coprolite

I kind of agree with you but kind of don't. Members of broad socio economic groups will tend to prefer other people like them and there will be an insider/outsider dynamic. That applies equally to working class society as to upper middle class society. And i think you're right that the people who care most about being insiders and hating outsiders do that from a position of low self esteem. Where proper snobbery differs from standard insider/outsider dynamics is power. Snobbery is a special case where outsiders are rejected because they have less money or are lower class (probably status is more accurate nowadays). This makes it harder for lower income/status people to acheive wealth or status and preserves the inequalities we have.

Define Scottish

I was once speaking to an acquaintance and occasional employer while he was sorting a pile of job applications by binning all of them with Tillydrone or Torry addresses.

We could have done with the points.

The shortest odds reflect where the most money has gone not the most objectively likely outcome.

You're a very silly boy but you know what you've done and you seem sorry. This does illustrate an important point though. If i remember rightly about 40% of the pro brexit vote was for softer brexits, in the customs union and the likes. The biggest block of votes for any one type of relationships was for remain. There was not majority support for hard brexit but that's what we got because of tory internal politics. Still, unelected commissioners in Brussels eh?

The amount of transport needed won't change from what it was before brexit (although the cost will but that will affect UK producers too). Production doesn't need to increase. They'd just sell to the highest bidder.

I'd be confident that you'd do a better job than many current MPs, based solely on how you've described the role.

We now have a tarrif free trade in agricultural goods with the EU. So UK wages go up, uk prices go up and continental food becomes way more competitive so we import more from the EU. "British" jobs still go to low cost East Europeans, just in the EU and not in the UK. Experience suggests that most consumers won't buy british if it costs more. Maybe in the long term we'll find new niches, growing higher margin more perishable crops with more mechanisation. In the short term it will be the "destruction" part of capitalisms "creative destruction" I don't think this can happen in services so easily.

Yeah, well Jeremy Corbyn had a beard. Like Bin Laden and Harold Shipman.

I had my eyes open and it was no less terrifying.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58794515 To save time reading, figures are available for the larger businesses that accounted for 40% of furloughed staff. They sacked everyone they needed to last year so aren't sacking any more now. 60% of furloughed workers were at businesses with fewer than 20 staff so don't have to report figures. Some guy says they might be at more risk but some amateur sleuth says it's all cool because of Google searches. I wouldn't hang the bunting just yet.

5g is the same frequency as blood and they can use it to transmit subliminal messages straight into your bloodstream. Maybe that could be used for the half time scores?

If it wasn't for the meagre allowance for accomodation and the £4k a year no questions asked expenses (before actual expenses) it would be difficult for these poor guys to to work in London on that pittance. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9148/ Plus 15k extra for committee chairs and junior ministers etc. Before any of the usual suspects comes in with the usual "we need good mps" shite, this is how it compares to other government jobs in the London area: https://uk.indeed.com/m/viewjob?jk=667e80ed72377631&from=serp https://uk.indeed.com/m/viewjob?jk=40283508cd8ad9d7&from=serp https://uk.indeed.com/m/viewjob?jk=a034b6c12bb6556c&from=serp All of which are obviously jobs we'd like complete welts in. Oh, and none of the above are jobs where you can work on the side as a hedge fund marketer, arms firm director or reactionary contrarian newspaper columnist. Utterly despicable c***s.

That first sentence just made my toes curl 1080 degrees

Do you think it’s because you're on a watch list?

Downdy dons

I'd say "meh" is extremely generous, unless it markedly improved from episode 3 onwards. It actually annoyed me how shit the first two episodes were.

Fair point. Give her a chance to explain herself.

Both Please no whataboutery here. What she's done there doesn't look as bad as i'd feared. I had visions of her leaning over the hoardings doing a taunt. But she is in the stadium, with many other people and cameras and being visibly racist. No fucking about. Get her banned. Maybe a temporary one should suffice?

To be fair you can get a decent coat out of asda for £20-£30 so there's no need for Jezza to get all billy big baws in his flashy clothes.

The kids think Twitter is for their das. They're all on the snapchat and tik toks these days. Anyway. If this happened, no fucking about, get her banned.

I do agree that it's not all been the Tories. There were over 100,000 staff post merger in 2005 and that was down to 80k ish by the time the Tories came in. I think it's closer to 40k now. The brain drain that @welshbairn mentioned is real and hugely exacerbated by the Tories stringing out a pay freeze and below average pay increases because of their austerity dogma. I personally lost 25% of my take home pay in real terms between 2008 and 2015 while frequently putting in 50 hours a week and often much more. There has been zero catch up in pay since then. The work to be done expanded to include UC, furlough and brexit. The IT is more than adequate for CT repayments to be processed from someone 's living room. Tgat person just needs to be available. The much maligned scs usually work in London for a salary comparable to a big 4 audit manager or maybe senior manager and are expected to be available for parliamentary business without having a state provided home in the city like the MPs do. I think it’s reprehensible for a politician to be having a go at the civil service for working from home. The Tories wanted a small state. A small state can do less and has to prioritise. CT payments have been de prioritised. I'm sorry the leopard ate your face.

HMRC are chronically understaffed after years of cutting, way past trimming the fat and into lopping off bones. They've had to administer furlough and implement universal credit. The reason it's taken 9 months for a repayment is 11 years of Tory government, more than someone appreaciating their new found work /life balance.