124: Court Short

The team look at delays in the court system, the new news on the old proposals to redevelop Wimbledon’s tennis infrastructure, and the government’s investment rumble with P&O. Featuring, Adam, Andy, Jane Mackenzie and Sarah Shannon.

[@richardh8082]

If the only way your business works is by paying workers well below minimum wage, it's not a business

[@truckerallikatuk]

They missed out by not calling it the "Government Investment and Technology Summit".

[@ThePsiclone]

the GITS!

[@johnmoorefilm]

😂

[@animatechap5176]

Listening to the second part of this podcast just reveals how much lasting damage funding cuts have made to this country. Such foreseeable knock-on effects

[@ScarySox]

I will never go on any P&O boats or ferries as long as I live.

[@clarecrawford9677]

DP World sold off P&O Cruises some years ago. It is now part of the Carnival consortium.

[@timmytom]

I listened to both this and the podcast on BBC Newscast (interview with Starmer) Show's just how low we have got that we are sticking out the hand with the begging bowl at the cost of values.

[@andrewgilbertson5356]

P&O should not be involved in Government deals

[@WaaMac]

Starmer's change over P&O just goes to show how two faced he is and that he can't be trusted.

[@b3564]

So ashamed that I was fooled!

[@nicksimmons7234]

@@b3564you didn’t vote for him.

[@sjgreaves]

Colour me unsurprised, he is a politician, 'nuff said

[@b3564]

@@nicksimmons7234 no I didn't, my mother always has! She did ask me and others if it was still old labour! Then again who else was there, I voted for the only white English candidate, before anyone is up in arms I'm the child of immigrants!

[@Jon-xw9om]

And yet they will still insist that they are "NOT all the same."

[@tompearce3610]

Not supporting Labour's position but not sure what people think they should do, turn away massive investment? Tory condemnation made a lot of noise but did they do anything at all? Ironically, P&O weren't able to behave like that to EU countries.

[@joehiggs100]

Erm, maybe we should join the EU🤔

[@tompearce3610]

@@joehiggs100 there are many people who wish we'd never left the EU but sadly joining would take many years and the Tories need to fail harder before they'll change their anti EU position

[@JohnCrabtree-gr9ee]

To be fair Liz Truss had pretty good 100 minutes.

[@Lee-k9y]

True, but that was after the queen died and Liz wasnt doing anything 😂

[@smokerjim]

Just a shame for the rest of us it was 99 minutes too much

[@Lee-k9y]

@@smokerjim 🤣

[@mikesmith2905]

I am somewhat wary of 'investment' (apparently Britain is unable to invest in itself), it was 'inward investment' that made our marine engine industry what it is today, and indeed our fertiliser industry, among others. I think the term I am searching for is 'asset stripping'.

[@nicksimmons7234]

I live in Mitchan & Morden and have no problem with the Wimbledon development.

[@BrockSamson-i1i]

21,000 of your neighbours disagree

[@Simonsimon-fy3hq]

Someone who lives there would know it's spelt Mitcham.

[@nicksimmons7234]

@@Simonsimon-fy3hq bless you’ve never had spell check change thing without noticing. Maybe it’s a golfing thing.

[@nicksimmons7234]

@@BrockSamson-i1i so 55,000 don’t!

[@nicksimmons7234]

@@Simonsimon-fy3hq oh it was a n vs m, yep must mean I don’t live here vs not spotting a typo on my iPad. Utter idiot.

[@ethzero]

Thanks, Peeps! (Or Pipes)

[@stevereber3358]

16:45 Or else the companies are learning quickly how to slow things up in the courts.

[@b3564]

People's party, my 4r53! Are these people not ashamed, too busy with matches, concerts, shopping and free! Labour never nowadays mind blood on their hands, disgusting!

[@GorgeDawes]

They’ve got a very, very long way to go before they match the corruption of the previous lot. It’s not a great start, admittedly.

[@highmyope-ps2by]

An old lady travelled on a Cunard liner after years of using P&O. She was highly critical of everything. The final straw was when she went into the ladies' loo and saw a little china dish which was a repository for coins. "This would never be countenanced on the P&O line!". The attendant said "Oh, really? Well, this is not the P&O line. It's the Pee and Pay line.

[@anthonyparker4334]

who brought in the rules that allowed this to happen?

[@philmckay9973]

The asset class

[@philmckay9973]

P&O are feral

[@michaeljefferson4186]

National minimum wage for over 21s is £11:44 ph for over 21s, not £11:46 + mass redundancies law applies if over 20 employees in 90 days, not 100 employees. Both are to some degree to be amended in the just published Employment Rights bill.

[@ThePsiclone]

OMG they were out by TWO PENCE, Thanks for correcting that. Please never come to one of my Parties. Pretty please with a cherry on top.

[@garethyoung6067]

Idiots Corner

[@BrockSamson-i1i]

you can take off the Dunce hat now bro

[@kidmohair8151]

well. all of these stories *are* interconnected. and the overarching theme to all of them is, (waitforit) capitalism.

[@mikesmith2905]

Capitalism (or rather commerce) is defensible, corruption is not. It annoys some people when one refers to Corporate Socialism and compares it to Soviet Socialism. Obviously there are differences, one is a system exploited by individuals with mental health issues rendering them unable to maintain healthy human relationships who use bureaucracy and intimidation via surveillance to control people and are not above breaking the law in the firm belief that they are the clever ones and therefore are not going to suffer any consequences. The other spoke Russian. The Russian culture was a somewhat psychopathic system, established by the Rus who left Scandinavia and turned right then right again, heading up the Don. In this country we have the enduring legacy of the Normans, who left Scandinavia and turned left, let's just say there are many similarities. We actually know quite a lot about these people, not all 'corporates' are sociopathic although the classic corporate structure is largely devised by people with psychopathic tendencies (1 in 20 in the general population, 1 in 7 in Corporations and 1 in 5 in financial institutions). We also know something about how these deviant behaviours originate, for example see Overearning - C.K. Hsee, J. Zhang, C.F. Cai, S. Zhang - Psychological Science, 2013. In short it seem it is largely due to poor parenting. Shrivelled connections between the amygdala and other brain regions are strongly correlated with psychopathy, but the research on brain plasticity suggests that may itself be a result of formative influences. The result is a rather odd perception of terms such as 'big' and 'clever'. Obviously we are all dancing to Life's tune, that's why 'status' is so important (breeding rights and all that), but whereas commerce allowed individuals to achieve status through participation and contribution to the local society the Corporate Socialist model hinges on marketing. In the commerce based system 'bling' was bestowed upon those who performed well and that enhanced their breeding chances. In the Corporate world the bling is an independent entity, pursued largely due to those nagging insecurities Life uses to keep us all in line and on the same page. The snag is there is a lot more to having status bestowed upon one within a community and all of that is absent from the Corporate version, leaving the poor dears with a rather hollow and unfulfilling life experience. They are to be pitied and if at all possible avoided, they should not be allowed to enter politics but the appeal of all the bling means they are strongly drawn to that industry. That is why Private Eye is such an important organ

[@kidmohair8151]

@@mikesmith2905 personal opinion only. any philosophy that prioritizes self-interest (greed) over the common-interest, is going to inevitably lead to the psycho- and socio-paths being in charge. as can be witnessed by most countries we call democracies. they are all oligarchies and plutocracies at best, or outright dictatorships of the rich and well connected, at worst. i agree that Private Eye fulfills an important function, but it is too often dismissed, by the real media (put airquotes there), as a "satirical rag".

[@mikesmith2905]

@@kidmohair8151 I think the problem is that we have not yet evolved to live in the world we have created. We know we have a limited capacity for forming relationships and building mutual trust (see Dunbars Number) but we like to live in cities. Estimates vary but the consensus is that anything up to 1%-2% of what we think is conscious, that is the stuff we are actually ‘aware’ of, and the rest we do not need to bother our pretty little heads about because Life is dealing with all that. In practice those conscious thoughts can be overruled by other stuff going on in the brain (but we still like to think it was ‘our decision’ to do something). That 2% of thought we are aware of is very important to us (although perhaps not so important in reality) and that influences our 'cultures' (the commonly agreed rules intended to enable us to deal with the problems we face). and humans do like that, unless they are frightened (and humans are very easily frightened) in which case all bets are off and logic tends to go out of the window. Zhangs work on greed has shown the potential for self destructive social tendencies (I did like Is Chinese greed different to Western Greed, obviously it isn't but by posing an interesting question he got a lot of responses that allowed him to drill-down into the root causes). The current rash of Great Leaders (as opposed to actual leaders) is a symptom not a cause (but don't tell the Great Leaders that, they'll bomb you to try and prove otherwise) and the predictable by-product is lots of broken things and damaged people. We are not doomed, we do have some profoundly redeeming features. For example Jean Piaget looked at how children perceive ‘quantities’ and how our perception of the amount of material changes if we change its shape. In one experiment children are shown two short fat glasses and orange juice or some other coloured liquid is poured in them until the levels are equal. Looking at them from the side if a child is asked "which has more" they're likely to reply they have the same amount of water, as they look identical. However, if you empty the juice from one of the short wide glasses into a tall thin one and ask which has more they are likely to say the tall glass has more water because it ‘looks bigger’. Another example is to have two identical biscuits and break one in half, a youngster will see the two halves as being ‘more’ than the single biscuit. The interesting aspect in the present context is when you say to the child that one glass or biscuit should go to one person and the other to another person they (virtually always) respond with 'that's not fair'. In short the concept of ‘fairness’ is built-in to the human psyche and we all know what ‘fair’ means. This can also be demonstrated in adults, if for example you tell them there are seven chocolate biscuits and three people they will probably suggest giving each person two and throwing the odd one away. This was termed ‘inequity aversion’ but it turns out they do not want everyone to get the same reward. If one person has made the tea they will probably suggest giving that person the extra biscuit as that is ‘only fair’ and this has consequences in the wider society. Economists and sociologists measure the ‘Gini Coefficient’ as proposed by the statistician and sociologist Corrado Gini as a measure of inequality. Current thinking is that this directly correlates with social cohesion and societies with taxation and legal systems that are considered ‘fair’ have measurably lower levels of crime and fewer mental health problems. We like equal opportunity but we are quite happy to live with unequal outcomes with two provisos; Firstly the unequal outcome must not be the result of unethical behaviour (James Bond super villains do not ‘deserve’ the luxury extinct volcano) and secondly the degree of inequality must be proportionate. We are happy if the boss gets three to five times as much money as the person sweeping the floor, we get upset of they get a hundred times as much. Currently that disparity is much greater. It is an inditement of our current political industry that the levels of inequity in modern developed societies are worse that at any point in our history. That is a failure to manage those areas we entrust to our politicians and the results of management failures are seldom desirable. However that is perhaps just another indication that humans are experiencing difficulty adjusting their behaviour to the world we have created. We are not as ‘smart’ as we would like to believe we are.

[@Minimmalmythicist]

The thing is the private eye crew will whinge about the situation but go after politicians like Corbyn who actually want to do something

[@maxhaughton1964]

it's not exactly pretty but if you think the government shouldn't be trying to woo investors you're living in a funny world

[@BrockSamson-i1i]

yes, however the level of 'woo' should be proportionate to the value of the 'woo-e' and P&O have shown that they have none