UK Politics - BoJo Kool-Aid vs Project Fear Cocktail of Terror

[A wilding]

To answer @The Anti-Targ 's question near the end of the last thread:

Th US allows substantially higher amounts of food contaminants than the EU, and yes this does include mouse droppings. The limits are published online if you look. For example: https://www.fda.gov/food/ingredients-additives-gras-packaging-guidance-documents-regulatory-information/food-defect-levels-handbook

[Heartofice]

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Well, it’s either Brexit or Covid. If Covid, surely you have examples of other countries similarly impacted?

Hmm well

how about the US.. don’t remember Brexit affecting there?

https://heavy.com/news/why-empty-shelves-stores/amp/#click=https://t.co/aXgS23jJnJ
 

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Walk into any U.S. store these days and you’re likely to see empty shelves. 

Shortages of virtually every type of product – from toilet paper and sneakersto pickup trucks and chicken – are showing up across the country. Looking for a book, bicycle, baby crib or boat? You may have to wait weeks or months longer than usual to get your hands on it.

Or here:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-09-24/inflation-and-supply-shortages-mean-a-return-of-empty-shelves-and-panic-buying

 

 

Or you could maybe head over to the US thread and listen to Zorral bemoaning the lack of produce.

Maybe Brexit is why there is a Driver shortage in America?

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/a7283077-69de-4bb2-9d0a-1c68090d719f

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A dearth of workers willing to drive trucks has become so severe in the US that some fleet managers are petitioning to let more foreign operators into the country.

But maybe Germany is being affected by Brexit as well with its supply issues.

https://www.ifo.de/en/node/65598

 

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Among bicycle retailers, 100 percent of all surveyed companies reported problems with their orders. “At the moment, there is sand in the gears of global logistics. In addition, the freight rates for water transport have substantially increased,” Wohlrabe says. Among DIY centers (99 percent) and furniture stores, the aftereffects of skyrocketing timber prices in the first half of the year are apparent. Meanwhile, a scarcity of chips and semiconductors has meant that products have not been immediately available to retailers of all kinds of electronic products. This was reported by 97 percent of consumer electronics retailers. As for car dealers (88 percent), the delivery problems have affected electric cars most of all.

Are there any driver shortages across Europe? 

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.scotsman.com/business/is-there-a-lorry-driver-shortage-in-europe-what-is-the-situation-across-the-channel-3398097%3famp

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logistics analysts Transport Intelligence reported that Germany had an industry gap of between 45,000 and 60,00 HGV drivers. Predictions for 2024 see this number increasing to up 185,000 by 2027.

In France, there has been a shortage of 43,000 drivers since 2019 and Italy reports a deficit in drivers of around 15,000.

Clearly, the problem is not isolated to the UK, but has been a common issue across Europe for the last couple of years. In total, Europe has an estimated shortage of 400,000 HGV drivers, according to Transport Intelligence.

 

[Zorral]

11 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Or you could maybe head over to the US thread and listen to Zorral bemoaning the lack of produce.

I am not doing any such thing, because there hasn't been any shortage of same here at all.  By the end of summer, due to, hurricanes, droughts, flooding and wildfires, hitting all of our highest food producing regions, certain items such as carrots were of low quality -- that is what I was mentioning, and 'bemoaning' is incorrect -- I was describing. What we are experiencing is much higher prices for everything. For food it's because of the above mentioned and it will get more so as the effects of the midwestern drought upon all the grains and cereals hits really hard with winter and spring. What else I do is speculate on what will happen further down line, because things are screwed everywhere, and particularly in this country thanks to the deranged shoggoths everywhere and covid.

In the meantime, however, our region has done very well with our produce, and we gorged on fresh, heritage tomatoes, etc. We had great fruit and berries all summer. Our apples are on market now. But we sure as hell don't have cardboard sitting where the bunches of asparagus are -- we had a brilliant asparagus season, and we ate a lot of it. We continue to eat very well, thank you.

In the meantime here in NYC there are no shortages of anything, at least around here.  Other than razor blades and so on -- and that's because they are no longer shelved due to practice of gangs with bags racing into the chains of CVS, Walgreens, etc., and sweeping all the higher end products off the shelves and taking off -- and then selling them around the nabe or online. So a customer has to request nice shampoos and so on from a staff member, who has to go down to the locked basement and bring up the items.  This is far worse in California than here, but it's still an inefficiency.

Let's be honest here, most of the jerkwaddies writing this stuff haven't a clue as to what's really going on in the stores, any more than the Karens understand about the problems even good restaurants and owners are facing with staffing and inflation.  One of them wrote about our part of the City being deserted.  This guy must not have been down here since the spring of 2020, because, 1) it contradicts everything I see with my own eyes for about a year now; 2)  yesterday I did a whole walkabout, criss-crossing from east to west, from 22nd street on down.  Walking was difficult due to the sheer press of people on the streets and on the sidewalks -- and has been for a long time already.  All of them shopping like mad, including at the Union Square Green Market. There were as many customers and staff in the Sephoras as one saw on a Saturday afternoon in October pre-pandemic.

At the same time most stores such as Uniqlo mandate masks, and will give you one if you aren't wearing one.  Vaccination proof is mandated to enter inside a restaurant, a theater, etc.

Though when it comes to movie theaters and certain sorts of music clubs -- not the ones we would frequent -- but kids, djs etc. -- I don't trust there is any real scrutiny going on -- though our local restaurant, for instance does.  I was requested to show my vax card tonight by someone rather new to a regular restaurant who doesn't know us -- and I ran back to the apt. to get it because I hadn't brought it with me).

Of course supply chains are halted or slow for all the same things that are delayed globally, particularly for furniture, lumber, building supplies, cars (because parts are delayed) new windows and so on. OTOH, last week Partner and I walked down to Bed Bath & Beyond and purchased 1000 thread cotton sheets, a beautiful quilt, duvet, new mattress protector and mattress cover.  There were no empty shelves for anything there, including appliances, shower curtains, area rugs, and so on. And there's been no shortage at the gas pumps.

Get your reading comprehension in shape, read what's there not what you prefer to see.

In the meantime all of this is going to increase.  With BREXIT the UK is really and truly screwed.

 

[A wilding]

3 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Are there any driver shortages across Europe?

Quick answer: yes, but not as bad as in the UK. That is why the government recently came up with its half-arsed scheme to try to lure drivers from the EU to the UK.

Longer answer: try the BBC fact checking - There are HGV driver shortages across Europe, but in the UK Brexit has made things worse.

 

[Heartofice]

18 minutes ago, A wilding said:

Quick answer: yes, but not as bad as in the UK. That is why the government recently came up with its half-arsed scheme to try to lure drivers from the EU to the UK.

Longer answer: try the BBC fact checking - There are HGV driver shortages across Europe, but in the UK Brexit has made things worse.

 

Nobody said Brexit had no effect, but the driver shortage is only ‘cos of Brexit’ if you deliberately ignore all the other pretty damn important contributing factors.  
 

The original point was Ants was ‘it’s either Brexit or Covid’ when actually it’s a mix of a lot of factors. The fact that it’s happening to a ton of other countries suggests Brexit is really only a minor contributing factor 

[The Anti-Targ]

20 hours ago, A wilding said:

To answer @The Anti-Targ 's question near the end of the last thread:

Th US allows substantially higher amounts of food contaminants than the EU, and yes this does include mouse droppings. The limits are published online if you look. For example: https://www.fda.gov/food/ingredients-additives-gras-packaging-guidance-documents-regulatory-information/food-defect-levels-handbook

What's the EU level? Surely it's not zero. For pretty much all of the products that are listed has having a tolerance for mammal pooh they are products harvested in the field where animals are going to poop while the crop is growing. Therefore unavoidable. And for the most part the tolerance is very small, like 1mg/pound (500g-ish). Are you arguing a material benefit from eating a very small amount of pooh once per week rather than twice per week? Seems like it's a bit of a wash. People are likely eating more pooh if they have their own garden.

This seems more indicative of urban people not understanding the conditions in which foods and spices are grown and harvested. One might also point out that many of the tolerances are for products not grown, or not grown in significant quantities in the USA, like cocoa. So the tolerances are primarily for imports in many cases not domestic production, and for all products applies equally to imports and domestic production. Potentially the USA is cutting developing countries more slack in being less strict about these things than Europe, and therefore supporting those economies by not overburdening them with compliance costs that do not improve the safety of the products.

[Varysblackfyre321]

18 hours ago, A wilding said:

Quick answer: yes, but not as bad as in the UK. That is why the government recently came up with its half-arsed scheme to try to lure drivers from the EU to the UK.

Longer answer: try the BBC fact checking - There are HGV driver shortages across Europe, but in the UK Brexit has made things worse.

 

Dude it's simple; anything good that happens in the UK post-brexit is due to being free from the tyrannical EU(bastards won't even let Poland become a dictatorship and toss a gay off the roof), anything bad can never be explicitly noted as having happened in part or worsened by brexit because...that would make Brexiteers potentially feel stupid is what I'm getting. Which perhaps it should imo. Brexit is a good example for why rejecting of fact, reason, and evidence for nationalistic fee fees is bad. 

[Heartofice]

7 minutes ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

Dude it's simple; anything good that happens in the UK post-brexit is due to being free from the tyrannical EU(bastards won't even let Poland become a dictatorship and toss a gay off the roof), anything bad can never be explicitly noted as having happened in part or worsened by brexit because...that would make Brexiteers potentially feel stupid is what I'm getting. Which perhaps it should imo.

Cool post bro. Really well informed as usual 

[Varysblackfyre321]

46 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Cool post bro. Really well informed as usual 

Yay I finally got

@Heartofice

To say something grounded in reality.

Sigh, but we’d best not needlessly clog the thread up so I’ll stop here for now.
 Maybe.

@Heartofice  You’re welcome . 

[A wilding]

2 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

What's the EU level? Surely it's not zero. For pretty much all of the products that are listed has having a tolerance for mammal pooh they are products harvested in the field where animals are going to poop while the crop is growing. Therefore unavoidable. And for the most part the tolerance is very small, like 1mg/pound (500g-ish). Are you arguing a material benefit from eating a very small amount of pooh once per week rather than twice per week? Seems like it's a bit of a wash. People are likely eating more pooh if they have their own garden.

Sure, but the whole point is that US standards are lower than EU standards. So, for example, chlorinated chicken became the symbol of these lower standards. And not so much meaning that eating chlorinated meat will harm you, (though there is certainly scope for wondering about whether it is a good idea) but more because US meat is of sufficiently poor quality that it needs to be chlorinated in the first place.

Now you could certainly make the point that these lower standards do not result in Americans dying en masse (though a discussion could certainly be had about the poor health of large swathes of US citizens considering how wealthy the country is) and that adopting them would be acceptable to achieve some greater good. This indeed seemed to be the position of some Brexit supporters. However I think you can equally argue that it would not have been worthwhile, and as far as I am concerned "chlorinated chicken" and "mouse droppings" are perfectly reasonable rallying calls for this point of view. Certainly they are much truer than some of the slogans that Johnson and his ilk have come up with.

[Varysblackfyre321]

1 minute ago, A wilding said:

However I think you can equally argue that it would not have been worthwhile, and as far as I am concerned "chlorinated chicken" and "mouse droppings" are perfectly reasonable rallying calls for this point of view. Certainly they are much truer than some of the slogans that Johnson and his ilk have come up with.

I would say most but overall agree. 

[Spockydog]

Widespread reports of Tory MPs blocking constituents for asking why they voted to allow water companies to keep dumping raw sewage into our rivers and onto our beaches.

They are not being abusive, just asking questions, but instead of getting an explanation, they are getting blocked.

Cut and paste responses, whining about the cost of not poisoning us or our rivers, have been prepared by Bozo's people, and are being given to those lucky enough not to get blocked.

[Spockydog]

 

[Spockydog]

Here is an example of the type of 'abuse' they are whining about, and using as an excuse to block their constituents. It absolutely despicable that they are using the murder of David Amess to wheedle out of their responsibility to the people who elected them.

 

As one of the commentators pointed out, if simply having your voting record read out to you makes you so uncomfortable it constitutes abuse, then you probably voted the wrong way.

 

[Heartofice]

1 hour ago, Spockydog said:

Widespread reports of Tory MPs blocking constituents for asking why they voted to allow water companies to keep dumping raw sewage into our rivers and onto our beaches.

They are not being abusive, just asking questions, but instead of getting an explanation, they are getting blocked.

Cut and paste responses, whining about the cost of not poisoning us or our rivers, have been prepared by Bozo's people, and are being given to those lucky enough not to get blocked.

Yeah seems pretty simplistic from your perspective as usual. 

It was actually part of a bill to help reduce environmental waste and make water cleaner.. but someone put in an admentment that basically could have cost up to £650bn and led to sewage being dumped into the streets! Not surprising it gets voted down.

Of course from Spocky's perspective this is evil tories who deliberately want to poison the world and kill cute animals. 
 

https://capx.co/beware-of-the-sewage-emanating-from-fake-news-websites/

 

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What I discovered disgusted me even more. Far from voting to dump sewage, MPs have actually been doing the very opposite. The legislation that has stirred up the Twitter hornets’ nest is the Environment Bill, which hasn’t even finished its passage through Parliament yet. Far from being a license to pollute, the bill tightens up of a lot of environmental regulation, including the Water Industry Act 1991 (Sewage Services) on Storm Overflows, which is the bit of the legislation that has got the clicktivists so incensed.

The real dirt of the story is that fake news websites are deliberately deceiving the public by misreporting and misrepresenting what’s going on in Parliament

 

[Heartofice]

Anyway, the good news is that cases have declined for the fourth day in a row, which is encouraging. The growth in cases in kids has been flattening for a while so this looked like it was coming. Hopefully the panic over Plan B can calm down a bit now if this continues.

(btw, not because of Half term before anyone chimes in.)

[Fragile Bird]

2 hours ago, A wilding said:

Sure, but the whole point is that US standards are lower than EU standards. So, for example, chlorinated chicken became the symbol of these lower standards. And not so much meaning that eating chlorinated meat will harm you, (though there is certainly scope for wondering about whether it is a good idea) but more because US meat is of sufficiently poor quality that it needs to be chlorinated in the first place.

Now you could certainly make the point that these lower standards do not result in Americans dying en masse (though a discussion could certainly be had about the poor health of large swathes of US citizens considering how wealthy the country is) and that adopting them would be acceptable to achieve some greater good. This indeed seemed to be the position of some Brexit supporters. However I think you can equally argue that it would not have been worthwhile, and as far as I am concerned "chlorinated chicken" and "mouse droppings" are perfectly reasonable rallying calls for this point of view. Certainly they are much truer than some of the slogans that Johnson and his ilk have come up with.

Living in Canada, you regularly get to hear about the cases of food-associated illness and death in the US. Restaurant chains have to shut down locations, people are asked to throw their groceries. Often, of course, they’ve been eaten, and you must wonder if that was the flu or salmonella.

The US repeatedly has salmonella outbreaks.  The chlorinated chicken likely comes from high-risk plants. I looked up the number and apparently only 10% of US chicken is chlorinated, but…the US produces 44 billion pounds of chicken each year. 4.4 billion pounds of chlorinated chicken is a lot of chicken. And let’s not forget salmonella from eggs, and regular as clockwork, lettuce. Right now US authorities have suggested everyone throw out their onions, the salmonella outbreak is so big.

[Derfel Cadarn]

I’ve heard that the US has somethibg like 10 times as many food poisoning cases per head of population than the UK.

Hard pass on their chickens.

[Spockydog]

It's all grist to the mill of their wonderful Medical Industrial Complex.

[A wilding]

Re the sewerage argument.

As reasonably balanced summary of the situation is given by the BBC. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-59040175

The background is that the water utility companies were privatised some 30 years back by Margaret Thatcher. They are now typically somehow massively in debt to offshore companies in tax havens, and the interest payments on these debts leaves them cash strapped, making no taxable profits, and struggling just to maintain services.

A generation ago UK had some of the cleanest rivers in Europe. However they have been getting steadily more polluted in recent years. It has been widely alleged that the water companies find it cheaper to accept a a significant amount of their raw sewerage getting into rivers, paying the fines when they get caught, rather then to spend on infrastructure to reduce spillages. Also, the government has recently reduced the penalties for these spillages, citing "Covid-19 and other factors", as mentioned in a previous UK politics thread.

This is the background to which the government has blocked a move to force the water companies to clean up their act, saying that the companies "simply cannot afford to do so". I think there is now consensus that the underlying problem is many years of massive underinvestment by the companies, but personally I think the the government's apparent plan of leaning on them just a little bit to get them to clean their act up slightly is going to have little effect. Frankly driving them into bankruptcy and renationalising them, while disruptive, may be the only solution.

Edit: And I am just about old enough to remember that the main argument for privatising the water utility companies in the first place was that this "would ensure the large amount of investment that they needed".