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Reply | Tulip Sadiq
at 14:14 19 Dec 2024
If only Keith Vaz hadn't lost his seat you would have had one more tick in the line. I suppose some pedants might say "solicited" applied in his case though.  Wonder if any of his pals used the nickname vas rather than Vaz. |
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Reply | All this Budget Speculation
at 13:14 19 Dec 2024
But it is not a sustainable solution. After over 3 million arrivals in 5 years all the indicators are going in the wrong direction. It is true that too many long-term residents do not work and that needs sorting out too. |
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Reply | Rachael
at 11:04 19 Dec 2024
The phase that keeps coming back to me is "the adults are in the room now". People who trotted out some variant of that must feel a tad embarrassed now. [Post edited 19 Dec 12:43]
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Reply | Is Europe turning ?
at 10:52 19 Dec 2024
Weapons of mass destruction and DOP (Disappearing Object Phenomenon) come to mind. |
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Reply | Is Europe turning ?
at 08:33 19 Dec 2024
"Nothing forced on the UK in nine years. Fact."
You wouldn't get far in my line old son. We actually have to make out a case as to why things we claim to be facts have that status. |
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Reply | Is Europe turning ?
at 08:26 19 Dec 2024
The significance of this case was that it was the first one where the UK had to disapply an Act of Parliament because of a ECJ judgement, so in a way the fishing aspect was incidental. The case was also interesting because it led to HMG having to pay out £55 million to reach a settlement in follow-up litigation. |
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Thread | Britain is the Western Sharia Law Capital
at 08:14 19 Dec 2024
The Times has a big feature today on the growth of Sharia tribunals in the UK. It has undertaken an investigation that concludes that Britain has become the “western capital” for sharia courts, dealing with such areas as family and inheritance law.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/society/article/sharia-law-courts-uk-marriages-divor
Extract from behind The Times pay-wall.
“An investigation by The Times also discovered that polygamy is so normalised that an app for Muslims in England and Wales to create Islamic wills has a drop-down menu for men to say how many wives they have (between one and four). The app, approved by a sharia court, gives daughters half as much inheritance as sons.
The number of sharia courts, also known as councils, in Britain has grown to 85 since the first began operating in the country in 1982.
Muslims from across Europe and North America are increasingly turning to Britain’s sharia courts, which operate as informal bodies issuing religious rulings on marriage and family life.
About 100,000 Islamic marriages are believed to have been conducted in Britain, many of which are not officially registered with the civil authorities.”
Although it doesn’t really feature in the Times article, one of the key issues is how this fits in with the British legal system and laws such as the Equality Act. Some people say there is no real problem because none of the Muslim tribunals have legal standing in the UK. However, others point out that where people on both sides of a dispute agree to be bound by an agreed alternative dispute resolution mechanism such as arbitration, this has real world-impact and is legally sanctioned by the Arbitration Act, 1996.
https://lawandreligionuk.com/2012/10/24/sharia-law-the-arbitration-act-1996-and-
Many will see this as a dry subject, but it looks set to be a hot issue.
[Post edited 19 Dec 8:41]
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Reply | Axel Rudakubana
at 17:11 18 Dec 2024
I do wonder how much information would come into the public domain if a guilty plea had been entered and the defendant elected not to take the stand. There may be perverse incentives that lead the authorities to stay vague about the circumstances of the case. |
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Reply | Axel Rudakubana
at 16:55 18 Dec 2024
At least some things that we are not allowed to discuss will become clearer. One wonders whether the persons who seem to have been enraged by misinformation will be much happier when the facts of the case are confirmed. |
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Reply | Morriston A&E
at 10:16 18 Dec 2024
For nurses too, at least in terms of our local training capacity. The numbers of places available at Swansea University were cut in the late 1990s, and perhaps early 2000s (forgotten the exact years) to the point that teaching staff numbers were reduced, as I recall mainly through not filling posts. At Swansea student applications were always well above numbers admitted to courses in that period. Wales compared favorably with England because of bursaries. [Post edited 18 Dec 10:17]
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Reply | The I voted labour and want to apologise thread.
at 10:03 18 Dec 2024
The argument is that the women finally received "targeted" letters over 2 years after the Government stated that letters should be sent, and that this affected the ability of some women to plan their retirement to their best advantage. As you say, information was transmitted via other channels. I must admit that I'd say the impending change in the retirement age did receive a great deal of publicity, not least in the mass media, so that women should have known about it, On that basis a £10 billion bill seems to me too steep.
Extracts from summary of Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman report:
"We find that between 1995 and 2004, DWP’s communication of changes to State Pension age reflected the standards we would expect it to meet. Accurate information about changes to State Pension age was publicly available in leaflets, through DWP’s pensions education campaigns, through DWP’s agencies and on its website. That reflected those applicable standards. (...)
We consider that, if DWP had made a reasonable decision in August 2005 and then acted promptly, it would have written to affected women to tell them about changes to their State Pension age by, at the latest, December 2006. This is 28 months earlier than DWP actually wrote to them." |
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Reply | Morriston A&E
at 08:16 18 Dec 2024
It would be interesting to chart the changing configuration of A&E services in our area over the years. For many years the main A&E Unit was at Singleton, but that closed as Morriston expanded. Later there was a Minor Injuries Unit at that same location, which also closed after a few years. Initially, the new arrangements seemed to offer more capacity, but one wonders whether, with population growth, there has been too much centralisation with consolidation into too few centres. Obviously, staffing is a problem, and one might argue that the period I am talking about was also a time of abysmal workforce planning. In my opinion there was the training capacity to increase both medical and nursing student numbers, which were deliberately constrained. [Post edited 18 Dec 8:24]
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Reply | The I voted labour and want to apologise thread.
at 07:57 18 Dec 2024
It is the photographs of Labour politicians (who are now ministers) with Waspi women, and the promises made at the time, that grate. There seems to be a bit of a pattern. |
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Reply | Gorllewin Abertawe Gŵyr
at 22:27 17 Dec 2024
At least we are part of the minority (4) allowed to use bilingual constituency names. Even this wasn't enough for some. |
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Reply | Digital Creator
at 16:17 17 Dec 2024
Most of the FB "digital creators" seem to make "reels" - short videos that you can access by looking under the reels heading. That is not to say the content is always great. My wife used to do cooking reels. |
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Reply | Public sector pay
at 12:38 17 Dec 2024
I'm going to give up after this post as certain other posters on this thread simply haven't done their research. Vague mention of subsidies does not capture the change that has occurred since COVID-19 in the franchising model and the flow of resources between government (DfT) and the passenger train operating companies.
Look at this report and especially p. 19 and indeed the whole chapter on passenger services.
https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/A-financial-overview-of-the-ra
The quote below gives the gist of what has happened, but the table on page 19 provides more precise information about payment of management fees etc. As JMAB says the ORR website also contains relevant info.
"In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, government changed the franchising model of passenger service delivery, transferring substantially all risk and reward from operators to the Department. The new arrangements mean the government is now directly exposed to operators’ income and expenditure positions, rather than exposure being
deferred until a franchise contract ends or the financial position of a franchisee changes." [Post edited 17 Dec 12:48]
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Reply | Public sector pay
at 17:16 16 Dec 2024
Mike Lynch represents RMT. It was ASLEF that conducted the drivers' pay negotiations. What anyway does "full discretion" mean when the companies have been shielded from risk and just get their money from government. Why do you suppose all the headlines about the settlement mention a deal offered by government? It is pretty easy to check that what I have told you is correct if you do a little reading. |
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