Or, in my case, off to Greece. Possibly, depending on the quarantine situation. But two things are certain. I will be going there sooner than Harry Maguire will, and I am likely to generate a slightly lower bar bill.
Cultural Kosova
Here is a bit of future nostalgia for you. In about the year 2029, somewhere in the UK, a child is going to ask of its parent: “but mum, why have I got a Kosovan name? We’re from Skipton?”. And said parent, now rather embarrassed in a similar way to those people with thirty year old children called Jason and Kylie is going to mumble some vague apology and the kid is going to storm off yelling “don’t start caring about me know!”.
Yes, you are not hallucinating, and it may blow your mind but we have new rules to count when it comes to the naming of babies. Since 2017 we have seen dual the number of Duas registered in UK on the back of Kosovo’s number one pop export (Ora is so last decade) Lipaing up the charts. Although since the actual numbers involved are 63 and 126 and this is a complete non story just devised to gloss over the fact that Olivia and Oliver are really boring names (with apologies to any Olivias or Olivers who read this) and you may be questioning why I have even brought attention to it. But, hey, IDGAF.
Angie gives up trying
I think that redresses the balance for the older listener.
Angela Merkel has taken Brexit off the agenda for next week’s EU Council meeting as, well, there is no point. As this article alludes to, and as I can confirm from discussions with the only person I know engaged in the negotiations who was being less cagey than normal on our virtual pub session this Sunday, talks are at a seemingly intractable impasse. UK will not agree to follow EU state aid rules because that might prevent the government propping up inefficient businesses in former red wall constituencies. EU won’t agree to any settlement on tariffs without this. Plus they are obsessed with fish but no self-respecting independent nation would allow another country’s trawlers into its sovereign waters just for fun. Plus, even where agreements have been reached in principle, which they seem to have on services (although the agreement is little different from GATT), EU will not progress to agree detailed text because nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. So, even if some last minute compromise were reached in October, there would still be masses of work to do to draw up a formal treaty and the timetable up to December 31st is probably unachievable.
So it would now seem to be odds on no deal. And possibly odds on no equivalence determinations nor data protection adequacy. The latter could have significant impact on you if you are continuing to service EEA clients. This excellent advice from ICO should help you make sure you are doing what you need to do.
Scots bluff
It may come as a surprise to you to find out that 49% of the Scots version of Wikipedia has been produced by a teenager from North Carolina. Actually, let us wind that back a bit. It may come as a surprise to you that there is a Scots version of Wikipedia. Less surprising is that the person to be known only as AmaryllisGardner is not very good at this.
I am not one to nit-pick, but even if you are translating “A’m X, an A’m Y an aw” as “I am X and I am Y and all” as the interfering busy body from Reddit who has picked on the poor kid seems to think you should, then that is pretty rubbish as well – unless you are a script writer for The Waltons. I feel Nicola Sturgeon really needs to jump on this pretty quickly. An independent Scotland would be so far enhanced by having its own language (however much it may look like just a badly spelt version of English). But if the only person that can speak it is an adolescent in Charlotte – and even they can’t speak it properly – then that is not such a good look. So expect the Sturge to announce next week that Scots is now part of the core curriculum in all of Scotland’s reopened schools. This will be followed by four days of Bozzer and Gav denying that it will ever be taught in England before performing their customary policy hand brake turn and English kids will be reciting William McGonagall in the original vernacular before September is out.
Before we leave this, can we just also note the strange dichotomy that is the fact that hippy trippy internet free for all Wikipedia is actually controlled by a strict governance hierarchy based on nothing but longevity. Like the North Korea of the web.
Save our Pret
A rather odd interjection into the back to the office debate from CBI today. You would have thought they got the point that city centres are never going to be what they were – and public policy should be focussed on reinventing them not bullying people back in to buy sandwiches. But it did prompt me to include the message that we had another meeting with Operations representatives from Lloyd’s. LMA and IUA this week and plans remain much the same as previously reported. A very slow move back towards EC3 from next month but no significant numbers of people before the end of the year.
Family Feud
Whilst working from home has many advantages – no commute, more focussed meetings, the ability to go on mute and switch the video off so you can do something else when other meetings are not so focussed – it does mean that you have to spend more time with your family. And I am sure that that can prove a strain on relations in certain circumstances. So in case you felt your whanau was becoming dysfunctional, I bring you the story of Flordelis dos Santos de Souza who ordered nine of her children to shoot her husband (and their father) 30 times – a possibly excessive amount motivated by the fact that six previous attempts to poison him had failed. Just to give this some perspective though, the husband/father is not universally hated in the family as he and Flor have 50 kids. And, as you would expect, our Flor is the only one of the gang yet to be arrested. This is because she has immunity from prosecution as a member of the Brazilian parliament. Sort of like had AA Gill not died of natural causes but been bumped off by Flora and Amber Rudd (come to think of it…). But at least this should put any mild tiff over who has the remote control into some form of perspective.
The Jackie Hobbs relevance revival
In which our very own Ms Hobbs insists that this column should occasionally include something about insurance. A bit nove,l but here goes.
- A webinar was held on Tuesday for DA Claims, with discussions lead by Ben Kelly and Iain Lebbell (always a disappointment. When I first heard of Iain I thought he was Labelle and would be known as Lady Marmalade in the dressing room) from LIIBA’s DA Claims Committee (DACC). A recording of the event will be available on our website shortly. In the meantime, we agreed to resend to members details of the Delegated Claim Standards released a month ago (attached). The LMA have confirmed they will be detailing which Managing Agents have signed up to the standards soon.
- A proposal made by the DACC to rid the market of paper claim files is currently being discussed with the LMA and IUA (surely arson would be cheapest and quickest?).
- Taxing? (Crikey, she is doing her own puns) We are expecting HMRC to publish their long awaited IPT consultation imminently, following responses received to their call for evidence around the operation of IPT. LIIBA provided its feedback on the call for evidence following reviews by our Tax Working Party (TWP), who will also be reviewing the consultation which HMRC have noted will be out ‘during the Summer’ .
Thanks once again to JH for this.
How do you eat an elephant?
Get another elephant stoned and wait for the munchies to set in, obvs. This seems to be the approach favoured by Polish zoo keepers who have decided to treat Fredzia the African elephant’s depression with cannabis. Now, instead of moping around pining for her lost and beloved leader, she mopes around listening to Joni Mitchell records and troughing buns. And, presumably, it is quite difficult to determine if it is having the effect of cheering her up, because she now gets uncontrollable giggles at the strangest things anyway. I fear this experiment will be trunkated.
That is it for this week. I am off to sign Lionel Messi with the savings on James’s expenses under lockdown.