Employment in the UK has fallen at its fastest rate in four years amid growing evidence that a slowing economy is taking its toll on the labour market.
Hmm, well, not so fast there.
From the ONS:
The number of people in employment declined by 58,000 to 32.75 million in Quarter 3 (July to Sept) 2019.
Well, OK, but:
… See MoreThe number of part-time workers fell by 164,000 to 8.54 million in Quarter 3 2019, while the number of full-time workers increased by 106,000 to 24.21 million.
As well all know there’s a hissy fit going on over in the world of non-cis, non-hetero, campaigning groups. Some who aren’t all that keen on the addition of trans to the alphabet soup have moved off away from Stonewall which is in favour of such.
Hey, we’re all liberals around here, spend your money and time as you wish. It’s just that for some that’s not how it does work:
… See MoreBut when a couple of people in the UK start a group designed to destabilise Stonewall, the trans-inclusive LGBT+ charity named after the Stonewall riots that were in part started by trans people, it’s a different story.
Shocked we tell you, shocked.
Actually, we are shocked, because we thought that Hillary was, while devious, bright enough to be able to keep the story straight:
… See MoreHillary Clinton has called Downing Street’s suppression of a report into potential Russian infiltration of British politics “damaging, inexplicable and shaming”.
The 2016 US presidential candidate told the Guardian it was “incredibly surprising and unacceptable that in your country there is a government report sitting there about Russian influence and your current government isn’t releasing it”.
An interesting statement made here:
Kevin Watkins, the Save the Children chief executive, said: “I would describe pneumonia as the ultimate disease of poverty, both in the UK and globally.”
OK, fair enough. I did think that it was largely a disease of old age but then what do I know?
So, we’ve a rise in this disease of poverty:
… See MoreEmergency hospital admissions for children with pneumonia have risen by more than 50% in England over the past decade, figures suggest, with admission rates highest in more deprived areas.
A useful background to the idea of student fees and loans is that the people doing the studying should have skin in the game as to whether their study is actually economically valuable for the rest of society. I know this because I’m on the periphery of the group of people who made the argument.
Further queer interpretations of Jane Austen’s oeuvre may well be fascinating for both student and teacher but they’re not the sort of thing which adds value to the bus system in Macclesfield.…
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The importance being that of course they don’t have any. Even Cuba, a tropical island fer cryin’ out loud, is not replete with the freely growing tropical fruit.
All of this was well known in Germany and was even used as a marker of the difference between the two ruling systems.
… See MoreThat such a basic commodity was a luxury good in East Germany tells you all you need to know about that system’s manifest failings.
In what is surely the most surprising finding of all time it has become apparent that the munchies are a real thing. For when cannabis – for purely recreational purposes – is made legal in a US state then sales of candies and chips rise more there than in other, non-legalising, states.
This is just one of those things that we all find incredibly surprising, isn’t it?
MunchiesOf course, this means that we’re going to have to ban cannabis again.…
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It’s entirely true that the iPhone, Apple’s practice of building it in China, increases the US trade deficit. But how and by how much is something worth examining at a greater level of detail. The answer being that it’s very much less than you think:
How the iPhone widens the US trade deficit with China: The case of the iPhone X
Yuqing Xing 11 November 2019
In order to pursue ‘fair trade’, the Trump administration has imposed a punitive 25% tariff on $250 billion’s worth of Chinese goods.…
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That Corbyn himself seems more than just a little antisemitic is true. Whether he is or not is another matter, he certainly seems it to me. That the anti-zionist shouting matches are really all about Jews and capitalism seems equally obvious to me. There’s a strain of the left that just cannot forgive Israel for not having remained stewed in kibbutznik socialism and poverty. Nor succumbed to that equal poverty of the government controlled economies around it.…
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Not all that much of a surprise to be honest, that a single election, or even four in four years, didn’t solve an argument that’s been running 600 years and more. The point to recall about Spanish politics being that there’s another axis running through it beyond left and right. Beyond the usual conservative/classical liberal divide, the modern normal of the social democratic left and the hippies into woo.
That’s whether there should be a Spain at all.…
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