meanwhile in there US, Boeing's troubles look to be about to get (even) worse.
After the two 737Max fatal crashes, the US Dept. of Justice agreed not to prosecute if it addressed the issues that had led to the engineering mistakes that causes the crashes... some saw that as letting Boeing off the hook.
Now the DoJ has decided that the agreement is off because Boeing had not honoured the 'deal'; might we now see major prosecution of Boeing?
Yes, I'm sure there will.... the Seatle establishment will be seeking to ensure that... but the Q. might be how far it goes publicly before its stamped on.... it may in the end prove fatal to Boeing, in its current form at least
Team Starmer & the unions have come away from their summit today all suggesting that they have reached a deal on the New Deal for Working People, which the unions assert has seen a recommitment to its original shape & goals.
From cynics corner this looks like both sides deciding this argument can wait until after the election & for now it will pay to be seen not to be squabbling...
So, if/once labour gain power, the debate on workers rights will quickly flare up (again)
Yup, sounds like a good idea... even better curfew & controlled visiting (to vet lobbyists).... might quickly dissuade the grifters & opportunists - link that with a lottery for a two year term in the upper house, and we're looking at some great reforms....
(oh hold on, I've just come to... was I hallucinating there?)
Yes, and all good... but the one fly in the ointment (as it were), is that in such citizen assemblies, the permanent bureaucracy gains power through continuity - now that's not fatal as there are all sorts of ways of dealing with that, but nonetheless its not an insgnifcnat problem - but overall I've always favoured a lottery-filled limited term citizens' second house
Across the political Right, the narrative is that disability benefits (primarily Personal Independence Payments; PIPs) are too easy to get & are often paid to the 'undeserving'... however, in reality nearly half of applicants are rejected, rising to over two thirds for endometriosis (a gendered dimension I'll leave you to ponder), but with high rates of rejections over-turned on appeal (often with the same evidence).
I'm sorry to her about this; we have institutionalised inhumanity & callousness & you're paying the price of these choices.... hope the next review goes better
yes classic easily systemic distancing that's a much wider 'benefit' of outsourcing.... we see this in supply chains all the time - 'oh we didn't realise the price reduction this supplier offered would involve exploration of workers.... how were we to know, we're so far away'... labour rights workers have been battling this sort of distancing for years (incidentally all predicted by John Ruskin in C19th)
'sources' are now saying that Natalie Elphicke did not so much experience a political conversion as storm out of the Tory party having twice been refused Ministerial posts.
And, more explicitly Tories seem to be happy to say that it was her conduct in trying to excuse her husband's conviction for sexual assault (for which she has belatedly apologised).
No surprise the Tories want to depict her as tainted... & perhaps no surprise Streeting is defending her!
I know what you mean... at each point when you think, 'well, now we've reached rock bottom'... after a few days, you find we're sinking that little but deeper.
Good luck with the sales... we're big on terrace & container gardening here... having forsaken a 'real' garden when we moved 16 years ago... and have never looked back - containers are so much easier than beds etc. - and you can move them round when you want to rejig the courtyard.
enjoy your Sunday.... we're hoping the rain holds off until this evening, but we're (I think) a but further east than you.
thanks... at our last house I laid a terrace too flat, so it ends up quite dangerous with standing water (and ice in the winter), so don't forget to lay the slabs at incline.... and if you were going to do that, I apologise for the mansplaining-ness of that remark
Our nearby small market town used to have 3 banks; they're all closed (taking their cash machines with them), and this week one of the two remaining cash machines was removed from the supermarket where it was located.
So, we're down to a single cash machine in an area with a radius (I'm guessing) of around 20 miles.
The cashless society doesn't represent consumer choice, its pace is being forced by financial institutions keen to charge fees on transactions!
Yes, before I retired & was still teaching the core model on the PPE course, I did a sub-section of a lecture on Grazaini's theory of money & credit.... but now I can hardly recall it at all; such is retirement
Holly Pester's short novel The Lodgers (2024), is a timely mediation on the unanchoredness of the peripatetic life of the renter/lodger. At times elliptical, with two narratives whose relations remains unsettled, this is a book which offers a real feeling for a key element of modern life; moving from one lodging/rental to another. While at time wry, it remains elegiac in its approach to tenant's despair & longing.
When 0.6% growth of GDP (for the first Q of 2024) is reported as stronger than expected... you know that we have seriously downgraded our expectations about the UK's economic plight.
0.6% might end up looking like 2% + growth over the year, but don't get all happy, most of this 'growth' took place in services, which continue to have (as is well known) problems enhancing productivity... and productivity is the likely key to a revival of workers' real wages!