Speaking from a non manager point of view, just a man in the street who does normal man in the street things, basically no one has noticed anything different since we left the eu....food is slighty dearer but that is as much the increase in fuel prices and the ukraine war....some people have to queue a little longer to holiday in france...who gives a shit frankly. That is the average worker stance not rochdale pioneers we are all doomed stance and frankly there are a lot of workers and not many rochdales so tough shit really
But. We were told Brexit would solve our problems and make us better off. If no one has noticed what was the bloody point of the last six years?
In the Scotland border issue, remember that its al theoretical. Even if there was a referendum next year (and there won't be) and it voted Yes (and it won't), its way off into the 2nd half of the decade before they even have discussions about separation, never mind an agreement to instigate.
As the UK's current Brexit settlement is unworkable, it will be reformed. And the reformation will be closer and looser alignment with the EEA and CU. Which makes alignment between an EU Scotland and a post-Brext rUK much easier than it would be now.
Even if we could bounce the EU into mutual recognition of standards (which we probably can't) or the EU can bounce us into dynamic alignment (which they probably can't) that still leaves us outside the CU, which still means border infrastructure.
Unless, of course, away-from-the-border Unicorns really do exist...
The UK has already abandoned any plans to erect border infrastructure. Because we are functionally incompetent.
Speaking from a non manager point of view, just a man in the street who does normal man in the street things, basically no one has noticed anything different since we left the eu....food is slighty dearer but that is as much the increase in fuel prices and the ukraine war....some people have to queue a little longer to holiday in france...who gives a shit frankly. That is the average worker stance not rochdale pioneers we are all doomed stance and frankly there are a lot of workers and not many rochdales so tough shit really
Sure - we're boiling frogs. But people voted for the moon on a stick they were promised. As it becomes clearer there is no moon coming to them, they will get angry. As Tories are starting to notice in the red wall.
Well I am certainly getting angry with actually getting a decent payrise as are many of those I know who finally find they have being incentivised to stay in their jobs and are no longer earning minimum wage and have a bit more in their pocket.
Complaints that you have more paper work or that it takes you longer to get past french border control fall on deaf ears because frankly they dont give a shit about you just like you didnt give a toss about their problems when we were in the eu. Shoe is on the other foot deal with it
Speaking from a non manager point of view, just a man in the street who does normal man in the street things, basically no one has noticed anything different since we left the eu....food is slighty dearer but that is as much the increase in fuel prices and the ukraine war....some people have to queue a little longer to holiday in france...who gives a shit frankly. That is the average worker stance not rochdale pioneers we are all doomed stance and frankly there are a lot of workers and not many rochdales so tough shit really
But. We were told Brexit would solve our problems and make us better off. If no one has noticed what was the bloody point of the last six years?
Covid and the Ukraine war are complicating a fair assessment of the impact of Brexit.*
*Note this is not a claim that Brexit is a huge success, rather that the current situation is not all because Brexit.
Speaking from a non manager point of view, just a man in the street who does normal man in the street things, basically no one has noticed anything different since we left the eu....food is slighty dearer but that is as much the increase in fuel prices and the ukraine war....some people have to queue a little longer to holiday in france...who gives a shit frankly. That is the average worker stance not rochdale pioneers we are all doomed stance and frankly there are a lot of workers and not many rochdales so tough shit really
But. We were told Brexit would solve our problems and make us better off. If no one has noticed what was the bloody point of the last six years?
I noticed when we were able to open up after covid months after the rest of Europe.
While my predictions, as the Stodge Saturday Patent has demonstrated, aren't worth any attention, I'll offer a thought based on recent experience.
In 50-75 years time, London will empty at the beginning of June as those who can seek solace from the 45c temperatures and humidity associated with the late 21st century British summer between the spring and autumn monsoon seasons.
The newly-refurbished London Euston station will host the regular 30-minute Maglev summer service to the Lake District having passengers disembarking at Oxenholme in little more than a hour. From there, families will decamp to their summer chalets near the lakes (or as near as is affordable). The ability to work independently from location, first established during the 2020 pandemic, will allow tens of thousands of Londoners to continue working far from the overheating capital.
For those without the means to escape the heat, the annual ordeal that is summer in London is the very definition of purgatory. On the hottest days, with temperatures nearing 50c, many head to vast "cool centres" where they can enjoy air conditioned relief before heading home in the later evening.
While the Lakes are one popular "retreat from the heat", the Pennines and Cheviots have also seen summer housing and the major development of the north Scottish coast around Torrisdale and the islands of Harris and Lewis have seen an explosion of summer homes for those from southern and eastern Britain desperate to seek cooler summer weather.
I think you understate the case. The way we're going it will be a runaway climate change. Although some, especially reputable researchers, know what we need to do to counter this, most of us are too gormless to act accordingly. For instance, getting an electric car does not justify an otherwise wanton life style.
That's my fear. That we are now in an accelerating loop of increasing warmth and volatility, which will feed off itself like a chain reaction. And perhaps it is already too late to stop this
Our presence in this universe appears to be the result of a long series of lucky circumstances.
These include: The fortuitous value of the fine structure constant, which, if it were a little difference would not allow stellar fusion to produce carbon. The existence of a rocky planet at just the right distance from a stable and long-lived star. The presence of just enough water on said planet to make a complex environment of coasts and shallows that would drive evolution along. The presence of an unusually large moon orbiting said planet to slosh all that water about and further drive evolution. A complex geology that, combined with the effects of life, has managed to remove CO2 from the Earth's atmosphere at a rate that has just about compensated for the gradual increase in the luminosity of the sun, this keeping the temperature of the Earth in a range compatible with life over the aeons.
And we are just about to screw it all up.
Not at all. Whilst you are right about the serendipity element of our existence, you vastly overestimate the significance of our current civilisation and the nature of the changes we are facing. Presenting these current very minor adjustments in our environment with the vast changes that have occurred over the last few million years (one of which probably reduced the human population to less than 10,000 individuals) really shows a fundamental disconnect with the reality of our existence on planet earth.
The changes of a few degrees - whilst undoubtedly bad for our current comfortable civilisation - are bugger all in both scale and rate of change compared to the natural changes that have occurred even in fairly recent times.
This is not to say we shouldn't try to mitigate such changes, nor that they won't be very bad for our current lifestyles but your hyperbolic comment shows a stunning lack of historical and prehistorical perspective.
You are wrong, Richard. My view as set out here is supported by the evidence, and is shared by the vast majority of people who have expertise in this area. That's why they are so worried about the future.
Climatologists are well aware of both the rate and magnitude of past changes in climate and have a pretty good idea of their causes. In particular, the cycles of glaciation over the past few million years are thought to have been triggered by the Milankovitch cycles, the effects of which were than amplified by various feedback effects - the CO2 greenhouse effect being one of the prime ones. Ice core records show the very strong correlation of atmospheric CO2 with global temperature, and this is supported by models based on radiative physics.
The difference between the depths of the last glacial period and the current balmy interglacial is, in terms of global mean temperature, around 5 C, and that happened over a period of around 10,000 years. In about 150 years, humans have already lifted by global temperature by nearly 1.5 C and it continues to rise. This is not "bugger all". This is a profound shock to the climate system.
I'm off now, but if you are going to respond to this, please don't confuse local rates of temperature change for global ones, as you did last time we discussed this issue.
Sorry but now you are simply talking garbage. I actually spend a lot of my time teaching people about glaciations and interglacials from an archaeological and geological point of view and the idea that it took 10,000 years to move from glacial to interglacial conditions is complete hokum.
The last major glacial event was the Younger Dryas when the average UK annual temperature (as an example) was around -3 to -5 degrees C. I am currently involved in running research projects studying human occupation of the British Isles in the interstadial prior to the the Younger Dryas so I know how rapidly these things changed. The end of the Younger Dryas sees the temperatures rise by around 10 degrees in a single decade. And we are still not, today, anywhere near as warm globally as we were in either the Bronze Age or the Roman period.
This is Not an argument against the causes of Climate change. This a specific argument against your claims that this is in any way 'the end of humanity' or even the end of civilisation.
Speaking from a non manager point of view, just a man in the street who does normal man in the street things, basically no one has noticed anything different since we left the eu....food is slighty dearer but that is as much the increase in fuel prices and the ukraine war....some people have to queue a little longer to holiday in france...who gives a shit frankly. That is the average worker stance not rochdale pioneers we are all doomed stance and frankly there are a lot of workers and not many rochdales so tough shit really
But. We were told Brexit would solve our problems and make us better off. If no one has noticed what was the bloody point of the last six years?
I noticed when we were able to open up after covid months after the rest of Europe.
Speaking from a non manager point of view, just a man in the street who does normal man in the street things, basically no one has noticed anything different since we left the eu....food is slighty dearer but that is as much the increase in fuel prices and the ukraine war....some people have to queue a little longer to holiday in france...who gives a shit frankly. That is the average worker stance not rochdale pioneers we are all doomed stance and frankly there are a lot of workers and not many rochdales so tough shit really
But. We were told Brexit would solve our problems and make us better off. If no one has noticed what was the bloody point of the last six years?
Brexit has made me better off and most of those I know as for the first time many are actually not earning minimum wage. If you are poorer because you did well off being in the eu well tough. Its what people like I and my friends were told...you arent getting payrises but better for the country to be in the eu so deal with it.
In the Scotland border issue, remember that its al theoretical. Even if there was a referendum next year (and there won't be) and it voted Yes (and it won't), its way off into the 2nd half of the decade before they even have discussions about separation, never mind an agreement to instigate.
As the UK's current Brexit settlement is unworkable, it will be reformed. And the reformation will be closer and looser alignment with the EEA and CU. Which makes alignment between an EU Scotland and a post-Brext rUK much easier than it would be now.
Even if we could bounce the EU into mutual recognition of standards (which we probably can't) or the EU can bounce us into dynamic alignment (which they probably can't) that still leaves us outside the CU, which still means border infrastructure.
Unless, of course, away-from-the-border Unicorns really do exist...
The UK has already abandoned any plans to erect border infrastructure. Because we are functionally incompetent.
Snide non-answers aside, a border has two sides.
It isn't a non-answer! I have already said that a post-Tory government in the 2nd half of the decade will wind back the worst stupidities of the Johnson Brexit settlement.
Brown on front page of Mirror calling for action on CoL crisis.
Something is afoot. He's been everywhere media-wise this week.
I cannot remember the Brown years. Blair, yes, Cameron, yes. But I can't bring to mind Brown at the dispatch box, other than as chancellor, or any memory of policy at the time. Like a phantom prime minister.
Edit: second thought, I can remember a fuss about whether to hold an early election. But that it is.
In the Scotland border issue, remember that its al theoretical. Even if there was a referendum next year (and there won't be) and it voted Yes (and it won't), its way off into the 2nd half of the decade before they even have discussions about separation, never mind an agreement to instigate.
As the UK's current Brexit settlement is unworkable, it will be reformed. And the reformation will be closer and looser alignment with the EEA and CU. Which makes alignment between an EU Scotland and a post-Brext rUK much easier than it would be now.
Even if we could bounce the EU into mutual recognition of standards (which we probably can't) or the EU can bounce us into dynamic alignment (which they probably can't) that still leaves us outside the CU, which still means border infrastructure.
Unless, of course, away-from-the-border Unicorns really do exist...
The UK has already abandoned any plans to erect border infrastructure. Because we are functionally incompetent.
Snide non-answers aside, a border has two sides.
Yet people complain about the French taking control of their side of the border.
I thought Sunak did very well and he does seem more realistic and would be a safer pair of hands .
Truss just looks out of her depth and has changed positions on many issues far too many times . I find nothing likeable about her and she’s just continuity Bozo without any charm .
Doris Johnson?
Or save time and just morph them together;
The underlying issue is that a substantial minority of the Conservative party would quite happily have continued with BoJo, despite everything.
In the Scotland border issue, remember that its al theoretical. Even if there was a referendum next year (and there won't be) and it voted Yes (and it won't), its way off into the 2nd half of the decade before they even have discussions about separation, never mind an agreement to instigate.
As the UK's current Brexit settlement is unworkable, it will be reformed. And the reformation will be closer and looser alignment with the EEA and CU. Which makes alignment between an EU Scotland and a post-Brext rUK much easier than it would be now.
No, if Scotland left the UK that makes it much easier to sustain a hard Brexit for England permanently. For Scotland was the only 1 of the 3 home nations in GB that voted Remain
England won't have sustained a hard Brexit by the time we theoretically got there. Because the Brexit we have doesn't work. Unless Mistress Truss has whipped everyone to back punishment beatings.
On current theoretical polling a Truss led Tories would still win a majority in England at the next general election even if not in the UK
Speaking from a non manager point of view, just a man in the street who does normal man in the street things, basically no one has noticed anything different since we left the eu....food is slighty dearer but that is as much the increase in fuel prices and the ukraine war....some people have to queue a little longer to holiday in france...who gives a shit frankly. That is the average worker stance not rochdale pioneers we are all doomed stance and frankly there are a lot of workers and not many rochdales so tough shit really
But. We were told Brexit would solve our problems and make us better off. If no one has noticed what was the bloody point of the last six years?
Covid and the Ukraine war are complicating a fair assessment of the impact of Brexit.*
*Note this is not a claim that Brexit is a huge success, rather that the current situation is not all because Brexit.
Accepted. But the claim was no one has noticed. That wasn't what it said on the tin.
Speaking from a non manager point of view, just a man in the street who does normal man in the street things, basically no one has noticed anything different since we left the eu....food is slighty dearer but that is as much the increase in fuel prices and the ukraine war....some people have to queue a little longer to holiday in france...who gives a shit frankly. That is the average worker stance not rochdale pioneers we are all doomed stance and frankly there are a lot of workers and not many rochdales so tough shit really
Sure - we're boiling frogs. But people voted for the moon on a stick they were promised. As it becomes clearer there is no moon coming to them, they will get angry. As Tories are starting to notice in the red wall.
Well I am certainly getting angry with actually getting a decent payrise as are many of those I know who finally find they have being incentivised to stay in their jobs and are no longer earning minimum wage and have a bit more in their pocket.
Complaints that you have more paper work or that it takes you longer to get past french border control fall on deaf ears because frankly they dont give a shit about you just like you didnt give a toss about their problems when we were in the eu. Shoe is on the other foot deal with it
Great! You got a 5% pay rise! But inflation is double that and rising, and your government is saying "no more pay rises for you".
If you are genuinely saying people are going into this winter and will feel better off, its a unique perspective.
Speaking from a non manager point of view, just a man in the street who does normal man in the street things, basically no one has noticed anything different since we left the eu....food is slighty dearer but that is as much the increase in fuel prices and the ukraine war....some people have to queue a little longer to holiday in france...who gives a shit frankly. That is the average worker stance not rochdale pioneers we are all doomed stance and frankly there are a lot of workers and not many rochdales so tough shit really
But. We were told Brexit would solve our problems and make us better off. If no one has noticed what was the bloody point of the last six years?
No one ever said Brexit would solve all our problems. Strawmen arguments do not become you.
While my predictions, as the Stodge Saturday Patent has demonstrated, aren't worth any attention, I'll offer a thought based on recent experience.
In 50-75 years time, London will empty at the beginning of June as those who can seek solace from the 45c temperatures and humidity associated with the late 21st century British summer between the spring and autumn monsoon seasons.
The newly-refurbished London Euston station will host the regular 30-minute Maglev summer service to the Lake District having passengers disembarking at Oxenholme in little more than a hour. From there, families will decamp to their summer chalets near the lakes (or as near as is affordable). The ability to work independently from location, first established during the 2020 pandemic, will allow tens of thousands of Londoners to continue working far from the overheating capital.
For those without the means to escape the heat, the annual ordeal that is summer in London is the very definition of purgatory. On the hottest days, with temperatures nearing 50c, many head to vast "cool centres" where they can enjoy air conditioned relief before heading home in the later evening.
While the Lakes are one popular "retreat from the heat", the Pennines and Cheviots have also seen summer housing and the major development of the north Scottish coast around Torrisdale and the islands of Harris and Lewis have seen an explosion of summer homes for those from southern and eastern Britain desperate to seek cooler summer weather.
I think you understate the case. The way we're going it will be a runaway climate change. Although some, especially reputable researchers, know what we need to do to counter this, most of us are too gormless to act accordingly. For instance, getting an electric car does not justify an otherwise wanton life style.
That's my fear. That we are now in an accelerating loop of increasing warmth and volatility, which will feed off itself like a chain reaction. And perhaps it is already too late to stop this
Our presence in this universe appears to be the result of a long series of lucky circumstances.
These include: The fortuitous value of the fine structure constant, which, if it were a little difference would not allow stellar fusion to produce carbon. The existence of a rocky planet at just the right distance from a stable and long-lived star. The presence of just enough water on said planet to make a complex environment of coasts and shallows that would drive evolution along. The presence of an unusually large moon orbiting said planet to slosh all that water about and further drive evolution. A complex geology that, combined with the effects of life, has managed to remove CO2 from the Earth's atmosphere at a rate that has just about compensated for the gradual increase in the luminosity of the sun, this keeping the temperature of the Earth in a range compatible with life over the aeons.
And we are just about to screw it all up.
Not at all. Whilst you are right about the serendipity element of our existence, you vastly overestimate the significance of our current civilisation and the nature of the changes we are facing. Presenting these current very minor adjustments in our environment with the vast changes that have occurred over the last few million years (one of which probably reduced the human population to less than 10,000 individuals) really shows a fundamental disconnect with the reality of our existence on planet earth.
The changes of a few degrees - whilst undoubtedly bad for our current comfortable civilisation - are bugger all in both scale and rate of change compared to the natural changes that have occurred even in fairly recent times.
This is not to say we shouldn't try to mitigate such changes, nor that they won't be very bad for our current lifestyles but your hyperbolic comment shows a stunning lack of historical and prehistorical perspective.
You are wrong, Richard. My view as set out here is supported by the evidence, and is shared by the vast majority of people who have expertise in this area. That's why they are so worried about the future.
Climatologists are well aware of both the rate and magnitude of past changes in climate and have a pretty good idea of their causes. In particular, the cycles of glaciation over the past few million years are thought to have been triggered by the Milankovitch cycles, the effects of which were than amplified by various feedback effects - the CO2 greenhouse effect being one of the prime ones. Ice core records show the very strong correlation of atmospheric CO2 with global temperature, and this is supported by models based on radiative physics.
The difference between the depths of the last glacial period and the current balmy interglacial is, in terms of global mean temperature, around 5 C, and that happened over a period of around 10,000 years. In about 150 years, humans have already lifted by global temperature by nearly 1.5 C and it continues to rise. This is not "bugger all". This is a profound shock to the climate system.
I'm off now, but if you are going to respond to this, please don't confuse local rates of temperature change for global ones, as you did last time we discussed this issue.
Sorry but now you are simply talking garbage. I actually spend a lot of my time teaching people about glaciations and interglacials from an archaeological and geological point of view and the idea that it took 10,000 years to move from glacial to interglacial conditions is complete hokum.
The last major glacial event was the Younger Dryas when the average UK annual temperature (as an example) was around -3 to -5 degrees C. I am currently involved in running research projects studying human occupation of the British Isles in the interstadial prior to the the Younger Dryas so I know how rapidly these things changed. The end of the Younger Dryas sees the temperatures rise by around 10 degrees in a single decade. And we are still not, today, anywhere near as warm globally as we were in either the Bronze Age or the Roman period.
This is Not an argument against the causes of Climate change. This a specific argument against your claims that this is in any way 'the end of humanity' or even the end of civilisation.
Best place to live during the Younger Dryas would have been along the equator, where the temperature would have been more Mediterranean than tropical.
Speaking from a non manager point of view, just a man in the street who does normal man in the street things, basically no one has noticed anything different since we left the eu....food is slighty dearer but that is as much the increase in fuel prices and the ukraine war....some people have to queue a little longer to holiday in france...who gives a shit frankly. That is the average worker stance not rochdale pioneers we are all doomed stance and frankly there are a lot of workers and not many rochdales so tough shit really
But. We were told Brexit would solve our problems and make us better off. If no one has noticed what was the bloody point of the last six years?
Brexit has made me better off and most of those I know as for the first time many are actually not earning minimum wage. If you are poorer because you did well off being in the eu well tough. Its what people like I and my friends were told...you arent getting payrises but better for the country to be in the eu so deal with it.
So it's I'm all right Jack, then? The vast majority aren't better off. And a heck of a lot of them are low paid. I should know.
Speaking from a non manager point of view, just a man in the street who does normal man in the street things, basically no one has noticed anything different since we left the eu....food is slighty dearer but that is as much the increase in fuel prices and the ukraine war....some people have to queue a little longer to holiday in france...who gives a shit frankly. That is the average worker stance not rochdale pioneers we are all doomed stance and frankly there are a lot of workers and not many rochdales so tough shit really
Sure - we're boiling frogs. But people voted for the moon on a stick they were promised. As it becomes clearer there is no moon coming to them, they will get angry. As Tories are starting to notice in the red wall.
Well I am certainly getting angry with actually getting a decent payrise as are many of those I know who finally find they have being incentivised to stay in their jobs and are no longer earning minimum wage and have a bit more in their pocket.
Complaints that you have more paper work or that it takes you longer to get past french border control fall on deaf ears because frankly they dont give a shit about you just like you didnt give a toss about their problems when we were in the eu. Shoe is on the other foot deal with it
Great! You got a 5% pay rise! But inflation is double that and rising, and your government is saying "no more pay rises for you".
If you are genuinely saying people are going into this winter and will feel better off, its a unique perspective.
I didnt say I had a 5% payrise I got 16% as it happens. A lot of my friends have had similar because companies have had to pay it rather than have no staff
Google Photos has just given me this photo after I typed in "booze"
Two young people in a bar on the Solovetsky Archipelago, in the White Sea, northern Russia, who have just served me a dubious glass of wine and they are wondering if I will like it. Also, they are wondering what on earth a Brit is doing in one of the most remote places in Russia
While my predictions, as the Stodge Saturday Patent has demonstrated, aren't worth any attention, I'll offer a thought based on recent experience.
In 50-75 years time, London will empty at the beginning of June as those who can seek solace from the 45c temperatures and humidity associated with the late 21st century British summer between the spring and autumn monsoon seasons.
The newly-refurbished London Euston station will host the regular 30-minute Maglev summer service to the Lake District having passengers disembarking at Oxenholme in little more than a hour. From there, families will decamp to their summer chalets near the lakes (or as near as is affordable). The ability to work independently from location, first established during the 2020 pandemic, will allow tens of thousands of Londoners to continue working far from the overheating capital.
For those without the means to escape the heat, the annual ordeal that is summer in London is the very definition of purgatory. On the hottest days, with temperatures nearing 50c, many head to vast "cool centres" where they can enjoy air conditioned relief before heading home in the later evening.
While the Lakes are one popular "retreat from the heat", the Pennines and Cheviots have also seen summer housing and the major development of the north Scottish coast around Torrisdale and the islands of Harris and Lewis have seen an explosion of summer homes for those from southern and eastern Britain desperate to seek cooler summer weather.
I think you understate the case. The way we're going it will be a runaway climate change. Although some, especially reputable researchers, know what we need to do to counter this, most of us are too gormless to act accordingly. For instance, getting an electric car does not justify an otherwise wanton life style.
That's my fear. That we are now in an accelerating loop of increasing warmth and volatility, which will feed off itself like a chain reaction. And perhaps it is already too late to stop this
Our presence in this universe appears to be the result of a long series of lucky circumstances.
These include: The fortuitous value of the fine structure constant, which, if it were a little difference would not allow stellar fusion to produce carbon. The existence of a rocky planet at just the right distance from a stable and long-lived star. The presence of just enough water on said planet to make a complex environment of coasts and shallows that would drive evolution along. The presence of an unusually large moon orbiting said planet to slosh all that water about and further drive evolution. A complex geology that, combined with the effects of life, has managed to remove CO2 from the Earth's atmosphere at a rate that has just about compensated for the gradual increase in the luminosity of the sun, this keeping the temperature of the Earth in a range compatible with life over the aeons.
And we are just about to screw it all up.
Not at all. Whilst you are right about the serendipity element of our existence, you vastly overestimate the significance of our current civilisation and the nature of the changes we are facing. Presenting these current very minor adjustments in our environment with the vast changes that have occurred over the last few million years (one of which probably reduced the human population to less than 10,000 individuals) really shows a fundamental disconnect with the reality of our existence on planet earth.
The changes of a few degrees - whilst undoubtedly bad for our current comfortable civilisation - are bugger all in both scale and rate of change compared to the natural changes that have occurred even in fairly recent times.
This is not to say we shouldn't try to mitigate such changes, nor that they won't be very bad for our current lifestyles but your hyperbolic comment shows a stunning lack of historical and prehistorical perspective.
Not really, as your parenthesis "(one of which probably reduced the human population to less than 10,000 individuals)" accidentally reveals. What is the point of saying This is nothing, we've had snowball earth and ice free earth and oxygen levels of 31%, this is a mere pin prick, when any one of those three sets of conditions would leave mankind wholly or mainly, stone dead? What has the long view got to do with us, when we have only been in the picture for a couple of minutes relatively speaking?
It's like warning a population of tadpoles in an April puddle that if it doesn't rain in the next week their puddle will dry out and they will all die: not much consolation for them to know that rainfall usually averages out in the course of a year and their puddle was virtually a pond back in January.
Nah. The point is that the changes we are seeing now are pinpricks compared to what nature can and has done in the past. We will and as we always have and this idea that this is the end of humanity or even civilisation which is expressed in FE's posting really is baseless. Indeed civilisations of the past have thrived under exactly the conditions which are being predicted now. It is uncomfortable for individuals and is probably something to be avoided if we can since it will make life miserable for a lot of people. But it is simply rubbish to consider anything we re predicting at the moment as the end of humanity.
Of course if we decided to nuke each other that is another matter. But I grew up in the 70s and 80s when threat was a permanent imminent threat so even that I find a bit of a yawn.
The world is a wonderful place and will continue to be so pretty much regardless of what we do.
The world is a wonderful place here and now for well heeled UK property owning PBers with money in the bank and drink in the fridge, sure. Our current predicament is such that either hundreds of millions of people who are mainly poor and fucked up anyway are going to be wiped out, or all of us are. I can't pretend to be terribly fussed at either possibility, but that's because I am a selfish twat. How about you?
The poor in the rest of the world are always being fucked up by those of us in the first world. But in fact their lot has being getting better rather than worse over the last century and continues to do so. So yes I continue to say the world is a wonderful place - and a lot better place to live in than it has been for almost all of human history for the vast majority of its population whether rich or poor.
In the Scotland border issue, remember that its al theoretical. Even if there was a referendum next year (and there won't be) and it voted Yes (and it won't), its way off into the 2nd half of the decade before they even have discussions about separation, never mind an agreement to instigate.
As the UK's current Brexit settlement is unworkable, it will be reformed. And the reformation will be closer and looser alignment with the EEA and CU. Which makes alignment between an EU Scotland and a post-Brext rUK much easier than it would be now.
No, if Scotland left the UK that makes it much easier to sustain a hard Brexit for England permanently. For Scotland was the only 1 of the 3 home nations in GB that voted Remain
England won't have sustained a hard Brexit by the time we theoretically got there. Because the Brexit we have doesn't work. Unless Mistress Truss has whipped everyone to back punishment beatings.
On current theoretical polling a Truss led Tories would still win a majority in England at the next general election even if not in the UK
It isn't an England election. And Mistress Truss will not win any election. As you well know voting (rightly) for Dishi
Listening to MmmmmmmmmmmBop after a very good birthday lunch where I finally reconnected with my mother.
It is the most joyful song.
It is the best popsong ever written. Along with the Complete Works of Busted
It is. My little sister who I adore was obsessed with them at the time and I still sing joyfully along with it reminiscing about me driving her to teenage parties.
Now trying to decide which out of the waterboys “whole of the moon” and “moonlight shadow” by Mike oldfield is the better song to moon to…..
Speaking from a non manager point of view, just a man in the street who does normal man in the street things, basically no one has noticed anything different since we left the eu....food is slighty dearer but that is as much the increase in fuel prices and the ukraine war....some people have to queue a little longer to holiday in france...who gives a shit frankly. That is the average worker stance not rochdale pioneers we are all doomed stance and frankly there are a lot of workers and not many rochdales so tough shit really
Sure - we're boiling frogs. But people voted for the moon on a stick they were promised. As it becomes clearer there is no moon coming to them, they will get angry. As Tories are starting to notice in the red wall.
Well I am certainly getting angry with actually getting a decent payrise as are many of those I know who finally find they have being incentivised to stay in their jobs and are no longer earning minimum wage and have a bit more in their pocket.
Complaints that you have more paper work or that it takes you longer to get past french border control fall on deaf ears because frankly they dont give a shit about you just like you didnt give a toss about their problems when we were in the eu. Shoe is on the other foot deal with it
Great! You got a 5% pay rise! But inflation is double that and rising, and your government is saying "no more pay rises for you".
If you are genuinely saying people are going into this winter and will feel better off, its a unique perspective.
I didnt say I had a 5% payrise I got 16% as it happens. A lot of my friends have had similar because companies have had to pay it rather than have no staff
Speaking from a non manager point of view, just a man in the street who does normal man in the street things, basically no one has noticed anything different since we left the eu....food is slighty dearer but that is as much the increase in fuel prices and the ukraine war....some people have to queue a little longer to holiday in france...who gives a shit frankly. That is the average worker stance not rochdale pioneers we are all doomed stance and frankly there are a lot of workers and not many rochdales so tough shit really
But. We were told Brexit would solve our problems and make us better off. If no one has noticed what was the bloody point of the last six years?
No one ever said Brexit would solve all our problems. Strawmen arguments do not become you.
You've sneakily added the word "all" there. Straw men arguments don't help your case.
Listening to MmmmmmmmmmmBop after a very good birthday lunch where I finally reconnected with my mother.
It is the most joyful song.
It is the best popsong ever written. Along with the Complete Works of Busted
It is. My little sister who I adore was obsessed with them at the time and I still sing joyfully along with it reminiscing about me driving her to teenage parties.
Now trying to decide which out of the waterboys “whole of the moon” and “moonlight shadow” by Mike oldfield is the better song to moon to…..
The latter falls down significantly with the line "4am in the morning"...
How about Van Morrison's 'Moondance', which you could cheerfully wave your bare arse around to?
Speaking from a non manager point of view, just a man in the street who does normal man in the street things, basically no one has noticed anything different since we left the eu....food is slighty dearer but that is as much the increase in fuel prices and the ukraine war....some people have to queue a little longer to holiday in france...who gives a shit frankly. That is the average worker stance not rochdale pioneers we are all doomed stance and frankly there are a lot of workers and not many rochdales so tough shit really
But. We were told Brexit would solve our problems and make us better off. If no one has noticed what was the bloody point of the last six years?
Brexit has made me better off and most of those I know as for the first time many are actually not earning minimum wage. If you are poorer because you did well off being in the eu well tough. Its what people like I and my friends were told...you arent getting payrises but better for the country to be in the eu so deal with it.
So it's I'm all right Jack, then? The vast majority aren't better off. And a heck of a lot of them are low paid. I should know.
Why is I am alright Jack no longer alright...for the last 40 years its been those benefitting from the eu saying its I am alright jack.....dont like it because now you aren't so alright tough titties.
This is what a lot of people on this board dont seem to get. Since 1997 they have been doing just fine.....a huge number of people in this country however have seen their wages fall in real terms year after year while bosses did ok and lets face it their are a lot of senior managers and boss types here whinging about brexit, Rochdale is a prime example.....now that huge number of people see their wages actually going up and yes we are pleased about that and really dont care about you just as you didnt about us.
Speaking from a non manager point of view, just a man in the street who does normal man in the street things, basically no one has noticed anything different since we left the eu....food is slighty dearer but that is as much the increase in fuel prices and the ukraine war....some people have to queue a little longer to holiday in france...who gives a shit frankly. That is the average worker stance not rochdale pioneers we are all doomed stance and frankly there are a lot of workers and not many rochdales so tough shit really
But. We were told Brexit would solve our problems and make us better off. If no one has noticed what was the bloody point of the last six years?
No one ever said Brexit would solve all our problems. Strawmen arguments do not become you.
You've sneakily added the word "all" there. Straw men arguments don't help your case.
Nope. You are just trying to twist your way out of it now.
Speaking from a non manager point of view, just a man in the street who does normal man in the street things, basically no one has noticed anything different since we left the eu....food is slighty dearer but that is as much the increase in fuel prices and the ukraine war....some people have to queue a little longer to holiday in france...who gives a shit frankly. That is the average worker stance not rochdale pioneers we are all doomed stance and frankly there are a lot of workers and not many rochdales so tough shit really
But. We were told Brexit would solve our problems and make us better off. If no one has noticed what was the bloody point of the last six years?
No one ever said Brexit would solve all our problems. Strawmen arguments do not become you.
You've sneakily added the word "all" there. Straw men arguments don't help your case.
Nope. You are just trying to twist your way out of it now.
Come off it. We were told Brexit would make our lives better.
Fascinated by the concept that the Normans would reject the Danish word ‘jarl’ (earl). They were Danes themselves, had only switched language - from Norse to French - a few decades prior to 1066, and would have still been very familiar and comfortable with Norse nobility and societal structures.
Indeed, the Norman French language inherited 150 Norse words straight from their Danish homeland.
In the Scotland border issue, remember that its al theoretical. Even if there was a referendum next year (and there won't be) and it voted Yes (and it won't), its way off into the 2nd half of the decade before they even have discussions about separation, never mind an agreement to instigate.
As the UK's current Brexit settlement is unworkable, it will be reformed. And the reformation will be closer and looser alignment with the EEA and CU. Which makes alignment between an EU Scotland and a post-Brext rUK much easier than it would be now.
No, if Scotland left the UK that makes it much easier to sustain a hard Brexit for England permanently. For Scotland was the only 1 of the 3 home nations in GB that voted Remain
England won't have sustained a hard Brexit by the time we theoretically got there. Because the Brexit we have doesn't work. Unless Mistress Truss has whipped everyone to back punishment beatings.
On current theoretical polling a Truss led Tories would still win a majority in England at the next general election even if not in the UK
It isn't an England election. And Mistress Truss will not win any election. As you well know voting (rightly) for Dishi
If an indyref2 was allowed by PM Starmer however and Scotland voted Yes, England would instantly revert to Tory rule if it had a Tory majority but the UK didn't
Speaking from a non manager point of view, just a man in the street who does normal man in the street things, basically no one has noticed anything different since we left the eu....food is slighty dearer but that is as much the increase in fuel prices and the ukraine war....some people have to queue a little longer to holiday in france...who gives a shit frankly. That is the average worker stance not rochdale pioneers we are all doomed stance and frankly there are a lot of workers and not many rochdales so tough shit really
But. We were told Brexit would solve our problems and make us better off. If no one has noticed what was the bloody point of the last six years?
Brexit has made me better off and most of those I know as for the first time many are actually not earning minimum wage. If you are poorer because you did well off being in the eu well tough. Its what people like I and my friends were told...you arent getting payrises but better for the country to be in the eu so deal with it.
So it's I'm all right Jack, then? The vast majority aren't better off. And a heck of a lot of them are low paid. I should know.
Why is I am alright Jack no longer alright...for the last 40 years its been those benefitting from the eu saying its I am alright jack.....dont like it because now you aren't so alright tough titties.
This is what a lot of people on this board dont seem to get. Since 1997 they have been doing just fine.....a huge number of people in this country however have seen their wages fall in real terms year after year while bosses did ok and lets face it their are a lot of senior managers and boss types here whinging about brexit, Rochdale is a prime example.....now that huge number of people see their wages actually going up and yes we are pleased about that and really dont care about you just as you didnt about us.
And the average wage is rising way below the rate of inflation. This may or may not be a result of Brexit. But we aren't getting better off.
Speaking from a non manager point of view, just a man in the street who does normal man in the street things, basically no one has noticed anything different since we left the eu....food is slighty dearer but that is as much the increase in fuel prices and the ukraine war....some people have to queue a little longer to holiday in france...who gives a shit frankly. That is the average worker stance not rochdale pioneers we are all doomed stance and frankly there are a lot of workers and not many rochdales so tough shit really
But. We were told Brexit would solve our problems and make us better off. If no one has noticed what was the bloody point of the last six years?
No one ever said Brexit would solve all our problems. Strawmen arguments do not become you.
You've sneakily added the word "all" there. Straw men arguments don't help your case.
Nope. You are just trying to twist your way out of it now.
Come off it. We were told Brexit would make our lives better.
Very different from claiming it would 'solve our problems' (with or without the 'all') . A claim no one made.
Speaking from a non manager point of view, just a man in the street who does normal man in the street things, basically no one has noticed anything different since we left the eu....food is slighty dearer but that is as much the increase in fuel prices and the ukraine war....some people have to queue a little longer to holiday in france...who gives a shit frankly. That is the average worker stance not rochdale pioneers we are all doomed stance and frankly there are a lot of workers and not many rochdales so tough shit really
But. We were told Brexit would solve our problems and make us better off. If no one has noticed what was the bloody point of the last six years?
No one ever said Brexit would solve all our problems. Strawmen arguments do not become you.
You've sneakily added the word "all" there. Straw men arguments don't help your case.
Nope. You are just trying to twist your way out of it now.
Come off it. We were told Brexit would make our lives better.
By some. We were also told by many it would make our lives worse, disastrously so. The reality seems somewhere in between. It turns out that issues like war, disease and famine have much greater impacts than membership or otherwise of the EU.
I don't have any majestic landscapes for my holiday photos, just this, probably rotated by vanilla one: one day I wish to be as carefree as a frenchman.
Speaking from a non manager point of view, just a man in the street who does normal man in the street things, basically no one has noticed anything different since we left the eu....food is slighty dearer but that is as much the increase in fuel prices and the ukraine war....some people have to queue a little longer to holiday in france...who gives a shit frankly. That is the average worker stance not rochdale pioneers we are all doomed stance and frankly there are a lot of workers and not many rochdales so tough shit really
But. We were told Brexit would solve our problems and make us better off. If no one has noticed what was the bloody point of the last six years?
No one ever said Brexit would solve all our problems. Strawmen arguments do not become you.
You've sneakily added the word "all" there. Straw men arguments don't help your case.
Nope. You are just trying to twist your way out of it now.
Come off it. We were told Brexit would make our lives better.
Very different from claiming it would 'solve our problems' (with or without the 'all') . A claim no one made.
You really don't think that was the implication heard?
Listening to MmmmmmmmmmmBop after a very good birthday lunch where I finally reconnected with my mother.
It is the most joyful song.
It is the best popsong ever written. Along with the Complete Works of Busted
It is. My little sister who I adore was obsessed with them at the time and I still sing joyfully along with it reminiscing about me driving her to teenage parties.
Now trying to decide which out of the waterboys “whole of the moon” and “moonlight shadow” by Mike oldfield is the better song to moon to…..
The latter falls down significantly with the line "4am in the morning"...
How about Van Morrison's 'Moondance', which you could cheerfully wave your bare arse around to?
No, it’s “Nightshift” by the Commodores now. One of my funeral choices! Don’t know why but one of the best songs ever.
In the Scotland border issue, remember that its al theoretical. Even if there was a referendum next year (and there won't be) and it voted Yes (and it won't), its way off into the 2nd half of the decade before they even have discussions about separation, never mind an agreement to instigate.
As the UK's current Brexit settlement is unworkable, it will be reformed. And the reformation will be closer and looser alignment with the EEA and CU. Which makes alignment between an EU Scotland and a post-Brext rUK much easier than it would be now.
No, if Scotland left the UK that makes it much easier to sustain a hard Brexit for England permanently. For Scotland was the only 1 of the 3 home nations in GB that voted Remain
England won't have sustained a hard Brexit by the time we theoretically got there. Because the Brexit we have doesn't work. Unless Mistress Truss has whipped everyone to back punishment beatings.
On current theoretical polling a Truss led Tories would still win a majority in England at the next general election even if not in the UK
It isn't an England election. And Mistress Truss will not win any election. As you well know voting (rightly) for Dishi
If an indyref2 was allowed by PM Starmer however and Scotland voted Yes, England would instantly revert to Tory rule if it had a Tory majority but the UK didn't
Not if Mistress Truss has caused millions of English voters to suffer a hellish winter and has moved onto a spring and summer of "YOU MUST CLEAR YOUR DEBTS".
BTW I do genuinely respect you for identifying the problems that Mistress Truss presents to your party. I know you will revert to both slavishly supporting her and insisting you always did, but this summer we have seen that a person is there under the bluster.
“This will be Russian land or scorched earth!” The commander of Russian forces in Zaporizhzhya, who’s also the head of Russia’s defense “against” radioactive, chemical and biological threats reportedly threatens “various scenarios” at Enerhodar plant. https://mobile.twitter.com/charliekreuz/status/1556366134546399237
In the Scotland border issue, remember that its al theoretical. Even if there was a referendum next year (and there won't be) and it voted Yes (and it won't), its way off into the 2nd half of the decade before they even have discussions about separation, never mind an agreement to instigate.
As the UK's current Brexit settlement is unworkable, it will be reformed. And the reformation will be closer and looser alignment with the EEA and CU. Which makes alignment between an EU Scotland and a post-Brext rUK much easier than it would be now.
No, if Scotland left the UK that makes it much easier to sustain a hard Brexit for England permanently. For Scotland was the only 1 of the 3 home nations in GB that voted Remain
England won't have sustained a hard Brexit by the time we theoretically got there. Because the Brexit we have doesn't work. Unless Mistress Truss has whipped everyone to back punishment beatings.
On current theoretical polling a Truss led Tories would still win a majority in England at the next general election even if not in the UK
It isn't an England election. And Mistress Truss will not win any election. As you well know voting (rightly) for Dishi
If an indyref2 was allowed by PM Starmer however and Scotland voted Yes, England would instantly revert to Tory rule if it had a Tory majority but the UK didn't
Not if Mistress Truss has caused millions of English voters to suffer a hellish winter and has moved onto a spring and summer of "YOU MUST CLEAR YOUR DEBTS".
Even so by then the hypothesis is Starmer was now PM, he granted and lost indyref2 and English nationalism is then resurgent to give no quarter to the SNP
I see barbecues are the latest target for the modern-day puritans. It makes sense to discourage portable barbecues but they're now apparently talking about the home variety.
Speaking from a non manager point of view, just a man in the street who does normal man in the street things, basically no one has noticed anything different since we left the eu....food is slighty dearer but that is as much the increase in fuel prices and the ukraine war....some people have to queue a little longer to holiday in france...who gives a shit frankly. That is the average worker stance not rochdale pioneers we are all doomed stance and frankly there are a lot of workers and not many rochdales so tough shit really
But. We were told Brexit would solve our problems and make us better off. If no one has noticed what was the bloody point of the last six years?
Brexit has made me better off and most of those I know as for the first time many are actually not earning minimum wage. If you are poorer because you did well off being in the eu well tough. Its what people like I and my friends were told...you arent getting payrises but better for the country to be in the eu so deal with it.
So it's I'm all right Jack, then? The vast majority aren't better off. And a heck of a lot of them are low paid. I should know.
Why is I am alright Jack no longer alright...for the last 40 years its been those benefitting from the eu saying its I am alright jack.....dont like it because now you aren't so alright tough titties.
This is what a lot of people on this board dont seem to get. Since 1997 they have been doing just fine.....a huge number of people in this country however have seen their wages fall in real terms year after year while bosses did ok and lets face it their are a lot of senior managers and boss types here whinging about brexit, Rochdale is a prime example.....now that huge number of people see their wages actually going up and yes we are pleased about that and really dont care about you just as you didnt about us.
And the average wage is rising way below the rate of inflation. This may or may not be a result of Brexit. But we aren't getting better off.
And if we were still in the eu it may well be that the average wage was even further below the rate of inflation as people like me and friends wouldn't have had inflation busting payrises. Indeed I suspect if we hadnt voted out then my pay would still be the same as it was in 2003 as it didnt start to rise till 2018. Can I prove it no obviously not its a counter factual however you also by that light can't claim average wage would be better compared to inflation now if we had stayed in
That has to be in the running for "ugliest station canopy in the country"...
And yet, I can personally assure you that is probably the nicest building in Wick. Also the best building, as it is the route out of Wick
I unironically went on holiday to Wick a few years ago. Good Tesco.
How anyone can go to Wick without admiring Pulteneytown - by the same chap who also helped develop Bath - escapes me.
Using the AWESOME POWER OF GOOGLE PHOTOS:
Actually, to cease taking the piss, the heatmap feature of Google photos is pretty cool. Found this one of Wick's version of K2.
Heatmap feature???
OOOH, tell me more. I do love Google Photos. As you know
Search, places:
Brilliant. It just coughed up this photo (of a trip I had almost totally forgotten): a helicopter ride over the Whitsunday Islands, Australia, just to have a drink on a beach
While my predictions, as the Stodge Saturday Patent has demonstrated, aren't worth any attention, I'll offer a thought based on recent experience.
In 50-75 years time, London will empty at the beginning of June as those who can seek solace from the 45c temperatures and humidity associated with the late 21st century British summer between the spring and autumn monsoon seasons.
The newly-refurbished London Euston station will host the regular 30-minute Maglev summer service to the Lake District having passengers disembarking at Oxenholme in little more than a hour. From there, families will decamp to their summer chalets near the lakes (or as near as is affordable). The ability to work independently from location, first established during the 2020 pandemic, will allow tens of thousands of Londoners to continue working far from the overheating capital.
For those without the means to escape the heat, the annual ordeal that is summer in London is the very definition of purgatory. On the hottest days, with temperatures nearing 50c, many head to vast "cool centres" where they can enjoy air conditioned relief before heading home in the later evening.
While the Lakes are one popular "retreat from the heat", the Pennines and Cheviots have also seen summer housing and the major development of the north Scottish coast around Torrisdale and the islands of Harris and Lewis have seen an explosion of summer homes for those from southern and eastern Britain desperate to seek cooler summer weather.
I think you understate the case. The way we're going it will be a runaway climate change. Although some, especially reputable researchers, know what we need to do to counter this, most of us are too gormless to act accordingly. For instance, getting an electric car does not justify an otherwise wanton life style.
That's my fear. That we are now in an accelerating loop of increasing warmth and volatility, which will feed off itself like a chain reaction. And perhaps it is already too late to stop this
Our presence in this universe appears to be the result of a long series of lucky circumstances.
These include: The fortuitous value of the fine structure constant, which, if it were a little difference would not allow stellar fusion to produce carbon. The existence of a rocky planet at just the right distance from a stable and long-lived star. The presence of just enough water on said planet to make a complex environment of coasts and shallows that would drive evolution along. The presence of an unusually large moon orbiting said planet to slosh all that water about and further drive evolution. A complex geology that, combined with the effects of life, has managed to remove CO2 from the Earth's atmosphere at a rate that has just about compensated for the gradual increase in the luminosity of the sun, this keeping the temperature of the Earth in a range compatible with life over the aeons.
And we are just about to screw it all up.
Not at all. Whilst you are right about the serendipity element of our existence, you vastly overestimate the significance of our current civilisation and the nature of the changes we are facing. Presenting these current very minor adjustments in our environment with the vast changes that have occurred over the last few million years (one of which probably reduced the human population to less than 10,000 individuals) really shows a fundamental disconnect with the reality of our existence on planet earth.
The changes of a few degrees - whilst undoubtedly bad for our current comfortable civilisation - are bugger all in both scale and rate of change compared to the natural changes that have occurred even in fairly recent times.
This is not to say we shouldn't try to mitigate such changes, nor that they won't be very bad for our current lifestyles but your hyperbolic comment shows a stunning lack of historical and prehistorical perspective.
Not really, as your parenthesis "(one of which probably reduced the human population to less than 10,000 individuals)" accidentally reveals. What is the point of saying This is nothing, we've had snowball earth and ice free earth and oxygen levels of 31%, this is a mere pin prick, when any one of those three sets of conditions would leave mankind wholly or mainly, stone dead? What has the long view got to do with us, when we have only been in the picture for a couple of minutes relatively speaking?
It's like warning a population of tadpoles in an April puddle that if it doesn't rain in the next week their puddle will dry out and they will all die: not much consolation for them to know that rainfall usually averages out in the course of a year and their puddle was virtually a pond back in January.
Nah. The point is that the changes we are seeing now are pinpricks compared to what nature can and has done in the past. We will and as we always have and this idea that this is the end of humanity or even civilisation which is expressed in FE's posting really is baseless. Indeed civilisations of the past have thrived under exactly the conditions which are being predicted now. It is uncomfortable for individuals and is probably something to be avoided if we can since it will make life miserable for a lot of people. But it is simply rubbish to consider anything we re predicting at the moment as the end of humanity.
Of course if we decided to nuke each other that is another matter. But I grew up in the 70s and 80s when threat was a permanent imminent threat so even that I find a bit of a yawn.
The world is a wonderful place and will continue to be so pretty much regardless of what we do.
The world is a wonderful place here and now for well heeled UK property owning PBers with money in the bank and drink in the fridge, sure. Our current predicament is such that either hundreds of millions of people who are mainly poor and fucked up anyway are going to be wiped out, or all of us are. I can't pretend to be terribly fussed at either possibility, but that's because I am a selfish twat. How about you?
The poor in the rest of the world are always being fucked up by those of us in the first world. But in fact their lot has being getting better rather than worse over the last century and continues to do so. So yes I continue to say the world is a wonderful place - and a lot better place to live in than it has been for almost all of human history for the vast majority of its population whether rich or poor.
But there's more of them. Lots more of them. So in absolute terms there's more human misery now, than in all previous history combined. Not claiming I lose sleep over this, but celebrations seem out of order.
Speaking from a non manager point of view, just a man in the street who does normal man in the street things, basically no one has noticed anything different since we left the eu....food is slighty dearer but that is as much the increase in fuel prices and the ukraine war....some people have to queue a little longer to holiday in france...who gives a shit frankly. That is the average worker stance not rochdale pioneers we are all doomed stance and frankly there are a lot of workers and not many rochdales so tough shit really
But. We were told Brexit would solve our problems and make us better off. If no one has noticed what was the bloody point of the last six years?
Brexit has made me better off and most of those I know as for the first time many are actually not earning minimum wage. If you are poorer because you did well off being in the eu well tough. Its what people like I and my friends were told...you arent getting payrises but better for the country to be in the eu so deal with it.
So it's I'm all right Jack, then? The vast majority aren't better off. And a heck of a lot of them are low paid. I should know.
Why is I am alright Jack no longer alright...for the last 40 years its been those benefitting from the eu saying its I am alright jack.....dont like it because now you aren't so alright tough titties.
This is what a lot of people on this board dont seem to get. Since 1997 they have been doing just fine.....a huge number of people in this country however have seen their wages fall in real terms year after year while bosses did ok and lets face it their are a lot of senior managers and boss types here whinging about brexit, Rochdale is a prime example.....now that huge number of people see their wages actually going up and yes we are pleased about that and really dont care about you just as you didnt about us.
I was a remain campaigner, one of about 10 people who did this in an area of 100,000+. What was interesting was that the rich people who benefitted most from being the EU were not interested in campaigning. Quite often we would encounter them in the street and they would tell us to 'work harder', as if we were working for them and not doing a good enough job. They completely deserved their beating. It's impossible to feel sorry for them.
While my predictions, as the Stodge Saturday Patent has demonstrated, aren't worth any attention, I'll offer a thought based on recent experience.
In 50-75 years time, London will empty at the beginning of June as those who can seek solace from the 45c temperatures and humidity associated with the late 21st century British summer between the spring and autumn monsoon seasons.
The newly-refurbished London Euston station will host the regular 30-minute Maglev summer service to the Lake District having passengers disembarking at Oxenholme in little more than a hour. From there, families will decamp to their summer chalets near the lakes (or as near as is affordable). The ability to work independently from location, first established during the 2020 pandemic, will allow tens of thousands of Londoners to continue working far from the overheating capital.
For those without the means to escape the heat, the annual ordeal that is summer in London is the very definition of purgatory. On the hottest days, with temperatures nearing 50c, many head to vast "cool centres" where they can enjoy air conditioned relief before heading home in the later evening.
While the Lakes are one popular "retreat from the heat", the Pennines and Cheviots have also seen summer housing and the major development of the north Scottish coast around Torrisdale and the islands of Harris and Lewis have seen an explosion of summer homes for those from southern and eastern Britain desperate to seek cooler summer weather.
I think you understate the case. The way we're going it will be a runaway climate change. Although some, especially reputable researchers, know what we need to do to counter this, most of us are too gormless to act accordingly. For instance, getting an electric car does not justify an otherwise wanton life style.
That's my fear. That we are now in an accelerating loop of increasing warmth and volatility, which will feed off itself like a chain reaction. And perhaps it is already too late to stop this
Our presence in this universe appears to be the result of a long series of lucky circumstances.
These include: The fortuitous value of the fine structure constant, which, if it were a little difference would not allow stellar fusion to produce carbon. The existence of a rocky planet at just the right distance from a stable and long-lived star. The presence of just enough water on said planet to make a complex environment of coasts and shallows that would drive evolution along. The presence of an unusually large moon orbiting said planet to slosh all that water about and further drive evolution. A complex geology that, combined with the effects of life, has managed to remove CO2 from the Earth's atmosphere at a rate that has just about compensated for the gradual increase in the luminosity of the sun, this keeping the temperature of the Earth in a range compatible with life over the aeons.
And we are just about to screw it all up.
Not at all. Whilst you are right about the serendipity element of our existence, you vastly overestimate the significance of our current civilisation and the nature of the changes we are facing. Presenting these current very minor adjustments in our environment with the vast changes that have occurred over the last few million years (one of which probably reduced the human population to less than 10,000 individuals) really shows a fundamental disconnect with the reality of our existence on planet earth.
The changes of a few degrees - whilst undoubtedly bad for our current comfortable civilisation - are bugger all in both scale and rate of change compared to the natural changes that have occurred even in fairly recent times.
This is not to say we shouldn't try to mitigate such changes, nor that they won't be very bad for our current lifestyles but your hyperbolic comment shows a stunning lack of historical and prehistorical perspective.
Not really, as your parenthesis "(one of which probably reduced the human population to less than 10,000 individuals)" accidentally reveals. What is the point of saying This is nothing, we've had snowball earth and ice free earth and oxygen levels of 31%, this is a mere pin prick, when any one of those three sets of conditions would leave mankind wholly or mainly, stone dead? What has the long view got to do with us, when we have only been in the picture for a couple of minutes relatively speaking?
It's like warning a population of tadpoles in an April puddle that if it doesn't rain in the next week their puddle will dry out and they will all die: not much consolation for them to know that rainfall usually averages out in the course of a year and their puddle was virtually a pond back in January.
Nah. The point is that the changes we are seeing now are pinpricks compared to what nature can and has done in the past. We will and as we always have and this idea that this is the end of humanity or even civilisation which is expressed in FE's posting really is baseless. Indeed civilisations of the past have thrived under exactly the conditions which are being predicted now. It is uncomfortable for individuals and is probably something to be avoided if we can since it will make life miserable for a lot of people. But it is simply rubbish to consider anything we re predicting at the moment as the end of humanity.
Of course if we decided to nuke each other that is another matter. But I grew up in the 70s and 80s when threat was a permanent imminent threat so even that I find a bit of a yawn.
The world is a wonderful place and will continue to be so pretty much regardless of what we do.
The world is a wonderful place here and now for well heeled UK property owning PBers with money in the bank and drink in the fridge, sure. Our current predicament is such that either hundreds of millions of people who are mainly poor and fucked up anyway are going to be wiped out, or all of us are. I can't pretend to be terribly fussed at either possibility, but that's because I am a selfish twat. How about you?
The poor in the rest of the world are always being fucked up by those of us in the first world. But in fact their lot has being getting better rather than worse over the last century and continues to do so. So yes I continue to say the world is a wonderful place - and a lot better place to live in than it has been for almost all of human history for the vast majority of its population whether rich or poor.
But there's more of them. Lots more of them. So in absolute terms there's more human misery now, than in all previous history combined. Not claiming I lose sleep over this, but celebrations seem out of order.
But the reason there are more of them.is that far fewer of them are dying. Death rates in the third world have fallen dramatically in the past generation.
Listening to MmmmmmmmmmmBop after a very good birthday lunch where I finally reconnected with my mother.
It is the most joyful song.
It is the best popsong ever written. Along with the Complete Works of Busted
It is. My little sister who I adore was obsessed with them at the time and I still sing joyfully along with it reminiscing about me driving her to teenage parties.
Now trying to decide which out of the waterboys “whole of the moon” and “moonlight shadow” by Mike oldfield is the better song to moon to…..
The latter falls down significantly with the line "4am in the morning"...
How about Van Morrison's 'Moondance', which you could cheerfully wave your bare arse around to?
No, it’s “Nightshift” by the Commodores now. One of my funeral choices! Don’t know why but one of the best songs ever.
Best couplet ever
It's 4 in the morning and I'm walking along Beside the ghost of every drinker here who's ever done wrong
Speaking from a non manager point of view, just a man in the street who does normal man in the street things, basically no one has noticed anything different since we left the eu....food is slighty dearer but that is as much the increase in fuel prices and the ukraine war....some people have to queue a little longer to holiday in france...who gives a shit frankly. That is the average worker stance not rochdale pioneers we are all doomed stance and frankly there are a lot of workers and not many rochdales so tough shit really
Sure - we're boiling frogs. But people voted for the moon on a stick they were promised. As it becomes clearer there is no moon coming to them, they will get angry. As Tories are starting to notice in the red wall.
Well I am certainly getting angry with actually getting a decent payrise as are many of those I know who finally find they have being incentivised to stay in their jobs and are no longer earning minimum wage and have a bit more in their pocket.
Complaints that you have more paper work or that it takes you longer to get past french border control fall on deaf ears because frankly they dont give a shit about you just like you didnt give a toss about their problems when we were in the eu. Shoe is on the other foot deal with it
Great! You got a 5% pay rise! But inflation is double that and rising, and your government is saying "no more pay rises for you".
If you are genuinely saying people are going into this winter and will feel better off, its a unique perspective.
I didnt say I had a 5% payrise I got 16% as it happens. A lot of my friends have had similar because companies have had to pay it rather than have no staff
The big question - of course - is whether British firms have been making out like banditos, and earning super normal margins.
If they have, then there will be a natural move from the owners of capital (i.e. businesses) to labour (i.e. workers).
If they have not, then they will demand less labour - either because they will outsource work to other countries, or because they will invest in capital to replace labour.
Of course, right now things are clouded by Covid, and Ukraine/energy/food. But it will be interesting to see what happens next.
While my predictions, as the Stodge Saturday Patent has demonstrated, aren't worth any attention, I'll offer a thought based on recent experience.
In 50-75 years time, London will empty at the beginning of June as those who can seek solace from the 45c temperatures and humidity associated with the late 21st century British summer between the spring and autumn monsoon seasons.
The newly-refurbished London Euston station will host the regular 30-minute Maglev summer service to the Lake District having passengers disembarking at Oxenholme in little more than a hour. From there, families will decamp to their summer chalets near the lakes (or as near as is affordable). The ability to work independently from location, first established during the 2020 pandemic, will allow tens of thousands of Londoners to continue working far from the overheating capital.
For those without the means to escape the heat, the annual ordeal that is summer in London is the very definition of purgatory. On the hottest days, with temperatures nearing 50c, many head to vast "cool centres" where they can enjoy air conditioned relief before heading home in the later evening.
While the Lakes are one popular "retreat from the heat", the Pennines and Cheviots have also seen summer housing and the major development of the north Scottish coast around Torrisdale and the islands of Harris and Lewis have seen an explosion of summer homes for those from southern and eastern Britain desperate to seek cooler summer weather.
I think you understate the case. The way we're going it will be a runaway climate change. Although some, especially reputable researchers, know what we need to do to counter this, most of us are too gormless to act accordingly. For instance, getting an electric car does not justify an otherwise wanton life style.
That's my fear. That we are now in an accelerating loop of increasing warmth and volatility, which will feed off itself like a chain reaction. And perhaps it is already too late to stop this
Our presence in this universe appears to be the result of a long series of lucky circumstances.
These include: The fortuitous value of the fine structure constant, which, if it were a little difference would not allow stellar fusion to produce carbon. The existence of a rocky planet at just the right distance from a stable and long-lived star. The presence of just enough water on said planet to make a complex environment of coasts and shallows that would drive evolution along. The presence of an unusually large moon orbiting said planet to slosh all that water about and further drive evolution. A complex geology that, combined with the effects of life, has managed to remove CO2 from the Earth's atmosphere at a rate that has just about compensated for the gradual increase in the luminosity of the sun, this keeping the temperature of the Earth in a range compatible with life over the aeons.
And we are just about to screw it all up.
Not at all. Whilst you are right about the serendipity element of our existence, you vastly overestimate the significance of our current civilisation and the nature of the changes we are facing. Presenting these current very minor adjustments in our environment with the vast changes that have occurred over the last few million years (one of which probably reduced the human population to less than 10,000 individuals) really shows a fundamental disconnect with the reality of our existence on planet earth.
The changes of a few degrees - whilst undoubtedly bad for our current comfortable civilisation - are bugger all in both scale and rate of change compared to the natural changes that have occurred even in fairly recent times.
This is not to say we shouldn't try to mitigate such changes, nor that they won't be very bad for our current lifestyles but your hyperbolic comment shows a stunning lack of historical and prehistorical perspective.
Not really, as your parenthesis "(one of which probably reduced the human population to less than 10,000 individuals)" accidentally reveals. What is the point of saying This is nothing, we've had snowball earth and ice free earth and oxygen levels of 31%, this is a mere pin prick, when any one of those three sets of conditions would leave mankind wholly or mainly, stone dead? What has the long view got to do with us, when we have only been in the picture for a couple of minutes relatively speaking?
It's like warning a population of tadpoles in an April puddle that if it doesn't rain in the next week their puddle will dry out and they will all die: not much consolation for them to know that rainfall usually averages out in the course of a year and their puddle was virtually a pond back in January.
Nah. The point is that the changes we are seeing now are pinpricks compared to what nature can and has done in the past. We will and as we always have and this idea that this is the end of humanity or even civilisation which is expressed in FE's posting really is baseless. Indeed civilisations of the past have thrived under exactly the conditions which are being predicted now. It is uncomfortable for individuals and is probably something to be avoided if we can since it will make life miserable for a lot of people. But it is simply rubbish to consider anything we re predicting at the moment as the end of humanity.
Of course if we decided to nuke each other that is another matter. But I grew up in the 70s and 80s when threat was a permanent imminent threat so even that I find a bit of a yawn.
The world is a wonderful place and will continue to be so pretty much regardless of what we do.
The world is a wonderful place here and now for well heeled UK property owning PBers with money in the bank and drink in the fridge, sure. Our current predicament is such that either hundreds of millions of people who are mainly poor and fucked up anyway are going to be wiped out, or all of us are. I can't pretend to be terribly fussed at either possibility, but that's because I am a selfish twat. How about you?
The poor in the rest of the world are always being fucked up by those of us in the first world. But in fact their lot has being getting better rather than worse over the last century and continues to do so. So yes I continue to say the world is a wonderful place - and a lot better place to live in than it has been for almost all of human history for the vast majority of its population whether rich or poor.
But there's more of them. Lots more of them. So in absolute terms there's more human misery now, than in all previous history combined. Not claiming I lose sleep over this, but celebrations seem out of order.
But the reason there are more of them.is that far fewer of them are dying. Death rates in the third world have fallen dramatically in the past generation.
But so what? What is great about increasing the numbers of people having a shit time?
@StuartDickson you touch on an interesting point on migration. Scotland would need to at least double net migration to make up for our low fertility rate (even lower than the UK generally), depending on what migration projection you go for.
This is a valid argument for indy, imo. Open the borders! The problem with this is is about 2/3td of current net migration is from rUK, so you'd probably cut that to an extent (though this tends to be much older than international migration, so might not be a bad thing for health spending etc).
The other problem is that in period with open borders, Scotland just didn't really see that much immigration. How do you attract people?
An independent Scotland could be quite appealing to rUK youngsters wanting to move to an English speaking country with the advantages of EU membership.
Rather assumes EU membership. What would be the entry requirements? Would Scotland be forced into the euro? Would it meet economic criteria?
I think Scotland would find quite an accelerated application process, after all very little has changed since it was a member last year. The Euro is more theoretical. Applicants have to promise to join, but with no timescale so in practice it is voluntary.
I think it would be the best currency for Scotland, and works for Ireland. It might well revitalise the Scottish financial sector if they join.
Surely building the border would take some time? No Irish Sea to put it in. Real one.
Border's been fixed since about 1560. Unlike the UK's current border with the EU which is up in the air.
Ok, smartypants. Border infrastucture.
Very few actual crossings, in fact. Remarkably few.
Assumes the EU would be happy with border posts for goods only on roads, not a wall across fields. Obviously for people, the most likely result is that Scotland would be in the CTA like RoI.
But it really would not, not if Scotland adopted a super relaxed immigration policy (on top of Freedom of Movement if it ever went back into the EU)
The English would not stand for it, because all these migrants could simply get a train down to London from Glasgow and then that's an end to any semblance of "control" of our borders. We have a political storm building over the dinghy people, if all they have to do is get on a minibus at Berwick then blend into England, whoah
Yet again this is one of the suppositions of Scottish independence which presumes that the rest of the UK will simply tolerate whatever Scotland wants, and be super accommodating to Scottish needs and desires, and ignore public sentiment at home in England, Wales and NI. This will not be the case
The UK was very generous to Ireland after Irish indy because the British felt guilty (rightly) and offered stuff like the CTA and voting rights. The British will NOT be so soft hearted to a Scotland that has broken up the UK. Not at all
Does anything actually prevent someone who has a visa for RoI but not for UK taking a ferry from Dublin to Liverpool? What about a train to Belfast, then a ferry to the UK?
I asked the PB Brexiters about exactly that back in 2016 or so given their concern with IMMIGRATION. I was told not to be stupid, the UK didn;t control immigration at its borders because reasons.
The UK's immigration policies are in some ways quite weak: we don't check people on the way out at airports, and overstaying a visa is trivial. But most people concerned with immigration are concerned with people who want to work, and the ability to work (at least legally) is not the same as the simple ability to be physically present in the country.
I assume the UK and RoI have some collaboration on non-admmitance of undesirables to the CTA, but it is probably informal. The UK is absolutely entitled to allow access to someone banned by the RoI and vice versa. Hence my question about ferries.
There are two ways to enforce immigration: strong external border and strong internal controls. The UK makes a big fuss over the former, but overstaying a visa is trivial. And we do a very poor job with the latter.
Listening to MmmmmmmmmmmBop after a very good birthday lunch where I finally reconnected with my mother.
It is the most joyful song.
It is the best popsong ever written. Along with the Complete Works of Busted
It is. My little sister who I adore was obsessed with them at the time and I still sing joyfully along with it reminiscing about me driving her to teenage parties.
Now trying to decide which out of the waterboys “whole of the moon” and “moonlight shadow” by Mike oldfield is the better song to moon to…..
The latter falls down significantly with the line "4am in the morning"...
How about Van Morrison's 'Moondance', which you could cheerfully wave your bare arse around to?
No, it’s “Nightshift” by the Commodores now. One of my funeral choices! Don’t know why but one of the best songs ever.
Best couplet ever
It's 4 in the morning and I'm walking along Beside the ghost of every drinker here who's ever done wrong
Just moved onto Tanita Tikaram - good tradition and laughing at my best friend telling me it was his parents music - guess you had to be there.
Speaking from a non manager point of view, just a man in the street who does normal man in the street things, basically no one has noticed anything different since we left the eu....food is slighty dearer but that is as much the increase in fuel prices and the ukraine war....some people have to queue a little longer to holiday in france...who gives a shit frankly. That is the average worker stance not rochdale pioneers we are all doomed stance and frankly there are a lot of workers and not many rochdales so tough shit really
Sure - we're boiling frogs. But people voted for the moon on a stick they were promised. As it becomes clearer there is no moon coming to them, they will get angry. As Tories are starting to notice in the red wall.
Well I am certainly getting angry with actually getting a decent payrise as are many of those I know who finally find they have being incentivised to stay in their jobs and are no longer earning minimum wage and have a bit more in their pocket.
Complaints that you have more paper work or that it takes you longer to get past french border control fall on deaf ears because frankly they dont give a shit about you just like you didnt give a toss about their problems when we were in the eu. Shoe is on the other foot deal with it
Great! You got a 5% pay rise! But inflation is double that and rising, and your government is saying "no more pay rises for you".
If you are genuinely saying people are going into this winter and will feel better off, its a unique perspective.
I didnt say I had a 5% payrise I got 16% as it happens. A lot of my friends have had similar because companies have had to pay it rather than have no staff
The big question - of course - is whether British firms have been making out like banditos, and earning super normal margins.
If they have, then there will be a natural move from the owners of capital (i.e. businesses) to labour (i.e. workers).
If they have not, then they will demand less labour - either because they will outsource work to other countries, or because they will invest in capital to replace labour.
Of course, right now things are clouded by Covid, and Ukraine/energy/food. But it will be interesting to see what happens next.
Employers like being forced into 16% pay rises. They never then downsize like fuck and force horrendous new contracts on people once the market conditions allow. Pagan and his mates will be golden.
While my predictions, as the Stodge Saturday Patent has demonstrated, aren't worth any attention, I'll offer a thought based on recent experience.
In 50-75 years time, London will empty at the beginning of June as those who can seek solace from the 45c temperatures and humidity associated with the late 21st century British summer between the spring and autumn monsoon seasons.
The newly-refurbished London Euston station will host the regular 30-minute Maglev summer service to the Lake District having passengers disembarking at Oxenholme in little more than a hour. From there, families will decamp to their summer chalets near the lakes (or as near as is affordable). The ability to work independently from location, first established during the 2020 pandemic, will allow tens of thousands of Londoners to continue working far from the overheating capital.
For those without the means to escape the heat, the annual ordeal that is summer in London is the very definition of purgatory. On the hottest days, with temperatures nearing 50c, many head to vast "cool centres" where they can enjoy air conditioned relief before heading home in the later evening.
While the Lakes are one popular "retreat from the heat", the Pennines and Cheviots have also seen summer housing and the major development of the north Scottish coast around Torrisdale and the islands of Harris and Lewis have seen an explosion of summer homes for those from southern and eastern Britain desperate to seek cooler summer weather.
I think you understate the case. The way we're going it will be a runaway climate change. Although some, especially reputable researchers, know what we need to do to counter this, most of us are too gormless to act accordingly. For instance, getting an electric car does not justify an otherwise wanton life style.
That's my fear. That we are now in an accelerating loop of increasing warmth and volatility, which will feed off itself like a chain reaction. And perhaps it is already too late to stop this
Our presence in this universe appears to be the result of a long series of lucky circumstances.
These include: The fortuitous value of the fine structure constant, which, if it were a little difference would not allow stellar fusion to produce carbon. The existence of a rocky planet at just the right distance from a stable and long-lived star. The presence of just enough water on said planet to make a complex environment of coasts and shallows that would drive evolution along. The presence of an unusually large moon orbiting said planet to slosh all that water about and further drive evolution. A complex geology that, combined with the effects of life, has managed to remove CO2 from the Earth's atmosphere at a rate that has just about compensated for the gradual increase in the luminosity of the sun, this keeping the temperature of the Earth in a range compatible with life over the aeons.
And we are just about to screw it all up.
Not at all. Whilst you are right about the serendipity element of our existence, you vastly overestimate the significance of our current civilisation and the nature of the changes we are facing. Presenting these current very minor adjustments in our environment with the vast changes that have occurred over the last few million years (one of which probably reduced the human population to less than 10,000 individuals) really shows a fundamental disconnect with the reality of our existence on planet earth.
The changes of a few degrees - whilst undoubtedly bad for our current comfortable civilisation - are bugger all in both scale and rate of change compared to the natural changes that have occurred even in fairly recent times.
This is not to say we shouldn't try to mitigate such changes, nor that they won't be very bad for our current lifestyles but your hyperbolic comment shows a stunning lack of historical and prehistorical perspective.
Not really, as your parenthesis "(one of which probably reduced the human population to less than 10,000 individuals)" accidentally reveals. What is the point of saying This is nothing, we've had snowball earth and ice free earth and oxygen levels of 31%, this is a mere pin prick, when any one of those three sets of conditions would leave mankind wholly or mainly, stone dead? What has the long view got to do with us, when we have only been in the picture for a couple of minutes relatively speaking?
It's like warning a population of tadpoles in an April puddle that if it doesn't rain in the next week their puddle will dry out and they will all die: not much consolation for them to know that rainfall usually averages out in the course of a year and their puddle was virtually a pond back in January.
Nah. The point is that the changes we are seeing now are pinpricks compared to what nature can and has done in the past. We will and as we always have and this idea that this is the end of humanity or even civilisation which is expressed in FE's posting really is baseless. Indeed civilisations of the past have thrived under exactly the conditions which are being predicted now. It is uncomfortable for individuals and is probably something to be avoided if we can since it will make life miserable for a lot of people. But it is simply rubbish to consider anything we re predicting at the moment as the end of humanity.
Of course if we decided to nuke each other that is another matter. But I grew up in the 70s and 80s when threat was a permanent imminent threat so even that I find a bit of a yawn.
The world is a wonderful place and will continue to be so pretty much regardless of what we do.
The world is a wonderful place here and now for well heeled UK property owning PBers with money in the bank and drink in the fridge, sure. Our current predicament is such that either hundreds of millions of people who are mainly poor and fucked up anyway are going to be wiped out, or all of us are. I can't pretend to be terribly fussed at either possibility, but that's because I am a selfish twat. How about you?
The poor in the rest of the world are always being fucked up by those of us in the first world. But in fact their lot has being getting better rather than worse over the last century and continues to do so. So yes I continue to say the world is a wonderful place - and a lot better place to live in than it has been for almost all of human history for the vast majority of its population whether rich or poor.
But there's more of them. Lots more of them. So in absolute terms there's more human misery now, than in all previous history combined. Not claiming I lose sleep over this, but celebrations seem out of order.
But the reason there are more of them.is that far fewer of them are dying. Death rates in the third world have fallen dramatically in the past generation.
But so what? What is great about increasing the numbers of people having a shit time?
Well I would have thought if you'd asked them whether they'd rather live and be poor or die of some preventable disease, they'd go for the former.
Listening to MmmmmmmmmmmBop after a very good birthday lunch where I finally reconnected with my mother.
It is the most joyful song.
It is the best popsong ever written. Along with the Complete Works of Busted
It is. My little sister who I adore was obsessed with them at the time and I still sing joyfully along with it reminiscing about me driving her to teenage parties.
Now trying to decide which out of the waterboys “whole of the moon” and “moonlight shadow” by Mike oldfield is the better song to moon to…..
The latter falls down significantly with the line "4am in the morning"...
How about Van Morrison's 'Moondance', which you could cheerfully wave your bare arse around to?
No, it’s “Nightshift” by the Commodores now. One of my funeral choices! Don’t know why but one of the best songs ever.
Best couplet ever
It's 4 in the morning and I'm walking along Beside the ghost of every drinker here who's ever done wrong
Just moved onto Tanita Tikaram - good tradition and laughing at my best friend telling me it was his parents music - guess you had to be there.
That first album was mind blowing - good trad, cathedral song, world outside your window, it felt like this was the new Dylan. Then nothing.
Speaking from a non manager point of view, just a man in the street who does normal man in the street things, basically no one has noticed anything different since we left the eu....food is slighty dearer but that is as much the increase in fuel prices and the ukraine war....some people have to queue a little longer to holiday in france...who gives a shit frankly. That is the average worker stance not rochdale pioneers we are all doomed stance and frankly there are a lot of workers and not many rochdales so tough shit really
But. We were told Brexit would solve our problems and make us better off. If no one has noticed what was the bloody point of the last six years?
Brexit has made me better off and most of those I know as for the first time many are actually not earning minimum wage. If you are poorer because you did well off being in the eu well tough. Its what people like I and my friends were told...you arent getting payrises but better for the country to be in the eu so deal with it.
So it's I'm all right Jack, then? The vast majority aren't better off. And a heck of a lot of them are low paid. I should know.
Why is I am alright Jack no longer alright...for the last 40 years its been those benefitting from the eu saying its I am alright jack.....dont like it because now you aren't so alright tough titties.
This is what a lot of people on this board dont seem to get. Since 1997 they have been doing just fine.....a huge number of people in this country however have seen their wages fall in real terms year after year while bosses did ok and lets face it their are a lot of senior managers and boss types here whinging about brexit, Rochdale is a prime example.....now that huge number of people see their wages actually going up and yes we are pleased about that and really dont care about you just as you didnt about us.
And the average wage is rising way below the rate of inflation. This may or may not be a result of Brexit. But we aren't getting better off.
And if we were still in the eu it may well be that the average wage was even further below the rate of inflation as people like me and friends wouldn't have had inflation busting payrises. Indeed I suspect if we hadnt voted out then my pay would still be the same as it was in 2003 as it didnt start to rise till 2018. Can I prove it no obviously not its a counter factual however you also by that light can't claim average wage would be better compared to inflation now if we had stayed in
Well no. But the average wage rise is well below inflation. That may or may not be as a result of Brexit. But that isn't eidence of a shining success.
Listening to MmmmmmmmmmmBop after a very good birthday lunch where I finally reconnected with my mother.
It is the most joyful song.
It is the best popsong ever written. Along with the Complete Works of Busted
It is. My little sister who I adore was obsessed with them at the time and I still sing joyfully along with it reminiscing about me driving her to teenage parties.
Now trying to decide which out of the waterboys “whole of the moon” and “moonlight shadow” by Mike oldfield is the better song to moon to…..
Listening to MmmmmmmmmmmBop after a very good birthday lunch where I finally reconnected with my mother.
It is the most joyful song.
It is the best popsong ever written. Along with the Complete Works of Busted
It is. My little sister who I adore was obsessed with them at the time and I still sing joyfully along with it reminiscing about me driving her to teenage parties.
Now trying to decide which out of the waterboys “whole of the moon” and “moonlight shadow” by Mike oldfield is the better song to moon to…..
Listening to MmmmmmmmmmmBop after a very good birthday lunch where I finally reconnected with my mother.
It is the most joyful song.
It is the best popsong ever written. Along with the Complete Works of Busted
It is. My little sister who I adore was obsessed with them at the time and I still sing joyfully along with it reminiscing about me driving her to teenage parties.
Now trying to decide which out of the waterboys “whole of the moon” and “moonlight shadow” by Mike oldfield is the better song to moon to…..
The latter falls down significantly with the line "4am in the morning"...
How about Van Morrison's 'Moondance', which you could cheerfully wave your bare arse around to?
No, it’s “Nightshift” by the Commodores now. One of my funeral choices! Don’t know why but one of the best songs ever.
Best couplet ever
It's 4 in the morning and I'm walking along Beside the ghost of every drinker here who's ever done wrong
Just moved onto Tanita Tikaram - good tradition and laughing at my best friend telling me it was his parents music - guess you had to be there.
That first album was mind blowing - good trad, cathedral song, world outside your window, it felt like this was the new Dylan. Then nothing.
Listening to MmmmmmmmmmmBop after a very good birthday lunch where I finally reconnected with my mother.
It is the most joyful song.
It is the best popsong ever written. Along with the Complete Works of Busted
It is. My little sister who I adore was obsessed with them at the time and I still sing joyfully along with it reminiscing about me driving her to teenage parties.
Now trying to decide which out of the waterboys “whole of the moon” and “moonlight shadow” by Mike oldfield is the better song to moon to…..
The latter falls down significantly with the line "4am in the morning"...
How about Van Morrison's 'Moondance', which you could cheerfully wave your bare arse around to?
No, it’s “Nightshift” by the Commodores now. One of my funeral choices! Don’t know why but one of the best songs ever.
Best couplet ever
It's 4 in the morning and I'm walking along Beside the ghost of every drinker here who's ever done wrong
Just moved onto Tanita Tikaram - good tradition and laughing at my best friend telling me it was his parents music - guess you had to be there.
That first album was mind blowing - good trad, cathedral song, world outside your window, it felt like this was the new Dylan. Then nothing.
Bought her second album on one of those old fashioned cassette tapes and it was quite good but classic case of putting out an amazing first album that couldn’t be matched or repeated.
I have a weird desire to arrange a concert with her and Lloyd Cole and the commotions but you are only allowed to attend in black polo necks and pretend to be very disinterested.
Listening to MmmmmmmmmmmBop after a very good birthday lunch where I finally reconnected with my mother.
It is the most joyful song.
It is the best popsong ever written. Along with the Complete Works of Busted
It is. My little sister who I adore was obsessed with them at the time and I still sing joyfully along with it reminiscing about me driving her to teenage parties.
Now trying to decide which out of the waterboys “whole of the moon” and “moonlight shadow” by Mike oldfield is the better song to moon to…..
Whole of the moon is a monumental track.
It's become irritating through overplay in my opinion.
Listening to MmmmmmmmmmmBop after a very good birthday lunch where I finally reconnected with my mother.
It is the most joyful song.
It is the best popsong ever written. Along with the Complete Works of Busted
It is. My little sister who I adore was obsessed with them at the time and I still sing joyfully along with it reminiscing about me driving her to teenage parties.
Now trying to decide which out of the waterboys “whole of the moon” and “moonlight shadow” by Mike oldfield is the better song to moon to…..
While my predictions, as the Stodge Saturday Patent has demonstrated, aren't worth any attention, I'll offer a thought based on recent experience.
In 50-75 years time, London will empty at the beginning of June as those who can seek solace from the 45c temperatures and humidity associated with the late 21st century British summer between the spring and autumn monsoon seasons.
The newly-refurbished London Euston station will host the regular 30-minute Maglev summer service to the Lake District having passengers disembarking at Oxenholme in little more than a hour. From there, families will decamp to their summer chalets near the lakes (or as near as is affordable). The ability to work independently from location, first established during the 2020 pandemic, will allow tens of thousands of Londoners to continue working far from the overheating capital.
For those without the means to escape the heat, the annual ordeal that is summer in London is the very definition of purgatory. On the hottest days, with temperatures nearing 50c, many head to vast "cool centres" where they can enjoy air conditioned relief before heading home in the later evening.
While the Lakes are one popular "retreat from the heat", the Pennines and Cheviots have also seen summer housing and the major development of the north Scottish coast around Torrisdale and the islands of Harris and Lewis have seen an explosion of summer homes for those from southern and eastern Britain desperate to seek cooler summer weather.
I think you understate the case. The way we're going it will be a runaway climate change. Although some, especially reputable researchers, know what we need to do to counter this, most of us are too gormless to act accordingly. For instance, getting an electric car does not justify an otherwise wanton life style.
That's my fear. That we are now in an accelerating loop of increasing warmth and volatility, which will feed off itself like a chain reaction. And perhaps it is already too late to stop this
Our presence in this universe appears to be the result of a long series of lucky circumstances.
These include: The fortuitous value of the fine structure constant, which, if it were a little difference would not allow stellar fusion to produce carbon. The existence of a rocky planet at just the right distance from a stable and long-lived star. The presence of just enough water on said planet to make a complex environment of coasts and shallows that would drive evolution along. The presence of an unusually large moon orbiting said planet to slosh all that water about and further drive evolution. A complex geology that, combined with the effects of life, has managed to remove CO2 from the Earth's atmosphere at a rate that has just about compensated for the gradual increase in the luminosity of the sun, this keeping the temperature of the Earth in a range compatible with life over the aeons.
And we are just about to screw it all up.
Not at all. Whilst you are right about the serendipity element of our existence, you vastly overestimate the significance of our current civilisation and the nature of the changes we are facing. Presenting these current very minor adjustments in our environment with the vast changes that have occurred over the last few million years (one of which probably reduced the human population to less than 10,000 individuals) really shows a fundamental disconnect with the reality of our existence on planet earth.
The changes of a few degrees - whilst undoubtedly bad for our current comfortable civilisation - are bugger all in both scale and rate of change compared to the natural changes that have occurred even in fairly recent times.
This is not to say we shouldn't try to mitigate such changes, nor that they won't be very bad for our current lifestyles but your hyperbolic comment shows a stunning lack of historical and prehistorical perspective.
Not really, as your parenthesis "(one of which probably reduced the human population to less than 10,000 individuals)" accidentally reveals. What is the point of saying This is nothing, we've had snowball earth and ice free earth and oxygen levels of 31%, this is a mere pin prick, when any one of those three sets of conditions would leave mankind wholly or mainly, stone dead? What has the long view got to do with us, when we have only been in the picture for a couple of minutes relatively speaking?
It's like warning a population of tadpoles in an April puddle that if it doesn't rain in the next week their puddle will dry out and they will all die: not much consolation for them to know that rainfall usually averages out in the course of a year and their puddle was virtually a pond back in January.
Nah. The point is that the changes we are seeing now are pinpricks compared to what nature can and has done in the past. We will and as we always have and this idea that this is the end of humanity or even civilisation which is expressed in FE's posting really is baseless. Indeed civilisations of the past have thrived under exactly the conditions which are being predicted now. It is uncomfortable for individuals and is probably something to be avoided if we can since it will make life miserable for a lot of people. But it is simply rubbish to consider anything we re predicting at the moment as the end of humanity.
Of course if we decided to nuke each other that is another matter. But I grew up in the 70s and 80s when threat was a permanent imminent threat so even that I find a bit of a yawn.
The world is a wonderful place and will continue to be so pretty much regardless of what we do.
The world is a wonderful place here and now for well heeled UK property owning PBers with money in the bank and drink in the fridge, sure. Our current predicament is such that either hundreds of millions of people who are mainly poor and fucked up anyway are going to be wiped out, or all of us are. I can't pretend to be terribly fussed at either possibility, but that's because I am a selfish twat. How about you?
The poor in the rest of the world are always being fucked up by those of us in the first world. But in fact their lot has being getting better rather than worse over the last century and continues to do so. So yes I continue to say the world is a wonderful place - and a lot better place to live in than it has been for almost all of human history for the vast majority of its population whether rich or poor.
But there's more of them. Lots more of them. So in absolute terms there's more human misery now, than in all previous history combined. Not claiming I lose sleep over this, but celebrations seem out of order.
But the reason there are more of them.is that far fewer of them are dying. Death rates in the third world have fallen dramatically in the past generation.
But so what? What is great about increasing the numbers of people having a shit time?
Well I would have thought if you'd asked them whether they'd rather live and be poor or die of some preventable disease, they'd go for the former.
Like a choice between eating a shit sandwich or having your head removed with a chainsaw. Why celebrate an increase in the number of people with those options?
A harrowing wildlife encounter. This is a big bull elephant seal that really took against me on some island off the Antarctic Peninsula. Here he is. This is him coming after me
They weigh about three tons, mature male elephant seals, so it could be potentially scary, but he was such a fat twat it took him about an hour to go a metre. I had several days in which to slowly walk away and make my escape. After the first hour, when he had advanced a metre, he just gave up, and stared at me. Tosser
In the Scotland border issue, remember that its al theoretical. Even if there was a referendum next year (and there won't be) and it voted Yes (and it won't), its way off into the 2nd half of the decade before they even have discussions about separation, never mind an agreement to instigate.
As the UK's current Brexit settlement is unworkable, it will be reformed. And the reformation will be closer and looser alignment with the EEA and CU. Which makes alignment between an EU Scotland and a post-Brext rUK much easier than it would be now.
Even if we could bounce the EU into mutual recognition of standards (which we probably can't) or the EU can bounce us into dynamic alignment (which they probably can't) that still leaves us outside the CU, which still means border infrastructure.
Unless, of course, away-from-the-border Unicorns really do exist...
The UK has already abandoned any plans to erect border infrastructure. Because we are functionally incompetent.
Snide non-answers aside, a border has two sides.
It isn't a non-answer! I have already said that a post-Tory government in the 2nd half of the decade will wind back the worst stupidities of the Johnson Brexit settlement.
It sounds like wishful thinking. The direction of travel is for a non-SM settlement to become the consensus between the two main parties.
A harrowing wildlife encounter. This is a big bull elephant seal that really took against me on some island off the Antarctic Peninsula. Here he is. This is him coming after me
They weigh about three tons, mature male elephant seals, so it could be potentially scary, but he was such a fat twat it took him about an hour to go a metre. I had three days in which to make my escape. After the first hour, when he had advanced a metre, he just gave up, and stared at me. Tosser
Listening to MmmmmmmmmmmBop after a very good birthday lunch where I finally reconnected with my mother.
It is the most joyful song.
It is the best popsong ever written. Along with the Complete Works of Busted
It is. My little sister who I adore was obsessed with them at the time and I still sing joyfully along with it reminiscing about me driving her to teenage parties.
Now trying to decide which out of the waterboys “whole of the moon” and “moonlight shadow” by Mike oldfield is the better song to moon to…..
The latter falls down significantly with the line "4am in the morning"...
How about Van Morrison's 'Moondance', which you could cheerfully wave your bare arse around to?
No, it’s “Nightshift” by the Commodores now. One of my funeral choices! Don’t know why but one of the best songs ever.
Best couplet ever
It's 4 in the morning and I'm walking along Beside the ghost of every drinker here who's ever done wrong
Just moved onto Tanita Tikaram - good tradition and laughing at my best friend telling me it was his parents music - guess you had to be there.
That first album was mind blowing - good trad, cathedral song, world outside your window, it felt like this was the new Dylan. Then nothing.
Bought her second album on one of those old fashioned cassette tapes and it was quite good but classic case of putting out an amazing first album that couldn’t be matched or repeated.
I have a weird desire to arrange a concert with her and Lloyd Cole and the commotions but you are only allowed to attend in black polo necks and pretend to be very disinterested.
I forgot, twist in my sobriety. That album, was as perfect as the first stone roses. Immaculate.
2nd album had little sister leaving town which was ok, otherwise tosh.
Listening to MmmmmmmmmmmBop after a very good birthday lunch where I finally reconnected with my mother.
It is the most joyful song.
It is the best popsong ever written. Along with the Complete Works of Busted
It is. My little sister who I adore was obsessed with them at the time and I still sing joyfully along with it reminiscing about me driving her to teenage parties.
Now trying to decide which out of the waterboys “whole of the moon” and “moonlight shadow” by Mike oldfield is the better song to moon to…..
Whole of the moon is a monumental track.
It truly is but “Fisherman’s Blues” is exquisite as an album and sadly it’s not on there. As is not “red army blues”.. Not sure if the order but in top three with”the cure disintegration”, and U2 “Achtung baby”.
A harrowing wildlife encounter. This is a big bull elephant seal that really took against me on some island off the Antarctic Peninsula. Here he is. This is him coming after me
They weigh about three tons, mature male elephant seals, so it could be potentially scary, but he was such a fat twat it took him about an hour to go a metre. I had three days in which to make my escape. After the first hour, when he had advanced a metre, he just gave up, and stared at me. Tosser
Maybe it was love at first sight?
I think that is the last thing a scotnat sees, when HYUFD comes for him.
Listening to MmmmmmmmmmmBop after a very good birthday lunch where I finally reconnected with my mother.
It is the most joyful song.
It is the best popsong ever written. Along with the Complete Works of Busted
It is. My little sister who I adore was obsessed with them at the time and I still sing joyfully along with it reminiscing about me driving her to teenage parties.
Now trying to decide which out of the waterboys “whole of the moon” and “moonlight shadow” by Mike oldfield is the better song to moon to…..
The latter falls down significantly with the line "4am in the morning"...
How about Van Morrison's 'Moondance', which you could cheerfully wave your bare arse around to?
No, it’s “Nightshift” by the Commodores now. One of my funeral choices! Don’t know why but one of the best songs ever.
Best couplet ever
It's 4 in the morning and I'm walking along Beside the ghost of every drinker here who's ever done wrong
Just moved onto Tanita Tikaram - good tradition and laughing at my best friend telling me it was his parents music - guess you had to be there.
That first album was mind blowing - good trad, cathedral song, world outside your window, it felt like this was the new Dylan. Then nothing.
Bought her second album on one of those old fashioned cassette tapes and it was quite good but classic case of putting out an amazing first album that couldn’t be matched or repeated.
I have a weird desire to arrange a concert with her and Lloyd Cole and the commotions but you are only allowed to attend in black polo necks and pretend to be very disinterested.
I forgot, twist in my sobriety. That album, was as perfect as the first stone roses. Immaculate.
2nd album had little sister leaving town which was ok, otherwise tosh.
I thought The Cappuccino Songs was a return to form.
“This will be Russian land or scorched earth!” The commander of Russian forces in Zaporizhzhya, who’s also the head of Russia’s defense “against” radioactive, chemical and biological threats reportedly threatens “various scenarios” at Enerhodar plant. https://mobile.twitter.com/charliekreuz/status/1556366134546399237
We need to make very clear to Putin that if anything happens there he will be held responsible and face consequences. A naval blockade?
A harrowing wildlife encounter. This is a big bull elephant seal that really took against me on some island off the Antarctic Peninsula. Here he is. This is him coming after me
They weigh about three tons, mature male elephant seals, so it could be potentially scary, but he was such a fat twat it took him about an hour to go a metre. I had three days in which to make my escape. After the first hour, when he had advanced a metre, he just gave up, and stared at me. Tosser
Maybe it was love at first sight?
Does this look like love, Sunil?
No, he wanted a ruck. He wanted me off his island. Unfortunately for him, he was so fat he could only move seven millimetres every thirty minutes, so I was able to flee by virtue of shuffling slightly to the left while yawning
Possibly the most pathetic attack in the history of the animal kingdom
Speaking from a non manager point of view, just a man in the street who does normal man in the street things, basically no one has noticed anything different since we left the eu....food is slighty dearer but that is as much the increase in fuel prices and the ukraine war....some people have to queue a little longer to holiday in france...who gives a shit frankly. That is the average worker stance not rochdale pioneers we are all doomed stance and frankly there are a lot of workers and not many rochdales so tough shit really
Sure - we're boiling frogs. But people voted for the moon on a stick they were promised. As it becomes clearer there is no moon coming to them, they will get angry. As Tories are starting to notice in the red wall.
Well I am certainly getting angry with actually getting a decent payrise as are many of those I know who finally find they have being incentivised to stay in their jobs and are no longer earning minimum wage and have a bit more in their pocket.
Complaints that you have more paper work or that it takes you longer to get past french border control fall on deaf ears because frankly they dont give a shit about you just like you didnt give a toss about their problems when we were in the eu. Shoe is on the other foot deal with it
Great! You got a 5% pay rise! But inflation is double that and rising, and your government is saying "no more pay rises for you".
If you are genuinely saying people are going into this winter and will feel better off, its a unique perspective.
I didnt say I had a 5% payrise I got 16% as it happens. A lot of my friends have had similar because companies have had to pay it rather than have no staff
The big question - of course - is whether British firms have been making out like banditos, and earning super normal margins.
If they have, then there will be a natural move from the owners of capital (i.e. businesses) to labour (i.e. workers).
If they have not, then they will demand less labour - either because they will outsource work to other countries, or because they will invest in capital to replace labour.
Of course, right now things are clouded by Covid, and Ukraine/energy/food. But it will be interesting to see what happens next.
Yes but the point I was trying to make is
some people made out very well from us being in the eu, mainly companies and senior managers. Some people ( a majority of the country) just saw their living standards decline year on year since maastricht.
Now the people doing well out of brexit are some of the people who weren't doing so well under the eu and the people complaining about us leaving are the people who were doing well when we were in the EU so its a bit rich for them to use phrases such as "so its I'm alright Jack" when they were quite content when they were the Jack in question.
How will things be in the future, frankly no idea. I am pretty sure though if we hadn't voted to leave the prospect for millions in this country was continued slow decline with more and more jobs being swept up as minimum wage. At least now some of those have had a boost to their take home pay even if it turns out to be temporary.
Comments
We were told Brexit would solve our problems and make us better off. If no one has noticed what was the bloody point of the last six years?
Something is afoot. He's been everywhere media-wise this week.
Complaints that you have more paper work or that it takes you longer to get past french border control fall on deaf ears because frankly they dont give a shit about you just like you didnt give a toss about their problems when we were in the eu. Shoe is on the other foot deal with it
*Note this is not a claim that Brexit is a huge success, rather that the current situation is not all because Brexit.
https://www.johnogroat-journal.co.uk/news/wick-features-in-most-deprived-statistics-190596/
The last major glacial event was the Younger Dryas when the average UK annual temperature (as an example) was around -3 to -5 degrees C. I am currently involved in running research projects studying human occupation of the British Isles in the interstadial prior to the the Younger Dryas so I know how rapidly these things changed. The end of the Younger Dryas sees the temperatures rise by around 10 degrees in a single decade. And we are still not, today, anywhere near as warm globally as we were in either the Bronze Age or the Roman period.
This is Not an argument against the causes of Climate change. This a specific argument against your claims that this is in any way 'the end of humanity' or even the end of civilisation.
After buying my ticket, I asked "Which side for the train to York?"
"We've only got one side."
OOOH, tell me more. I do love Google Photos. As you know
Edit: second thought, I can remember a fuss about whether to hold an early election. But that it is.
Listening to MmmmmmmmmmmBop after a very good birthday lunch where I finally reconnected with my mother.
It is the most joyful song.
The underlying issue is that a substantial minority of the Conservative party would quite happily have continued with BoJo, despite everything.
But the claim was no one has noticed.
That wasn't what it said on the tin.
If you are genuinely saying people are going into this winter and will feel better off, its a unique perspective.
The vast majority aren't better off. And a heck of a lot of them are low paid. I should know.
Two young people in a bar on the Solovetsky Archipelago, in the White Sea, northern Russia, who have just served me a dubious glass of wine and they are wondering if I will like it. Also, they are wondering what on earth a Brit is doing in one of the most remote places in Russia
About four years ago. Fantastic
Now trying to decide which out of the waterboys “whole of the moon” and “moonlight shadow” by Mike oldfield is the better song to moon to…..
We remarked that you usually only get that pyramidal shadow effect when you are much higher up.
How about Van Morrison's 'Moondance', which you could cheerfully wave your bare arse around to?
This is what a lot of people on this board dont seem to get. Since 1997 they have been doing just fine.....a huge number of people in this country however have seen their wages fall in real terms year after year while bosses did ok and lets face it their are a lot of senior managers and boss types here whinging about brexit, Rochdale is a prime example.....now that huge number of people see their wages actually going up and yes we are pleased about that and really dont care about you just as you didnt about us.
Happy dogs this morning.
Indeed, the Norman French language inherited 150 Norse words straight from their Danish homeland.
But we aren't getting better off.
The reality seems somewhere in between.
It turns out that issues like war, disease and famine have much greater impacts than membership or otherwise of the EU.
I don't have any majestic landscapes for my holiday photos, just this, probably rotated by vanilla one: one day I wish to be as carefree as a frenchman.
BTW I do genuinely respect you for identifying the problems that Mistress Truss presents to your party. I know you will revert to both slavishly supporting her and insisting you always did, but this summer we have seen that a person is there under the bluster.
https://mobile.twitter.com/charliekreuz/status/1556366134546399237
It's 4 in the morning and I'm walking along
Beside the ghost of every drinker here who's ever done wrong
If they have, then there will be a natural move from the owners of capital (i.e. businesses) to labour (i.e. workers).
If they have not, then they will demand less labour - either because they will outsource work to other countries, or because they will invest in capital to replace labour.
Of course, right now things are clouded by Covid, and Ukraine/energy/food. But it will be interesting to see what happens next.
Google Photos gave me this when I typed in "ice"
1981:
England 46.8m
Scotland 5.2m
2021:
England 56.5m
Scotland 5.5m
But the average wage rise is well below inflation. That may or may not be as a result of Brexit. But that isn't eidence of a shining success.
I have a weird desire to arrange a concert with her and Lloyd Cole and the commotions but you are only allowed to attend in black polo necks and pretend to be very disinterested.
A harrowing wildlife encounter. This is a big bull elephant seal that really took against me on some island off the Antarctic Peninsula. Here he is. This is him coming after me
They weigh about three tons, mature male elephant seals, so it could be potentially scary, but he was such a fat twat it took him about an hour to go a metre. I had several days in which to slowly walk away and make my escape. After the first hour, when he had advanced a metre, he just gave up, and stared at me. Tosser
2nd album had little sister leaving town which was ok, otherwise tosh.
The public want the priority to be bringing inflation down not tax cuts by 64% to 18% .
It doesn’t make much sense to have a situation where you cut taxes with any benefits being swallowed up by a longer period of higher inflation .
No, he wanted a ruck. He wanted me off his island. Unfortunately for him, he was so fat he could only move seven millimetres every thirty minutes, so I was able to flee by virtue of shuffling slightly to the left while yawning
Possibly the most pathetic attack in the history of the animal kingdom
some people made out very well from us being in the eu, mainly companies and senior managers. Some people ( a majority of the country) just saw their living standards decline year on year since maastricht.
Now the people doing well out of brexit are some of the people who weren't doing so well under the eu and the people complaining about us leaving are the people who were doing well when we were in the EU so its a bit rich for them to use phrases such as "so its I'm alright Jack" when they were quite content when they were the Jack in question.
How will things be in the future, frankly no idea. I am pretty sure though if we hadn't voted to leave the prospect for millions in this country was continued slow decline with more and more jobs being swept up as minimum wage. At least now some of those have had a boost to their take home pay even if it turns out to be temporary.