This no deal/bad deal thing is bollocks.

A) What are the economic and social consequences of leaving the EU without an agreement in place?

B) What are the economic and social consequences of the ‘bad’ deal?

Which is worse A or B

Note: option A is still a ‘deal’

Over what timescale? Surely we need to look medium to long term to really see whether Brexit has been successful?

On the current analysis, moving to WTO tariffs will add around £5-10Bn to costs for exporters. Sticking 2 fingers up to the EU in the “divorce” negotiations would save us time and £60-100Bn – enough to provide a complete offset on WTO tariffs for exporters for the first decade.

I hadn’t been aware that election to parliament was sufficient basis for absolution from sin. Has the Pope been informed?

Shouldn’t someone elected to the heart of one of the strongest democracies in the world be 100% opposed to sharing platforms and proposing policies that would undermine that same democracy they take wages from?

Assuming you’re a medic, do you think it would appropriate for the leader of the BMA to share a platform with people who advocate the bombing of Hospitals and random murders of NHS Medics, Patients and their families?

Corbyn, Abbott and others have become millionaires at our expense all the while repeatedly affiliating themselves with those who would do harm to the constituents of their fellow MPs.

DrJ – you seem to overlook the key difference between attending the launch of a new bus where the elected politician was present had renounced violence and engaged in the democratic process and repeatedly sharing platforms with people who are still committed to the terrorist cause and / or protesting outside court that the terrorist on trial are actually heroes and deserve our love and respect and / or leading petitions to give convicted IRA murderers better visiting conditions in prison.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/19/exclusive-mi5-opened-file-jeremy-corbyn-amid-concerns-ira-links/

“UK foreign policy would change under a Labour government to one that “reduces rather than increases the threat” to the country, Jeremy Corbyn is to say”.

ISIL and franchised groups are now active in close to 50 countries, the majority of which are not in the “West” and in most cases have played no role in Libya, Iraq or other “hotspots”.

If Corbyn’s diagnosis of the root cause of Islamist terror in the UK is foreign policy he’s completely wrong.

ISIL themselves have stated that their attacks on European countries are nothing to do with foreign policy and solely motivated by a desire to:
1. attack the kuffir
2. kill non believers
3. establish a worldwide caliphate.
4. see an end to secularism, liberalism and democracy.

For this reason there is no scope for negotiating – ISIL and similar groups have no interest in doing so and what our domestic foreign policy has been / will be is by and large removed from the Islamist terror attacks that first started in the 1980s and are spreading in line with the adoption of Wahabi / Salafist Islam.

Even reasonably stable Islamic secular states like Indonesia are now having to deal with terrorism and unrest i.e. recent events in Aceh.

given May was in the chair when security cuts were made and when the bomber was reported as an extremist (if I’ve got the dates right) someone is bound to ask her certain questions (and UKIP already have) – but would a different Home Secretary over those years have made a difference? To be fair we will never know, but I’m not entirely convinced.

The facts seem to speak for themselves. We’ve had successful terrorist attacks in the periods when resources were higher and lower – and more attempted attacks have been foiled since the cuts were made than before (albeit this is because the frequency of attempted attacks has risen).

The funding for “security services” has actually risen 30% in the last 2 years. The reduction in police headcount / conflation between 1,000 fewer armed officers and the “successful” attack this week seems to ignore:

– a significant number of officers have chosen to give up armed duties because the protracted investigations / trial by public they face in the event they have to discharge their weapons. This process can last for years and places a wholly unacceptable burden on the officers and their families. We as the public are part of the reason so many police don’t want to carry guns i.e. we don’t give them enough support when they have to use them (which is very infrequently compared to pretty much every other country)

– calling the army / SAS out is actually a sensible use of specialist resources. If we haven’t needed 1,000 armed police for the last few years it makes no sense to maintain them when the army are arguably better trained and there already.

– the “community knowledge” and link to intelligence gathering seems to be massively over stated. In the recent attack the local police had been informed about the attacker’s mindset / behaviour but don’t appear to have been able to do much by way of follow up. Most of the 18 or so major attacks foiled have reportedly been as a result of intercepts and feedback via Prevent – Lord Carlile (former Lib Democrat peer and independent reviewer of terrorism legislation) has concurred with the current Home Secretary on this.

As an aside, Lord Carlile was interviewed on R4 this morning and pretty much said that he resigned from the Lib Dems because of their behaviour on Control Orders – he suggested the combination of Lib Dem policy and constant actions by human rights groups had forced the government into using T-PIMs which have been completely useless, not least because they allow suspects to continue using mobile phones and the internet.

Especially as on the other side, you’ve got May passing a bill allowing her husband to buy up child welfare services at an even greater rate.

Happy to stand corrected but how so? Her husband doesn’t seem to own or control (as a director) any companies – so what is he buying and how?

His job appears to be a relationship manager in the pensions division of an investment company. If he had any material / pecuniary interest in the investments that would have to be declared on Theresa May’s entry on the register of interests (as all ministers have to list the full interests above £1.5K (I think – tbc) as well as directorships, dividends etc etc of all partners and close family members).

So where is the information on him buying, owning or selling companies?
https://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmregmem/170502/may_theresa.htm

It’s been reported elsewhere that the average cost per police FTE is £94K – including on costs such as pensions, NI, injury payments and extra back office resources to support this.

So for 10K additional police we’re looking at around £940m a year or close to £5B of extra spending under the next parliamentary term. So she was way off the true cost even using the “corrected” £300m figure by more than £1/2B a year.

Quite an interesting piece in the Telegraph on the EU’s likely tactics with input from Yanis Voroufakis:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/28/yanis-varoufakis-brexit-advice-theresa-may-avoid-negotiating/

Personally I think even trying to negotiate will be a waste of time – better to tell the 27 members to stuff their divorce claim, focus on WTO and wait till the German car manufacturers (amongst others) start to put the pressure on Merkel.

Consultant pay starts at £75k and tops out at £120k it really isnt that much compared to what similar skilled/educated people earn in other industries.

Taking into account pensions that means Consultant remuneration is firmly in the top 1% of all earners across all industries. I’d say that’s pretty good for what’s realistically a job for life and one where extra time / overtime is normally paid on top.

It takes huge amounts of study / effort to become a consultant but to say the pay “isn’t that much” is simply untrue, particularly for consultants working in the regions where living costs are lower than the national average.

wl – not sure if I know my stuff but the thing Labour keep pushing very hard is to scare everyone about US Health Firms. What’s not clear is if US firms actually have any interest in competing to provide a service to the NHS.

The likes of Kaiser actually oversee a health system that is more integrated and performs better than the NHS on many indices – but Kaiser don’t seem to be active here and the fact some of the firms that might operate here could bring some models that improve outcomes and patient experience never gets a mention.

What Labour noticeably don’t do is mention the many EU Companies involved in healthcare who could also operate in the UK but again don’t.

I rather suspect that the idiosyncrasies of public sector procurement, the incredibly negative political rhetoric and significant cost of building any health business in the UK is more than enough to put most firms off – so the “USA Fear” tactics from Labour is simply a politically expedient way of obfuscating their lack of real policy or detailed answers to the key question:

“what is the real root cause of what’s currently not working in the NHS and what is your proposed solution?”

just5minutes – staff are leaving to go to other countries, or leaving healthcare completely.

This is certainly true in Primary Care (with around 3/4 of all GPs now working part time) but simply reflects the level of pay is such that many doctors have chosen to work less because they don’t need the extra pay or pension contributions.

In Secondary Care I suspect that staff are leaving for a number of reasons, the principle one being that of the experience of working in an often pressured and chaotic environment. Simply paying more or adding staff won’t address the underlying root cause which is lack of organisation, failure to address the real issues impacting the flow of patients from A&E to wards, or the lack of effective working / integration with social care.

There’s also a plank missing to the policies of all 3 main parties in England namely that of transforming the health of the population by things like:

– encouraging more walking / cycling to school, work and shops etc
– tipping the balance on food consumption to make the most unhealthy choices far more expensive
– encouraging employers to create workplaces where physical and mental wellbeing is seen as a real responsibility
– addressing the obesity / diabetes time bomb head on with a nationwide strategy

One thing’s for sure, Theresa May opening up our NHS to US firms isn’t going to help matters.

The NHS “opened up” to US firms under Blair / Brown – that’s when the likes of Humana first opened for business in the UK. What’s happened in the interim is that the level of private sector activity in the NHS has changed very little in % terms – from around 5% when Labour left office to around 6.5% now. So opening the NHS for business to US firms has actually had almost no effect.

On the other points above:

– The NHS is struggling in Scotland and Wales, so its problems aren’t just reflective of the national government because Labour run it in Wales and the SNP north of the border.
– the GDP comparison isn’t always a reliable one because if some EU systems include social care costs in overall spending whereas in the UK a lot of social care budgets sits with Councils and is thus reported seperately. So the real UK figure is somewhat higher and closer to the EU average.
– Patient co-pay or insurance has to be part of the discussion in order to reduce the inappropriate use of NHS resources – but this needs to be done in a way whereby people who are in need of care don’t see it as a barrier.
– More pay won’t increase capacity or flow of patients. Even if Labour do succeed in closing down private sector provision the number of qualified staff will remain the same.

I’d like to see some policy that:
– Takes any increased funding to create more posts in order to relieve the pressure on staff. As others have said many people have had low / no pay rises for many years now, often on salaries that are far lower than the NHS and without the additional benefits of a defined benefit pension.
– Transforms the way the NHS operates – getting things right first time and learning from its mistakes more quickly – the £56B provision for NHS negligence is an obscene waste of money and reflects the significant numbers of patients who die or come to harm due to often quite basic oversights in care
– Harnesses technology to remove waste and duplication
– Uses the resources that are already there more efficiently e.g. diverting some of the excess primary care workload to community pharmacies which are often open longer than GP surgeries and staffed by pharmacists who could easily take a significant share of the primary care burden.

The wired connections have allowed browsing of the media from the head unit and therefore eminently more useable.

The level of distraction is just the same – the driver still has to take their eyes off the road long enough to cause an accident.

Nothing fancy but it would be good to be able to bluetooth music as well as calls without any wires hanging out the dash.

As no-one else has said it, the evidence is that making handsfree calls whilst driving results in as significant impairment to driver awareness and reaction times – similar to that whilst driving drunk:

Driver reaction times are 30% slower while using a hands-free phone than driving with a blood alcohol level of 80mg alcohol per 100ml blood (the current limit in England and Wales), and nearly 50% slower than driving under normal conditions.

To the OP, why would you want to risk harming your own life, or those of other people in the car, or other vulnerable road users (cyclists like us!) all for the sake of waiting a few minutes and calling when the car is stationary?

http://www.brake.org.uk/media-centre/1582-yet-more-evidence-to-support-brake-s-calls-to-ban-dangerous-hands-free-phones-in-vehicles

I can’t think of one large industrial entity that is successful and home grown i.e. British owned and ran. Can anybody else?

JCB?

Big implications for the NHS. Many consultants are paid above normal working hours in to their company. If they are now forced to go PAYE I doubt many will continue to do it. Why would you work an extra 10hrs on top of a 50+hr week for then 50% to be taken off you

What, like pretty much every other higher rate tax payer (albeit it’s 62% marginal tax at £100K)?

Maybe the hospital consultants (already one of the most highly paid professions) should see it as a fair contribution towards the running costs of a service that just about everyone agrees needs more money spent on it.

Great shirts and they last really well – I get mine cleaned at the laundrette and have only just thrown out my “favourite” shirt that must have been worn / washed close to 100 times – maybe they last longer when they get washed in a bigger drum.

As well as the offers you can normally get 10% cash back via top cashback.co.uk which brings the price down to £22.50 a shirt.

Agree with the delivery though – Hermes can be a bit hit and miss but I’ve never had an order lost even when they’ve been left by the front door. Don’t know why they don’t offer an option to pay for DPD delivery or similar though.

If it’s true she tweeted this whilst in court (see Jeremy Vine’s original twitter post) the option of a further non custodial sentence should be disgarded – she seems to have no respect for other road users or the court so the best place for her is in the clink.

“yea il be back straight back behind the wheel and let’s up you don’t ever get infrount of my car cah I wouldn’t b stopping”

Agree with above comments on USA food production standards but are we so sure that Europe is much better?

Latest example of poor animal welfare here:

http://www.thestandard.com.hk/section-news.php?id=178919

“For things like consumer electronics, there’s no way that the US can compete.”

I’m not sure I completely buy this – it’s true for some consumer electronics but also untrue for others.

If we take the example of apple – their profit margin is enormous. On a $600-$900 iPhone the factory gate cost is below $225 and that includes labour – so even if labour costs changed from $10 to $40 per unit the profit margin is still massively out of line with other industries, and then we have to allow to apple’s well proven tax avoidance structures which has led to them having $220b in cash on their books – google, Microsoft and apple have over $1.6 trillion in cash between them.

So (through gritted teeth), fair play to Trump – if he forces companies like Apple to create jobs and invest in the market that provides so much of their profit then good on him.

Agree with everything above but get a pair of montane minimus waterproof trousers – they pack down to the size of an apple and weigh nowt – if you get caught out by rain on the way into work it will keep you dry and stop rain going down into your cycling shoes for the way home. Makes a real difference in autumn / winter.

+1 on neff being completely duff

In our 4 year old kitchen:

– the brand new neff oven developed a terminal fault after 13 months
– the built in microwave oven has a non repairable fault that started showing at 3 years old and now shorts the power supply of used for more than 5 minutes
– the neff induction hob exploded inside just f before xmas and we’ve now got 2 zones left

I’ve had several kitchens / appliances from new and have never had a problem before. Neff quality is by contrast with cheaper brands completely absent – £2k of appliances that all need replacing within 4 years and with only moderate use in that time due to working away a lot.

That would have so much more credence if the TUC General secretary was not called Ms Frances O’Grady.

Yes but this misses the point that the TUC can’t call members out on strike – that’s the likes of the RMT, ASLEF etc. most / all? of which are led by men.

The toady old unions have long since stopped caring about ensuring the organisations their members work in remain financially viable or serve the customers that keep the money coming in.

Having Theresa May as a PM represents a once in 30 years opportunity to re-run a coordinated campaign against a female prime minister – it’s no coincidence that nearly all of the union leaders are men. We don’t need to guess as to why there are so many strikes:

– The Union leaders told us they wanted to use Jeremy Corbyn to re-establish hard left politics and funded him for that purpose
– They told us they would seek to agitate disputes with the Government
– They told us they would work to do this
– Jeremy Corbyn / Labour have nothing to say – perhaps the £116K the former received from the Unions has something to do with this?
…And they are still telling us this now.

The video of RMT president Sean Hoyle takes away any uncertainty about how these strikes will play out – “we are coordinating to bring the government down”.

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/rail-union-boss-vows-to-topple-tories-c0hm3r3sh

As with NUM/ miners in the 80’s these disputes will simply cause untold misery for the majority of workers who aren’t in Unions and will likely cause the government to introduce even more anti-union legislation. This is something that’s a retrograde step but when the likes of the RMT have balloted their members more than once a week for the whole of the last year it’s pretty clear they have no desire to resolve things in an sensible negotiated way and the only measure of success they seek is conflict.

I’ve experienced fantastic customer service off wiggle – even to the point where they gave me a refund on a saddle after I’d used it enough to find it excruciatingly painful and somewhat wide of the comfort claimed by the manufacturer.

Personally I’d just order a new one and send the previous one back for a refund – much quicker than waiting around for a return, inspection and replacement.

if you’re going to do the keysafe thing make sure the door lock / key is a secure type to begin with.

Leaving a key in a keysafe is an open invitation for the key to be copied and used at will at any point in the future – which can be a problem where different carers access the property.

I went from a 6 to a 7 because I love taking photos and the 7 was apparently going to be loads better for most photos – especially in low light.

In reality I can’t really see any improvement in photo quality and it’s still useless in low light compared to the Xperia Z1 I had 3 years ago.

Good to hear the new “Second Referendum” Lib Dem MP for Richmond on the radio yesterday – an absolute car crash of an interview:

The students at Reading University are next up for the WillShortlyGetAShockWhenTheyJoinTheRealWorld awards with their alternate universe branding of Jeremy Paxman as a Sexist and Mysoginist for asking about their team mascot on University Challenge:

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/jeremy-paxman-in-bizarre-sexism-row-over-comment-on-university-challenge-about-knitted-doll-a3391911.html

Apple have been claiming the new MBP are their fastest selling ever

But Apple are nor claiming to have sold more than in a similar time period for the previous versions, it’s just speed of sales. i.e. if they launched the previous version in 5 markets and got an average of 100K orders in each market, they could best the previous “fastest sale” by offering the new model in 20 markets and only selling an average of 25,001 units per market even though that’s actually a 75% drop in demand.

If he’d only been kept out of the UK, then a Latvian would’ve been killed instead, and that would have been MUCH better.

I think the point is that the authorities in Latvia knew he was a murderer so were more likely to keep tabs on him. The authorities here were not aware band even when he was questioned about an earlier child abduction here our police did not find the Latvian authorities forthcoming about his previous convictions – no information was shared despite the fact it existed and could have helped to prosecute him for the first offence here well before the second offence and subsequent murder.

I don’t get why they don’t install mobile phone jammers in British prisons – it would immediate halt much of the communication associated with smuggling in legal highs, drugs etc etc, arranging drone drops etc. It seems remarkably short sighted given prisons in other countries did this years ago and managed to do so without completely trashing neighbourhood phone coverage.

And for those who love their figures, this is quite interesting:”Between March to May 2016 and June to August 2016, the number of people in work and the number of unemployed people increased.”

What’s the problem with this?

More jobs were created and filled. At the same time even more people arrived in the UK looking for work / and or reached the age where they were no longer in Education.

Ah, trotting out ‘officiual statistics’ to try and prove a point.

Ah yes, how easily we forget that National Statistics is a high credence organisation staffed by the best statisticians in the world when Labour are in office but that same organisation and people completely change their spots and make stuff up when the Conservatives are in power.

It isn’t. Whilst Labour may support the idea of a benefit cap, they also pledge to create jobs, address causes of poverty and offer greater support to those who need it.

Does their pledge have any more substance than their actual performance in the ten years to 2010 when they added 1.76m jobs but nearly half of these were public sector – meaning that Labour actually created less than 100K private sector jobs a year?

When almost none of the current shadow cabinet have any significant experience in starting or running a substantive business where exactly would their insight on job creation come from?

Nobody has been in touch regarding joining my Lakeland Tea and Coffee growing enterprise yet, perhaps next I can seek some backers for my UK iron ore mining projects

Unfortunately you’ve already lost first mover advantage – there’s a Scottish Tea company growing white tea and exporting it to China:

Home

Bimbler – some reports do show an increase.. here’s one from this year:

http://kutv.com/news/local/study-teen-pot-use-increasing-in-colorado-after-legalization

– past-month pot use for teens 12-17, has increased significantly.
– drug related expulsions and suspensions have increased by 40 percent

I’m opposed to it:

– In Colorado the amount of cannabis being smoked by young people has actually increased since it was legalised as measured by frequency of use
– I have seen good friends develop severe mental health problems as a consequence of prolonged cannabis use. In one of these cases the person has gone from having a great job / life to no job and a very tough existence.
– A good friend who is a Psychiatrist has seen his case mix for acute admissions change rapidly over the last 15 years with a majority of younger patients now having chronic mental health issues due to cannabis use. In many cases the symptoms cannot be reversed.
– Consumption of cannaboids and the effect it has on reaction times / awareness is hard to predict / measure. This means people are potentially a greater risk to others when driving / operating machinery / working in safety critical environments.
– The legalisation may also encourage the illegal trade to drop prices / increase strength in order to retain business. This makes many of the above points even worse.

unroll.me?
Outlook on iphone instead of the native email app?
AshleyMadison messenger app?

If you haven’t already, set up 2 factor authentication on yahoo using your mobile number – or use the Yahoo sitekey to avoid using a password at all.

Massive amounts of work has been done trying to try and get healthier lifestyles and prevent the onset obesity/diabetes etc. Unfortunately the fact is, people like eating kebabs, drinking, smoking,and eating sugar etc.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/oct/24/gps-should-not-worry-about-offending-obese-patients-finds-study