Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

C & M

I agree entirely that the self employed status of couriers is a bad arrangement for the couriers. However, the old system meant a salary and packages to be delivered if time permitted. I have been buying goods online for years and used to use couriers in businesses several times every day. The switch to self employed status has speeded up deliveries due to a price per item for the courier. They work longer hours and do more deliveries in a day. The courier companies charge less and promise faster delivery. EBay and Amazon have lots of items with free delivery. It is all driven by market forces.

I know it is not a good arrangement but what is the solution.

You already well know H/S. so stop playing the Mr. innocent.

It would be interesting to know what your solution would be. The reason Interlink gave for folding was the extreme competitiveness of the business.

Topline figures for today’s two polls are:

Opinium/Observer – CON 29%(nc), LAB 36%(+2), LDEM 6%(nc), UKIP 16%(-3), GRN 5% (tabs)

YouGov/Sunday Times – CON 32%, LAB 34%, LDEM 6%, UKIP 15%, GRN 8% (tabs)

Old polls with people away for Xmas. It will take a while for them to settle down. Don't forget the Ipsos More poll showing Conservatives in the lead.

Labour and the SNP IF the Tories were the biggest party would vote against everything they proposed.

They couldnt get anything through.

It would be pointless them trying to govern.

Sorry Hays one way or another ITS THE END FOR THE TORIES Happy New Year.

Ipsos Mori

CON 32 (nc); LAB 29 (nc); LIB DEM 9 (nc); UKIP 13 (-1); GREEN 9 (+2)

Labour p!us SNP is no bigger than now. The split just changes. Conservatives plus Libs may well be bigger.

No chance and your using an out of date poll.

The Greens would go with labour aswel given the U Turn Camoron as made on green policy.

courier drivers
a good and efficient courier driver is worth a fortune to his employer, as is true of any employee
if drivers are paid reasonably and are treated fairly, then they will stay ...... the perpetual churning of the very people who make the business work at all is a hidden disaster
regrettably, few employers manage to recognise this simple fact as the benefit cannot be easily identified by the dumbo accountants who tend to run the companies

cancelled surgery
what a terrifying report in today's ST

while it is certainly true that a myriad of people wrongly refer themselves to A&E - eg they have a headache or a (minor) cut finger - i'ld hazard that good proportion would previously have gone to their local cottage hospital or similar, which of course have now been wiped out .... but then there is a severe shortage of staff to man them

that said, the son a friend of ours had to be rushed to hospital in the last few days
the bureaucracy now imposed started off that he had to make an appointment(!!!!) though he had severe breathing difficulties
having got round that problem, there were then reams of paperwork to be filled out out

by chance, a nurse was passing by ..... she took one look and said, "i know exactly what the matter is", gave a steroid injection or some pills with an instruction for them to wait around for about an hour to ensure it had done the job

it had, so end of story in double-quick time

i wonder how long the wait would have been had it been deemed imperative that all the paperwork had to be completed before even being allowed to queue for the next stage

Anything to do with Lansley's "reforms" and the money wasted on them?

Four and half years wasted!

typical fred takes the bait of the easy political call, which has only an element of truth in it

the malaise of the NHS goes back many many years and in honesty, is not the fault of any particular gov't, nor even (just) a lack of funding by all those gov'ts

i really can't be bothered to set out even a small table of whys and wherefores as i have no wish or intent of spending my day(s) knocking back fred's undoubted blathering thereafter .... he can bore his poor family instead

Taken from the citylink site: good job eh c?



What can you expect to earn?


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*This is dependent on where your delivery round is in the country.



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Problem is cynic you also fall for Fred's bait, he is a lost cause, just ignore the pillock. Everyone else does, stop feeding him. Goldfinger (or whoever he is calling himself this week) along with Fred know exactly which buttons to press. Scotland, Scotland :0)

Revealed: 'Out of touch' Ed Miliband was barred from appearing at final rally against Scottish independence
Labour leader was blocked from speaking in major event because pro-UK campaign feared his 'north London intellectual' image would put off voters, The Telegraph learns


By Ben Riley-Smith, Political Correspondent10:00PM GMT 27 Dec 2014
The full extent of the divisions in the Labour Party over Scotland can be disclosed after it emerged that Ed Miliband was barred from appearing at the final rally on the eve of the independence referendum.
The Telegraph has learnt that the Labour leader wanted to speak at the event but was blocked amid concerns that he was “out of touch” and had a “north London intellectual image”.
He was forced to stand aside as Gordon Brown, the former prime minister, Alistair Darling, the former Labour chancellor, and Johann Lamont, the Scottish Labour leader, who has since stepped down, represented the party.
Labour is facing electoral oblivion north of the border amid growing concerns about Mr Miliband’s appeal in the party’s traditional heartlands.
A poll published on Saturday forecast that Labour would face a bloodbath at the next general election at the hands of the SNP, which is expected to take 45 of Scotland’s 59 seats. The collapse of Labour in Scotland would offset any gains that the party makes in England and Wales and could put Downing Street beyond Mr Miliband’s reach.



Three senior figures from the campaign to save the Union have told this newspaper that the Labour leader wanted to speak at the major eve-of-poll event but was blocked.
Ms Lamont was so concerned that she is understood to have told him: “Why are you here? You are not winning any votes.”
According to one source the Labour leader had a “hugely negative” impact on the fight to save the Union, adding: “He was just a total liability. He didn’t win us one vote. Without question he hurt the cause.”
The disclosure highlights the depth of his unpopularity north of the border.
The Telegraph has conducted exclusive interviews with more than 15 central figures in the pro-Union campaign to understand what was really going on in the final 100 days.
Other findings include:
• Mr Brown made changes to David Cameron’s final pro-UK speech and talked regularly with the Prime Minister, who later complained the conversations dragged on
• Mr Darling threatened to resign in a secret meeting with Better Together’s board during a period of intense backroom briefing against his leadership in spring
• Unionist politicians appearing on television were briefed on what lines to take if Scotland went independent
• Philip Hammond, then defence secretary, and Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, were on a list of senior Tories not allowed to campaign in Scotland.
• Andy Murray was repeatedly approached by the pro-UK camp to endorse the campaign before he eventually backed the Yes campaign.
• Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s former communications chief, drafted Mr Darling’s victory speech after the referendum and was secretly one of his most trusted advisers during the independence campaign.
The criticism of Mr Miliband intensified after a YouGov poll put the Yes camp ahead just 11 days before September’s vote.
“Miliband and his people were desperate for him to be involved … but there was a lack of self awareness about how unpopular he was,” said one pro-UK source, who witnessed the tensions.
Divisions came to a head when the Labour leader insisted on appearing in the final rally in Glasgow the night before the polls opened.
“We were determined that he wouldn’t appear in the final rally,” one senior pro-UK strategist recalled. “I thought he embodied a completely out-off-touch Westminster. He was not popular on the doorsteps.”
A second campaign chief separately told this newspaper: “There was a suggestion he take part but we wanted the focus to be more on the punters and Gordon [Brown].”
A third senior strategist said: “Miliband felt it was his right as Labour leader to offer the closing slot and was p------ off that Brown should be the man.” Mr Miliband’s team eventually backed down after heated conversations.
Mr Brown’s passionate speech was widely hailed as helping convince wavering Labour voters to reject independence.
However, a Labour spokesman insisted the claims were nonsense, adding: “Everybody wanted Scottish campaigners like Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling at the forefront on the last day of the campaign.”
The spokesman added that Mr Miliband had led the campaign to raise the Saltire across the UK in support of the No campaign and “played a leading role in keeping the UK together”.
A government source also disclosed that Mr Cameron’s conversations with Mr Brown about the vote dragged on.
The source added: “There was always the inclination just to hang up at the point when Brown had given a positive contribution and not be on the phone for another hour hearing Gordon’s view on every other crisis in the world.”
Those around Mr Cameron have also admitted that he knew he would have to resign if Scots voted to leave the UK.
“Everybody always understood that it wouldn’t be possible to survive something of that magnitude,” said one of Mr Cameron’s confidantes on Scotland.

max - of course that City Link advert is a total load of crap .... not only that, but assuredly CL will make a nice slice out of the van hire and all the other bits and pieces ..... add to that the pitiful amount they will pay the driver for deliveries and so on and so on

our little local company (Deadline) is a rare exception as many of their drivers remain the same and reports from them are that they are treated fairly .... all that can be asked

the company that does the collections and deliveries to our doctors' surgery also seem to fall into the same bracket, but that may be a slightly different and specialised category