On Beecroft: it is already quite easy to sack people
On the incompetent Mr Beecroft‘s attempt to take labour relations back to the 1830s – note that in private sector workplaces in England & Wales without union recognition agreements, all of the following are the case:
There are straightforward processes available to sack lazy/incompetent workers which, if you follow them correctly, take less than six months from when you first notice the problem with their work and don’t lead to complicated legal action.
I’ve personally dismissed people in this way. Anyone denying that is either lying or has no idea what they are talking about.
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It’s not just the NOTW that needs to be destroyed
Gordon Brown isn’t the most loved Labour leader ever. But he has a bit of an air of authenticity to him: the kind of man who wouldn’t sell his kid’s illness for political advantage, for example.
So whenever the details of his first kid’s death and second kid’s illness [*] appeared in the Sun, it genuinely made me think less of him. After all, it’s a perfect NewLab, Alastair Campbell media strategy to humanise the dude.
But it turns out that Brown never leaked to the Sun at all, and that this – like, apparently, every other story News International has won – was obtained by thievery.
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In defence of Monarchies
My lack of interest in the forthcoming Royal nuptials is about as total as it gets. However, people will keep writing about it, and I don’t always look away from their articles in time…
So Johann Hari has written a fairly boilerplate piece about the monarchy, and why the UK shouldn’t have one. He sensibly and rapidly deals with the fatuous points that monarchists make about tourism and ‘defenders of democracy’.
But there’s also this:
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Barclays paid a billion quid in tax – but not to us
It’s become a well-reported trope over the course of a weekend that Barclays only paid GBP113m in UK corporation tax in 2009.
Various people of various ideologies have reacted to this disclosure, some by blockading Barclays branches, some by making fairly irrelevant points about tax losses.
But the truth, found in Barclay’s 2009 annual report – is a bit more complicated.
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The Observer bravely stands up for punishment without trial
There was a very odd piece in Sunday’s Observer, running under the headline MEPs putting child pornographers’ rights ahead of abuse victims, claim campaigners.
The piece, written by veteran home affairs correspondent Jamie Doward, says – as a reported fact in the piece, not as a quote from a pressure group:
The European parliament’s civil liberties, justice and home affairs committee (LIBE) will meet in Strasbourg tomorrow, when it is expected to approve a controversial measure that would compel EU member states to inform publishers of child pornography that their images are to be deleted from the internet or blocked. Child pornographers will also have to be informed of their right to appeal against any removal or blocking
Oxbridge isn’t racist – but it’s failing the working class
Newspapers are frustrating. They often report stories that are genuinely interesting and worth investigating in a way that’s so misleading and confusing that the real point gets totally lost amid extremist rhetoric.
The Guardian’s reporting of David Lammy’s data on ethnic minority admissions of domestic Oxbridge undergraduates is a good example: some of the underlying data is good, but many of the factoids are wrong or misleading.
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Wikileaks’ Julian Assange isn’t is now accused of rape – updated
[Update 9th December 2010 - The charges are now clarified and written about here.]
It’s become a prevalent meme across the western media – who, completely coincidentally, hate Wikileaks – that Julian Assange is currently being sought by the Swedish police on rape charges.
He isn’t. He’s sought on made-up-weird-charges that aren’t a crime in the UK, or anywhere else sensible.
Killer line:
The consent of both women to sex with Assange has been confirmed by prosecutors.
Labour blames immigration but working class betrayal is the real issue
When talking about Phil Woolas, immigration or “white working class racism”, it’s easy to lose sight of some important points.
Especially when populist demagogues blame immigration for all our ills, with more success than anyone in their right mind would like.
1) For sheer economic reasons, which can only be avoided by sacrificing the massive economic gains associated with them, the unskilled working class have been screwed over since the 1970s.
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Fears of talent leaving City ‘over-blown’
From Financial News:
Not a single trading team from Tullett Prebon, the London-based broker which told employees they cold move abroad for tax reasons in one of the clearest signals of an exodus from London has moved, almost a year after the offer was made.
It is the second development in a week that suggests fears over core talent leaving the City were overblown.
So *nobody at all* at Tullett thought that they would be better off paying less tax to work somewhere that wasn’t in London.
I suppose some people might argue that although not emigrating, Tullett’s brokers are working-to-rule and deliberately ensuring they aren’t eligible for big bonuses, because they’d rather have 100% of nothing than 50% of a lot.
This doesn’t seem entirely convincing, given the personality traits of the trader-y types that I’ve encountered…
Sanity, liberalism and hypocrisy. And MORE BOOZE!
Much of the most interesting work that I’ve done has been paid for by the drinks industry. So I’m about as impartial on this article as Mao Zedong on ‘whether or not Chinese-style communism was a good idea’.
Nonetheless, the often-missed point about the drinks industry, is that we’re an interesting, jolly, fun and indispensable part of society. A wedding without some champers, or a night out with the boys without a few beers would be shit.
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» Robin Hood tax: backed by the rich AND the rest, says new poll
» Criticism of Obama for its own sake: a reply to Mehdi Hasan
» Do older people really need more NHS healthcare?
» There are alternatives to the reckless ‘Plan A’
» On Beecroft: it is already quite easy to sack people
» Why Cameron’s claim of 600,000 jobs created is plainly wrong
» By using age to allocate NHS funding, Lansley rewards Tory voters
» The rise in domestic violence deaths is not an “isolated” problem
» Adrian Beecroft highlights mindset of Tory right
» The US is now a model for the Eurozone to save itself
» The IMF plan to revive the economy doesn’t go far enough
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