Off Topic Other Stuff (anything you want to share)

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I only ever had two jobs (not including National Service)....the first firm I worked for starting as an apprentice I stayed at for 26yrs....it was all consuming...it had a big sports ground in the leafy suburbs...a big pavilion with a bar and restuarant...two football pitches.....a cricket square....tennis courts....a bowling green.....an athletic track and club....a cycling club.........the bar sold drinks at half price.....you got looked after at work with a nurse on site....in fact it was a welfare state all but in name......there were trade unions on site....but disputes were unheard of....we were well paid....it was utopia.

I left and became self employed....but my timing was all wrong and two years on I started looking for another job.....this was the era of Maggie Thatcher....who was literally killing of engineering companies with her anti union stance.....so I got a job in a none union firm....the pay was literally half the salary I had earnt before....you had no form of representation.....you either kept quiet or left....the turn over of personnel was very high.....there was people queuing up for work......having an apprenticeship and years of experience behind me didn't matter.....people came in with no experience and you were expected to show them the ropes.....and they got the same money as you......no looking after your work force no welfare state in this firm......I was having to use my savings to make up my wages to be able to live.....But I stuck at it and things slowly improved and my apprenticeship and experience saw me climb the ladder eventually....so i stayed for 23 years....and by paying extra money into the pension scheme...I ended up with a good pension.....during my time there the firm was taken over by Smith Industries and it was their pension scheme that helped me to have a reasonable lifestyle in retirement....plus of course my pension from my first firm....plus a state pension.

My working life divided in two....the first half starting in 1954 was full of good things and being well looked after.....the second half was financially hard under Thatcher but improved once the witch had gone.
 
It amuses me that you think Maggie was a witch and yet Boris aint that bad really. He is far more devisive than she ever was or could be. He is quite happy for this strike to take place and he will be equally happy for others in the future. It is very convenient and gives him something other than his own side and himself to blame. Stamer was quite right today during PMQs. Boris and his Ministers have not lifted a finger to try to avert this dispute. I don't think he even gets why anyone would want more money. He has gone a long way towards the inflation we now have. He of course will blame Putin for it and take no blame himself. Brexit is what we are now paying for and will continue to pay for for a long time. His answer to probable strike action by workers is to hint they will allow temp staff to fill the jobs. And you thought Maggie was bad? There will be many more strikes if he continues down the route he is taking. You cannot expect people to curb their pay demands to 2 or 3% when inflation is in double figures and rising. You have a multi millionaire Chancellor telling people basically to tighten their belts. There are 4 basics that affect people greatly. Food, Fuel and Gas and Electricity. You cannot tell me that the inflation on those are running at only 9.1%. I have seen the prices in the shops and have had to almost double my direct debit for electricity. I don't drive but know the cost of petrol and what my family are having to put in the tank. Real inflation has got to be over 20% minimum.
 
Boris is a buffoon that plays it by ear....he will only last until a genuine leader appears out of the woodwork to put us on a clear and even path.....so were is that leader....not obviously in the Tory party at the moment....and certainly not Keir Starmer whose MP's take no notice of him.

Now Thatcher was a different kettle of fish all together.....completely undermined th UK's engineering industry because of her war with Scargill and the miners Union fogging her view of any thing blue collared.

Hers was a class war....she wanted to keep the "workers" in their place....under the heel of the ruling classes.....and it didn't look like it was going to succeed....but she had the luck of the Falklands war....which rallied the "troops" against the Argies affront of daring to take the Falklands from us.

Thatcher saw the opportunity of rallying the country behind a single cause and a single enemy.....the result was the end of the UK being a leading manufacturing country..... and skilled workers were on the dole replaced by cheap unskilled labour being paid minimal wages.....many highly skilled men being replaced by a cheap labour force......I was there...I saw it happen...and I saw my wages halved....and non-union firms did just what they wanted...with no safety levels maintained....and no voice to say how it should happen....other than the sack or to shut-up and just put up with it.

Even her own Cabinet were scared of her and became yellow bellied sheep...only bleating when told to......Heath and Heseltine hated her with a passion....then came the selling off of the Countries assets....to her friends for pennies....making hugh profits on their purchases.....the Railways being a prime example of a major asset being raped and pillaged for the benefit od the shareholders.

I called her a witch.....maybe I was too kind.......she cried like a baby when they got rid of her.....but she still managed to thwart her enemies and get a stoodge in John Major elected to be PM and his only un-grey moment had been knocking off a fellow Tory MP... Edwina Currie for four years before he became a cabinet minister.....who would have guessed it at the time......Maggie would have had him on the naughty step for that.
 
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There are bigger parallels with the Thatcher era: she took on years of stagflation: no growth (or worse) in the economy and runaway inflation driven by militant union leaders calling strike after strike, partly motivated by Marxist ambitions and partly to recover last year's inflation, In doing so, these wage increases merely ensured next year's inflation would be the same or worse. The miners, led by a revolutionary but rather dim leader, were the victims.

This inflationary spiral is caused by shortages in world production post Covid, oil producers milking a dying product by raising prices rather than increasing production, Putin's War and in this country, Brexit. The whole thing's been made worse by decades of crazy energy policy. There's not much this Government can do about any of those. Even a competent government, which this isn't, couldn't solve it except over decades.

Unless we want to go back to the '70's, the rail unions need to be crushed as the miners were. It seems it's planned to ban railway overtime so strikers can't make up their already very generous pay packets for time lost to strikes. I'd go further: strike in a week and get no shifts at all. Even on days when when the railways are theoretically working, there's no usable service, so let's get it over with quickly.
 
So we think we have problems in this country.

Over the last week, the US Supreme Court has forbidden state rules against carrying concealed guns at a time when school children are being slaughtered in their hundreds and police are regularly guilty of shooting innocent people. Why does the latter happen? Because on a dark night on a lonely road, police have a pretty high chance of coming across someone with a gun in their pocket or glove compartment, so they tend to shoot first and ask questions afterwards.

Now the Supreme Court has stuck down Roe v Wade, the 1973 (yes 1973) court judgement that gave women the right to a legal abortion.

Unlike the Supreme Court, our judges aren't appointed by the government. Trump broke the protocol and appointed a right wing extremist to the Supreme Court during the period AFTER he'd lost the election but before Biden was inaugurated. Now there's a right wing majority bent on re-writing laws they don't like. There has been talk of Biden increasing the number of judges on the panel in retaliation and appointing two judges to restore the pre-Trump balance. No doubt that would have Trump nutters out on the streets brandishing AR15's.

The independence of judges is a absolutely vital to a healthy democracy. We (and our newspapers) criticise them at our peril.
 
I will quote my comment when this appeared on tonight's News. "So, it's not ok to end the life of an unbporn child but when they get to school it's ok to shoot them" That Country is getting worse and worse. Has the entire World gone mad........
 
I assume that in the USA you need to stop women having abortions.....just in case gun men run out of school kids to blast into kingdom come.
 
Despite being proved to be the biggest lying barsteward this country has ever seen in charge he still won't go will he. Ole Boris will cling on for dear life no matter who throws themselves on the funeral pyer. I don't know why I should feel ashamed that he is this Countries leader. I would not piss on him if he were on fire. But, I do. What the feck has this Country come to with this bloke still around.
 
Boris will super glue his hands to the No10 door knocker.....they'll have to take the door off it's hinges and drag him out of Downing Street to get rid of him.
 
He has no honour does he?

Interesting comment on a political blog : that he might call a snap election. This would be in the hope there are still enough fools out there to vote for him personally as that cheeky rascal who lied his way into Brexit and stopped all those foreigners coming here to do undervalued but vital jobs that Brits prefer claiming benefits to doing themselves.

This Government repealed the Fixed-Term Parliament Act precisely to enable them to call an election whenever they felt the political winds blowing in their favour. Apparently though we now fall back on some unwritten part of the Constitution which enables the Monarch to refuse a PM's request for an election if three tests are met:

  1. If an election would cause economic harm. I'm not sure how that got in there: the Opposition would always say that the Government are destroying the economy. However, the fact the Chancellor has just resigned pretty clearly because he thinks the PM intends to spend money we haven't got to buy his way out of trouble makes it's pretty obvious the solution for the Conservatives to dump Johnson and install an honest PM. No doubt rash economic "promises" would be chucked about like confetti to win such an election.
  2. If there are other candidates able to form a Government without an election. Similar to the above, since it's his own party that are deserting him, it's reasonable to assume the Conservatives could elect another leader and carry on with a Parliamentary majority.
  3. If Parliament remains functional i.e. capable of governing. Well, again, the Conservatives have a working majority: it's not as though it's a hung parliament that is incapable of reaching decisions (right or wrong).
No doubt the Queen would seek advice from the Privvy Council or whatever but I think (and hope) that he won't be allowed to call an election just to save his own skin when a government can quite clearly go on functioning as it was elected to do in 2019 merely by changing the PM.
 
Been watching PM questions on BBC this lunch time.

What came over to me is that Keir Starmer couldn't out punch Boris....although he had more ammunition to use than ever and should have nailed him to the wall....he just couldn't get Boris feeling embarrassed at all.....in fact it looked as if Boris was enjoying it more than ever......even the SNP leader couldn't land a punch worth mentioning.

Even if Boris has to go soon....who could replace him in the Tory party....no one with an inkling of charisma to attract the voters.....Starmer has nothing to offer although all the chips are there for him to use.....he has nothing to attract the voters with.
 
I think today has been pathetic all around. Boris doesn't have any honour that's crystal clear. He just waffles his way through any criticism and trots out the usual "we have provided 10000 more of something or other. We have put squids in peoples pockets. Blah Blah Blah." There is no shame evident for anything and it is difficult for anyone to nail Boris to anything. He simply doesn't answer any question anyway. He also trots out the normal "the public aren't interested in this so turn the page and move on". News flash Boris the public are interested and the majority want you gone. Is there anything this bloke will not do to save his own skin or is there anyone he will not throw to the wolves to achieve the same? Embarrassing doesn't even begin to cut it does it. I swear he would sign the Country over to Vlad if it meant he could stay in No.10 and feck anyone else. I also find those in his Cabinet who have stayed to be as embarrassing as he is. How can any sane person continue to back the man when it is so blatantly obvious he is just out for himself and he just lies and lies. I don't care at the moment who replaces him as long as somebody does and soon.
 
His brand new Chancellor of the Exchequer has said....24 hrs later that he should go....wow how's that for loyalty.
 
You know it's bad when Ratty Gove and Pritstick Patel tell him to do one. Do you really expect any loyalty to anyone other than themselves from this bunch of chinless wonders?
 
We don’t need charisma, it’s nice if you have it sure but the essentials are intelligence, judgement, commitment, loyalty, confidence tempered by humility and, above all, honesty.

How many ticks would Johnson ever have got?
 
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Vacancy at No10

All the cabinet are tainted in one way or another.

Steve Baker isn't tainted ?
 
Rory Stewart isn't an MP at the moment....he was disillusioned by how he got nowhere the last time when Boris got the job....didn't bother to stand as a candidate in 2019.

I fancy Steve Baker.....untainted by any of the chaos of this cabinet.....ex-RAF officer......respected by many at Westminster.....which could be a draw back of course.
 
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You have said it often enough Plym, Who? Who? Who?. The majority of the Country probably couldn't name more than a few of them of any party. I am more than relieved that Boris has finally grown one and fallen on the proverbial sword but now comes the question who takes over. It isn't very obvious right now is it. I get the requirements in the job description laid out above by notdistant but it is going to be very hard to find any one of them with even half of those qualities.

I listened to Boris banging on in his leaving speach. He was or is determined to remain a complete arsehole till the bitter end isn't he. I actually think he believes what he spouted. Any bets he tries a Churchillian comeback at some stage.......
 
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