Posts

Normally at this stage in the electoral cycle you'd have a pretty good idea who'd win ... now ?

My constituency is a safe Tory seat so how I vote doesn't matter, I wish it did. 

On thing that irritates me beyond reason is the pretence that religion doesn't have social consequences.  If religion's worth anything at all, it always will have ... and the hallmark of a genuinely "right minded" religion is that those consequences will be benign for other people and for society as a whole.

I'm Quaker.  I'm proud Quakers were the first to take action against the slave trade and capital punishment.  I'm proud they set up social housing, the National Trust and Oxfam.  I'm even more proud that today's Quakers work hard to protect the disadvantaged, vulnerable and poor and that individual Quakers are still ready to risk imprisonment and fines for principled, non-violent protests against nuclear weapons and government policies they believe to be evil.  

Faith groups should try to build a better world for everyone.  I'm glad this Archbishop and the Pope are using their influence (inside and outside their congregations) to encourage politicians and others to think and act ethically.

"Should the Archbishop tell firms to pay their taxes?" 

Of course he should.  The Archbishop is duty bound to remind us all of the key parts of Biblical teaching - which in this case is Jesus's teaching to "love thy neighbour as thyself".  You can't "love thy neighbour as thyself" while depriving him / her of the money necessary to pay for the NHS, Education, Police, Social Care and all the rest of it.

I sometimes get asked about discounts for seeing more than one client (whether it's several members of the family wanting careers advice or an outplacement services contract on offer).  I always explain I can't drop my prices because each individual gets the same amount of help and I'm not prepared to compromise on the quality of the service offered.

I haven't lost any individual clients because I'm not willing to drop my prices but may have lost corporate customers because of my general unwillingness to do deals of this sort.

(Not that they'll worry about it but) I'm still boycotting Poundland because of their participation in the government's infamous workfare scheme. 

If you remember, that was the one where claimants (including graduate Cait Reilly who'd been working away first in a paid career-relevant post in a museum, then an unpaid post there when the museum ran out of the money to pay her) were used as free shelf-fillers - the alleged purpose of that unpaid slaving was to make them more work ready!!!

Cait very sensibly said she didn't mind working as a shelf-filler but she wanted to be paid for doing it.  

Emails are positively encouraged on my site.  Every "product offer" invites visitors to get more information about it, either by emailing or completing a form (their choice which option).  Yes, that leads to loads of spam ... but hopefully the absence of any barrier to an enquiry prompts more contact from visitors who will later on book appointments.

Can't stand Boris ... he seems a waste of space as Mayor of London, very good at self-publicity but too lazy to tackle any of London's real problems (transport, housing, etc).  He's another politician with zero human empathy.

Nigel Farage is his alter ego methinks.

Something like 80% new jobs this quarter (I think) are actually part-time ones. 

Given that a standard working week is around 37.5 hours, I don't understand why we don't do a further analysis and focus all the economic discussions on the UK's figures for full-time jobs (counting the part-time jobs as fractions of a full-time job). 

What matters most about jobs surely is that they provide enough income for the jobholder (and his / her family) to live on?  Very few part-time jobs would provide enough money to fund these costs of living.  I accept some full-time jobs don't either  but ....

The UK can and does remove illegal immigrants when it finds them.  The ConDems have cut back on Customs staff, though, so perhaps fewer checks at our borders are done and they're done less rigorously. 

An illegal immigrant who gets past the border checks would be much more likely to work in the black economy for an exploitative employer (eg one of the gang masters who sent Chinese workers out to pick cockles and drown) than in decent, properly documented employment.  Whether they and their employers get caught depends on luck and how many government agencies are prepared to put the effort into finding them.