Wednesday 22nd June 2022

[refitman]

Morning all.

[AnatolyKasparov]

Good morefternoon all, how many trains are actually running today?

[frog222]

More or Less with Tim Harford

Do rail workers really earn £13,000 a year more than nurses?** As rail strikes severely hit services we look at some of the claims being made around pay – and explain how you can measure average pay in different ways.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0018gql

How to fiddle the figures —
Many nurses work part-time, so let’s bundle their earnings with full-timers .
Train drivers are a different union, most not on strike, but let’s include their higher pay with rail workers !

** Rough calculation came out at rail workers earning c£2K more .

ALSO I don't know if agency nurses were included in all those figures , because they are not underpaid ...

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Well that was an interesting PMQ's, armed with a rail strike and Starmer's vacillation you'd have expected Johnson to wipe the floor with him today, but it didn't happen. One mention of lifting the limits on bankers' bonuses by Starmer and the Tory benches went quiet while Johnson was reduced to a babbling jelly. Lynton Crosby will not be pleased.

[AnatolyKasparov]

The realisation has also perhaps dawned on the Tories that their latest bit of "populism" isn't actually, again, all that popular.

[refitman]

[Sky'sGoneOut]

I don't think they've helped their own cause by sending clearly ill-briefed ministers out on the media rounds only to have Mick Lynch effortlessly make them look like bullshitting fools.

Neither has blathering about 'Union Barons' and Scargill. It sounds anachronistic, lazy and completely out of touch.

If Johnson can't even weaponise a rail strike properly, and he made an absolute balls up of it today, he really is in trouble.

[AnatolyKasparov]

They were briefing their pet hacks that this would be a re-run of the 1980s miners strike - its just cosplaying the Thatcher years on steroids.

[refitman]

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Hmmm...I just had text chat with a guy I know who's been out canvassing for Labour in Wakefield and he said he was more hopeful than confident. Apparently the tory voters have been digging their heels in more this last week and he reckons it's going to be a lot closer than the polls are predicting.

So basically fingers crossed.

[AnatolyKasparov]

Meh, people often say that sort of thing as polling day gets nearer - and tbh one doubts if the (as we all know well) naturally hugely cautious Starmer would have joked about the Tory candidate for Wakefield at PMQs today if he hadn't been told stuff that made him pretty confident.

[refitman]

Give me strength

[frog222]

[frog222]

Boris Johnson could count himself lucky. He wasn’t up against the RMT union leader. Mick Lynch has already seen off Kay Burley, Piers Morgan, Labour’s Jenny Chapman and several half-witted Tory MPs. Chris Philp and Jonathan Gullis were chewed up and spat out. So it would be a racing certainty that the Convict would come off worse in any one-to-one with Lynch. One very good reason why the Tories have made no effort to engage with the RMT.

But the Convict did have to face a revitalised Keir Starmer. In recent weeks, the Labour leader has seemed underpowered. As if his mind was elsewhere. But at Wednesday’s prime minister’s questions he was fully on it. Not all the gags landed, but then they didn’t need to. Johnson looked hopelessly out of his depth from the start. Powerless to defend his record. Not even the Tories now believe the Tory line that Labour is to blame for the rail strikes. More to the point, the public certainly seem to know where the fault lies.

Crace

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... out-carrie