Alex

They should’ve held out for at least another £15m more than the only bidder in town was willing to pay. And he’s not good enough for the Premier League and will struggle.

Like Craig Hope has a clue

Please tell me you’re going dressed as DLT

Divorce settlement transfer tbh

I love how they just ignore the fact he’ll probably be trebling his wages (or better) if he goes

Hey, look at this fucking hipster 👆

How different ‘September’ by Earth, Wind and Fire would’ve been with that opening line

Heaton Stannington in FA Cup action at home tonight.

Saw comments pre-season from Newcastle fans on Twitter saying he’d be a £100m player soon. I fucking guarantee that’s off the back of never having seen him play

Well that’s helped allay my fears selling him would come back to haunt us.

I think the proper legal definitions are greenfield and brownfield. The latter is land that has previously been developed for industrial use etc. The former is land that hasn’t been developed in theory. They’ve talked about building on the former where it’s anomalously in a greenfield designated area. Like you might have a big disused carpark that’s near the coast or something. But it falls within greenfield land so you can’t easily build in it. You can but there’s a lot of red tape.

There’s a new one just put as it happens. @spongebob toonpants too

That’s the point here. On one hand you’re saying ‘if this was Tory enacted policy…’ yet you can’t name a policy as an example. You’re criticising them on the basis of media speculation rather than anything they’ve specifically done. I don’t doubt we’ll all worry about them not being brave enough in the not too distant future. But it isn’t straightforward and they’ve inherited an absolute shit tip. And most of them have zero experience of government

Doesn’t necessarily reflect the reality. I would imagine a few piled on at long odds when he made that statement after Staveley left

It’ll be borne out of some petty office squabble / clash of personalities shite too probably.

They could have raised a (potentially) legitimate complaint and put the article in their website. But there was no need to name the person in the case of the latter. Including their grade and work location. Wtf is that all about?

A lot (over half) of civil servants are union members. PCS are the biggest one by some margin. They also represent lower grades on the whole. But despite the large numbers of members, it’s relatively easy, in terms of numbers to be elected into their National Executive Committee. Because elections take place locally and there are quite a lot places up for grabs. Eg 5 (plucking that number out of thin air) from DWP at Leeds. Then another 10 from HMRC there (for example etc). Plus most members won’t even bother to vote and you don’t require legal thresholds like in strike ballots and so on. What I would surmise in this instance is that you have a quite militant NEC, due to lots of current and recent events, emboldened by Labour now being in power asking for the moon on a stick. And I think the power play is about internal squabbling and politics above all else. Meanwhile the 100,000s of their members just joined (in the main) for better pay and a collective voice. This makes my role interesting but saddens me. I am vehemently in favour of trade unions but often think this sort of thing makes them their own worst enemies. More importantly it clearly isn’t serving the vest interests of their members

Also on PCS they’ve chosen to publicly name and attempt to shame (on their website) an HEO working in Devon. This person removed some posters on notice boards relating to Gaza because she felt they might breach the civil service code and that they might make people uncomfortable. It’s a grey area tbh but that is a fucking pitiful move in the current climate

This is all in the public domain anyway. But PCS have a newish General Secretary. But a long standing, existing Assistant General Secretary. Both are from different factions. In the case of the latter, their faction has recently taken over their national executive committee via elections. For context, PCS is the largest civil service union, with over 200,000 members. And, therefore, one of the biggest in the UK. One thing their NEC has done is instruct departmental trade unions (ie PCS at departmental level) not to enter pay negotiations. Because of delegation, departments get a budget for a pay award. They can then give out that pay award as they choose. Eg all departments get enough money for 5% pay increase. But Defra might give 5% across the board and DWP might give 6% to lower grades and less to higher ones. By refusing to negotiate at local level, PCS are saying they want to get rid of delegation so all civil service negotiations happen centrally. Except they know this will never happen. It’s just a pathetic power play. And all it means is their members and all other civil servants will have this year’s pay award delayed. Incidentally the reason it will never happen is because it would trigger decades of equal pay cases. Which would cost the taxpayer billions. Because people would be able to argue their grade in a different department got more in some cases (even though their jobs could be vastly different). On the parliamentary questions thing, to give a particular example, John Glen (former Minister for Cabinet Office) has spent the summer sending written PQs asking about Labour’s various plans about intricate matters of future trade union relations, policy. Check off, facility time, etc. A cynic would suggest he must know any new ministers would not have anything like that detail planned out. But Glen would be aware that it would still generate lots of work and hassle to go through the proper processes to reply.

I’m not sure what exact philosophical things you’re alluding to and I would suggest you don’t know the first thing about me if you think I just accept everything is as good as it gets. But I will call out disingenuous grifters and their band of idiotic followers when I feel they are achieving the square root of fuck all in terms of making lives better

If you really want I could bore the tits off you with tales from the inner workings of central government. About how the new ministers don’t even understand their jobs or departments yet. How the former Tory ministers who are still MPs are such sad, bitter creatures that they have spent the summer writing PQs on unimportant matters but which their expertise means they know will be awkward to address. How a basket case of a trade union is happy to delay the pay award to hundreds of thousands of people because it’s more arsed about Gaza fundraising posters on notice boards and I could go on. But there isn’t a meme for it

I meant the wankers who follow Owen Jones et al and people like him and what he espoused. That said, you might consider why the people who didn’t even vote for Labour are unlikely to be at the front of the queue in terms of getting what they want

It’s just a good job the hard left united behind them in the run up to the general election and kept quiet. Rather than blaming them for Gaza and encouraging the terminally naive to vote for independent and green candidates. Labour really needs to now prioritise giving those people what they want after all the help they gave in delivering a landslide victory 👍🏻

You do know it’s the summer parliamentary recess and most ministers are on holiday?

that is absolutely pathetic