WTF is happening in the UK?

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FD2
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Re: WTF is happening in the UK?

#4281 Post by FD2 » Mon Mar 21, 2022 4:35 am

The NukeWatch boys and girls say they are being moved for refurbishment but I would have thought that would mean them being moved away from Loch Long not to it. I see HMS QE has just been in Loch Long to re-arm but it's more likely an SSBN needs re-arming before a patrol.

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Re: WTF is happening in the UK?

#4282 Post by Woody » Mon Mar 21, 2022 1:40 pm

For UP :D

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Re: WTF is happening in the UK?

#4283 Post by Pontius Navigator » Mon Mar 21, 2022 2:05 pm

FD2, or an empty convoy going to collect them.

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BoJo is a liar - you heard it in parliament

#4284 Post by Boac » Tue Mar 29, 2022 12:22 pm

Interesting


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Re: WTF is happening in the UK?

#4285 Post by Woody » Wed Mar 30, 2022 6:50 am

Can’t see this really helping with the staff shortages X(

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60921606
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Re: WTF is happening in the UK?

#4286 Post by Pontius Navigator » Wed Mar 30, 2022 8:59 am

It added that running the scheme had cost around £130m over nearly two years.
No, not COST £130m, but SAVED the ill and the carering staff £130m.

Our Trust even charged MORE if you register your car and pay online. The company, based in California, promises to respond to your email in 24-48 hours but never does.

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Re: WTF is happening in the UK?

#4287 Post by Boac » Sun Apr 03, 2022 9:18 am

The hero of the Tory's, the 'forecast' next PM, appears to have flown too close to the sun according to 'Jonn Elledge' in the New Statesman

"Rishi Sunak has been playing politics on easy mode and now he can’t cope

The Chancellor’s petulance over difficult questions on the cost-of-living crisis is a reminder he’s never before had to face them.

After watching the sudden deflation of Rishi Sunak’s popularity over the last few days, I’ve been left with a question. Late last week someone close to the Chancellor told the Sun that he had been “particularly annoyed by the BBC’s focus on help for Universal Credit claimants”. On Thursday we learnt from the Times that Sunak is annoyed with the Office for Budget Responsibility, apparently because its doom-laden economic forecasts had overshadowed his lovely Spring Statement.

My question is: who is doing his briefing? If it’s someone close to Liz Truss, or another plausible rival for the leadership, then big tick, congrats on making the Chancellor look like a petulant child. But if, as seems more likely, it’s someone in Sunak’s team, or even the man himself, then all they’ve managed is to sow yet more doubt about whether he’s up to the job. He’s got a worse PR strategy than the norovirus.

In the unlikely event you’ve missed all this, some headlines. As of Friday, the energy price cap has risen from around £1,300 for the average household per year to nearly £2,000; forecasts suggest it could plausibly increase by the same again by the autumn. At the same time, food prices have started going up, housing costs have continued rising and inflation could be on course to hit 8 per cent. Money Saving Expert’s Martin Lewis has described the resulting cost-of-living crisis as the worst he’s seen this century. He did not exclude either Covid or the 2008 financial crash.

To help ameliorate all this, Rishi Sunak has offered some money off fuel duty (which is not enough to counteract the increase in prices and is, anyway, of little use if you don’t own a car). He’s also offering to scrap VAT on measures like loft insulation and rooftop solar panels (which is meaningless if you don’t own a house). He has offered literally nothing for Universal Credit claimants, whose costs are rising just like everybody else’s, and the government has not backed down on its decision to scrap free lateral flow tests, even though “yet more Covid” hardly seems the strategy to get us out of this hole.

And then, at the end of his Spring Statement, the Chancellor announced plans to take a penny off the basic rate of income tax in March 2024 — conveniently just before the next election, but inconveniently a potential £4,000 in energy costs away — and smiled like he expected applause. He didn’t get any. According to YouGov, just 6 per cent of the public think he’s done enough to help with the increasing cost of living, and his already flagging popularity immediately descended to an all-time low. It was roughly at this point in proceedings that someone began briefing that it was all the fault of the BBC.

Much of the commentary about all this has invoked that ancient Red Wall curse, “out of touch”. It’s true that Sunak’s personal wealth is so great that mere millionaires feel shabby in his presence, but I’m not sure that’s it. You can be orders of magnitude harder up than the Chancellor and still struggle to comprehend the implications of the fact that, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, his budget will cost families in poverty around £446 a year. For many, that will mean choices between clothing or heating, debates over how much different family members need to eat. If you are used to having money, even if it feels like not enough money, the experience of real poverty is impossible to grasp.

So I think there’s another reason why a man who just a few weeks ago was the most popular politician in Britain has managed to fumble things so abysmally: his political career has been played entirely on the easy setting. He has never known opposition (entering parliament in 2015), and rose from nowhere to become Chancellor aged just 39, arriving just in time to become the hero who saved the British economy from Covid. His obvious petulance at being asked difficult questions is a reminder of the fact he’s never before had to face them. He reminds me of the last generation of ministers produced by New Labour, advisers whose careers had been built entirely on the patronage of the leader, and whose political instincts turned out, the moment they spoke to a voter, to completely and utterly suck.

Sunak is clearly baffled by his own failure. He found goodies for his voters, while denying them to those on benefits; he found things that could be spun as tax cuts, even as he set the country on course for the highest tax burden since the war. Such tricks, in living memory, have always worked before. Surely, he must think, this is how the game is played?

But as the cost of living crisis bites, empathy increases. Not so long ago Sunak’s claim that £25bn is too much to spend on keeping benefits in line with inflation would have resonated with voters worried about the deficit; now, many just see a government that won’t protect the country’s children. The world has changed, and the Chancellor doesn’t understand. And so instead he blames the BBC."

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Re: WTF is happening in the UK?

#4288 Post by om15 » Sun Apr 03, 2022 2:14 pm

Julian Jessop is an independent economist, he writes this article that includes facts rather than opinions,
It is astonishing how many people are willing to claim that the UK would not be facing a cost of living crisis if Brexit had not happened, or if the Tories were not in power, and that the Chancellor has done nothing to help. This is – to use a technical economics term – cobblers.

Let’s start with the facts on consumer prices. The inconvenient truth is that inflation is just as high in the rest of Europe.

Preliminary estimates published by Eurostat on Friday showed that the average inflation rate in the euro area jumped to 7.5pc in March, including a particularly sharp rise to 11.9pc in the Netherlands.

In Belgium, home of so many EU bureaucrats, inflation was 9.3pc. Even in inflation-shy Germany, it was 7.6pc.

The latest official figure for the UK was 6.2pc in February. Of course, this rate will inevitably rise further, probably to around 7pc in March, and more than 8pc in April. But the idea that “Brexit Britain” is some sort of outlier is just nonsense.

The usual suspects therefore have to fall back on the accusation that the UK Government has done far less than the rest of Europe to shield the most vulnerable from higher prices. This claim doesn’t stack up, either.

Last October the European Commission unveiled a “toolbox” of measures to protect consumers and businesses. This included emergency income support for energy-poor consumers, temporary deferrals of bill payments, and temporary tax cuts. The UK Government is deploying all of these tools, in some form.

Of course, different countries have done different things. Unlike some EU members, the UK has not cut VAT on domestic energy bills. But UK VAT here is already relatively low, at just 5pc. Eliminating this would save less than £100 from a typical bill, with more of the cash going to higher energy users who are more likely to be well off. Instead, the UK has cut Council Tax by £150 for millions of lower-income households.

And for all its many faults, the Ofgem energy price cap will at least protect most UK households from further increases until October, when the Treasury could do more if necessary.

In the meantime, the Government has also taken action in other areas (this crisis isn’t just about energy prices). This has included raising the threshold at which people start to pay National Insurance and reducing the taper rate for Universal Credit (both effectively a tax cut for low earners), as well as increasing the national minimum wage by 6.6pc.

Netherlands inflation close to 12%
To be clear, the Chancellor could, and probably should, have gone further in his Spring Statement. The measures announced last month will undo just one-sixth of the tax rises he has previously announced, and still left £30bn of fiscal headroom that could have been used now.

My own wishlist included a more realistic uprating of benefits, which are only being increased by the September 2021 inflation rate of 3.1pc, a one-year postponement of the hikes in National Insurance rates, and more to lower the standing charges in energy bills by taking off some of the environmental and social levies.

There are some relatively easy wins on regulation too, from rowing back on plans to restrict the promotion of “buy one get one free” offers, to doing more to lower the costs of housing and childcare by reducing red tape. Energy policy remains a dog’s breakfast.

But these shortfalls do not justify claims that Rishi Sunak has been idle, or that this is a “Tory” cost-of-living crisis unique to “Brexit Britain”.
Indeed, there are many reasons why the UK should weather the coming storm much better than the EU economies. One is that the UK economy had greater positive momentum at the start of the year. For example, the S&P Global PMI business surveys suggest that private sector activity in the UK outpaced the eurozone in every single month between October and March. (Yes, despite the Brexit drag on trade.)

In part this reflects the fact that the UK is one of the first major countries to emerge from lockdown. The pandemic may not be over (worryingly, staff absences are climbing again). But our economy is learning to live with Covid much sooner than most.

The UK economy is also less exposed to the fallout from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Our trade and financial links with Russia are relatively limited, though no one can escape the volatility in energy prices.

The UK has two other big advantages over the rest of Europe. First, our labour market is relatively tight and nominal wages are rising more quickly. Private sector pay growth in the euro area is barely 2pc, perhaps half the rate in the UK. As a result, while real wages are still likely to fall in the UK, they should at least fall by less than elsewhere.

Greater job security should also give UK households more confidence to dip into savings (where they have them) to maintain spending and living standards, even if incomes fall.

Second, there is far more scope for business investment to rise in the UK. In the fourth quarter of last year, business investment was still 8.6pc below its pre-Covid level. This year, though, surveys suggest that investment is finally set to rebound, helped by tax breaks and an easing of some of the Covid and Brexit uncertainties that have held companies back over the last few years.

Compared to their pre-Covid peaks, the UK economy had already caught up with the euro area in the final quarter of last year. This year the UK should pull ahead. The Government – and Sunak – deserve at least some credit for this
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Re: WTF is happening in the UK?

#4289 Post by Boac » Sun Apr 03, 2022 2:47 pm

I think all of us are old enough to remember the "You've never had it so good" Macmillan chant. We now have the "You've never had it so bad" Johnson chant.

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Re: WTF is happening in the UK?

#4290 Post by Boac » Sun Apr 03, 2022 2:56 pm

According to the Sunday Times, BoJo wants a huge wind farm in the Irish Sea. Whether this would get in the way of the Irish Sea bridge or not is under debate. =))

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Re: WTF is happening in the UK?

#4291 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sun Apr 03, 2022 4:59 pm

Boac wrote:
Sun Apr 03, 2022 2:56 pm
According to the Sunday Times, BoJo wants a huge wind farm in the Irish Sea. Whether this would get in the way of the Irish Sea bridge or not is under debate. =))
The words of the Johnson above, are written in the wind and the running water!

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Re: WTF is happening in the UK?

#4292 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Wed Apr 06, 2022 4:28 pm

Former P&O Ferries chef from Herne Bay suing for £76million over 'sham redundancy'

A former P&O Ferries chef from Herne Bay is suing the company and its chief executive for £76million. John Lansdown, is making claims of unfair dismissal, racial discrimination and harassment after losing his job 'out of the blue'.

Mr Lansdown, 39, from Herne Bay joined the company at 16 years-old, working his way up to the position of sous chef on the Pride of Canterbury but then lost his job in March alongside 800 colleagues. John is the sole seafarer taking legal action after P&O sparked uproar by firing workers without notice last month, The Mirror reports.

In his landmark claim to London South employment tribunal, Mr Lansdown accuses P&O of treating him unfavourably in a "sham" redundancy because he is British. He is claiming race discrimination on the basis that P&O replaced staff with non-British crew paid an average of just £5.50 an hour less than the minimum wage.
https://www.kentlive.news/

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Nuclear Power - new 'Strategy'

#4293 Post by Boac » Thu Apr 07, 2022 7:25 am

I thought a few years back that nuclear waste disposal was a major problem which took the 'shine' (no pun intended) off Nuclear Power Stations?

Is there an acceptable provision for this in the new froth?

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Re: WTF is happening in the UK?

#4294 Post by Undried Plum » Thu Apr 07, 2022 7:39 am

TheGreenGoblin wrote:
Wed Apr 06, 2022 4:28 pm
Former P&O Ferries chef from Herne Bay suing for £76million over 'sham redundancy'
Why isn't his Union suing?

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Re: WTF is happening in the UK?

#4295 Post by Woody » Sun Apr 17, 2022 10:00 am

Well what a surprise, another MP is on the fiddle X(

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dish ... 74c4f7603e
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Re: WTF is happening in the UK?

#4296 Post by barkingmad » Sun Apr 17, 2022 1:08 pm

WTF not only in UK but worldwide;



:YMAPPLAUSE:

A brilliant summation of the human disease for which there is as yet no known cure and the symptoms are worsening.

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Re: WTF is happening in the UK?

#4297 Post by Boac » Tue Apr 19, 2022 3:02 pm

The proud record of he who is considered fit to lead the country. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... tmas-party

Remember also that he is thought to be the best (and presumably most trustworthy) member of the Conservative Party to be Prime Minister.

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Re: WTF is happening in the UK?

#4298 Post by barkingmad » Tue Apr 19, 2022 7:32 pm

The answer to the question posed by the OP is that the madness gets worse though still highly refined in the febrile atmosphere in which we've been choking since March 2020;

https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/hal ... ism-ahead/

Maybe it's a side-effect of all those fibres of dubious materials, which even MSM are discussing, following the craze for sticking knob swabs in our respiratory orifices as often as preferred?

And boac, before you speculate attempting to reinforce your myth concerning my fictional relationship with a Tory female, I know lots of females who might vote or empathise with that once great party but otherwise I have never had *Ugandan Discussions* with any of them.

* Refer to Private Eye for the libel-avoidance meaning of this phrase... :-B

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Re: WTF is happening in the UK?

#4299 Post by Boac » Tue Apr 19, 2022 7:46 pm

BM wrote:your myth concerning my fictional relationship with a Tory female,
Can you refresh me on that myth? It certainly sounds interesting.

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Re: WTF is happening in the UK?

#4300 Post by PHXPhlyer » Tue Apr 19, 2022 7:53 pm

Boac wrote:
Tue Apr 19, 2022 7:46 pm
BM wrote:your myth concerning my fictional relationship with a Tory female,
Can you refresh me on that myth? It certainly sounds interesting.
The Man, The Myth, The Legend? :-o :ymdevil:

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