Questions Of The Day (Politics)

[Mick Harper]

[Grant]

My youngest works in the Co-Op at weekends. They are a very good employer, but they are easily the most expensive store in the town. Their business model appears to be to set up in areas where people don't have cars and over-charge them.

Their motto should be: If you're poor, you pay more

[Mick Harper]

[Wile E. Coyote]

Wiley has two cars, but seriously do you really think I want to spend a coupla hours in a bog standard retail park that are part shops, part ugly warehouses.

I have no desire to wear Primark, Next, and having a franchise restaurant meal in ugly surroundings.

Convenient stores are convenient, many are costly, many are in great historic locations that you can walk around. Co-Op, lucky buggers, has 25% of the total market.

If I want cheapness, clearly internet/warehouses are the way.

Still, takes all sorts.

[Mick Harper]

Are you sure? NISA, Spar et al are co-operatives but not the Co-op.

[Wile E. Coyote]

NISA is owned by the Co-op, but is not a co-operative. Am I missing something? Do they not count?

[Mick Harper]

There's a big difference. NISA, Spar and suchlike are corner shops owned and operated by individuals. They are no better (and no worse) than your standard Asian. The Co-op is simply their wholesale supplier (and maybe franchiser, I don't know). It's a bit like the old Milk Marketing Board's relationship to dairy farmers.

At one remove from the market place, a co-operative can be quite a good thing. It's only when they have to compete mano a mano with capitalist enterprise they come unstuck. On the other hand, in AE terms, one would have to concede that the Co-op has lasted since 1844, unlike their capitalist rivals (I've got the oldest as Sainsbury c 1900) so it may be my prejudices showing.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Co-op are also cornering (ha!) the local delivery market, they have already forced Gorillas out of business around here. No wonder they, the Co-op, can charge a bit more if those hard nosed joint equity capitalists that are trying to buy and set up these pop-up delivery grocer networks are so easily beaten away.

Still, can't complain, I don't have to go to a retail park.......

[Mick Harper]

Ah yes, Gorillas. Use 'em all the time. But I can't see the Co-op lasting much longer. Presumably they can't use zero hour contracts. This is just the sort of real time, all the time, failure is not an option that co-ops, especially the Co-op, are so bad at. Order something once a week, at random times, using your AEL gold card and report back.

Where does your wife stand on the retail park question? Or is she a lefty apologist too?

[Wile E. Coyote]

Warning for AE managers when you have a "suspense account bug", a "payment and receipt bug" and another bug, as well as bad training on people new to IT, it is likely that the everyday default business practice of sticking it in the "suspense account" while it gets sorted (the IT seems to take forever to fix, people are slow to learn....) and whoops, then using the large sums accruing in the suspense account for other things, is likely to lead to later problems.

Just saying.

[Mick Harper]

I wish you'd say it more clearly.

Whether this is relevant or not, both the AEL and the Megalithic Empire site are undergoing apparently necessary reconstructions so expect changes (no doubt for the worse) in the near future.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Interesting interview on Sophy Ridge. No, not the one with Tice, but with the Science Minister, Andrew Griffith.


Sophy started with a gotcha.

"What single word adjective would you use to describe the Tories' performance on immigration?"

The science minister gave a perfectly reasonable couple of minutes on things in general and the difficulties of passing the Rwanda Bill, and obstacles against it.

But the problem was the graph, and previous staments (from prominent Tories) about the need to get immigration down from the "hundreds of thousands" to "tens of thousands" .

Yikes. Sophy was placing the numbers game that you can't mention in polite circles. She was talking about legal migration

"That is three Birminghams, seven Manchesters.". Quel horreur, according to Sophy we were being swamped.......

Poor Andrew hadn't anticipated this at all, he was expecting legal migration to be ignored even though as Science Minister he was in fact well placed to answer, as the big leap post Breixt in numbers (up from couple of hundred thousand to six hundred thousand yearly) is down to more foreign students. Since 2019 the government has tried to attract as many foreign students as it could. The explanation behind this is they see this as revenue generating, and as a way of attracting world class talent to our shores to boost Britain's high tech, scientific research and development, future economy.

Why can't he say it?

The truth is, Universities and Colleges are booming by recruiting more foreign students (and, yes, their dependents are also coming) to actually, err, study business studies and social care......

So the science minister talked around this, about the pandemic, and Labour not having a plan to get the numbers down. He pointed out they had a points based system. He clearly did not want to talk about foreign students......

The universities and colleges are now arguing that students shouldn't be counted in the figures (an additional million over three years on courses will leave at the end of the studies).

EH? .... it turns out that this is because they do not have the skills we require after all?

So ends Day 1, we can now all safely talk about the boats from now on.

[Mick Harper]

It also transpired (Newsnight? Channel 4 News?) that the lucrative supply of foreign students nosedived after the government withdrew the traditional 'one year stay after completion of course' and had to hastily re-instate it, whereupon numbers returned to the status quo ante. What exactly is the reason for staying on beats me--do you know anyone who hung around after graduation? Apart from the usual deadbeats. I can't imagine many genuine applicants saying, "I'll only go to somewhere that gives me a year tacked on to do nothing very much."

My assumption is that it is actually to get a job and then start wangling your way into indefinite permission to remain, but I'm prepared to listen to other explanations. It conveniently brings us on to 'dependents'.

When I was in higher education I didn't know anyone who had dependents. We were dependents. There are vague stories of mature students and postgrads having to bring their families along -- with the unstated sentiment that it would be cruel to split up families -- but I don't know many people either here or in the Third World who can maintain a family on a student grant. It would certainly be cheaper to leave them at home for the duration but, frankly, I don't believe a word of this. A flat rule: no dependents. There are dozens of other countries offering equally good courses for them insofar as they exist.

And so finally the list of countries sending us the most students: China, India and Nigeria. The Chinese can stay or go as far as I'm concerned. Indians... mmm. Nigerians, no. That's my racist verdict.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Don't know the reasons. Will hazard that: when they took back control, by ending EU freedom of movement, the "word" went out to relax (managed or controlled migration) eg requirements on work and study visas. They relaxed this so much the numbers of non-EU migrants, workers, students, dependents have now rocketed.

There appears a big divide beween Universities who are arguing they need increased number of foreign students to be financially stable and government. Hence the government April 24 review.

39% of the total postgards at UK institutions are now international.

[Mick Harper]

As you know, I should like to abolish universities. But while we've got them we might as well make some money out of them. I'd do everything I could to attract bona fide foreign students to come here, spend all their lovely money getting a lovely education, and then go home again. We can cherry pick those who it would be advantageous to keep. If, as would seem essential, there has to be some native people sitting beside them to provide top cover, they can pay their own way.

Do you think I should stand for parliament on such a programme? I'd get the red wall vote.