There does seem to be a lot of buyers remorse about over Brexit.Maybe as in many other contract situations they should have been a cooling of period.
Seems like buyers' anger to me, much of it with dastardly remoaners for not fixing it. I wonder when, if ever, it'll be directed at the pied pipers that sold them the pup?
People have families and uprooting families is much harder. Spouses have careers of their own. Children are in schools. There may be elderly parents you want to be near to. It’s not just a question of a social life, though that matters too.
Some people may move but others may decide that they don’t want to and skilled people like that have alternatives. And it may become harder to recruit.
What the staff fancy may not determine the decision but it would be a foolish organisation which did not take account of how easy or otherwise it is to recruit and maintain highly skilled staff when making its decision.
Fair point, but in the end that consideration gets overridden. In the 90's and Noughties there was a sustained attempt to relocate civil service offices to outside London. All or part of Health went to Quarry House in Leeds, ONS went to Newport, Inland/Revenue/HMRC works regionally with offices in Brum, Belfast, Nottingham et al, and - of course - BBC relocated to Salford. There's usually a small office left behind in London to satisfy the upper echelons, but most of it is moved. The argument that staff are difficult to replace may well be true but is usually overridden.
How many international schools are there in Bratislava, that are acceptable to those doctors and scientists relocating from London? Huge opportunity for GEMS and other private education providers to separate the children of the EU elites from those around them.
Indeed.
If the doctors and scientists won't relocate, then they will become unemployed and smart people who will go to Bratislava will get their jobs in their place, and in ten years time you won't know the difference. The graveyards are full of people who thought they were indispensable.
The doctors and scientsts who won't relocate can join the new UK medicines agency which will be needed post Brexit.
The main point of HS2 for me was that you'd be able to get on a train in Edinburgh and get off in Paris. Because of the Euston mess up that won't happen. Thanks Camden.
To be fair, the HS2<->HS1 link was a very dodgy affair anyway. A single-track railway, AIUI running along the already congested North London Line. If it was to be done, best it was done properly.
Yes, not building a ghost junction in to the HS1 tunnel out of St Pancras was very silly. But apparently, they didn't want to run trains from Birmingham to Paris/Brussels because they'd then need to build international platforms (i.e. with passport control etc.) at the Birmingham station which would take up a lot of space.
It's worse than that. They were going to run North of London services after the Channel Tunnel opened, but it never happened. The expensive Nightstar fiasco was part of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightstar_(train)#Delay
The main point of HS2 for me was that you'd be able to get on a train in Edinburgh and get off in Paris. Because of the Euston mess up that won't happen. Thanks Camden.
To be fair, the HS2<->HS1 link was a very dodgy affair anyway. A single-track railway, AIUI running along the already congested North London Line. If it was to be done, best it was done properly.
Dig a fr**ing tunnel. London gets Crossrail. Rest of country doesn't get a direct link to continent. UK centralisation of major investment in a nutshell.
Hold on, but that would cost a few billion, for something that would only occasionally get used. And as that money will be spent in London, the whinging, mamby-pamby northerners will complain about even more money being spent on London infrastructure...
The main point of HS2 for me was that you'd be able to get on a train in Edinburgh and get off in Paris. Because of the Euston mess up that won't happen. Thanks Camden.
I agree. It is utterly bonkers and only in UK would you not connect HS2 into Pancras and straight on to HS1 and the continent.
In 1994 we were promised through trains from Manchester or B'ham to Paris or Brussels.
The Welsh train franchisee even, briefly, ran through trains from here to Waterloo. One could thus get to the continent with a single change of train. That didn't last long, due to our non-joined up public transport system.
That’s only half a dozen annual salaries, before we find them offices and phones. The bid cost is probably 100 hours though, so the selected bidder has to big up the costs to win in the first place.
Easier way is to pay £30k for the same work, and have a single consultant bash it out in six months, and get another consultant in for one month to check and balance it.
No doubt there'll be plenty of subcontracting along the way.
In response to various bits: 1. No point connecting HS2 and HS1. International trains to "the regions" take longer than flying and aren't viable. Plus our paranoia about border controls means checks and the cost thereof. There is a through Avignon - London Eurostar where all passengers have to get off the train in Lille, be scanned and frisked, then get back on
2. Yes HS2 will largely have separate terminals which makes onward connection slow, but thats what happens with a victorian railway where even where futureproofing is offered (a 2nd tunnel under the new Bull Ring) its refused because cost. As has been pointed out we have to build a new line as the existing WCML is full and bursting, and if building new it may as well be at the international standard of 200mph
3. The Brexit mandate. I don't care if people were promised £350m for the NHS and to be rid of the foreigners - it was never going to happen and they need to be told that. If the alternatives are a slap round the face to bring voters to their senses and a future that doesn't tick all their boxes but leaves them with a job and food on the shelves, or one where their loss of a job and food riots is the slap round the face, surely the former is better
I went to a talk by an ex-head of what is now the MHRA a couple of weeks ago. He made several points. One is that because the EMA is situated in London much of the work our MHRA does is for the EMA, and the close proximity of the two organisations is, if not vital, very important. There’s a lot of money flowing both ways, and while some of this will continue, there will be barriers. Also, especially with medicines for rarer diseases, we benefit from pan-European studies; if/when we leave the EMA we may well not be part of the studies. There is of course sharing of scientific data but will the designs of such studies continue to allow direct comparisons. Probably, of course, but neither necessarity nor invariably.
Snip
In short, he was very, very concerned about the practical effects of Brexit on medicine safety in Europe as a whole, and in UK, and on the supply of medicines in UK.
Pan economic sense
NICE is a hurdle, as @foxinsoxuk notes, but every country has a similar set up. They are increasingly taking their lead from NICE as we have the most rigourous approach. I'd expect that to continue
Scientific budget doesn't matter - it's a recycling of UK money. If our government chooses to spend money there it can.
Japan is irrelevant to global development because their regulator insists on genetic bridging studies. The FDA will still be the most important followed by the EMA and MHRA/NICE will be significant.
But the rational outcome would be for us to remain an associate member of the EMA.
Thanks for that. I was hoping you’d comment. However, is there (yet) associate member status for the EMA. And it does seem, as per the document quoted, very disruptive and, health-wise, counter productive. IIRC the guy I listened to was concerned not at alignment with the FDA’s requirments, but with the legal system in the USA.
I don't know if there is associate status - but it should be easy to create. All you need to do is delete words "you have to be a member of EU to be a member of EMA"
Company drives interest in aligning with FDA (one set of trials not two). Not sure of the legal issues he is concerned with.
The EMA is ultimately regulated by the CJEU. The red line the UK government has created over the court's jurisdiction post-Brexit consequently rules out ongoing membership - full or associate - of a number of organisations of which we are currently a part. See also Euratom.
The red line doesn't mean what you think it does. It's about control over our laws not details of specific regulations. May identified the top two issues Leavers voted on and made them red lines
The main point of HS2 for me was that you'd be able to get on a train in Edinburgh and get off in Paris. Because of the Euston mess up that won't happen. Thanks Camden.
There's no point whatsover to HS2. But if you think the main point was to allow someone else to get on a train in Edinburgh and get off in Paris, £120,000,000,000+ would be quite a lot to pay to deliver that.
The main point of HS2 for me was that you'd be able to get on a train in Edinburgh and get off in Paris. Because of the Euston mess up that won't happen. Thanks Camden.
To be fair, the HS2<->HS1 link was a very dodgy affair anyway. A single-track railway, AIUI running along the already congested North London Line. If it was to be done, best it was done properly.
Indeed. A new terminus between KX and StP would have been best, with easy pedestrian access to both stations and rail junctions to HS1, the ECML and the Midlands ML.
I think it’s very debatable whether the NHS does drive a hard bargain on drugs prices. On orphan drugs I think it’s clear we are getting ripped off in many cases.
Yes, I may be out of date, but when I worked for Novartis the UK market was seen as one of the higher payers (and hence an early place to market - Spain was cheapest and last), and as an MP the ABPI lobbied to keep the existing complicated and not very transparent system rather than either simplify or harmonise with other countries.
I'd think that in practice we would normally recognise an EMA-approved drug as safe - it'd be bonkers to require fresh trials - in the same way that drugs approved by NICE as cost-effective usually have an easier time getting into other markets. In this particular case, I expect pragmatism to find a way.
And people can get used to Bratislava or wherever if they need to. The number who really quit their specialised jobs will, I think, be small. I don't particularly want to work in Magdeburg, say, but if that's where my job went, I'd need to go with it.
One other thing to keep an eye on will be if UK pharmacies can still re import medicines from Greece/wherever is cheapest and change the labels as necessary.
I’d imagine pharma will lobby hard against that being part of a final deal. Also the poorer countries with cheaper drugs may not want it either.
Pharma will lobby against parallel importing. Poorer companies sort of like it (hospitals can generate cash when supply is restricted due to governments not paying their bills)
People have families and uprooting families is much harder. Spouses have careers of their own. Children are in schools. There may be elderly parents you want to be near to. It’s not just a question of a social life, though that matters too.
Some people may move but others may decide that they don’t want to and skilled people like that have alternatives. And it may become harder to recruit.
What the staff fancy may not determine the decision but it would be a foolish organisation which did not take account of how easy or otherwise it is to recruit and maintain highly skilled staff when making its decision.
Fair point, but in the end that consideration gets overridden. In the 90's and Noughties there was a sustained attempt to relocate civil service offices to outside London. All or part of Health went to Quarry House in Leeds, ONS went to Newport, Inland/Revenue/HMRC works regionally with offices in Brum, Belfast, Nottingham et al, and - of course - BBC relocated to Salford. There's usually a small office left behind in London to satisfy the upper echelons, but most of it is moved. The argument that staff are difficult to replace may well be true but is usually overridden.
How many international schools are there in Bratislava, that are acceptable to those doctors and scientists relocating from London? Huge opportunity for GEMS and other private education providers to separate the children of the EU elites from those around them.
Indeed.
If the doctors and scientists won't relocate, then they will become unemployed and smart people who will go to Bratislava will get their jobs in their place, and in ten years time you won't know the difference. The graveyards are full of people who thought they were indispensable.
The doctors and scientsts who won't relocate can join the new UK medicines agency which will be needed post Brexit.
Nahh, staffing it will be easy. Just buy a photocopier, download the EU regs, scribble out the headline, write "I WROTE THIS HONEZT" on the top, and send it to HMSO...
The main point of HS2 for me was that you'd be able to get on a train in Edinburgh and get off in Paris. Because of the Euston mess up that won't happen. Thanks Camden.
There's no point whatsover to HS2. But if you think the main point was to allow someone else to get on a train in Edinburgh and get off in Paris, £120,000,000,000+ would be quite a lot to pay to deliver that.
Any advance on £120 billion in the pulling figures out your backside stakes?
Fair point, but in the end that consideration gets overridden. In the 90's and Noughties there was a sustained attempt to relocate civil service offices to outside London. All or part of Health went to Quarry House in Leeds, ONS went to Newport, Inland/Revenue/HMRC works regionally with offices in Brum, Belfast, Nottingham et al, and - of course - BBC relocated to Salford. There's usually a small office left behind in London to satisfy the upper echelons, but most of it is moved. The argument that staff are difficult to replace may well be true but is usually overridden.
How many international schools are there in Bratislava, that are acceptable to those doctors and scientists relocating from London? Huge opportunity for GEMS and other private education providers to separate the children of the EU elites from those around them.
Indeed.
If the doctors and scientists won't relocate, then they will become unemployed and smart people who will go to Bratislava will get their jobs in their place, and in ten years time you won't know the difference. The graveyards are full of people who thought they were indispensable.
They won’t be unemployed. People like that are always in demand. Sure they can be replaced. No-one is indispensable. But organisations which lose corporate memory, hard-won experience and a cadre/ generation of skilled people do suffer. Even if a decade later the organisation still exists.
Look at banks which got rid, for efficiency reasons, of bank managers and trained middle level executives and are now, a decade later, seeking to reintroduce them or, expensively, to recreate the culture they lost when they got rid of the culture carriers. Or look at HMRC, which has hardly covered itself in glory in recent years. Or at the FCA which has lost a good number of those who painfully acquired experience during the crisis years and where a very significant proportion of its supervisory staff have been there less than two years.
You cannot say, on the one hand, that you want to invest in skilled staff and, on the other, treat them as so many widgets to be discarded or shuffled round at a moment’s notice and not expect there to be consequences.
A strong robust culture is not found in a firm’s handbook or its procedures but, ultimately, in its people.
There does seem to be a lot of buyers remorse about over Brexit.Maybe as in many other contract situations they should have been a cooling of period.
Seems like buyers' anger to me, much of it with dastardly remoaners for not fixing it. I wonder when, if ever, it'll be directed at the pied pipers that sold them the pup?
True, take back control , no you f ING take it , seem the message to many.
Miss Cyclefree, your comment reminds me of the Telegraph blogs which got a lot of traffic, were axed by some hotshot idiot brought in to reduce costs, who promptly departed only for the Telegraph to realise they couldn't magically restore the corner of the internet their bloggers (such as our own Mr. T) had carved out.
The main point of HS2 for me was that you'd be able to get on a train in Edinburgh and get off in Paris. Because of the Euston mess up that won't happen. Thanks Camden.
There's no point whatsover to HS2. But if you think the main point was to allow someone else to get on a train in Edinburgh and get off in Paris, £120,000,000,000+ would be quite a lot to pay to deliver that.
The West Coast line as far as Rugby / Birmingham is already so full that we're having to divert and reschedule freight which makes rail even less competitive. Thats now, in 10/20/30 years time it will be so much worse. So we need to build more capacity and that means a new line.
The non-HS option was one of two proposed - a 4 track electrified Chiltern route, or an M1 Spine Route. But with the existing railway able to do that role once intercity passenger traffic moves to HS2 it became the best option. And with the rest of the world investing in high speed rail it seemed stupid not to.
(CNN) So far, the Brexit negotiations between Britain and the EU have been entirely predictable.
Despite the contemporary tendency, so aptly described by Stephen Bush in the New Statesman, to describe things that were obvious as "shocks" or "blows" to Britain, the Brexit talks have, to date, progressed pretty much as any long-term observer of European politics would have assumed they might.
In response to various bits: 1. No point connecting HS2 and HS1. International trains to "the regions" take longer than flying and aren't viable. Plus our paranoia about border controls means checks and the cost thereof. There is a through Avignon - London Eurostar where all passengers have to get off the train in Lille, be scanned and frisked, then get back on
2. Yes HS2 will largely have separate terminals which makes onward connection slow, but thats what happens with a victorian railway where even where futureproofing is offered (a 2nd tunnel under the new Bull Ring) its refused because cost. As has been pointed out we have to build a new line as the existing WCML is full and bursting, and if building new it may as well be at the international standard of 200mph
3. The Brexit mandate. I don't care if people were promised £350m for the NHS and to be rid of the foreigners - it was never going to happen and they need to be told that. If the alternatives are a slap round the face to bring voters to their senses and a future that doesn't tick all their boxes but leaves them with a job and food on the shelves, or one where their loss of a job and food riots is the slap round the face, surely the former is better
Good luck with that, there are many voters out there who don’t accept that especially the immigration part. So many Brexiteers think they’re going to get a cost free Brexit, the shock when it doesn’t turn out that way....
Referendum: should we have the lights on, or lights off?
Lights-off wins.
Lights-on Brigade: How about we install dimmers?
Brexit should have been seen as a national project, not solely one for 52% of voters who took part in the referendum.
Well, it still can be. If you have bright ideas, shout them out.
Too many Remainers though are sat in a sulk. There's damn all expressions of conciliation that I see coming from their direction. Given that they lost the argument.
That's the spirit!!
The truth is harsh sometimes.
The truth is that the PM has allowed the Tory right to commandeer Brexit, so that is the version of it we will get. As a result, the country will be far more divided for a far longer period than it had to be. But we are where we are.
The trouble is that if Teresa May goes the Tory grassroots will vote for a hard brexiteer.
100 000 or so with an average age of 71 to choose the PM and form of Brexit.
Miss Cyclefree, your comment reminds me of the Telegraph blogs which got a lot of traffic, were axed by some hotshot idiot brought in to reduce costs, who promptly departed only for the Telegraph to realise they couldn't magically restore the corner of the internet their bloggers (such as our own Mr. T) had carved out.
Indeed. The concept of the “false economy” is one which senior management in a lot of industries seem to have no understanding of. It is short-termism at its very worst.
I went to a talk by an ex-head of what is now the MHRA a couple of weeks ago. He made severalhere is of course sharing of scientific data but will the designs of such studies continue to allow direct comparisons. Probably, of course, but neither necessarity nor invariably.
Snip
In short, he was very, very concerned about the practical effects of Brexit on medicine safety in Europe as a whole, and in UK, and on the supply of medicines in UK.
Pan economic sense
NICE is a hurdle, as @foxinsoxuk notes, but every country has a similar set up. They are increasingly taking their lead from NICE as we have the most rigourous approach. I'd expect that to continue
Scientific budget doesn't matter - it's a recycling of UK money. If our government chooses to spend money there it can.
Japan is irrelevant to global development because their regulator insists on genetic bridging studies. The FDA will still be the most important followed by the EMA and MHRA/NICE will be significant.
But the rational outcome would be for us to remain an associate member of the EMA.
Thanks for that. I was hoping you’d comment. However, is there (yet) associate member status for the EMA. And it does seem, as per the document quoted, very disruptive and, health-wise, counter productive. IIRC the guy I listened to was concerned not at alignment with the FDA’s requirments, but with the legal system in the USA.
I don't know if there is associate status - but it should be easy to create. All you need to do is delete words "you have to be a member of EU to be a member of EMA"
Company drives interest in aligning with FDA (one set of trials not two). Not sure of the legal issues he is concerned with.
The EMA is ultimately regulated by the CJEU. The red line the UK government has created over the court's jurisdiction post-Brexit consequently rules out ongoing membership - full or associate - of a number of organisations of which we are currently a part. See also Euratom.
The red line doesn't mean what you think it does. It's about control over our laws not details of specific regulations. May identified the top two issues Leavers voted on and made them red lines
But some on here not so long ago were saying how the UK Parliament should determine line by line all the regulations (in that instance) of MiFID and that really was reclaiming our sovereignty.
And who is on top of the MiFID regulatory jurisdiction? Not the Rt. Hon M Gove MP.
(CNN) So far, the Brexit negotiations between Britain and the EU have been entirely predictable.
Despite the contemporary tendency, so aptly described by Stephen Bush in the New Statesman, to describe things that were obvious as "shocks" or "blows" to Britain, the Brexit talks have, to date, progressed pretty much as any long-term observer of European politics would have assumed they might.
The main point of HS2 for me was that you'd be able to get on a train in Edinburgh and get off in Paris. Because of the Euston mess up that won't happen. Thanks Camden.
To be fair, the HS2<->HS1 link was a very dodgy affair anyway. A single-track railway, AIUI running along the already congested North London Line. If it was to be done, best it was done properly.
Dig a fr**ing tunnel. London gets Crossrail. Rest of country doesn't get a direct link to continent. UK centralisation of major investment in a nutshell.
Hold on, but that would cost a few billion, for something that would only occasionally get used. And as that money will be spent in London, the whinging, mamby-pamby northerners will complain about even more money being spent on London infrastructure...
Yes, it would cost a few billion. The UK would then have an asset that delivered benefits for a hundred years or more.
Looking back, it’s truly hilarious the stuff they said about Ed M. Especially given how so many right wingers are now depicting dystopian scenarios about a Corbyn government. Ed Balls, who some of them praise today was also supposed to be some kind of socialist nightmare as well, lol....
What's hilarious about it? Ed Miliband would have been bad, Corbyn, being so extreme, would be massively worse. It's not complicated.
Miss Cyclefree, your comment reminds me of the Telegraph blogs which got a lot of traffic, were axed by some hotshot idiot brought in to reduce costs, who promptly departed only for the Telegraph to realise they couldn't magically restore the corner of the internet their bloggers (such as our own Mr. T) had carved out.
Indeed. The concept of the “false economy” is one which senior management in a lot of industries seem to have no understanding of. It is short-termism at its very worst.
Sometimes their incentives are set up in such a way that false economies for the company = good news for them personally.
I too enjoyed the Telegraph blogs.
I would have thought they were rather cheap to maintain given they were just opinions, but perhaps the bloggers were on big money.
I've been told by a friend who used to work at New Statesman that maintaining an online forum/comments and avoiding nastiness/legal trouble can be expensive and a lot of work...
Referendum: should we have the lights on, or lights off?
Lights-off wins.
Lights-on Brigade: How about we install dimmers?
Brexit should have been seen as a national project, not solely one for 52% of voters who took part in the referendum.
Well, it still can be. If you have bright ideas, shout them out.
Too many Remainers though are sat in a sulk. There's damn all expressions of conciliation that I see coming from their direction. Given that they lost the argument.
That's the spirit!!
The truth is harsh sometimes.
The truth is that the PM has allowed the Tory right to commandeer Brexit, so that is the version of it we will get. As a result, the country will be far more divided for a far longer period than it had to be. But we are where we are.
The trouble is that if Teresa May goes the Tory grassroots will vote for a hard brexiteer.
100 000 or so with an average age of 71 to choose the PM and form of Brexit.
Makes the rotten boroughs seem democratic.
I think the age of 71 has been disproved. More like 58 iirc. But the point is still valid.
One thing you can say about Jezza is that he has facilitated a mass membership party again.
The main point of HS2 for me was that you'd be able to get on a train in Edinburgh and get off in Paris. Because of the Euston mess up that won't happen. Thanks Camden.
To be fair, the HS2<->HS1 link was a very dodgy affair anyway. A single-track railway, AIUI running along the already congested North London Line. If it was to be done, best it was done properly.
Dig a fr**ing tunnel. London gets Crossrail. Rest of country doesn't get a direct link to continent. UK centralisation of major investment in a nutshell.
Hold on, but that would cost a few billion, for something that would only occasionally get used. And as that money will be spent in London, the whinging, mamby-pamby northerners will complain about even more money being spent on London infrastructure...
Yes, it would cost a few billion. The UK would then have an asset that delivered benefits for a hundred years or more.
I agree. However, people are already screeching about the cost of HS2, and giving increasingly hysterical cost 'predictions' (see below). Some red meat had to be given, and the HS2<->HS1 link, a compromised beast as it was, sadly needed to go.
As it happens, IMV what may kill HS2 is Euston. I don't think they've come up with a final plan for it yet, and the disruption and cost will be huge.
Referendum: should we have the lights on, or lights off?
Lights-off wins.
Lights-on Brigade: How about we install dimmers?
Brexit should have been seen as a national project, not solely one for 52% of voters who took part in the referendum.
Well, it still can be. If you have bright ideas, shout them out.
Too many Remainers though are sat in a sulk. There's damn all expressions of conciliation that I see coming from their direction. Given that they lost the argument.
That's the spirit!!
The truth is harsh sometimes.
The truth is that the PM has allowed the Tory right to commandeer Brexit, so that is the version of it we will get. As a result, the country will be far more divided for a far longer period than it had to be. But we are where we are.
The trouble is that if Teresa May goes the Tory grassroots will vote for a hard brexiteer.
100 000 or so with an average age of 71
I hope you’re more on top of the facts in your day job....
Referendum: should we have the lights on, or lights off?
Lights-off wins.
Lights-on Brigade: How about we install dimmers?
Brexit should have been seen as a national project, not solely one for 52% of voters who took part in the referendum.
Well, it still can be. If you have bright ideas, shout them out.
Too many Remainers though are sat in a sulk. There's damn all expressions of conciliation that I see coming from their direction. Given that they lost the argument.
That's the spirit!!
The truth is harsh sometimes.
The truth is that the PM has allowed the Tory right to commandeer Brexit, so that is the version of it we will get. As a result, the country will be far more divided for a far longer period than it had to be. But we are where we are.
The trouble is that if Teresa May goes the Tory grassroots will vote for a hard brexiteer.
100 000 or so with an average age of 71 to choose the PM and form of Brexit.
Makes the rotten boroughs seem democratic.
Except the average age of Tory members is 58 not 71 as Tim Bale recently proved, little difference from Labour members average age of 54
Looking back, it’s truly hilarious the stuff they said about Ed M. Especially given how so many right wingers are now depicting dystopian scenarios about a Corbyn government. Ed Balls, who some of them praise today was also supposed to be some kind of socialist nightmare as well, lol....
What's hilarious about it? Ed Miliband would have been bad, Corbyn, being so extreme, would be massively worse. It's not complicated.
LOL. There’s no hope for you Tories learning anything from the last GE.
Dr. Foxinsox, who else would choose the leader of the Conservative Party?
We should go back to the good old days and let the magic circle of wise old Tories choose the Leader of the Tory party.
We basically did and got Theresa. The problem isn't the mechanism of election it's the lack of electable options. It's a problem across the entirety of British politics tbh.
Looking back, it’s truly hilarious the stuff they said about Ed M. Especially given how so many right wingers are now depicting dystopian scenarios about a Corbyn government. Ed Balls, who some of them praise today was also supposed to be some kind of socialist nightmare as well, lol....
What's hilarious about it? Ed Miliband would have been bad, Corbyn, being so extreme, would be massively worse. It's not complicated.
LOL. There’s no hope for you Tories learning anything from the last GE.
Like coming first on seats and voteshare you mean?
Looking back, it’s truly hilarious the stuff they said about Ed M. Especially given how so many right wingers are now depicting dystopian scenarios about a Corbyn government. Ed Balls, who some of them praise today was also supposed to be some kind of socialist nightmare as well, lol....
What's hilarious about it? Ed Miliband would have been bad, Corbyn, being so extreme, would be massively worse. It's not complicated.
LOL. There’s no hope for you Tories learning anything from the last GE.
My learning is not from the GE, but from 50 years observing what works, in the UK and elsewhere (not to mention history before that). Quick summary: it ain't Corbynomics.
Mr. Eagles, it was the membership who opted for Cameron.
Anyway, must be off.
The membership also chose IDS.
Only because the MPs shafted Portillo.
Portillo's heart wasn't in it.
He'd gone from being the poster boy for Thatcherism to a socially liberal One Nation Tory, which managed to alienate his original supporters, and the One Nation wing 1) Didn't trust him 2) Already had a much better candidate in Ken Clarke.
On the question of approvals for medicines in the UK and for UK-produced drugs in the EU: if the EU act in good faith there is absolutely no reason why there should be any disruption or problem at all. The Swiss aren't members of the EMA, but they manage just fine with a mutual recognition agreement:
Looking back, it’s truly hilarious the stuff they said about Ed M. Especially given how so many right wingers are now depicting dystopian scenarios about a Corbyn government. Ed Balls, who some of them praise today was also supposed to be some kind of socialist nightmare as well, lol....
What's hilarious about it? Ed Miliband would have been bad, Corbyn, being so extreme, would be massively worse. It's not complicated.
LOL. There’s no hope for you Tories learning anything from the last GE.
My learning is not from the GE, but from 50 years observing what works, in the UK and elsewhere (not the mention history before that). Quick summary: it ain't Corbynomics.
If you’d like to avoid that dystopian Corbyn disaster that you portray, I don’t think learning from the GE would be a bad bet. Of course, if you cry wolf on nearly every leftie going, don’t be surprised when many don’t listen your message at a GE.
Looking back, it’s truly hilarious the stuff they said about Ed M. Especially given how so many right wingers are now depicting dystopian scenarios about a Corbyn government. Ed Balls, who some of them praise today was also supposed to be some kind of socialist nightmare as well, lol....
What's hilarious about it? Ed Miliband would have been bad, Corbyn, being so extreme, would be massively worse. It's not complicated.
LOL. There’s no hope for you Tories learning anything from the last GE.
Like coming first on seats and voteshare you mean?
Yes, the Conservative Party totally decided to put all that effort into a GE campaign in order to lose their majority and place themselves into a much weaker position politically than before, and make the opposition look viable to many voters, and make a Corbyn government go from ‘lol bye, not happening’ to a possibility.
Referendum: should we have the lights on, or lights off?
Lights-off wins.
Lights-on Brigade: How about we install dimmers?
Brexit should have been seen as a national project, not solely one for 52% of voters who took part in the referendum.
Well, it still can be. If you have bright ideas, shout them out.
Too many Remainers though are sat in a sulk. There's damn all expressions of conciliation that I see coming from their direction. Given that they lost the argument.
That's the spirit!!
The truth is harsh sometimes.
The truth is that the PM has allowed the Tory right to commandeer Brexit, so that is the version of it we will get. As a result, the country will be far more divided for a far longer period than it had to be. But we are where we are.
The trouble is that if Teresa May goes the Tory grassroots will vote for a hard brexiteer.
100 000 or so with an average age of 71
I hope you’re more on top of the facts in your day job....
To be fair, your link suggests the age 71 factoid comes not from the Morning Star but from the Bow Group, Tory think tank and home of Geoffrey Howe, Norman Tebbit, old uncle John Redwood and all.
Looking back, it’s truly hilarious the stuff they said about Ed M. Especially given how so many right wingers are now depicting dystopian scenarios about a Corbyn government. Ed Balls, who some of them praise today was also supposed to be some kind of socialist nightmare as well, lol....
What's hilarious about it? Ed Miliband would have been bad, Corbyn, being so extreme, would be massively worse. It's not complicated.
LOL. There’s no hope for you Tories learning anything from the last GE.
Like coming first on seats and voteshare you mean?
Yes, the Conservative Party totally decided to put all that effort into a GE campaign in order to lose their majority and place themselves into a much weaker position politically than before, and make the opposition look viable to many voters, and make a Corbyn government go from ‘lol bye, not happening’ to a possibility.
If you’d like to avoid that dystopian Corbyn disaster that you portray, I don’t think learning from the GE would be a bad bet. Of course, if you cry wolf on nearly every leftie going, don’t be surprised when many don’t listen your message at a GE.
On that side, yes of course you are right that we should learn from the GE. There are lots of lessons, which are being learnt, most notably not to completely screw the campaign or to announce half-baked proposals on hugely controversial and emotive issues. Another lesson, which I very much hope will be re-learnt, is not to let Labour get away with the utter economic nonsense they were peddling, or to portray Corbyn as something he is not. The issue wasn't that the Tories attacked Corbyn too much, but that they never really got round to attacking him, McDonnell and their policies at all. We kept waiting for the equivalent of the 'Tax Bombshell' posters to appear; astonishingly, they never did.
From the murder of Jo Cox to those Nazi era posters, the signs were there.
I agree with that.
The use of the word “shrill” is also rather revealing about the author’s attitude to women.
But the referendum also unleashed - or perhaps revealed - a contemptuous and sneering attitude on the part of those who had done very well out of the established settlement to those who had not. And this attitude is unworthy of people who claim to be educated and to hold the moral high ground.
Hard as it may be for those of us who work in the financial sector to understand but Britain does not exist purely to make life easy for that one industry. As I have argued in a previous thread header, at precisely the time when that industry needed friends, it had behaved in a way calculated to offend and disgust pretty much everyone with a brain and a moral compass.
Sowing and reaping come to mind.
It is a lesson which those responsible for nastiness now would do well to remember.
If you’d like to avoid that dystopian Corbyn disaster that you portray, I don’t think learning from the GE would be a bad bet. Of course, if you cry wolf on nearly every leftie going, don’t be surprised when many don’t listen your message at a GE.
On that side, yes of course you are right that we should learn from the GE. There are lots of lessons, which are being learnt, most notably not to completely screw the campaign or to announce half-baked proposals on hugely controversial and emotive issues. Another lesson, which I very much hope will be re-learnt, is not to let Labour get away with the utter economic nonsense they were peddling, or to portray Corbyn as something he is not. The issue wasn't that the Tories attacked Corbyn too much, but that they never really got round to attacking him, McDonnell and their policies at all. We kept waiting for the equivalent of the 'Tax Bombshell' posters to appear; astonishingly, they never did.
"Magic money tree" might ring a bit hollow after the colossal divorce bill
The sensible answer to the problem of relocating the EMA would be to move the legal headquarters to a serviced office in Bratislava employing three people, and to subcontract the actual work to a new operation in Canary Wharf. Being sensible, it won't happen.
If you’d like to avoid that dystopian Corbyn disaster that you portray, I don’t think learning from the GE would be a bad bet. Of course, if you cry wolf on nearly every leftie going, don’t be surprised when many don’t listen your message at a GE.
On that side, yes of course you are right that we should learn from the GE. There are lots of lessons, which are being learnt, most notably not to completely screw the campaign or to announce half-baked proposals on hugely controversial and emotive issues. Another lesson, which I very much hope will be re-learnt, is not to let Labour get away with the utter economic nonsense they were peddling, or to portray Corbyn as something he is not. The issue wasn't that the Tories attacked Corbyn too much, but that they never really got round to attacking him, McDonnell and their policies at all. We kept waiting for the equivalent of the 'Tax Bombshell' posters to appear; astonishingly, they never did.
The tax bombshell posters would have attacked Hammond's plans to raise tax and national insurance. That is why.
From the murder of Jo Cox to those Nazi era posters, the signs were there.
I agree with that.
The use of the word “shrill” is also rather revealing about the author’s attitude to women.
But the referendum also unleashed - or perhaps revealed - a contemptuous and sneering attitude on the part of those who had done very well out of the established settlement to those who had not. And this attitude is unworthy of people who claim to be educated and to hold the moral high ground.
Hard as it may be for those of us who work in the financial sector to understand but Britain does not exist purely to make life easy for that one industry. As I have argued in a previous thread header, at precisely the time when that industry needed friends, it had behaved in a way calculated to offend and disgust pretty much everyone with a brain and a moral compass.
Sowing and reaping come to mind.
It is a lesson which those responsible for nastiness now would do well to remember.
I think you protest too much - perhaps drumming up business for your white knight sleaze-free new venture?
The vast majority of people in the City are decent, hardworking, sensible. That they might get paid more than labourers or other manual workers (might, mind) is a testament to their application - plenty of regional accents in the dealing rooms of EC2 and E14.
Equally, many City types voted Remain because, like most other Londoners, they live in a fully integrated society where it is not a big deal to be, say, the only WASP on the Central Line coming in to work. Most I'd wager didn't vote Remain in order to preserve their (hard-fought) privilege, if that's what you want to call being in a fiercely competitive industry, but more likely because they see how the success of the City feeds through to any number of subsidiary and contingent benefits. From City firms "adopting" local schools, to the overall tax take.
Now, of course, few live in Wisbech, so can't speak from experience about the "wrong" kind of immigration. But that is still not to say they did any more or any less than any other person or profession in terms of voting for what they believed in or of helping those who for one reason or another are not in their "privileged" position.
If you’d like to avoid that dystopian Corbyn disaster that you portray, I don’t think learning from the GE would be a bad bet. Of course, if you cry wolf on nearly every leftie going, don’t be surprised when many don’t listen your message at a GE.
On that side, yes of course you are right that we should learn from the GE. There are lots of lessons, which are being learnt, most notably not to completely screw the campaign or to announce half-baked proposals on hugely controversial and emotive issues. Another lesson, which I very much hope will be re-learnt, is not to let Labour get away with the utter economic nonsense they were peddling, or to portray Corbyn as something he is not. The issue wasn't that the Tories attacked Corbyn too much, but that they never really got round to attacking him, McDonnell and their policies at all. We kept waiting for the equivalent of the 'Tax Bombshell' posters to appear; astonishingly, they never did.
Yet many Conservatives, including some of the PBtories are only too willing to accept the totally nonsensical information and figures emanating from 10 Downing Street and CCHQ without question. That the media accepts and pumps out the propaganda would have made Eric Blair blush in shame that he wouldn't have been believed if he had written it down.....
From the murder of Jo Cox to those Nazi era posters, the signs were there.
I agree with that.
The use of the word “shrill” is also rather revealing about the author’s attitude to women.
But the referendum also unleashed - or perhaps revealed - a contemptuous and sneering attitude on the part of those who had done very well out of the established settlement to those who had not. And this attitude is unworthy of people who claim to be educated and to hold the moral high ground.
There may be contempt and sneering around, but it goes in both directions, and Brexit certainly doesn't fit a simple narrative of a revolt of the left behind.
Comparing the results of the GE and EU referendum shows just how weak that analysis is.
If you’d like to avoid that dystopian Corbyn disaster that you portray, I don’t think learning from the GE would be a bad bet. Of course, if you cry wolf on nearly every leftie going, don’t be surprised when many don’t listen your message at a GE.
On that side, yes of course you are right that we should learn from the GE. There are lots of lessons, which are being learnt, most notably not to completely screw the campaign or to announce half-baked proposals on hugely controversial and emotive issues. Another lesson, which I very much hope will be re-learnt, is not to let Labour get away with the utter economic nonsense they were peddling, or to portray Corbyn as something he is not. The issue wasn't that the Tories attacked Corbyn too much, but that they never really got round to attacking him, McDonnell and their policies at all. We kept waiting for the equivalent of the 'Tax Bombshell' posters to appear; astonishingly, they never did.
The University of Southampton is advertising for a chauffeur just days after it announced it would be making 75 lecturers redundant. The job ad says the role will involve “providing a chauffeur and car service to university executives and visiting dignitaries”.
Mr. Eagles, it was the membership who opted for Cameron.
Anyway, must be off.
The membership also chose IDS.
Only because the MPs shafted Portillo.
IDS would have beaten Portillo too though it may have been closer
I'm not sure he would have done, actually.
Portillo was very popular amongst the associations, and seen as a credible PM.
Plus, I think Thatcher would have endorsed Portillo, she was very fond of him, and that would have swung it for him too.
Thatcher made clear in a letter to the Telegraph she did not prefer Portillo over IDS after false reports she did and she openly opposed Ken Clarke in a letter to the same paper once it went to the membership
Mr. Eagles, it was the membership who opted for Cameron.
Anyway, must be off.
The membership also chose IDS.
Only because the MPs shafted Portillo.
IDS would have beaten Portillo too though it may have been closer
I'm not sure he would have done, actually.
Portillo was very popular amongst the associations, and seen as a credible PM.
Plus, I think Thatcher would have endorsed Portillo, she was very fond of him, and that would have swung it for him too.
Thatcher made clear in a letter to the Telegraph she did not prefer Portillo over IDS after false reports she did and she openly opposed Ken Clarke in a letter to the same paper once it went to the membership
Go read the authorised biography of Thatcher by Charles Moore, it is clear in there she would have endorsed Portillo over IDS.
She wanted the final two to be IDS and Portillo.
But you know better than Lady Thatcher and her official biographer.
Looking back, it’s truly hilarious the stuff they said about Ed M. Especially given how so many right wingers are now depicting dystopian scenarios about a Corbyn government. Ed Balls, who some of them praise today was also supposed to be some kind of socialist nightmare as well, lol....
What's hilarious about it? Ed Miliband would have been bad, Corbyn, being so extreme, would be massively worse. It's not complicated.
LOL. There’s no hope for you Tories learning anything from the last GE.
My learning is not from the GE, but from 50 years observing what works, in the UK and elsewhere (not to mention history before that). Quick summary: it ain't Corbynomics.
I am sure if you had been alive you would have said the same in 1945 on Attleenomics.
Not with sufficient vigour for anyone to notice. In addition, incredibly, they kept missing media opportunities to rebut McDonnell's lunacies (or cynicism, take your pick); in some cases, they didn't put up anyone to be interviewed on the Today programme, for example. I have never seen anything like it in any election campaign.
Comments
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightstar_(train)#Delay
The Welsh train franchisee even, briefly, ran through trains from here to Waterloo. One could thus get to the continent with a single change of train. That didn't last long, due to our non-joined up public transport system.
1. No point connecting HS2 and HS1. International trains to "the regions" take longer than flying and aren't viable. Plus our paranoia about border controls means checks and the cost thereof. There is a through Avignon - London Eurostar where all passengers have to get off the train in Lille, be scanned and frisked, then get back on
2. Yes HS2 will largely have separate terminals which makes onward connection slow, but thats what happens with a victorian railway where even where futureproofing is offered (a 2nd tunnel under the new Bull Ring) its refused because cost. As has been pointed out we have to build a new line as the existing WCML is full and bursting, and if building new it may as well be at the international standard of 200mph
3. The Brexit mandate. I don't care if people were promised £350m for the NHS and to be rid of the foreigners - it was never going to happen and they need to be told that. If the alternatives are a slap round the face to bring voters to their senses and a future that doesn't tick all their boxes but leaves them with a job and food on the shelves, or one where their loss of a job and food riots is the slap round the face, surely the former is better
Look at banks which got rid, for efficiency reasons, of bank managers and trained middle level executives and are now, a decade later, seeking to reintroduce them or, expensively, to recreate the culture they lost when they got rid of the culture carriers. Or look at HMRC, which has hardly covered itself in glory in recent years. Or at the FCA which has lost a good number of those who painfully acquired experience during the crisis years and where a very significant proportion of its supervisory staff have been there less than two years.
You cannot say, on the one hand, that you want to invest in skilled staff and, on the other, treat them as so many widgets to be discarded or shuffled round at a moment’s notice and not expect there to be consequences.
A strong robust culture is not found in a firm’s handbook or its procedures but, ultimately, in its people.
The non-HS option was one of two proposed - a 4 track electrified Chiltern route, or an M1 Spine Route. But with the existing railway able to do that role once intercity passenger traffic moves to HS2 it became the best option. And with the rest of the world investing in high speed rail it seemed stupid not to.
Remember - doing nothing is not an option.
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/11/17/opinions/the-brexit-talks-are-going-exactly-as-predicted-menon-opinion/index.html
(CNN) So far, the Brexit negotiations between Britain and the EU have been entirely predictable.
Despite the contemporary tendency, so aptly described by Stephen Bush in the New Statesman, to describe things that were obvious as "shocks" or "blows" to Britain, the Brexit talks have, to date, progressed pretty much as any long-term observer of European politics would have assumed they might.
The GT race was bloody hillarious though, another view:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DY7vA_OuF2o
Makes the rotten boroughs seem democratic.
And who is on top of the MiFID regulatory jurisdiction? Not the Rt. Hon M Gove MP.
As the article also notes, the vast majority of the business of the City of London is not reliant on EU passporting.
Because I've not been working on this for nearly two years.
Or been running a compliance and regulatory affairs department for six years.
http://www.cityam.com/276078/michel-barnier-says-city-firms-lose-financial-passports-uk
I too enjoyed the Telegraph blogs.
I would have thought they were rather cheap to maintain given they were just opinions, but perhaps the bloggers were on big money.
I've been told by a friend who used to work at New Statesman that maintaining an online forum/comments and avoiding nastiness/legal trouble can be expensive and a lot of work...
But the point is still valid.
One thing you can say about Jezza is that he has facilitated a mass membership party again.
As it happens, IMV what may kill HS2 is Euston. I don't think they've come up with a final plan for it yet, and the disruption and cost will be huge.
https://fullfact.org/news/how-old-average-conservative-party-member/
Anyway, must be off.
http://www.scotsman.com/news/north-sea-oil-industry-could-be-boosted-by-change-in-budget-1-4618183
https://twitter.com/JolyonMaugham/status/932504924050677760
From the murder of Jo Cox to those Nazi era posters, the signs were there.
He'd gone from being the poster boy for Thatcherism to a socially liberal One Nation Tory, which managed to alienate his original supporters, and the One Nation wing 1) Didn't trust him 2) Already had a much better candidate in Ken Clarke.
https://www.swissmedic.ch/swissmedic/en/home/about-us/collaboration/international-collaboration/bilateral-collaboration-with-partner-authorities/mutual-recognition-agreements.html
https://twitter.com/JennyGilruth/status/932278789161316353
Plus on EdM - he would have been fine as a PM.
Portillo was very popular amongst the associations, and seen as a credible PM.
The use of the word “shrill” is also rather revealing about the author’s attitude to women.
But the referendum also unleashed - or perhaps revealed - a contemptuous and sneering attitude on the part of those who had done very well out of the established settlement to those who had not. And this attitude is unworthy of people who claim to be educated and to hold the moral high ground.
Hard as it may be for those of us who work in the financial sector to understand but Britain does not exist purely to make life easy for that one industry. As I have argued in a previous thread header, at precisely the time when that industry needed friends, it had behaved in a way calculated to offend and disgust pretty much everyone with a brain and a moral compass.
Sowing and reaping come to mind.
It is a lesson which those responsible for nastiness now would do well to remember.
The vast majority of people in the City are decent, hardworking, sensible. That they might get paid more than labourers or other manual workers (might, mind) is a testament to their application - plenty of regional accents in the dealing rooms of EC2 and E14.
Equally, many City types voted Remain because, like most other Londoners, they live in a fully integrated society where it is not a big deal to be, say, the only WASP on the Central Line coming in to work. Most I'd wager didn't vote Remain in order to preserve their (hard-fought) privilege, if that's what you want to call being in a fiercely competitive industry, but more likely because they see how the success of the City feeds through to any number of subsidiary and contingent benefits. From City firms "adopting" local schools, to the overall tax take.
Now, of course, few live in Wisbech, so can't speak from experience about the "wrong" kind of immigration. But that is still not to say they did any more or any less than any other person or profession in terms of voting for what they believed in or of helping those who for one reason or another are not in their "privileged" position.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-42050512
Comparing the results of the GE and EU referendum shows just how weak that analysis is.
https://twitter.com/johnrentoul/status/932584923059322881
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/03/general-election-2017-tories-warn-45bn-labour-tax-spend-bombshell/
https://inews.co.uk/essentials/news/education/southampton-university-advertises-chauffeur-announcing-75-job-cuts/
She wanted the final two to be IDS and Portillo.
But you know better than Lady Thatcher and her official biographer.