david_carnell

There was a documentary the other night depicting a libel fight between the Daily Mail and the Sun vs Carter Ruck law firm (of Trafigura infamy). Never have I wanted both sides to lose so badly.

Maradonna - greatest ever (maybe). As a manager.....loon. And useless. At my own club (Leeds) all of our best players have been terrible managers.....Bremner, Clarke, Giles, Lorimer, McAllister. Strachan is the one that never came and given his record at Middlesborough a good job too. I imagine someone like Bergkamp would be a great manager. Cerebral. Whereas Henry seems too much of a prima donna to ever put out cones at a training session. Stuggling to think of one to be honest. Beckenbaur maybe. Anyway....welcome to life in the lower leagues ???? and Mockney. I've been here a while and it's not all bad. But you'll never, ever get an away ticket. So don't try. And the games against Milwall, Cardiff and Leeds will require the entire Met Police to turn up.

James, Please tell me you had your tongue firmly in cheek on that post? Given the utter shambles presented by the two other parties, the undoubted abilities of the LibDems to be all things to all men at a local level, you honestly believe that after 22 years, a 16% share of the vote is a "fine launch pad"? Doomed.

I would think there are only three inc young Piers.

Bobbly - stop with CAPS. It's bad form and irritating. And your message gets ignored more not less. I don't really want to get drawn into this as it has been done to death in the days of SteveT and his constant cry of "please describe the (black) people who mug us" but the idea that DJKQ puts across that those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear from the police is simply authoritarian nonsense. I'm sure you will be the first to volunteer for an ID card, to be microchipped and your home searched regularly for illegal materials. There are too few deaths in custody to allow for meaningful discussions as to whether black men are more at risk. Given that they are arrested in greater numbers in central London I would imagine any stats to be bias anyway. James - Melbourne Grove is particularly badly lit at night but the side streets around ED station seem to have been targetted by muggers for a while now. There was a spate nr Oglander/Odine a few months ago. Perhaps patrols after dark from SNTs could be in order. Something you can advise on?

Grammar schools, cheap property and a good commute.....get moving ????!

You called?

My god! She's ALIVE! I thought the local shortage of formaldehyde was a sign of terrible things but now realise it was merely allowing a once a year return of the Dulwich's own Barbara Cartland.

I've been planning on starting to read Tintin for the first time but have had trouble finding copies in book shops. I now have had it confirmed by a source that Chener stock issues so I clearly didn't look very hard. And I don't think there is anything particularly politically unpleasant about it is there?

Mmmm.....fair enough. I grew up in Cheam which is quite nice. Lots of green spaces and a village(y) feel with ok pubs and shops. Good schools (LB Sutton still has grammars) both state and private. Decent transport links - Cheam to Victoria in about 35mins (Zone 5/6). Some other areas that way are quite decent too but stay away from Sutton - like the OK Coral on weekends.

Is that more characterless than that house, Piers? They seem to have run out of bricks half way up.

High Speed 2 may make the Chilterns somewhat less picturesque. Perhaps East Sussex. Lewes, Ringmer, Saltdean etc.

I'm pretty much in the same quandry as MM. Whilst I have no desire to curtail protests or demonstrations, years on, this one is achieving nothing and spoling one of the capital's most pleasing aesthetics. Yet the very fact that a man is exercising his democratic right, outside the home of democracy has a poignancy that is hard to resist. Is Brian Haws campaigning to bring troops home? Will he leave when that happens? I'm tempted to leave him be till then and only then instigate forcible removal and perhaps consider time-limited controls on protests in that area. As MP says - perhaps a week? That would seem a sensible amount of time.

Brockwell Park are good but you need to book through the council's leisure team.

Well whilst I have a hunt (during my unproductive working day!) I shall leave with the Parkinson's Law which states that: "....work expands to fit time available"

That's correct. Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet MPs cannot sign EDMs.

But then any economic comparisons are going to be flawed because no two economies or demographics are the same. Only three countries in Europe have comparable populations and you've already dismissed France. So that leaves Germany and Italy who also manage to be more productive per hour worked. But no doubt you'll have reasons why their economies are wildly different as a basis for comparison. Yet I can't shake the nagging feeling that the protestant work-ethic that invidiously infects the workers and managers in Britain, that demands that we work the longest hours in Europe, is fundamentally flawed. It creates more problems, primarily social, than it solves financially.

Do you think the other nations I highlighted, such as Finland, also fail your test for the same reason? And don't get all antse about me highlighting a flaw in your argument...you do it to others all the time. It's what you're good at!

Hmmm....this artisan sourdough seems a bit pricey. Do you have any sliced white?

I'm not making it personally about her either. But you claimed her economic policies were based on a strategy of full employment unlike the French. And I'm calling you on it and saying that's nonsense. Her economic policies, right or wrong, were based heavily on keeping inflation under control and unemployment was a cost worth paying for that. Hence the 11% figure. Do you dispute that?

Selective use of stats here. The ONS show that unemployment was hovering around 5.5% when she came to office so not only did it then increase to over 11% during her tenure in office she never managed to get it down below the level she inherited. If that's evidence of a full employment strategy it seems a pretty poor effort.

Huguenot Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > As a result all countries who have full employment > strategies, as the UK usually does, and Thatcher > did in the mid eighties, are the whipping boys of > the 'productivity' tables. But it's all bollocks, > as are, frequently, the French ;-) Sorry - I've just read this bit again. You what? Thatcher had a full employment strategy? Did she bollocks! Her economic policy was that of inflation controlling monetarism. As long as inflation remained low, she was happy. The resulting unemployment rate reaching an unprecedented 4 million was a direct reflection of this.

But surely a full employment strategy would lead to higher GDP thus negating the lower productivity?

Nah - just buy some Bernie Mac DVDs. Their lowest-common-denominator humour should appeal but the cast of ethnic minorities will absolve you of any middle-class guilt.

This comment does not have a direct inequality bent, but bear with me and we get there in the end. Yesterday, the Daily Mail ran an article celebrating the work of the Thatcher government and their overhaul of industrial relations. The headline proclaimed: It told its loyal readers that [my bolds]: ?Britain is the only country whose people work harder than they did in the 1980s, an international study has found. Margaret Thatcher?s workplace revolution has seen Britons working more hours per week than when she was in Number Ten. ?The former Tory prime minister?s success at cracking down on union restrictive practices and freeing the country?s entrepreneurial spirit means we work much harder than we used to. Meanwhile, across Europe, people now work fewer hours than they did in the 1980s.? It used OECD data that has recently been published on working hours in developed countries. It shows that, compared to almost all other developed nations where working hours have been falling, in Britain both rich and poor are working more hours than in the mid-1980s. Further data from the EU from two years ago verifies this: http://www.leftfootforward.org/images/2011/05/European-working-hours.gif So, the facts cannot be argued. Britain is working harder. Excellent news, right? We should all be raking it in and be richer and more prosperous. And that is where the interesting stuff starts. First, the OECD report shows that inequality is rising in Britain over the same period and makes us the fourth most unequal country behind Mexico, the USA and Israel. To give the benefit of the doubt, only 5 nations show a decrease in inequality however (Table on page 6 for those interested). Of more interest to me at least, as a ex-student of labour relations, is the prosperity of countries in relation to the hours worked. Private business organisations such as the CBI would have you believe that Britain is a nation of shirkers and to compete globally we must be shackled to our desks. Today's Evening Standard reports 1 in 3 employees made to feel guilty by taking their legally obligated lunch break. All things being equal, this would make us (with Romania and Malta), the richest people in Europe. Unfortunately, our productivity lags far behind our main northern and western European neighours, according to this OECD data: http://www.leftfootforward.org/images/2011/05/Productivity.jpg Those lazy Finns, who work the fewest hours of all EU nations have exactly the same figure as us hard working Brits. In fact, 2 out the top 3 nations in terms of GDP per hour are the ones who work the fewest hours. Now, I'm sure the are anomolies and inconsistencies that will be highlighted by those who have vested interests in keeping workers in fear of their jobs and supressing employment rights. The fact that the economic basket case that is Ireland performs well is strange. But overall I think the facts speak for themselves. Now, back to Thatcher. When did the UK fall behind? Well a big chunk of the ?productivity gap? fell into place in the 1980s, under Thatcher. Lets compare changes in productivity since 1979 between blessed economically liberated Britain and that union-infested tyranny of unreconstructed statism, France (Again, sourced from the OECD): http://www.leftfootforward.org/images/2011/05/Uk-V-France.jpg As you can see, France sped ahead with productivity gains in the late 80s, just as Thatcher?s reforms kicked in. After the UK took a productivity hit in the mid-80s, the gap stabalised and finally closed under Labour. While Thatcherite reforms may not have been responsible for the loss of relative UK productivity, lack of them did not appear to hold back France. In fact, unsuprisingly, shorter working hours can be a spur to productivity. As an ETUC paper puts it:: So there you are ? the Thatcher revolution: Longer hours, lower productivity.