In 2014, the former prime minister proudly announced that his government had
stopped ‘needless health and safety inspections’
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Tag - Politics
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Ever since Elon Musk took over Twitter, I and many others have been looking for
alternatives. Who wants to share a platform with the likes of Andrew Tate and
Tommy Robinson?
I considered leaving Twitter as soon as Elon Musk acquired it in 2022, just not
wanting to be part of a community that could be bought, least of all by a man
like him – the obnoxious “long hours at a high intensity” bullying of his staff
began immediately. But I’ve had some of the most interesting conversations of my
life on there, both randomly, ambling about, and solicited, for stories: “Anyone
got catastrophically lonely during Covid?”; “Anyone hooked up with their
secondary school boy/girlfriend?” We used to call it the place where you told
the truth to strangers (Facebook was where you lied to your friends), and that
wide-openness was reciprocal and gorgeous.
It got more unpleasant after the blue-tick fiasco: identity verification became
something you could buy, which destroyed the trust quotient. So I joined the
rival platform Mastodon, but fast realised that I would never get 70,000
followers on there like I had on Twitter. It wasn’t that I wanted the attention
per se, just that my gang wasn’t varied or noisy enough. There’s something eerie
and a bit depressing about a social media feed that doesn’t refresh often
enough, like walking into a shopping mall where half the shops have closed down
and the rest are all selling the same thing.
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Increase will lift minimum rates by 9.8% and comes after online retailer
defeated GMB union bid for bargaining rights on pay
Amazon has announced a pay rise worth nearly 10% for tens of thousands of UK
employees, after defeating an attempt by the GMB trade union for bargaining
rights over pay and conditions.
The online retailer said the increase would lift minimum pay rates by 9.8% to
between £13.50 and £14.50 an hour, depending on location. Staff with at least
three years’ service will receive a minimum of between £13.75 and £14.75 an
hour.
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Ahead of the publication of his book about leadership – definitely not aimed at
Keir Starmer – the former prime minister talks about relinquishing power, why
he’s not fazed about a second Trump term and being an AI evangelist
Were you to board an aeroplane piloted by a man who has never previously sat in
a cockpit, you’d be alarmed. Were you to face surgery by a woman with no medical
qualifications, you’d be frightened. Politics is the one profession that can put
someone in a position of great power and responsibility without any prior
experience or demonstration of ability. “It’s bizarre,” Tony Blair says. “In any
other walk of life, that doesn’t happen.” When he became prime minister in 1997
he was in his early forties and an absolute neophyte at governing. He was much
better at it, he believes, towards the end of his decade at No 10 than at the
outset. So he’s written a book about the dos and the don’ts of leadership
“because government is a science as well as an art”.
In the first flush of taking power, leaders “listen eagerly” because they grasp
that they know little or nothing about governing. In the second stage, they know
enough to think they know everything and become impatient with listening. Hubris
becomes a danger, inviting nemesis. “You’ve got some experience, but your
experience makes you believe that you know more than you actually do. And that’s
the risk. That’s why I say stage two is the most difficult and many people never
get to stage three.” Maturity comes with the realisation that what they know is
not the sum total of political knowledge. Once again, “with more humility”, they
listen and learn.
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The prime minister’s beauty sleep is interrupted by an unwelcome visitor with
designs on the government’s spending plans
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