The state of the UK

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Re: The state of the UK

Post by Scot Dutchy » Thu Apr 15, 2021 8:32 am

The UK; a great place to work :{D

Almost 40% of UK workers ‘get less than a week’s notice of shift patterns’
New research suggests chaotic employment practices are spreading into professional roles

Almost two-fifths of UK workers are given only short notice of their working hours, research has revealed, with lower-paid staff suffering the most during the pandemic, in a sign that precarious employment practices are widespread across the economy.

The Living Wage Foundation campaign said that 38% of all workers – representing about 10 million people in the UK workforce – were being given less than a week’s notice of shift patterns by their employer.

In research exposing the scale of precarious work, the figures suggest that chaotic employment practices and just-in-time arrangements extend well beyond roles in hospitality, retail and warehousing into typically higher-paying professional jobs.

Based on two surveys of more than 2,000 workers, the study showed that short-notice periods were most common in London, where 48% of workers were given less than a week’s advance notice of their schedules.

Short-notice periods were even more pronounced for those in jobs with variable hours or shift work built into their contracts, with 62% having less than a week to prepare for their schedule. At the extreme, 12% of this group – amounting to 7% all working adults – had less than 24 hours’ notice.
Long live Chumocracy.
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Re: The state of the UK

Post by aufbahrung » Thu Apr 15, 2021 8:39 am

Unpredictable what the infinite cantors dust of the digital era is gonna do next - it is fun thought isn't it? if you like roller-coasters, anyway...
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Re: The state of the UK

Post by Brian Peacock » Thu Apr 15, 2021 10:34 am

Our current economic models are all predicated on precarity.

:|
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Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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Re: The state of the UK

Post by Scot Dutchy » Thu Apr 15, 2021 11:23 pm

Who runs the country?

MPs accuse spads of ‘running shop’ in Covid funding decisions
Public accounts committee points to ‘unusual’ meeting where special advisers altered civil servants’ decisions

Questions over checks and balances in government have been raised after political special advisers (spads) were accused of “running the shop” in a meeting with civil servants about handing out emergency pandemic funds to charities.

MPs raised concerns about the process run by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to decide how much money from a £750m pot should be given to other departments to allocate to voluntary and community organisations last April.

Quoting private correspondence from DCMS in a meeting of the public accounts committee on Thursday, MPs said it seemed as if some bids had initially been “red-listed” by civil servants – meaning they were deprioritised after “scoring very low” on internal assessments – before being approved by ministers.

The Tory MP Richard Holden said the convening of a meeting known as a “star chamber” with three officials and five spads – three from No 10, one from the Treasury and another from DCMS – seemed “unusual” and amounted to a “filtering process” by political appointees instead of impartial civil servants.
Chumocracy.
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Re: The state of the UK

Post by Scot Dutchy » Fri Apr 16, 2021 8:55 am

More Chumocracy:

Second Cabinet Office adviser hired by Greensill while in civil service
David Brierwood joined government in 2014 and two months later was recruited to Greensill Capital

A second Cabinet Office adviser was hired by Greensill Capital while working for the civil service, raising further questions over revolving doors between the government and the scandal-hit firm.

Former Morgan Stanley banker David Brierwood was brought into the heart of government during David Cameron’s administration in 2014, the same year Greensill’s founder Lex Greensill apparently took on a similar role. Two months later, Brierwood was recruited to join Greensill Capital’s board as a director.

Brierwood remained a Greensill director throughout the rest of his Whitehall appointment, which lasted more than three and a half years, according to his LinkedIn profile, which also showed that he resigned from the supply chain finance firm in February this year.

On Tuesday it emerged that the government’s chief commercial officer, Bill Crothers, had joined Greensill while remaining a civil servant – in a move sanctioned by the Cabinet Office. The revelation prompted alarm within No 10 over the growing scandal.
The worrying thing this is the one scandal that has been discovered.
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Re: The state of the UK

Post by Brian Peacock » Fri Apr 16, 2021 9:00 am

Kier Starmer's accusations of Tory Sleaze at PMQ's on Wednesday seems to have hit home. At least three stories about (let's call it what it is) corruption on the morning radio news today. This can only mean that the focus groups of Tory voters aren't happy with the govt's 'keeping it in the family' approach to contracts and procurment.
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Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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Re: The state of the UK

Post by Scot Dutchy » Fri Apr 16, 2021 9:03 am

If you wonder what the cowboys at Greensill Capital were doing:

What did Greensill Capital actually do?
Adam Leaver wrote:Behind David Cameron’s lobbying lies a surreal web of ‘supply chain financing’ and ‘factoring’

The focus on David Cameron’s role in lobbying for Greensill Capital’s involvement in NHS payment systems has obscured a less glamorous question: how did a firm involved in such a mundane part of the financial services ecology became so significant, so quickly?

Greensill Capital, which entered administration last month, provided payment services including “factoring” and “supply chain financing”. Although the company represented itself as part of the “fintech” revolution, these services were not in themselves particularly noteworthy or innovative. To understand the growing appeal of Greensill and other providers, we therefore need a wider lens.

Supply chain financing (or “reverse-factoring”) solves a common payment problem. Firms traditionally supply goods or services to a customer and issue an invoice for payment. While the supplier might prefer the invoice to be paid immediately, the customer might want to delay payment. In situations where the customer is large and influential, they might insist the supplier wait two or more months. With reverse factoring, a financial institution offers to step in to pay the supplier sooner on the customer’s behalf, minus a small discount which they take as their fee, or part of their fee. The customer then settles with the financial institution at an agreed later date, often four or five months later. On paper, everyone wins and there are no risks.

But textbook definitions don’t always apply neatly to the real world. In recent years, the appeal of supply-chain finance has included the possibilities it provides for what’s euphemistically called creative accounting. Creative accounting has blossomed under the fair-value revolution – a change in the accounting rules towards a more market-based outlook.


That is the unsettling context within which the Cameron story should be understood. Greensill was carrying a lot of risk going into the negotiations over payment systems in the NHS. That deal, if the company could have secured it, would have provided Greensill with an extremely large, near-riskless income stream because of the state’s creditworthiness. But it may also have created sizeable too-big-to-fail problems if the company became an intrinsic part of the public sector payment machinery. Would the state need to support or bail out Greensill if its risky private ventures produced solvency problems that threatened to disrupt wage payments to nurses and doctors? Although the company was not given this deal, it did manage to make some inroads via its Earnd app and also provided supply-chain financing to pharmacies. It remains to be seen how far its involvement in public provision has stretched.
Capitalism at its worst.
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Re: The state of the UK

Post by Brian Peacock » Fri Apr 16, 2021 9:45 am

"How did a firm involved in such a mundane part of the financial services ecology became so significant, so quickly?"

Fraudulently.
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Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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Re: The state of the UK

Post by NineBerry » Fri Apr 16, 2021 11:05 am

Gnome shortage: garden centres run out as business booms

Shortage of raw materials and boom in garden centre sales over lockdown has led to dearth of gnomes
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Re: The state of the UK

Post by Brian Peacock » Fri Apr 16, 2021 11:39 am

Image
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Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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Re: The state of the UK

Post by Scot Dutchy » Sat Apr 17, 2021 8:26 am

More Chumocracy. The department setup in the UK to look after lobbyists does not have a full time boss and few powers. A sham in other words which of course is how Chumocracy works.

Government spends £66,000 on lobbyists register run by part-time boss
Office set up by David Cameron after series of scandals is limited by narrow powers and meagre resources
Along with that is this article, great how Chumocracy operates:

Greensill inquiry chairman sits on board of private bank linked to Tory party
Questions raised over Nigel Boardman’s appointment given role at Arbuthnot Banking Group, which also employs former civil servants

The man appointed by Boris Johnson to rule over the Greensill lobbying scandal is on the board of a private bank that has close ties with the Conservative party and has a number of former civil servants in its ranks, the Guardian can reveal.

The position held by Nigel Boardman with Arbuthnot Banking Group has raised concerns among anti-corruption campaigners that his inquiry could be undermined by the perception of bias.

The bank specialises in managing money for the wealthy and is chaired and majority owned by one of the largest donors to the Tory party, and one of its former treasurers, Sir Henry Angest. Arbuthnot has also stacked its boardroom with former government staffers, including the former British ambassador Christopher Meyer, the former Tory MP and Treasury minister Angela Knight, and – until January – Baroness Finn.
Corruption does not describe it. It is just rotten to the core of UK politics.
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Re: The state of the UK

Post by pErvinalia » Sat Apr 17, 2021 8:58 am

Can we change the thread title to State of the Chumocracy?
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Re: The state of the UK

Post by Brian Peacock » Sat Apr 17, 2021 9:02 am

I don't see why not - if the thread-starter requests it.
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"This is how humanity ends; bickering over the irrelevant."
Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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Re: The state of the UK

Post by pErvinalia » Sat Apr 17, 2021 9:33 am

I was joking.
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Re: The state of the UK

Post by Brian Peacock » Sat Apr 17, 2021 9:34 am

Yeah, but were you really?
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"It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice.
There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."

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"This is how humanity ends; bickering over the irrelevant."
Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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