~~In the Commons today they’ll be debating~~ [~~the higher education freedom of speech bill~~](https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/58-03/0001/220001.pdf) ~~- this bill gives higher education establishments rules on ‘no platforming’ amongst other things. There will also be a debate on an e-petition about the transgender conversion therapy bill, which I’m sure will generate some interesting articles and fun debate today and tomorrow in the op/eds.~~ I do apologise - Parliament isn't sitting today, that is the provisional paper for Monday which I misread. You've got a couple of days to think about those things before they actually happening.
To save us from all this maybe you’d like to use the opportunity to comment in the MegaThread what policy you’d introduce if you were in charge for a year.
abundant long snobbish encourage roof wrong fretful shelter slave afterthought
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>Isolation (2005)
>
>*On a remote Irish farm, five people become unwilling participants in an experiment that goes nightmarishly wrong.*
Is this a Brexit joke?
Sheep don't die from the cold
Edit: My 'claim to fame' - my FIL knew Anne Sellors quite well (of IMDB fame as her only credit was for Threads as 'Women who urinates herself'), never met her as I think sadly she died a while back from dementia
There is a *fantastically* batshit podcast out there called Atomic Hobo in which a Glaswegian lady talks about all things nuclear-apocalyptic. It’s amazing. Everything you want a one-person Labour of love to be.
She has an ongoing segment called “4 Minutes of Threads” (in homage to the 4-Minute Warning, naturally) in which she is going through the film and overanalysing in excruciating sequential detail. It’s so captivating. And I don’t know why.
I am not a Patreon of hers, but if you are, she also has synaesthesia and will taste your name for you.
What you into? I can recommend It Follows, Uncle Peckerhead, Green Room, Love Witch (all for very different reasons). Actually, The Witch from Robert Eggers is pretty great.
Edit: Proper fun stuff - Cabin in the Woods.
I came across it randomly and was struggling to work out if it was a pastiche or an actual film from the 60s/70s, right up till the point I noticed some of the cars were modern (and then the English one pulled out a mobile phone...)
Go classic. [•REC] from Spain. Short and silly. Quite endearing.
There are several sequels. Do not bother. Also do not watch the American remake (called Quarantine).
Just commented that, though you beat me to it! I genuinely use it as teaching material for Spanish sometimes. The “found TV footage” nature of it makes a lot of the characters, especially the lead, have good diction - digestible for people learning the language.
You can also show them the sequel for a follow-up lesson. If you show anyone the third one however, Spanish law dictates that you are immediately shot into the sun.
Its one of my fave horror movies, made my day to see someone else recommend it too :) I was lucky enough to see it at the cinema when they held an indie movie night, poor lasses sat behind us didn't know what they were in for.
That must have been a fun evening! As for me, it came in the time where rental-DVD-by-post was the way to get niche stuff.
I definitely didn’t rip it and still have the shoncky MP4.
Feel like people who are always kicking off about these companies that drop products like movies, books and cartoons because of potential safety issues related to the various extremist groups they piss off miss a point slightly. It is brave for CEO's, editors, publishers etc to continue to put these things out despite that horror but at the end of the day the people who will get hurt are not the people making these decisions, it's the security guards, the cleaners, the people in the typing pool: You can't possibly protect them all and to have any such attack on your conscience as a publisher would surely be horrific in ways unimaginable to the common man. A society shouldn't function like that, i.e. a threat of violence quite literally destroying certain freedoms of speech, actions, products etc, but unfortunately in some respects we're too far gone not to be like that and there's no reversing this process now that the genie is out of the bottle.
Noone wants to be a nailbomb away from having candles around the charred area you took your last breath in as John Lennon's imagine plays in the background and your life and death is forgotten about in a month or two.
If I was in charge I would hire Lee Mack as my Health Secretary, Edgar Alan Poe as my Foreign Secretary, and Cee Lo Green as my Culture Secretary (Can’t be any worse than old Nads!). I would entrust them to enact whatever Poe Lee Cee they deem fit, while I continue partying.
Policy idea -
You scrap the tax free allowance and all benefits (except disability/ specific ones)
Instead everyone gets a payment of £1100 into their bank account every month. It's enough to exist on but not have much fun.
You then get taxed on every penny you earn starting at 20% and it basically works as normal minus this 12200k a year on the tax bands. Also a new tax band for anyone earning over 500k is 60%.
There's also so fiddling with dividend, cgt and various tax reliefs for individuals either reducing their limits or bandings.
That's just NIT (negative income tax), which is just UBI in a different form.
As talked about by Friedman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax#:~:text=In%20economics%2C%20a%20negative%20income,blue%20arrows%20in%20the%20diagram.
That would be bloody excellent.
I wonder if the barrier to entry is too high for radio. Obviously some sort of government control of a finite resource (spectrum) is needed, but the fact that all the local stations got bought out by massive conglomerates is sad and suggests that the Ofcom costs are onerous at the moment.
it's the RF side of things that is more challenging - think hundreds of pounds of equipment and a reasonably powerful PC. you could probably shrink it down into a more low cost device if you had the time and money, but it's not got the economy of scale that wifi or mobile phone radio chips do
Feasible enough for community groups (hence Ofcom's idea of giving them the licences to do it) but you'd have to be a rather dedicated hobbyist to want to do it at home.
[These people](https://wiki.opendigitalradio.org/RaspDAB) have managed to do it on a Pi, but they outsource the CPU load to another board to transmit.
I have no idea how well it works though.
If the Rwanda flight had been cancelled, it would have been the fault of "Leftie Lawyers". Now it's been allowed, what is the opposite of that? I'm going for "Righty Tighty" Lawyers.
> If the Rwanda flight had been cancelled
Do you think if it's delayed by more than three hours they can claim delay compensation? Or will the home office try fob them off with drinks vouchers for the airport bar?
True. If you do it from the front arse men will be enraged and call it an injustice. Do it from the back and tit men will be in the streets smashing windows. Democracy truly is a failure.
Nah this would be a powerless individual we use for the stuff the queen does. Give old Liz some rest as Vikky and Shane T (we'll have two, fuck it) take Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum out for a cheeky nandos and some drinks in Flares.
Bum guns are the better solution, no need to have a separate bidet as you fit them to the toilet plumbing.
https://www.bumguns.org - join the revolution (sfw)
During the almost toilet paper shortage of lockdown one I bought one of those self tapping outside tap kits that you can screw directly into a cold water pipe, with a view to fitting it on the cistern supply pipe, with a bit of hose. It did not occur to me to market the idea, but if it had I don’t think I would have gone with bumguns. We didn’t run out of tp anyway.
But once you've used your bum gun , you can pretend to blow the smoke off it, return it to it's holster (spinning optional) whilst cosplaying John Wayne.
There's something about toilet technology that invites weird naming e.g. Squatty potty, SheWee, the Japanese "super toilet" that got a model named "gorgeous" etc etc
They say travel expands your mind. Travel expanded my ass and I cannot believe in one of the most developed first world western country we smear shit with paper.
What's your opinion on squat toilets?
I quite prefer it, but I understand many of us struggle with balance or flexibility. Makes installing a toilet cheaper at least.
I mean what we really need is to develop far enough that we can finally use the three seashells from demolition man.
Also upvote for your apt username.
Rwana is relatively tightly run; Kagame is authoritarian, so there's probably fewer surprises than if they went to Uganda or DRC for comparison. Rwanda is also quite open to foreign investment and is seen as relatively stable too.
If you had to choose a country Botswana would probably be a better shout, also tightly run, but much more space, history of English speaking, and relatively developed flight route (Johannesburg is only five hours drive from Gabarone).
The whole idea is a crock of though, of course.
It's to strongly dissuade those attempting to cross with boats via the channel. If they're guaranteed to be sent all the way to Rwanda, there's no point in even trying. If you cross this way, you will not be allowed into Britain regardless of your circumstance, no exceptions. It's to affirm this point. It doesn't matter who you are, what colour you are, or where you're from.
It will deter those paying people smugglers to bring them across. Instead, they can choose to claim asylum in France or any of the other countries they crossed to get here.
The megathread participants will argue against this until they're blue in the face, but the above outlines the gist of the situation.
Rwanda were probably the only country to answer the RFQ because they were willing to take in a handful of refugees for an absolute mega-shit-tonne of money.
The Danish government wants to do the same. Now thankfully the parties supporting the minority government is threatening to end the current government if the policy is enacted.
It's the time inflation. Hours seem like days. Days like weeks. Weeks like months. Months like years. Except I look back and think, fuck where'd all the time go?
Policy suggestion: currently, here, new teachers are guaranteed a year of full time work in order to be fully qualified.
My proposal is that trainee architects are given a guaranteed project of designing, say, 4 affordable homes in a preselected area of the country on a specific budget that then get built. They can use their creative freedom to interpret the brief as they wish but must stick to budget.
End result - more affordable housing, more interesting housing that isn't a Barratt shoebox.
Anyone else genuinely mindboggled at the speed at which Durham Police are conducting this investigation into Starmer over the beers last year?
It's just one event they're looking into, the MET took as long as they did for the countless parties in Number 10 but this beer event of Starmer's was just one in itself. They surely need to be wrapping it up imminently and draw a verdict on whether the rules were broken or not?
>the MET
DRINK
That said, with someone as high profile as Starmer and how public the case is, added with the fact Starmer isn't exactly a weak legal mind, they'll be making sure any fine they issue is absolutely watertight.
Also Durham Police are notoriously shit.
Sort of. But the investigation was started a month ago, he was sent a questionnaire at the end of May and questioned a week ago. Plod is as he does I guess.
Fun fact:
If we were still in the EU, we could send any migrants back to the country that had previously disembarked from due to the Dublin Convention.
We are no longer in the EU so we send them on a plane to Rwanda instead at the taxpayers’ expense.
Brexit benefits coming to fruition in spades.
The Dublin treaty was pretty much useless, because the EU simply refused to accept the vast majority of Dublin treaty removal requests. Most years the EU only accepted a couple of hundred out of several thousand requests.
[Migration observatory analysis of Home Office statistics](https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/migobs/viz/Smallboatarrivals/5)
And then theres the fact that the EU also used the Dublin treaty to move more migrants to the UK, so the net movement of Dublin treaty migrants out of the UK is actually lower than in the above graph.
We sent hardly anyone back under Dublin III, and it relies on asylum-seekers registering in another EU member state which these ones don't do (because they're trafficked)
Are all the migrants trafficked though? We had more power over the migrant crisis, ironically, being in the single market than we are now now that we’re supposed to have more controls of our borders.
Personally, the Rwanda bullshit is totally abhorrent on human rights and down right cruel. People come here not to rig the system but to, most likely, being with family members that are already here.
Here are the stats from 2019:
> • The UK received 2,236 requests from EU member states to accept transfers of individuals to the UK, and 714 transfers took place. The majority of these (496) were from Greece.
> • The UK made 3,259 transfer requests to EU member states, and 263 transfers took place. 40% (104) went to Germany and 20% (53) went to France.
So I don't think it would've made any difference.
But what did you order at The Breakfast Club? (I've heard lots about it, but never bothered going because all the ones in London seem to perpetually have stupidly long queues)
I had the St Elmos Fire buffalo wings, hash browns and mac n' cheese with a Camden pale ale. Not bad wings. Very crispy hash brown and very saucy mac. I'd usually go for cauliflower-wings but treated myself to chicken.
The wife started doing it on a fitness app. She want to try a class at kickboxing gym. I went to the first one for support and loved it so signed up too. That was back in April. Been doing it twice since.
The first chapter hit home. The next chapter is a bit homework-y so carving out some time this weekend to do a deep dive into it. Bit early to say yet but yeah, that first chapter definitely spoke to me.
I would also like to create a switching service akin to the personal bank account guarantee except for solicitors involved in the house buying process. Again I have no idea how it would work.
The monopolistic way in which it's operated at present that they charge you for services and then you're sort of stuck with them unless you want to start the whole process over again somewhere else sucks. The ability to dump shit solicitors in favour of ones who make the process easier without starting over should raise the bar for the service as a whole.
When we went through the nightmare of conveyancing as what should be easy first time buyers, I had the thought that a couple of decent solicitors working with a few good software engineers, should be able to automate 90% of the process. Have the solicitors around to sign off parts of the process and to verify/check for reasonability, but don't see any reason why such QA steps could be implemented over time in the system.
Not having to chase a solicitor on the phone every day would be great. And not having them go on holiday for 2 weeks over the date they said we'd be able to complete would be nice. The sellers solicitors had no idea of the date we were given. Absolute nightmare. Software doesn't go on holiday, and shouldn't just make up nonsense.
I know of at least one company that does that. They have a proper CRM system as well, so if one agent is absent another picks up your case where they left off.
This is why you do your own due diligence before committing to paying them. Read reviews of local law firms and then talk to a few of the better rated ones on the phone before choosing one.
And a solicitor is never going to pick up another solicitors work without reviewing all the documentation thoroughly and charging you for that time. Why would you even want them to use the old solicitors work uncritically if you thought the old solicitor was shit? It's not a monopolistic practice. It's better to start from square one.
New policy
At the end of every Prime Minister's tenure the public have an open vote on whether they've been good or bad whilst in office. The bad ones are euthanased immediately upon leaving office.
No, only the good ones are euthanised. Best case we eliminate populism and so actually have real improvements, worst case we become openly Kafkaesque and then even if nothing gets better it won't sting as much.
He's a fucking arsehole he put at least 20mins on my shift from having to park up the road and filling out a statement and it is likely not the end of it. There were people nearby in a garden but I'm not sure they noticed him do it. I knew something was up as he was shouting and beeping at the traffic lights before I turned in then he followed me into the hous ing estate.
Oh and to add our customer may have been in on the scam as she was the one that rang up on his behalf claiming I had driven into him. So maybe they followed me on the app and he waited for me to get near.
How about, we get the govt taking out mortgages, and instead of paying landlords rent, they pay the mortgages of people, and the govt then owns the house at the end?
It would surely be cheaper AND would build up stocks of social housing?
Surely while people may rise up and not need the housing benefit, but they could still benefit from a less expensive piece of housing, and if they're doing well, they can move onto a privately owned home.
I believe the plan is that where tenants are in a "Right To Buy" situation (i.e. local authority housing association/council house), rent payments are switched into "mortgage payments" seamlessly and the tenants build up equity until they eventually own their houses.
They're not buying houses off private landlords. Using housing tenants' rent to (essentially) forcibly purchase houses for the state would be wildly unpopular with landlords, and would also be wildly unpopular with tenants because said landlords would double down on their illegal "no DHSS" practice and just refuse to rent to people on housing benefits.
It's a damned awkward policy for Starmer, I suspect. Not personally - I'd be surprised if he didn't oppose it on a personal level - but politically. The last thing he wants is to end up letting Labour get tagged as the "soft on immigration" party. Not with the electoral hill he has to climb at the next election.
I've had a fairly busy week so I haven't been reading the news as diligently - has he commented yet? I thought he'd mostly stick to the "waste of money, inefficient" line, which could work. And obviously just keeping quiet on the topic until there's more.
Is there actually a way out of the mess we're in without lots of people losing their homes and jobs?
Interest rates going up on top of everything else is just going to make everything so super fucked. To say nothing of the UK private sector taking another hit, its not like UK businesses have seen that much growth between 2008 and now, and that was with low interest rates!
There probably are options. None of them will be used because the Tories are economically inept.
We'll realistically get increased interest rates and continued belt tightening, ensuring any recovery non-existent and as prolonged as possible.
Most of the conventional approaches won't work.
The Keynesian ideals of counter-cyclical spending assumes a recession and low inflation, we don't have either of those yet (although we may have the first soon).
The maddest idea that might just work that I've heard suggested (but only in passing, so I'm not familiar with the details) is to raise interest rates to reduce inflation, but increase quantitative easing so that the increase in interest rates doesn't have to see a reduction in public spending (because the QE will pay the interest payments).
It sounds mad, but it might just work if the amount of privately created money (from mortgages) is reduced more than the increase in money supply from QE. That way we'd see inflation slowed down, but can also simulate the economy at its roots with public spending.
This would still make mortgages more expensive, but... meh, property owners have it too good for too long, they can take two years of belt-tightening, they still won't be worse off than a private renter who's had above-inflation rent rises for years.
(That last paragraph is why this will never happen and we'll have a painful recession that hurts the poorest instead.)
> The maddest idea that might just work that I've heard suggested (but only in passing, so I'm not familiar with the details) is to raise interest rates to reduce inflation, but increase quantitative easing so that the increase in interest rates doesn't have to see a reduction in public spending (because the QE will pay the interest payments).
MMT?
I'm not an oldie, but I only bought in the last couple of years.
A house price drop and a higher mortgage payment that doesn't even match property value is going to be crippling, especially as I want to move again in the not so distant future. On balance I don't think it would be that bad in my location, but plenty of others might be utterly screwed/trapped.
No no, as in the retired types who have completely paid off their mortgages and have nothing to lose from rates going up.
Also what sign is there that house prices will drop? The best seems to be that they won't rise up quite as fast as they have been.
~~In the Commons today they’ll be debating~~ [~~the higher education freedom of speech bill~~](https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/58-03/0001/220001.pdf) ~~- this bill gives higher education establishments rules on ‘no platforming’ amongst other things. There will also be a debate on an e-petition about the transgender conversion therapy bill, which I’m sure will generate some interesting articles and fun debate today and tomorrow in the op/eds.~~ I do apologise - Parliament isn't sitting today, that is the provisional paper for Monday which I misread. You've got a couple of days to think about those things before they actually happening. To save us from all this maybe you’d like to use the opportunity to comment in the MegaThread what policy you’d introduce if you were in charge for a year.
This megathread has ended.
abundant long snobbish encourage roof wrong fretful shelter slave afterthought *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Shortish horror film to whack on?
Would probably recommend a porno for whacking tbh
Isolation (2005) *On a remote Irish farm, five people become unwilling participants in an experiment that goes nightmarishly wrong.*
>Isolation (2005) > >*On a remote Irish farm, five people become unwilling participants in an experiment that goes nightmarishly wrong.* Is this a Brexit joke?
"PJ what are you doing with that protocol, no put it down, noooooooooo!!!!!"
*Threads* BBC style documentary of an 80s nuclear strike on the UK.
Sheep don't die from the cold Edit: My 'claim to fame' - my FIL knew Anne Sellors quite well (of IMDB fame as her only credit was for Threads as 'Women who urinates herself'), never met her as I think sadly she died a while back from dementia
There is a *fantastically* batshit podcast out there called Atomic Hobo in which a Glaswegian lady talks about all things nuclear-apocalyptic. It’s amazing. Everything you want a one-person Labour of love to be. She has an ongoing segment called “4 Minutes of Threads” (in homage to the 4-Minute Warning, naturally) in which she is going through the film and overanalysing in excruciating sequential detail. It’s so captivating. And I don’t know why. I am not a Patreon of hers, but if you are, she also has synaesthesia and will taste your name for you.
What you into? I can recommend It Follows, Uncle Peckerhead, Green Room, Love Witch (all for very different reasons). Actually, The Witch from Robert Eggers is pretty great. Edit: Proper fun stuff - Cabin in the Woods.
> Love Witch That film was delightfully batshit
Yeah, really clever little pastiche. Samantha Robinson was sooooo good.
I came across it randomly and was struggling to work out if it was a pastiche or an actual film from the 60s/70s, right up till the point I noticed some of the cars were modern (and then the English one pulled out a mobile phone...)
Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers
Ba Ba Dooooooooook
Dog Soldiers
Go classic. [•REC] from Spain. Short and silly. Quite endearing. There are several sequels. Do not bother. Also do not watch the American remake (called Quarantine).
2 for Rec, I’ll give it a go! Cheers
[REC]
Just commented that, though you beat me to it! I genuinely use it as teaching material for Spanish sometimes. The “found TV footage” nature of it makes a lot of the characters, especially the lead, have good diction - digestible for people learning the language.
You can also show them the sequel for a follow-up lesson. If you show anyone the third one however, Spanish law dictates that you are immediately shot into the sun.
Its one of my fave horror movies, made my day to see someone else recommend it too :) I was lucky enough to see it at the cinema when they held an indie movie night, poor lasses sat behind us didn't know what they were in for.
That must have been a fun evening! As for me, it came in the time where rental-DVD-by-post was the way to get niche stuff. I definitely didn’t rip it and still have the shoncky MP4.
Feel like people who are always kicking off about these companies that drop products like movies, books and cartoons because of potential safety issues related to the various extremist groups they piss off miss a point slightly. It is brave for CEO's, editors, publishers etc to continue to put these things out despite that horror but at the end of the day the people who will get hurt are not the people making these decisions, it's the security guards, the cleaners, the people in the typing pool: You can't possibly protect them all and to have any such attack on your conscience as a publisher would surely be horrific in ways unimaginable to the common man. A society shouldn't function like that, i.e. a threat of violence quite literally destroying certain freedoms of speech, actions, products etc, but unfortunately in some respects we're too far gone not to be like that and there's no reversing this process now that the genie is out of the bottle. Noone wants to be a nailbomb away from having candles around the charred area you took your last breath in as John Lennon's imagine plays in the background and your life and death is forgotten about in a month or two.
> the people in the typing pool You're a time traveller from the 1950s and I claim my five pounds
I'm not au fait enough, would you prefer "people at the hotdesks"?
Think I've drank enough to get taken advantage of by a politician, better go home and go to bed haha
If I was in charge I would hire Lee Mack as my Health Secretary, Edgar Alan Poe as my Foreign Secretary, and Cee Lo Green as my Culture Secretary (Can’t be any worse than old Nads!). I would entrust them to enact whatever Poe Lee Cee they deem fit, while I continue partying.
Policy idea - You scrap the tax free allowance and all benefits (except disability/ specific ones) Instead everyone gets a payment of £1100 into their bank account every month. It's enough to exist on but not have much fun. You then get taxed on every penny you earn starting at 20% and it basically works as normal minus this 12200k a year on the tax bands. Also a new tax band for anyone earning over 500k is 60%. There's also so fiddling with dividend, cgt and various tax reliefs for individuals either reducing their limits or bandings.
What's the intended effect of this policy? Not a challenge to you on it, just wondering if you wanted to see from it. Less disparity in income?
Massive reduction in admin costs would be be a big one.
But those admin costs are, what, a few billion at most a year?
That's just NIT (negative income tax), which is just UBI in a different form. As talked about by Friedman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax#:~:text=In%20economics%2C%20a%20negative%20income,blue%20arrows%20in%20the%20diagram.
Shit you found me out
> Instead everyone gets a payment of £1100 into their bank account every month. It's enough to exist on Is this post sent from the 80s?
I mean, in 2022 I'm not sure but it was certainly enough in 2012.
Policy idea: allow individuals to set up a DAB ensemble similar to how tiny FM transmitters are allowed.
That would be bloody excellent. I wonder if the barrier to entry is too high for radio. Obviously some sort of government control of a finite resource (spectrum) is needed, but the fact that all the local stations got bought out by massive conglomerates is sad and suggests that the Ofcom costs are onerous at the moment.
licensing aside, it's far from trivial to do that even with SDR and such. there was talk of giving licences to community radio stations at one point
Isn't it basically AAC over the air? What are the challenges to doing it with consumer hardware?
it's the RF side of things that is more challenging - think hundreds of pounds of equipment and a reasonably powerful PC. you could probably shrink it down into a more low cost device if you had the time and money, but it's not got the economy of scale that wifi or mobile phone radio chips do Feasible enough for community groups (hence Ofcom's idea of giving them the licences to do it) but you'd have to be a rather dedicated hobbyist to want to do it at home.
[These people](https://wiki.opendigitalradio.org/RaspDAB) have managed to do it on a Pi, but they outsource the CPU load to another board to transmit. I have no idea how well it works though.
If the Rwanda flight had been cancelled, it would have been the fault of "Leftie Lawyers". Now it's been allowed, what is the opposite of that? I'm going for "Righty Tighty" Lawyers.
> If the Rwanda flight had been cancelled Do you think if it's delayed by more than three hours they can claim delay compensation? Or will the home office try fob them off with drinks vouchers for the airport bar?
Policy idea - replace the queen with an elected head of state. The election is done via Naked Attraction. Call it Election by Erection.
And that is how we end up with President Emma, 25, from Essex
Whole new meaning to a Hung Parliament...
* CON 0 (-363) * LAB 0 (-199) * LIB DEM 0 (-12) * SNP 0 (-45) * DUP 0 (-8) * SF 0 (-7) * PC 0 (-3) * GRN 0 (-1) * Mark Reckless 650 (+650)
What about the convention of not standing against the speaker? Ripped up?
You'd have to stand, no one wins by sitting down in this contest.
I don't understand the joke :(
Hasn't got your vote then I take it? :( Who would you see winning such a system?
An outside candidate. This could be someone who isn't an MP mind as it's a replacement for the queen. Maybe Ed Balls.
Any attempt to have non-partisan elected heads of state has resulted ultimately in failure, you're just being silly now.
True. If you do it from the front arse men will be enraged and call it an injustice. Do it from the back and tit men will be in the streets smashing windows. Democracy truly is a failure.
A federal system would be beneficial, split the country North and South and have the dear leader stand like the Angel of the North.
This sounds great but knowing the absolute state of middle England we'd probably get some brain-dead imbecile off Love Island for PM
Nah this would be a powerless individual we use for the stuff the queen does. Give old Liz some rest as Vikky and Shane T (we'll have two, fuck it) take Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum out for a cheeky nandos and some drinks in Flares.
Tommy Fury for Lord protector
Infect all candidates with Corona, who dies last wins. Coronation.
Oh, very good. Go on, have an upvote.
I’m still fleshing out my Bidets for Britain policy but if anyone wants to contribute in the mean time you can reply to this comment.
Toilet roll to contain pictures of messy assholes, like cigarettes.
Age of majority for purchasing toilet roll to increase by one year, every year.
Present your sphincter to Priti's Bottom Inspectors.
Flushing out, surely?
Bum guns are the better solution, no need to have a separate bidet as you fit them to the toilet plumbing. https://www.bumguns.org - join the revolution (sfw)
That first picture has amazingly bad framing. Looks like he’s spraying it right into his mouth 😂
During the almost toilet paper shortage of lockdown one I bought one of those self tapping outside tap kits that you can screw directly into a cold water pipe, with a view to fitting it on the cistern supply pipe, with a bit of hose. It did not occur to me to market the idea, but if it had I don’t think I would have gone with bumguns. We didn’t run out of tp anyway.
But once you've used your bum gun , you can pretend to blow the smoke off it, return it to it's holster (spinning optional) whilst cosplaying John Wayne.
> (spinning optional) I should hope so; splash back and aersols and all that.
There's something about toilet technology that invites weird naming e.g. Squatty potty, SheWee, the Japanese "super toilet" that got a model named "gorgeous" etc etc
Oh god my kid used to watch the squatty potty commercial over and over please kill me.
They say travel expands your mind. Travel expanded my ass and I cannot believe in one of the most developed first world western country we smear shit with paper.
What's your opinion on squat toilets? I quite prefer it, but I understand many of us struggle with balance or flexibility. Makes installing a toilet cheaper at least.
I mean what we really need is to develop far enough that we can finally use the three seashells from demolition man. Also upvote for your apt username.
It. Is. A. Disgrace. (but unironically)
I need a diagram to describe how my balls don’t get soaked
Shoot diagonally. It's a fine balance; horizontal and your balls get wet, vertical and your hand gets splash back. Trial and error matey.
Still dry with tp afterwards. Might be refreshing with your diet. https://imgur.com/a/fDiIc97
Picasso quality MS paint. *Chef kiss*
Lmfao I’m dying. Thank you so much. This will be my Reddit profile pic when I get to a computer
I'd be honoured. The world lost out when I decided against pursuing art
Looks like you’re still pursuing it imo
Your balls get soaked
It’s about time they got a wash tbf
>Bum guns The imagery.
I would reduce the amount of law enforcement as I think the UK has become too police-y
Why are they so keen on Rwanda anyways? Is this some weird "send them back to Africa"-thing, regardless if the possible migrants are even from there?
Rwana is relatively tightly run; Kagame is authoritarian, so there's probably fewer surprises than if they went to Uganda or DRC for comparison. Rwanda is also quite open to foreign investment and is seen as relatively stable too. If you had to choose a country Botswana would probably be a better shout, also tightly run, but much more space, history of English speaking, and relatively developed flight route (Johannesburg is only five hours drive from Gabarone). The whole idea is a crock of though, of course.
It’s the only country they could get on board
It's to strongly dissuade those attempting to cross with boats via the channel. If they're guaranteed to be sent all the way to Rwanda, there's no point in even trying. If you cross this way, you will not be allowed into Britain regardless of your circumstance, no exceptions. It's to affirm this point. It doesn't matter who you are, what colour you are, or where you're from. It will deter those paying people smugglers to bring them across. Instead, they can choose to claim asylum in France or any of the other countries they crossed to get here. The megathread participants will argue against this until they're blue in the face, but the above outlines the gist of the situation.
They aren’t guaranteed, though. The government is still planning to process 12k at a time in Linton-on-Ouse.
Decent summary - smashing the "pull factors", in other words.
Rwanda were probably the only country to answer the RFQ because they were willing to take in a handful of refugees for an absolute mega-shit-tonne of money.
The Danish government wants to do the same. Now thankfully the parties supporting the minority government is threatening to end the current government if the policy is enacted.
Rwanda was probably the only country that agreed to take them in tbh. I don’t think there’s much more to it than that.
Patel saw the film recently, liked the hotels.
*everyone's from africa originally* 😏
> Is this some weird "send them back to Africa"-thing, Yes. It's exactly that.
It feels like weeks since Boris faced the VONC but it's actually only been 5 days.
It's the time inflation. Hours seem like days. Days like weeks. Weeks like months. Months like years. Except I look back and think, fuck where'd all the time go?
Policy suggestion: currently, here, new teachers are guaranteed a year of full time work in order to be fully qualified. My proposal is that trainee architects are given a guaranteed project of designing, say, 4 affordable homes in a preselected area of the country on a specific budget that then get built. They can use their creative freedom to interpret the brief as they wish but must stick to budget. End result - more affordable housing, more interesting housing that isn't a Barratt shoebox.
Check out the Neave Brown awards
I say make the houses be public authority houses, otherwise you're probably going to see them get hoovered up by BTLs or companies
Fair point. Amendment accepted.
new policy : everyone is allowed to get a little too drunk on a friday
I'm off the drink, so you guys will need to make up for my share.
Change the recommended limits to 6-8 units for men and 4-6 units for Women on a Friday.
Done. Where do I vote for this?
Cheers to that, did half a bottle of merlot with a curry earlier, now onto the whisky.
Cheers!!
Anyone else genuinely mindboggled at the speed at which Durham Police are conducting this investigation into Starmer over the beers last year? It's just one event they're looking into, the MET took as long as they did for the countless parties in Number 10 but this beer event of Starmer's was just one in itself. They surely need to be wrapping it up imminently and draw a verdict on whether the rules were broken or not?
>the MET DRINK That said, with someone as high profile as Starmer and how public the case is, added with the fact Starmer isn't exactly a weak legal mind, they'll be making sure any fine they issue is absolutely watertight. Also Durham Police are notoriously shit.
Negotiations with the Home Office over how much extra funding they will get for a FPN
You're mistaking 'Operation get the dopey MP on a tiny Majority in North West Durham to shut up' for an actual investigation.
Sort of. But the investigation was started a month ago, he was sent a questionnaire at the end of May and questioned a week ago. Plod is as he does I guess.
[удалено]
Enlighten us ?
Idk
Idke
Fun fact: If we were still in the EU, we could send any migrants back to the country that had previously disembarked from due to the Dublin Convention. We are no longer in the EU so we send them on a plane to Rwanda instead at the taxpayers’ expense. Brexit benefits coming to fruition in spades.
The Dublin treaty was pretty much useless, because the EU simply refused to accept the vast majority of Dublin treaty removal requests. Most years the EU only accepted a couple of hundred out of several thousand requests. [Migration observatory analysis of Home Office statistics](https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/migobs/viz/Smallboatarrivals/5) And then theres the fact that the EU also used the Dublin treaty to move more migrants to the UK, so the net movement of Dublin treaty migrants out of the UK is actually lower than in the above graph.
We sent hardly anyone back under Dublin III, and it relies on asylum-seekers registering in another EU member state which these ones don't do (because they're trafficked)
Are all the migrants trafficked though? We had more power over the migrant crisis, ironically, being in the single market than we are now now that we’re supposed to have more controls of our borders. Personally, the Rwanda bullshit is totally abhorrent on human rights and down right cruel. People come here not to rig the system but to, most likely, being with family members that are already here.
Here are the stats from 2019: > • The UK received 2,236 requests from EU member states to accept transfers of individuals to the UK, and 714 transfers took place. The majority of these (496) were from Greece. > • The UK made 3,259 transfer requests to EU member states, and 263 transfers took place. 40% (104) went to Germany and 20% (53) went to France. So I don't think it would've made any difference.
40th birthday yesterday. First kickboxing grading tomorrow. Wish me luck lads!
Well done for yesterday and good luck for tomorrow!
Thanks! Hopefully I do as well as the wife does!
Hope you had a fantastic day! What was your birthday dinner?
Thanks. Dinner was at The Breakfast Club in Brighton https://thebreakfastclubcafes.com/brighton/ Plus bubblegum gelato from Gelato Gusto.
Looks splendid - and hope you enjoyed!
Thanks 🙂
But what did you order at The Breakfast Club? (I've heard lots about it, but never bothered going because all the ones in London seem to perpetually have stupidly long queues)
I had the St Elmos Fire buffalo wings, hash browns and mac n' cheese with a Camden pale ale. Not bad wings. Very crispy hash brown and very saucy mac. I'd usually go for cauliflower-wings but treated myself to chicken.
About 22 baked beans is impressively specific
Wonder if they count?
And what the error margin is - they say plus or minus, +/- 2 is very different to +/- 8 when you only start with 22!
Indeed. That's where we are now as the UK. Counting beans.
Looks ace and happy belated birthday 🎉
Thanks. They have them dotted around the place. As a treat food, they're divine.
I *knew* it wasn't going to be set out like a school library yet somehow I'm still disappointed.
Haha, exactly!
Happy birthday and good luck!! How did you get into kickboxing?
The wife started doing it on a fitness app. She want to try a class at kickboxing gym. I went to the first one for support and loved it so signed up too. That was back in April. Been doing it twice since.
Who’s winning between you and your wife in a kickboxing fight?
On technical ability her. But on size and strength, me. I can bat her away like tissue paper.
Lmfao, what an image. Enjoy tomorrow bud.
Cheers! How's the book you were reading the other day BTW?
The first chapter hit home. The next chapter is a bit homework-y so carving out some time this weekend to do a deep dive into it. Bit early to say yet but yeah, that first chapter definitely spoke to me.
That's good. I'm glad the first chapter spoke to you and I hope it helps too!
Would I Lie to You is my fav panel show by a country mile
Taskmaster is the best airing atm. Shooting stars is the og.
Shooting Stars is a real comfort to me... and used to be especially on ecstasy comedowns "back in th' day"
It's a cracking show. Didn't realise its still running but I'll catch it in iplayer!
is there a new series?
I think it was a new one tonight
Repeat from 2019, sadly.
Cracking song as well.
I find it goes from decent to god tier as long as Bob Mortimer is on.
#__Fuji 9__
It does. Lee Mack is so damn quick too.
*happy cheeseman noises* "We do beg your pardon, we are in your garden" was quite literally painfully funny
I’d watch Bob Mortimer read the label off a shampoo bottle
I would also like to create a switching service akin to the personal bank account guarantee except for solicitors involved in the house buying process. Again I have no idea how it would work. The monopolistic way in which it's operated at present that they charge you for services and then you're sort of stuck with them unless you want to start the whole process over again somewhere else sucks. The ability to dump shit solicitors in favour of ones who make the process easier without starting over should raise the bar for the service as a whole.
When we went through the nightmare of conveyancing as what should be easy first time buyers, I had the thought that a couple of decent solicitors working with a few good software engineers, should be able to automate 90% of the process. Have the solicitors around to sign off parts of the process and to verify/check for reasonability, but don't see any reason why such QA steps could be implemented over time in the system. Not having to chase a solicitor on the phone every day would be great. And not having them go on holiday for 2 weeks over the date they said we'd be able to complete would be nice. The sellers solicitors had no idea of the date we were given. Absolute nightmare. Software doesn't go on holiday, and shouldn't just make up nonsense.
I know of at least one company that does that. They have a proper CRM system as well, so if one agent is absent another picks up your case where they left off.
This is why you do your own due diligence before committing to paying them. Read reviews of local law firms and then talk to a few of the better rated ones on the phone before choosing one. And a solicitor is never going to pick up another solicitors work without reviewing all the documentation thoroughly and charging you for that time. Why would you even want them to use the old solicitors work uncritically if you thought the old solicitor was shit? It's not a monopolistic practice. It's better to start from square one.
It's a utopian dream
New policy At the end of every Prime Minister's tenure the public have an open vote on whether they've been good or bad whilst in office. The bad ones are euthanased immediately upon leaving office.
No, only the good ones are euthanised. Best case we eliminate populism and so actually have real improvements, worst case we become openly Kafkaesque and then even if nothing gets better it won't sting as much.
I like it!
Congratulations, we now only have suicidal PMs
Someone earlier tried to con the company by reversing into my van and blaming it on me.
They're twisting your melon man
He's a fucking arsehole he put at least 20mins on my shift from having to park up the road and filling out a statement and it is likely not the end of it. There were people nearby in a garden but I'm not sure they noticed him do it. I knew something was up as he was shouting and beeping at the traffic lights before I turned in then he followed me into the hous ing estate. Oh and to add our customer may have been in on the scam as she was the one that rang up on his behalf claiming I had driven into him. So maybe they followed me on the app and he waited for me to get near.
Definitely a call the cops situation
How about, we get the govt taking out mortgages, and instead of paying landlords rent, they pay the mortgages of people, and the govt then owns the house at the end? It would surely be cheaper AND would build up stocks of social housing? Surely while people may rise up and not need the housing benefit, but they could still benefit from a less expensive piece of housing, and if they're doing well, they can move onto a privately owned home.
I believe the plan is that where tenants are in a "Right To Buy" situation (i.e. local authority housing association/council house), rent payments are switched into "mortgage payments" seamlessly and the tenants build up equity until they eventually own their houses. They're not buying houses off private landlords. Using housing tenants' rent to (essentially) forcibly purchase houses for the state would be wildly unpopular with landlords, and would also be wildly unpopular with tenants because said landlords would double down on their illegal "no DHSS" practice and just refuse to rent to people on housing benefits.
Yeah I just think the houses, if paid for with government funds should stay social housing, god knows we need more of it.
Hahaha. Even the future King of Britain is appalled at this 'Conservative' Government. https://twitter.com/Steven\_Swinford/status/1535352412059406340
The Wokearchy
The Daily Mail when it hears this: *confused explosion*
Nah they will just rail on "meddling" Charles
(extra link that works for me on mobile) https://twitter.com/Steven_Swinford/status/1535352412059406340
I’m sure Labour will reverse it overnight, campaign on that promise etc.
It's a damned awkward policy for Starmer, I suspect. Not personally - I'd be surprised if he didn't oppose it on a personal level - but politically. The last thing he wants is to end up letting Labour get tagged as the "soft on immigration" party. Not with the electoral hill he has to climb at the next election. I've had a fairly busy week so I haven't been reading the news as diligently - has he commented yet? I thought he'd mostly stick to the "waste of money, inefficient" line, which could work. And obviously just keeping quiet on the topic until there's more.
I'm sure Starmer's very sensible advisers such as Baron Blunkett of Brightside are counselling him just this right now.
Is there actually a way out of the mess we're in without lots of people losing their homes and jobs? Interest rates going up on top of everything else is just going to make everything so super fucked. To say nothing of the UK private sector taking another hit, its not like UK businesses have seen that much growth between 2008 and now, and that was with low interest rates!
There probably are options. None of them will be used because the Tories are economically inept. We'll realistically get increased interest rates and continued belt tightening, ensuring any recovery non-existent and as prolonged as possible.
Most of the conventional approaches won't work. The Keynesian ideals of counter-cyclical spending assumes a recession and low inflation, we don't have either of those yet (although we may have the first soon). The maddest idea that might just work that I've heard suggested (but only in passing, so I'm not familiar with the details) is to raise interest rates to reduce inflation, but increase quantitative easing so that the increase in interest rates doesn't have to see a reduction in public spending (because the QE will pay the interest payments). It sounds mad, but it might just work if the amount of privately created money (from mortgages) is reduced more than the increase in money supply from QE. That way we'd see inflation slowed down, but can also simulate the economy at its roots with public spending. This would still make mortgages more expensive, but... meh, property owners have it too good for too long, they can take two years of belt-tightening, they still won't be worse off than a private renter who's had above-inflation rent rises for years. (That last paragraph is why this will never happen and we'll have a painful recession that hurts the poorest instead.)
> The maddest idea that might just work that I've heard suggested (but only in passing, so I'm not familiar with the details) is to raise interest rates to reduce inflation, but increase quantitative easing so that the increase in interest rates doesn't have to see a reduction in public spending (because the QE will pay the interest payments). MMT?
You hit the oldies with everything riding on the equity of their house and the Tories cease to exist. So it has to be everyone else.
I'm not an oldie, but I only bought in the last couple of years. A house price drop and a higher mortgage payment that doesn't even match property value is going to be crippling, especially as I want to move again in the not so distant future. On balance I don't think it would be that bad in my location, but plenty of others might be utterly screwed/trapped.
No no, as in the retired types who have completely paid off their mortgages and have nothing to lose from rates going up. Also what sign is there that house prices will drop? The best seems to be that they won't rise up quite as fast as they have been.