Too much disgraceful behaviour.
Every time Philip committed infinitely the Queen had a child.
It's never stopped and bread into all of them.
Get rid now.
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Too much disgraceful behaviour.
Every time Philip committed infinitely the Queen had a child.
It's never stopped and bread into all of them.
Get rid now.
Oh I don’t know Stagger, it’s not all bad. Just binged my way through the third series of the Crown on Netflix, nine episodes over three nights. Just one episode left regrettably. For political history buffs like me it’s been fantastic. Not just the Royals but Wilson then Heath and the three day week. All brilliantly acted.
I agree Stagger, most of them are a waste of skin. But its all balanced out by the Queen. A quite remarkable individual and we should be very grateful we have grown up in the Elizabethan era.
Fair point Wheeze.
The Queen deserves respect.
It's the rest of the males.
And today her little scrot has asked mummy for forgiveness.
Should send the runt to the tower.
That would be a good Celebrity Slug-Fest!!:D:D
I'm no celebtity.
You are on here!😂😘
It will all change when Corbyn seizes power. Up the revolution.
Given that everyone who worked in an ex-nationalised industry knows how inefficient they were and might now be a shareholder in the successor privatised industry, I am surprised that Corbyn and his North Korean pals think nationalisation is a vote winner - unless he is so dim and deluded that he no longer has any sense of reality.
Let's see. I guess the unions think it's a great idea and are probably telling Corbyn he's genius right now.
I think there are many rail users who would support renationalisation (and am I right that our own Witton Park agrees with this?). And I'm not sure the experiment into privatisation within the water industry has been a success either. For me it should be a case-by-case basis. That's the problem with some politicians - they're driven by dogma. Thatcher thought privatisation was great for everything, and Corbyn thinks nationalisation is great for everything.
Well Thatcher was right in principle (and of course Trade Unions want to get back to feather bedding and "Spanish Practices and closed shops etc)- but there are two issues. One is the business model you adopt and the other is the condition of the industry taken over; and the railways is a good example of both.
The original fragmented model for the railways was flawed (as an unthinking reaction to British Gas being privatised as one vertically integrated "well head to burner tip" monopoly) and it is taking a long time to remedy that misjudgement - hindered by the Government.
The second is that the railways (like water) had been chronically underfunded by government and the massive costs of improving things now falls on the public via ticket prices and surprise! surprise!, some people don't like paying for faster, cleaner, SAFER and more modern and frequent trains: but I am happy to and I do.
Still under Labour no doubt travel will be free for all - executive jets to one's local airport?
Oh and back to British Gas plc. No plc can take on the government and win and eventually British Gas plc was forced by the government to break itself up into different plcs. Transco was then swallowed up by National Grid plc, the exploration company fell into the arms of the oil industry, and the gas sales market became fragmented and is now in chaos with piddling companies promising cheap gas but unfortunately going bust every few weeks with the big players having to bail them out - using the money I pay for my gas bill of course.
Has Corbyn promised free gas and electricity yet?
The private company playbook when taking over a nationalised industry.
1. Quote a stupidly low price for the franchise such that the government are guaranteed to give you the contract
2. Re-employ all the old staff but on brand spanking new contracts that either pay less or require longer or more flexible working hours
3. Raid the pension fund by not contributing to it and building up a funding deficit. Close that scheme to future membership and plonk everyone into a cheaper alternative (that provides a lowers pension)
4. Cut business costs at every opportunity as it’s only by making massive cost savings that you have any chance of making any money
5. Less people doing the work usually works
6. Desperately raise the prices of the service that you are offering
7. Realise that your business model is going to hell in a hand basket and get a hand out from the government to stop you going under
😊
Nice to hear your views stolly.
A good summary Stolly.
So what would be the nationalised playbook to correct those issues?
I very much doubt sensible rail users support it.
Allowing communist RMT to paralyse the nation not just south east, so no rail users get to work. How is that an improvement? Seventies all over again.
Be under no illusion that is why corbyn wants it. His union paymasters made that the quid pro quo.
There is no efficiency argument for it, the cost of french rail per km is massive because of union stranglehold, and drivers in uk are way overpaid for the same reason.
Trouble is most of the voters were not born when corbyns mates last paralysed Britain and industry.
Even on here the starry eyed corbynistas need to get a grip.
I should sell them get rich quick schemes, they are clearly gullible enough to accept unicorn promises.
The General sending one into battle or the Chief Executive influencing whether or not one will have a job next year & etc, may not actually be the smartest guy in the room but it helps with moral if the top team can at least pretend that he or she is. Which brings us to Corbyn...;)
If you mean state businesses are so badly conceived, inefficient , overpaid, underworked and badly run it is almost impossible to save them, you have a point. Start from scratch is better.
But as for the pension schemes you are hopelessly wrong, Blair and brown destroyed them with monetary policy killing return, and otherwise super taxing them, making the schemes ( and most public sector schemes) non viable.
All companies can ever do and should do is guarantee what they put in, which they do. Politicians control what comes out by rate of return in the economy, and it was disgraceful when labour destroyed so many companies making companies fill in the gap that labour created. It is why most ex nationalised industries are basket cases, eg telecom, and why private companies easily charge far less than such as British Gas. The liability of an excessive pension scheme in which a company is forced to make up for politicians crap decisions.
A tale of two businesses for corbynistas.
First the nationalised basket case. Ordnance survey. No entrepreneurial flair, not only charged the taxpayer for making maps, still charges for wanting a copy of one, even though I as a taxpayer own the maps they created. If we asked it to create street view , like all public projects it would demand 10 billion, deliver five years late if at all, twice overbudget and charge a fortune.
Then the private sector :google. As one ( of many services we all use every day) it did it for FREE , in many countries , offers maps, street view , GPS , 3D, etc, and charged neither to create it or update it or provide it. It tells you where the nearest petrol, cafe, etc are. It only took a couple of years and entrepreneurial flair.
Google like amazon are a massive asset that have revolutionised ( the sensible end) of small businesses , in the services they provide.
All f!c!wit corbynistas see is billionaires and something to tax, when what they provide Freeis worth billions to the UK.
If ordnance survey had entrepreneurs, they would have done what google did.
Instead, OS sells expensive increasingly redundant maps.
Google changed the world.
Corbyn hates Google and wants to create more useless nationalised companies,
And the sad thing is too many seemingly intelligent, gullible fools thing he is headed in the right direction.
I despair of the grudge of corbynistas against the miracle workers of health - ie big pharma. The only reason there are no new antibiotics is it is not cost eff3ctive to develop them. Developing drugs is hideously expensive and risky, and has too short a patent life. The failure rate is massive.
Corbyns answer? Steal them.
Point of information -
Google now charge for maps embedded in websites. An interesting business model; they hold your credit card details and monitor how many hits they receive via your website. If you exceed your monthly quota, you get charged. You have no control over the number of hits, or proof of how many there were in the charging period.
Licence to print money?
Only for very high volume use. I forget the numbers but tens of thousands of impressions needed to go past the free quota. Impression limits are possible I believe.
Use of such as adwords also needs a lot of care to avoid being fleeced.
Again, impression and cost limits built in.
Gooogle are entitled to charge commercial customers!
Do you have a price for your personal data?
I use these https://duckduckgo.com/spread
Not perfect but safer than google, I also use Linux as my OS
So you dont use any google products? Google docs, mail, maps, etc It puts you in a minority.
Most are on facebook that harvest personal data in far more insidious ways.
And it is easy to create accounts that mask your identity using them.
I have multiple accounts on both platforms and on occasion use proxy servers to see the unpersonalized versions.
Its true that even on corporate level such as google analytics is free but gives google an insight into your website. But the alternatives are very expensive.
You pay your money, take your choice.
What I said was also true - google and amazon have made a sea change in the access of small
and even big business to the web. What they provide for free or cheap is worth many billions
to the economy. And that nationalized industries would not replace any of it effectively.
I am not saying that using Google etc is wrong. I was just pointing out that there is no such thing as a free-lunch. If you are not paying for a service provided by a company with money, you are paying for it with something else. It behoves us to recognise that and decide individually if we are comfortable with it.
Personally I am not, we live in an increasingly surveilled/monitored society and I wouldn't want us to blindly walk into a 1984esq "big brother" style situation.
<takes off tinfoil hat>
My company forces me to use Google mail and docs at work because that is what they use. In my private life however I use the perfectly good alternatives available, as JohnK mentioned, wherever I can.
For search: Duckduckgo or startpage
Maps: maps.me or openstreetmap based solutions.
Email: I pay circa 20 pounds a year for an email service. Personally I think it is worth it for the privacy and customer service.
Prince pervert is beginning to sound like Clinton and Armstrong. Let's hope the truth comes out on him too.
It's becoming apparent that there's more to this story than he was trying to let on. Who would have thought it would be difficult for a Prince of the British royal family to keep things out of the public eye :rolleyes:
Labour leadership: Clive Lewis calls for Royal Family referendum
Might get a sensible majority for that one!
Well, ginger and his missus are off. Let's hope more follow their lead.
I wish young Master Hewitt (as he was known in the army, allegedly) and his Missus all the best, he's had the balls to take his own path and stick a couple of fingers up at the press.
I hope it goes well and they both find happiness.