Brexit.

[WolfEyes]

Of the 88 key battleground seats

Bit of an odd coincidence that a piano has 88 keys.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

What does that mean, if it persists, for control of Parliament? Will it compel the Tories to find a weak partner to form a government? Or a shift to control by Labour?

That would mean a huge Labour majority, comparable to that currently enjoyed by the Conservatives.

I don't think it's likely to happen that way -- though I would certainly welcome it -- but I think that unless something very unexpected happens, Labour will probably be the largest single party after the next election, and will form the next government, whether on their own or in coalition with the Lib Dems.

After Brexit, a whole section of the parliamentary Conservative Party either left politics or was driven out by Johnson, and the current party is a very disparate coalition with no real unifying ideas. They were elected to "Get Brexit Done" (i.e. put an end to the endless deadlock that had paralysed everything since the referendum) but beyond that they don't any particular idea what they want to do or why, so they're simply responding to events, good or bad, rather than trying to pursue any particular agenda, and they're making a pretty bad fist of it, largely because Johnson is such a hopeless PM.

Certainly, both Covid and the consequences of Russia's invasion of Ukraine have been huge problems not of their making, but their handling of both have been so poor, as they've taken untenable positions that they've had to abandon within weeks and reverse course, and squandered huge amounts of money on bungled initiatives during the pandemic, that we have a supposedly Conservative government presiding over the highest levels of personal taxation since WW2 and inflation at levels not seen since the 1980s.

The whole reason for voting Conservative used to be that, while no one thought they were particularly nice people, they were more competent at running the government and better at managing the economy than Labour, but now Johnson's blown that for them for a generation, I think.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

If anything ever actually happens as a result of the announcement, and some regulations are actually changed, it's going to be utterly trivial and have very little effect -- manufacturers aren't going to redesign their packaging, and certainly aren't going to change the size/volume of their products without having very good commercial reasons, and now that we've had metric measures for decades, even people like me who grew up with imperial measures (and £sd) are now accustomed to thinking in metric.

In practical terms, it makes very little difference, I think. I know how much of something/how many I want to buy, and it makes every little difference whether I'm buying 454 g of sausages (i.e. 1lb) or 400 g, or 410 g, or various other weights offered by my local supermarket. What matters is whether I'm buying 6 or 8 of them, and what size they are.

It's just Johnson desperately trying to look as if he's doing something, possibly because of this


though heaven knows why they think it's going to make much difference.

Very interesting thread

 

[Sid]

So how many furlongs is the queue of trucks waiting at Dover? At least they won't have to wait in kilometers anymore.

It sounds a lot shorter in miles.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Debt, inflation and Brexit ‘put sterling at risk of slide’

Pound is in for a rude awakening, says Bank of America

www.thetimes.co.uk

Evernote link

Ever since Mrs Thatcher came to power, the Tories have pointed to the 1970s as a horrible example of what can happen under a Labour government, and now this:

Kamal Sharma, foreign exchange strategist at Bank of America, warned that the pound was facing a prolonged period of weakness that risked resembling an emerging market currency hit by unique volatility caused by government interference in monetary policy.

“We think sterling finds itself in an increasingly invidious position, where central bank communication has been increasingly challenging, where imbalances are rising, and where the spectre of Brexit still looms large on the domestic political scene,” Sharma said.

“Investors are increasingly discussing sterling as taking on emerging market (EM) characteristics whilst parallels to the 1970’s resonate as being one of the worst post-war decades for the UK. We are concerned that the increasing politicisation of UK policy undermines the pound in ways that would appear EM-like.”

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Veritable Quandry]

Ummm.... 454 grams is just shy of a half kilo, which we in America only use to measure drugs. But that's 16 ounces aka a full pound.

Has Aldi's been losing money over there?

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

113.4 grammers and can we have a nitpick reaction?

Edit: Jinx.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Looking forward to stealthily quadrupling prices, are they?

 

[Free]

Maybe it's a misspell and 'grammars' is some new language rules measurement?

 

[Sid]

The metric system originally had an ounce and a pound too. 100 gram was an ounce and 500 gram was a pound.
But these were abandoned for shop use when the British went over to metrics, to not confuse them too much.
In hindsight we should not have bothered.

So if one talks about a quarter pounder hamburger over here one expects 125 gram meat or whatever it actually is (seasoned cardboard?) if one goes to a McD. .

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Khamon]

Do prefer London McD over Hong Kong McD though. I eat almost anything in Asia but...whoa. That's some scary "food."

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Innula Zenovka]