Posts by Ben Austin
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So East Croydon this morning looks reasonably normal, although with a hint of smoke. Everyone is doing their normal thing by the looks of it, although all over town (where I've been) there are less people than you'd expect.
West Croydon however, according to colleagues who use that station, looks to be in terrible shape.
According to the local newspaper, there are thousands of volunteers expressing interest in helping the clean up, which is nice
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I was in Croydon today, working, eating lunch around some of those zones where the riots kicked off, but I didn't see anything at 2, possibly due to the rain. Might have been better if it kept raining it seems. I was also in Clapham yesterday around where the looting happened.
It is really rather hard to imagine that these are the same places. I guess when I wake up tomorrow I'll see if the Business Continuity Plan has been activated.
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Guys, spoilers tags on the pie incident!
;)
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So the Met Police Commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson has just resigned
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People do seem genuinely angry here, judging by the fact that the topic comes up unprompted in casual discussion. Whether or not that will be enough to sustain the rage is another question.
On the employment law matter, given as this is my profession, I can safely say that dismissing several hundred people on the spot in the UK is almost impossible to do without create all sorts of actionable cases. So unless NI buys off everyone (which they could do), expect to see all sorts of stories trickle out in the next 6 or so months from embittered ex employees.
There is also a risk of kinds in creating a replacement in all but name, given that in the UK/EU there are a set of regulations that seek to preserve employment even when the business shuts down or is transferred. See "Transfers of Undertaking".
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Well, good work Mr Hulse!
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Well, regardless of the relative quality of NR, their online / podcast service is fantastic. I listen most days by way of Google Listen on my Phone and it is so good, it almost is like I am still listening in NZ
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Keir, I haven't heard or seen any definitive explanations or insider reports from what happened within the Coalition negotiations as yet, but so far as I know, it did not seem that the electoral reform discussions were a wide ranging, let us look at all the options discussion. If anyone in the current Tory leadership had read more than the title of the Jenkin's Commission prior to the discussions, I would be rather surprised.
So unless reliable evidence comes to hand, I do not think we can label the AV referendum as a blatant power grab in the way that you have
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Legal Beagle: Voting Referendum: Jus' Sayin', in reply to Keir Leslie,
I don't think it was so much a "blatant power grab" as the fulfilment of a general desire to effect voting reform, a programme that had been widely discussed and desired for several decades before the referendum.
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Legal Beagle: Voting Referendum: Jus' Sayin', in reply to JLM,
I would have thought the main lesson of the UK referendum was that framing it as a referendum on the government / or its junior partner, rather than the actual issue was the way to get a result. How that helps the NZ right’s anti position I can’t quite tell, given the different way the question is framed in NZ and the two step process. Unless they eat their own and run with saying if you have MMP you get parties like ACT wagging the dog….which seems unlikely
Most pro AV campaigners I knew of here would have preferred the NZ referendum process and question wording too, not that they had any choice. IT certainly would have been harder to make it an anti Lib Dem/Coalition vote anyway