Given he kept the press waiting for almost an hour before telling them with a straight face he went for a test drive with his son in the car because he thought he was blind then I think its fair to say he gives zero feks about how credible his bullshit is... especially as it hardly seems to have weakened his position
Westminster Politics
- Thread starter altodevil
- Start date
Even if it hasn't weakened his position, which I am sure that it has (apart from Mr Bumble), it very much has weakened the credibility of blonde bombshell.
You cannot fool all the people all the time. Even some of the DM readers must recognise how damaging it has been to Boris.
The rest will be rejoicing that he can do two push-ups and all is well with the world.
They have an 80 seat majority and the GE is 4 years off. They don't care and, unless they spectacularly screw up, they will suffer no meaningful consequences. Even if it goes completely pear shaped for the tousel haired bullshit generator himself, they'll just bring in a new leader and get a bounce. Sun is right: they don't really give a damn and they have been actively recreating the partizan team politics of the US for years meaning a good chunk of their base doesn't give a damn either.
Or the new guy is one of the Doms friends and does not have any experience for the job. You don’t have to be a hero to give constructive criticism which is spot on in my view.
Boris is turning like Trump by brushing off incompetent or law breaking things he or his Government has done. I mean Jenrick and Cummins are still in post, the Russian report still hasn’t been released. The man is like Teflon, it’s pathetic what this country is turning into.
Who is going to build build build?
The construction industry is on its knees. Social distancing has reduced production by 20%. Companies are giving staff pay cuts and there is a massive skills shortage. These are all issues that must be resolved before you can talk about increasing output.
Before lock-down the industry had a serious skills shortage but in the weeks leading up to lockdown a significant number of workers left the country and haven't come back. I work for a large subcontractor and our order book is currently overflowing yet we will not be able to fulfill our obligations because of a lack of skills.
I've been complaining about this for years and it just got worse. The Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) hasn't been fit for purpose for decades.
Don't even mention the impact of Grenfell. Building regulations and contracts remain complicated and onerous and yet three years after the fire we still await the outcome of the inquiry. In the meantime more and more buildings are failing, more materials of unsatisfactory quality are being discovered and the fire regulations are still unfathomable.
Boris is pining his hopes on an industry that doesn't have the capacity to build.
The construction industry is on its knees. Social distancing has reduced production by 20%. Companies are giving staff pay cuts and there is a massive skills shortage. These are all issues that must be resolved before you can talk about increasing output.
Before lock-down the industry had a serious skills shortage but in the weeks leading up to lockdown a significant number of workers left the country and haven't come back. I work for a large subcontractor and our order book is currently overflowing yet we will not be able to fulfill our obligations because of a lack of skills.
I've been complaining about this for years and it just got worse. The Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) hasn't been fit for purpose for decades.
Don't even mention the impact of Grenfell. Building regulations and contracts remain complicated and onerous and yet three years after the fire we still await the outcome of the inquiry. In the meantime more and more buildings are failing, more materials of unsatisfactory quality are being discovered and the fire regulations are still unfathomable.
Boris is pining his hopes on an industry that doesn't have the capacity to build.
Bricklaying, Carpentry, Plumbing have been crying out for years about shortages in young British workers, unless there as been a drive for significant training in the last five years those jobs will be filled by EU migrants.
That's just it. No-one is going to build build build. It's just more Tory bullshit bullshit bullshit.
Its telling just how far right the current government is. When their actions anger their own ex prime minister from only a couple of years ago.
I don't think she's concerned about them being right wing. She's concerned about the nepotism and the erosion of impartiality.
Rise of fascism? Or just a totally unaccountable government?
Yeah agree with the sentiment of this. Work in the industry myself and whilst we are back busy on site for now there is a worrying amount of tenders coming in for the back end of the year. I think it'll be a pretty shit 2020/early 2021 for most companies and they will be picking up scraps. Of course plenty will go bust but plenty will survive to and the price cutting that will go on will be ridiculous which could benefit not just the government but anyone planning to build as they will be seeing some really low figures and it will benefit them that way so there is people there to do it, whether they have the skill or whether the government even stick to it (I doubt they do) is another thing.
May's pretty right wing: her home secretary stint was very unpleasant indeed.
But, yes, I think she is concerned about the latter. I suspect she'd completely refute the first point.
It’s not about right or far right.
It’s one mass personal enrichment scheme. If Left wing policies made them richer, they’d follow them.
They don’t believe in anything. They don’t stand for anything.
The Construction industry has been robbed of its cheap worker imports from the EU, so now if it wants to gorge on Boris's 'big build' programme its going to have to start training people, again; bring back the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) and its levy system on employers... whilst we are at it, bring back EITB, DITB, etc. all 'levied up'. Magic well done Boris, might even get YTS back....?
I work in roofing and cladding and we are getting involved with replacement cladding jobs. (Post Grenfell etc) We priced two of them last year and one of them was a very large project for us, £4.5m. In the end we turned it down because of a lack of resources but we could have landed the project. We have since turned down another contract of similar size. We are now increasing our prices because the market is drained of competent contractors. We have just last week landed a replacement contract for £6m at decent rates. Our order book for next year is already the largest we have ever had.
The Government has set aside £500m to assist with the replacement of the type of cladding used on Grenfell (ACM) but a much larger £1.8bn for replacement of other combustible cladding. There aren't enough contractors to carry out the work and the prices are increasing. It seems the Government are unaware of this and are still promising to spend more on projects beyond the industries capacity.
I just wonder if the immigration laws for migrant labour will change before we start work.
They have been closing the construction trades training colleges for years if not decades. The carpenters I use are just not proper carpenters and cannot be relied upon. I've had enough and am getting out of the industry.
Quality has dropped beyond acceptable levels, onerous contract terms which make the subcontractor at the bottom of the pile totally responsible for design, architects who who don't want to be accountable and a new breed of contractors who do not want to pay. I'm on my last legs and can't wait to get out.
Not a bad position to be in! Not really involved much with roofing and cladding work as in the commercial fit out sector myself so it's on its arse a bit at the moment as you can imagine, did think a few more cash rich companies may take the opportunity to fit out their premises in anticipation of reopening but they haven't really. We were lucky we started a lot of jobs pre Covid which now won't finish til the end of the year and have landed a couple of small jobs since. Hopefully we get a few projects to keep people going til next year at least but I wouldn't think there's enough out there for everyone.
I think the government needs to do something, the contruction industry is typically the one thing that can dictate the rest of the economy, I don't really have faith in them to do it myself to be honest though. Like you say the grenfell stuff has been at a standstill since it started really.
I think it comes higher up than the contractor. I suppose the saying shit travels down hill. You're 100% right about the architects, we barely get detailed drawings anymore, most have the wrong project name on them and are generic from previous schemes so we basically have to design stuff (as do our subcontractors.) But equally the clients are reluctant to pay anyone so it puts everyone in the same situation, we have some good payers and pay in turn to the subcontractors but we also have to chase for money all the time which is frustrating. Don't get me wrong there are contractors out there ripping people off but there is also contractors stuck in the same situation as yourself and it's hugely frustrating, even more so on a good job when things are going well and you can't pay people.
The worst of the lot I find is architects or the PQS who seem to be doing less and less as jobs go on, the information is awful asn you're held accountable to it most the time.
Wtf is this ?
I suspect office fit out will unfortunately be hit hard. There appears to be a move towards working from home. I drive a round the City of London and the place is deserted at the moment. Twitter have already said they aren't going back and others will follow.
You're right the bad payment practice does come from the top. I'm also just experiencing a terrible surveyor who undervalues everything beyond the norm.
We have unusually been approached to carry out work in Manchester recently and just missed out on the Town Hall roof. I was in Manchester last year for the Pitched Roofing awards and was pleasantly surprised to see a lot of investment happening in the city center. Good luck.
England leaving the Union?
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/referendum-on-independence-for-england
apparently linked to some work they were doing on polling for an independent wales
https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/9ibhldbfuq/YesCymru_Results_200618_EnglandPoll_IndependenceW.pdf
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Maybe it's something I've just missed. English independence seems very strange(The union is perfectly set up for them).
I do really worry about this country at times tbh.
Surprised nobody has mentioned what Raab and Johnson have said today about Hong Kong.
Might be about to see an influx of many of them to the UK in the near future.
Might be about to see an influx of many of them to the UK in the near future.
Those unelected bureaucrats in Cardiff and Edinburgh have been dictating the affairs of England for too long!
There's a school of thought that Scotland doesn't 'pay its way' and therefore England subsidises them that right wing voters seem to hold on to (but in honesty I think it's mostly just a spurned lover thing: 'fine, if Scotland doesn't want us then we don't want them either!').
Came here to ask ye about that, seeing there's no thread bumped
Net positive IMO, HKers seem to be a highly educated and Democratic bunch
Yeah definitely will be, a few are looking into the hub spaces as there is people out there who don't/can't work from home and businesses can use them at a lower rate than keeping an office open. Oh there's plenty of them out there as well hugely frustrating to deal with!
Thanks, you to...hopefully back to some normality over the next 12 months or so.
The Barnett formula used by the treasury and devised in the late 70's that relates how block grants are worked out for Scotland, Wales and NI is the source of discontent for many as these three nations always seem to get more per head than in England.
There will be some but I doubt there will be huge numbers ... certainly nothing like the potential 3 million people which would be over 10 years normal net migration figures at once
I was there just last summer to visit a friend (who actually was thinking to live to the UK even before these laws were being passed). Lovely place, as is China also to be fair.
Would love to see even more HKese in the UK.
Of course, 3 million would be insane (and over half of HK's population I think?) . For one thing, my friend says quite a few would prefer to stick in Asia so many of his friends and colleagues are looking at Singapore/Taiwan /Japan etc.
Definitely quite a few who are considering the UK though from the sounds of it.
some will - I suspect most will stay where they are though as moving family to another country without a guaranteed job etc is a risk most wont take (or at least that is my gut feel)
I'm still of the view a portion of the English population are basically some form of peasantry
Cheers. I've always hear little bits here but I'm surprised by the polling.
Yet another scandal in the gov’s handling of the pandemic. Looks like the government is even withholding the true data from local councils
English water companies have handed more than £2bn a year on average to shareholders since they were privatised three decades ago, according to analysis for the Guardian.
The payouts in dividends to shareholders of parent companies between 1991 and 2019 amount to £57bn – nearly half the sum they spent on maintaining and improving the country’s pipes and treatment plants in that period.
When Margaret Thatcher sold off the water industry in 1989, the government wrote off all debts. But according to the analysis by David Hall and Karol Yearwood of the public services international research unit of Greenwich University, the nine privatised companies in England have amassed debts of £48bn over the past three decades – almost as much as the sum paid out to shareholders. The debt cost them £1.3bn in interest last year. Hall concludes the companies have borrowed to pay dividends, rather than to invest in infrastructure projects. The £123bn of capital expenditure spent by the companies has all been financed by customer bills, the analysis states.
Scottish Water, which is publicly owned, has invested nearly 35% more per household in infrastructure since 2002 than the privatised English water companies, according to the analysis. It charges users 14% less and does not pay dividends.
https://www.theguardian.com/environ...privatised-water-firms-dividends-shareholders
The payouts in dividends to shareholders of parent companies between 1991 and 2019 amount to £57bn – nearly half the sum they spent on maintaining and improving the country’s pipes and treatment plants in that period.
When Margaret Thatcher sold off the water industry in 1989, the government wrote off all debts. But according to the analysis by David Hall and Karol Yearwood of the public services international research unit of Greenwich University, the nine privatised companies in England have amassed debts of £48bn over the past three decades – almost as much as the sum paid out to shareholders. The debt cost them £1.3bn in interest last year. Hall concludes the companies have borrowed to pay dividends, rather than to invest in infrastructure projects. The £123bn of capital expenditure spent by the companies has all been financed by customer bills, the analysis states.
Scottish Water, which is publicly owned, has invested nearly 35% more per household in infrastructure since 2002 than the privatised English water companies, according to the analysis. It charges users 14% less and does not pay dividends.
https://www.theguardian.com/environ...privatised-water-firms-dividends-shareholders
So about 60p per person per week not a scandelous profit for all the capital spend required id say
This was discussed extensively in the covid thread yesterday, it's not even about withholding data here. The data on pillar two is about as much use as a hole in a condom and has been since 22nd May.
At today's PMQ, I got the impression that Boris has changed tack slightly and was more on the offensive.
It didn't work and yet again, his performance was an embarrassing mix of lies and bullshit.
Yesterday, he was championing his so called new deal of £5bn build build and build.
Today, that figure had magically jumped to £650bn.
Poor thing had become totally confused by the surgical strikes from Starmer.
Maybe it was due to hunger from his new diet. But he was all over the place.
It didn't work and yet again, his performance was an embarrassing mix of lies and bullshit.
Yesterday, he was championing his so called new deal of £5bn build build and build.
Today, that figure had magically jumped to £650bn.
Poor thing had become totally confused by the surgical strikes from Starmer.
Maybe it was due to hunger from his new diet. But he was all over the place.
That's not realy the point though is it Sun? I mean you do get that the last paragraph quoted is the punchline?