I honestly don't know what is misconstrued about "There's no such thing as society" interview.
Shes whinging about people skiving on the dole, her meaning is pretty clear.
If you read the speech, she was talking about a variant of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect, where people think that "This problem is going to be fixed by Society*, not me".
*As in some remote, amorphous organisation that exists completely separately from the population at large.
That is what some people on the left want though it seems. A perfect example is food banks.
In the Labour days food banks etc were heavily restricted and what wasn't very restricted was legalised loan sharks like Wonga etc
David Cameron reversed that. The restrictions on food banks were lifted and restrictions were put on for the loan sharks.
As a result the loan sharks went out of business and the food banks have thrived. Instead of celebrating that, the left bemoans the rise of food banks instead of celebrating them as a success of people donating what they can spare to help others rather than forcing others to go to loan sharks instead as they had to under Blair and Brown.
This is complete nonsense. Foodbank demand exploded in 2014-15, immediately after the first round of welfare cuts
You're looking at it completely backwards
Food bank demand is limited by food bank supply. The demand for free food is essentially infinite, what is not infinite is generosity and people choosing to give.
Also 2015 is when Wonga started losing instead of making money.
So yes the two are intrinsically linked. The regulations on food banks were eased and thus people started giving to them more, so people started demanding from them more, which is a virtuous rather than vicious circle.
The regulations on Wonga etc were tightened, so the likes of Wonga weren't the free cash making machines preying on the vulnerable that they were under Brown.
You should be celebrating 2014/15 seeing food banks replace Wonga not bemoaning it.
Celebrating widespread reliance on foodbanks?
Orwellian right wing Doublespeak.
No, celebrating widespread availability of foodbanks.
People will always run into hard times. When they do it is better to have foodbanks than Wonga, theft or starvation.
So your policy objective is food banks all over the place but nobody using them?
Basic economics says the demand for free is infinite. There will always be demand.
But yes food banks all over the place is fantastic. The more the merrier, let people give what they can afford to give so that those in need can get from those who have something to spare.
What is bad about that in your eyes?
You've never been to a food bank. Or spoken to people who use food banks. Or the people who run food banks.
Demand is not infinite. The profound shame that so many users feel having to resort to using them means that demand is far from infinite.
Nor is having a lot of food banks in your area something to celebrate. They are a physical demonstration of a society that has gone very wrong, especially with so many people with jobs still having to shame themselves using them as their wages do not pay the bills.
Is a food bank better than a loan shark? Yes. In the same way that losing your leg below the knee is better than losing it below the hip. In no way is people having to beg for charity to survive "fantastic".
Oh cut the sanctimonious claptrap. If I wanted to listen to that, I'd be religious and go to Chruch.
People have always run into hard times. People will always run into hard times. That's not "society gone very wrong" that is real life.
Yes people may be regretful, but that is no different whatsoever to people being ashamed to sign on for welfare benefits. Either way it is better that the supply is there than it isn't.
That people are willing to donate to those less fortunate than them isn't society gone wrong, its society gone right and something to celebrate.
Unless you can point to me a time when food banks were getting inundated with donations that were going to landfill as they had nobody to give the donations to, because everybody was fine and dandy, nobody hand trouble, nobody was getting into debt etc then yes supply always has been and always will be the limiting factor.
Absolute rubbish. Food banks have a requirement for people to access them just like the benefits system. If more people fall into it then by definition then things are going worse. That is unless you can demonstrate that food banks are relaxing their criteria for help to encompass more people?
Yes they have relaxed the criteria to encompass more people. Those reforms happened in the Coalition government. That is the point!
Plus awareness of them increased so people started going to them instead of Wonga.
But as mentioned, the main reform happened in 2010. Suddenly job centres were actually sending people direct to foodbanks. The absolute explosion in use happened a few years later, when this route was also already altered and slightly restricted.
Yes because the supply wasn't there to meet the demand in 2010. 🤦♂️
Demand is infinite, supply isn't. So when the liberalisation in the rules happened, it took time to build the supply capacity. It is to the credit of the British public that they responded by being generous and meeting the demand that was always there.
Almost none of this is true in this particular case, but I know that whatever I post will make little difference to your view.
What evidence do you have it isn't true? You haven't provided any evidence whatsoever. Do you have evidence of food banks sending mounds of food to landfill due to an absence of demand in 2011?
The onus one me isn't to prove a lack of demand in 2011 ; the onus is on you to prove that your abstracted concept of infinite demand has anything immediately relevant or helpful with the debate. There were clear new drivers of demand in 2013-2015, in a period of significant welfare cuts, and which period also coincided with rises in homelessness and several other social indicators.
To me it seems that you're trying to bend reality towards an ideology.
Its always daft straw man arguments and daft emojis from him.
His core supposition is that food banks are fantastic and demand for free food is infinite. As neither is true you can just ignore the straw man points and move on.
Why pre-food banks were Britons needing to borrow billions from the likes of Wonga that went out of business when food banks displaced them?
Can you actually answer the point or are you just going to daftly pretend everything was fine and dandy pre-2014 and nobody ever had money issues prior to food banks replacing Wonga.com?
Is it better for people who run into difficulty to have a charity able to provide assistance, or to pay 5000% APR instead?
I honestly don't know what is misconstrued about "There's no such thing as society" interview.
Shes whinging about people skiving on the dole, her meaning is pretty clear.
If you read the speech, she was talking about a variant of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect, where people think that "This problem is going to be fixed by Society*, not me".
*As in some remote, amorphous organisation that exists completely separately from the population at large.
That is what some people on the left want though it seems. A perfect example is food banks.
In the Labour days food banks etc were heavily restricted and what wasn't very restricted was legalised loan sharks like Wonga etc
David Cameron reversed that. The restrictions on food banks were lifted and restrictions were put on for the loan sharks.
As a result the loan sharks went out of business and the food banks have thrived. Instead of celebrating that, the left bemoans the rise of food banks instead of celebrating them as a success of people donating what they can spare to help others rather than forcing others to go to loan sharks instead as they had to under Blair and Brown.
This is complete nonsense. Foodbank demand exploded in 2014-15, immediately after the first round of welfare cuts
You're looking at it completely backwards
Food bank demand is limited by food bank supply. The demand for free food is essentially infinite, what is not infinite is generosity and people choosing to give.
Also 2015 is when Wonga started losing instead of making money.
So yes the two are intrinsically linked. The regulations on food banks were eased and thus people started giving to them more, so people started demanding from them more, which is a virtuous rather than vicious circle.
The regulations on Wonga etc were tightened, so the likes of Wonga weren't the free cash making machines preying on the vulnerable that they were under Brown.
You should be celebrating 2014/15 seeing food banks replace Wonga not bemoaning it.
Celebrating widespread reliance on foodbanks?
Orwellian right wing Doublespeak.
No, celebrating widespread availability of foodbanks.
People will always run into hard times. When they do it is better to have foodbanks than Wonga, theft or starvation.
So your policy objective is food banks all over the place but nobody using them?
Basic economics says the demand for free is infinite. There will always be demand.
But yes food banks all over the place is fantastic. The more the merrier, let people give what they can afford to give so that those in need can get from those who have something to spare.
What is bad about that in your eyes?
You've never been to a food bank. Or spoken to people who use food banks. Or the people who run food banks.
Demand is not infinite. The profound shame that so many users feel having to resort to using them means that demand is far from infinite.
Nor is having a lot of food banks in your area something to celebrate. They are a physical demonstration of a society that has gone very wrong, especially with so many people with jobs still having to shame themselves using them as their wages do not pay the bills.
Is a food bank better than a loan shark? Yes. In the same way that losing your leg below the knee is better than losing it below the hip. In no way is people having to beg for charity to survive "fantastic".
Oh cut the sanctimonious claptrap. If I wanted to listen to that, I'd be religious and go to Chruch.
People have always run into hard times. People will always run into hard times. That's not "society gone very wrong" that is real life.
Yes people may be regretful, but that is no different whatsoever to people being ashamed to sign on for welfare benefits. Either way it is better that the supply is there than it isn't.
That people are willing to donate to those less fortunate than them isn't society gone wrong, its society gone right and something to celebrate.
Unless you can point to me a time when food banks were getting inundated with donations that were going to landfill as they had nobody to give the donations to, because everybody was fine and dandy, nobody hand trouble, nobody was getting into debt etc then yes supply always has been and always will be the limiting factor.
Thanks for reinforcing my points that you are clueless on the issue.
Not clueless.
Demand for free is infinite.
Utterly clueless. And shameless. Hardly unexpected though.
Air is free. That's why I walk around breathing as fast as I can. It plays havoc with my blood chemistry, but hey. Free
Yes, got some things right but not great overall seems about right.
Looking at it as more or fewer deaths continues not to make sense, since it means places regarded as doing much better than the UK would be essentially just as terrible, eg Germany would be among the worst in the world barely better than us since 7th or 14th out of 190 odd is not good.
One thing that has skewed the view of a lot of people is testing. Because Europe does a lot of testing we hear about record cases, and Europe also does a good job of reporting covid related deaths. So Europe is the covid hot-spot? Probably not, there have been some huge excess death figures for countries in Asia, South America, and Africa, but because of relatively poor healthcare and statistics they aren't reported as record covid cases and deaths.
I hope and expect Boris to be asked to resign by the 1922 next week and ultimately it will be his character flaws that will finally catch up with him
However, I shall always be grateful to Boris for Brexit and while mistakes were made his management of covid generally was good
I would just say that I thought I would check my energy deal which I signed with EDF on 1st September 2021 for 2 years
I know energy prices have increased since, but I was actually warned not to change as the cheapest deal available today is £1,366 pa more or twice my monthly direct debit,
I showed my wife the figures and she was dumbfounded and simply asked how on earth are people meant to pay, especially those on low or modest incomes. Sunak and Reeves can offer help on the margins but to defray this cost will cost many tens of billions of pounds and over the next two years
Reeves is talking of raising money by taxing buy to lets and investment/shares but that will only see increases in rents and lower returns on pension funds
None of this is easy for any government and as some say, (though I do not agree) the next election is a good one to lose
I agree with your main point, but AUIU the Reeves policy is simply to make sure that the 1.25% extra "income tax" (effectively) for health and social care is borne on unearned income as well as earned income - which seems pretty just. It wouldn't have any impact on income received by pension funds because they aren't within scope of the taxes that would be affected. As for rents rising, that seems pretty unlikely (as far as I know, the restriction of mortgage interest relief on personally-owned BTLs has not been shown to have a significant impact on rents, and for a normally-leveraged property it has a far bigger impact on tax cost than a 1.25% rate increase would).
Context: It's had significant effect on how many BTLs are now owned by companies. Especially amongst medium sized portfolios. There's been a polarisation as the Osborne measures have driven a polarisation.
The number that have low % of mortgage, or have mortgages paid off, is a further impact, which has reduced the resources available for investment in improving housing.
I'd say that "huge energy bills for two years" is mainly industry scaremongering.
Absolutely - I think it's a pretty terrible policy with lots of apparently unintended effects (balancing up the benefit of full interest deductibility with the higher/two-layer tax charge on getting property sales proceeds back out of a company is a particularly fun exercise), but in general landlords are already charging the highest rent that they can get, and I struggle with the idea that tenants will suddenly be willing to pay more rent because the tax rate applicable to the landlord changes.
Rather disagree with your "highest rent they can get in general" comment.
There is a huge advantage to longer term stable tenants paying a somewhat lower rent than a property could achieve, and a *lot* of LLs do it. Changing tenants, voids and refurbs are the expensive part of being a LL.
I'm not sure if stats are available.
(Just checked with my Lettings Agent and a significant number of their LLs let rents fall behind market to keep tenants, then reset to market when a T leaves.)
Perhaps at cross purposes, because I completely agree (I've had clients who take both approaches - keeping rent at market vs retaining long-term tenants - and the two groups seem to get pretty similar long-term returns), but the discussion was about the landlord's effective tax rate leading to corresponding movements in rent. A landlord who chases market-rate rent would still do so; a landlord who tries to retain tenants presumably wouldn't jeopardise that approach by trying to pass on tax costs to those tenants.
I honestly don't know what is misconstrued about "There's no such thing as society" interview.
Shes whinging about people skiving on the dole, her meaning is pretty clear.
If you read the speech, she was talking about a variant of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect, where people think that "This problem is going to be fixed by Society*, not me".
*As in some remote, amorphous organisation that exists completely separately from the population at large.
That is what some people on the left want though it seems. A perfect example is food banks.
In the Labour days food banks etc were heavily restricted and what wasn't very restricted was legalised loan sharks like Wonga etc
David Cameron reversed that. The restrictions on food banks were lifted and restrictions were put on for the loan sharks.
As a result the loan sharks went out of business and the food banks have thrived. Instead of celebrating that, the left bemoans the rise of food banks instead of celebrating them as a success of people donating what they can spare to help others rather than forcing others to go to loan sharks instead as they had to under Blair and Brown.
This is complete nonsense. Foodbank demand exploded in 2014-15, immediately after the first round of welfare cuts
You're looking at it completely backwards
Food bank demand is limited by food bank supply. The demand for free food is essentially infinite, what is not infinite is generosity and people choosing to give.
Also 2015 is when Wonga started losing instead of making money.
So yes the two are intrinsically linked. The regulations on food banks were eased and thus people started giving to them more, so people started demanding from them more, which is a virtuous rather than vicious circle.
The regulations on Wonga etc were tightened, so the likes of Wonga weren't the free cash making machines preying on the vulnerable that they were under Brown.
You should be celebrating 2014/15 seeing food banks replace Wonga not bemoaning it.
Celebrating widespread reliance on foodbanks?
Orwellian right wing Doublespeak.
No, celebrating widespread availability of foodbanks.
People will always run into hard times. When they do it is better to have foodbanks than Wonga, theft or starvation.
So your policy objective is food banks all over the place but nobody using them?
Basic economics says the demand for free is infinite. There will always be demand.
But yes food banks all over the place is fantastic. The more the merrier, let people give what they can afford to give so that those in need can get from those who have something to spare.
What is bad about that in your eyes?
You've never been to a food bank. Or spoken to people who use food banks. Or the people who run food banks.
Demand is not infinite. The profound shame that so many users feel having to resort to using them means that demand is far from infinite.
Nor is having a lot of food banks in your area something to celebrate. They are a physical demonstration of a society that has gone very wrong, especially with so many people with jobs still having to shame themselves using them as their wages do not pay the bills.
Is a food bank better than a loan shark? Yes. In the same way that losing your leg below the knee is better than losing it below the hip. In no way is people having to beg for charity to survive "fantastic".
Oh cut the sanctimonious claptrap. If I wanted to listen to that, I'd be religious and go to Chruch.
People have always run into hard times. People will always run into hard times. That's not "society gone very wrong" that is real life.
Yes people may be regretful, but that is no different whatsoever to people being ashamed to sign on for welfare benefits. Either way it is better that the supply is there than it isn't.
That people are willing to donate to those less fortunate than them isn't society gone wrong, its society gone right and something to celebrate.
Unless you can point to me a time when food banks were getting inundated with donations that were going to landfill as they had nobody to give the donations to, because everybody was fine and dandy, nobody hand trouble, nobody was getting into debt etc then yes supply always has been and always will be the limiting factor.
Absolute rubbish. Food banks have a requirement for people to access them just like the benefits system. If more people fall into it then by definition then things are going worse. That is unless you can demonstrate that food banks are relaxing their criteria for help to encompass more people?
Yes they have relaxed the criteria to encompass more people. Those reforms happened in the Coalition government. That is the point!
Plus awareness of them increased so people started going to them instead of Wonga.
But as mentioned, the main reform happened in 2010. Suddenly job centres were actually sending people direct to foodbanks. The absolute explosion in use happened a few years later, when this route was also already altered and slightly restricted.
Yes because the supply wasn't there to meet the demand in 2010. 🤦♂️
Demand is infinite, supply isn't. So when the liberalisation in the rules happened, it took time to build the supply capacity. It is to the credit of the British public that they responded by being generous and meeting the demand that was always there.
Almost none of this is true in this particular case, but I know that whatever I post will make little difference to your view.
What evidence do you have it isn't true? You haven't provided any evidence whatsoever. Do you have evidence of food banks sending mounds of food to landfill due to an absence of demand in 2011?
The onus one me isn't to prove a lack of demand in 2011 ; the onus is on you to prove that your abstracted concept of infinite demand has anything immediately relevant or helpful with the debate. There were clear new drivers of demand in 2013-2015, in a period of significant welfare cuts, and which period also coincided with rises in homelessness and several other social indicators.
To me it seems that you're trying to bend reality towards an ideology.
Its always daft straw man arguments and daft emojis from him.
His core supposition is that food banks are fantastic and demand for free food is infinite. As neither is true you can just ignore the straw man points and move on.
Why pre-food banks were Britons needing to borrow billions from the likes of Wonga that went out of business when food banks displaced them?
Can you actually answer the point or are you just going to daftly pretend everything was fine and dandy pre-2014 and nobody ever had money issues prior to food banks replacing Wonga.com?
Wonga didn't go out of business because Food Banks arrived.
Wonga went out of business because their business model was destroyed when the FCA discovered they had been naughty and should never have lent money to a vast amount of their customer base.
Why the F don't the Colombans have nice bars when you can sit outside? It's mad
They don't have many bars, for a start, and those they do have are nearly all indoors.
The climate is nearly identitcal to Thailand where every third shop is a bar or cafe - fronted by fried squid and whisky pop-ups - yet the Colombans resolutely close the windows and stay in. Both countries - Sri Lanka - Thailand - are Buddhist
Annoying. I want to sit at a seafront bar and sip gin
Yes, got some things right but not great overall seems about right.
Looking at it as more or fewer deaths continues not to make sense, since it means places regarded as doing much better than the UK would be essentially just as terrible, eg Germany would be among the worst in the world barely better than us since 7th or 14th out of 190 odd is not good.
One thing that has skewed the view of a lot of people is testing. Because Europe does a lot of testing we hear about record cases, and Europe also does a good job of reporting covid related deaths. So Europe is the covid hot-spot? Probably not, there have been some huge excess death figures for countries in Asia, South America, and Africa, but because of relatively poor healthcare and statistics they aren't reported as record covid cases and deaths.
Testing in Europe is variable, to say the least...
I honestly don't know what is misconstrued about "There's no such thing as society" interview.
Shes whinging about people skiving on the dole, her meaning is pretty clear.
If you read the speech, she was talking about a variant of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect, where people think that "This problem is going to be fixed by Society*, not me".
*As in some remote, amorphous organisation that exists completely separately from the population at large.
That is what some people on the left want though it seems. A perfect example is food banks.
In the Labour days food banks etc were heavily restricted and what wasn't very restricted was legalised loan sharks like Wonga etc
David Cameron reversed that. The restrictions on food banks were lifted and restrictions were put on for the loan sharks.
As a result the loan sharks went out of business and the food banks have thrived. Instead of celebrating that, the left bemoans the rise of food banks instead of celebrating them as a success of people donating what they can spare to help others rather than forcing others to go to loan sharks instead as they had to under Blair and Brown.
This is complete nonsense. Foodbank demand exploded in 2014-15, immediately after the first round of welfare cuts
You're looking at it completely backwards
Food bank demand is limited by food bank supply. The demand for free food is essentially infinite, what is not infinite is generosity and people choosing to give.
Also 2015 is when Wonga started losing instead of making money.
So yes the two are intrinsically linked. The regulations on food banks were eased and thus people started giving to them more, so people started demanding from them more, which is a virtuous rather than vicious circle.
The regulations on Wonga etc were tightened, so the likes of Wonga weren't the free cash making machines preying on the vulnerable that they were under Brown.
You should be celebrating 2014/15 seeing food banks replace Wonga not bemoaning it.
Celebrating widespread reliance on foodbanks?
Orwellian right wing Doublespeak.
No, celebrating widespread availability of foodbanks.
People will always run into hard times. When they do it is better to have foodbanks than Wonga, theft or starvation.
So your policy objective is food banks all over the place but nobody using them?
Basic economics says the demand for free is infinite. There will always be demand.
But yes food banks all over the place is fantastic. The more the merrier, let people give what they can afford to give so that those in need can get from those who have something to spare.
What is bad about that in your eyes?
You've never been to a food bank. Or spoken to people who use food banks. Or the people who run food banks.
Demand is not infinite. The profound shame that so many users feel having to resort to using them means that demand is far from infinite.
Nor is having a lot of food banks in your area something to celebrate. They are a physical demonstration of a society that has gone very wrong, especially with so many people with jobs still having to shame themselves using them as their wages do not pay the bills.
Is a food bank better than a loan shark? Yes. In the same way that losing your leg below the knee is better than losing it below the hip. In no way is people having to beg for charity to survive "fantastic".
Oh cut the sanctimonious claptrap. If I wanted to listen to that, I'd be religious and go to Chruch.
People have always run into hard times. People will always run into hard times. That's not "society gone very wrong" that is real life.
Yes people may be regretful, but that is no different whatsoever to people being ashamed to sign on for welfare benefits. Either way it is better that the supply is there than it isn't.
That people are willing to donate to those less fortunate than them isn't society gone wrong, its society gone right and something to celebrate.
Unless you can point to me a time when food banks were getting inundated with donations that were going to landfill as they had nobody to give the donations to, because everybody was fine and dandy, nobody hand trouble, nobody was getting into debt etc then yes supply always has been and always will be the limiting factor.
Absolute rubbish. Food banks have a requirement for people to access them just like the benefits system. If more people fall into it then by definition then things are going worse. That is unless you can demonstrate that food banks are relaxing their criteria for help to encompass more people?
Yes they have relaxed the criteria to encompass more people. Those reforms happened in the Coalition government. That is the point!
Plus awareness of them increased so people started going to them instead of Wonga.
But as mentioned, the main reform happened in 2010. Suddenly job centres were actually sending people direct to foodbanks. The absolute explosion in use happened a few years later, when this route was also already altered and slightly restricted.
Yes because the supply wasn't there to meet the demand in 2010. 🤦♂️
Demand is infinite, supply isn't. So when the liberalisation in the rules happened, it took time to build the supply capacity. It is to the credit of the British public that they responded by being generous and meeting the demand that was always there.
Almost none of this is true in this particular case, but I know that whatever I post will make little difference to your view.
What evidence do you have it isn't true? You haven't provided any evidence whatsoever. Do you have evidence of food banks sending mounds of food to landfill due to an absence of demand in 2011?
The onus one me isn't to prove a lack of demand in 2011 ; the onus is on you to prove that your abstracted concept of infinite demand has anything immediately relevant or helpful with the debate. There were clear new drivers of demand in 2013-2015, in a period of significant welfare cuts, and which period also coincided with rises in homelessness and several other social indicators.
To me it seems that you're trying to bend reality towards an ideology.
Its always daft straw man arguments and daft emojis from him.
His core supposition is that food banks are fantastic and demand for free food is infinite. As neither is true you can just ignore the straw man points and move on.
Why pre-food banks were Britons needing to borrow billions from the likes of Wonga that went out of business when food banks displaced them?
Can you actually answer the point or are you just going to daftly pretend everything was fine and dandy pre-2014 and nobody ever had money issues prior to food banks replacing Wonga.com?
Why do I - or indeed any of us - need to answer your self-righteous straw man bullshit? I understand why you removed your name from the site as who'd want to be publicly associated with that, but it hasn't sadly changed what you are posting.
You would benefit truly and profoundly from volunteering for a few hours at a food bank. Don't tell people what you think, go and listen to what the staff think and what their customers think.
Then post your snarky emojis and make your pronouncements on the subject. At least then you will have the real world experience for a change.
I read this tweet and my immediate thought was why they were only using an 8-bit system (apologies to non-geeks).
British Army's new Apache helicopters that can detect 256 potential targets at once and prioritise threats in a matter of seconds are undergoing test flights at Wattisham Flying Station. With a top speed of 186mph, the new fleet can detect targets up to a range of 10 miles https://twitter.com/jjgiddens/status/1484494710043512835
As an aside last Summer we went for a break staying close to that base. Every day we had at least one flypass from Apache helicopters.
It can only engage 16 targets so it's probably pointless acquiring more than 256. And in a situation where there are over 200 targets the crew are going to be dead soon enough anyway.
The tories have just scrapped 16 Apaches.
As a matter of interest, how effective are "fire and forget" heatseeking anti-tank weapons against low flying helicopters?
I honestly don't know what is misconstrued about "There's no such thing as society" interview.
Shes whinging about people skiving on the dole, her meaning is pretty clear.
If you read the speech, she was talking about a variant of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect, where people think that "This problem is going to be fixed by Society*, not me".
*As in some remote, amorphous organisation that exists completely separately from the population at large.
That is what some people on the left want though it seems. A perfect example is food banks.
In the Labour days food banks etc were heavily restricted and what wasn't very restricted was legalised loan sharks like Wonga etc
David Cameron reversed that. The restrictions on food banks were lifted and restrictions were put on for the loan sharks.
As a result the loan sharks went out of business and the food banks have thrived. Instead of celebrating that, the left bemoans the rise of food banks instead of celebrating them as a success of people donating what they can spare to help others rather than forcing others to go to loan sharks instead as they had to under Blair and Brown.
This is complete nonsense. Foodbank demand exploded in 2014-15, immediately after the first round of welfare cuts
You're looking at it completely backwards
Food bank demand is limited by food bank supply. The demand for free food is essentially infinite, what is not infinite is generosity and people choosing to give.
Also 2015 is when Wonga started losing instead of making money.
So yes the two are intrinsically linked. The regulations on food banks were eased and thus people started giving to them more, so people started demanding from them more, which is a virtuous rather than vicious circle.
The regulations on Wonga etc were tightened, so the likes of Wonga weren't the free cash making machines preying on the vulnerable that they were under Brown.
You should be celebrating 2014/15 seeing food banks replace Wonga not bemoaning it.
Celebrating widespread reliance on foodbanks?
Orwellian right wing Doublespeak.
No, celebrating widespread availability of foodbanks.
People will always run into hard times. When they do it is better to have foodbanks than Wonga, theft or starvation.
So your policy objective is food banks all over the place but nobody using them?
Basic economics says the demand for free is infinite. There will always be demand.
But yes food banks all over the place is fantastic. The more the merrier, let people give what they can afford to give so that those in need can get from those who have something to spare.
What is bad about that in your eyes?
You've never been to a food bank. Or spoken to people who use food banks. Or the people who run food banks.
Demand is not infinite. The profound shame that so many users feel having to resort to using them means that demand is far from infinite.
Nor is having a lot of food banks in your area something to celebrate. They are a physical demonstration of a society that has gone very wrong, especially with so many people with jobs still having to shame themselves using them as their wages do not pay the bills.
Is a food bank better than a loan shark? Yes. In the same way that losing your leg below the knee is better than losing it below the hip. In no way is people having to beg for charity to survive "fantastic".
Oh cut the sanctimonious claptrap. If I wanted to listen to that, I'd be religious and go to Chruch.
People have always run into hard times. People will always run into hard times. That's not "society gone very wrong" that is real life.
Yes people may be regretful, but that is no different whatsoever to people being ashamed to sign on for welfare benefits. Either way it is better that the supply is there than it isn't.
That people are willing to donate to those less fortunate than them isn't society gone wrong, its society gone right and something to celebrate.
Unless you can point to me a time when food banks were getting inundated with donations that were going to landfill as they had nobody to give the donations to, because everybody was fine and dandy, nobody hand trouble, nobody was getting into debt etc then yes supply always has been and always will be the limiting factor.
Thanks for reinforcing my points that you are clueless on the issue.
Not clueless.
Demand for free is infinite.
Utterly clueless. And shameless. Hardly unexpected though.
Why did the rise of food banks and a fall in predatory loan shark businesses happen in the same year?
You are the clueless one. And the shameless one. Yes the demand was there pre-2014, but it was met by Wonga and the like instead.
Lol - as I am not talking about wonga I hardly need to answer your point about wonga do I?
Not putting words into your mouth but is your huge enthusiasm for food banks because you think feeding the working poor via charity reduces your tax bill?
It is possible to both smash down on loansharks and have an economy that doesn't rely on charity to feed working people. It isn't either / or.
It is either/or.
There always have been and always will be people who run into difficulty. Somebodies car breaks down, somebodies boiler packs in, unexpected bills they can't make etc
Either you can have charity available in the form of food banks, or you can have predators available in the form of Wonga.
Pre-2014 the latent demand was there, but it was being serviced by Wonga instead. Post-2014 it was serviced by foodbanks instead.
That you are so conceited and unwilling to admit that food banks replacing predatory loan sharks is a good thing, and want to twist it to being bad by pretending all was fine and dory pre-2014 is you being how shall I put it? Clueless and shameless.
Shame on you for preferring 5000% APR over increased donations to food banks.
Dr. Foxy, a customs union would allow the EU to dictate our trade deals. There's no point leaving the EU only to let them retain the power they had and throwing away any say whatsoever in said decisions.
As and when there is any sign at all of this government going off signing new enhanced trade deals I would consider the point. There isn't. In Liz We Trust has copy pasted existing deals. The only "new" deal massively favours Australia in 15 years should it ever get implemented which it won't. Nor are there any prospects of major trading partners like Japan or America granting us new enhanced trade deals - we've openly been told to stick it.
The whole point about trade is that you form a block and negotiate en masse. The EU trade deals were better than anything we can realistically hope for because the EU is bigger than the GB. As we're now finding out.
Our post Brexit trade policy is scarcely a policy. It’s purely tactical, across the board. Looking for little wins that will impress the voters (or backbenchers) rather than any long term strategic direction that will make the country fertile ground for investment, or have a noticeable impact on consumers.
In fact the whole Brexit realignment so far has been net bad news for consumers. Not disastrous, and outweighed by other problems caused by Covid, but not positive.
The trouble is the downsides are boring. Somewhat reduced choice in retail. Traffic jams of stationary lorries in Kent. Increased costs and back office paperwork for businesses. It’s bad, but boring. So almost completely absent from media. Downing st parties, a pandemic and Russian aggression are all much more exciting.
The impact analysis by the Government on the Australian trade deal is interesting. It concedes that British agriculture will be damaged, but estimates overall that the economy will benefit by a tiny amount (0.08%) - because farming is a small industry in Britain, selling more whisky and financial products outweighs selling less British beef. But it's an odd decision by a Tory government to encourage a drift further away from farming and food security. The report is here - you have to read the whole executive summary to spot the downsides for farming:
It is, I think, true that Liz Truss saw her sole KPI as "sign several trade deals", and any benefit is hard to spot. Most of them have been rollovers from the EU, with the Australian and NZ deals the first to have at least a little significant content. Next up is probably a deal with the GCC (Saudi etc.).
It seems fairly certain that the damage done to UK farming will be real. The economic benefit calculated seems so small that it's quite possible it won't be.
I read this tweet and my immediate thought was why they were only using an 8-bit system (apologies to non-geeks).
British Army's new Apache helicopters that can detect 256 potential targets at once and prioritise threats in a matter of seconds are undergoing test flights at Wattisham Flying Station. With a top speed of 186mph, the new fleet can detect targets up to a range of 10 miles https://twitter.com/jjgiddens/status/1484494710043512835
As an aside last Summer we went for a break staying close to that base. Every day we had at least one flypass from Apache helicopters.
186 mph top speed? That's an example of using inappropriate precision in the wrong units. It's been converted from a top speed of ~300 kph, where it's probably only accurate to +/- 10 kph at best, but then given to a spurious precision of 1 mph.
I'm an advocate of Imperial measurements in some circumstances, but converting from one unit system to another is a recipe for trouble.
I honestly don't know what is misconstrued about "There's no such thing as society" interview.
Shes whinging about people skiving on the dole, her meaning is pretty clear.
If you read the speech, she was talking about a variant of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect, where people think that "This problem is going to be fixed by Society*, not me".
*As in some remote, amorphous organisation that exists completely separately from the population at large.
That is what some people on the left want though it seems. A perfect example is food banks.
In the Labour days food banks etc were heavily restricted and what wasn't very restricted was legalised loan sharks like Wonga etc
David Cameron reversed that. The restrictions on food banks were lifted and restrictions were put on for the loan sharks.
As a result the loan sharks went out of business and the food banks have thrived. Instead of celebrating that, the left bemoans the rise of food banks instead of celebrating them as a success of people donating what they can spare to help others rather than forcing others to go to loan sharks instead as they had to under Blair and Brown.
This is complete nonsense. Foodbank demand exploded in 2014-15, immediately after the first round of welfare cuts
You're looking at it completely backwards
Food bank demand is limited by food bank supply. The demand for free food is essentially infinite, what is not infinite is generosity and people choosing to give.
Also 2015 is when Wonga started losing instead of making money.
So yes the two are intrinsically linked. The regulations on food banks were eased and thus people started giving to them more, so people started demanding from them more, which is a virtuous rather than vicious circle.
The regulations on Wonga etc were tightened, so the likes of Wonga weren't the free cash making machines preying on the vulnerable that they were under Brown.
You should be celebrating 2014/15 seeing food banks replace Wonga not bemoaning it.
Celebrating widespread reliance on foodbanks?
Orwellian right wing Doublespeak.
No, celebrating widespread availability of foodbanks.
People will always run into hard times. When they do it is better to have foodbanks than Wonga, theft or starvation.
So your policy objective is food banks all over the place but nobody using them?
Basic economics says the demand for free is infinite. There will always be demand.
But yes food banks all over the place is fantastic. The more the merrier, let people give what they can afford to give so that those in need can get from those who have something to spare.
What is bad about that in your eyes?
You've never been to a food bank. Or spoken to people who use food banks. Or the people who run food banks.
Demand is not infinite. The profound shame that so many users feel having to resort to using them means that demand is far from infinite.
Nor is having a lot of food banks in your area something to celebrate. They are a physical demonstration of a society that has gone very wrong, especially with so many people with jobs still having to shame themselves using them as their wages do not pay the bills.
Is a food bank better than a loan shark? Yes. In the same way that losing your leg below the knee is better than losing it below the hip. In no way is people having to beg for charity to survive "fantastic".
Oh cut the sanctimonious claptrap. If I wanted to listen to that, I'd be religious and go to Chruch.
People have always run into hard times. People will always run into hard times. That's not "society gone very wrong" that is real life.
Yes people may be regretful, but that is no different whatsoever to people being ashamed to sign on for welfare benefits. Either way it is better that the supply is there than it isn't.
That people are willing to donate to those less fortunate than them isn't society gone wrong, its society gone right and something to celebrate.
Unless you can point to me a time when food banks were getting inundated with donations that were going to landfill as they had nobody to give the donations to, because everybody was fine and dandy, nobody hand trouble, nobody was getting into debt etc then yes supply always has been and always will be the limiting factor.
Absolute rubbish. Food banks have a requirement for people to access them just like the benefits system. If more people fall into it then by definition then things are going worse. That is unless you can demonstrate that food banks are relaxing their criteria for help to encompass more people?
Yes they have relaxed the criteria to encompass more people. Those reforms happened in the Coalition government. That is the point!
Plus awareness of them increased so people started going to them instead of Wonga.
But as mentioned, the main reform happened in 2010. Suddenly job centres were actually sending people direct to foodbanks. The absolute explosion in use happened a few years later, when this route was also already altered and slightly restricted.
Yes because the supply wasn't there to meet the demand in 2010. 🤦♂️
Demand is infinite, supply isn't. So when the liberalisation in the rules happened, it took time to build the supply capacity. It is to the credit of the British public that they responded by being generous and meeting the demand that was always there.
Almost none of this is true in this particular case, but I know that whatever I post will make little difference to your view.
What evidence do you have it isn't true? You haven't provided any evidence whatsoever. Do you have evidence of food banks sending mounds of food to landfill due to an absence of demand in 2011?
The onus one me isn't to prove a lack of demand in 2011 ; the onus is on you to prove that your abstracted concept of infinite demand has anything immediately relevant or helpful with the debate. There were clear new drivers of demand in 2013-2015, in a period of significant welfare cuts, and which period also coincided with rises in homelessness and several other social indicators.
To me it seems that you're trying to bend reality towards an ideology.
Its always daft straw man arguments and daft emojis from him.
His core supposition is that food banks are fantastic and demand for free food is infinite. As neither is true you can just ignore the straw man points and move on.
Why pre-food banks were Britons needing to borrow billions from the likes of Wonga that went out of business when food banks displaced them?
Can you actually answer the point or are you just going to daftly pretend everything was fine and dandy pre-2014 and nobody ever had money issues prior to food banks replacing Wonga.com?
Wonga didn't go out of business because Food Banks arrived.
Wonga went out of business because their business model was destroyed when the FCA discovered they had been naughty and should never have lent money to a vast amount of their customer base.
There was also this time when we hadn't debased ourselves as a society to try and pretend that "wonga" and "foodbank" are the only options to avoid poor people starving.
I honestly don't know what is misconstrued about "There's no such thing as society" interview.
Shes whinging about people skiving on the dole, her meaning is pretty clear.
If you read the speech, she was talking about a variant of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect, where people think that "This problem is going to be fixed by Society*, not me".
*As in some remote, amorphous organisation that exists completely separately from the population at large.
That is what some people on the left want though it seems. A perfect example is food banks.
In the Labour days food banks etc were heavily restricted and what wasn't very restricted was legalised loan sharks like Wonga etc
David Cameron reversed that. The restrictions on food banks were lifted and restrictions were put on for the loan sharks.
As a result the loan sharks went out of business and the food banks have thrived. Instead of celebrating that, the left bemoans the rise of food banks instead of celebrating them as a success of people donating what they can spare to help others rather than forcing others to go to loan sharks instead as they had to under Blair and Brown.
This is complete nonsense. Foodbank demand exploded in 2014-15, immediately after the first round of welfare cuts
You're looking at it completely backwards
Food bank demand is limited by food bank supply. The demand for free food is essentially infinite, what is not infinite is generosity and people choosing to give.
Also 2015 is when Wonga started losing instead of making money.
So yes the two are intrinsically linked. The regulations on food banks were eased and thus people started giving to them more, so people started demanding from them more, which is a virtuous rather than vicious circle.
The regulations on Wonga etc were tightened, so the likes of Wonga weren't the free cash making machines preying on the vulnerable that they were under Brown.
You should be celebrating 2014/15 seeing food banks replace Wonga not bemoaning it.
Celebrating widespread reliance on foodbanks?
Orwellian right wing Doublespeak.
No, celebrating widespread availability of foodbanks.
People will always run into hard times. When they do it is better to have foodbanks than Wonga, theft or starvation.
So your policy objective is food banks all over the place but nobody using them?
Basic economics says the demand for free is infinite. There will always be demand.
But yes food banks all over the place is fantastic. The more the merrier, let people give what they can afford to give so that those in need can get from those who have something to spare.
What is bad about that in your eyes?
You've never been to a food bank. Or spoken to people who use food banks. Or the people who run food banks.
Demand is not infinite. The profound shame that so many users feel having to resort to using them means that demand is far from infinite.
Nor is having a lot of food banks in your area something to celebrate. They are a physical demonstration of a society that has gone very wrong, especially with so many people with jobs still having to shame themselves using them as their wages do not pay the bills.
Is a food bank better than a loan shark? Yes. In the same way that losing your leg below the knee is better than losing it below the hip. In no way is people having to beg for charity to survive "fantastic".
Oh cut the sanctimonious claptrap. If I wanted to listen to that, I'd be religious and go to Chruch.
People have always run into hard times. People will always run into hard times. That's not "society gone very wrong" that is real life.
Yes people may be regretful, but that is no different whatsoever to people being ashamed to sign on for welfare benefits. Either way it is better that the supply is there than it isn't.
That people are willing to donate to those less fortunate than them isn't society gone wrong, its society gone right and something to celebrate.
Unless you can point to me a time when food banks were getting inundated with donations that were going to landfill as they had nobody to give the donations to, because everybody was fine and dandy, nobody hand trouble, nobody was getting into debt etc then yes supply always has been and always will be the limiting factor.
Absolute rubbish. Food banks have a requirement for people to access them just like the benefits system. If more people fall into it then by definition then things are going worse. That is unless you can demonstrate that food banks are relaxing their criteria for help to encompass more people?
Yes they have relaxed the criteria to encompass more people. Those reforms happened in the Coalition government. That is the point!
Plus awareness of them increased so people started going to them instead of Wonga.
But as mentioned, the main reform happened in 2010. Suddenly job centres were actually sending people direct to foodbanks. The absolute explosion in use happened a few years later, when this route was also already altered and slightly restricted.
Yes because the supply wasn't there to meet the demand in 2010. 🤦♂️
Demand is infinite, supply isn't. So when the liberalisation in the rules happened, it took time to build the supply capacity. It is to the credit of the British public that they responded by being generous and meeting the demand that was always there.
Almost none of this is true in this particular case, but I know that whatever I post will make little difference to your view.
What evidence do you have it isn't true? You haven't provided any evidence whatsoever. Do you have evidence of food banks sending mounds of food to landfill due to an absence of demand in 2011?
The onus one me isn't to prove a lack of demand in 2011 ; the onus is on you to prove that your abstracted concept of infinite demand has anything immediately relevant or helpful with the debate. There were clear new drivers of demand in 2013-2015, in a period of significant welfare cuts, and which period also coincided with rises in homelessness and several other social indicators.
To me it seems that you're trying to bend reality towards an ideology.
Its always daft straw man arguments and daft emojis from him.
His core supposition is that food banks are fantastic and demand for free food is infinite. As neither is true you can just ignore the straw man points and move on.
Why pre-food banks were Britons needing to borrow billions from the likes of Wonga that went out of business when food banks displaced them?
Can you actually answer the point or are you just going to daftly pretend everything was fine and dandy pre-2014 and nobody ever had money issues prior to food banks replacing Wonga.com?
Is it better for people who run into difficulty to have a charity able to provide assistance, or to pay 5000% APR instead?
Wonga and the like flopped because of government restrictions on usurious interest rates, not lack of demand as I recall.
Precisely. The continuing efforts to rewrite history and blame the pig's breakfast we have now on anyone other than the fools in the Conservative and Unionist Party who delivered it are laughable. May's Citizens of Nowhere speech (probably the only speech in my lifetime that gets raised regularly in casual conversation among non political types) closed off the soft Brexit route. As did the Tory whipping against those options in the Commons votes. It is nobody else's fault.
The way that May's 'Citizens' of Nowhere' speech has been traduced and misrepresented is one of the most extraordinary feature of the of politics of the last decade. You obviously haven't read it, but you have strong views about it.
It's not even principally about Brexit, but here's what she actually said about the relationship with the EU:
It is, of course, too early to say exactly what agreement we will reach with the EU. It’s going to be a tough negotiation, it will require some give and take. And while there will always be pressure to give a running commentary, it will not be in our national interest to do so.
But let me be clear about the agreement we seek. I want it to reflect the strong and mature relationships we enjoy with our European friends. I want it to include cooperation on law enforcement and counter-terrorism work. I want it to involve free trade, in goods and services.
I want it to give British companies the maximum freedom to trade with and operate within the Single Market – and let European businesses do the same here.
But let’s state one thing loud and clear: we are not leaving the European Union only to give up control of immigration all over again. And we are not leaving only to return to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. That’s not going to happen.
There's no closing off there, quite the opposite. She was genuinely trying to find a route which respected the referendum result but kept trade frictions to a minimum. It was of course a hugely difficult circle to square, and she failed in the end, thanks to the 2017 election disaster and Labour joining the ERG in torpedoing any compromise, but she was certainly trying hard.
And the 'citizens of nowhere' phrase was about tax evaders and irresponsible employers, but was seized upon by the Guardian-reading classes and twisted into something which bore no relation to what she was saying.
The United States has authorized Ukraine’s Baltic neighbors to send Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to Ukrainian forces to bolster defenses should Russia attack, according to two officials from Baltic countries who are familiar with the deal.
Stinger missiles are unlikely to significantly alter the Russian calculus in any military action, according to experts, in part because it is unclear to what extent Russia might rely on airpower over Ukrainian territory.
I honestly don't know what is misconstrued about "There's no such thing as society" interview.
Shes whinging about people skiving on the dole, her meaning is pretty clear.
If you read the speech, she was talking about a variant of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect, where people think that "This problem is going to be fixed by Society*, not me".
*As in some remote, amorphous organisation that exists completely separately from the population at large.
That is what some people on the left want though it seems. A perfect example is food banks.
In the Labour days food banks etc were heavily restricted and what wasn't very restricted was legalised loan sharks like Wonga etc
David Cameron reversed that. The restrictions on food banks were lifted and restrictions were put on for the loan sharks.
As a result the loan sharks went out of business and the food banks have thrived. Instead of celebrating that, the left bemoans the rise of food banks instead of celebrating them as a success of people donating what they can spare to help others rather than forcing others to go to loan sharks instead as they had to under Blair and Brown.
This is complete nonsense. Foodbank demand exploded in 2014-15, immediately after the first round of welfare cuts
You're looking at it completely backwards
Food bank demand is limited by food bank supply. The demand for free food is essentially infinite, what is not infinite is generosity and people choosing to give.
Also 2015 is when Wonga started losing instead of making money.
So yes the two are intrinsically linked. The regulations on food banks were eased and thus people started giving to them more, so people started demanding from them more, which is a virtuous rather than vicious circle.
The regulations on Wonga etc were tightened, so the likes of Wonga weren't the free cash making machines preying on the vulnerable that they were under Brown.
You should be celebrating 2014/15 seeing food banks replace Wonga not bemoaning it.
Celebrating widespread reliance on foodbanks?
Orwellian right wing Doublespeak.
No, celebrating widespread availability of foodbanks.
People will always run into hard times. When they do it is better to have foodbanks than Wonga, theft or starvation.
So your policy objective is food banks all over the place but nobody using them?
Basic economics says the demand for free is infinite. There will always be demand.
But yes food banks all over the place is fantastic. The more the merrier, let people give what they can afford to give so that those in need can get from those who have something to spare.
What is bad about that in your eyes?
You've never been to a food bank. Or spoken to people who use food banks. Or the people who run food banks.
Demand is not infinite. The profound shame that so many users feel having to resort to using them means that demand is far from infinite.
Nor is having a lot of food banks in your area something to celebrate. They are a physical demonstration of a society that has gone very wrong, especially with so many people with jobs still having to shame themselves using them as their wages do not pay the bills.
Is a food bank better than a loan shark? Yes. In the same way that losing your leg below the knee is better than losing it below the hip. In no way is people having to beg for charity to survive "fantastic".
Oh cut the sanctimonious claptrap. If I wanted to listen to that, I'd be religious and go to Chruch.
People have always run into hard times. People will always run into hard times. That's not "society gone very wrong" that is real life.
Yes people may be regretful, but that is no different whatsoever to people being ashamed to sign on for welfare benefits. Either way it is better that the supply is there than it isn't.
That people are willing to donate to those less fortunate than them isn't society gone wrong, its society gone right and something to celebrate.
Unless you can point to me a time when food banks were getting inundated with donations that were going to landfill as they had nobody to give the donations to, because everybody was fine and dandy, nobody hand trouble, nobody was getting into debt etc then yes supply always has been and always will be the limiting factor.
Absolute rubbish. Food banks have a requirement for people to access them just like the benefits system. If more people fall into it then by definition then things are going worse. That is unless you can demonstrate that food banks are relaxing their criteria for help to encompass more people?
Yes they have relaxed the criteria to encompass more people. Those reforms happened in the Coalition government. That is the point!
Plus awareness of them increased so people started going to them instead of Wonga.
But as mentioned, the main reform happened in 2010. Suddenly job centres were actually sending people direct to foodbanks. The absolute explosion in use happened a few years later, when this route was also already altered and slightly restricted.
Yes because the supply wasn't there to meet the demand in 2010. 🤦♂️
Demand is infinite, supply isn't. So when the liberalisation in the rules happened, it took time to build the supply capacity. It is to the credit of the British public that they responded by being generous and meeting the demand that was always there.
Almost none of this is true in this particular case, but I know that whatever I post will make little difference to your view.
What evidence do you have it isn't true? You haven't provided any evidence whatsoever. Do you have evidence of food banks sending mounds of food to landfill due to an absence of demand in 2011?
The onus one me isn't to prove a lack of demand in 2011 ; the onus is on you to prove that your abstracted concept of infinite demand has anything immediately relevant or helpful with the debate. There were clear new drivers of demand in 2013-2015, in a period of significant welfare cuts, and which period also coincided with rises in homelessness and several other social indicators.
To me it seems that you're trying to bend reality towards an ideology.
Its always daft straw man arguments and daft emojis from him.
His core supposition is that food banks are fantastic and demand for free food is infinite. As neither is true you can just ignore the straw man points and move on.
Why pre-food banks were Britons needing to borrow billions from the likes of Wonga that went out of business when food banks displaced them?
Can you actually answer the point or are you just going to daftly pretend everything was fine and dandy pre-2014 and nobody ever had money issues prior to food banks replacing Wonga.com?
Wonga didn't go out of business because Food Banks arrived.
Wonga went out of business because their business model was destroyed when the FCA discovered they had been naughty and should never have lent money to a vast amount of their customer base.
Wonga did, yes, but Wonga weren't the only company in the industry and I'm using them like Hoover as a generic to represent the industry.
In 2014 the entire payday loan industry had a 27% fall in demand, lest we forget as often mentioned that is the year that food bank usage exploded.
I celebrate the fact that food bank supply expanded to meet the latent demand that pre-2014 was met by payday loan sharks. Don't you?
Yes, got some things right but not great overall seems about right.
Looking at it as more or fewer deaths continues not to make sense, since it means places regarded as doing much better than the UK would be essentially just as terrible, eg Germany would be among the worst in the world barely better than us since 7th or 14th out of 190 odd is not good.
One thing that has skewed the view of a lot of people is testing. Because Europe does a lot of testing we hear about record cases, and Europe also does a good job of reporting covid related deaths. So Europe is the covid hot-spot? Probably not, there have been some huge excess death figures for countries in Asia, South America, and Africa, but because of relatively poor healthcare and statistics they aren't reported as record covid cases and deaths.
And especially true in the UK, which I think tests more than any other large country. In some ways positivity rates are a better indicator of how severe an outbreak is.
Yes, got some things right but not great overall seems about right.
Looking at it as more or fewer deaths continues not to make sense, since it means places regarded as doing much better than the UK would be essentially just as terrible, eg Germany would be among the worst in the world barely better than us since 7th or 14th out of 190 odd is not good.
One thing that has skewed the view of a lot of people is testing. Because Europe does a lot of testing we hear about record cases, and Europe also does a good job of reporting covid related deaths. So Europe is the covid hot-spot? Probably not, there have been some huge excess death figures for countries in Asia, South America, and Africa, but because of relatively poor healthcare and statistics they aren't reported as record covid cases and deaths.
It's partly that, and partly that death rates increase massively with age. Countries with a higher proportion of older people will have a higher number of covid deaths, and Europe is old. Of the big European countries it goes Italy, Germany, France, UK from older to younger. Japan has an even older population, so seems to have done particularly well whether you look at the official death toll or excess deaths.
I honestly don't know what is misconstrued about "There's no such thing as society" interview.
Shes whinging about people skiving on the dole, her meaning is pretty clear.
If you read the speech, she was talking about a variant of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect, where people think that "This problem is going to be fixed by Society*, not me".
*As in some remote, amorphous organisation that exists completely separately from the population at large.
That is what some people on the left want though it seems. A perfect example is food banks.
In the Labour days food banks etc were heavily restricted and what wasn't very restricted was legalised loan sharks like Wonga etc
David Cameron reversed that. The restrictions on food banks were lifted and restrictions were put on for the loan sharks.
As a result the loan sharks went out of business and the food banks have thrived. Instead of celebrating that, the left bemoans the rise of food banks instead of celebrating them as a success of people donating what they can spare to help others rather than forcing others to go to loan sharks instead as they had to under Blair and Brown.
This is complete nonsense. Foodbank demand exploded in 2014-15, immediately after the first round of welfare cuts
You're looking at it completely backwards
Food bank demand is limited by food bank supply. The demand for free food is essentially infinite, what is not infinite is generosity and people choosing to give.
Also 2015 is when Wonga started losing instead of making money.
So yes the two are intrinsically linked. The regulations on food banks were eased and thus people started giving to them more, so people started demanding from them more, which is a virtuous rather than vicious circle.
The regulations on Wonga etc were tightened, so the likes of Wonga weren't the free cash making machines preying on the vulnerable that they were under Brown.
You should be celebrating 2014/15 seeing food banks replace Wonga not bemoaning it.
Celebrating widespread reliance on foodbanks?
Orwellian right wing Doublespeak.
No, celebrating widespread availability of foodbanks.
People will always run into hard times. When they do it is better to have foodbanks than Wonga, theft or starvation.
So your policy objective is food banks all over the place but nobody using them?
Basic economics says the demand for free is infinite. There will always be demand.
But yes food banks all over the place is fantastic. The more the merrier, let people give what they can afford to give so that those in need can get from those who have something to spare.
What is bad about that in your eyes?
You've never been to a food bank. Or spoken to people who use food banks. Or the people who run food banks.
Demand is not infinite. The profound shame that so many users feel having to resort to using them means that demand is far from infinite.
Nor is having a lot of food banks in your area something to celebrate. They are a physical demonstration of a society that has gone very wrong, especially with so many people with jobs still having to shame themselves using them as their wages do not pay the bills.
Is a food bank better than a loan shark? Yes. In the same way that losing your leg below the knee is better than losing it below the hip. In no way is people having to beg for charity to survive "fantastic".
Oh cut the sanctimonious claptrap. If I wanted to listen to that, I'd be religious and go to Chruch.
People have always run into hard times. People will always run into hard times. That's not "society gone very wrong" that is real life.
Yes people may be regretful, but that is no different whatsoever to people being ashamed to sign on for welfare benefits. Either way it is better that the supply is there than it isn't.
That people are willing to donate to those less fortunate than them isn't society gone wrong, its society gone right and something to celebrate.
Unless you can point to me a time when food banks were getting inundated with donations that were going to landfill as they had nobody to give the donations to, because everybody was fine and dandy, nobody hand trouble, nobody was getting into debt etc then yes supply always has been and always will be the limiting factor.
Absolute rubbish. Food banks have a requirement for people to access them just like the benefits system. If more people fall into it then by definition then things are going worse. That is unless you can demonstrate that food banks are relaxing their criteria for help to encompass more people?
Yes they have relaxed the criteria to encompass more people. Those reforms happened in the Coalition government. That is the point!
Plus awareness of them increased so people started going to them instead of Wonga.
But as mentioned, the main reform happened in 2010. Suddenly job centres were actually sending people direct to foodbanks. The absolute explosion in use happened a few years later, when this route was also already altered and slightly restricted.
Yes because the supply wasn't there to meet the demand in 2010. 🤦♂️
Demand is infinite, supply isn't. So when the liberalisation in the rules happened, it took time to build the supply capacity. It is to the credit of the British public that they responded by being generous and meeting the demand that was always there.
Almost none of this is true in this particular case, but I know that whatever I post will make little difference to your view.
What evidence do you have it isn't true? You haven't provided any evidence whatsoever. Do you have evidence of food banks sending mounds of food to landfill due to an absence of demand in 2011?
The onus one me isn't to prove a lack of demand in 2011 ; the onus is on you to prove that your abstracted concept of infinite demand has anything immediately relevant or helpful with the debate. There were clear new drivers of demand in 2013-2015, in a period of significant welfare cuts, and which period also coincided with rises in homelessness and several other social indicators.
To me it seems that you're trying to bend reality towards an ideology.
Its always daft straw man arguments and daft emojis from him.
His core supposition is that food banks are fantastic and demand for free food is infinite. As neither is true you can just ignore the straw man points and move on.
Why pre-food banks were Britons needing to borrow billions from the likes of Wonga that went out of business when food banks displaced them?
Can you actually answer the point or are you just going to daftly pretend everything was fine and dandy pre-2014 and nobody ever had money issues prior to food banks replacing Wonga.com?
Wonga didn't go out of business because Food Banks arrived.
Wonga went out of business because their business model was destroyed when the FCA discovered they had been naughty and should never have lent money to a vast amount of their customer base.
There was also this time when we hadn't debased ourselves as a society to try and pretend that "wonga" and "foodbank" are the only options to avoid poor people starving.
I'm ignoring that as it conflates 2 different issues.
Wonga was closed down because it's business practices were found to be illegal.
There is no correlation nor causation between Wonga disappearing and Food banks appearing. The fact that someone sees correlation and causation demonstrates that some people see things that don't exist because it's matches their simplistic / simplified version of the real world.
The government would be doing ok if it didn't keep hitting that self destruct button.
I'm still trying to work out who the expected buyers of the batteries are...
As pointed out by someone else - this factory will produce about 1/8th of the batteries required if all cars produced in the UK are electric.
Car companies are directly investing in battery production, because there is nothing like the capacity required. Yet. There are no technological blockers to massively increasing battery production like this, but it hasn't been done yet. So there will be a market for the batteries, if virtually any circumstance.
For example, I think it was Porsche who, when they tried to expand EV production, got told the price of batteries would go UP. This was because the supplier would need to build an entire factory to meet the demand, and the costs and risks associated with that....
Vertical integration, with the car maker owning component factories would actually be unusual in the car business. The individual battery cells are likely to become commodity components, and will be bought by car makers..
Will it be that unusual ? Tesla are certainly vertically integrated, even though they also source batteries externally. VW are standardising a battery format for their entire range (though they are agnostic on what chemistries it will use).
On the other hand, in the medium term the 'commodity' market is likely to be dominated by a handful of manufacturers who have sufficient capital to stay ahead of the rest in cost competitiveness as the technology changes rapidly. Towards the end of this decade there's likely to be a serious thinning out of the smaller manufacturers (like Britvolt, unless they are very lucky).
I think that demand for batteries is going to stay sufficiently ahead of supply for a bit longer than that, which will help the less competitive manufacturers keep going well into the 2030s.
Sadly does not have the cut to a gently stunned Bob Harris at the end.
Me too! What a boon TOGWT was to lads (& possibly some lasses) in the provinces. It was my favourite tv along with World at War, and they made the creature before you today.
Those 2 and - with me - also Brian Walden's Weekend World and I Claudius. A studious type, I was.
An integral part of the memory of watching that "Dashboard Light" performance was that my parents were sat there too. I could have done without that.
Yes, got some things right but not great overall seems about right.
Looking at it as more or fewer deaths continues not to make sense, since it means places regarded as doing much better than the UK would be essentially just as terrible, eg Germany would be among the worst in the world barely better than us since 7th or 14th out of 190 odd is not good.
One thing that has skewed the view of a lot of people is testing. Because Europe does a lot of testing we hear about record cases, and Europe also does a good job of reporting covid related deaths. So Europe is the covid hot-spot? Probably not, there have been some huge excess death figures for countries in Asia, South America, and Africa, but because of relatively poor healthcare and statistics they aren't reported as record covid cases and deaths.
Testing in Europe is variable, to say the least...
This year there has been one Roy Morgan Poll, taken from 4th to 16th January and Djocovic was not deported until 16th. That has the ALP 2.5% ahead on the primary vote. A slightly more recent poll from 11th to 15th January by Resolve has the ALP just 1% ahead on the primary vote on 35% with a high Others vote.
The 2PP gives bigger ALP leads but all the 2PP polls were completely wrong in 2019. Morrison does lead still as preferred PM as he did in 2019 however
‘Bigger leads” Is putting it like that not a tad disingenuous though? Those polls show 2pp at 45-55 - last election result 51-49?
Dr. Foxy, a customs union would allow the EU to dictate our trade deals. There's no point leaving the EU only to let them retain the power they had and throwing away any say whatsoever in said decisions.
As and when there is any sign at all of this government going off signing new enhanced trade deals I would consider the point. There isn't. In Liz We Trust has copy pasted existing deals. The only "new" deal massively favours Australia in 15 years should it ever get implemented which it won't. Nor are there any prospects of major trading partners like Japan or America granting us new enhanced trade deals - we've openly been told to stick it.
The whole point about trade is that you form a block and negotiate en masse. The EU trade deals were better than anything we can realistically hope for because the EU is bigger than the GB. As we're now finding out.
Our post Brexit trade policy is scarcely a policy. It’s purely tactical, across the board. Looking for little wins that will impress the voters (or backbenchers) rather than any long term strategic direction that will make the country fertile ground for investment, or have a noticeable impact on consumers.
In fact the whole Brexit realignment so far has been net bad news for consumers. Not disastrous, and outweighed by other problems caused by Covid, but not positive.
The trouble is the downsides are boring. Somewhat reduced choice in retail. Traffic jams of stationary lorries in Kent. Increased costs and back office paperwork for businesses. It’s bad, but boring. So almost completely absent from media. Downing st parties, a pandemic and Russian aggression are all much more exciting.
The impact analysis by the Government on the Australian trade deal is interesting. It concedes that British agriculture will be damaged, but estimates overall that the economy will benefit by a tiny amount (0.08%) - because farming is a small industry in Britain, selling more whisky and financial products outweighs selling less British beef. But it's an odd decision by a Tory government to encourage a drift further away from farming and food security. The report is here - you have to read the whole executive summary to spot the downsides for farming:
It is, I think, true that Liz Truss saw her sole KPI as "sign several trade deals", and any benefit is hard to spot. Most of them have been rollovers from the EU, with the Australian and NZ deals the first to have at least a little significant content. Next up is probably a deal with the GCC (Saudi etc.).
It seems fairly certain that the damage done to UK farming will be real. The economic benefit calculated seems so small that it's quite possible it won't be.
The Truss clearly got caught up in the whole reckless Boris-ite Empire II Global Britain flummery and signed up for the headlines and the euphoria it would generate amongst the Tory base. Now, in the cold light of day, she probably knows she should have done better.
I'm surprised that Johnson is being allowed to get away with this crap ...the most successful roll out anywhere .... 'the best vaccine program'... 'The best track and trace'....'the best economy in the G20' ....'The best recovery....The most sought after destination blah blah blah...."
That isn't what the coronavirus figures show. We have the sixth biggest death toll in the world and a bigger death toll than any country in the EU.
What exactly have we done that makes us the best?
I went to Chester two days ago and there were more rough sleepers than I've even seen in Barcelona. It was back to the dark days of Thatcher when you couldn't pass a doorway in the West End without stepping over a cardboard box with someone sleeping in it.
That is massively misleading by you. From the table you link to:
The German homeless number "*Includes "around 441,000 asylum seekers and refugees in temporary accommodation"; only 4.9/10000 people are without any shelter"
The US total is higher than the UK but in terms of % population they are massively lower - 17.7 per 10,000 compared to the UK value of 54 per 10,000. That we have a higher rate of homelessness than the US should be a matter of shame to any British Government.
No he's not being misleading in this instance since people with temporary shelter are defined as homeless in the UK too. So you should compare the UK's raw figure with Germany's raw figure for a like-for-like comparison.
This is like discussions about poverty, but where poverty has been redefined to mean inequality. International tables and comparisons are absurd if you aren't comparing like for like.
There is no way the real homeless situation in the UK is worse than America's. Any drive or walk through British and American cities would confirm that.
When the UK takes in a million or so refugees like Germany has over the last few years then you might have a point. Until then you are just talking bullshit. Germany has a short term issue related to accepting all those refugees. The UK has a long standing and endemic problem with homelessness which no Government has been taking seriously.
The UK has taken in millions of migrants over the last few years, net migration is considerably higher in the UK than it has been in Germany for many years now which inevitably affects the housing situation. Either way though on a like-for-like comparison the German situation is worse.
However I was primarily responding to your nonsense claim that the homeless situation in the UK is worse than the USA. Stop and think about that for thirty seconds please and think for thirty seconds about the fact that, like in Germany, those in temporary accommodation are classed as "homeless" in the UK.
Now after stopping and thinking do you still want to claim the homeless situation in the UK is worse than the USA? Really?
Yet again you are being thoroughly dishonest in your comparisons. The UK has taken in millions of migrants who came here with work and with money to pay for accommodation. Germany has taken in millions with nothing but the clothes on their back. The comparison you make is simply stupid and ignorant.
The United States has authorized Ukraine’s Baltic neighbors to send Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to Ukrainian forces to bolster defenses should Russia attack, according to two officials from Baltic countries who are familiar with the deal.
Stinger missiles are unlikely to significantly alter the Russian calculus in any military action, according to experts, in part because it is unclear to what extent Russia might rely on airpower over Ukrainian territory.
NY Times
I forget who linked to it a few days ago, but the article that suggested the Russians might concentrate on a long-range artillery and missile bombardment has me worried.
There's so much rhetoric in the West about the threat of invasion, and our military support seems to be focused on helping the Ukrainians fight a ten-year guerrilla war in that scenario. So if the Russians blow Ukraine's military and economy to pieces from afar we will have done nothing to help them, and will end up congratulating ourselves on a job well done.
I read this tweet and my immediate thought was why they were only using an 8-bit system (apologies to non-geeks).
British Army's new Apache helicopters that can detect 256 potential targets at once and prioritise threats in a matter of seconds are undergoing test flights at Wattisham Flying Station. With a top speed of 186mph, the new fleet can detect targets up to a range of 10 miles https://twitter.com/jjgiddens/status/1484494710043512835
As an aside last Summer we went for a break staying close to that base. Every day we had at least one flypass from Apache helicopters.
It can only engage 16 targets so it's probably pointless acquiring more than 256. And in a situation where there are over 200 targets the crew are going to be dead soon enough anyway.
The tories have just scrapped 16 Apaches.
As a matter of interest, how effective are "fire and forget" heatseeking anti-tank weapons against low flying helicopters?
It depends on the weapon, range, countermeasures, etc. It's impossible to generalise.
However if you get close enough then anything is effective hence the single bullet shoot down of a US AH-64 at Karbala by an Iraqi farmer.
I read this tweet and my immediate thought was why they were only using an 8-bit system (apologies to non-geeks).
British Army's new Apache helicopters that can detect 256 potential targets at once and prioritise threats in a matter of seconds are undergoing test flights at Wattisham Flying Station. With a top speed of 186mph, the new fleet can detect targets up to a range of 10 miles https://twitter.com/jjgiddens/status/1484494710043512835
As an aside last Summer we went for a break staying close to that base. Every day we had at least one flypass from Apache helicopters.
It can only engage 16 targets so it's probably pointless acquiring more than 256. And in a situation where there are over 200 targets the crew are going to be dead soon enough anyway.
The tories have just scrapped 16 Apaches.
As a matter of interest, how effective are "fire and forget" heatseeking anti-tank weapons against low flying helicopters?
It depends on the weapon, range, countermeasures, etc. It's impossible to generalise.
However if you get close enough then anything is effective hence the single bullet shoot down of a US AH-64 at Karbala by an Iraqi farmer.
I read this tweet and my immediate thought was why they were only using an 8-bit system (apologies to non-geeks).
British Army's new Apache helicopters that can detect 256 potential targets at once and prioritise threats in a matter of seconds are undergoing test flights at Wattisham Flying Station. With a top speed of 186mph, the new fleet can detect targets up to a range of 10 miles https://twitter.com/jjgiddens/status/1484494710043512835
As an aside last Summer we went for a break staying close to that base. Every day we had at least one flypass from Apache helicopters.
It can only engage 16 targets so it's probably pointless acquiring more than 256. And in a situation where there are over 200 targets the crew are going to be dead soon enough anyway.
The tories have just scrapped 16 Apaches.
As a matter of interest, how effective are "fire and forget" heatseeking anti-tank weapons against low flying helicopters?
It depends on the weapon, range, countermeasures, etc. It's impossible to generalise.
However if you get close enough then anything is effective hence the single bullet shoot down of a US AH-64 at Karbala by an Iraqi farmer.
Farmers shoot up everything.
Or, as the farmer concerned put it - no, I didn't.
(Sorry to do this twice in one thread. Unless there is another case.)
Minqash told the paper that he had come across the aircraft in his field early one morning.
"I didn't shoot down an Apache or anything else. All that happened was that I went to the field, as I usually do early in the morning, and was surprised to find some bodies on the ground.
"I began to rub my eyes to make sure that what I was seeing was true or whether I was imagining it," he said.
"When I realised that it was really true, I was overcome by fear and rushed to the nearest government post to inform them that there was a plane in my field.
"A large number of [Baath] party members and security men came with me to investigate. They told me that it was an American Apache aircraft and made me stay with them until someone who they said was a senior official arrived. I didn't know who he was.
Sadly does not have the cut to a gently stunned Bob Harris at the end.
Me too! What a boon TOGWT was to lads (& possibly some lasses) in the provinces. It was my favourite tv along with World at War, and they made the creature before you today.
Those 2 and - with me - also Brian Walden's Weekend World and I Claudius. A studious type, I was.
An integral part of the memory of watching that "Dashboard Light" performance was that my parents were sat there too. I could have done without that.
Pure rock opera and just hilarious. He was as much an actor as a singer.
That said, I don’t see how loyalty can be considered to be a defining characteristic of the Tory party. They are many things, loyal though? I can’t see it.
I dont see how one squares a (supposed) characteristic of ruthlessness with one of loyalty.
I'm surprised that Johnson is being allowed to get away with this crap ...the most successful roll out anywhere .... 'the best vaccine program'... 'The best track and trace'....'the best economy in the G20' ....'The best recovery....The most sought after destination blah blah blah...."
That isn't what the coronavirus figures show. We have the sixth biggest death toll in the world and a bigger death toll than any country in the EU.
What exactly have we done that makes us the best?
I went to Chester two days ago and there were more rough sleepers than I've even seen in Barcelona. It was back to the dark days of Thatcher when you couldn't pass a doorway in the West End without stepping over a cardboard box with someone sleeping in it.
That is massively misleading by you. From the table you link to:
The German homeless number "*Includes "around 441,000 asylum seekers and refugees in temporary accommodation"; only 4.9/10000 people are without any shelter"
The US total is higher than the UK but in terms of % population they are massively lower - 17.7 per 10,000 compared to the UK value of 54 per 10,000. That we have a higher rate of homelessness than the US should be a matter of shame to any British Government.
No he's not being misleading in this instance since people with temporary shelter are defined as homeless in the UK too. So you should compare the UK's raw figure with Germany's raw figure for a like-for-like comparison.
This is like discussions about poverty, but where poverty has been redefined to mean inequality. International tables and comparisons are absurd if you aren't comparing like for like.
There is no way the real homeless situation in the UK is worse than America's. Any drive or walk through British and American cities would confirm that.
When the UK takes in a million or so refugees like Germany has over the last few years then you might have a point. Until then you are just talking bullshit. Germany has a short term issue related to accepting all those refugees. The UK has a long standing and endemic problem with homelessness which no Government has been taking seriously.
The UK has taken in millions of migrants over the last few years, net migration is considerably higher in the UK than it has been in Germany for many years now which inevitably affects the housing situation. Either way though on a like-for-like comparison the German situation is worse.
However I was primarily responding to your nonsense claim that the homeless situation in the UK is worse than the USA. Stop and think about that for thirty seconds please and think for thirty seconds about the fact that, like in Germany, those in temporary accommodation are classed as "homeless" in the UK.
Now after stopping and thinking do you still want to claim the homeless situation in the UK is worse than the USA? Really?
Yet again you are being thoroughly dishonest in your comparisons. The UK has taken in millions of migrants who came here with work and with money to pay for accommodation. Germany has taken in millions with nothing but the clothes on their back. The comparison you make is simply stupid and ignorant.
It’s interesting that their population is virtually static. I hadn’t appreciated emigration was so high there.
Comments
Can you actually answer the point or are you just going to daftly pretend everything was fine and dandy pre-2014 and nobody ever had money issues prior to food banks replacing Wonga.com?
Is it better for people who run into difficulty to have a charity able to provide assistance, or to pay 5000% APR instead?
Wonga went out of business because their business model was destroyed when the FCA discovered they had been naughty and should never have lent money to a vast amount of their customer base.
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?time=2021-09-23..latest&facet=none&uniformYAxis=0&Metric=Tests&Interval=7-day+rolling+average&Relative+to+Population=true&Color+by+test+positivity=false&country=ITA~DEU~GBR~FRA~BEL~NLD~ESP~PRT~DNK~IRL~AUT~NOR~SWE~CHE~FIN~AUS
You would benefit truly and profoundly from volunteering for a few hours at a food bank. Don't tell people what you think, go and listen to what the staff think and what their customers think.
Then post your snarky emojis and make your pronouncements on the subject. At least then you will have the real world experience for a change.
There always have been and always will be people who run into difficulty. Somebodies car breaks down, somebodies boiler packs in, unexpected bills they can't make etc
Either you can have charity available in the form of food banks, or you can have predators available in the form of Wonga.
Pre-2014 the latent demand was there, but it was being serviced by Wonga instead. Post-2014 it was serviced by foodbanks instead.
That you are so conceited and unwilling to admit that food banks replacing predatory loan sharks is a good thing, and want to twist it to being bad by pretending all was fine and dory pre-2014 is you being how shall I put it? Clueless and shameless.
Shame on you for preferring 5000% APR over increased donations to food banks.
The economic benefit calculated seems so small that it's quite possible it won't be.
I'm an advocate of Imperial measurements in some circumstances, but converting from one unit system to another is a recipe for trouble.
One of the greatest speeches of all time.
Stinger missiles are unlikely to significantly alter the Russian calculus in any military action, according to experts, in part because it is unclear to what extent Russia might rely on airpower over Ukrainian territory.
NY Times
In 2014 the entire payday loan industry had a 27% fall in demand, lest we forget as often mentioned that is the year that food bank usage exploded.
I celebrate the fact that food bank supply expanded to meet the latent demand that pre-2014 was met by payday loan sharks. Don't you?
Wonga was closed down because it's business practices were found to be illegal.
There is no correlation nor causation between Wonga disappearing and Food banks appearing. The fact that someone sees correlation and causation demonstrates that some people see things that don't exist because it's matches their simplistic / simplified version of the real world.
An integral part of the memory of watching that "Dashboard Light" performance was that my parents were sat there too. I could have done without that.
This has been pointed out several times already.
There's so much rhetoric in the West about the threat of invasion, and our military support seems to be focused on helping the Ukrainians fight a ten-year guerrilla war in that scenario. So if the Russians blow Ukraine's military and economy to pieces from afar we will have done nothing to help them, and will end up congratulating ourselves on a job well done.
However if you get close enough then anything is effective hence the single bullet shoot down of a US AH-64 at Karbala by an Iraqi farmer.
(Sorry to do this twice in one thread. Unless there is another case.)
Minqash told the paper that he had come across the aircraft in his field early one morning.
"I didn't shoot down an Apache or anything else. All that happened was that I went to the field, as I usually do early in the morning, and was surprised to find some bodies on the ground.
"I began to rub my eyes to make sure that what I was seeing was true or whether I was imagining it," he said.
"When I realised that it was really true, I was overcome by fear and rushed to the nearest government post to inform them that there was a plane in my field.
"A large number of [Baath] party members and security men came with me to investigate. They told me that it was an American Apache aircraft and made me stay with them until someone who they said was a senior official arrived. I didn't know who he was.
"They asked me to say what you have heard on the TV satellite channels - that I shot down the plane with an old gun, a Brno."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2969471.stm