Westminster Politics

Silva said:
There's almost 5 million self employed people in the UK (ONS 2016 stat). And while there's nothing inherently bad about being self employed, it can hide significant numbers of the underemployed from official stats. There are also almost a million on zero hours contracts (ONS 2017 stat), and any minimum wage gig with consistent hours is a better option where they find it. When you add the underemployed and the unemployed, there's a lot more competition for work than at first glance, albeit varying city from city.
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Plus the many more with part-time jobs, often several of them, who spend half their time travelling unpaid from one to another so their hourly rate in terms of cash in the pocket for hours working/waiting between/travelling is much less than minimum. Any job offering more hours will be seized upon.

I'd expect an employer of minimum wage staff to know these things to be honest.
 
Here we are with the Budget moved to the late-Autumn, the retail intensive season upon us, and Hammond spurns the opportunity to put more money in people's pockets. When combined with the Government's other travail's this year, it's as if with gone from salesman Dave to no sales at all.


In other news...

Labour suspends Bury South MP, Iv an Lewis.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42098762


712 said:
Plus the many more with part-time jobs, often several of them, who spend half their time travelling unpaid from one to another so their hourly rate in terms of cash in the pocket for hours working/waiting between/travelling is much less than minimum. Any job offering more hours will be seized upon.

I'd expect an employer of minimum wage staff to know these things to be honest.
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Yes and no, i read a report not long ago which explained that ZHCs and more casual labour is increasingly popular among older people. Presumably, they are either recently retired and interested in supplementary income, but not the hours expected in other forms of employment. Workplace-related ageism might have seen them nudged out the door prematurely as well.
 
Nick 0208 Ldn said:
Yes and no, i read a report not long ago which explained that ZHCs and more casual labour is increasingly popular among older people. Presumably, they are either recently retired and interested in supplementary income, but not the hours expected in other forms of employment. Workplace-related ageism might have seen them nudged out the door prematurely as well.
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Being of that age I can say you're correct. There are lots of reasons why older folk might want to work fewer hours, maybe they've been forced out as you say, or they've started to draw a pension, have paid off their mortgage or just decided they don't need to spend as much. Often they need something easier, less physical or less stressful. I half-intended to look for part-time work myself, but doing nothing is just so fecking good, you know.

In my earlier reply though I was more concerned with the younger ones desperate for more hours for more income, and there's no shortage of them in today's supposedly low-employment world I'm afraid, as finneh says, even if he doesn't really understand it. See a full-time job, minimum wage or not, and they're on it like a tramp on a kipper.
 
Ken Clarke Says David Cameron Did "Some Sort Of Deal" To Win Rupert Murdoch's Support

"Within a few weeks of taking over, my prime minister arranged a meeting with The Sun editor Rebekah Brooks. Rebekah Brooks described herself as running the government now in partnership with David Cameron. I found myself having an extraordinary meeting with Rebekah who was instructing me on criminal justice policy from now on, as I think she had instructed my predecessor, so far as I could see, judging from the numbers of people we had in prison and the growth of rather exotic sentences."

"She wanted me to buy prison ships because she did accept that the capacity of the prisons was getting rather strained, putting it mildly, it was not the way I described it."

"She really was solemnly telling me that we had got to have prison ships because she had got some more campaigns coming."
(Source: Buzzfeed)
 
McDonnell's iPad gaffe will be first in line when the Tories go looking for material at a future GE. And it's why even a fragile government could have a degree of hope i guess.

In case we need any reminding that our choices aren't particularly stellar right now.



Re: Manchester

What are the Government claiming to be an 'unreasonable' expense?
 
Nick 0208 Ldn said:
McDonnell's iPad gaffe will be first in line when the Tories go looking for material at a future GE. And it's why even a fragile government could have a degree of hope i guess.

In case we need any reminding that our choices aren't particularly stellar right now.



Re: Manchester

What are the Government claiming to be an 'unreasonable' expense?
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And how much will the shortfall be?
I'm decidedly anti-Tory but I'll wait for some facts on this before I form a view, not make stuff up to suit.
 
Now imagine Hunt completed his life mission of handing the NHS over to his friends at the pharma corporations and some of those victims didn't have adequate coverage.
 
SteveJ said:
Ken Clarke Says David Cameron Did "Some Sort Of Deal" To Win Rupert Murdoch's Support

"Within a few weeks of taking over, my prime minister arranged a meeting with The Sun editor Rebekah Brooks. Rebekah Brooks described herself as running the government now in partnership with David Cameron. I found myself having an extraordinary meeting with Rebekah who was instructing me on criminal justice policy from now on, as I think she had instructed my predecessor, so far as I could see, judging from the numbers of people we had in prison and the growth of rather exotic sentences."

"She wanted me to buy prison ships because she did accept that the capacity of the prisons was getting rather strained, putting it mildly, it was not the way I described it."

"She really was solemnly telling me that we had got to have prison ships because she had got some more campaigns coming."
(Source: Buzzfeed)
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Only just saw this. How exactly is this not the biggest story in the UK media right now? A media mogul directly giving instructions to government ministers? That's beyond insane.
 
Kentonio said:
Only just saw this. How exactly is this not the biggest story in the UK media right now? A media mogul directly giving instructions to government ministers? That's beyond insane.
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Because it directly involves the UK media.
 
Kentonio said:
Only just saw this. How exactly is this not the biggest story in the UK media right now? A media mogul directly giving instructions to government ministers? That's beyond insane.
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The Murdoch press won't mention it because it hurts him. The BBC won't mention it because Kuenssberg knows it'll hurt the Tories. That's a big chunk silenced pretty quickly.
 
Kentonio said:
Only just saw this. How exactly is this not the biggest story in the UK media right now? A media mogul directly giving instructions to government ministers? That's beyond insane.
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Something is seriously fecked in this country.
 
The tories announced that benefits will be frozen for another year 20 minutes after the royal engagement announcement. But I'm sure the aristocratic pageantry will console the soon to be homeless.
 
Silva said:
The tories announced that benefits will be frozen for another year 20 minutes after the royal engagement announcement. But I'm sure the aristocratic pageantry will console the soon to be homeless.
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It’s distracted the press, that’s for sure.

Seriously, apart from a minority of batshit crazy people who have Queen Liz plates and an even smaller minority of non batshit people who have an affinity with the Royals, why is every single Royal shit that whacks off the bottom of the porcelain reported in a way that implies that you’re the twat if you don’t fawn over the news?

I’ve got nothing against the people in that family. Especially Harry, he seems like a decent chap. But so is my neighbour Bob and I don’t give a flying feck where his wedding is going to be, or how he helped design the engagement ring and what each individual stone signifies, or which horse faced inbred cousin is going to play the banjo and which one will play the spoons at the reception.
 
If Damien Green's mission today was to make Theresa May look like an orator extraordinaire, job done.

Discussing the humanitarian crisis in Lemon...er...Lenin...erm Yemen was a particularly eye-opening moment.
 
I'm pretty sure i could stand in for the Tories at PMQ. Their responses are so predictable and meaningless that you don't need any actual knowledge of policy.
 
Damian Green computer porn claims: 'Thousands' of images viewed

On some days, websites containing pornography were being searched for and opened for several hours.

Mr Lewis, who retired from the Metropolitan Police in 2014, said although "you can't put fingers on a keyboard", a number of factors meant that he was sure it was Mr Green, the MP for Ashord, Kent, who was accessing the pornographic material.

His analysis of the way the computer had been used left the former detective constable in "no doubt whatsoever" that it was Mr Green, who was then an opposition immigration spokesman but is now the first secretary of state.

"The computer was in Mr Green's office, on his desk, logged in, his account, his name," said Mr Lewis, who at the time was working as a computer forensics examiner for SO15, the counter-terrorism command.

"In between browsing pornography, he was sending emails from his account, his personal account, reading documents... it was ridiculous to suggest anybody else could have done it."

Similar material had also been accessed on Mr Green's laptop, he claimed.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-42151148
 
sun_tzu said:
751 mep's and his voting % is 748... so there are actually three mep's with a worse voting record than him... impressive work to be lazier than farrage
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Probably either fellow UKIP or from one of the other anti-EU parties in another country.
 
https://www.theguardian.com/society...r-sharp-rise-children-pensioner-poverty-study
Poverty trap – Hundreds of thousands of children and old people have slipped into poverty in the past four years as falling wage growth and rising inflation take their toll on household budgets. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that 400,000 more children and 300,000 more pensioners were living in poverty last year compared with 2012-13. The foundation said the government should reverse the freeze on benefits, increase training for adult workers and adopt a bigger house-building programme to provide affordable homes for struggling families.
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