Re: Britain outside the EU
 

I suppose that will mean the hordes will continue to flood in from the EU on the pretext of being performers.
Would the likes of Lativia and Lithuania, really be that interested in havung performers from the UK, or would they be more interested in having "performers" coming to the UK. From the UKs perspective, EU freedom of movement has always been lop-sided against the UKs interest.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

How long is a 'short tour', and does it mean a tour of all EU countries or just allow a tour in one?

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Erm, it's for UK people going to the EU countries, it's not about the other direction.

That's already been covered in our Visa rules - https://www.gov.uk/temporary-worker-...-sporting-visa

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

3 months apparently - https://www.gov.uk/government/news/v...-member-states

Not sure how this will increase illegal immigration when you can come in as a tourist with having to carry a guitar. Seems much simpler doing that tbh

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

The UK runs a huge surplus in music so UK artists performing in the EU greatly exceed inbound performers from the EU.
If you want to get to the UK from Europe, just get a passport or if you can't, take advantage of Brexit and get someone to smuggle you across.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

I'd imagine 3 months in the EU countries.

13 weeks, at 2 shows a week, that's 26 performances . . . just pick the venues that make sense :D

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

What a complete non event.

So hardly a "Punish the UK".

Most likely we will take this up.

So adults only, not children.


For most people, all this will affect is their holidays.
Assuming for a minute that everyone stopped going to the EU for a holiday, then all that would punish is the EU, not the UK.
In reality, no one is going to care about paying it, everyone does it for holidays to Florida, and no one complains about it "hurting".

I dislike the EU as much as many, and I am glad to be rid of them, but trying to make this a brexit issue is pure desperation by some.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

There's a vicious rumour on twitter that the government is going to deploy the army to keep the shelves stocked in supermarkets, wtf, wt actual f, who voted for this again?

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

More misinformation from you I see, careful, I might mistake you for Mr K.

Brexit had nothing to do with shelves being empty, if there is actually any shelves empty at all. My supermarket has fully stocked shelves. The shortfalls the other week was triggered by the sheer number of people being pinged by the NHS Covid App. I saw some desperate Remainiacs post a doctored screenshot, alleged to have been taken when the initial panic buying took place at start of pandemic. Desperate stuff still trying to rubbish the vote, when in reality, all their stupid claims of the county going bankrupt hasn’t come to pass, quite the opposite actually.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ics-Corps.html

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Thanks for confirming what I had originally said.

But Remainiacs are going to cling to the Brexit scapegoat for everything, because everything else they said was going to happen, has not happened. :rolleyes:

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Yeah what do I know, I only work for some of the biggest haulage and logistic firms in the country, you know the ones trying to poach each others staff with hefty bounties because things are so bad and I think you'll find it wasn't lorry drivers being pinged it was the people unloading them and we don't have 100000 people waiting for licence to fill the gaps either, very far from it

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Surely 1/6th of HGV drivers in the UK weren't foreign were they?

If so, that's a massive failing somewhere . . . and a possible nod to the wages on offer that allowed it to happen.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Exactly - but it's a lets blame Brexit for everything approach to every problem Britain is having at the current moment.

The UK does not need to be in the corrupted EU - the vaccine fiasco they caused should be a bloody eye opener to Remainers, but oh no they love this disgusting corrupted club for some unknown reason. We are better out of that club, well out.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

I can only find data (albeit after a very quick search up until 2016

The proportion of foreign national HGV drivers between 2006 - 2016 increased from 3% in 2006 to 12%

it would be a reasonable assumption to make, that this increase continued 2016-2019 ?

Average salary in 2016 was £11.06

I did find data to suggest that this had increased to approx. £11.60 per hour YE 2020

The hourly salary is atrocious consdering their responsibilities
https://assets.publishing.service.go...stics-2016.pdf

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

It's actually worse than that, European firms tend to pay drivers by the kilometre not by the hour, so if they're being held up at boarders or by customs they're not earning a penny. It's a very complicated industry with very fine margins and what may seem like opportunities opening will quickly disappear along with the jobs

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Because a lot didn't work for British firms, they worked for EU companies who sub contracted them to British firms, imo the problem is with the continental driving, they don't want to do it so filling those spots has had a knock on effect on the rest of the industry, I could be wrong to, I'm more likely in the drivers room having a cuppa than in the logistics office, it's the drivers from various companies I pick this up from.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

https://www.ft.com/content/4d6b3be1-...5-91da326cabdc

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

If they could have they would have, be cheaper than offering bounties to poach drivers

---------- Post added at 16:08 ---------- Previous post was at 16:06 ----------

That's funny, I've never heard a driver say that about the tax status but I have from security and warehouse staff, tbh it needed reforming imo, to many people weren't paying in

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Brexit does not allow them to work here I guess? Maybe we can advertise in the countries where we are signing new trade deals?

One issue for the workforce size has been lack of new drivers being able to be tested for HGV licences during the pandemic, so hopefully the backlogs here can be addressed. With other people coming off furlough and facing redundancy, there may be more people attracted to re-training as HGV drivers. And perhaps some coach drivers re-training as at least one large coach operator went bankrupt during the peak of the pandemic.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Just shows that the British haulage industry has relied on cheap foreign labour instead of investing and training UK workers. Story of British industry as a whole really.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

HGV driver shortages pre-date the referendum, never mind Brexit.:rolleyes:

Eg Nov 2015
Feb 2016

Quote:

In the UK right now there is a shortage of licensed, qualified HGV drivers. This is having an impact on the haulage industry as well as the UK economy and it currently shows no sign of improving.

And not just the UK.
And not just UK and Germany.
The fundamental problem is:-

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Oh well, at least there's a good side to all this . . .

100,000 lorries that are no longer clogging up the roads, producing nasty smelly fumes that contribute to global warming and health issues.

Surprised the news channels haven't cottoned on yet, they seem full of environmental stuff lately :D

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

So what have the shortages been attributed to? That was ommited from the quote

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Can't include the whole of an article, and I did include 2 reasons.
The central points being that it(as usual) has nothing whatsoever to do with Brexit(ie this thread), and has been a worldwide issue for more than a decade.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Do you have a link?

---------- Post added at 20:40 ---------- Previous post was at 20:35 ----------

Wouldn't be surprised to see Johnson claiming that Brexit like closing the mines was all about saving the planet. ;)

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Thanks

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

IIRC Labour closed more mines than the Conservatives.
UK Coal supply dropped in the late 1960s and 1970s. Who was in power both of those times?

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Not sure that information - correct or otherwise - has any relevance.

2016: Project Fear. 2021: Project Here
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-58146039

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

He's shaken, not stirred. ;)

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

You are quite correct, just a year after record production. But hey, that was Harold Wilson.

Coal mining is a touchy subject but Scargill closed more pits than Thatcher.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

I'm not sure why you fail to see the relevance. I know that Labour supporters would prefer to ignore this fact.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Why is it relevant which party closed the most mines? It's Johnson (Conservative) who claims that Thatcher (Conservative) closed mines due to global warming, not Starmer (Labour).

And as I've explained before, I've voted for all main parties in the UK and Thatcher was one of the best prime ministers we've had. She had her faults of course - poll tax, Hillsborough, etc but compared to recent prime ministers she towers above them.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

I don't he "claimed", it was - as is usual with Boris - a poor attempt at humour.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Report here that army has not been asked and its capacity would not cover the gap. Plus bin deliveries could be problematical as drivers move from rubbish collection to driving lorries. The Winter could be memorable for the wrong reasons.
https://news.sky.com/story/bringing-...rtage-12377823

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Are there any other countries suffering shortages of staff/food who have also suffered from covid, but not gone through a withdrawal from the EU?

Knowing this should help us to decide if Brexit is a factor in this.

Also, is it possible to escape roaming charges by buying a local PAYG SIM? I suspect that they will all eventually bring roaming charges back.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Only this year that The Sun proudly proclaimed "Mobile phone operators will not bring back roaming charges for Brits travelling in Europe"
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/137043...-brits-europe/

Somewhat awkward for those easily-misled MPs then like Julian Knight who believed this nonsense and retweeted it with the comment "Another remoaner myth busted!" :dunce:
https://twitter.com/julianknight15/s...86213755109379

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Misled by the mobile companies.

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.ph...g-charges.html

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Absolutely awful isn't it, I mean fancy paying a few £k to go abroad on holiday and then finding you have to find an extra £10 to use your phone :rolleyes:

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

I’m happily retired in the Covid thread. ;)

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

It’s relevant simply because those who’ve exercised their right to be offended use Thatcher as their bogeyman because of pit closures. They don’t like to be reminded that Labour closed even more pits.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Misled, but an entirely predictable step for capitalists in markets that aren’t genuinely competitive.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

The costs that are payable to those companies in the other countries has to come from somewhere. Why should those remaining in the UK, be expected to pay the additional costs incurred by people travelling to Spain etc?
People are using the mobile networks of other companies in other countries, and those other companies, quite reasonably, expect to be paid for providing that service.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

You’re assuming that their pricing is absolutely stripped to the bone, all of their costs absolutely minimised for fear of losing out to their competitors.

While markets in perfect competition work in this manner that isn’t true where there’s a small number of suppliers offering like for like products. While there are MVNOs there’s fundamentally four UK suppliers of mobile connectivity. They have no incentive to aggressively reduce their costs and every incentive to push their prices gradually upwards to maximise profits in the absence of adequate regulation.

None can make substantial inroads into the others market share in a short period, in which the other would respond anyway.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

How on earth can they reduce the costs created by other companies, in other countries?
Eg Movistar mobile network in Spain would charge the EE for a call placed by an UK EE customer in Spain to somebody in the UK. How else could Movistar be expected to fund the service in Spain?:rolleyes: EE would have no control over that cost.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

My point is they’ve no incentive to reduce any costs at all. They could equally charge Movistar for their customers coming here.

The cost of mobile calls are next to nothing, but it’s in their interests (UK networks and EU networks) to push prices up in the absence of regulation to prevent them from doing so.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

They almost certainly do charge customers using SIMs from other countries. They ARE reducing costs for people who don't use roaming.
Setting up and maintaining the network is not cheap.
So a UK mobile provider could be expected to set up and provide a mobile network with no money coming in, because everybody is using a SIM from another country?
Why aren't landline call costs the same within a country, never mind between countries?

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Check the dates - the MP endorsed The Sun article five months before Vodafone's misleading statement.

---------- Post added at 21:57 ---------- Previous post was at 21:48 ----------

Another piece of Project Fear becomes Project Here:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics...made-permanent

---------- Post added at 21:59 ---------- Previous post was at 21:57 ----------

In this instance not as the MP Tweeted five months before Vodafone's statement.

---------- Post added at 22:02 ---------- Previous post was at 21:59 ----------

They were offended because Johnson was possibly trying to rewrite history but importantly came across as insensitive to the Red Wall voters. Those kind of comments might land well in Berkshire but not in Yorkshire or Scotland.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

The PM was certainly not trying to re-write history, Andrew. It was a joke, anyone can see that. Insensitive? Probably. I certainly wouldn't have made a joke of it in that location.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Where the heck have we suddenly found 13,000 lorries to hide in a Kent lay-by?

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Better-known observers felt otherwise, Old Boy. For example, Sarah Vine who writes a column in one of our best-selling newspapers.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Were did they find the drivers?

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

hmm yes, I seem to have got that one wrong ;)

Maybe the lorries have been there a few months, and every refugee that makes it ashore gets asked "can you drive a lorry?" :D

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

well she's wrong too.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

So we should be impressed by the opinion of a writer for a newspaper? They are all out to get a headline.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Johnson's bright enough to know that some people would have taken it literally.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

some idiots,and those with a political agenda

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

I was going to say well he is a professional politician, but I don’t really know his income and to the extent it’s something to do on the side while writing books, preparing for a speaking tour, comedy sketches, advisory boards of international conglomerates etc.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

As Cameron will testify, the real pay-out for Eton PMs begins when you step down from being PM.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Well, the war criminal does not too bad for himself too. Although I accept in a way that is less overly corrupt.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Cameron's shown the rest up as mere amateurs! The combination of his Eton Filofax and his ex-PMs What'sApp is gold dust and some.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

He also said the next massive political scandal after mp expenses would be lobbying. What shocks me is how cheap they are, if you've got 250k spare you can get millions worth of taypayers money in contracts. The PCR tests are 20 times the fair price apparently for instance

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

2016: It's not the EU's money that's funding the poorer areas of the country, it's the UK's. That will continue. All Project Fear.
2021: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...9.html?r=20848

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Interesting how you chose to frame your post as if this is the normative situation post-Brexit, whereas in fact even the article you linked to is eventually forced to admit that the promised Shared Prosperity Fund is due to begin in April.

Meantime, I would hazard a guess that the interim Community Renewal Fund has been hampered more than a little by other pressing political priorities over the last year or so.

Nice try though, and thanks for the link - the Independent’s persistent remoaning is always good for a giggle.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

You talk about April as if it's next month. The article states that a year's funding will have been lost as a result of inaction so it acknowledges that something might indeed happen next year.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

The article is a thinly-veiled opinion piece that makes more than a few assumptions based on figures handed to the news desk by the Labour Party. It also stretches credulity somewhat by claiming that the current financial year is almost halfway through when in fact we’re barely past the one-third point, and also in the middle of the long summer recess when nothing happens anyway. So you and the independent need to make up your minds whether April 2022 is fast approaching or not - you can’t have it both ways. ;)

Notwithstanding any of that, come the next general election, if there has been a failure to adequately fund regional development that will have been a failure of British politicians, who can be handed their P45s by British voters. Again, not for the first time, you appear not to have understood this simple, elegant truth of Brexit. Accountability. That is a good thing.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

I might be aware of funding failures and successes but such matters are pretty opaque to most people. If a council cuts back services or improves them then it tends to get blamed or praised, not the government funding the council. It's an unfortunate truth and is not a good thing.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

And adding a layer of money-splashing bureaucracy over which British voters had no effective influence was better?

(Answer: no it wasn’t, which is why we binned it in a referendum in 2016).

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

It was better because the money was actually allocated.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

No, it was not better because it was beyond our democratic control. That’s a fundamental principle for me and for a great many long-time Eurosceptics.

You claim to have understood the point yet you’re still attributing the question of whether or not development funds are properly allocated this financial year to the wider and altogether more permanent issue of EU membership. You are plainly wrong about this. Regional development is now the remit of the UK government and if it does not adequately deliver the sanction lies in the hands of UK voters. That is a fundamentally better state of affairs, regardless of how well (or not) cash is allocated over the next 8 months.

The logic behind your position is that our own government and our own democratic processes are not to be trusted and we need a remote organisation to do these things for us in order for them to be done properly. That’s a position I find rather worrying.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

I'm taking an evidence-based approach and not the ideological one which you espouse. The funds were allocated before, a promise was made that this would continue and it's not happened in this financial year. That's clearly not better. Councils and development agencies need to fund projects with cash not political ideologies.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

You plainly aren’t taking an evidence-based approach. You’re swallowing what the ultra-remain Independent is feeding you: interim measures that may or may not turn out to have worked very well, which are hard to judge fairly at present as we’re (1) emerging from a pandemic that has absorbed huge amounts of government time and (2) we are only 4 months through the 12 month financial year in which the scheme will operate.

On the basis of this scant evidence you are concluding that (1) everything is the way you always thought it would be and (2) it will ever be thus. You’re as clear a case study in confirmation bias as you’ll ever find.

Regardless, the substantive point is this: if they royally screw it up, they can be removed from office. That’s the democratic state of affairs I voted for in 2016 and it will require a fundamental, constitutional balls-up to challenge that, not a piffling, mid-ranking kerfuffle over one year of regional grant aid.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Not at all.

You're giving the government a green card to not deliver on its promises and for it not to be honest about not doing so because you are seeing the words sovereignty and are being dazzled by them. The government chose to implement Brexit when a pandemic was raging. It's sensibly not using this as an excuse for inaction. Councils need some notice that funds are on the way even if they won't be receiving them for several months.

I had hoped that the government would honour its promises and as a net contributor to the EU budget, it's not as if we don't have the money. Or am I assuming something here?

You will find that I've posted positive news stories about Brexit. Unfortunately, my optimism was misplaced with the story I posted about musicians' touring rights as it turned out to be the government department rehashing something agreed previously.

But on the subject of sovereignty. The fact remains that genuine sovereignty costs and it's not a price that governments feel is worth paying. Look at the medicines regulator as an example of how things are going. The government is proposing substantial cuts there that that will reputedly make it an organisation that simply rubber stamps the European Medicine Agency's decisions. Our seat at the table is gone. For a sovereignty theorist such as yourself, no problem, just elect a government that is prepared to spend the sums required on duplicating such bodies. You and I both know that with our political set-up, such choices are unlikely to appear on the ballot paper.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

You use an awful lot of words to disguise your distaste for our democracy. Fortunately they are of no consequence. The present government will either satisfy the electorate and win a new term in office, or it will not, and be removed. That’s not a green card for anything - it is our democracy at work. As it should be.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

The green card referred to your use of the pandemic to justify the government's inaction on this issue when even it wasn't this desperate to use this excuse. And to write off as mere words the fact that the UK is having to become a rule-taker in some areas shows an ideological approach at work, whether consciously or unconsciously.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Pivot … pivot … pivot …

Let’s re-cap.

You presented an argument that conflated constitution and policy (as remainers are wont to do)
I pointed out your error
You switched to argue an unrelated point.

It’s a given you’re never going to admit you’re wrong, which is why the tack-switch is always so gratifying.

Goodnight. ;)

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

You remember Bately and Spen? I think it was there I saw a couple interviewed saying they'd voted Labour all their lives but were switching to Conservatives, when asked why they said it was because the labour council had closed this, shut that and cut the other, turns out of course that they didn't have any choice because the central government grant had been slashed. It's not always as simple as you've made out.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Good afternoon. :)

I did indeed mention a related point about how sovereignty on paper might sound good but in the real world practicalities mean that it does not work out that way.

I do acknowledge I could not get you to agree on regional funding and I give you full credit for the lengths you have gone to defend the government not doing what it said it would do.

---------- Post added at 16:45 ---------- Previous post was at 16:41 ----------

I'm deeply worried by some of the apparent corruption I'm now seeing (look at the VIP lane for PPE procurement for example) and our inability to tackle this as a country.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

As a reminder, The Daddy made a good point earlier - it's not as simple as Chris likes to think.
What do you mean by our own democratic processes?

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

- we have democratically elected institutions;
- we have free, fair, open elections and universal suffrage.

By any global standard our democratic processes are more than up to the task of giving the people a voice in who governs and how they behave.

Examples of the electorate making judgments you (or the daddy) consider inadequate … well that just begins to sound a teensy bit like the sort of patronising nonsense that was sadly all too common from remain campaigners in 2016. It seems some Europhiles really do think a technocratic government in a foreign country is what’s required to save them from stupid British voters who keep making poor decisions.

To reiterate the substantive point: regional development funding is a political issue, not a constitutional one. It will be solved by political means (either by the incumbent party or one elected to replace it), not by wholesale constitutional change. British voters deciding British issues, which was the entire point of Brexit. It really is that simple.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

The substantive point is that regional funding actually got paid out by the EU when it was going it and the current government has broken its promises and not delivered on this. That's always been my point despite many attempts to take me on another path.

But issues like this in the absence of more trustworthy politicians can be obfuscated and TheDaddy gave you an example of how this is so. Inconvenient as it might be. To stipulate that matters are either perfect or that we need a foreign country to help reeks of playing to the audience when matters are far more nuanced.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

… so vote them out. Replace them with a party that will adequately fund regional development. What’s so hard to understand about that?

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

You’re right, It’s not, because Labour is now the party of identity politics, pro-nouns and Palestine, which may be important to the metropolitan blue hair wing of the NUS, but not the people of Batley & Spen and others. In a few short years Labour has divorced itself from the working class and actively despises them.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Odd, according to the two interviewed it wasn't any of the things you mentioned, just the fact local services had be cut to the bone and they wrongly blamed it on the labour council. Maybe those things you mention do matter to the people of Batley and Spen after all considering Labour held it or maybe they just identified less with the sleezy chumocricy currently making themselves richer at everyone else's expense at the heart of government

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

But what you have identified isn’t a constitutional problem, much less a problem that would be solved by outsourcing regional grant funding to a supra-national institution headquartered in Belgium.

If voters in Batley and Spen are incorrectly blaming the local Labour council for services being cut then that is an abject failure on the part of the local Labour Party which has allowed that narrative to develop. Again, not a constitutional problem and certainly not a problem that would lend any credence to the idea that British voters are too thick to vote on the issues (and therefore those nice people in Brussels should just make the decisions for them).

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

No not a constitutional problem, we have levels of deceit and corruption third world juntas would be proud of, just today the chancellor has become embroiled in it all and it's the oppositions fault for being to incompetent to call it out, it's the publics fault for being thick or more likely to busy living their lives to be paying attention etc etc. I said on the day of the referendum no matter who won we needed to clean politics up and we should never allow campaigns to be run like that again and what happened, they're even worse today!

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Yes, it’s a Brexit issue, because, yes, we’ve cut off the cheap, unlimited East European labour tap. Here’s a phrase I seem to be using a lot lately: that was the point.

A point I’ve also made multiple times recently: British businesses need to stop squealing to be allowed back on the teat and come to terms with the fact that they now have to compete for British workers, they may have to start apprenticing and (shock, horror) they may have to stop offering crap pay and conditions, which has been a particular problem in the hospitality and leisure sector.

I’m not surprised the Home Office hasn’t rushed to respond to yet another business wailing to be allowed to carry on importing cheap labour rather than adopting some sense of responsibility to the communities in which it operates.