The 'Vulcan' showing the intellect he is famous for: https://twitter.com/secrettory12/status/1504736581684547597
P&O France, Ireland and Holland employees have not been dismissed. Not necessarily brexit related, as our laws have not changed, but gives the absolute lies about EU red tape, "ruled by Brussels", freedom to make our own regulations etc. As to the RMT bollox being "in step with its members" surely an organisation trusted with looking after its members interests should lead rather than finding out which way the mob is going, running to the front and shouting 'follow me'.
It was simply a rueful aside about the RMT. But ‘the Mob’ is their membership so it’s hardly surprising they reflect its views and you also know why they wanted change in the economic model. Precisely because of the insecurity of employment. And yes I know, you don’t have to convince me that this isn’t the way to change that, not without a wholly different type of Government.
I would love that. I’ve never seen anything that suggests piracy of the aaaarrrgh Jim lad variety isn’t a cracking good laugh. Arrr! Handover your duty free and French cheeses!
I'm with you. And if you're caught, you can just claim you're a privateer with a charter from Elizabeth I and didn't realise war with Spain was over.
This will bring a warm tingle to your hearts as Dover MP Natalie Elphick gets an unexpected reaction: https://twitter.com/JJ_Bryant/status/1504861661668290563
No idea has she? Not a care about the actual impact of her policies. Heart-warming to see her face an angry working class mob, when she’s the sort of Tory who thinks waving a flag is enough.
Like Starmer thinks talking about football is enough. Mind you, tory MP heckled by union activists is hardly headline news. Only on here would snyone reproduce it as serious ness.
Whitehall memo indicates that ministers knew about the plans to sack 800 workers, but they did nothing about it. Now there has been an outcry the Government is pretending to be appalled, but again the interests of ordinary British people fall well below those of international capital and shareholders. This is reminiscent of the European Super League proposals that Johnson knew about, bit then pretended to be outraged by when the public were angry. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...p-o-ferries-dp-world-government-b2039799.html
RMT are saying the replacement agency P&O crew are being paid £1.80 per hour: And to think the RMT supported Brexit because they felt the EU undermined pay and conditions!
And had they had a Labour Government Brexit would have had a different flavour, but they misjudged how much Brexit would weaken Corbyn’s position. Any Tory Brexit is a disaster for the working class. They are been offered nothing more than flag waving. There will be no resistance to the demands of global capitalism. Tory MPs are its footsoldiers.
But Elphicke points the finger at who's really to blame: I was looking for the clip of her talking in parliament that they've just played on R4.
It is bizarre that the Brexit win seems to have made some Tories forget who they are, believe that somehow they have become the w class party, when of course the majority of w class people still loathe them. They mistake the absence of a strong w class party and the Brexit vote for acceptance. Tories of old didn’t feel the need to get down with the workers on a demo like this. You can’t imagine Cecil Parkinson or Margaret Thatcher warming their hands on a brazier with their comrades. They knew who they were and the class interests they represented. Elphicke really doesn’t know her audience and ought to be beatable at the next election given the Government-inflicted calamities Dover has faced.
Funny thing about Parky - he was my MP and represented, what became, Hertsmere. He was very 'old-schoool' (of course, lots of shagging scandals and disgusting misogynistic behaviour) but when ATV pulled- out of the 'Wood (and the threatened closure of 'The, EMI, Film Studios') there were/are lots of rumours of him discretely pulling strings and using his influence (old school 'politicking') to get the BBC 'in' to replace ATV AND halt the total sale of the studios.
Constituency MP lifts finger shock, except by that time, he wasn’t the MP anymore. MPs will generally support things in their areas. They have nothing to lose, but they rarely join industrial dispute demos. Elphicke is on another planet to show up at this one. Putin may as well turn up for Ukraine solidarity benefits.
What? MP for South Herts (1974-83), constituency abolished, MP for Hertsmere (1983-92)? ATV pissed off to Nottingham (with all their staff in '83, interestingly as a result of the Tories' change to broadcasting rules, franchises 'had' to be located in their geographical regions) and 1987-88 attempted full sell-off of studios. Am I missing something?
Beeb started moving in around '83 (to find most of the usable equipment had been wrecked by Central staff). The council purchase of the surviving site was/is an entirely different matter and was an extremely odd application of Tory ideology with the 'state' (Tory controlled council) running a private business. The original, planned sale of the entire plot was slowed to the piecemeal sale (Parky's influence) for a 'business centre' (now virtually empty - it was the home Bradford and Bingley's mortgage business and a mobile phone network, Three) and the next tranche became a Tesco super-store. EDIT: You do realise that the 'Film Studios' and 'ATV/Central/BBC Studios' are two different things?
P&O have not been able to find crews. Seems like few agency staff want to take their terms on. So no Ferries have sailed in nearly a week. The losses must be piling up. It shows how catastrophically inept its wealthy management and owners are. The CEO has been summoned in front of the relevant select committee of Parliament on Thursday. They should be clear if the Government has subsidised this business, whether through furlough or any other scheme and ask him if he thinks that confers any responsibility on a business to be loyal to both staff and Country.
P&O Ferries' Peter Hebblethwaite isn't exactly covering himself in glory here is he. Nor is the chief exec of DP World. It's almost like the consequences of sacking 800 people at a moment's notice hadn't sunk in until they actually had to sit in a room and explain it to other human beings. (DP World fella is appearing by video link, but still). Meanwhile, tune in to Sky Sports to watch the DP World-sponsored golf tournament from Qatar. The Mail published a story this week pointing out that Hebblethwaite lives in a £1.5m house with loads of land in Gloucestershire. What do they expect? Why does it only come as a surprise to organisations like the Mail how corporations are structured and run when things go wrong? Meanwhile, buried in the small print following yesterday's budget report is the news that the Government will be bailing out Bulb Energy (basically just a middle man, anyway) to the tune of £2.2 billion over the next two years. So, not only are direct prices to the customer going through the roof but losses are being covered by the taxpayer too. Extraordinary.
Their ‘excuse’ is that the company is only viable if it takes on the staffing model used by other operators around the World. I didn’t see all of the Select Committee, but I hope they puncture this lie. For a start, Other countries will have different models, for example in Germany, Scandinavia and in other European Countries. They manage well enough. If it’s such a great model, then why isn’t every business in the UK agency only contracts? Show the figures that this was the only way rather than a choice among many, but the one preferred by Dubai? Does Britain simply have to accept poor global norms? Where is our leadership towards better conditions?
£5.50 per hour is what they propose paying their agency staff. How can a business, running at high capacity most of the time, make so little money it has to pay staff at this rate? Staff who have important health and safety roles? Nationalise it. It’s an important service for UK logistics. If Dubai can’t run it, then bring it in house.
This seems such an obvious solution to me. Nationalisation can be a pragmatic route as well as a dogmatic one. God forbid, but if there was another fire in the Channel tunnel, a good portion of the UKs trade with Europe would be at the mercy of a Danish logistics company. Surely there is a recently retired admiral or somesuch who could run the business for a year or two and get it into a better shape without shafting the existing employees. The Dubai owners should be deligthed with compensation of £1, if its losing as much money as they claim. Or perhaps Johnson has another bridge scheme in mind......
So P&O decided to break the law in a "limited and specific way" to achieve their objective. I am sure I have heard that concept somewhere else!
P&O Ferries lost £101m last year. Fine, it's a failing business at first glance. However, DP World, its parent company, made $475m last year. These Russian doll set-ups exist so that as much money as possible can be extracted, redistributed, put out of reach of the taxman and so that losses can be turned to an advantage when the time is right. If naked, unfettered capitalism worked, the profit-making company would cover the losses of the loss-making one it owns. But we all know that's not how it works. If 'the market' truly decided then the Government would have called Hebblethwaite's bluff when he said that the company had no choice otherwise it would have gone bust. "Fine. Wind it up." You can bet DP World won't be suffering any financial hardship any time soon.
Well yes, I don’t believe them on profitability and if for a moment it was true, then they shouldn’t be running it. Freight is huge, holidays are huge and for a few hours you have a captive market to flog food, drink and trinkets to. Brexit promised a global Britain with its own high standards. Many warned that this would simply lead to a race to the bottom and a rolling back of employment regulation. After all, we’ve applied very few standards to foreign capital before. Nothing so far to suggest that outside of the EU British workers won’t get an even worse deal than before.
P&O will not face prosecution. It should be of great concern to all that the Government is steaming ahead with its ‘Freeports’ which will mean large areas around ports may be free of regulation entirely. This, un-unionised Labour, subject to fire and rehire, could become the norm. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-62613625
Errrr... I do hope everyone is aware that 'our' government is bravely fighting the greedy Stalinist hordes of the railway unions but there are also its actions in trying to fatally damage politically Sadiq Khan reigning in TFL... Foolish Londoners voting for the wrong candidate.
