Big J

That may possibly be the case, but there is a huge labour shortage and no prospect of rectifying that. How do you tackle that without additional people? There are a thousand other points to make but I'm wiped and going to bed! 😁

It's not a question of shaming anything away, IMO. Our forebears fought for a noble cause with the hope of a better future. That has largely been the case. But times change, three generations have passed and the future isn't exactly looking great. It's important that people have the right to try to improve their situation, and the freedom of movement we had within the EU afforded that. But I am biased, as I'm anti-Brexit and I've recently left the UK!

I appreciate that your location means you're at the focal point of one aspect of UK immigration. But seen as a whole, we don't take many. Go to Devon for instance, and it's a much less diverse affair.

Away with you and your facts Beau! How dare you spoil a good story with the truth?! 😁

In the South East, just east of Vetlanda

Haha! Couldn't resist. Sweden is lovely. Very relaxed and it's nice to have so much more space, both in our home, but also in our surrounds. The kids are settling in fairly well - their language development is being slowed slightly by the fact that everyone speaks English! Work is proving slow to get started, mainly as setting up a business takes some time here. Getting there though.

I do believe that I have already filled that role! 😆

Isn't that a shame though? I have found it almost impossible over the years to find cutters who were both properly competent and happy to work for someone else. The issue with running your own business is that inevitably, you end up pulled away from the saws. You're then forced to rely on subcontractors of inconsistent quality and the overall work quality deteriorates. Really good cutters should be paid really good money. I've paid £240 a day down in Devon (where rates are suppressed) and made good money off the back of those guys. Equally, I have lost money on guys I've paid £80 a day because they've been so bad. Perhaps some sort of cooperative, profit sharing company would be a way to go. A collective of top notch cutters, machine operators, foresters and timber sellers, working together to do the best job possible where everyone makes a fair and decent wage. So much of the timber industry is driven down to price and price alone. It is (I feel) one of the main reasons there is such inconsistency in the market. Boom and bust.

If I may take an analytical view for a moment, the biggest practical issue (leaving aside the frequent and pointless popularity contests the Tories seem to enjoy having at the moment) is a lack of money. In reversing Liz Truss's insane mini budget, Jeremy Hunt was able to roughly half the budgetary black hole, but that still leaves a £40 billion shortfall. So just to balance the books, £40b needs to be found in either cuts or tax rises. Add to that the fact that at the present level of funding, basic services are not being adequately provided. NHS, education, emergency services, infrastructure, transport. The list goes on. This is a poison chalice for any government to take on, let alone another Tory government who cannot escape some degree of responsibility for the previous 12 years of failure. To coronate yet another Tory PM and expecting a different outcome seems like an exercise in insanity. Repeating the same action and expecting a different outcome and all that. How best to tackle this though? In my view, the situation the UK finds itself in now is at least in part due to a large scale transfer of wealth from the public coffers to private individuals and companies. Widescale privatisation, lobbied interests and cronyism has only worsened over the past 12 years. The final straw was Truss's attempt to simply and overtly pander to these interest groups with her mini budget. At least at this point there was some pushback. I've got absolutely no idea how the next government can fix this extraordinary funding gap. In a time where more needs to be spent on public services and taxes need to be reduced to ease the cost of living crisis, the prospect of cutting funding and increasing taxes seems unconscionable.

It's not so much because he had a beer. It's because he lied and lied and lied about it and everything else. If he's the best the British public have on offer, then perhaps Kev's proposal ( 😉 ) for a military coup is the way to go.

There is something to be said for a benevolent dictatorship! The problem is that they rarely remain benevolent. I wonder how this period of tumult will be regarded in the future? The death of the Tory party? The death of common sense? The death of democracy in the UK? All of the above?

It's OK - I understood your intent. I agree, for what it's worth. It's a circus and so irrelevant to the average person. Simple, understated competency. That's what the country needs. The issue is that it's believed that such qualities don't win elections. So untrustworthy showmen like Boris get in....

I agree. Simultaneously hilarious and awful! Can you imagine how wonderful things would be if politicians' first priority was enacting beneficial policy for the country rather than self preservation? What a novel idea that'd be!

So it appears that a significant percentage of Tory MPs want Boris back. Not because he's a good leader, but because he can win them their elections and save them their jobs. What a miserable reflection of the British parliamentary democracy. Integrity, honesty and ability to do the job seem to mean nothing.

And she's gone!! Hahahahahaha!! 😆 What a complete and utter flustercuck.

That's Braveman gone now. The first of many? Seems like Truss is getting closer and closer to the end.

Quite unlike you to be so optimistic! 😄

I respect your take on the overall process and don't disagree that a democratic process of sorts was followed, but the entire campaign for Brexit was littered with half truths and complete lies, which had the effect of causing a tiny majority to vote for it. The upshot now is that the UK finds itself in a much lesser position than it did prior to Brexit with little benefit. But that is water under the bridge and no longer has the same effect on me as it once did. It has happened, the consequences are being suffered and perhaps in a few years it'll be reversed. Time will tell. On the point of Conservative Party leadership, it does rather seem that competence isn't a valued character trait for prospective leaders. Sunak accurately predicted what would happen if Truss took over, yet he isn't leader and she is...

That as the case may be, the Conservative Party has gone through such a seismic shift in recent years that continuously replacing the leader without the general public being allowed to choose seems to be undemocratic.

I have a lot of time for Rory Stewart and I agree, he's cut from a slightly different cloth to the others. The Tory party is a very broad church which in and of itself is one of the causes of Brexit (offering the vote was an act of appeasement to the ERG that backfired spectacularly on Cameron).

That as it may be, he's pressed from a similar mould to the likes of Cameron, Major, Ken Clarke, Rory Stewart. Today's Tory party bears little resemblance to that of 10-15 years ago.

Well we disagree on the character of Starmer, and that's OK, but I feel that after 3 new Tory PMs that haven't been elected, it's time the public had a vote.

Even if you don't agree with his policies, at least you'd be voting instead of watching a Tory elite play king/queen maker.