Off-topic, but has anyone seen a hitchiker in the last ten years? I can't remember the last time I did. In my late teens, I'd hitchike regularly, and when I had a car, I'd pick them up on a regular basis.
I remember well the last four Yorkshiremen I picked up.
Still see them in the Highlands. Last one I picked up was a Romanian lad in Bridge of Orczy to Fort William a couple of years ago. I guess motorways and affluence have killed it more generally.
I retract my previous criticisms of the Church of England, I'm sure @HYUFD will now be espousing disestablishing the Church of England.
The Church of England is facing questions over its role in converting hundreds of asylum seekers, including the Liverpool suicide bomber, to Christianity in an attempt to help them avoid deportation.
Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, is understood to be appalled at the "merry-go-round" of failed asylum seekers changing religion and using other tactics to launch "appeal after appeal" to stay in the country.
The Iraqi man killed in the abortive suicide bomb attack outside Liverpool Women's Hospital is understood to have been helped by the Church in his attempts to avoid being kicked out of Britain, after his claim for asylum was first rejected in 2014.
The Home Office believes changing religion is now "standard practice" among asylum seekers from countries including Iraq "to game the asylum system", as converts claim they are at risk of persecution in their home countries.
That and being told to say they are gay are the two most obvious routes to asylum from shithole but not specifically dangerous countries.
My ex, who worked in immigration law, described the comedy (on occasion) as er.... aggressively homophobic clients would get very worried that, when claiming to be gay, that might have to prove that they were gay.
Which begs the question, how do you prove you are gay?
By knowing who Johnny Rapid is.
Excellent - I'm NOT gay then...
Well I’m going to tell you now so you will know.
He’s a twink and gay porn star loved by most of my gay and bi friends.
He’s actually gay for pay which means he’s loved by quite a few of my heterosexual female friends.
“Last year the U.S. divorce rate hit a 50-year low. Teen pregnancies are at the lowest rate seen since they began to be systematically tracked in the 1930s, and the rate continues to plummet: In 2018, the teen-pregnancy rate was half of what it was in 2008. Even the rate of out-of-wedlock births, which had been climbing steadily since the 1950s, peaked around 2008 and has been declining modestly since—from 52 births per 1,000 unmarried women that year to 40 in 2019.”
Sounds good. But why is it happening?
“The bad news is that rates of more positive behaviors are declining too. Most notably, both marriage rates and fertility rates are at all-time lows in the United States. Total fertility in our country is now about 1.7 births per woman, well below the population-replacement rate. Younger Americans are having trouble pairing off—so that not only teen sex but also teen dating have dipped dramatically. “
“There are fewer abortions because there are fewer pregnancies, and so more of those that happen are wanted. There are fewer out-of-wedlock births because there are fewer births in general. The same pattern is evident beyond sexuality and family too. Fewer teenagers are dying in car accidents because fewer teenagers are getting driver’s licenses. There is less social disorder, we might say, because there is less social life. We are doing less of everything together, so that what we do is a little more tidy and controlled.”
Golly, email from Amazon saying you can't pay by visa credit card as from january
Unless it's a Nigerian prince wanting some alternative card details from me
Nope was about to report the same.
It seems Mastercard have cut Amazon a discounted rate that Visa weren't willing to match. Visa Debit cards aren't impacted but I don't have 1 anymore as I discovered to my cost when Ticketmaster weren't accepting Mastercard a while back.
WTF?
Are Amazon bonkers? There's zillions of VISA credit card owners.
Apols for my ignorance, is the use of "Kevin" as a derogatory term something unique to YCC or a wider issue?
I wondered that too. I've never heard of it and lived relatively locally (although thankfully across the border in the good, non-racist* bit of Yorkshire) for almost a decade.
*to be fair, N Yorks is so white that there probably isn't much chance for racists to practice their craft, so they head west to where there are more opportunities
I retract my previous criticisms of the Church of England, I'm sure @HYUFD will now be espousing disestablishing the Church of England.
The Church of England is facing questions over its role in converting hundreds of asylum seekers, including the Liverpool suicide bomber, to Christianity in an attempt to help them avoid deportation.
Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, is understood to be appalled at the "merry-go-round" of failed asylum seekers changing religion and using other tactics to launch "appeal after appeal" to stay in the country.
The Iraqi man killed in the abortive suicide bomb attack outside Liverpool Women's Hospital is understood to have been helped by the Church in his attempts to avoid being kicked out of Britain, after his claim for asylum was first rejected in 2014.
The Home Office believes changing religion is now "standard practice" among asylum seekers from countries including Iraq "to game the asylum system", as converts claim they are at risk of persecution in their home countries.
That and being told to say they are gay are the two most obvious routes to asylum from shithole but not specifically dangerous countries.
My ex, who worked in immigration law, described the comedy (on occasion) as er.... aggressively homophobic clients would get very worried that, when claiming to be gay, that might have to prove that they were gay.
Which begs the question, how do you prove you are gay?
Like your religion, they *have* to take your word for it. Which is why it is such a handy method of claiming asylum.
Mind you, given the efforts to claim that physical things like age can't be checked....
One point in this - if the church did go through with a fake conversion, they may have fuelled the self-loathing of the individual in question.
Apparently a big thing in radicalisation is the element of "you have corrupted yourself with Western indulgence" - forsaking your faith with a lie would have fed into that.
Christ himself of course came from the Middle East, he was not Western. This man being a Syrian refugee who came to this country via Merkel and Cameron's refugee policy, grew up closer to the lands of the Bible than those Christians in Liverpool are
I retract my previous criticisms of the Church of England, I'm sure @HYUFD will now be espousing disestablishing the Church of England.
The Church of England is facing questions over its role in converting hundreds of asylum seekers, including the Liverpool suicide bomber, to Christianity in an attempt to help them avoid deportation.
Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, is understood to be appalled at the "merry-go-round" of failed asylum seekers changing religion and using other tactics to launch "appeal after appeal" to stay in the country.
The Iraqi man killed in the abortive suicide bomb attack outside Liverpool Women's Hospital is understood to have been helped by the Church in his attempts to avoid being kicked out of Britain, after his claim for asylum was first rejected in 2014.
The Home Office believes changing religion is now "standard practice" among asylum seekers from countries including Iraq "to game the asylum system", as converts claim they are at risk of persecution in their home countries.
That and being told to say they are gay are the two most obvious routes to asylum from shithole but not specifically dangerous countries.
My ex, who worked in immigration law, described the comedy (on occasion) as er.... aggressively homophobic clients would get very worried that, when claiming to be gay, that might have to prove that they were gay.
Which begs the question, how do you prove you are gay?
The Greens have been getting a lot of flack for abandoning their credentials for ministerial office. This announcement throws a bone to them but will go down like a lead balloon in the NE.
My impression is that Sturgeon is moving towards the Left and de-prioritising Indy. The hard-line on Trans rights is another sign. Be interesting to see if they go so far as expelling Joanne Cherry over this. Huge social media campaign to take her out.
Golly, email from Amazon saying you can't pay by visa credit card as from january
Unless it's a Nigerian prince wanting some alternative card details from me
Nope was about to report the same.
It seems Mastercard have cut Amazon a discounted rate that Visa weren't willing to match. Visa Debit cards aren't impacted but I don't have 1 anymore as I discovered to my cost when Ticketmaster weren't accepting Mastercard a while back.
WTF?
Are Amazon bonkers? There's zillions of VISA credit card owners.
There are far fewer Visa credit cards than Mastercard nowadays
I retract my previous criticisms of the Church of England, I'm sure @HYUFD will now be espousing disestablishing the Church of England.
The Church of England is facing questions over its role in converting hundreds of asylum seekers, including the Liverpool suicide bomber, to Christianity in an attempt to help them avoid deportation.
Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, is understood to be appalled at the "merry-go-round" of failed asylum seekers changing religion and using other tactics to launch "appeal after appeal" to stay in the country.
The Iraqi man killed in the abortive suicide bomb attack outside Liverpool Women's Hospital is understood to have been helped by the Church in his attempts to avoid being kicked out of Britain, after his claim for asylum was first rejected in 2014.
The Home Office believes changing religion is now "standard practice" among asylum seekers from countries including Iraq "to game the asylum system", as converts claim they are at risk of persecution in their home countries.
That and being told to say they are gay are the two most obvious routes to asylum from shithole but not specifically dangerous countries.
My ex, who worked in immigration law, described the comedy (on occasion) as er.... aggressively homophobic clients would get very worried that, when claiming to be gay, that might have to prove that they were gay.
Which begs the question, how do you prove you are gay?
Like your religion, they *have* to take your word for it. Which is why it is such a handy method of claiming asylum.
Mind you, given the efforts to claim that physical things like age can't be checked....
One point in this - if the church did go through with a fake conversion, they may have fuelled the self-loathing of the individual in question.
Apparently a big thing in radicalisation is the element of "you have corrupted yourself with Western indulgence" - forsaking your faith with a lie would have fed into that.
Christ himself of course came from the Middle East, he was not Western. This man being a Syrian refugee who came to this country via Merkel and Cameron's refugee policy, grew up closer to the lands of the Bible than those Christians in Liverpool are
Indeed. Just pointing out that if the Church was in on a lie, that some of the moral damage is on them as well.
Off-topic, but has anyone seen a hitchiker in the last ten years? I can't remember the last time I did. In my late teens, I'd hitchike regularly, and when I had a car, I'd pick them up on a regular basis.
I remember well the last four Yorkshiremen I picked up.
Still see them in the Highlands. Last one I picked up was a Romanian lad in Bridge of Orczy to Fort William a couple of years ago. I guess motorways and affluence have killed it more generally.
“Last year the U.S. divorce rate hit a 50-year low. Teen pregnancies are at the lowest rate seen since they began to be systematically tracked in the 1930s, and the rate continues to plummet: In 2018, the teen-pregnancy rate was half of what it was in 2008. Even the rate of out-of-wedlock births, which had been climbing steadily since the 1950s, peaked around 2008 and has been declining modestly since—from 52 births per 1,000 unmarried women that year to 40 in 2019.”
Sounds good. But why is it happening?
“The bad news is that rates of more positive behaviors are declining too. Most notably, both marriage rates and fertility rates are at all-time lows in the United States. Total fertility in our country is now about 1.7 births per woman, well below the population-replacement rate. Younger Americans are having trouble pairing off—so that not only teen sex but also teen dating have dipped dramatically. “
“There are fewer abortions because there are fewer pregnancies, and so more of those that happen are wanted. There are fewer out-of-wedlock births because there are fewer births in general. The same pattern is evident beyond sexuality and family too. Fewer teenagers are dying in car accidents because fewer teenagers are getting driver’s licenses. There is less social disorder, we might say, because there is less social life. We are doing less of everything together, so that what we do is a little more tidy and controlled.”
Golly, email from Amazon saying you can't pay by visa credit card as from january
Unless it's a Nigerian prince wanting some alternative card details from me
Nope was about to report the same.
It seems Mastercard have cut Amazon a discounted rate that Visa weren't willing to match. Visa Debit cards aren't impacted but I don't have 1 anymore as I discovered to my cost when Ticketmaster weren't accepting Mastercard a while back.
WTF?
Are Amazon bonkers? There's zillions of VISA credit card owners.
There are far fewer Visa credit cards than Mastercard nowadays
Mastercard are being quite aggressive recently. They’ve snatched a lot of VISA’s debit card business. Santander already and RBS/NatWest in the new year are moving to debit Mastercards.
“Last year the U.S. divorce rate hit a 50-year low. Teen pregnancies are at the lowest rate seen since they began to be systematically tracked in the 1930s, and the rate continues to plummet: In 2018, the teen-pregnancy rate was half of what it was in 2008. Even the rate of out-of-wedlock births, which had been climbing steadily since the 1950s, peaked around 2008 and has been declining modestly since—from 52 births per 1,000 unmarried women that year to 40 in 2019.”
Sounds good. But why is it happening?
“The bad news is that rates of more positive behaviors are declining too. Most notably, both marriage rates and fertility rates are at all-time lows in the United States. Total fertility in our country is now about 1.7 births per woman, well below the population-replacement rate. Younger Americans are having trouble pairing off—so that not only teen sex but also teen dating have dipped dramatically. “
“There are fewer abortions because there are fewer pregnancies, and so more of those that happen are wanted. There are fewer out-of-wedlock births because there are fewer births in general. The same pattern is evident beyond sexuality and family too. Fewer teenagers are dying in car accidents because fewer teenagers are getting driver’s licenses. There is less social disorder, we might say, because there is less social life. We are doing less of everything together, so that what we do is a little more tidy and controlled.”
Golly, email from Amazon saying you can't pay by visa credit card as from january
Unless it's a Nigerian prince wanting some alternative card details from me
Nope was about to report the same.
It seems Mastercard have cut Amazon a discounted rate that Visa weren't willing to match. Visa Debit cards aren't impacted but I don't have 1 anymore as I discovered to my cost when Ticketmaster weren't accepting Mastercard a while back.
WTF?
Are Amazon bonkers? There's zillions of VISA credit card owners.
It used to be that Visa and Mastercard were in lockstep on fees. American Express was the outlier - hence lots of places not taking Amex.
Most people have no idea of the layers of fees that card payments entail for retailers....
The alt-banks and investigations in price fixing have caused real competition for the first time in years.
"Our governments have no desire to be adversarial, or seek in any way to strategically encircle or undermine the Russian Federation. We are concerned by Russia’s military build-up and activity around the borders of Ukraine."
Ooh... Baldy Ben is 'concerned'... Putin must be shitting himself.
I reckon the Belarus/Poland business could easily turn hot very quickly. All it would take is a jittery gopnik or dreisarz to send a few rounds through the wire and it'd be on like Fat Pat's Thong.
I retract my previous criticisms of the Church of England, I'm sure @HYUFD will now be espousing disestablishing the Church of England.
The Church of England is facing questions over its role in converting hundreds of asylum seekers, including the Liverpool suicide bomber, to Christianity in an attempt to help them avoid deportation.
Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, is understood to be appalled at the "merry-go-round" of failed asylum seekers changing religion and using other tactics to launch "appeal after appeal" to stay in the country.
The Iraqi man killed in the abortive suicide bomb attack outside Liverpool Women's Hospital is understood to have been helped by the Church in his attempts to avoid being kicked out of Britain, after his claim for asylum was first rejected in 2014.
The Home Office believes changing religion is now "standard practice" among asylum seekers from countries including Iraq "to game the asylum system", as converts claim they are at risk of persecution in their home countries.
That and being told to say they are gay are the two most obvious routes to asylum from shithole but not specifically dangerous countries.
My ex, who worked in immigration law, described the comedy (on occasion) as er.... aggressively homophobic clients would get very worried that, when claiming to be gay, that might have to prove that they were gay.
Which begs the question, how do you prove you are gay?
Like your religion, they *have* to take your word for it. Which is why it is such a handy method of claiming asylum.
Mind you, given the efforts to claim that physical things like age can't be checked....
One point in this - if the church did go through with a fake conversion, they may have fuelled the self-loathing of the individual in question.
Apparently a big thing in radicalisation is the element of "you have corrupted yourself with Western indulgence" - forsaking your faith with a lie would have fed into that.
Christ himself of course came from the Middle East, he was not Western. This man being a Syrian refugee who came to this country via Merkel and Cameron's refugee policy, grew up closer to the lands of the Bible than those Christians in Liverpool are
Indeed. Just pointing out that if the Church was in on a lie, that some of the moral damage is on them as well.
The Church was doing what it is supposed to do, evangelising and converting to Christ.
It was Cameron who allowed in Syrian refugees, morally arguably correctly but clearly better background checks were needed.
It is the UK government and Home Office who should ensure we do thorough checks of those we allow in and deport those who turn out to be security risks, not the Church
Ah but what is causing this inflation? The economy was deliberately shrunk by governments in the face of the Covid pandemic. Contraction was not caused by lack of demand, money supply, or the economic cycle. The risk is surely that central bankers' traditional toolkit and analysis are ill-suited to today's unique conditions.
What is causing it? The price of bloody everything going up. There's swathes of real shortages out there and what you can get has had a whopping price increase. Which means the cost of getting work done, things produced or shipped etc etc etc has gone up.
A 27% swing in the inflation rate in a month is Not Good.
Shipping costs, though, appear to be unsustainably high. While there are barriers to entry into the market, they could swing downwards over time. Similarly, how long will the 'real shortages' last ? Markets tend to correct such things.
Global supply chains were shut down. To fully re-open them will take at least a year. The problem is that the supply chains are essentially a set of queues - and from queuing theory, we can expect a lot of oscillations. One part of the system will come up to speed, but be blocked by issues further down the system, get hit by back pressure.....
Yes, the readjustment will take a little time. The inflationary 'spike' looks more like a hump to me.
“Last year the U.S. divorce rate hit a 50-year low. Teen pregnancies are at the lowest rate seen since they began to be systematically tracked in the 1930s, and the rate continues to plummet: In 2018, the teen-pregnancy rate was half of what it was in 2008. Even the rate of out-of-wedlock births, which had been climbing steadily since the 1950s, peaked around 2008 and has been declining modestly since—from 52 births per 1,000 unmarried women that year to 40 in 2019.”
Sounds good. But why is it happening?
“The bad news is that rates of more positive behaviors are declining too. Most notably, both marriage rates and fertility rates are at all-time lows in the United States. Total fertility in our country is now about 1.7 births per woman, well below the population-replacement rate. Younger Americans are having trouble pairing off—so that not only teen sex but also teen dating have dipped dramatically. “
“There are fewer abortions because there are fewer pregnancies, and so more of those that happen are wanted. There are fewer out-of-wedlock births because there are fewer births in general. The same pattern is evident beyond sexuality and family too. Fewer teenagers are dying in car accidents because fewer teenagers are getting driver’s licenses. There is less social disorder, we might say, because there is less social life. We are doing less of everything together, so that what we do is a little more tidy and controlled.”
A minister drowns in the Lords thanks to another Johnson u-turn (or pack of lies as it is known in the trade). This time his 2019 promises over HS2 and NE:
Andrew Adonis @Andrew_Adonis · 4h This is what the cancellation of HS2 East means. So much for levelling up
Golly, email from Amazon saying you can't pay by visa credit card as from january
Unless it's a Nigerian prince wanting some alternative card details from me
Nope was about to report the same.
It seems Mastercard have cut Amazon a discounted rate that Visa weren't willing to match. Visa Debit cards aren't impacted but I don't have 1 anymore as I discovered to my cost when Ticketmaster weren't accepting Mastercard a while back.
WTF?
Are Amazon bonkers? There's zillions of VISA credit card owners.
There are far fewer Visa credit cards than Mastercard nowadays
Mastercard are being quite aggressive recently. They’ve snatched a lot of VISA’s debit card business. Santander already and RBS/NatWest in the new year are moving to debit Mastercards.
There’s a few more in the pipeline.
HSBC as well - we now have a First Direct debit card that doesn't work in HSBC automation machines (well done there folks).
I retract my previous criticisms of the Church of England, I'm sure @HYUFD will now be espousing disestablishing the Church of England.
The Church of England is facing questions over its role in converting hundreds of asylum seekers, including the Liverpool suicide bomber, to Christianity in an attempt to help them avoid deportation.
Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, is understood to be appalled at the "merry-go-round" of failed asylum seekers changing religion and using other tactics to launch "appeal after appeal" to stay in the country.
The Iraqi man killed in the abortive suicide bomb attack outside Liverpool Women's Hospital is understood to have been helped by the Church in his attempts to avoid being kicked out of Britain, after his claim for asylum was first rejected in 2014.
The Home Office believes changing religion is now "standard practice" among asylum seekers from countries including Iraq "to game the asylum system", as converts claim they are at risk of persecution in their home countries.
That and being told to say they are gay are the two most obvious routes to asylum from shithole but not specifically dangerous countries.
My ex, who worked in immigration law, described the comedy (on occasion) as er.... aggressively homophobic clients would get very worried that, when claiming to be gay, that might have to prove that they were gay.
Which begs the question, how do you prove you are gay?
Like your religion, they *have* to take your word for it. Which is why it is such a handy method of claiming asylum.
Mind you, given the efforts to claim that physical things like age can't be checked....
One point in this - if the church did go through with a fake conversion, they may have fuelled the self-loathing of the individual in question.
Apparently a big thing in radicalisation is the element of "you have corrupted yourself with Western indulgence" - forsaking your faith with a lie would have fed into that.
Christ himself of course came from the Middle East, he was not Western. This man being a Syrian refugee who came to this country via Merkel and Cameron's refugee policy, grew up closer to the lands of the Bible than those Christians in Liverpool are
Indeed. Just pointing out that if the Church was in on a lie, that some of the moral damage is on them as well.
The Church was doing what it is supposed to do, evangelising and converting to Christ.
It was Cameron who allowed in Syrian refugees, morally arguably correctly but clearly better background checks were needed.
It is the UK government and Home Office who should ensure we do thorough checks of those we allow in and deport those who turn out to be security risks, not the Church
The Church, before performing an adult baptism, is supposed* to carry out a series of sessions with a priest to try and find out why the convert is converting and if they are sincere.
Washing your hands of responsibility isn't the done thing in Christianity....
“Last year the U.S. divorce rate hit a 50-year low. Teen pregnancies are at the lowest rate seen since they began to be systematically tracked in the 1930s, and the rate continues to plummet: In 2018, the teen-pregnancy rate was half of what it was in 2008. Even the rate of out-of-wedlock births, which had been climbing steadily since the 1950s, peaked around 2008 and has been declining modestly since—from 52 births per 1,000 unmarried women that year to 40 in 2019.”
Sounds good. But why is it happening?
“The bad news is that rates of more positive behaviors are declining too. Most notably, both marriage rates and fertility rates are at all-time lows in the United States. Total fertility in our country is now about 1.7 births per woman, well below the population-replacement rate. Younger Americans are having trouble pairing off—so that not only teen sex but also teen dating have dipped dramatically. “
“There are fewer abortions because there are fewer pregnancies, and so more of those that happen are wanted. There are fewer out-of-wedlock births because there are fewer births in general. The same pattern is evident beyond sexuality and family too. Fewer teenagers are dying in car accidents because fewer teenagers are getting driver’s licenses. There is less social disorder, we might say, because there is less social life. We are doing less of everything together, so that what we do is a little more tidy and controlled.”
I retract my previous criticisms of the Church of England, I'm sure @HYUFD will now be espousing disestablishing the Church of England.
The Church of England is facing questions over its role in converting hundreds of asylum seekers, including the Liverpool suicide bomber, to Christianity in an attempt to help them avoid deportation.
Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, is understood to be appalled at the "merry-go-round" of failed asylum seekers changing religion and using other tactics to launch "appeal after appeal" to stay in the country.
The Iraqi man killed in the abortive suicide bomb attack outside Liverpool Women's Hospital is understood to have been helped by the Church in his attempts to avoid being kicked out of Britain, after his claim for asylum was first rejected in 2014.
The Home Office believes changing religion is now "standard practice" among asylum seekers from countries including Iraq "to game the asylum system", as converts claim they are at risk of persecution in their home countries.
That and being told to say they are gay are the two most obvious routes to asylum from shithole but not specifically dangerous countries.
My ex, who worked in immigration law, described the comedy (on occasion) as er.... aggressively homophobic clients would get very worried that, when claiming to be gay, that might have to prove that they were gay.
Which begs the question, how do you prove you are gay?
Like your religion, they *have* to take your word for it. Which is why it is such a handy method of claiming asylum.
Mind you, given the efforts to claim that physical things like age can't be checked....
One point in this - if the church did go through with a fake conversion, they may have fuelled the self-loathing of the individual in question.
Apparently a big thing in radicalisation is the element of "you have corrupted yourself with Western indulgence" - forsaking your faith with a lie would have fed into that.
Christ himself of course came from the Middle East, he was not Western. This man being a Syrian refugee who came to this country via Merkel and Cameron's refugee policy, grew up closer to the lands of the Bible than those Christians in Liverpool are
What has that got to do with the price of fish?
Do you really think that this man was a Christian?
I retract my previous criticisms of the Church of England, I'm sure @HYUFD will now be espousing disestablishing the Church of England.
The Church of England is facing questions over its role in converting hundreds of asylum seekers, including the Liverpool suicide bomber, to Christianity in an attempt to help them avoid deportation.
Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, is understood to be appalled at the "merry-go-round" of failed asylum seekers changing religion and using other tactics to launch "appeal after appeal" to stay in the country.
The Iraqi man killed in the abortive suicide bomb attack outside Liverpool Women's Hospital is understood to have been helped by the Church in his attempts to avoid being kicked out of Britain, after his claim for asylum was first rejected in 2014.
The Home Office believes changing religion is now "standard practice" among asylum seekers from countries including Iraq "to game the asylum system", as converts claim they are at risk of persecution in their home countries.
That and being told to say they are gay are the two most obvious routes to asylum from shithole but not specifically dangerous countries.
My ex, who worked in immigration law, described the comedy (on occasion) as er.... aggressively homophobic clients would get very worried that, when claiming to be gay, that might have to prove that they were gay.
Which begs the question, how do you prove you are gay?
We could always adopt the same practice as the Turkish army does, with men who claim to be gay in order to avoid military service.
You have to provide a photograph of yourself being buggered, with a smile on your face.
I retract my previous criticisms of the Church of England, I'm sure @HYUFD will now be espousing disestablishing the Church of England.
The Church of England is facing questions over its role in converting hundreds of asylum seekers, including the Liverpool suicide bomber, to Christianity in an attempt to help them avoid deportation.
Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, is understood to be appalled at the "merry-go-round" of failed asylum seekers changing religion and using other tactics to launch "appeal after appeal" to stay in the country.
The Iraqi man killed in the abortive suicide bomb attack outside Liverpool Women's Hospital is understood to have been helped by the Church in his attempts to avoid being kicked out of Britain, after his claim for asylum was first rejected in 2014.
The Home Office believes changing religion is now "standard practice" among asylum seekers from countries including Iraq "to game the asylum system", as converts claim they are at risk of persecution in their home countries.
That and being told to say they are gay are the two most obvious routes to asylum from shithole but not specifically dangerous countries.
My ex, who worked in immigration law, described the comedy (on occasion) as er.... aggressively homophobic clients would get very worried that, when claiming to be gay, that might have to prove that they were gay.
Which begs the question, how do you prove you are gay?
Like your religion, they *have* to take your word for it. Which is why it is such a handy method of claiming asylum.
Mind you, given the efforts to claim that physical things like age can't be checked....
One point in this - if the church did go through with a fake conversion, they may have fuelled the self-loathing of the individual in question.
Apparently a big thing in radicalisation is the element of "you have corrupted yourself with Western indulgence" - forsaking your faith with a lie would have fed into that.
Christ himself of course came from the Middle East, he was not Western. This man being a Syrian refugee who came to this country via Merkel and Cameron's refugee policy, grew up closer to the lands of the Bible than those Christians in Liverpool are
What has that got to do with the price of fish?
Do you really think that this man was a Christian?
Well, if he could feed a multitude with one fish (which would certainly hit the price of fish).... he would get in the Express Lane for baptism, I presume.
I retract my previous criticisms of the Church of England, I'm sure @HYUFD will now be espousing disestablishing the Church of England.
The Church of England is facing questions over its role in converting hundreds of asylum seekers, including the Liverpool suicide bomber, to Christianity in an attempt to help them avoid deportation.
Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, is understood to be appalled at the "merry-go-round" of failed asylum seekers changing religion and using other tactics to launch "appeal after appeal" to stay in the country.
The Iraqi man killed in the abortive suicide bomb attack outside Liverpool Women's Hospital is understood to have been helped by the Church in his attempts to avoid being kicked out of Britain, after his claim for asylum was first rejected in 2014.
The Home Office believes changing religion is now "standard practice" among asylum seekers from countries including Iraq "to game the asylum system", as converts claim they are at risk of persecution in their home countries.
That and being told to say they are gay are the two most obvious routes to asylum from shithole but not specifically dangerous countries.
My ex, who worked in immigration law, described the comedy (on occasion) as er.... aggressively homophobic clients would get very worried that, when claiming to be gay, that might have to prove that they were gay.
Which begs the question, how do you prove you are gay?
By knowing who Johnny Rapid is.
Or having an Erasure CD
I've still got a CD of Darik's Boot and Nuke around somewhere... Do I need to have a serious conversation with my wife?
Golly, email from Amazon saying you can't pay by visa credit card as from january
Unless it's a Nigerian prince wanting some alternative card details from me
Nope was about to report the same.
It seems Mastercard have cut Amazon a discounted rate that Visa weren't willing to match. Visa Debit cards aren't impacted but I don't have 1 anymore as I discovered to my cost when Ticketmaster weren't accepting Mastercard a while back.
WTF?
Are Amazon bonkers? There's zillions of VISA credit card owners.
There are far fewer Visa credit cards than Mastercard nowadays
Mastercard are being quite aggressive recently. They’ve snatched a lot of VISA’s debit card business. Santander already and RBS/NatWest in the new year are moving to debit Mastercards.
There’s a few more in the pipeline.
HSBC as well - we now have a First Direct debit card that doesn't work in HSBC automation machines (well done there folks).
No cashback with Mastercard apparently either. Wasn't impressed by the change forced upon me.
I retract my previous criticisms of the Church of England, I'm sure @HYUFD will now be espousing disestablishing the Church of England.
The Church of England is facing questions over its role in converting hundreds of asylum seekers, including the Liverpool suicide bomber, to Christianity in an attempt to help them avoid deportation.
Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, is understood to be appalled at the "merry-go-round" of failed asylum seekers changing religion and using other tactics to launch "appeal after appeal" to stay in the country.
The Iraqi man killed in the abortive suicide bomb attack outside Liverpool Women's Hospital is understood to have been helped by the Church in his attempts to avoid being kicked out of Britain, after his claim for asylum was first rejected in 2014.
The Home Office believes changing religion is now "standard practice" among asylum seekers from countries including Iraq "to game the asylum system", as converts claim they are at risk of persecution in their home countries.
That and being told to say they are gay are the two most obvious routes to asylum from shithole but not specifically dangerous countries.
My ex, who worked in immigration law, described the comedy (on occasion) as er.... aggressively homophobic clients would get very worried that, when claiming to be gay, that might have to prove that they were gay.
Which begs the question, how do you prove you are gay?
We could always adopt the same practice as the Turkish army does, with men who claim to be gay in order to avoid military service.
You have to provide a photograph of yourself being buggered, with a smile on your face.
Old Etonians required for those undercover missions?
I retract my previous criticisms of the Church of England, I'm sure @HYUFD will now be espousing disestablishing the Church of England.
The Church of England is facing questions over its role in converting hundreds of asylum seekers, including the Liverpool suicide bomber, to Christianity in an attempt to help them avoid deportation.
Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, is understood to be appalled at the "merry-go-round" of failed asylum seekers changing religion and using other tactics to launch "appeal after appeal" to stay in the country.
The Iraqi man killed in the abortive suicide bomb attack outside Liverpool Women's Hospital is understood to have been helped by the Church in his attempts to avoid being kicked out of Britain, after his claim for asylum was first rejected in 2014.
The Home Office believes changing religion is now "standard practice" among asylum seekers from countries including Iraq "to game the asylum system", as converts claim they are at risk of persecution in their home countries.
That and being told to say they are gay are the two most obvious routes to asylum from shithole but not specifically dangerous countries.
My ex, who worked in immigration law, described the comedy (on occasion) as er.... aggressively homophobic clients would get very worried that, when claiming to be gay, that might have to prove that they were gay.
Which begs the question, how do you prove you are gay?
Like your religion, they *have* to take your word for it. Which is why it is such a handy method of claiming asylum.
Mind you, given the efforts to claim that physical things like age can't be checked....
One point in this - if the church did go through with a fake conversion, they may have fuelled the self-loathing of the individual in question.
Apparently a big thing in radicalisation is the element of "you have corrupted yourself with Western indulgence" - forsaking your faith with a lie would have fed into that.
Christ himself of course came from the Middle East, he was not Western. This man being a Syrian refugee who came to this country via Merkel and Cameron's refugee policy, grew up closer to the lands of the Bible than those Christians in Liverpool are
Indeed. Just pointing out that if the Church was in on a lie, that some of the moral damage is on them as well.
The Church was doing what it is supposed to do, evangelising and converting to Christ.
It was Cameron who allowed in Syrian refugees, morally arguably correctly but clearly better background checks were needed.
It is the UK government and Home Office who should ensure we do thorough checks of those we allow in and deport those who turn out to be security risks, not the Church
The Church, before performing an adult baptism, is supposed* to carry out a series of sessions with a priest to try and find out why the convert is converting and if they are sincere.
Washing your hands of responsibility isn't the done thing in Christianity....
*Written procedure of the CoE, IIRC.
It's still not the job of a CoE priest to do the work the immigration service should be doing.
Off-topic, but has anyone seen a hitchiker in the last ten years? I can't remember the last time I did. In my late teens, I'd hitchike regularly, and when I had a car, I'd pick them up on a regular basis.
I remember well the last four Yorkshiremen I picked up.
Still see them in the Highlands. Last one I picked up was a Romanian lad in Bridge of Orczy to Fort William a couple of years ago. I guess motorways and affluence have killed it more generally.
“Last year the U.S. divorce rate hit a 50-year low. Teen pregnancies are at the lowest rate seen since they began to be systematically tracked in the 1930s, and the rate continues to plummet: In 2018, the teen-pregnancy rate was half of what it was in 2008. Even the rate of out-of-wedlock births, which had been climbing steadily since the 1950s, peaked around 2008 and has been declining modestly since—from 52 births per 1,000 unmarried women that year to 40 in 2019.”
Sounds good. But why is it happening?
“The bad news is that rates of more positive behaviors are declining too. Most notably, both marriage rates and fertility rates are at all-time lows in the United States. Total fertility in our country is now about 1.7 births per woman, well below the population-replacement rate. Younger Americans are having trouble pairing off—so that not only teen sex but also teen dating have dipped dramatically. “
“There are fewer abortions because there are fewer pregnancies, and so more of those that happen are wanted. There are fewer out-of-wedlock births because there are fewer births in general. The same pattern is evident beyond sexuality and family too. Fewer teenagers are dying in car accidents because fewer teenagers are getting driver’s licenses. There is less social disorder, we might say, because there is less social life. We are doing less of everything together, so that what we do is a little more tidy and controlled.”
Yes. Smart phones and the internet are killing human society
Plus young people are much more risk averse. Cautious. Nervous. From sex to booze to the way they speak. They are scared
Of course I make these comments by typing on my smartphone. Which I have been scrolling for 2 hours, this morning
Smartphones have created new ways of interacting which limit the extent of physical contact. Access to porn has changed sexual behaviour. Youthful indescretions can be recorded and remain online forever. A lot of stupid stuff used to happen because kids were bored. People are less bored now, they have lots of "content" to stimulate them. Not all of this is bad. A bit of population decline would probably be a good thing, although with three children I'm not contributing to it.
“Last year the U.S. divorce rate hit a 50-year low. Teen pregnancies are at the lowest rate seen since they began to be systematically tracked in the 1930s, and the rate continues to plummet: In 2018, the teen-pregnancy rate was half of what it was in 2008. Even the rate of out-of-wedlock births, which had been climbing steadily since the 1950s, peaked around 2008 and has been declining modestly since—from 52 births per 1,000 unmarried women that year to 40 in 2019.”
Sounds good. But why is it happening?
“The bad news is that rates of more positive behaviors are declining too. Most notably, both marriage rates and fertility rates are at all-time lows in the United States. Total fertility in our country is now about 1.7 births per woman, well below the population-replacement rate. Younger Americans are having trouble pairing off—so that not only teen sex but also teen dating have dipped dramatically. “
“There are fewer abortions because there are fewer pregnancies, and so more of those that happen are wanted. There are fewer out-of-wedlock births because there are fewer births in general. The same pattern is evident beyond sexuality and family too. Fewer teenagers are dying in car accidents because fewer teenagers are getting driver’s licenses. There is less social disorder, we might say, because there is less social life. We are doing less of everything together, so that what we do is a little more tidy and controlled.”
Every western nation now is below replacement rate birth rate of 2.1, including the USA.
France at 1.87 is the only one close
The great global population decline will be a wholly new issue for the world to get its head around (for it will happen in even the poorest countries in due course too). It possibly comes at the nick of time to slow down climate change, but for a science and economics establishment used to rising global population it's going to be a hell of a big change in paradigm.
The closest - and related - analogue I can think of is the end of inflation in Japan about 20 years ago and the new phenomenon of deflation. Economists hard-wired to see inflation as a permanent state took a long time to work out what on earth its opposite would mean.
Shrinking population means shrinking GDP, deflation, an increasing dependency ratio, yet (if Japan and Eastern / Southern Europe are anything to go by) relatively stable or growing urban populations with massive rural emptying. A world made up of thriving urban centres + wilderness. A kind of global version of Washington State or Arizona.
I retract my previous criticisms of the Church of England, I'm sure @HYUFD will now be espousing disestablishing the Church of England.
The Church of England is facing questions over its role in converting hundreds of asylum seekers, including the Liverpool suicide bomber, to Christianity in an attempt to help them avoid deportation.
Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, is understood to be appalled at the "merry-go-round" of failed asylum seekers changing religion and using other tactics to launch "appeal after appeal" to stay in the country.
The Iraqi man killed in the abortive suicide bomb attack outside Liverpool Women's Hospital is understood to have been helped by the Church in his attempts to avoid being kicked out of Britain, after his claim for asylum was first rejected in 2014.
The Home Office believes changing religion is now "standard practice" among asylum seekers from countries including Iraq "to game the asylum system", as converts claim they are at risk of persecution in their home countries.
That and being told to say they are gay are the two most obvious routes to asylum from shithole but not specifically dangerous countries.
My ex, who worked in immigration law, described the comedy (on occasion) as er.... aggressively homophobic clients would get very worried that, when claiming to be gay, that might have to prove that they were gay.
Which begs the question, how do you prove you are gay?
Like your religion, they *have* to take your word for it. Which is why it is such a handy method of claiming asylum.
Mind you, given the efforts to claim that physical things like age can't be checked....
One point in this - if the church did go through with a fake conversion, they may have fuelled the self-loathing of the individual in question.
Apparently a big thing in radicalisation is the element of "you have corrupted yourself with Western indulgence" - forsaking your faith with a lie would have fed into that.
Christ himself of course came from the Middle East, he was not Western. This man being a Syrian refugee who came to this country via Merkel and Cameron's refugee policy, grew up closer to the lands of the Bible than those Christians in Liverpool are
Indeed. Just pointing out that if the Church was in on a lie, that some of the moral damage is on them as well.
The Church was doing what it is supposed to do, evangelising and converting to Christ.
It was Cameron who allowed in Syrian refugees, morally arguably correctly but clearly better background checks were needed.
It is the UK government and Home Office who should ensure we do thorough checks of those we allow in and deport those who turn out to be security risks, not the Church
The Church, before performing an adult baptism, is supposed* to carry out a series of sessions with a priest to try and find out why the convert is converting and if they are sincere.
Washing your hands of responsibility isn't the done thing in Christianity....
*Written procedure of the CoE, IIRC.
It's still not the job of a CoE priest to do the work the immigration service should be doing.
No, it isn't.
The suggestion was that they are knowingly performing fake baptisms. If true, this could be making things worse.
I know a someone who did adult baptism - so they could stand as god parents at a christening - and he didn't just rock up at the church and get water tipped on him. X meetings with a priest to make sure he was sincere....
On the names front, we should also remember that many Jewish names were adopted from packing cases or shop signs to satisfy immigration officials.
Or like my wife's family taken from the surname of an old Tsar so as not to sound "too jewish" during one of Stalin's fits of temper in the 50's - of course they were still jews so my mother in law wasn't allowed to go to Moscow University as they had filled their 'jew quota' at the time
FREDERIKSBERG has a social democrat mayor - perhaps only Nick Palmer will appreciate what a shock this is and shows how demographic change is sending the Copenhagen area redder than ever - his old chums in Enhedslisten (lightweight communists with ponytails) also THRASHED the social democrats in Copenhagen - the "mink scandal" hit the social democrats very hard and they had their worst night in decades and the Konservative had their best night
Very interesting (to me), thanks!
Traditionally, Ottomans did not have surnames. In the 1930s Ataturk 'westernised' the newly-found republic of Turkey, and this included everyone choosing their surnames. Ataturk himself was 'given' his surname: it means 'Father of the Turks'.
Can you imagine having to choose a surname that will be passed own through the generations?
It's all very silly because part of the point of a surname, and how they came to be used, was to uniquely identify people, but the number of people with uniquely identifying full names must be very small.
On the internet, where databases enforce the uniqueness of names, the solution has been to append numbers, which is lacking a certain something.
Rethinking names to create uniqueness in a more human and interesting way would be a worthwhile project.
I retract my previous criticisms of the Church of England, I'm sure @HYUFD will now be espousing disestablishing the Church of England.
The Church of England is facing questions over its role in converting hundreds of asylum seekers, including the Liverpool suicide bomber, to Christianity in an attempt to help them avoid deportation.
Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, is understood to be appalled at the "merry-go-round" of failed asylum seekers changing religion and using other tactics to launch "appeal after appeal" to stay in the country.
The Iraqi man killed in the abortive suicide bomb attack outside Liverpool Women's Hospital is understood to have been helped by the Church in his attempts to avoid being kicked out of Britain, after his claim for asylum was first rejected in 2014.
The Home Office believes changing religion is now "standard practice" among asylum seekers from countries including Iraq "to game the asylum system", as converts claim they are at risk of persecution in their home countries.
That and being told to say they are gay are the two most obvious routes to asylum from shithole but not specifically dangerous countries.
My ex, who worked in immigration law, described the comedy (on occasion) as er.... aggressively homophobic clients would get very worried that, when claiming to be gay, that might have to prove that they were gay.
Which begs the question, how do you prove you are gay?
By knowing who Johnny Rapid is.
Or having an Erasure CD
I've still got a CD of Darik's Boot and Nuke around somewhere... Do I need to have a serious conversation with my wife?
I have an Erasure CD which used to belong to my ex-wife. A lot to unpack there, probably.
BoE policy is now a major and growing scandal I would say.
It'll pass, I think. OR at least moderate. This bounce is driven by energy and raw material prices which are a knock on effect of temporary capacity reductions in 2020 that haven't yet caught up with the global economic rebound.
FREDERIKSBERG has a social democrat mayor - perhaps only Nick Palmer will appreciate what a shock this is and shows how demographic change is sending the Copenhagen area redder than ever - his old chums in Enhedslisten (lightweight communists with ponytails) also THRASHED the social democrats in Copenhagen - the "mink scandal" hit the social democrats very hard and they had their worst night in decades and the Konservative had their best night
Looking at the detailed results, what stands out is a swing from far right (the Danish People's Party were halved) to mainstream conservatives, and from social democrats to parties to their left. Enhedslisten now lead in Copenhagewn as kingbongo says, and, bizarrely to me, Bornholm, which in my recollection is as intellectual and working-class as, say, the Isle of Wight. What's happened there, kingobongo?
In Bornholm it seems again to be a case of th social democrats getting punished - also Enhedslisten have gone very big on capturing the green vote.
I retract my previous criticisms of the Church of England, I'm sure @HYUFD will now be espousing disestablishing the Church of England.
The Church of England is facing questions over its role in converting hundreds of asylum seekers, including the Liverpool suicide bomber, to Christianity in an attempt to help them avoid deportation.
Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, is understood to be appalled at the "merry-go-round" of failed asylum seekers changing religion and using other tactics to launch "appeal after appeal" to stay in the country.
The Iraqi man killed in the abortive suicide bomb attack outside Liverpool Women's Hospital is understood to have been helped by the Church in his attempts to avoid being kicked out of Britain, after his claim for asylum was first rejected in 2014.
The Home Office believes changing religion is now "standard practice" among asylum seekers from countries including Iraq "to game the asylum system", as converts claim they are at risk of persecution in their home countries.
That and being told to say they are gay are the two most obvious routes to asylum from shithole but not specifically dangerous countries.
My ex, who worked in immigration law, described the comedy (on occasion) as er.... aggressively homophobic clients would get very worried that, when claiming to be gay, that might have to prove that they were gay.
Which begs the question, how do you prove you are gay?
Like your religion, they *have* to take your word for it. Which is why it is such a handy method of claiming asylum.
Mind you, given the efforts to claim that physical things like age can't be checked....
One point in this - if the church did go through with a fake conversion, they may have fuelled the self-loathing of the individual in question.
Apparently a big thing in radicalisation is the element of "you have corrupted yourself with Western indulgence" - forsaking your faith with a lie would have fed into that.
Christ himself of course came from the Middle East, he was not Western. This man being a Syrian refugee who came to this country via Merkel and Cameron's refugee policy, grew up closer to the lands of the Bible than those Christians in Liverpool are
Indeed. Just pointing out that if the Church was in on a lie, that some of the moral damage is on them as well.
The Church was doing what it is supposed to do, evangelising and converting to Christ.
It was Cameron who allowed in Syrian refugees, morally arguably correctly but clearly better background checks were needed.
It is the UK government and Home Office who should ensure we do thorough checks of those we allow in and deport those who turn out to be security risks, not the Church
The Church, before performing an adult baptism, is supposed* to carry out a series of sessions with a priest to try and find out why the convert is converting and if they are sincere.
Washing your hands of responsibility isn't the done thing in Christianity....
*Written procedure of the CoE, IIRC.
It's still not the job of a CoE priest to do the work the immigration service should be doing.
No, it isn't.
The suggestion was that they are knowingly performing fake baptisms. If true, this could be making things worse.
I know a someone who did adult baptism - so they could stand as god parents at a christening - and he didn't just rock up at the church and get water tipped on him. X meetings with a priest to make sure he was sincere....
Sorry but No.
If you disagree with a policy why shouldn't a priest do everything they can to keep the refugee (who they now personally know) in the country.
As I said - it's not the job of a priest to do the job of the immigration service - if the immigration service has outsourced that job and can't see the utter flaw in the plan that just show how stupid the immigration service is
Golly, email from Amazon saying you can't pay by visa credit card as from january
Unless it's a Nigerian prince wanting some alternative card details from me
Nope was about to report the same.
It seems Mastercard have cut Amazon a discounted rate that Visa weren't willing to match. Visa Debit cards aren't impacted but I don't have 1 anymore as I discovered to my cost when Ticketmaster weren't accepting Mastercard a while back.
WTF?
Are Amazon bonkers? There's zillions of VISA credit card owners.
There are far fewer Visa credit cards than Mastercard nowadays
Mastercard are being quite aggressive recently. They’ve snatched a lot of VISA’s debit card business. Santander already and RBS/NatWest in the new year are moving to debit Mastercards.
There’s a few more in the pipeline.
HSBC as well - we now have a First Direct debit card that doesn't work in HSBC automation machines (well done there folks).
It's a right mess for the multi brand banks, yes I'm looking at you Lloyds Banking Group.
The rumours are they've not made the official decision but if they do they will go for the big bang option and move over all Lloyds, Halifax, and BOS customers in the same month.
I retract my previous criticisms of the Church of England, I'm sure @HYUFD will now be espousing disestablishing the Church of England.
The Church of England is facing questions over its role in converting hundreds of asylum seekers, including the Liverpool suicide bomber, to Christianity in an attempt to help them avoid deportation.
Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, is understood to be appalled at the "merry-go-round" of failed asylum seekers changing religion and using other tactics to launch "appeal after appeal" to stay in the country.
The Iraqi man killed in the abortive suicide bomb attack outside Liverpool Women's Hospital is understood to have been helped by the Church in his attempts to avoid being kicked out of Britain, after his claim for asylum was first rejected in 2014.
The Home Office believes changing religion is now "standard practice" among asylum seekers from countries including Iraq "to game the asylum system", as converts claim they are at risk of persecution in their home countries.
That and being told to say they are gay are the two most obvious routes to asylum from shithole but not specifically dangerous countries.
My ex, who worked in immigration law, described the comedy (on occasion) as er.... aggressively homophobic clients would get very worried that, when claiming to be gay, that might have to prove that they were gay.
Which begs the question, how do you prove you are gay?
Like your religion, they *have* to take your word for it. Which is why it is such a handy method of claiming asylum.
Mind you, given the efforts to claim that physical things like age can't be checked....
One point in this - if the church did go through with a fake conversion, they may have fuelled the self-loathing of the individual in question.
Apparently a big thing in radicalisation is the element of "you have corrupted yourself with Western indulgence" - forsaking your faith with a lie would have fed into that.
Christ himself of course came from the Middle East, he was not Western. This man being a Syrian refugee who came to this country via Merkel and Cameron's refugee policy, grew up closer to the lands of the Bible than those Christians in Liverpool are
Indeed. Just pointing out that if the Church was in on a lie, that some of the moral damage is on them as well.
The Church was doing what it is supposed to do, evangelising and converting to Christ.
It was Cameron who allowed in Syrian refugees, morally arguably correctly but clearly better background checks were needed.
It is the UK government and Home Office who should ensure we do thorough checks of those we allow in and deport those who turn out to be security risks, not the Church
We don't know he was Syrian, in fact reports suggest he was Iraqi or Jordanian
“Last year the U.S. divorce rate hit a 50-year low. Teen pregnancies are at the lowest rate seen since they began to be systematically tracked in the 1930s, and the rate continues to plummet: In 2018, the teen-pregnancy rate was half of what it was in 2008. Even the rate of out-of-wedlock births, which had been climbing steadily since the 1950s, peaked around 2008 and has been declining modestly since—from 52 births per 1,000 unmarried women that year to 40 in 2019.”
Sounds good. But why is it happening?
“The bad news is that rates of more positive behaviors are declining too. Most notably, both marriage rates and fertility rates are at all-time lows in the United States. Total fertility in our country is now about 1.7 births per woman, well below the population-replacement rate. Younger Americans are having trouble pairing off—so that not only teen sex but also teen dating have dipped dramatically. “
“There are fewer abortions because there are fewer pregnancies, and so more of those that happen are wanted. There are fewer out-of-wedlock births because there are fewer births in general. The same pattern is evident beyond sexuality and family too. Fewer teenagers are dying in car accidents because fewer teenagers are getting driver’s licenses. There is less social disorder, we might say, because there is less social life. We are doing less of everything together, so that what we do is a little more tidy and controlled.”
Yes. Smart phones and the internet are killing human society
Plus young people are much more risk averse. Cautious. Nervous. From sex to booze to the way they speak. They are scared
Of course I make these comments by typing on my smartphone. Which I have been scrolling for 2 hours, this morning
But, fuck, it's a blessing. Living out here in the sticks 40 years ago I'd have looked forward to the Spectator coming once a week, and driven into Plymouth every so often to see if there was anything readable at Waterstones. And become severely alcoholic out of complete and utter boredom.
On the names front, we should also remember that many Jewish names were adopted from packing cases or shop signs to satisfy immigration officials.
Or like my wife's family taken from the surname of an old Tsar so as not to sound "too jewish" during one of Stalin's fits of temper in the 50's - of course they were still jews so my mother in law wasn't allowed to go to Moscow University as they had filled their 'jew quota' at the time
FREDERIKSBERG has a social democrat mayor - perhaps only Nick Palmer will appreciate what a shock this is and shows how demographic change is sending the Copenhagen area redder than ever - his old chums in Enhedslisten (lightweight communists with ponytails) also THRASHED the social democrats in Copenhagen - the "mink scandal" hit the social democrats very hard and they had their worst night in decades and the Konservative had their best night
Very interesting (to me), thanks!
Traditionally, Ottomans did not have surnames. In the 1930s Ataturk 'westernised' the newly-found republic of Turkey, and this included everyone choosing their surnames. Ataturk himself was 'given' his surname: it means 'Father of the Turks'.
Can you imagine having to choose a surname that will be passed own through the generations?
It's all very silly because part of the point of a surname, and how they came to be used, was to uniquely identify people, but the number of people with uniquely identifying full names must be very small.....
Aren't the origins of surnames rather more to do with declarations of lineage - or social hierarchy ?
On the names front, we should also remember that many Jewish names were adopted from packing cases or shop signs to satisfy immigration officials.
Or like my wife's family taken from the surname of an old Tsar so as not to sound "too jewish" during one of Stalin's fits of temper in the 50's - of course they were still jews so my mother in law wasn't allowed to go to Moscow University as they had filled their 'jew quota' at the time
FREDERIKSBERG has a social democrat mayor - perhaps only Nick Palmer will appreciate what a shock this is and shows how demographic change is sending the Copenhagen area redder than ever - his old chums in Enhedslisten (lightweight communists with ponytails) also THRASHED the social democrats in Copenhagen - the "mink scandal" hit the social democrats very hard and they had their worst night in decades and the Konservative had their best night
Very interesting (to me), thanks!
Traditionally, Ottomans did not have surnames. In the 1930s Ataturk 'westernised' the newly-found republic of Turkey, and this included everyone choosing their surnames. Ataturk himself was 'given' his surname: it means 'Father of the Turks'.
Can you imagine having to choose a surname that will be passed own through the generations?
It's all very silly because part of the point of a surname, and how they came to be used, was to uniquely identify people, but the number of people with uniquely identifying full names must be very small.
On the internet, where databases enforce the uniqueness of names, the solution has been to append numbers, which is lacking a certain something.
Rethinking names to create uniqueness in a more human and interesting way would be a worthwhile project.
I knew a rather senior chap at an oil company who changed his surname. Apparently, in the Netherlands, you can only change your surname to something unique. So he literally translated the name of a character in Tolkien to Dutch...
He did all this as a bit of hippy, when he was young.
So we had this senior, silver haired, suited, boss type chap with a name.....
I retract my previous criticisms of the Church of England, I'm sure @HYUFD will now be espousing disestablishing the Church of England.
The Church of England is facing questions over its role in converting hundreds of asylum seekers, including the Liverpool suicide bomber, to Christianity in an attempt to help them avoid deportation.
Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, is understood to be appalled at the "merry-go-round" of failed asylum seekers changing religion and using other tactics to launch "appeal after appeal" to stay in the country.
The Iraqi man killed in the abortive suicide bomb attack outside Liverpool Women's Hospital is understood to have been helped by the Church in his attempts to avoid being kicked out of Britain, after his claim for asylum was first rejected in 2014.
The Home Office believes changing religion is now "standard practice" among asylum seekers from countries including Iraq "to game the asylum system", as converts claim they are at risk of persecution in their home countries.
That and being told to say they are gay are the two most obvious routes to asylum from shithole but not specifically dangerous countries.
My ex, who worked in immigration law, described the comedy (on occasion) as er.... aggressively homophobic clients would get very worried that, when claiming to be gay, that might have to prove that they were gay.
Which begs the question, how do you prove you are gay?
Like your religion, they *have* to take your word for it. Which is why it is such a handy method of claiming asylum.
Mind you, given the efforts to claim that physical things like age can't be checked....
One point in this - if the church did go through with a fake conversion, they may have fuelled the self-loathing of the individual in question.
Apparently a big thing in radicalisation is the element of "you have corrupted yourself with Western indulgence" - forsaking your faith with a lie would have fed into that.
Christ himself of course came from the Middle East, he was not Western. This man being a Syrian refugee who came to this country via Merkel and Cameron's refugee policy, grew up closer to the lands of the Bible than those Christians in Liverpool are
What has that got to do with the price of fish?
Do you really think that this man was a Christian?
He might have been Christian at some point. Aiui, it is the already-religious who are most susceptible to conversion, so it is plausible he was converted and then converted back again. In this case, it is more worrying that he wanted to blow people up than what book he venerated.
And there are still gaps in the story. Should the bomber have been deported when his asylum appeal failed five years ago? Was the intended target the cathedral or the hospital? Whose idea was it? And so on.
Golly, email from Amazon saying you can't pay by visa credit card as from january
Unless it's a Nigerian prince wanting some alternative card details from me
Nope was about to report the same.
It seems Mastercard have cut Amazon a discounted rate that Visa weren't willing to match. Visa Debit cards aren't impacted but I don't have 1 anymore as I discovered to my cost when Ticketmaster weren't accepting Mastercard a while back.
WTF?
Are Amazon bonkers? There's zillions of VISA credit card owners.
There are far fewer Visa credit cards than Mastercard nowadays
Mastercard are being quite aggressive recently. They’ve snatched a lot of VISA’s debit card business. Santander already and RBS/NatWest in the new year are moving to debit Mastercards.
There’s a few more in the pipeline.
HSBC as well - we now have a First Direct debit card that doesn't work in HSBC automation machines (well done there folks).
It's a right mess for the multi brand banks, yes I'm looking at you Lloyds Banking Group.
The rumours are they've not made the official decision but if they do they will go for the big bang option and move over all Lloyds, Halifax, and BOS customers in the same month.
They have an IT screw up when that happens...
It won't so much be an IT screw up it will be (as with HSBC) a very expensive (and labour intensive) hardware screw up as all the customer facing systems are built to handle nothing but Visa cards.
It’ll be ready, these things always are. The track itself is done, they can always add temporary barriers and other circuit furniture if required. I have a few friends heading out there next week, they’ll be working as marshals and safety crew.
I retract my previous criticisms of the Church of England, I'm sure @HYUFD will now be espousing disestablishing the Church of England.
The Church of England is facing questions over its role in converting hundreds of asylum seekers, including the Liverpool suicide bomber, to Christianity in an attempt to help them avoid deportation.
Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, is understood to be appalled at the "merry-go-round" of failed asylum seekers changing religion and using other tactics to launch "appeal after appeal" to stay in the country.
The Iraqi man killed in the abortive suicide bomb attack outside Liverpool Women's Hospital is understood to have been helped by the Church in his attempts to avoid being kicked out of Britain, after his claim for asylum was first rejected in 2014.
The Home Office believes changing religion is now "standard practice" among asylum seekers from countries including Iraq "to game the asylum system", as converts claim they are at risk of persecution in their home countries.
That and being told to say they are gay are the two most obvious routes to asylum from shithole but not specifically dangerous countries.
My ex, who worked in immigration law, described the comedy (on occasion) as er.... aggressively homophobic clients would get very worried that, when claiming to be gay, that might have to prove that they were gay.
Which begs the question, how do you prove you are gay?
By knowing who Johnny Rapid is.
Excellent - I'm NOT gay then...
Well I’m going to tell you now so you will know.
He’s a twink and gay porn star loved by most of my gay and bi friends.
He’s actually gay for pay which means he’s loved by quite a few of my heterosexual female friends.
“Last year the U.S. divorce rate hit a 50-year low. Teen pregnancies are at the lowest rate seen since they began to be systematically tracked in the 1930s, and the rate continues to plummet: In 2018, the teen-pregnancy rate was half of what it was in 2008. Even the rate of out-of-wedlock births, which had been climbing steadily since the 1950s, peaked around 2008 and has been declining modestly since—from 52 births per 1,000 unmarried women that year to 40 in 2019.”
Sounds good. But why is it happening?
“The bad news is that rates of more positive behaviors are declining too. Most notably, both marriage rates and fertility rates are at all-time lows in the United States. Total fertility in our country is now about 1.7 births per woman, well below the population-replacement rate. Younger Americans are having trouble pairing off—so that not only teen sex but also teen dating have dipped dramatically. “
“There are fewer abortions because there are fewer pregnancies, and so more of those that happen are wanted. There are fewer out-of-wedlock births because there are fewer births in general. The same pattern is evident beyond sexuality and family too. Fewer teenagers are dying in car accidents because fewer teenagers are getting driver’s licenses. There is less social disorder, we might say, because there is less social life. We are doing less of everything together, so that what we do is a little more tidy and controlled.”
Every western nation now is below replacement rate birth rate of 2.1, including the USA.
France at 1.87 is the only one close
The great global population decline will be a wholly new issue for the world to get its head around (for it will happen in even the poorest countries in due course too). It possibly comes at the nick of time to slow down climate change, but for a science and economics establishment used to rising global population it's going to be a hell of a big change in paradigm.
The closest - and related - analogue I can think of is the end of inflation in Japan about 20 years ago and the new phenomenon of deflation. Economists hard-wired to see inflation as a permanent state took a long time to work out what on earth its opposite would mean.
Shrinking population means shrinking GDP, deflation, an increasing dependency ratio, yet (if Japan and Eastern / Southern Europe are anything to go by) relatively stable or growing urban populations with massive rural emptying. A world made up of thriving urban centres + wilderness. A kind of global version of Washington State or Arizona.
Thriving urban centres + wilderness sounds quite good to me. You get the glories of London, then you step outside and it’s the primordial forest of the Weald, and the rolling woods of the Chilterns. Pristine and undisturbed
It’s often occurred to me that south east England must have been utterly exquisite - before we concreted half of it. The bits that remain are still gems. But isolated
I retract my previous criticisms of the Church of England, I'm sure @HYUFD will now be espousing disestablishing the Church of England.
The Church of England is facing questions over its role in converting hundreds of asylum seekers, including the Liverpool suicide bomber, to Christianity in an attempt to help them avoid deportation.
Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, is understood to be appalled at the "merry-go-round" of failed asylum seekers changing religion and using other tactics to launch "appeal after appeal" to stay in the country.
The Iraqi man killed in the abortive suicide bomb attack outside Liverpool Women's Hospital is understood to have been helped by the Church in his attempts to avoid being kicked out of Britain, after his claim for asylum was first rejected in 2014.
The Home Office believes changing religion is now "standard practice" among asylum seekers from countries including Iraq "to game the asylum system", as converts claim they are at risk of persecution in their home countries.
That and being told to say they are gay are the two most obvious routes to asylum from shithole but not specifically dangerous countries.
My ex, who worked in immigration law, described the comedy (on occasion) as er.... aggressively homophobic clients would get very worried that, when claiming to be gay, that might have to prove that they were gay.
Which begs the question, how do you prove you are gay?
Like your religion, they *have* to take your word for it. Which is why it is such a handy method of claiming asylum.
Mind you, given the efforts to claim that physical things like age can't be checked....
One point in this - if the church did go through with a fake conversion, they may have fuelled the self-loathing of the individual in question.
Apparently a big thing in radicalisation is the element of "you have corrupted yourself with Western indulgence" - forsaking your faith with a lie would have fed into that.
Christ himself of course came from the Middle East, he was not Western. This man being a Syrian refugee who came to this country via Merkel and Cameron's refugee policy, grew up closer to the lands of the Bible than those Christians in Liverpool are
Indeed. Just pointing out that if the Church was in on a lie, that some of the moral damage is on them as well.
The Church was doing what it is supposed to do, evangelising and converting to Christ.
It was Cameron who allowed in Syrian refugees, morally arguably correctly but clearly better background checks were needed.
It is the UK government and Home Office who should ensure we do thorough checks of those we allow in and deport those who turn out to be security risks, not the Church
The Church, before performing an adult baptism, is supposed* to carry out a series of sessions with a priest to try and find out why the convert is converting and if they are sincere.
Washing your hands of responsibility isn't the done thing in Christianity....
*Written procedure of the CoE, IIRC.
It's still not the job of a CoE priest to do the work the immigration service should be doing.
No, it isn't.
The suggestion was that they are knowingly performing fake baptisms. If true, this could be making things worse.
I know a someone who did adult baptism - so they could stand as god parents at a christening - and he didn't just rock up at the church and get water tipped on him. X meetings with a priest to make sure he was sincere....
Sorry but No.
If you disagree with a policy why shouldn't a priest do everything they can to keep the refugee (who they now personally know) in the country.
As I said - it's not the job of a priest to do the job of the immigration service - if the immigration service has outsourced that job and can't see the utter flaw in the plan that just show how stupid the immigration service is
Among other things, the priest would be actually lying - he has to (as part of the ceremony) IIRC, state his belief that the applicant is honestly a Christian.
How can the immigration service test peoples religion? Make them spit on the other holy books? There are very good reasons why religion is a personal thing....
If, as you suggest, it is morally fine for the priests to say that anyone is a Christian to get round laws they don't like, then surely the Immigration Service can say "You say he is CoE. Since you lie about this kind of thing, we no longer accept the concept of conversion".
Think of it as a bit like having people from various professions counter-signing important documents tis verify identity - if lying about that became endemic, then the government would no longer use that method.
Speaking of religious conversions-of-convenience, can someone run through the logic of Boris's annulled marriages again? Or Tony Blair's undercover Catholicism?
On the names front, we should also remember that many Jewish names were adopted from packing cases or shop signs to satisfy immigration officials.
Or like my wife's family taken from the surname of an old Tsar so as not to sound "too jewish" during one of Stalin's fits of temper in the 50's - of course they were still jews so my mother in law wasn't allowed to go to Moscow University as they had filled their 'jew quota' at the time
FREDERIKSBERG has a social democrat mayor - perhaps only Nick Palmer will appreciate what a shock this is and shows how demographic change is sending the Copenhagen area redder than ever - his old chums in Enhedslisten (lightweight communists with ponytails) also THRASHED the social democrats in Copenhagen - the "mink scandal" hit the social democrats very hard and they had their worst night in decades and the Konservative had their best night
Very interesting (to me), thanks!
Traditionally, Ottomans did not have surnames. In the 1930s Ataturk 'westernised' the newly-found republic of Turkey, and this included everyone choosing their surnames. Ataturk himself was 'given' his surname: it means 'Father of the Turks'.
Can you imagine having to choose a surname that will be passed own through the generations?
It's all very silly because part of the point of a surname, and how they came to be used, was to uniquely identify people, but the number of people with uniquely identifying full names must be very small.
On the internet, where databases enforce the uniqueness of names, the solution has been to append numbers, which is lacking a certain something.
Rethinking names to create uniqueness in a more human and interesting way would be a worthwhile project.
I am pretty sure that my daughters' names uniquely identify them, which I quite like. My son's doesn't, especially as his first name has become far more popular in the UK in recent years.
On the names front, we should also remember that many Jewish names were adopted from packing cases or shop signs to satisfy immigration officials.
Or like my wife's family taken from the surname of an old Tsar so as not to sound "too jewish" during one of Stalin's fits of temper in the 50's - of course they were still jews so my mother in law wasn't allowed to go to Moscow University as they had filled their 'jew quota' at the time
FREDERIKSBERG has a social democrat mayor - perhaps only Nick Palmer will appreciate what a shock this is and shows how demographic change is sending the Copenhagen area redder than ever - his old chums in Enhedslisten (lightweight communists with ponytails) also THRASHED the social democrats in Copenhagen - the "mink scandal" hit the social democrats very hard and they had their worst night in decades and the Konservative had their best night
Very interesting (to me), thanks!
Traditionally, Ottomans did not have surnames. In the 1930s Ataturk 'westernised' the newly-found republic of Turkey, and this included everyone choosing their surnames. Ataturk himself was 'given' his surname: it means 'Father of the Turks'.
Can you imagine having to choose a surname that will be passed own through the generations?
It's all very silly because part of the point of a surname, and how they came to be used, was to uniquely identify people, but the number of people with uniquely identifying full names must be very small.....
Aren't the origins of surnames rather more to do with declarations of lineage - or social hierarchy ?
Surnames among the posh nobs were like that, but for the little people they were descriptive so that you would say "John Smith" instead of "John the blacksmith" when you were trying to distinguish that John from John the miller, or the John from that there London. I think.
"Our governments have no desire to be adversarial, or seek in any way to strategically encircle or undermine the Russian Federation. We are concerned by Russia’s military build-up and activity around the borders of Ukraine."
Ooh... Baldy Ben is 'concerned'... Putin must be shitting himself.
I reckon the Belarus/Poland business could easily turn hot very quickly. All it would take is a jittery gopnik or dreisarz to send a few rounds through the wire and it'd be on like Fat Pat's Thong.
I think Baldy Ben is a dark horse for the Con leadership if Rishi somehow self-immolates and the prospect of Truss fails to send a shiver. He has quite an impressive "real-world" background which would go down well with party members.
From Wiki: "From 1991 to 1998, he served in Germany, Cyprus, Belize, and Northern Ireland, rising to the rank of captain. During his time in Northern Ireland, he was mentioned in dispatches in 1992 for an incident in which the patrol he was commanding captured an entire IRA active service unit attempting to carry out a bomb attack against British troops."
Speaking of religious conversions-of-convenience, can someone run through the logic of Boris's annulled marriages again? Or Tony Blair's undercover Catholicism?
Well for Blair's undercover Catholicism there were some anti Catholic statutes on the book until quite recently and technically the PM recommends a lot of the Bishops and a Catholic wasn't allowed to do that, so it was easier for us look the other way when it came to Blair, had he converted whilst in office it would have opened a real can of worms.
“Last year the U.S. divorce rate hit a 50-year low. Teen pregnancies are at the lowest rate seen since they began to be systematically tracked in the 1930s, and the rate continues to plummet: In 2018, the teen-pregnancy rate was half of what it was in 2008. Even the rate of out-of-wedlock births, which had been climbing steadily since the 1950s, peaked around 2008 and has been declining modestly since—from 52 births per 1,000 unmarried women that year to 40 in 2019.”
Sounds good. But why is it happening?
“The bad news is that rates of more positive behaviors are declining too. Most notably, both marriage rates and fertility rates are at all-time lows in the United States. Total fertility in our country is now about 1.7 births per woman, well below the population-replacement rate. Younger Americans are having trouble pairing off—so that not only teen sex but also teen dating have dipped dramatically. “
“There are fewer abortions because there are fewer pregnancies, and so more of those that happen are wanted. There are fewer out-of-wedlock births because there are fewer births in general. The same pattern is evident beyond sexuality and family too. Fewer teenagers are dying in car accidents because fewer teenagers are getting driver’s licenses. There is less social disorder, we might say, because there is less social life. We are doing less of everything together, so that what we do is a little more tidy and controlled.”
Yes. Smart phones and the internet are killing human society
Plus young people are much more risk averse. Cautious. Nervous. From sex to booze to the way they speak. They are scared
Of course I make these comments by typing on my smartphone. Which I have been scrolling for 2 hours, this morning
But, fuck, it's a blessing. Living out here in the sticks 40 years ago I'd have looked forward to the Spectator coming once a week, and driven into Plymouth every so often to see if there was anything readable at Waterstones. And become severely alcoholic out of complete and utter boredom.
Yes the Net is great for older people. Paradoxically less so for the young
Btw thanks for your advice to go out and see Seth Lakeman live, last night. He was brilliant. A truly rousing gig. Some beautiful musicianship. But also alpha showmanship. He’s like the Bruce Springsteen of Dartmoor
I met with some former colleagues in retail (outdoorsy stuff) over the weekend and they think the big supply crunch will happen next year. All the disruption hasn't trickled down to consumer goods yet.
I think the inflation thing will run and run, and become much more obvious to voters by the spring. The stats for December and Christmas will be interesting.
On the names front, we should also remember that many Jewish names were adopted from packing cases or shop signs to satisfy immigration officials.
Or like my wife's family taken from the surname of an old Tsar so as not to sound "too jewish" during one of Stalin's fits of temper in the 50's - of course they were still jews so my mother in law wasn't allowed to go to Moscow University as they had filled their 'jew quota' at the time
FREDERIKSBERG has a social democrat mayor - perhaps only Nick Palmer will appreciate what a shock this is and shows how demographic change is sending the Copenhagen area redder than ever - his old chums in Enhedslisten (lightweight communists with ponytails) also THRASHED the social democrats in Copenhagen - the "mink scandal" hit the social democrats very hard and they had their worst night in decades and the Konservative had their best night
Very interesting (to me), thanks!
Traditionally, Ottomans did not have surnames. In the 1930s Ataturk 'westernised' the newly-found republic of Turkey, and this included everyone choosing their surnames. Ataturk himself was 'given' his surname: it means 'Father of the Turks'.
Can you imagine having to choose a surname that will be passed own through the generations?
It's all very silly because part of the point of a surname, and how they came to be used, was to uniquely identify people, but the number of people with uniquely identifying full names must be very small.....
Aren't the origins of surnames rather more to do with declarations of lineage - or social hierarchy ?
Surnames among the posh nobs were like that, but for the little people they were descriptive so that you would say "John Smith" instead of "John the blacksmith" when you were trying to distinguish that John from John the miller, or the John from that there London. I think.
That's something of a partial view, though. There are societies which didn't allow the peasants to have surnames.
“Last year the U.S. divorce rate hit a 50-year low. Teen pregnancies are at the lowest rate seen since they began to be systematically tracked in the 1930s, and the rate continues to plummet: In 2018, the teen-pregnancy rate was half of what it was in 2008. Even the rate of out-of-wedlock births, which had been climbing steadily since the 1950s, peaked around 2008 and has been declining modestly since—from 52 births per 1,000 unmarried women that year to 40 in 2019.”
Sounds good. But why is it happening?
“The bad news is that rates of more positive behaviors are declining too. Most notably, both marriage rates and fertility rates are at all-time lows in the United States. Total fertility in our country is now about 1.7 births per woman, well below the population-replacement rate. Younger Americans are having trouble pairing off—so that not only teen sex but also teen dating have dipped dramatically. “
“There are fewer abortions because there are fewer pregnancies, and so more of those that happen are wanted. There are fewer out-of-wedlock births because there are fewer births in general. The same pattern is evident beyond sexuality and family too. Fewer teenagers are dying in car accidents because fewer teenagers are getting driver’s licenses. There is less social disorder, we might say, because there is less social life. We are doing less of everything together, so that what we do is a little more tidy and controlled.”
Every western nation now is below replacement rate birth rate of 2.1, including the USA.
France at 1.87 is the only one close
The great global population decline will be a wholly new issue for the world to get its head around (for it will happen in even the poorest countries in due course too). It possibly comes at the nick of time to slow down climate change, but for a science and economics establishment used to rising global population it's going to be a hell of a big change in paradigm.
The closest - and related - analogue I can think of is the end of inflation in Japan about 20 years ago and the new phenomenon of deflation. Economists hard-wired to see inflation as a permanent state took a long time to work out what on earth its opposite would mean.
Shrinking population means shrinking GDP, deflation, an increasing dependency ratio, yet (if Japan and Eastern / Southern Europe are anything to go by) relatively stable or growing urban populations with massive rural emptying. A world made up of thriving urban centres + wilderness. A kind of global version of Washington State or Arizona.
Agree with that, but I think it is a problem we should welcome, for the sake of the planet, and work out how we are going to cope with the change, because the change will be less damaging than a permanently increasing population.
"Our governments have no desire to be adversarial, or seek in any way to strategically encircle or undermine the Russian Federation. We are concerned by Russia’s military build-up and activity around the borders of Ukraine."
Ooh... Baldy Ben is 'concerned'... Putin must be shitting himself.
I reckon the Belarus/Poland business could easily turn hot very quickly. All it would take is a jittery gopnik or dreisarz to send a few rounds through the wire and it'd be on like Fat Pat's Thong.
PB’s special forces correspondent has tapped his nose and said the games afoot in Ukraine.
On the basis that HMS QE was supposed to exert some influence on events while being 1000km from Kabul, presumably HMS PoW will have the same effect on Kiev just by being tied up in Portsmouth.
Mr. Password, became more important after the Norman Conquest.
There were a huge variety of Saxon names with meant relatively little repetition. By contrast, Davids, Rogers, Richards, Williams, Henrys, and Johns were very common indeed, as was Mary on the female side.
“Last year the U.S. divorce rate hit a 50-year low. Teen pregnancies are at the lowest rate seen since they began to be systematically tracked in the 1930s, and the rate continues to plummet: In 2018, the teen-pregnancy rate was half of what it was in 2008. Even the rate of out-of-wedlock births, which had been climbing steadily since the 1950s, peaked around 2008 and has been declining modestly since—from 52 births per 1,000 unmarried women that year to 40 in 2019.”
Sounds good. But why is it happening?
“The bad news is that rates of more positive behaviors are declining too. Most notably, both marriage rates and fertility rates are at all-time lows in the United States. Total fertility in our country is now about 1.7 births per woman, well below the population-replacement rate. Younger Americans are having trouble pairing off—so that not only teen sex but also teen dating have dipped dramatically. “
“There are fewer abortions because there are fewer pregnancies, and so more of those that happen are wanted. There are fewer out-of-wedlock births because there are fewer births in general. The same pattern is evident beyond sexuality and family too. Fewer teenagers are dying in car accidents because fewer teenagers are getting driver’s licenses. There is less social disorder, we might say, because there is less social life. We are doing less of everything together, so that what we do is a little more tidy and controlled.”
Every western nation now is below replacement rate birth rate of 2.1, including the USA.
France at 1.87 is the only one close
The great global population decline will be a wholly new issue for the world to get its head around (for it will happen in even the poorest countries in due course too). It possibly comes at the nick of time to slow down climate change, but for a science and economics establishment used to rising global population it's going to be a hell of a big change in paradigm.
The closest - and related - analogue I can think of is the end of inflation in Japan about 20 years ago and the new phenomenon of deflation. Economists hard-wired to see inflation as a permanent state took a long time to work out what on earth its opposite would mean.
Shrinking population means shrinking GDP, deflation, an increasing dependency ratio, yet (if Japan and Eastern / Southern Europe are anything to go by) relatively stable or growing urban populations with massive rural emptying. A world made up of thriving urban centres + wilderness. A kind of global version of Washington State or Arizona.
Thriving urban centres + wilderness sounds quite good to me. You get the glories of London, then you step outside and it’s the primordial forest of the Weald, and the rolling woods of the Chilterns. Pristine and undisturbed
It’s often occurred to me that south east England must have been utterly exquisite - before we concreted half of it. The bits that remain are still gems. But isolated
I think it works well in a lot of environments (and the US West is a good example, so too the Spanish Meseta, Russia, Scandinavia), less so in some of the places that have had dense rural populations and rural heritage for centuries: most of Italy, Provence, Holland/Flanders and so on, where the human footprint actually improves the countryside.
The biggest downside is dead villages and small towns with empty shops, half day closing and elderly residents who go to bed early.
Golly, email from Amazon saying you can't pay by visa credit card as from january
Unless it's a Nigerian prince wanting some alternative card details from me
Nope was about to report the same.
It seems Mastercard have cut Amazon a discounted rate that Visa weren't willing to match. Visa Debit cards aren't impacted but I don't have 1 anymore as I discovered to my cost when Ticketmaster weren't accepting Mastercard a while back.
Had same; not sure I believe it, given the rates Amex charge
“Last year the U.S. divorce rate hit a 50-year low. Teen pregnancies are at the lowest rate seen since they began to be systematically tracked in the 1930s, and the rate continues to plummet: In 2018, the teen-pregnancy rate was half of what it was in 2008. Even the rate of out-of-wedlock births, which had been climbing steadily since the 1950s, peaked around 2008 and has been declining modestly since—from 52 births per 1,000 unmarried women that year to 40 in 2019.”
Sounds good. But why is it happening?
“The bad news is that rates of more positive behaviors are declining too. Most notably, both marriage rates and fertility rates are at all-time lows in the United States. Total fertility in our country is now about 1.7 births per woman, well below the population-replacement rate. Younger Americans are having trouble pairing off—so that not only teen sex but also teen dating have dipped dramatically. “
“There are fewer abortions because there are fewer pregnancies, and so more of those that happen are wanted. There are fewer out-of-wedlock births because there are fewer births in general. The same pattern is evident beyond sexuality and family too. Fewer teenagers are dying in car accidents because fewer teenagers are getting driver’s licenses. There is less social disorder, we might say, because there is less social life. We are doing less of everything together, so that what we do is a little more tidy and controlled.”
Every western nation now is below replacement rate birth rate of 2.1, including the USA.
France at 1.87 is the only one close
The great global population decline will be a wholly new issue for the world to get its head around (for it will happen in even the poorest countries in due course too). It possibly comes at the nick of time to slow down climate change, but for a science and economics establishment used to rising global population it's going to be a hell of a big change in paradigm.
The closest - and related - analogue I can think of is the end of inflation in Japan about 20 years ago and the new phenomenon of deflation. Economists hard-wired to see inflation as a permanent state took a long time to work out what on earth its opposite would mean.
Shrinking population means shrinking GDP, deflation, an increasing dependency ratio, yet (if Japan and Eastern / Southern Europe are anything to go by) relatively stable or growing urban populations with massive rural emptying. A world made up of thriving urban centres + wilderness. A kind of global version of Washington State or Arizona.
Globally the population is not in decline though, the global birthrate is 2.4 ie just above replacement level and higher in the developing world.
The population decline is mainly in the West, Eastern Europe and Far East so they will have to grapple with the factors you mention.
Mr. Boy, maybe. But given they were so clearly adult yet claimed as children until the authorities put up barriers to stop the public/press from seeing the old men I think plenty will be sceptical of such things.
On the names front, we should also remember that many Jewish names were adopted from packing cases or shop signs to satisfy immigration officials.
Or like my wife's family taken from the surname of an old Tsar so as not to sound "too jewish" during one of Stalin's fits of temper in the 50's - of course they were still jews so my mother in law wasn't allowed to go to Moscow University as they had filled their 'jew quota' at the time
FREDERIKSBERG has a social democrat mayor - perhaps only Nick Palmer will appreciate what a shock this is and shows how demographic change is sending the Copenhagen area redder than ever - his old chums in Enhedslisten (lightweight communists with ponytails) also THRASHED the social democrats in Copenhagen - the "mink scandal" hit the social democrats very hard and they had their worst night in decades and the Konservative had their best night
Very interesting (to me), thanks!
Traditionally, Ottomans did not have surnames. In the 1930s Ataturk 'westernised' the newly-found republic of Turkey, and this included everyone choosing their surnames. Ataturk himself was 'given' his surname: it means 'Father of the Turks'.
Can you imagine having to choose a surname that will be passed own through the generations?
It's all very silly because part of the point of a surname, and how they came to be used, was to uniquely identify people, but the number of people with uniquely identifying full names must be very small.....
Aren't the origins of surnames rather more to do with declarations of lineage - or social hierarchy ?
Surnames among the posh nobs were like that, but for the little people they were descriptive so that you would say "John Smith" instead of "John the blacksmith" when you were trying to distinguish that John from John the miller, or the John from that there London. I think.
There are an awful lot of Smiths considering it's supposed to be a distinguishing name... And the registering nurse at the hospital where he was born refused to accept Dweezil Zappa, which suggests that unique identification isn't really accepted as the point of naming.
I retract my previous criticisms of the Church of England, I'm sure @HYUFD will now be espousing disestablishing the Church of England.
The Church of England is facing questions over its role in converting hundreds of asylum seekers, including the Liverpool suicide bomber, to Christianity in an attempt to help them avoid deportation.
Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, is understood to be appalled at the "merry-go-round" of failed asylum seekers changing religion and using other tactics to launch "appeal after appeal" to stay in the country.
The Iraqi man killed in the abortive suicide bomb attack outside Liverpool Women's Hospital is understood to have been helped by the Church in his attempts to avoid being kicked out of Britain, after his claim for asylum was first rejected in 2014.
The Home Office believes changing religion is now "standard practice" among asylum seekers from countries including Iraq "to game the asylum system", as converts claim they are at risk of persecution in their home countries.
That and being told to say they are gay are the two most obvious routes to asylum from shithole but not specifically dangerous countries.
My ex, who worked in immigration law, described the comedy (on occasion) as er.... aggressively homophobic clients would get very worried that, when claiming to be gay, that might have to prove that they were gay.
Which begs the question, how do you prove you are gay?
Like your religion, they *have* to take your word for it. Which is why it is such a handy method of claiming asylum.
Mind you, given the efforts to claim that physical things like age can't be checked....
One point in this - if the church did go through with a fake conversion, they may have fuelled the self-loathing of the individual in question.
Apparently a big thing in radicalisation is the element of "you have corrupted yourself with Western indulgence" - forsaking your faith with a lie would have fed into that.
Christ himself of course came from the Middle East, he was not Western. This man being a Syrian refugee who came to this country via Merkel and Cameron's refugee policy, grew up closer to the lands of the Bible than those Christians in Liverpool are
What has that got to do with the price of fish?
Do you really think that this man was a Christian?
He willingly converted to Christianity, so no reason to suspect otherwise.
As Eek correctly says, it is the immigration service (and the government's) job not to let security risks into this country and to deport those who turn out to be security risks.
That is not the Church's job. The Church's job includes converting souls to Christ
Golly, email from Amazon saying you can't pay by visa credit card as from january
Unless it's a Nigerian prince wanting some alternative card details from me
Nope was about to report the same.
It seems Mastercard have cut Amazon a discounted rate that Visa weren't willing to match. Visa Debit cards aren't impacted but I don't have 1 anymore as I discovered to my cost when Ticketmaster weren't accepting Mastercard a while back.
WTF?
Are Amazon bonkers? There's zillions of VISA credit card owners.
There are far fewer Visa credit cards than Mastercard nowadays
Mastercard are being quite aggressive recently. They’ve snatched a lot of VISA’s debit card business. Santander already and RBS/NatWest in the new year are moving to debit Mastercards.
There’s a few more in the pipeline.
These things can happen both ways of course. I remember the incredibly irritating rules on only being able to buy Olympics tickets with VISA cards
"Our governments have no desire to be adversarial, or seek in any way to strategically encircle or undermine the Russian Federation. We are concerned by Russia’s military build-up and activity around the borders of Ukraine."
Ooh... Baldy Ben is 'concerned'... Putin must be shitting himself.
I reckon the Belarus/Poland business could easily turn hot very quickly. All it would take is a jittery gopnik or dreisarz to send a few rounds through the wire and it'd be on like Fat Pat's Thong.
I think Baldy Ben is a dark horse for the Con leadership if Rishi somehow self-immolates and the prospect of Truss fails to send a shiver. He has quite an impressive "real-world" background which would go down well with party members.
He needs a bigger job first. Spending a few years staring at the MoD Excel document which makes no fucking sense whatsoever is not a traditional stepping stone to the job of PM.
“Last year the U.S. divorce rate hit a 50-year low. Teen pregnancies are at the lowest rate seen since they began to be systematically tracked in the 1930s, and the rate continues to plummet: In 2018, the teen-pregnancy rate was half of what it was in 2008. Even the rate of out-of-wedlock births, which had been climbing steadily since the 1950s, peaked around 2008 and has been declining modestly since—from 52 births per 1,000 unmarried women that year to 40 in 2019.”
Sounds good. But why is it happening?
“The bad news is that rates of more positive behaviors are declining too. Most notably, both marriage rates and fertility rates are at all-time lows in the United States. Total fertility in our country is now about 1.7 births per woman, well below the population-replacement rate. Younger Americans are having trouble pairing off—so that not only teen sex but also teen dating have dipped dramatically. “
“There are fewer abortions because there are fewer pregnancies, and so more of those that happen are wanted. There are fewer out-of-wedlock births because there are fewer births in general. The same pattern is evident beyond sexuality and family too. Fewer teenagers are dying in car accidents because fewer teenagers are getting driver’s licenses. There is less social disorder, we might say, because there is less social life. We are doing less of everything together, so that what we do is a little more tidy and controlled.”
Every western nation now is below replacement rate birth rate of 2.1, including the USA.
France at 1.87 is the only one close
The great global population decline will be a wholly new issue for the world to get its head around (for it will happen in even the poorest countries in due course too). It possibly comes at the nick of time to slow down climate change, but for a science and economics establishment used to rising global population it's going to be a hell of a big change in paradigm.
The closest - and related - analogue I can think of is the end of inflation in Japan about 20 years ago and the new phenomenon of deflation. Economists hard-wired to see inflation as a permanent state took a long time to work out what on earth its opposite would mean.
Shrinking population means shrinking GDP, deflation, an increasing dependency ratio, yet (if Japan and Eastern / Southern Europe are anything to go by) relatively stable or growing urban populations with massive rural emptying. A world made up of thriving urban centres + wilderness. A kind of global version of Washington State or Arizona.
Globally the population is not in decline though, the global birthrate is 2.4 ie just above replacement level and higher in the developing world.
The population decline is mainly in the West, Eastern Europe and Far East so they will have to grapple with the factors you mention.
“Last year the U.S. divorce rate hit a 50-year low. Teen pregnancies are at the lowest rate seen since they began to be systematically tracked in the 1930s, and the rate continues to plummet: In 2018, the teen-pregnancy rate was half of what it was in 2008. Even the rate of out-of-wedlock births, which had been climbing steadily since the 1950s, peaked around 2008 and has been declining modestly since—from 52 births per 1,000 unmarried women that year to 40 in 2019.”
Sounds good. But why is it happening?
“The bad news is that rates of more positive behaviors are declining too. Most notably, both marriage rates and fertility rates are at all-time lows in the United States. Total fertility in our country is now about 1.7 births per woman, well below the population-replacement rate. Younger Americans are having trouble pairing off—so that not only teen sex but also teen dating have dipped dramatically. “
“There are fewer abortions because there are fewer pregnancies, and so more of those that happen are wanted. There are fewer out-of-wedlock births because there are fewer births in general. The same pattern is evident beyond sexuality and family too. Fewer teenagers are dying in car accidents because fewer teenagers are getting driver’s licenses. There is less social disorder, we might say, because there is less social life. We are doing less of everything together, so that what we do is a little more tidy and controlled.”
Every western nation now is below replacement rate birth rate of 2.1, including the USA.
France at 1.87 is the only one close
The great global population decline will be a wholly new issue for the world to get its head around (for it will happen in even the poorest countries in due course too). It possibly comes at the nick of time to slow down climate change, but for a science and economics establishment used to rising global population it's going to be a hell of a big change in paradigm.
The closest - and related - analogue I can think of is the end of inflation in Japan about 20 years ago and the new phenomenon of deflation. Economists hard-wired to see inflation as a permanent state took a long time to work out what on earth its opposite would mean.
Shrinking population means shrinking GDP, deflation, an increasing dependency ratio, yet (if Japan and Eastern / Southern Europe are anything to go by) relatively stable or growing urban populations with massive rural emptying. A world made up of thriving urban centres + wilderness. A kind of global version of Washington State or Arizona.
Thriving urban centres + wilderness sounds quite good to me. You get the glories of London, then you step outside and it’s the primordial forest of the Weald, and the rolling woods of the Chilterns. Pristine and undisturbed
It’s often occurred to me that south east England must have been utterly exquisite - before we concreted half of it. The bits that remain are still gems. But isolated
I think it works well in a lot of environments (and the US West is a good example, so too the Spanish Meseta, Russia, Scandinavia), less so in some of the places that have had dense rural populations and rural heritage for centuries: most of Italy, Provence, Holland/Flanders and so on, where the human footprint actually improves the countryside.
The biggest downside is dead villages and small towns with empty shops, half day closing and elderly residents who go to bed early.
A lot of the “problems” of declining birthrates are going to rendered irrelevant if not fantastically trivial by the rise of AI and the robots
Most of those crossing the channel are genuine refugees not economic migrants.
No matter, the Overton Window of why it’s terrible that the UK should have to accept a fraction of refugees/migrants/asylum seekers that its neighbours receive will quickly adjust.
Speaking of religious conversions-of-convenience, can someone run through the logic of Boris's annulled marriages again? Or Tony Blair's undercover Catholicism?
Well for Blair's undercover Catholicism there were some anti Catholic statutes on the book until quite recently and technically the PM recommends a lot of the Bishops and a Catholic wasn't allowed to do that, so it was easier for us look the other way when it came to Blair, had he converted whilst in office it would have opened a real can of worms.
He would have had to have Lord Falconer recommending C of E Bishops for appointment as Raab now does for Boris
“Last year the U.S. divorce rate hit a 50-year low. Teen pregnancies are at the lowest rate seen since they began to be systematically tracked in the 1930s, and the rate continues to plummet: In 2018, the teen-pregnancy rate was half of what it was in 2008. Even the rate of out-of-wedlock births, which had been climbing steadily since the 1950s, peaked around 2008 and has been declining modestly since—from 52 births per 1,000 unmarried women that year to 40 in 2019.”
Sounds good. But why is it happening?
“The bad news is that rates of more positive behaviors are declining too. Most notably, both marriage rates and fertility rates are at all-time lows in the United States. Total fertility in our country is now about 1.7 births per woman, well below the population-replacement rate. Younger Americans are having trouble pairing off—so that not only teen sex but also teen dating have dipped dramatically. “
“There are fewer abortions because there are fewer pregnancies, and so more of those that happen are wanted. There are fewer out-of-wedlock births because there are fewer births in general. The same pattern is evident beyond sexuality and family too. Fewer teenagers are dying in car accidents because fewer teenagers are getting driver’s licenses. There is less social disorder, we might say, because there is less social life. We are doing less of everything together, so that what we do is a little more tidy and controlled.”
Yes. Smart phones and the internet are killing human society
Plus young people are much more risk averse. Cautious. Nervous. From sex to booze to the way they speak. They are scared
Of course I make these comments by typing on my smartphone. Which I have been scrolling for 2 hours, this morning
But, fuck, it's a blessing. Living out here in the sticks 40 years ago I'd have looked forward to the Spectator coming once a week, and driven into Plymouth every so often to see if there was anything readable at Waterstones. And become severely alcoholic out of complete and utter boredom.
Yes the Net is great for older people. Paradoxically less so for the young
Btw thanks for your advice to go out and see Seth Lakeman live, last night. He was brilliant. A truly rousing gig. Some beautiful musicianship. But also alpha showmanship. He’s like the Bruce Springsteen of Dartmoor
Most of those crossing the channel are genuine refugees not economic migrants.
That kind of thing assumes that people are only one or the other.
Plenty of people live in a shitty country *and* want a better life in economic terms. They could *survive* where they are (possibly), but want something better. So you could have someone whose immigration decision was 60% asylum and 40% economic (say)
“Last year the U.S. divorce rate hit a 50-year low. Teen pregnancies are at the lowest rate seen since they began to be systematically tracked in the 1930s, and the rate continues to plummet: In 2018, the teen-pregnancy rate was half of what it was in 2008. Even the rate of out-of-wedlock births, which had been climbing steadily since the 1950s, peaked around 2008 and has been declining modestly since—from 52 births per 1,000 unmarried women that year to 40 in 2019.”
Sounds good. But why is it happening?
“The bad news is that rates of more positive behaviors are declining too. Most notably, both marriage rates and fertility rates are at all-time lows in the United States. Total fertility in our country is now about 1.7 births per woman, well below the population-replacement rate. Younger Americans are having trouble pairing off—so that not only teen sex but also teen dating have dipped dramatically. “
“There are fewer abortions because there are fewer pregnancies, and so more of those that happen are wanted. There are fewer out-of-wedlock births because there are fewer births in general. The same pattern is evident beyond sexuality and family too. Fewer teenagers are dying in car accidents because fewer teenagers are getting driver’s licenses. There is less social disorder, we might say, because there is less social life. We are doing less of everything together, so that what we do is a little more tidy and controlled.”
Every western nation now is below replacement rate birth rate of 2.1, including the USA.
France at 1.87 is the only one close
The great global population decline will be a wholly new issue for the world to get its head around (for it will happen in even the poorest countries in due course too). It possibly comes at the nick of time to slow down climate change, but for a science and economics establishment used to rising global population it's going to be a hell of a big change in paradigm.
The closest - and related - analogue I can think of is the end of inflation in Japan about 20 years ago and the new phenomenon of deflation. Economists hard-wired to see inflation as a permanent state took a long time to work out what on earth its opposite would mean.
Shrinking population means shrinking GDP, deflation, an increasing dependency ratio, yet (if Japan and Eastern / Southern Europe are anything to go by) relatively stable or growing urban populations with massive rural emptying. A world made up of thriving urban centres + wilderness. A kind of global version of Washington State or Arizona.
Globally the population is not in decline though, the global birthrate is 2.4 ie just above replacement level and higher in the developing world.
The population decline is mainly in the West, Eastern Europe and Far East so they will have to grapple with the factors you mention.
There’s a movement in the US that’s trying to encourage rapid population growth, with a target of a billion Americans, as being the only way to restrain China from becoming the world’s sole superpower.
I retract my previous criticisms of the Church of England, I'm sure @HYUFD will now be espousing disestablishing the Church of England.
The Church of England is facing questions over its role in converting hundreds of asylum seekers, including the Liverpool suicide bomber, to Christianity in an attempt to help them avoid deportation.
Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, is understood to be appalled at the "merry-go-round" of failed asylum seekers changing religion and using other tactics to launch "appeal after appeal" to stay in the country.
The Iraqi man killed in the abortive suicide bomb attack outside Liverpool Women's Hospital is understood to have been helped by the Church in his attempts to avoid being kicked out of Britain, after his claim for asylum was first rejected in 2014.
The Home Office believes changing religion is now "standard practice" among asylum seekers from countries including Iraq "to game the asylum system", as converts claim they are at risk of persecution in their home countries.
That and being told to say they are gay are the two most obvious routes to asylum from shithole but not specifically dangerous countries.
My ex, who worked in immigration law, described the comedy (on occasion) as er.... aggressively homophobic clients would get very worried that, when claiming to be gay, that might have to prove that they were gay.
Which begs the question, how do you prove you are gay?
Like your religion, they *have* to take your word for it. Which is why it is such a handy method of claiming asylum.
Mind you, given the efforts to claim that physical things like age can't be checked....
One point in this - if the church did go through with a fake conversion, they may have fuelled the self-loathing of the individual in question.
Apparently a big thing in radicalisation is the element of "you have corrupted yourself with Western indulgence" - forsaking your faith with a lie would have fed into that.
I retract my previous criticisms of the Church of England, I'm sure @HYUFD will now be espousing disestablishing the Church of England.
The Church of England is facing questions over its role in converting hundreds of asylum seekers, including the Liverpool suicide bomber, to Christianity in an attempt to help them avoid deportation.
Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, is understood to be appalled at the "merry-go-round" of failed asylum seekers changing religion and using other tactics to launch "appeal after appeal" to stay in the country.
The Iraqi man killed in the abortive suicide bomb attack outside Liverpool Women's Hospital is understood to have been helped by the Church in his attempts to avoid being kicked out of Britain, after his claim for asylum was first rejected in 2014.
The Home Office believes changing religion is now "standard practice" among asylum seekers from countries including Iraq "to game the asylum system", as converts claim they are at risk of persecution in their home countries.
That and being told to say they are gay are the two most obvious routes to asylum from shithole but not specifically dangerous countries.
My ex, who worked in immigration law, described the comedy (on occasion) as er.... aggressively homophobic clients would get very worried that, when claiming to be gay, that might have to prove that they were gay.
Which begs the question, how do you prove you are gay?
Like your religion, they *have* to take your word for it. Which is why it is such a handy method of claiming asylum.
Mind you, given the efforts to claim that physical things like age can't be checked....
One point in this - if the church did go through with a fake conversion, they may have fuelled the self-loathing of the individual in question.
Apparently a big thing in radicalisation is the element of "you have corrupted yourself with Western indulgence" - forsaking your faith with a lie would have fed into that.
Most of those crossing the channel are genuine refugees not economic migrants.
That kind of thing assumes that people are only one or the other.
Plenty of people live in a shitty country *and* want a better life in economic terms. They could *survive* where they are (possibly), but want something better. So you could have someone whose immigration decision was 60% asylum and 40% economic (say)
And this is why it is a complex issue.
91% of those crossing the channel are from just 10 countries, which all suffer from civil wars, violence and/or repression. There are many many more "shitty" countries in the world than those 10 countries, but their citizens are not the ones showing up on our beaches.
“Last year the U.S. divorce rate hit a 50-year low. Teen pregnancies are at the lowest rate seen since they began to be systematically tracked in the 1930s, and the rate continues to plummet: In 2018, the teen-pregnancy rate was half of what it was in 2008. Even the rate of out-of-wedlock births, which had been climbing steadily since the 1950s, peaked around 2008 and has been declining modestly since—from 52 births per 1,000 unmarried women that year to 40 in 2019.”
Sounds good. But why is it happening?
“The bad news is that rates of more positive behaviors are declining too. Most notably, both marriage rates and fertility rates are at all-time lows in the United States. Total fertility in our country is now about 1.7 births per woman, well below the population-replacement rate. Younger Americans are having trouble pairing off—so that not only teen sex but also teen dating have dipped dramatically. “
“There are fewer abortions because there are fewer pregnancies, and so more of those that happen are wanted. There are fewer out-of-wedlock births because there are fewer births in general. The same pattern is evident beyond sexuality and family too. Fewer teenagers are dying in car accidents because fewer teenagers are getting driver’s licenses. There is less social disorder, we might say, because there is less social life. We are doing less of everything together, so that what we do is a little more tidy and controlled.”
Every western nation now is below replacement rate birth rate of 2.1, including the USA.
France at 1.87 is the only one close
The great global population decline will be a wholly new issue for the world to get its head around (for it will happen in even the poorest countries in due course too). It possibly comes at the nick of time to slow down climate change, but for a science and economics establishment used to rising global population it's going to be a hell of a big change in paradigm.
The closest - and related - analogue I can think of is the end of inflation in Japan about 20 years ago and the new phenomenon of deflation. Economists hard-wired to see inflation as a permanent state took a long time to work out what on earth its opposite would mean.
Shrinking population means shrinking GDP, deflation, an increasing dependency ratio, yet (if Japan and Eastern / Southern Europe are anything to go by) relatively stable or growing urban populations with massive rural emptying. A world made up of thriving urban centres + wilderness. A kind of global version of Washington State or Arizona.
Globally the population is not in decline though, the global birthrate is 2.4 ie just above replacement level and higher in the developing world.
The population decline is mainly in the West, Eastern Europe and Far East so they will have to grapple with the factors you mention.
There’s a movement in the US that’s trying to encourage rapid population growth, with a target of a billion Americans, as being the only way to restrain China from becoming the world’s sole superpower.
Yes, inevitably once China moved away from Communist Maoism as the largest population in the world with a reasonably educated population it was always going to be the number 1 superpower.
That does not mean it will be sole superpower, the US and India for example will likely be the others this century but the US certainly needs more babies to be No 1 again
Most of those crossing the channel are genuine refugees not economic migrants.
That kind of thing assumes that people are only one or the other.
Plenty of people live in a shitty country *and* want a better life in economic terms. They could *survive* where they are (possibly), but want something better. So you could have someone whose immigration decision was 60% asylum and 40% economic (say)
And this is why it is a complex issue.
91% of those crossing the channel are from just 10 countries, which all suffer from civil wars, violence and/or repression. There are many many more "shitty" countries in the world than those 10 countries, but their citizens are not the ones showing up on our beaches.
Mainly because they can get to the French beaches without much (or any) air travel.
If we had any kind of land connection with Central and South America, you'd find a lot more people from that part of the world claiming asylum here.
Most of those crossing the channel are genuine refugees not economic migrants.
That kind of thing assumes that people are only one or the other.
Plenty of people live in a shitty country *and* want a better life in economic terms. They could *survive* where they are (possibly), but want something better. So you could have someone whose immigration decision was 60% asylum and 40% economic (say)
And this is why it is a complex issue.
91% of those crossing the channel are from just 10 countries, which all suffer from civil wars, violence and/or repression. There are many many more "shitty" countries in the world than those 10 countries, but their citizens are not the ones showing up on our beaches.
France and Belgium suffer from civil war, violence and/or repression?
Golly, email from Amazon saying you can't pay by visa credit card as from january
Unless it's a Nigerian prince wanting some alternative card details from me
Nope was about to report the same.
It seems Mastercard have cut Amazon a discounted rate that Visa weren't willing to match. Visa Debit cards aren't impacted but I don't have 1 anymore as I discovered to my cost when Ticketmaster weren't accepting Mastercard a while back.
WTF?
Are Amazon bonkers? There's zillions of VISA credit card owners.
There are far fewer Visa credit cards than Mastercard nowadays
Mastercard are being quite aggressive recently. They’ve snatched a lot of VISA’s debit card business. Santander already and RBS/NatWest in the new year are moving to debit Mastercards.
There’s a few more in the pipeline.
These things can happen both ways of course. I remember the incredibly irritating rules on only being able to buy Olympics tickets with VISA cards
On the Yorkshire "Kevin" use, I'd guess that it was used due to it sounding quite similar to "Kaffir", another word that Ballance is alleged to have used (and presumably picked up due to his Zimbabwean background).
“Last year the U.S. divorce rate hit a 50-year low. Teen pregnancies are at the lowest rate seen since they began to be systematically tracked in the 1930s, and the rate continues to plummet: In 2018, the teen-pregnancy rate was half of what it was in 2008. Even the rate of out-of-wedlock births, which had been climbing steadily since the 1950s, peaked around 2008 and has been declining modestly since—from 52 births per 1,000 unmarried women that year to 40 in 2019.”
Sounds good. But why is it happening?
“The bad news is that rates of more positive behaviors are declining too. Most notably, both marriage rates and fertility rates are at all-time lows in the United States. Total fertility in our country is now about 1.7 births per woman, well below the population-replacement rate. Younger Americans are having trouble pairing off—so that not only teen sex but also teen dating have dipped dramatically. “
“There are fewer abortions because there are fewer pregnancies, and so more of those that happen are wanted. There are fewer out-of-wedlock births because there are fewer births in general. The same pattern is evident beyond sexuality and family too. Fewer teenagers are dying in car accidents because fewer teenagers are getting driver’s licenses. There is less social disorder, we might say, because there is less social life. We are doing less of everything together, so that what we do is a little more tidy and controlled.”
Every western nation now is below replacement rate birth rate of 2.1, including the USA.
France at 1.87 is the only one close
The great global population decline will be a wholly new issue for the world to get its head around (for it will happen in even the poorest countries in due course too). It possibly comes at the nick of time to slow down climate change, but for a science and economics establishment used to rising global population it's going to be a hell of a big change in paradigm.
The closest - and related - analogue I can think of is the end of inflation in Japan about 20 years ago and the new phenomenon of deflation. Economists hard-wired to see inflation as a permanent state took a long time to work out what on earth its opposite would mean.
Shrinking population means shrinking GDP, deflation, an increasing dependency ratio, yet (if Japan and Eastern / Southern Europe are anything to go by) relatively stable or growing urban populations with massive rural emptying. A world made up of thriving urban centres + wilderness. A kind of global version of Washington State or Arizona.
Thriving urban centres + wilderness sounds quite good to me. You get the glories of London, then you step outside and it’s the primordial forest of the Weald, and the rolling woods of the Chilterns. Pristine and undisturbed
It’s often occurred to me that south east England must have been utterly exquisite - before we concreted half of it. The bits that remain are still gems. But isolated
And you could keep some thatched cottages for the day-trippers as well.
Not for me thanks.
I want variety where in the space of two hours you can go from the trees and flowers of outer suburbia, through working farmland to ancient forest then country parks, re-wilded hills and the lakes of redeveloped land.
You can keep your wilderness and twee for the tourists - I prefer a twenty-first century landscape.
It can be true both that Johnson is an untrustworthy and irresponsible leader who has made the situation worse and that the deal he signed (which he claimed was great and won an election to ratify) really does threaten the very peace settlement in Northern Ireland that it was meant to protect. What is more, if this is the case, the EU must share some responsibility for the mess, for the deal was made as much in Europe as in Britain.
Most of those crossing the channel are genuine refugees not economic migrants.
That kind of thing assumes that people are only one or the other.
Plenty of people live in a shitty country *and* want a better life in economic terms. They could *survive* where they are (possibly), but want something better. So you could have someone whose immigration decision was 60% asylum and 40% economic (say)
And this is why it is a complex issue.
91% of those crossing the channel are from just 10 countries, which all suffer from civil wars, violence and/or repression. There are many many more "shitty" countries in the world than those 10 countries, but their citizens are not the ones showing up on our beaches.
Mainly because they can get to the French beaches without much (or any) air travel.
If we had any kind of land connection with Central and South America, you'd find a lot more people from that part of the world claiming asylum here.
Mexico, for example....
If people were simply looking for economic opportunities, you'd have huge numbers arriving from poor and populous countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh or Nigeria. Instead, you are getting 91% coming from just 10 countries who we know are major sources of refugees owing to civil war, violence and repression.
Most of those crossing the channel are genuine refugees not economic migrants.
That kind of thing assumes that people are only one or the other.
Plenty of people live in a shitty country *and* want a better life in economic terms. They could *survive* where they are (possibly), but want something better. So you could have someone whose immigration decision was 60% asylum and 40% economic (say)
And this is why it is a complex issue.
91% of those crossing the channel are from just 10 countries, which all suffer from civil wars, violence and/or repression. There are many many more "shitty" countries in the world than those 10 countries, but their citizens are not the ones showing up on our beaches.
France and Belgium suffer from civil war, violence and/or repression?
France is a failed state - various refugee agencies/charities state that the conditions for refugees are intolerable there.
Belgium is arguably similar.
We should invade and steal their oil.
On a serious note - my ex who worked both sides of the immigration thing (started out in immigration services, went into private practise) said that while the UK immigration people were often racist (she was first generation African immigration, herself), it was nothing on the French police and immigration officials. In the UK, they seemed to at least pay lip service to being non-racist. In the French system, people were openly racist about the immigrants. In front of her. They seemed to be using the old "educated black people are different" standard of racism, apparently.
Most of those crossing the channel are genuine refugees not economic migrants.
That kind of thing assumes that people are only one or the other.
Plenty of people live in a shitty country *and* want a better life in economic terms. They could *survive* where they are (possibly), but want something better. So you could have someone whose immigration decision was 60% asylum and 40% economic (say)
And this is why it is a complex issue.
91% of those crossing the channel are from just 10 countries, which all suffer from civil wars, violence and/or repression. There are many many more "shitty" countries in the world than those 10 countries, but their citizens are not the ones showing up on our beaches.
Mainly because they can get to the French beaches without much (or any) air travel.
If we had any kind of land connection with Central and South America, you'd find a lot more people from that part of the world claiming asylum here.
Mexico, for example....
If people were simply looking for economic opportunities, you'd have huge numbers arriving from poor and populous countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh or Nigeria. Instead, you are getting 91% coming from just 10 countries who we know are major sources of refugees owing to civil war, violence and repression.
We are getting plenty of applications from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nigeria. And you can make a case for asylum for all of those countries, at least for some groups.
The people on the beaches at Calais are a small sub-group of asylum seekers/immigrants.
Speaking of religious conversions-of-convenience, can someone run through the logic of Boris's annulled marriages again? Or Tony Blair's undercover Catholicism?
Boris was baptised a Catholic but abandoned it and was confirmed into the CoE. His previous two marriages were not in church so under canon law his marriage to Carrie was his first proper one. Quite why they ignored his adultery - and hers - and his procuring abortions for his mistress beats me. But there you go.
On names, I have a complicated name which hardly anyone ever gets right. Same for both my parents. I have never been called by the first name on my birth certificate but this seems to follow a family tradition. All my Irish aunties had lovely names but when we were doing a family tree a few years back we discovered that their given names were very different and that my grandparents had simply recycled the same two names using them alternately.
Kevin on the other hand is a lovely name in Ireland and Brittany. It is the name of an Irish saint and, over there, does not have the same connotations that the snobby English have assigned to it.
Finally, on politics, I do think that the decision to scrap the rail improvements in the North - a manifesto commitment - is going to hit the Tories much harder than sleaze and will not do much for Sunak's chances. Typical "penny wise, pound foolish" policies from the Tories coupled with a broken promise. A bad move.
Comments
Edit: Orchy, dammit! Orczy is an odd autocorrect.
He’s a twink and gay porn star loved by most of my gay and bi friends.
He’s actually gay for pay which means he’s loved by quite a few of my heterosexual female friends.
Sounds good. But why is it happening?
“The bad news is that rates of more positive behaviors are declining too. Most notably, both marriage rates and fertility rates are at all-time lows in the United States. Total fertility in our country is now about 1.7 births per woman, well below the population-replacement rate. Younger Americans are having trouble pairing off—so that not only teen sex but also teen dating have dipped dramatically. “
“There are fewer abortions because there are fewer pregnancies, and so more of those that happen are wanted. There are fewer out-of-wedlock births because there are fewer births in general. The same pattern is evident beyond sexuality and family too. Fewer teenagers are dying in car accidents because fewer teenagers are getting driver’s licenses. There is less social disorder, we might say, because there is less social life. We are doing less of everything together, so that what we do is a little more tidy and controlled.”
Something weird is happening to humanity
https://thedispatch.com/p/the-changing-face-of-social-breakdown
Are Amazon bonkers? There's zillions of VISA credit card owners.
*to be fair, N Yorks is so white that there probably isn't much chance for racists to practice their craft, so they head west to where there are more opportunities
My impression is that Sturgeon is moving towards the Left and de-prioritising Indy. The hard-line on Trans rights is another sign. Be interesting to see if they go so far as expelling Joanne Cherry over this. Huge social media campaign to take her out.
https://www.uswitch.com/credit-cards/visa/
France at 1.87 is the only one close
There’s a few more in the pipeline.
Most people have no idea of the layers of fees that card payments entail for retailers....
The alt-banks and investigations in price fixing have caused real competition for the first time in years.
I reckon the Belarus/Poland business could easily turn hot very quickly. All it would take is a jittery gopnik or dreisarz to send a few rounds through the wire and it'd be on like Fat Pat's Thong.
It was Cameron who allowed in Syrian refugees, morally arguably correctly but clearly better background checks were needed.
It is the UK government and Home Office who should ensure we do thorough checks of those we allow in and deport those who turn out to be security risks, not the Church
The inflationary 'spike' looks more like a hump to me.
Finally some good news from the US.
With her nose out.
Former world No 1 joins others in voicing concern for Peng, who has not been seen since accusing ex-vice-premier of sexual assault
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/nov/17/naomi-osaka-expresses-shock-over-missing-chinese-tennis-star-peng-shuai
Washing your hands of responsibility isn't the done thing in Christianity....
*Written procedure of the CoE, IIRC.
Plus young people are much more risk averse. Cautious. Nervous. From sex to booze to the way they speak. They are scared
Of course I make these comments by typing on my smartphone. Which I have been scrolling for 2 hours, this morning
Do you really think that this man was a Christian?
You have to provide a photograph of yourself being buggered, with a smile on your face.
Ouch
It's not a conversation you need to have with your wife
Fiscal policy can be used to tackle inflation as well as monetary policy.
Not all of this is bad. A bit of population decline would probably be a good thing, although with three children I'm not contributing to it.
The closest - and related - analogue I can think of is the end of inflation in Japan about 20 years ago and the new phenomenon of deflation. Economists hard-wired to see inflation as a permanent state took a long time to work out what on earth its opposite would mean.
Shrinking population means shrinking GDP, deflation, an increasing dependency ratio, yet (if Japan and Eastern / Southern Europe are anything to go by) relatively stable or growing urban populations with massive rural emptying. A world made up of thriving urban centres + wilderness. A kind of global version of Washington State or Arizona.
The suggestion was that they are knowingly performing fake baptisms. If true, this could be making things worse.
I know a someone who did adult baptism - so they could stand as god parents at a christening - and he didn't just rock up at the church and get water tipped on him. X meetings with a priest to make sure he was sincere....
On the internet, where databases enforce the uniqueness of names, the solution has been to append numbers, which is lacking a certain something.
Rethinking names to create uniqueness in a more human and interesting way would be a worthwhile project.
If you disagree with a policy why shouldn't a priest do everything they can to keep the refugee (who they now personally know) in the country.
As I said - it's not the job of a priest to do the job of the immigration service - if the immigration service has outsourced that job and can't see the utter flaw in the plan that just show how stupid the immigration service is
The rumours are they've not made the official decision but if they do they will go for the big bang option and move over all Lloyds, Halifax, and BOS customers in the same month.
They have an IT screw up when that happens...
He did all this as a bit of hippy, when he was young.
So we had this senior, silver haired, suited, boss type chap with a name.....
And there are still gaps in the story. Should the bomber have been deported when his asylum appeal failed five years ago? Was the intended target the cathedral or the hospital? Whose idea was it? And so on.
It’s often occurred to me that south east England must have been utterly exquisite - before we concreted half of it. The bits that remain are still gems. But isolated
How can the immigration service test peoples religion? Make them spit on the other holy books? There are very good reasons why religion is a personal thing....
If, as you suggest, it is morally fine for the priests to say that anyone is a Christian to get round laws they don't like, then surely the Immigration Service can say "You say he is CoE. Since you lie about this kind of thing, we no longer accept the concept of conversion".
Think of it as a bit like having people from various professions counter-signing important documents tis verify identity - if lying about that became endemic, then the government would no longer use that method.
From Wiki: "From 1991 to 1998, he served in Germany, Cyprus, Belize, and Northern Ireland, rising to the rank of captain. During his time in Northern Ireland, he was mentioned in dispatches in 1992 for an incident in which the patrol he was commanding captured an entire IRA active service unit attempting to carry out a bomb attack against British troops."
Btw thanks for your advice to go out and see Seth Lakeman live, last night. He was brilliant. A truly rousing gig. Some beautiful musicianship. But also alpha showmanship. He’s like the Bruce Springsteen of Dartmoor
I think the inflation thing will run and run, and become much more obvious to voters by the spring. The stats for December and Christmas will be interesting.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Austria, Czechia, Slovenia and Slovakia having UK equivalents of over 100k new cases per day.
Hungary is at an equivalent of 'only' 75k but has the highest death toll.
Any country which kept restrictions during summer made the wrong choice.
There are societies which didn't allow the peasants to have surnames.
On the basis that HMS QE was supposed to exert some influence on events while being 1000km from Kabul, presumably HMS PoW will have the same effect on Kiev just by being tied up in Portsmouth.
There were a huge variety of Saxon names with meant relatively little repetition. By contrast, Davids, Rogers, Richards, Williams, Henrys, and Johns were very common indeed, as was Mary on the female side.
The biggest downside is dead villages and small towns with empty shops, half day closing and elderly residents who go to bed early.
Most of those crossing the channel are genuine refugees not economic migrants.
The population decline is mainly in the West, Eastern Europe and Far East so they will have to grapple with the factors you mention.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependencies_by_total_fertility_rate
And the registering nurse at the hospital where he was born refused to accept Dweezil Zappa, which suggests that unique identification isn't really accepted as the point of naming.
As Eek correctly says, it is the immigration service (and the government's) job not to let security risks into this country and to deport those who turn out to be security risks.
That is not the Church's job. The Church's job includes converting souls to Christ
That's why the post you replied to said that this "..will be a wholly new issue..."
Humanity may be replacing itself, anyway
Plenty of people live in a shitty country *and* want a better life in economic terms. They could *survive* where they are (possibly), but want something better. So you could have someone whose immigration decision was 60% asylum and 40% economic (say)
And this is why it is a complex issue.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Billion_Americans
Has anyone said "Lessons Will Be Learned" yet?
*Press reports
That does not mean it will be sole superpower, the US and India for example will likely be the others this century but the US certainly needs more babies to be No 1 again
If we had any kind of land connection with Central and South America, you'd find a lot more people from that part of the world claiming asylum here.
Mexico, for example....
Not for me thanks.
I want variety where in the space of two hours you can go from the trees and flowers of outer suburbia, through working farmland to ancient forest then country parks, re-wilded hills and the lakes of redeveloped land.
You can keep your wilderness and twee for the tourists - I prefer a twenty-first century landscape.
It can be true both that Johnson is an untrustworthy and irresponsible leader who has made the situation worse and that the deal he signed (which he claimed was great and won an election to ratify) really does threaten the very peace settlement in Northern Ireland that it was meant to protect. What is more, if this is the case, the EU must share some responsibility for the mess, for the deal was made as much in Europe as in Britain.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/11/uk-eu-northern-ireland/620716/
Belgium is arguably similar.
We should invade and steal their oil.
On a serious note - my ex who worked both sides of the immigration thing (started out in immigration services, went into private practise) said that while the UK immigration people were often racist (she was first generation African immigration, herself), it was nothing on the French police and immigration officials. In the UK, they seemed to at least pay lip service to being non-racist. In the French system, people were openly racist about the immigrants. In front of her. They seemed to be using the old "educated black people are different" standard of racism, apparently.
The people on the beaches at Calais are a small sub-group of asylum seekers/immigrants.
On names, I have a complicated name which hardly anyone ever gets right. Same for both my parents. I have never been called by the first name on my birth certificate but this seems to follow a family tradition. All my Irish aunties had lovely names but when we were doing a family tree a few years back we discovered that their given names were very different and that my grandparents had simply recycled the same two names using them alternately.
Kevin on the other hand is a lovely name in Ireland and Brittany. It is the name of an Irish saint and, over there, does not have the same connotations that the snobby English have assigned to it.
Finally, on politics, I do think that the decision to scrap the rail improvements in the North - a manifesto commitment - is going to hit the Tories much harder than sleaze and will not do much for Sunak's chances. Typical "penny wise, pound foolish" policies from the Tories coupled with a broken promise. A bad move.