse than what they spun off from, and that's probably mostly true. But it does seem BCS is an exception.

BCS is definitely better. Just make sure you give it the same attention you gave Breaking Bad to appreciate the perfect storyline, the beautiful shots and the incredible acting.

2 hours ago, bickster said:

Meanwhile in Bongo's Bingoland The Canary as usual was singing the wrong f***ing song three days ago (and yes three days ago, this was THE topic of conversation)

Quote

Labour’s treatment of the PSC sums up the shift under Keir Starmer

 

Don't know why you even pay the Canary any attention whatsoever. I'd just ignore it.

I do find it very strange how both major parties are working really hard to alienate their core vote.

1 hour ago, Chindie said:

Yep. A kitchen that cost more than my house.

I'd love to know the full story there. 35, starts his own business 10yrs earlier providing financial services to the redevelopment industry in Exeter, can afford to build 3 houses at the same time, is totally unbothered when the budget balloons over 3 times the initial costs, including said ludicrous kitchen, and had basically nothing to do with the build except pay the bills. And has a young family and a hobby garage worth the better part of £5m at a guess. Claims not to have worked with mommy and daddys money either.

There's more to that than he's said.

Financial services is a licence to print money to be fair

20 hours ago, rjw63 said:

Started on Outlander.

It'll keep me interested as long as the female lead carries on as she's started, the dirty vixen

 

Mostly

20 minutes ago, blandy said:

Sorry to quote this again, but another thought has occurred. It's this: basically if you ask most people what they want from Government it's kind of "I want the potholes filled in, I want the trains and buses to run on time, I want hospitals and schools to work, I want the bins emptied, I want the local park to be free of litter and druggies, I want the police and fire service to be effective and I want big business to pay its fair share of taxes..." and so on. None of that is actually radical at all. People want stuff to work.

Of course you could say stuff in in such a mess that things working would be a radical change, but by and large "radical" is a misused word in politics. In a small number of cases it's kind of valid, but "we need to completely dismantle the system and fundamentally recreate the way we do stuff" is not in my perception what people mostly want or will vote for. This comment isn't about my personal view on whether we should, but on my perception of what the general populace will accept. I think the use of the term "radical" by politicians and commentators is a massive turn off for voters, generally.

Yeah interesting thoughts. I'm not sure I agree that most people would say that. Most people I know would say we need to do whatever it takes to stop the climate crisis. They would say we need to reduce homelessness. They'd say food bank use is horrific and something should be done.

Perhaps if you show these people what's actually required to sort those things, they might decide it needs too many 'radical' changes. Like to address the climate emergency, we need to dramatically alter our consumerist lifestyles. Perhaps the problem is, nobody with a large enough platform is being honest enough to give it to people straight.

Personally, I think the scale of the problems that have been allowed to fester are so great that only doing things what people would see as radical is enough. e.g. perfect example a few pages back; we need to plant 2 billions trees over 20 years. 'can't be done!', 'scoff', 'where are we going to find people to do it?'. People seem to have the best intentions about what we should fix but the baulk at the requirements.

8 hours ago, a m ole said:

I think that was probably true in the past, I don’t think leaflets make the slightest bit of difference anymore. I’d advise members to stop bothering.

I'm inclined to agree. Even more so with canvassing. But I remember @chrisp65 (sample of one I know) saying that he felt very unloved by Labour when they didn't even drop a leaflet through the door. And that if they couldn't even be bothered to drop a leaflet, why should he vote for them?

And if this is correct that leafleting, canvassing and grassroots activism is dead, then it supports my assertion that politics has completely changed over the last few years to be an instant hit populist heavy game that can only be won with radical thinking, not trying to chase the ever diminishing 'middle'. I don't remember getting a lot of support for that view.

58 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

I think there's some wishful thinking in there. 

I think there's a big chunk of the country that the left wing of the labour party is deeply popular with, it's just that it's not a big enough chunk of people to win an election. It's by a distance the second largest group of voters in the country, but that distance stretches in both directions. I think it's probably about two thirds of the Labour party membership, but not necessarily of its MP's - MP's for the most part just want to win elections. 

Then there's the majority of the country that are centrist or right wing, say two thirds - and the problem the Labour party has is that two thirds of that two thirds will vote Tory, either because they do, or because they worry that Labour is run by its left wing section.

Which leaves a relatively small group in the middle that want to take the third of the Labour party they have, add some Tory voters to it, maybe drag some people across from the left who just don't like the Tories and win an election. They've got two problems - there aren't anywhere near enough of them to win an election and they don't actually believe in anything.

So you have two unelectable groups, one that's pretty big, but not quite big enough to win elections, one that's smaller, empty and unelectable and a perpetual Tory government. 

It's a very difficult situation for Labour, and one without an obvious solution - but it's pretty clear that the Starmer way has no chance of success at all.

 

Bang on.

The only way forward in everyone's but the Tories interests is to have an electoral pact for proportional representation passing through using a coalition. It's easily doable, it just needs all of the parties' leaders and members to get real about what the situation is.

51 minutes ago, theboyangel said:

The one major problem with the Labour Party is the party members themselves.
 

Too much in-fighting instead of rallying together and focusing on the job at hand of bringing blondie and his gobshites to task. 

Have to disagree.

The members have every right to want their party to act in a certain way. The members are the ones who walk streets night after night in the cold and wet delivering leaflets, trying to elect an MP who then calls them Trots and antisemites.

The strength of the Labour Party is the members. The weakness is that the MPs have too much power over the members.

When is this pillock of a leader going to resign so we can get someone in who's not a blatant liar and have some kind of opposition against the worst government in my lifetime?

The doll episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm was incredible. Built to a perfect crescendo like the best Always Sunny episodes.

3 minutes ago, ender4 said:

Who?

3 hours ago, Seat68 said:

One of the good things about rewatching Game of Thrones I haven't spent the first season wondering who each character is. 

I'm on season 3 now. Everything makes perfect sense and it's much more enjoyable than the first time when I spent every episode wondering who this random new person was.

5 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

'Diving in the polls' is perhaps over-selling it!

On 3rd September 2020, the polls were CON 42-LAB 38. On 2nd September 2021, today, they are CON 40-LAB 33. It's a bigger decline for Labour, for sure, and it's not exactly a good position, but I don't know that you can hang too many huge claims on it.

Yeah it was diving but he managed to arrest the slide and now they're fairly stable at around 32%

58 minutes ago, blandy said:

If that's right (it's just my impression) then Labour needs to keep hold of it's economical leftishness and be more appealing to more socially centrist people. Which is perhaps what Starmer is doing

As I said earlier, that's what conventional political wisdom says. And it's what Starmer's doing. While diving in the polls.

I guess conventional political wisdom is no longer applicable. Because if it was, the increase from 26% to 46% for Labour in 2017 when offering socialism wouldn't have happened.

1 hour ago, bickster said:

More Trotskyite entryism

More?

44 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

 

Yeah, there's no way to celebrate ending an internal party civil war like taking over another party and starting another party civil war.  I also wonder how many of those circa 50 MPs have any chance of retaining their seat when they're no longer wearing a red tie. I suspect the lessons of "Change UK" may dissuade a big chunk of them from jumping ship to either a new party, or an existing much smaller party, not a single one of the people who left Labour retained their seat.

Labour left and Green are 2 cheeks of the same arse. There's almost nothing between the 2 groups policy wise because when Labour had the left in charge, they were greener than the Greens. The members and voters tend to swap between the parties. A lot of the socialists who went into Labour in 2015 came from Green. It's similar to Lib Dems and Tories with votes, values and members.

I agree that a good number of the socialist campaign group MPs wouldn't keep their seats if not under a Labour banner which is why I think it's a non starter so far.

30 minutes ago, bickster said:

Labour won't get into power again unless it actually splits. Its gone beyond repairable. Both sides need to be adults about it and face facts (absolutely guaranteed not to happen). The longer the brand war continues the worse it will be.

If the left side wanted some actual clout they should take over the Green Party. 50 Green MPs and ~20% vote share would force Labour to enter into an electoral reform pact for the next election.