UK Politics - Put your mask in the bin and hug your granny

[Liffguard]

1 minute ago, maarsen said:

Damn but you sound like Americans.

Where do you think they got it from?

[The Anti-Targ]

6 hours ago, Liffguard said:

Where do you think they got it from?

Yeah, I thought the English [nobility] were the OG "manifest destiny" lot and the USA just took it off them.

[Spockydog]

Awww, bless....

 

[BigFatCoward]

15 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Awww, bless....

 

Funny though that is, it strikes me as someone who needs help. 

[BigFatCoward]

I'm so sick of XR being so utterly shit at their job. Can someone please give them some PR advice? 

It's important they do better. 

[Zorral]

Long read; paywalled.

"Private Equity Firms All Want the Same Thing: British Companies
Flush with capital, the funds have gone bargain hunting in Britain, snapping up everything from supermarkets to defense companies."

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/31/business/private-equity-uk.html?

Quote

 

LONDON — It began as a market stall in West Yorkshire, selling eggs and butter just before the turn of the 20th century.

Today that market stall is Morrisons, Britain’s fourth-largest supermarket chain, with nearly 500 stores and the prize in a 7 billion-pound ($9.6 billion) bidding war between American private equity groups.

It is a financial drama that is playing out almost weekly in Britain: A domestic company is courted and snapped up by, most likely, private equity investors awash with cash. Global investment companies have $1.3 trillion in dry powder (industry parlance for the unallocated capital), according to PitchBook, and they are eager to pluck bargains on British shores, where company valuations have been depressed by years of Brexit uncertainty and then disrupted by the pandemic.

Already this year, 39 bids to take British companies private — just two shy of the total for 2020 — have been completed or proposed, half of them by private equity firms, according to Dealogic. . . . 

 

 

[Derfel Cadarn]

Wetherspoons running out of some brands of beer due to driver shortage.

Brexit karma, motherfuckers!

https://metro.co.uk/2021/08/31/beer-shortages-at-wetherspoons-after-brexit-and-covid-hit-supply-chains-15184924/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

[Which Tyler]

42 minutes ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Wetherspoons running out of some brands of beer due to driver shortage.

Brexit karma, motherfuckers!

https://metro.co.uk/2021/08/31/beer-shortages-at-wetherspoons-after-brexit-and-covid-hit-supply-chains-15184924/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

I guess these things even out - they're also short of staff to serve the beer: https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/tim-martin-calls-for-more-eu-migration-as-wetherspoons-is-hit-by-bar-staff-shortage-272908/

 

My sympathy is... limited

[Heartofice]

Funny because when I worked in pubs and bars 15 years ago there was an almost limitless supply of South Africans, Australians and Canadians, and there was never a problem in finding staff.

Add in other factors like pubs closing down and turning into Tesco’s , needing to serve food to make any level of profit and reduced punter numbers, I really cannot see how they would have any trouble finding staff.

Unless they were offering insultingly low levels of pay that nobody could ever survive on??

[Pebble thats Stubby]

9 minutes ago, Which Tyler said:

I guess these things even out - they're also short of staff to serve the beer: https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/tim-martin-calls-for-more-eu-migration-as-wetherspoons-is-hit-by-bar-staff-shortage-272908/

 

My sympathy is... limited

perhaps he shouldn't have told the staff that hadn't gone back to Europe  to get jobs in Tesco during the early Covid lockdown.

[A wilding]

Have to agree that, from one angle, his staff shortages are Brexit working as designed. Without foreign staff available, Wetherspoon will be forced to offer better pay and conditions to recruit UK employees. Of course that would require him to increase prices, and he would thus lose Wetherspoons USP, and probably be in big trouble.

[Heartofice]

1 minute ago, A wilding said:

Have to agree that, from one angle, his staff shortages are Brexit working as designed. Without foreign staff available, Wetherspoon will be forced to offer better pay and conditions to recruit UK employees. Of course that would require him to increase prices, and he would thus lose Wetherspoons USP, and probably be in big trouble.

Weatherspoon’s USP is a lack of music, a vague smell of vomit, a lot of sad old men at 11am staring at their pints and a late night fight outside at closing. 
 

Im sure they could get away with upping the price of their beer and a burger deals 

[A wilding]

Don't go to them myself, so I will bow to your superior knowledge.

[Heartofice]

Well I don’t go either, last time I did I almost added to the vomit smell the aroma was so bad.  But I look forward to a day in my old age where the idea of spending all day doing nothing in a Weatherspoons is appealing 

[Spockydog]

Guess we just add Wetherspoons to the long list of communities you have a deep, deep understanding of, yet never actually partake in.

[Heartofice]

1 minute ago, Spockydog said:

Guess we just add Wetherspoons to the list of communities you have a deep, deep understanding of, yet never actually partake in.

[Werthead]

The lack of elaboration in the article as to why the Irish population has taken 170 years to recover to the same level it was in 1851 - and the extreme drop over 3 million from the 1841 census - is really quite remarkable.

[Which Tyler]

21 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Funny because when I worked in pubs and bars 15 years ago there was an almost limitless supply of South Africans, Australians and Canadians, and there was never a problem in finding staff.

Add in other factors like pubs closing down and turning into Tesco’s , needing to serve food to make any level of profit and reduced punter numbers, I really cannot see how they would have any trouble finding staff.

Unless they were offering insultingly low levels of pay that nobody could ever survive on??

UK Hospitality industry down by approximately 93,000 EU workers, Aug 2020 => Aug 2021 https://www.hrreview.co.uk/hr-news/uk-hospitality-sector-loses-93000-eu-workers-in-the-last-year-alone/137037


Approximately 2/3 of non-British workers in the tourism industry are from the EU: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/articles/migrantlabourforcewithinthetourismindustry/august2019

 

It's probably true that there's no shortage of ANZAC workers in hospitality; but that's only true because there's not an over-availability of jobs, due to EU workers, who've gone home. During the pandemic, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the ANZAC workers have largely gone home as well, exacerbating the issue, rather than mitigating it.

[Werthead]

3 hours ago, Which Tyler said:

It's probably true that there's no shortage of ANZAC workers in hospitality; but that's only true because there's not an over-availability of jobs, due to EU workers, who've gone home. During the pandemic, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the ANZAC workers have largely gone home as well, exacerbating the issue, rather than mitigating it.

In 2018 there were 138,000 Australians and 60,000 New Zealanders resident in the UK versus 2.2 million Eastern Europeans. Obviously that's not counting seasonal visitors/workers/students, but those numbers would remain massively weighted in favour of Europeans, obviously.

[Spockydog]

Oooh, look, another broken Tory promise. They are calling their forthcoming increase in NI taxation a 'health and social care levy', in a lame attempt to get around breaking their manifesto promise not to increase taxation to pay for social care.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for people paying more tax, as long as it's fair. But increasing NI contributions to pay for mopping up the piss of older, wealthier people, which older, wealthier people do not pay, is not fair. At all.