Thursday 13 May 2021

They would say that, wouldn't they?

Item 1, from Business Insider:

WeWork's CEO said your desire to go to an office depends on how "engaged" you are at work.

Sandeep Mathrani, who stepped in as CEO of the coworking startup last year, said that people most comfortable working from home are the "least engaged" with their company, while the "overly engaged" want to go to the office.


Is he seriously trying to guilt trip people into paying rent?

Item 2, from the BBC:

Queen's Speech 2021: Key points at-a-glance

A Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill will get rid of the fixed five-year period between general elections and return the power to call early elections to the prime minister.


Wow. This law came in under the Tory-Lib Dem coalition in 2011. David Cameron stuck to it, and called a General Election after his five years were up (which he won convincingly). Then his successors called snap elections in 2017 and in 2019 and made a mockery of the whole thing. It must be one of the least observed laws in living memory.

Plans to force voters in Great Britain to to prove their identity when they vote at general elections will be introduced in an Electoral Integrity Bill

A Judicial Review Bill will set out the government's plans to change how its decisions can be challenged in the courts


I do not like either of these at all, but that's Tories for you (and I'm not saying that Labour haven't been just as authoritarian).

6 comments:

Bayard said...

"Plans to force voters in Great Britain to to prove their identity when they vote at general elections will be introduced in an Electoral Integrity Bill"

How do you do that with postal votes?

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, you'd just scrap postal votes. That's where most of the fraud is.

mombers said...

@MW any evidence of significant postal vote fraud?

After what happened in the US in Jan, and the Georgia voter suppression law last month, you'd think the Tories wouldn't want to jump on this cynical bandwagon. I don't have a driver's licence and forcing me to carry an extremely valuable document (my passport) to a polling station for no reason except to interfere with the electorate is awful. I vote by post anyway.

There's no free photo ID available, how this didn't invalidate the trials they did a while back is a mystery. In South Africa ID cards are mandatory and free so it's really not a problem, but ID cards are anathema here. A very expensive rollout of ID cards that cannot be used for anything except voting would need to be done, not a good use of funds

Bayard said...

"not a good use of funds"

Depend on in whose pocket those funds end up.

Mark Wadsworth said...

M, in the UK, most of the electoral frauds which they uncover involve postal votes. This does not apply to the USA, I believe they are far stricter over there. ID cards = bad idea, of course.

Lola said...

The Queens Speech legislative agenda was pretty all nasty authoritarianism. God read here https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/its-a-mistake-to-think-the-state-is-on-your-side/ h/t guido