Oh hangon, the Guardian “article” is by the wise sage “Charlie” Falconer aka
Baron Falconer of Thoroton, who in a previous life in the Bliar government accidentally overspent several
Hundred million pounds of our money on the millennium dome and also went to quite some lengths to create the means for public bodies to side step their FOI responsibilities . For me it lost all credibility before the first sentence.

So anyway, turns out that David Miranda was carrying “several thousand” classified documents when he was detained at Heathrow on Sunday – it appears that his detention was a pretty fair cop – the only question for me is why they let him go.

Binners wrote above about the german model of apprenticeships and investing in R&D but that’s actually what’s already happening in the UK. There’s also the rather unpleasant truth that much of the german success over the last 3 years is owed to devlauation by the Euro, making german products cheap, and the millions of german workers who earn less than the minimum wage…. and the fact that over the last 10 years wages in the UK rose by 45% compared to 28% in germany.

As for the wider point, the government introduced additional tax breaks for UK based R&D a few years ago including “patent box” which was fully implemented this April and goes one step on from R&D and effectively means companies pay less corporation tax on profits derived from products researched and then made here.

There is also a massive amount of work going on to extend the UK supply chain (companies, workforce etc) around the industries we’re good at – aerospace, automotive, pharmaceuticals.

All of these things could and should have happened a long time ago but they are now being done and do seem to be working if recent export and apprenticeships are anything to go by – some companies are apparently considering moving production back onshore to pick up the patent box credit – this is concentrated in economic areas where the return of manufacture work will significantly contribute to the balance of trade and company profits / tax for the UK.

People describe “Osborne and Dave” as idiots but even a cursory review shows that a lot of long term well thought out economic development plans have been put in place and run counter to the “nation of degree qualified hairdressers” strategy of the last government.

one angle not covered so far is the scope for cutting fees without compromising on the quality of degrees.

Most / all of the “established” universities have made few if any efforts to transform their cost base or their operating model – they are still stuck on fixed 3-4 year degrees with many buildings idle in the evenings and holidays.

A more commercial approach could see them reduce their estate and working the buildings more intensively thus shortening degree lengths (to 18 months or 2 years excluding the lab / medical based degrees).

This would not only enable the fixed costs per degree student to be reduced but would also save students a significant sum on living and accommodation expenses as well.

Unsurprisingly, most of our universities aren’t interested in modernising their operating models or responding to the desire from their students / customers for shorter courses so it’s actually the newer private universities and likes of BLP who are driving this agenda.

Oh, and the nonsense about the students loan company is just that – it’s simply the sale of a loan book whereby the treasury will convert a long term liability (default on loans) into an asset.

Get the CCJ moved to the high court and then enforced by court sheriffs – costs about £60 and the sheriffs can enter premises to remove goods and arrest anyone who gets in their way. There’s a series about it on bbc1 at the moment – seems quite a good system and a lot more robust that bailiffs.

8 people were murdered in Nigeria yesterday with Boko Haram warning of “massive” attacks in the days to come – al queda have also warned of imminent punishment for the west’s role in Syria so combined with the end of Ramadan let’s all hope the nay sayers on here know more than then intelligence services who look at this thing all year for a living.

EE’s “monopoly” will continue for a good while yet – they are already at 60% population coverage on 4G and pushing for 98% by the end of next year.

By contrast, o2 and Vodafone have basically pushed back their launch dates to the autumn despite all the initial noise about being held back by the license process. o2 has only just got to 90% 3G coverage after 10 years of network rollout, so their and Vodafone’s plan for 98% indoor coverage on 4G by the end of 2015 look like wishful thinking given that they’ve upgraded few (if any) transmission sites.

The wild card is 3 – who have been rolling out high speed 3G to 60% of the population and could yet do something on 4G short term with EE via their MBNL joint venture until they get their national rollout sorted – they already have the backhaul in place, so have a lot less work to do than Voda or o2 who still have many sites without backhaul that would support 3G let alone 4G.

There are 14 local labour groups in “special measures” at the moment – Ed’s biggest problem is that his party appear to be supported by corrupt members and are busy running something akin to rotten boroughs.

http://labourlist.org/2013/07/the-kafkaesque-farce-of-the-labour-party-special-measures-revisited/

I’m actually quite lucky in that my GP Surgery is pretty good and do at least try to accommodate patients with urgent needs for appointments.

I’ve got a Asthma and when it’s about to cycle out of control due to a honking chest infection that’s arrived at the speed of an express train from nowhere the surgery are pretty good at getting me in that day for a check up and medication.

They will also prescribe over the phone i.e. you phone them, say you need to speak to a doctor, they take your number and the doctor rings you at a given time – particularly helpful if you’re already at work – the script can then be picked up from the surgery after the docs have all gone home.

Having said that, the system that my surgery operates appears to be the exception rather than the rule. My experience of other surgeries, and the experience of other local friends and family across the UK is that most surgeries:

– haven’t ever thought about their booking process from a patient point of view
– designed their processes at a time when most patients lived and worked round the corner and haven’t felt the need to update them since
– operate a set of stupid inflexible and arbitrary rules on repeat prescriptions e.g. requests have to be made in writing and posted through their letterbox, some accept faxed requests, most don’t do emailed requests
– don’t address staff absence / lateness. When GPs are strolling through the door an hour late for their first session it’s in most cases nothing to do with home visits and just a lack of organisation
– operate most processes on the principle that endless visits to the surgery by the patient is better than using the technology that other surgeries have adopted.
– still operate on a 9-5 rota and won’t operate 8 till 8 which is actually what’s needed to keep the working population well. Obviously in a small partnered practice that’s more difficult to resource, which is exactly why we should be pushing for larger practices (not to mention the fact you’re much more likely to get bad care in a small / single handed practice due to the lack of peer review and learning).

There’s also an issue with some surgeries clearly taking on more patients on to their list than they can service with the actual working hours of the GPs – who in many cases are working significantly less hours than 10 years ago.

shadthebad is right – head over to the at800[/url] website to check if 4g at 800Mhz has been turned on in your area. If so you’ll have received a filter through the post – connect it to the back of your freeview set top box and job done.

Just don’t use one if you are on ee4g.

They haven’t sorted out the routing between the femto service and the core network with the result that inbound calls mostly don’t get routed to the phone when at home. Even though voice calls are delivered over 2g or 3G whilst on 4g the service they either go to voicemail or the caller just hears silence. It’s a known problem that ee currently don’t have any plans to fix.

It’s all very well saying the wage is equivalent to that of teachers / the police etc. but given that for most MP’s the job entails being away from their families and friends for half of the week for years on end with all the extra complexity that creates (human and financial) I don’t think a direct comparison makes sense.

I also wonder whether those that say MPs should just suck it up have ever had to put up with that kind of arrangement short term – let alone for 5 or 10 years. Of the latest cohort of new MPs, nearly a 1/3 that were married at the time of election are reportedly now divorced – the long hours (in constituencies and Westminster) are in the main not visible to most of the electorate with the result that we have a distorted view of what the job entails – most people who’ve never written to an MP or visited a local surgery or looked at the select committees have no idea that their MP is involved in any of those things and just think the banter we see at PMQs is what most MPs spend their time doing.

There clearly needs to be a balance on pay, but if we want capable people with broad experience to enter politics, manage the country effectively in an increasingly complex world AND work to resolve the problems their local electorate encounters then we need to accept this requires a level of commitment and ability that would most likely result in people that fit this profile earning a lot more than £65K a year. The new proposed salary seems pretty fair and I still wouldn’t want to do the job for the increase in pay given the poor quality of life and constant cynicism from the public that most hard working MPs (on all sides) put up with.

The fact that stw comes up in google hits reflects google’s omnipresent capability of tracking what you look at regularly and then tailoring search results to provide matches from those sites. It took me a while to figure out how it worked as I couldn’t initially work out why DIY related searches kept turning up things from stw.

Same experience here as rocket dog even though the guy who nicked my bikes using his company van was working for a company that has offices next door to the cop shop, repeated phone calls and emails to the local police failed to get any response – even a neighbouring cycle theft team couldn’t get a response from them. Pretty poor really but consistent with most people’s experience of dealing with them round here.

But it’s not really comparable with a huge multi-million pound business when most of the revenue to be spent comes from a block grant or local taxes is it? There’s a big difference between running an organisation in which the main challenge is spending money and one where in order to spend you need to generate income.

I made a bus driver get off his bus and apologise after squeezing me against some railings as he pulled in at a stop . I just leaned my bike up in front of the bus and stood there until the abuse from his passengers who had actually noticed the crazy move was sufficient to encourage him to get out and apologise properly.

It came in second on the Sunday Times best places to work list for this year – ahead of the likes of BMW. Great result for a small company and that Nev guy is a real character – the energy level and engagement in the weekly “s**t sandwich” meeting made a refreshing change from the usual dull corporate “town hall” meetings.

if it’s index linked it can be as much as 40% of salary in equivalent contributions that would need to be made towards a money purchase scheme.