There was an interesting contribution to the Adrian Chiles program yesterday. A woman who was employed to support victims of modern slavery explained how it worked. If someone from Albania has got their ride on credit they are "enslaved" until they pay that debt back because they have to account to the person providing the credit. These people seem to have more effective remedies than those provided by the civil courts and they are at risk.
If they make a claim that they are being trafficked in this way the authorities are not allowed to do anything for 45 days whilst they assess the claim. This is a provisional assessment and has a very low standard of proof. A final assessment by a suitably qualified person is required. She said that she had young men who had been waiting for more than 3 years for such a final assessment. She was lamenting the fact that these men were being left in limbo for so long and she has a point but most people will lament that we have created a system that just does not function or is incapable of reaching determinations within a reasonable period of time.
All trivially sorted by the Home Secretary, if any of them ever wished to actually tackle the problem rather than highlight the problem for political gain.
It could only be "trivially sorted" if the Modern Slavery Act 2015 was repealed. That Act was introduced by a HS, Mrs May no less, and she claims it was her greatest contribution. The Act focused much more on those doing the trafficking than those who were being trafficked and the implications of the assessment process do not seem to have been thought through.
These are difficult problems. How do we differentiate between far eastern women locked in cages and used for sex and young Albanian men forced to work on Cannabis farms or, for that matter, also used for sex? As with asylum we would be dismayed as to how many of these victims actually qualify under the rights we have given them.
There are two parts to this. One decide which groups we want to let in and adjust the laws to match that, including leaving treaties if needed. Secondly resource it so we don't wait 45 days whilst little to nothing happens because no-one is available to do the job.
I have seen no evidence of any recent Home Secretary doing much on either, instead they love to moan about the courts correctly interpreting the laws and treaties that the governments have written, and the lawyers that represent people within the law.
I agree that the current asylum rules are simply not sustainable and have argued for that on here many times. If. however, the victims of modern slavery are not given some protection what are the prospects of such crimes ever coming to light?
I am not an expert on modern slavery and don't have a strong view on what the limits should be for us accepting related asylum claims. I am content for the government to make an assessment that they believe in, as long as it matches the law.
What I find completely unacceptable is the government making the rules, then:
- complaining about others upholding their rules weakening trust in courts and dividing society - failing to fund the system resulting not just in further personal stress for those involved but also ending up in even higher costs, such as £600 hotels or hosting people for 3 years rather than 3 weeks, so we pay more than required in the first place
But as I say, even many of those who find Braverman incompetent like her because they feel she is on her side. There is no upside to her in trying to fix this, so it won't happen.
You are seriously underestimating the complexity of the "fix" and will no doubt be disappointed when the next Labour government struggles in exactly the same way with the same problems. There is nothing trivial about coming up with working solutions: the short answer is that there aren't any.
One thing that is having a blind eye turned to it is the involvement of established native British criminal gangs (and in some places Irish ones, but not so much in Kent) alongside Albanian etc. gangs in the business of illegal immigration and slavery.
Who do people think runs a town like Dover when it's nighttime?
The native criminal underworld has a big slice of the illegal immigration action (even as they favour the far right whenever they poke their toes into politics) - right the way across the employment spectrum whether it's the provision of services to hotels or courier companies or of labour for various jobs in farming and distribution.
But we shouldn't expect SKS to say smash organised crime, let's clean up the country.
According to the Guardian today, "Home Office contractors [have been] removed for trying to sell drugs at Manston asylum centre".
That'll be the Thanet underworld. Or if it's not them, then whoever it is had better watch out.
And look who's been housing refugees in Hove... Step forward, Nicholas van Hoogstraten:
It depends. If it is something an individual can turn on / off themselves. Then its a way to take a chunk of the OnlyFans and SnapChat "premium" money. If its a free for all, well that obviously dumb as.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
Thats too extreme. Schools and Uni's are open, the hospitals are cracking on with trying to reduce waiting lists, while still dealing with covid (less so but still there), unemployment is low, there are jobs available. Immigration is in the public eye but is at lower levels than most European nations. The economy is being buffeted by global events and is not alone. Tough times ahead, same as elsewhere.
The well off will be fine, the middle incomes will struggle some more and the poor as always will suffer the most.
I agree that it's too extreme a view. Our schools are actually OK, there are jobs, we still do a lot of stuff very well.
The area that seems closest to genuinely broken, to my outsider's eyes, is justice.
They're really, really not. That's a system right on the edge.
The thing is that the staff are trying their hardest to keep the full scale of the unfolding disaster from impacting the children so it isn't immediately obvious to outsiders just how bad it is.
Amusingly, in a grim way, I've just been sent yet another pleading email to go on supply. I checked where they wanted me and it was the very school I'd left. In fact, my old job. They haven't been able to replace me yet, six whole months after I informed them I was leaving.
Surely replacing you is a completely impossible task @ydoethur? No one else is as gifted at puns.
You flatter me
More seriously, there is a chronic shortage of people who can teach A-level philosophy. But even in English they had to get supply in.
And that's a good school. Don't get me started on what's happened in Walsall...
Maybe my son should be tutoring in that during his holidays? Hmm....
He could try, if he wanted. There are websites that take Oxbridge undergraduates and find them tutoring jobs.
The only thing I would say is that there aren't many tutoring jobs in philosophy out there. He'd be better off concentrating on economics, where there's enormous demand.
Out of curiosity, how much do you charge these days for private A-level teaching (1:1), per hour? Asking for a friend.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
Thats too extreme. Schools and Uni's are open, the hospitals are cracking on with trying to reduce waiting lists, while still dealing with covid (less so but still there), unemployment is low, there are jobs available. Immigration is in the public eye but is at lower levels than most European nations. The economy is being buffeted by global events and is not alone. Tough times ahead, same as elsewhere.
The well off will be fine, the middle incomes will struggle some more and the poor as always will suffer the most.
I agree that it's too extreme a view. Our schools are actually OK, there are jobs, we still do a lot of stuff very well.
The area that seems closest to genuinely broken, to my outsider's eyes, is justice.
They're really, really not. That's a system right on the edge.
The thing is that the staff are trying their hardest to keep the full scale of the unfolding disaster from impacting the children so it isn't immediately obvious to outsiders just how bad it is.
Amusingly, in a grim way, I've just been sent yet another pleading email to go on supply. I checked where they wanted me and it was the very school I'd left. In fact, my old job. They haven't been able to replace me yet, six whole months after I informed them I was leaving.
Surely replacing you is a completely impossible task @ydoethur? No one else is as gifted at puns.
You flatter me
More seriously, there is a chronic shortage of people who can teach A-level philosophy. But even in English they had to get supply in.
And that's a good school. Don't get me started on what's happened in Walsall...
Maybe my son should be tutoring in that during his holidays? Hmm....
He could try, if he wanted. There are websites that take Oxbridge undergraduates and find them tutoring jobs.
The only thing I would say is that there aren't many tutoring jobs in philosophy out there. He'd be better off concentrating on economics, where there's enormous demand.
Out of curiosity, how much do you charge these days for private A-level teaching (1:1), per hour? Asking for a friend.
Usually about £30-40 but there are discounts for bulk bookings.
A storm blew into the Seattle area overnight, bringing a flurry of warnings, watches and advisories in addition to the heavy rain, strong winds and mountain snow that are expected to blast the region through the weekend.
Heavy snow fell in the Cascades overnight, with a foot of snow at Snoqualmie Pass, and the resulting vehicle crashes, causing a full closure of Interstate 90 until around 5 a.m. Friday.
A warmer air mass then moved in, said Jeff Michalski, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Seattle. That’s bringing heavy mountain rainfall, but the rains in Seattle will be scattered because of “a rain shadow effect with some winds coming down off of the Olympics,” he said.
In King County, strong winds are expected across much of the lowlands Friday, with gusts reaching 40 to 50 mph and a wind advisory from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. (Just be happy we aren’t up on Mount Rainier, where gusts up to 100 mph are expected, along with a pleasant 6 to 8 inches of snow.)
Because of the mountain rains, a flood watch was issued in King County and a flash-flood warning for the burn scar from the Bolt Creek fire near Skykomish.
The weather service is watching for sharp changes and fast flows in the Snoqualmie River near Snoqualmie Falls and Carnation, the Tolt River near Carnation, the Green River and the White River.
SSI - Current weather radar shows it raining (snowing in mountains) like a sonofabitch everywhere in Western WA EXCEPT for Seattle and nearest burbs. Hopefully holds off here a bit longer, long enough anyway for me to get to the grocery store & back!
Meanwhile here it's a beautiful sunny evening and I've been sitting in the conservatory basking in the warmth. Again.
This is now the latest date for me putting on the central heating by three weeks. And I still haven't put it on!
Sunny or not it is too cold up here not to have heating on , was 2 degrees this morning , sunny day mind you.
I've not managed without heating, tbh. It's down at 17.5, it's a bit restricted to 8 hrs a day across 2 sessions, but being on a north side downslope in climate zone 7(iirc, the narrow Pennine strip anyway), in an old house, with tree cover to the south. It's not optimal for a mid November switch on, let's say that. Though finding the less draughty place to work with jumper and now dressing gown, I've managed to forswear the 1 hr boost setting now.
This person is an "epidemiologist and federal disaster medicine team member". Covid really has driven some people completely mad.
@maolesen Some perspective for those who still don't get it: If I were forced to be infected by either HIV or COVID, I would choose HIV without hesitation.
What a lunatic. I just did a quick google and as of 2016 the untreated survival rate for HIV at 10 years was 26%. The untreated survival rate for Covid is something over 99%.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever.
Far too London-centric. It's not in London that schools have the major problems in getting and retaining staff. It's got a large supply of young graduates it can draw on, although they also move on fairly swiftly as you note. The North East is by far the worst but things are grim in the Midlands and West Country.
Similarly, good luck getting a bus round here for less than a fortune. Tube, of course, doesn't operate outside London.
Also, the train services are grossly overstretched due to capacity constraints, which is why HS2 being scaled back is a real worry.
Now, that's not to say things are totally desolate. This is still a great country to live in in lots of ways. But it's frustratingly badly run and run down because too many public servants of all shades give no shits about anything except their own careers, so won't make hard choices and won't tell people difficult truths about spending and policy choices.
I'm sorry it was London centric but I wanted to draw on my own personal experience and London is where I live!
You had in fact said 'from your personal experience' and I had missed that, so assumed you were extrapolating country wide from London. My apologies.
Note to self - try to read properly before replying.
This person is an "epidemiologist and federal disaster medicine team member". Covid really has driven some people completely mad.
@maolesen Some perspective for those who still don't get it: If I were forced to be infected by either HIV or COVID, I would choose HIV without hesitation.
What a lunatic. I just did a quick google and as of 2016 the untreated survival rate for HIV at 10 years was 26%. The untreated survival rate for Covid is something over 99%.
Stunning innumeracy. I got my latest jab today. The centre was not packed out but it was pretty steady. I was assured that this one was "enhanced" to deal with Omnicron variant. Which was nice.
This person is an "epidemiologist and federal disaster medicine team member". Covid really has driven some people completely mad.
@maolesen Some perspective for those who still don't get it: If I were forced to be infected by either HIV or COVID, I would choose HIV without hesitation.
The election showed that Brexit continues to divide the British people. Some have argued that the country is united around it since 87% of voters – the total percentage of votes cast for the two major parties – supported parties favouring Brexit. But that is absurd. For, clearly, many Remainers voted Conservative or Labour and there is evidence that the swing to Labour was caused in part by Remainers seeking revenge.
As it turned out, Vernon Bogdanor is as thick as mince. God bless Jeremy Corbyn.
There was an interesting contribution to the Adrian Chiles program yesterday. A woman who was employed to support victims of modern slavery explained how it worked. If someone from Albania has got their ride on credit they are "enslaved" until they pay that debt back because they have to account to the person providing the credit. These people seem to have more effective remedies than those provided by the civil courts and they are at risk.
If they make a claim that they are being trafficked in this way the authorities are not allowed to do anything for 45 days whilst they assess the claim. This is a provisional assessment and has a very low standard of proof. A final assessment by a suitably qualified person is required. She said that she had young men who had been waiting for more than 3 years for such a final assessment. She was lamenting the fact that these men were being left in limbo for so long and she has a point but most people will lament that we have created a system that just does not function or is incapable of reaching determinations within a reasonable period of time.
All trivially sorted by the Home Secretary, if any of them ever wished to actually tackle the problem rather than highlight the problem for political gain.
It could only be "trivially sorted" if the Modern Slavery Act 2015 was repealed. That Act was introduced by a HS, Mrs May no less, and she claims it was her greatest contribution. The Act focused much more on those doing the trafficking than those who were being trafficked and the implications of the assessment process do not seem to have been thought through.
These are difficult problems. How do we differentiate between far eastern women locked in cages and used for sex and young Albanian men forced to work on Cannabis farms or, for that matter, also used for sex? As with asylum we would be dismayed as to how many of these victims actually qualify under the rights we have given them.
There are two parts to this. One decide which groups we want to let in and adjust the laws to match that, including leaving treaties if needed. Secondly resource it so we don't wait 45 days whilst little to nothing happens because no-one is available to do the job.
I have seen no evidence of any recent Home Secretary doing much on either, instead they love to moan about the courts correctly interpreting the laws and treaties that the governments have written, and the lawyers that represent people within the law.
I agree that the current asylum rules are simply not sustainable and have argued for that on here many times. If. however, the victims of modern slavery are not given some protection what are the prospects of such crimes ever coming to light?
I am not an expert on modern slavery and don't have a strong view on what the limits should be for us accepting related asylum claims. I am content for the government to make an assessment that they believe in, as long as it matches the law.
What I find completely unacceptable is the government making the rules, then:
- complaining about others upholding their rules weakening trust in courts and dividing society - failing to fund the system resulting not just in further personal stress for those involved but also ending up in even higher costs, such as £600 hotels or hosting people for 3 years rather than 3 weeks, so we pay more than required in the first place
But as I say, even many of those who find Braverman incompetent like her because they feel she is on her side. There is no upside to her in trying to fix this, so it won't happen.
You are seriously underestimating the complexity of the "fix" and will no doubt be disappointed when the next Labour government struggles in exactly the same way with the same problems. There is nothing trivial about coming up with working solutions: the short answer is that there aren't any.
One thing that is having a blind eye turned to it is the involvement of established native British criminal gangs (and in some places Irish ones, but not so much in Kent) alongside Albanian etc. gangs in the business of illegal immigration and slavery.
Who do people think runs a town like Dover when it's nighttime?
The native criminal underworld has a big slice of the illegal immigration action (even as they favour the far right whenever they poke their toes into politics) - right the way across the employment spectrum whether it's the provision of services to hotels or courier companies or of labour for various jobs in farming and distribution.
But we shouldn't expect SKS to say smash organised crime, let's clean up the country.
According to the Guardian today, "Home Office contractors [have been] removed for trying to sell drugs at Manston asylum centre".
That'll be the Thanet underworld. Or if it's not them, then whoever it is had better watch out.
And look who's been housing refugees in Hove... Step forward, Nicholas van Hoogstraten:
"Some of the children have gone missing during their stay".
Kudos to Hove's Labour MP, Peter Kyle, for kicking up a fuss.
Sorry to go off at a tangent but even during the Labour years it was apparent that subsidising tenants meant subsidising landlords, some of whom were investing ill-gotten gains.
Suspension should be an uncommon sanction, depriving people of their elected representative (even if just from the House, which they are not obligated to attend) is a serious business after all.
So long as it does become outright rare as a sanction, since most of the cases we have seen it applied appear reasonable.
LOL who are these muppets in the senior CS? MPs work for us, not the other way around. Suspensions should be longer and more frequent, and the public should have a much wider right of recall.
Out of curiosity, how much do you charge these days for private A-level teaching (1:1), per hour? Asking for a friend.
I've dropped my French rate (less demand) to £35 as I like to maintain quite a heavy schedule for French. Russian tutoring is £60+ based on my hard earned track record and a very limited number of tutors for that subject.
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
Portugal has been doing quite well lately. Booming digital economy in Lisbon, for example.
Of course it is poorer than the rest of Western Europe, always has been, but it’s catching up.
Covid response was also notably coherent, belying stereotypes.
I don’t recognise Leon’s judgement that it is “fucked”. It seems to my eyes that it is slowly but surely de-fucking.
Er, my table - as I explicitly say - went from Most Fucked - Armenia - to Least Fucked - Iceland
Portugal is towards the Least Fucked end, because I agree with all of this. It’s a poor country by Western European standards, but it is safe, sunny, and doing really quite well in solving some of its problems
Incidentally, I am amazed to discover that posters who told us the polls could not be trusted and GOP were going to do well in 2018 midterms & that Trump was going to win bigly in 2020 and that the polls could not be trusted (and that May was going to win big in 2017 and the polls could not be trusted) seem to be happy with the trustworthiness of the polls in 2022 when they are showing a GOP sweep.
Well, the polls did suggest that the Conservatives would win a working majority in 2017, and the polls do tend to underestimate Republican support, historically.
And, in the current case, the polls match the fundamentals. It's mid term, the economy is in a bad way, Biden is fairly unpopular, so why would one not expect the Presidential party to get a beating, since this almost always happens in those circumstances?
Of the last 10 Congressional elections the polls have understated Rs 6 times and Ds 4 times (on the RCP average - health warnings apply).
2020 understated the GOP, 2018 understated the Dems.
I listened to a podcast interview of the Trafalgar guy (sorry Robert). One of his points was that 'mainstream' polling wasn't picking up Republicans because a good chunk of the latter thought their poll responses would be picked up by the Government and used against them. Trafalgar, OTOH, was 'trusted' by this chunk, hence the difference.
Now, that is batshit crazy to think the Govt can be arsed to go down into the metadata (or you would hope so). However, we can't have it both ways - if we think that a good % of the GOP voting base are loons, then Trafalgar's explanation of the difference in voting preferences has to be considered. Saying that 'yeah, they are paranoid loons but they will tell the truth to a NYT poll' isn't really a strong argument.
There was an interesting contribution to the Adrian Chiles program yesterday. A woman who was employed to support victims of modern slavery explained how it worked. If someone from Albania has got their ride on credit they are "enslaved" until they pay that debt back because they have to account to the person providing the credit. These people seem to have more effective remedies than those provided by the civil courts and they are at risk.
If they make a claim that they are being trafficked in this way the authorities are not allowed to do anything for 45 days whilst they assess the claim. This is a provisional assessment and has a very low standard of proof. A final assessment by a suitably qualified person is required. She said that she had young men who had been waiting for more than 3 years for such a final assessment. She was lamenting the fact that these men were being left in limbo for so long and she has a point but most people will lament that we have created a system that just does not function or is incapable of reaching determinations within a reasonable period of time.
All trivially sorted by the Home Secretary, if any of them ever wished to actually tackle the problem rather than highlight the problem for political gain.
It could only be "trivially sorted" if the Modern Slavery Act 2015 was repealed. That Act was introduced by a HS, Mrs May no less, and she claims it was her greatest contribution. The Act focused much more on those doing the trafficking than those who were being trafficked and the implications of the assessment process do not seem to have been thought through.
These are difficult problems. How do we differentiate between far eastern women locked in cages and used for sex and young Albanian men forced to work on Cannabis farms or, for that matter, also used for sex? As with asylum we would be dismayed as to how many of these victims actually qualify under the rights we have given them.
There are two parts to this. One decide which groups we want to let in and adjust the laws to match that, including leaving treaties if needed. Secondly resource it so we don't wait 45 days whilst little to nothing happens because no-one is available to do the job.
I have seen no evidence of any recent Home Secretary doing much on either, instead they love to moan about the courts correctly interpreting the laws and treaties that the governments have written, and the lawyers that represent people within the law.
I agree that the current asylum rules are simply not sustainable and have argued for that on here many times. If. however, the victims of modern slavery are not given some protection what are the prospects of such crimes ever coming to light?
I am not an expert on modern slavery and don't have a strong view on what the limits should be for us accepting related asylum claims. I am content for the government to make an assessment that they believe in, as long as it matches the law.
What I find completely unacceptable is the government making the rules, then:
- complaining about others upholding their rules weakening trust in courts and dividing society - failing to fund the system resulting not just in further personal stress for those involved but also ending up in even higher costs, such as £600 hotels or hosting people for 3 years rather than 3 weeks, so we pay more than required in the first place
But as I say, even many of those who find Braverman incompetent like her because they feel she is on her side. There is no upside to her in trying to fix this, so it won't happen.
You are seriously underestimating the complexity of the "fix" and will no doubt be disappointed when the next Labour government struggles in exactly the same way with the same problems. There is nothing trivial about coming up with working solutions: the short answer is that there aren't any.
One thing that is having a blind eye turned to it is the involvement of established native British criminal gangs (and in some places Irish ones, but not so much in Kent) alongside Albanian etc. gangs in the business of illegal immigration and slavery.
Who do people think runs a town like Dover when it's nighttime?
The native criminal underworld has a big slice of the illegal immigration action (even as they favour the far right whenever they poke their toes into politics) - right the way across the employment spectrum whether it's the provision of services to hotels or courier companies or of labour for various jobs in farming and distribution.
But we shouldn't expect SKS to say smash organised crime, let's clean up the country.
According to the Guardian today, "Home Office contractors [have been] removed for trying to sell drugs at Manston asylum centre".
That'll be the Thanet underworld. Or if it's not them, then whoever it is had better watch out.
And look who's been housing refugees in Hove... Step forward, Nicholas van Hoogstraten:
"Some of the children have gone missing during their stay".
Kudos to Hove's Labour MP, Peter Kyle, for kicking up a fuss.
Sorry to go off at a tangent but even during the Labour years it was apparent that subsidising tenants meant subsidising landlords, some of whom were investing ill-gotten gains.
Sure, Labour figures have got slices of the landlord action in many areas including Nottingham, Glasgow, and parts of London. Labour nationally isn't about to start talking about the organised crime angle with illegal immigration. But still this particular MP deserves some credit, and would do whichever party he was from.
Incidentally, I am amazed to discover that posters who told us the polls could not be trusted and GOP were going to do well in 2018 midterms & that Trump was going to win bigly in 2020 and that the polls could not be trusted (and that May was going to win big in 2017 and the polls could not be trusted) seem to be happy with the trustworthiness of the polls in 2022 when they are showing a GOP sweep.
Well, the polls did suggest that the Conservatives would win a working majority in 2017, and the polls do tend to underestimate Republican support, historically.
And, in the current case, the polls match the fundamentals. It's mid term, the economy is in a bad way, Biden is fairly unpopular, so why would one not expect the Presidential party to get a beating, since this almost always happens in those circumstances?
Of the last 10 Congressional elections the polls have understated Rs 6 times and Ds 4 times (on the RCP average - health warnings apply).
2020 understated the GOP, 2018 understated the Dems.
I listened to a podcast interview of the Trafalgar guy (sorry Robert). One of his points was that 'mainstream' polling wasn't picking up Republicans because a good chunk of the latter thought their poll responses would be picked up by the Government and used against them. Trafalgar, OTOH, was 'trusted' by this chunk, hence the difference.
Now, that is batshit crazy to think the Govt can be arsed to go down into the metadata (or you would hope so). However, we can't have it both ways - if we think that a good % of the GOP voting base are loons, then Trafalgar's explanation of the difference in voting preferences has to be considered. Saying that 'yeah, they are paranoid loons but they will tell the truth to a NYT poll' isn't really a strong argument.
I thought that the allegation against Trafalgar was that they simply made the numbers up. Has that been disproved?
OT Cinema buffs shouldn't miss 'Triangle of Sadness'. Palme d'Or Cannes winner. Clever funny well acted well shot and not one to miss. Not too easy to find though
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
Portugal has been doing quite well lately. Booming digital economy in Lisbon, for example.
Of course it is poorer than the rest of Western Europe, always has been, but it’s catching up.
Covid response was also notably coherent, belying stereotypes.
I don’t recognise Leon’s judgement that it is “fucked”. It seems to my eyes that it is slowly but surely de-fucking.
Er, my table - as I explicitly say - went from Most Fucked - Armenia - to Least Fucked - Iceland
Portugal is towards the Least Fucked end, because I agree with all of this. It’s a poor country by Western European standards, but it is safe, sunny, and doing really quite well in solving some of its problems
Iceland? What a financial crash can lead to! I liked the stories about the private jets all whooshing out one evening as the super-cars got blown up for the insurance.
What would you do if an old friend clearly-accidentally forwarded some voicemails from someone else - and because you are an inquisitive bastard - you opened them - and they revealed this friend was in an absolutely toxic relationship?
Not violent, but highly abusive
Keep quiet? Because you should not have listened to the voicemails? Or say something, to the friend or other friends who might help?
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
It's not often remembered that Portugal was doing badly even going into 2008. It had had a boom in the 90s, but bust at the same time as the dot com bust.
Portugal (or at least its cities) also has the usual house price bubble, which the locals could do without.
What would you do if an old friend clearly-accidentally forwarded some voicemails from someone else - and because you are an inquisitive bastard - you opened them - and they revealed this friend was in an absolutely toxic relationship?
Not violent, but highly abusive
Keep quiet? Because you should not have listened to the voicemails? Or say something, to the friend or other friends who might help?
What I would do is use them to blackmail the abusive partner. £100,000 minimum, in notes or crypto, and tell him that he is not to enter a defined postcode area for the rest of his life. Insist on taking some compromising photos of him for extra insurance. If he threatens to squeal then make it painful.
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
Portugal has been doing quite well lately. Booming digital economy in Lisbon, for example.
Of course it is poorer than the rest of Western Europe, always has been, but it’s catching up.
Covid response was also notably coherent, belying stereotypes.
I don’t recognise Leon’s judgement that it is “fucked”. It seems to my eyes that it is slowly but surely de-fucking.
Er, my table - as I explicitly say - went from Most Fucked - Armenia - to Least Fucked - Iceland
Portugal is towards the Least Fucked end, because I agree with all of this. It’s a poor country by Western European standards, but it is safe, sunny, and doing really quite well in solving some of its problems
Iceland? What a financial crash can lead to! I liked the stories about the private jets all whooshing out one evening as the super-cars got blown up for the insurance.
The recovery in the Icelandic economy is phenomenal. Not just after the GFC but also Covid (tourism is their biggest earner)
Yet here we are, in Reykjavik, and it is full of happy drunken people, eating pretty good food (at absurd prices: but they can afford them). There is impressive construction everywhere. The new housing looks notably high quality
And it is no illusion. In GDP per capita they are just behind the USA and ahead of Australia, not far off Singapore
What would you do if an old friend clearly-accidentally forwarded some voicemails from someone else - and because you are an inquisitive bastard - you opened them - and they revealed this friend was in an absolutely toxic relationship?
Not violent, but highly abusive
Keep quiet? Because you should not have listened to the voicemails? Or say something, to the friend or other friends who might help?
What I would do is use them to blackmail the abusive partner. £100,000 minimum, in notes or crypto, and tell him that he is not to enter a defined postcode area for the rest of his life. Insist on taking some compromising photos of him for extra insurance. If he threatens to squeal then make it painful.
Ooh. That’s good. I might use What3Words to confine his movements
Incidentally, I am amazed to discover that posters who told us the polls could not be trusted and GOP were going to do well in 2018 midterms & that Trump was going to win bigly in 2020 and that the polls could not be trusted (and that May was going to win big in 2017 and the polls could not be trusted) seem to be happy with the trustworthiness of the polls in 2022 when they are showing a GOP sweep.
Well, the polls did suggest that the Conservatives would win a working majority in 2017, and the polls do tend to underestimate Republican support, historically.
And, in the current case, the polls match the fundamentals. It's mid term, the economy is in a bad way, Biden is fairly unpopular, so why would one not expect the Presidential party to get a beating, since this almost always happens in those circumstances?
Of the last 10 Congressional elections the polls have understated Rs 6 times and Ds 4 times (on the RCP average - health warnings apply).
2020 understated the GOP, 2018 understated the Dems.
I listened to a podcast interview of the Trafalgar guy (sorry Robert). One of his points was that 'mainstream' polling wasn't picking up Republicans because a good chunk of the latter thought their poll responses would be picked up by the Government and used against them. Trafalgar, OTOH, was 'trusted' by this chunk, hence the difference.
Now, that is batshit crazy to think the Govt can be arsed to go down into the metadata (or you would hope so). However, we can't have it both ways - if we think that a good % of the GOP voting base are loons, then Trafalgar's explanation of the difference in voting preferences has to be considered. Saying that 'yeah, they are paranoid loons but they will tell the truth to a NYT poll' isn't really a strong argument.
I thought that the allegation against Trafalgar was that they simply made the numbers up. Has that been disproved?
Don't they have a single employee and never publish data?
I recall PB saying they don't actually do polling, just adjust others figures, but have proven guessing ability.
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
Portugal has been doing quite well lately. Booming digital economy in Lisbon, for example.
Of course it is poorer than the rest of Western Europe, always has been, but it’s catching up.
Covid response was also notably coherent, belying stereotypes.
I don’t recognise Leon’s judgement that it is “fucked”. It seems to my eyes that it is slowly but surely de-fucking.
Er, my table - as I explicitly say - went from Most Fucked - Armenia - to Least Fucked - Iceland
Portugal is towards the Least Fucked end, because I agree with all of this. It’s a poor country by Western European standards, but it is safe, sunny, and doing really quite well in solving some of its problems
Iceland? What a financial crash can lead to! I liked the stories about the private jets all whooshing out one evening as the super-cars got blown up for the insurance.
Sounds like all the private jets out of Moscow for Dubai a few months ago.
Incidentally, I am amazed to discover that posters who told us the polls could not be trusted and GOP were going to do well in 2018 midterms & that Trump was going to win bigly in 2020 and that the polls could not be trusted (and that May was going to win big in 2017 and the polls could not be trusted) seem to be happy with the trustworthiness of the polls in 2022 when they are showing a GOP sweep.
Well, the polls did suggest that the Conservatives would win a working majority in 2017, and the polls do tend to underestimate Republican support, historically.
And, in the current case, the polls match the fundamentals. It's mid term, the economy is in a bad way, Biden is fairly unpopular, so why would one not expect the Presidential party to get a beating, since this almost always happens in those circumstances?
Of the last 10 Congressional elections the polls have understated Rs 6 times and Ds 4 times (on the RCP average - health warnings apply).
2020 understated the GOP, 2018 understated the Dems.
I listened to a podcast interview of the Trafalgar guy (sorry Robert). One of his points was that 'mainstream' polling wasn't picking up Republicans because a good chunk of the latter thought their poll responses would be picked up by the Government and used against them. Trafalgar, OTOH, was 'trusted' by this chunk, hence the difference.
Now, that is batshit crazy to think the Govt can be arsed to go down into the metadata (or you would hope so). However, we can't have it both ways - if we think that a good % of the GOP voting base are loons, then Trafalgar's explanation of the difference in voting preferences has to be considered. Saying that 'yeah, they are paranoid loons but they will tell the truth to a NYT poll' isn't really a strong argument.
I thought that the allegation against Trafalgar was that they simply made the numbers up. Has that been disproved?
Don't they have a single employee and never publish data?
I recall PB saying they don't actually do polling, just adjust others figures, but have proven guessing ability.
@rcs1000 has the lowdown. IIRC he interviewed Mr Trafalgar.
This person is an "epidemiologist and federal disaster medicine team member". Covid really has driven some people completely mad.
@maolesen Some perspective for those who still don't get it: If I were forced to be infected by either HIV or COVID, I would choose HIV without hesitation.
Why do people write things like this? The person on Twitter I mean.
Not quite as daft statement as it sounds. HIV is fairly easily controlled with medication now. It is a chronic disease like diabetes or blood pressure now. Take the pills and generally you are fine.
Covid has pretty low mortality now, mostly due to being less lung and more throat.
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
Portugal has been doing quite well lately. Booming digital economy in Lisbon, for example.
Of course it is poorer than the rest of Western Europe, always has been, but it’s catching up.
Covid response was also notably coherent, belying stereotypes.
I don’t recognise Leon’s judgement that it is “fucked”. It seems to my eyes that it is slowly but surely de-fucking.
Er, my table - as I explicitly say - went from Most Fucked - Armenia - to Least Fucked - Iceland
Portugal is towards the Least Fucked end, because I agree with all of this. It’s a poor country by Western European standards, but it is safe, sunny, and doing really quite well in solving some of its problems
Iceland? What a financial crash can lead to! I liked the stories about the private jets all whooshing out one evening as the super-cars got blown up for the insurance.
The recovery in the Icelandic economy is phenomenal. Not just after the GFC but also Covid (tourism is their biggest earner)
Yet here we are, in Reykjavik, and it is full of happy drunken people, eating pretty good food (at absurd prices: but they can afford them). There is impressive construction everywhere. The new housing looks notably high quality
And it is no illusion. In GDP per capita they are just behind the USA and ahead of Australia, not far off Singapore
Did you go to Hlíðarendi? (Bit recherche: but it's where Gunnar of the Saga of Burnt Njal used to live. No idea if there is anything to see, but it's a pretty famous book if you are into NW maritime Europe lit.)
This person is an "epidemiologist and federal disaster medicine team member". Covid really has driven some people completely mad.
@maolesen Some perspective for those who still don't get it: If I were forced to be infected by either HIV or COVID, I would choose HIV without hesitation.
Why do people write things like this? The person on Twitter I mean.
Not quite as daft statement as it sounds. HIV is fairly easily controlled with medication now. It is a chronic disease like diabetes or blood pressure now. Take the pills and generally you are fine.
At a lifetime cost to the health system in the hundreds of thousands.
What would you do if an old friend clearly-accidentally forwarded some voicemails from someone else - and because you are an inquisitive bastard - you opened them - and they revealed this friend was in an absolutely toxic relationship?
Not violent, but highly abusive
Keep quiet? Because you should not have listened to the voicemails? Or say something, to the friend or other friends who might help?
If an elderly person is being abused, and you know (for whatever reason), you have a duty to intervene.
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
It's not often remembered that Portugal was doing badly even going into 2008. It had had a boom in the 90s, but bust at the same time as the dot com bust.
Portugal (or at least its cities) also has the usual house price bubble, which the locals could do without.
Portuguese standards of living are likely higher than Wales’s.
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
Portugal has been doing quite well lately. Booming digital economy in Lisbon, for example.
Of course it is poorer than the rest of Western Europe, always has been, but it’s catching up.
Covid response was also notably coherent, belying stereotypes.
I don’t recognise Leon’s judgement that it is “fucked”. It seems to my eyes that it is slowly but surely de-fucking.
Er, my table - as I explicitly say - went from Most Fucked - Armenia - to Least Fucked - Iceland
Portugal is towards the Least Fucked end, because I agree with all of this. It’s a poor country by Western European standards, but it is safe, sunny, and doing really quite well in solving some of its problems
Iceland? What a financial crash can lead to! I liked the stories about the private jets all whooshing out one evening as the super-cars got blown up for the insurance.
The recovery in the Icelandic economy is phenomenal. Not just after the GFC but also Covid (tourism is their biggest earner)
Yet here we are, in Reykjavik, and it is full of happy drunken people, eating pretty good food (at absurd prices: but they can afford them). There is impressive construction everywhere. The new housing looks notably high quality
And it is no illusion. In GDP per capita they are just behind the USA and ahead of Australia, not far off Singapore
Did you go to Hlíðarendi? (Bit recherche: but it's where Gunnar of the Saga of Burnt Njal used to live. No idea if there is anything to see, but it's a pretty famous book if you are into NW maritime Europe lit.)
We went to a few places named in the Sagas. Including Njals. Tbh I dunno which was which
The best one was this place. The temple church. A known pagan temple where they built a church on top. They used to do horse sacrifices here and maybe humans, and the pagan temple stones are incorporated into the church. And even now it feels really pagan
This person is an "epidemiologist and federal disaster medicine team member". Covid really has driven some people completely mad.
@maolesen Some perspective for those who still don't get it: If I were forced to be infected by either HIV or COVID, I would choose HIV without hesitation.
Why do people write things like this? The person on Twitter I mean.
Not quite as daft statement as it sounds. HIV is fairly easily controlled with medication now. It is a chronic disease like diabetes or blood pressure now. Take the pills and generally you are fine.
At a lifetime cost to the health system in the hundreds of thousands.
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
Portugal has been doing quite well lately. Booming digital economy in Lisbon, for example.
Of course it is poorer than the rest of Western Europe, always has been, but it’s catching up.
Covid response was also notably coherent, belying stereotypes.
I don’t recognise Leon’s judgement that it is “fucked”. It seems to my eyes that it is slowly but surely de-fucking.
Er, my table - as I explicitly say - went from Most Fucked - Armenia - to Least Fucked - Iceland
Portugal is towards the Least Fucked end, because I agree with all of this. It’s a poor country by Western European standards, but it is safe, sunny, and doing really quite well in solving some of its problems
Iceland? What a financial crash can lead to! I liked the stories about the private jets all whooshing out one evening as the super-cars got blown up for the insurance.
The recovery in the Icelandic economy is phenomenal. Not just after the GFC but also Covid (tourism is their biggest earner)
Yet here we are, in Reykjavik, and it is full of happy drunken people, eating pretty good food (at absurd prices: but they can afford them). There is impressive construction everywhere. The new housing looks notably high quality
And it is no illusion. In GDP per capita they are just behind the USA and ahead of Australia, not far off Singapore
Because Iceland let failed businesses fail and didn't engage in market manipulation to keep zombie failed businesses alive, at taxpayer expenses, with the moral hazard attached.
Meanwhile Britain and Europe tried to "save the world" by not letting failed businesses fail.
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
Portugal has been doing quite well lately. Booming digital economy in Lisbon, for example.
Of course it is poorer than the rest of Western Europe, always has been, but it’s catching up.
Covid response was also notably coherent, belying stereotypes.
I don’t recognise Leon’s judgement that it is “fucked”. It seems to my eyes that it is slowly but surely de-fucking.
Er, my table - as I explicitly say - went from Most Fucked - Armenia - to Least Fucked - Iceland
Portugal is towards the Least Fucked end, because I agree with all of this. It’s a poor country by Western European standards, but it is safe, sunny, and doing really quite well in solving some of its problems
Iceland? What a financial crash can lead to! I liked the stories about the private jets all whooshing out one evening as the super-cars got blown up for the insurance.
The recovery in the Icelandic economy is phenomenal. Not just after the GFC but also Covid (tourism is their biggest earner)
Yet here we are, in Reykjavik, and it is full of happy drunken people, eating pretty good food (at absurd prices: but they can afford them). There is impressive construction everywhere. The new housing looks notably high quality
And it is no illusion. In GDP per capita they are just behind the USA and ahead of Australia, not far off Singapore
Did you go to Hlíðarendi? (Bit recherche: but it's where Gunnar of the Saga of Burnt Njal used to live. No idea if there is anything to see, but it's a pretty famous book if you are into NW maritime Europe lit.)
We went to a few places named in the Sagas. Including Njals. Tbh I dunno which was which
The best one was this place. The temple church. A known pagan temple where they built a church on top. They used to do horse sacrifices here and maybe humans, and the pagan temple stones are incorporated into the church. And even now it feels really pagan
Mentioned in several texts and sagas
Mm, thanks! Iceland is definitely on my list to do, already.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
NHS: fucked. Almost impossible to get appointments. Long waits for referrals. Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever. Council services: obviously very stretched. Street cleaning way down. Basic services covered, nothing else, impossible to speak to anyone about anything. Fly tipping out of control. Roads: surfaces increasingly poor. Perhaps there is an effort at catch up given amount of works going on, but a lot of that seems to be water related. Frequent burst water mains. Prices of everything massively up. Taxes up. Private sector obviously seeing staff shortages, evident in retail, hospitality and construction. Occasional glimpses of additional border red tape but doesn't affect me much directly. Overall: quality of life is deteriorating.
You can apply all that to Wales under the Welsh labour government (apart from the tube obviously)
Welsh Labour seem less a political proposition than a kind of shitocracy. I presume the Welsh prefer it this way as the Welsh Tories are even worse.
I've never understood the popularity of Mark Drakeford.
He looks like he's escaped from Harold Wilson's cabinet.
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
Portugal has been doing quite well lately. Booming digital economy in Lisbon, for example.
Of course it is poorer than the rest of Western Europe, always has been, but it’s catching up.
Covid response was also notably coherent, belying stereotypes.
I don’t recognise Leon’s judgement that it is “fucked”. It seems to my eyes that it is slowly but surely de-fucking.
Er, my table - as I explicitly say - went from Most Fucked - Armenia - to Least Fucked - Iceland
Portugal is towards the Least Fucked end, because I agree with all of this. It’s a poor country by Western European standards, but it is safe, sunny, and doing really quite well in solving some of its problems
Iceland? What a financial crash can lead to! I liked the stories about the private jets all whooshing out one evening as the super-cars got blown up for the insurance.
The recovery in the Icelandic economy is phenomenal. Not just after the GFC but also Covid (tourism is their biggest earner)
Yet here we are, in Reykjavik, and it is full of happy drunken people, eating pretty good food (at absurd prices: but they can afford them). There is impressive construction everywhere. The new housing looks notably high quality
And it is no illusion. In GDP per capita they are just behind the USA and ahead of Australia, not far off Singapore
Because Iceland let failed businesses fail and didn't engage in market manipulation to keep zombie failed businesses alive, at taxpayer expenses, with the moral hazard attached.
Meanwhile Britain and Europe tried to "save the world" by not letting failed businesses fail.
That's not quite true.
The Icelandics supported their local banks with massive bailouts, but they let the foreign subsidiaries (where the worst of the liabilities were) go bust.
Incidentally, I am amazed to discover that posters who told us the polls could not be trusted and GOP were going to do well in 2018 midterms & that Trump was going to win bigly in 2020 and that the polls could not be trusted (and that May was going to win big in 2017 and the polls could not be trusted) seem to be happy with the trustworthiness of the polls in 2022 when they are showing a GOP sweep.
Well, the polls did suggest that the Conservatives would win a working majority in 2017, and the polls do tend to underestimate Republican support, historically.
And, in the current case, the polls match the fundamentals. It's mid term, the economy is in a bad way, Biden is fairly unpopular, so why would one not expect the Presidential party to get a beating, since this almost always happens in those circumstances?
Of the last 10 Congressional elections the polls have understated Rs 6 times and Ds 4 times (on the RCP average - health warnings apply).
2020 understated the GOP, 2018 understated the Dems.
Is it time for a PB 'Predict the Midterms' competition?
Have we had a discussion on Strictly betting? SCD is huge in our house as the Ukrainians are obsessed with it. They tell me that Dianne Buswell is the best 'pro' and they should know as they have both been competitive dancers. So maybe Tyler West is value at 11/1? #teamtydi
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
Portugal has been doing quite well lately. Booming digital economy in Lisbon, for example.
Of course it is poorer than the rest of Western Europe, always has been, but it’s catching up.
Covid response was also notably coherent, belying stereotypes.
I don’t recognise Leon’s judgement that it is “fucked”. It seems to my eyes that it is slowly but surely de-fucking.
Er, my table - as I explicitly say - went from Most Fucked - Armenia - to Least Fucked - Iceland
Portugal is towards the Least Fucked end, because I agree with all of this. It’s a poor country by Western European standards, but it is safe, sunny, and doing really quite well in solving some of its problems
Iceland? What a financial crash can lead to! I liked the stories about the private jets all whooshing out one evening as the super-cars got blown up for the insurance.
The recovery in the Icelandic economy is phenomenal. Not just after the GFC but also Covid (tourism is their biggest earner)
Yet here we are, in Reykjavik, and it is full of happy drunken people, eating pretty good food (at absurd prices: but they can afford them). There is impressive construction everywhere. The new housing looks notably high quality
And it is no illusion. In GDP per capita they are just behind the USA and ahead of Australia, not far off Singapore
Because Iceland let failed businesses fail and didn't engage in market manipulation to keep zombie failed businesses alive, at taxpayer expenses, with the moral hazard attached.
Meanwhile Britain and Europe tried to "save the world" by not letting failed businesses fail.
That's not quite true.
The Icelandics supported their local banks with massive bailouts, but they let the foreign subsidiaries (where the worst of the liabilities were) go bust.
Also, they essentially “free rode” on Britain/European/US efforts to prevent wide scale business failure.
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
Portugal has been doing quite well lately. Booming digital economy in Lisbon, for example.
Of course it is poorer than the rest of Western Europe, always has been, but it’s catching up.
Covid response was also notably coherent, belying stereotypes.
I don’t recognise Leon’s judgement that it is “fucked”. It seems to my eyes that it is slowly but surely de-fucking.
Er, my table - as I explicitly say - went from Most Fucked - Armenia - to Least Fucked - Iceland
Portugal is towards the Least Fucked end, because I agree with all of this. It’s a poor country by Western European standards, but it is safe, sunny, and doing really quite well in solving some of its problems
Iceland? What a financial crash can lead to! I liked the stories about the private jets all whooshing out one evening as the super-cars got blown up for the insurance.
The recovery in the Icelandic economy is phenomenal. Not just after the GFC but also Covid (tourism is their biggest earner)
Yet here we are, in Reykjavik, and it is full of happy drunken people, eating pretty good food (at absurd prices: but they can afford them). There is impressive construction everywhere. The new housing looks notably high quality
And it is no illusion. In GDP per capita they are just behind the USA and ahead of Australia, not far off Singapore
Because Iceland let failed businesses fail and didn't engage in market manipulation to keep zombie failed businesses alive, at taxpayer expenses, with the moral hazard attached.
Meanwhile Britain and Europe tried to "save the world" by not letting failed businesses fail.
Iceland is small enough to have done this while looking after the victims (although many victims were of course foreign investors who had to take a loss). Population similar to Coventry.
Tourism seems to have helped a lot too. Completely taken off in the last decade.
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
It's not often remembered that Portugal was doing badly even going into 2008. It had had a boom in the 90s, but bust at the same time as the dot com bust.
Portugal (or at least its cities) also has the usual house price bubble, which the locals could do without.
Portuguese standards of living are likely higher than Wales’s.
That I can believe.
I wonder if any ambitious welsh nationalist has ever drafted a plan to link the North and South Walean economies? I assume they are essentially separate, and each more closely linked to their respective neighbouring English economies than to each other.
I still cannot understand that story. I mean, if they provide translations for people who do not speak Welsh then it would not make much sense to have an out of office message which was not in at least one other language as well as Welsh. So either it didn't and their out of office was dumb, or it did and the person receiving it still didn't notice.
I can believe it, because most small businesses don't have any structure to their email use and incoming requests. So an external client probably just has a bunch of individual employee email addresses in their contacts and is used to sending requests direct to some randomly picked person. And then when an individual goes on holiday, most systems let that person directly choose the out-of-office email, rather than imposing a corporate one. And if 95% of their email use is internal, not external, they might not even think about the possibility some previous client might email them direct. So if all the holes in the swiss cheese line up you get something silly. More commonly a request that could have been dealt with by somebody else gets unnecessarily delayed. Either way, at some point a business needs a more formal setup for incoming requests than "email anybody at any time"...
I still cannot understand that story. I mean, if they provide translations for people who do not speak Welsh then it would not make much sense to have an out of office message which was not in at least one other language as well as Welsh. So either it didn't and their out of office was dumb, or it did and the person receiving it still didn't notice.
I can believe it, because most small businesses don't have any structure to their email use and incoming requests. So an external client probably just has a bunch of individual employee email addresses in their contacts and is used to sending requests direct to some randomly picked person. And then when an individual goes on holiday, most systems let that person directly choose the out-of-office email, rather than imposing a corporate one. And if 95% of their email use is internal, not external, they might not even think about the possibility some previous client might email them direct. So if all the holes in the swiss cheese line up you get something silly. More commonly a request that could have been dealt with by somebody else gets unnecessarily delayed. Either way, at some point a business needs a more formal setup for incoming requests than "email anybody at any time"...
There must be a hybrid email-bugtracking system out there, but if there is, it's underused. In all sorts of businesses and government departments, it all seems to be webs of untracked emails, reliant on the right person being in the office and doing the right thing...
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
Portugal has been doing quite well lately. Booming digital economy in Lisbon, for example.
Of course it is poorer than the rest of Western Europe, always has been, but it’s catching up.
Covid response was also notably coherent, belying stereotypes.
I don’t recognise Leon’s judgement that it is “fucked”. It seems to my eyes that it is slowly but surely de-fucking.
Er, my table - as I explicitly say - went from Most Fucked - Armenia - to Least Fucked - Iceland
Portugal is towards the Least Fucked end, because I agree with all of this. It’s a poor country by Western European standards, but it is safe, sunny, and doing really quite well in solving some of its problems
Iceland? What a financial crash can lead to! I liked the stories about the private jets all whooshing out one evening as the super-cars got blown up for the insurance.
The recovery in the Icelandic economy is phenomenal. Not just after the GFC but also Covid (tourism is their biggest earner)
Yet here we are, in Reykjavik, and it is full of happy drunken people, eating pretty good food (at absurd prices: but they can afford them). There is impressive construction everywhere. The new housing looks notably high quality
And it is no illusion. In GDP per capita they are just behind the USA and ahead of Australia, not far off Singapore
Because Iceland let failed businesses fail and didn't engage in market manipulation to keep zombie failed businesses alive, at taxpayer expenses, with the moral hazard attached.
Meanwhile Britain and Europe tried to "save the world" by not letting failed businesses fail.
That's not quite true.
The Icelandics supported their local banks with massive bailouts, but they let the foreign subsidiaries (where the worst of the liabilities were) go bust.
We've never apologised to them for freezing assets under laws designed for terrorists.
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
It's not often remembered that Portugal was doing badly even going into 2008. It had had a boom in the 90s, but bust at the same time as the dot com bust.
Portugal (or at least its cities) also has the usual house price bubble, which the locals could do without.
Portuguese standards of living are likely higher than Wales’s.
That I can believe.
I wonder if any ambitious welsh nationalist has ever drafted a plan to link the North an South Walean economies? I assume they are essentially separate, and each more closely linked to their respective neighbouring English economies than to each other.
North Wales is essentially an economic exurb of Liverpool and, I suppose, Manchester.
But something like two thirds of the Welsh population live in South Wales, so any serious attempts to grow the Welsh economy starts with “Greater Cardiff”.
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
Lisbon is becoming a bit of a tech hub at the moment, alongside London. It's easy to get staff, and office rents are very low. Infrastructure is not bad either.
It's not perfect (nowhere is), but I'd regard it as significantly more likely to succeed in the medium term than Italy.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
NHS: fucked. Almost impossible to get appointments. Long waits for referrals. Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever. Council services: obviously very stretched. Street cleaning way down. Basic services covered, nothing else, impossible to speak to anyone about anything. Fly tipping out of control. Roads: surfaces increasingly poor. Perhaps there is an effort at catch up given amount of works going on, but a lot of that seems to be water related. Frequent burst water mains. Prices of everything massively up. Taxes up. Private sector obviously seeing staff shortages, evident in retail, hospitality and construction. Occasional glimpses of additional border red tape but doesn't affect me much directly. Overall: quality of life is deteriorating.
And sewage. Don't forget sewage.
There is a serious issue with sewage and rivers but a bit like showing cooling towers at power stations as pollution (its steam) the muck into the sea in Cornwall on that video is mostly mud.
Call me Mr Picky if you will, but I do like water I swim in to be entirely rather than just mostly not shit.
Not being picky at all, and we should be aiming for that. However the images last week were misleading.
There must be a hybrid email-bugtracking system out there, but if there is, it's underused. In all sorts of businesses and government departments, it all seems to be webs of untracked emails, reliant on the right person being in the office and doing the right thing...
There are several, yes, mostly used for IT ticketing systems and the like.
The lunacy of most corporate email use is something the book _A World Without Email_ looks at -- the author's conclusion is that it's kind of the default state you end up in if you don't step back and think about what you're doing and what might be workable processes for carrying it out. It's very short-term attractive but long-term incredibly inefficient.
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
Incidentally, I am amazed to discover that posters who told us the polls could not be trusted and GOP were going to do well in 2018 midterms & that Trump was going to win bigly in 2020 and that the polls could not be trusted (and that May was going to win big in 2017 and the polls could not be trusted) seem to be happy with the trustworthiness of the polls in 2022 when they are showing a GOP sweep.
Well, the polls did suggest that the Conservatives would win a working majority in 2017, and the polls do tend to underestimate Republican support, historically.
And, in the current case, the polls match the fundamentals. It's mid term, the economy is in a bad way, Biden is fairly unpopular, so why would one not expect the Presidential party to get a beating, since this almost always happens in those circumstances?
Of the last 10 Congressional elections the polls have understated Rs 6 times and Ds 4 times (on the RCP average - health warnings apply).
2020 understated the GOP, 2018 understated the Dems.
I listened to a podcast interview of the Trafalgar guy (sorry Robert). One of his points was that 'mainstream' polling wasn't picking up Republicans because a good chunk of the latter thought their poll responses would be picked up by the Government and used against them. Trafalgar, OTOH, was 'trusted' by this chunk, hence the difference.
Now, that is batshit crazy to think the Govt can be arsed to go down into the metadata (or you would hope so). However, we can't have it both ways - if we think that a good % of the GOP voting base are loons, then Trafalgar's explanation of the difference in voting preferences has to be considered. Saying that 'yeah, they are paranoid loons but they will tell the truth to a NYT poll' isn't really a strong argument.
I don't believe one in a hundred Americans has heard of Trafalgar.
And, fwiw, if what he was saying was true, then Fox News would get much better Republican numbers.
I still cannot understand that story. I mean, if they provide translations for people who do not speak Welsh then it would not make much sense to have an out of office message which was not in at least one other language as well as Welsh. So either it didn't and their out of office was dumb, or it did and the person receiving it still didn't notice.
I can believe it, because most small businesses don't have any structure to their email use and incoming requests. So an external client probably just has a bunch of individual employee email addresses in their contacts and is used to sending requests direct to some randomly picked person. And then when an individual goes on holiday, most systems let that person directly choose the out-of-office email, rather than imposing a corporate one. And if 95% of their email use is internal, not external, they might not even think about the possibility some previous client might email them direct. So if all the holes in the swiss cheese line up you get something silly. More commonly a request that could have been dealt with by somebody else gets unnecessarily delayed. Either way, at some point a business needs a more formal setup for incoming requests than "email anybody at any time"...
There must be a hybrid email-bugtracking system out there, but if there is, it's underused. In all sorts of businesses and government departments, it all seems to be webs of untracked emails, reliant on the right person being in the office and doing the right thing...
There’s huge amounts of documentation on mail flow rules, which any business on Office 365 can use.
The problem is, most of them have no idea what that means, or how to use it. Most small business has either no IT guy, a paid-by-the-hour junior contractor, or one of the managers can set up the email addresses. Occasionally, there will be a info@ email on the website, which someone might check once a week.
After a decade of scepticism, I finally came around to Office 365 a few years back. The latest version is genuinely a fully-featured Enterprise Exchange server on the backend.
What would you do if an old friend clearly-accidentally forwarded some voicemails from someone else - and because you are an inquisitive bastard - you opened them - and they revealed this friend was in an absolutely toxic relationship?
Not violent, but highly abusive
Keep quiet? Because you should not have listened to the voicemails? Or say something, to the friend or other friends who might help?
The heartbreaking truth is that I've tried pulling a friend out of a violently abusive relationship, only to watch her walk right back into it again, time and time again. It was as if, on pulling someone from a burning building, you watched them walk right back into the flames.
Relationships are weird and you can't really stop people from being in ones that are utterly toxic and harmful. All you can do is offer your support, and be there for them when they finally decide enough is enough.
But getting involved will only draw you into their world of pain. Be there as a friend, but don't get involved.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
NHS: fucked. Almost impossible to get appointments. Long waits for referrals. Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever. Council services: obviously very stretched. Street cleaning way down. Basic services covered, nothing else, impossible to speak to anyone about anything. Fly tipping out of control. Roads: surfaces increasingly poor. Perhaps there is an effort at catch up given amount of works going on, but a lot of that seems to be water related. Frequent burst water mains. Prices of everything massively up. Taxes up. Private sector obviously seeing staff shortages, evident in retail, hospitality and construction. Occasional glimpses of additional border red tape but doesn't affect me much directly. Overall: quality of life is deteriorating.
And sewage. Don't forget sewage.
There is a serious issue with sewage and rivers but a bit like showing cooling towers at power stations as pollution (its steam) the muck into the sea in Cornwall on that video is mostly mud.
Call me Mr Picky if you will, but I do like water I swim in to be entirely rather than just mostly not shit.
Fish have to.. you know, too. Oddly if we kill of all the fish then temporarily the oceans would be cleaner (whatever that might mean).
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
Lisbon is becoming a bit of a tech hub at the moment, alongside London. It's easy to get staff, and office rents are very low. Infrastructure is not bad either.
It's not perfect (nowhere is), but I'd regard it as significantly more likely to succeed in the medium term than Italy.
That's what I read. It's full of nomadic high tech people - often from elsewhere - who congregate in hip indoor spaces to earn a crust.
So, assuming Leon's analysis is correct, Armenia should be swarming with children, while Iceland will be uninhabited in a generation or two.
The countries have near-identical birth rates, as it happens. 1.75 or thereabouts
So below replacement
However Iceland is so rich it can import guest workers, despite the climate. Armenian, erm, not so much. Tho they do have the diaspora - which essentially funds Yerevan, which is a vivacious and surprisingly diverting city
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
What would you do if an old friend clearly-accidentally forwarded some voicemails from someone else - and because you are an inquisitive bastard - you opened them - and they revealed this friend was in an absolutely toxic relationship?
Not violent, but highly abusive
Keep quiet? Because you should not have listened to the voicemails? Or say something, to the friend or other friends who might help?
The heartbreaking truth is that I've tried pulling a friend out of a violently abusive relationship, only to watch her walk right back into it again, time and time again. It was as if, on pulling someone from a burning building, you watched them walk right back into the flames.
Relationships are weird and you can't really stop people from being in ones that are utterly toxic and harmful. All you can do is offer your support, and be there for them when they finally decide enough is enough.
But getting involved will only draw you into their world of pain. Be there as a friend, but don't get involved.
Thanks for the advice, I’m definitely not getting involved personally; I have wondered about talking to one of her relatives, who I know has influence over her
But maybe I should just butt out. And yet these hate-filled voicemails! UGH
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
Lisbon is becoming a bit of a tech hub at the moment, alongside London. It's easy to get staff, and office rents are very low. Infrastructure is not bad either.
It's not perfect (nowhere is), but I'd regard it as significantly more likely to succeed in the medium term than Italy.
That's what I read. It's full of nomadic high tech people - often from elsewhere - who congregate in hip indoor spaces to earn a crust.
I suspect that they will be pretty positive for the Lisbon economy, but I'd agree that once you leave Lisbon (and to a lesser extent Porto), then it gets pretty poor pretty quickly.
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
Portugal has been doing quite well lately. Booming digital economy in Lisbon, for example.
Of course it is poorer than the rest of Western Europe, always has been, but it’s catching up.
Covid response was also notably coherent, belying stereotypes.
I don’t recognise Leon’s judgement that it is “fucked”. It seems to my eyes that it is slowly but surely de-fucking.
In your view Britain is and must be fucked because of Brexit and nowhere else can be as bad.
It's as simple as that.
Perhaps if you lived here and extracted your head from your arse you'd realise things here actually aren't that bad.
What an odd comment. I guess it is pissed-and-dyspeptic o’clock at yours.
At the end of the day, despite sleeping with a Union Jack bedspread, most of your political positions are actively harmful to the country you love.
Take responsibility instead of randomly dishing out insults.
That really is the pot calling the kettle black.
I suppose you could always go back and live in New Xi-Land, which is too busy sucking on CCP cock to do anything about standing up for Western values x
This person is an "epidemiologist and federal disaster medicine team member". Covid really has driven some people completely mad.
@maolesen Some perspective for those who still don't get it: If I were forced to be infected by either HIV or COVID, I would choose HIV without hesitation.
Why do people write things like this? The person on Twitter I mean.
Not quite as daft statement as it sounds. HIV is fairly easily controlled with medication now. It is a chronic disease like diabetes or blood pressure now. Take the pills and generally you are fine.
At a lifetime cost to the health system in the hundreds of thousands.
Most of the pills are now generic, so the costs are coming down. And, statistically, there'll still be fewer years of state pension on the far end.
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
Lisbon is becoming a bit of a tech hub at the moment, alongside London. It's easy to get staff, and office rents are very low. Infrastructure is not bad either.
It's not perfect (nowhere is), but I'd regard it as significantly more likely to succeed in the medium term than Italy.
The food is fucking dismal, once you get behind sardines, custard tarts, and that saffron rice fish cataplana genre
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
NHS: fucked. Almost impossible to get appointments. Long waits for referrals. Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever. Council services: obviously very stretched. Street cleaning way down. Basic services covered, nothing else, impossible to speak to anyone about anything. Fly tipping out of control. Roads: surfaces increasingly poor. Perhaps there is an effort at catch up given amount of works going on, but a lot of that seems to be water related. Frequent burst water mains. Prices of everything massively up. Taxes up. Private sector obviously seeing staff shortages, evident in retail, hospitality and construction. Occasional glimpses of additional border red tape but doesn't affect me much directly. Overall: quality of life is deteriorating.
You can apply all that to Wales under the Welsh labour government (apart from the tube obviously)
Welsh Labour seem less a political proposition than a kind of shitocracy. I presume the Welsh prefer it this way as the Welsh Tories are even worse.
I've never understood the popularity of Mark Drakeford.
He looks like he's escaped from Harold Wilson's cabinet.
Now come on. Harold would never have entertained the idea of Drakeford as a cabinet minister. I don't think there is anything to understand regarding his popularity. People don't really like or dislike him. He's just there. He's not a Tory. He's welsh but not a nationalist. He doesn't cause offence.
Personally I don't think the Conservatives have a hope of overthrowing Labour in Wales so long as the private sector remains anaemic. Scottish Labour collapsed because their voters switched to one specific alternative, the SNP. In Wales the opposition is split between Tory/Plaid/Lib Dem/Reform. None of them individually strong enough and alliance friendly.
This person is an "epidemiologist and federal disaster medicine team member". Covid really has driven some people completely mad.
@maolesen Some perspective for those who still don't get it: If I were forced to be infected by either HIV or COVID, I would choose HIV without hesitation.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
NHS: fucked. Almost impossible to get appointments. Long waits for referrals. Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever. Council services: obviously very stretched. Street cleaning way down. Basic services covered, nothing else, impossible to speak to anyone about anything. Fly tipping out of control. Roads: surfaces increasingly poor. Perhaps there is an effort at catch up given amount of works going on, but a lot of that seems to be water related. Frequent burst water mains. Prices of everything massively up. Taxes up. Private sector obviously seeing staff shortages, evident in retail, hospitality and construction. Occasional glimpses of additional border red tape but doesn't affect me much directly. Overall: quality of life is deteriorating.
You can apply all that to Wales under the Welsh labour government (apart from the tube obviously)
Welsh Labour seem less a political proposition than a kind of shitocracy. I presume the Welsh prefer it this way as the Welsh Tories are even worse.
I've never understood the popularity of Mark Drakeford.
He looks like he's escaped from Harold Wilson's cabinet.
Now come on. Harold would never have entertained the idea of Drakeford as a cabinet minister. I don't think there is anything to understand regarding his popularity. People don't really like or dislike him. He's just there. He's not a Tory. He's welsh but not a nationalist. He doesn't cause offence.
Personally I don't think the Conservatives have a hope of overthrowing Labour in Wales so long as the private sector remains anaemic. Scottish Labour collapsed because their voters switched to one specific alternative, the SNP. In Wales the opposition is split between Tory/Plaid/Lib Dem/Reform. None of them individually strong enough and alliance friendly.
Labour's attempts to structurally game the electoral system in the devolved nations so they were permanently in power certainly worked in Wales. They've never been out of it.
Mark Drakeford just looks like - in every way, the way he looks, dressed and talks - like he should be living in 1974.
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
Lisbon is becoming a bit of a tech hub at the moment, alongside London. It's easy to get staff, and office rents are very low. Infrastructure is not bad either.
It's not perfect (nowhere is), but I'd regard it as significantly more likely to succeed in the medium term than Italy.
The food is fucking dismal, once you get behind sardines, custard tarts, and that saffron rice fish cataplana genre
Yes, I agree with this. Don’t forget the sherry though.
The weather is good, though. Better than Wales at least.
And I like that it’s unassuming. Unlike the Spanish, the Portuguese don’t pretend they are anything more than they are.
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
Lisbon is becoming a bit of a tech hub at the moment, alongside London. It's easy to get staff, and office rents are very low. Infrastructure is not bad either.
It's not perfect (nowhere is), but I'd regard it as significantly more likely to succeed in the medium term than Italy.
The food is fucking dismal, once you get behind sardines, custard tarts, and that saffron rice fish cataplana genre
They do like large dry lumps of pork, I've noticed. It is noticeably worse for food than the poor parts of Spain.
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
Portugal has been doing quite well lately. Booming digital economy in Lisbon, for example.
Of course it is poorer than the rest of Western Europe, always has been, but it’s catching up.
Covid response was also notably coherent, belying stereotypes.
I don’t recognise Leon’s judgement that it is “fucked”. It seems to my eyes that it is slowly but surely de-fucking.
In your view Britain is and must be fucked because of Brexit and nowhere else can be as bad.
It's as simple as that.
Perhaps if you lived here and extracted your head from your arse you'd realise things here actually aren't that bad.
What an odd comment. I guess it is pissed-and-dyspeptic o’clock at yours.
At the end of the day, despite sleeping with a Union Jack bedspread, most of your political positions are actively harmful to the country you love.
Take responsibility instead of randomly dishing out insults.
That really is the pot calling the kettle black.
I suppose you could always go back and live in New Xi-Land, which is too busy sucking on CCP cock to do anything about standing up for Western values x
Sleeplessness + Alcohol + Jingoistic Mental Retardation is a hell of a combo.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Of the NHS, courts, asylum system and economy which is not in your view fucked? 24 hour waits for A and E, delays and backlogs of literally years, 10% inflation and a 2 year recession forecast. Are these lies confected by libtards?
I agree those things are all quite banjaxed, and yet in my recent travels this year - and I have been to many countries - the UK does not stand out as feeling notably buggered
For a fucked country, try Armenia. My God
In fact here’s a list from most fucked to least fucked of all the countries I have visited this year. This is purely subjective. Just what I *feel* on the ground
Most fucked…
Armenia Sri Lanka Georgia Turkey Greece Montenegro United States Portugal Italy United Kingdom Spain Germany Iceland
…. Least fucked
The Courts and Land Registry are probably the worst. The introduction of new IT systems, designed to make things function better, seem to make things function worse. The Land Registry and Probate Registries can't complain of lack of resources, since they charge substantial fees to their users and they have a monopoly. I think both institutions actually take a great deal of pride in delivering terrible service to the public.
OTOH, the Courts were positively Dickensian back in the late eighties. There was a big improvement under Major and Blair, before things started to go backwards.
One question for the lawyers among us:
Why the f*** do so many court cases last so long these days? Not so long ago a trial was considered a bit of a monster if it lasted more than a week. Now, some drag on for months if not years.
Legal aid rates are terrible, which makes it hard to get people to conduct criminal defence work. Half the courts have been closed down, so there are delays in getting to trial. Countries like Japan or the US get around these problems by just letting the police beat confessions out of suspects, but we stopped doing that with PACE.
That may well all be true, but isn't what I asked. Why, when they come to trial, do they take so long in actually being heard?
@DavidL gives some insight above - three days to go through something that should really have taken four hours.
Some of those points do also lead to delays at the trial too though presumably, as even on the day things haven't arrived or been supplied, with additional delays etc.
But it does still seem baffling. It's not just here, in the US it seems like cases takes weeks or months, which even for complex matters seems like it shouldn't be necessary.
Professionalisation - the idea that more process and paperwork makes the work better. Worthier. More Godly.
In US government aerospace this has resulted in literally 6 people tightening one bolt. 1 to do the job, the others to checkbox each other. The fact that, quite often, the bolt has been incorrectly torqued, but signed off anyway…. Fuck it, there is infinite money to pay for it.
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
Portugal has been doing quite well lately. Booming digital economy in Lisbon, for example.
Of course it is poorer than the rest of Western Europe, always has been, but it’s catching up.
Covid response was also notably coherent, belying stereotypes.
I don’t recognise Leon’s judgement that it is “fucked”. It seems to my eyes that it is slowly but surely de-fucking.
Er, my table - as I explicitly say - went from Most Fucked - Armenia - to Least Fucked - Iceland
Portugal is towards the Least Fucked end, because I agree with all of this. It’s a poor country by Western European standards, but it is safe, sunny, and doing really quite well in solving some of its problems
Iceland? What a financial crash can lead to! I liked the stories about the private jets all whooshing out one evening as the super-cars got blown up for the insurance.
The recovery in the Icelandic economy is phenomenal. Not just after the GFC but also Covid (tourism is their biggest earner)
Yet here we are, in Reykjavik, and it is full of happy drunken people, eating pretty good food (at absurd prices: but they can afford them). There is impressive construction everywhere. The new housing looks notably high quality
And it is no illusion. In GDP per capita they are just behind the USA and ahead of Australia, not far off Singapore
Because Iceland let failed businesses fail and didn't engage in market manipulation to keep zombie failed businesses alive, at taxpayer expenses, with the moral hazard attached.
Meanwhile Britain and Europe tried to "save the world" by not letting failed businesses fail.
That's not quite true.
The Icelandics supported their local banks with massive bailouts, but they let the foreign subsidiaries (where the worst of the liabilities were) go bust.
Indeed, they took sensible, minimal steps rather than writing blank cheques to save the world.
The UK had deposit guarantee schemes in place, that were capped in theory, but when the crisis hit all that went completely out of the window.
This person is an "epidemiologist and federal disaster medicine team member". Covid really has driven some people completely mad.
@maolesen Some perspective for those who still don't get it: If I were forced to be infected by either HIV or COVID, I would choose HIV without hesitation.
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
Lisbon is becoming a bit of a tech hub at the moment, alongside London. It's easy to get staff, and office rents are very low. Infrastructure is not bad either.
It's not perfect (nowhere is), but I'd regard it as significantly more likely to succeed in the medium term than Italy.
The food is fucking dismal, once you get behind sardines, custard tarts, and that saffron rice fish cataplana genre
Yes, I agree with this. Don’t forget the sherry though.
The weather is good, though. Better than Wales at least.
And I like that it’s unassuming. Unlike the Spanish, the Portuguese don’t pretend they are anything more than they are.
In almost any Welsh town you will be able to get a decent curry, Thai, Chinese. It matters
And Portugal is seriously culturally remote, once you get outside Lisbon, Porto, or the flashier bits of the Algarve. It is boring. And poor
A lovely place to visit, but a place to live? Hmm. I used to think so, but as I get wiser and older - I wonder
And of course in 20 years southern Portugal could have weeks of 50C. It is now a factor to consider
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
Portugal has been doing quite well lately. Booming digital economy in Lisbon, for example.
Of course it is poorer than the rest of Western Europe, always has been, but it’s catching up.
Covid response was also notably coherent, belying stereotypes.
I don’t recognise Leon’s judgement that it is “fucked”. It seems to my eyes that it is slowly but surely de-fucking.
In your view Britain is and must be fucked because of Brexit and nowhere else can be as bad.
It's as simple as that.
Perhaps if you lived here and extracted your head from your arse you'd realise things here actually aren't that bad.
What an odd comment. I guess it is pissed-and-dyspeptic o’clock at yours.
At the end of the day, despite sleeping with a Union Jack bedspread, most of your political positions are actively harmful to the country you love.
Take responsibility instead of randomly dishing out insults.
That really is the pot calling the kettle black.
I suppose you could always go back and live in New Xi-Land, which is too busy sucking on CCP cock to do anything about standing up for Western values x
Sleeplessness + Alcohol + Jingoistic Mental Retardation is a hell of a combo.
Tell you what, when you start living here again, and you learn again what the fuck you're talking about, then I'll start listening about your views on what life is like in the UK.
Until then either shut the fuck up or fuck the fuck off.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Of the NHS, courts, asylum system and economy which is not in your view fucked? 24 hour waits for A and E, delays and backlogs of literally years, 10% inflation and a 2 year recession forecast. Are these lies confected by libtards?
I agree those things are all quite banjaxed, and yet in my recent travels this year - and I have been to many countries - the UK does not stand out as feeling notably buggered
For a fucked country, try Armenia. My God
In fact here’s a list from most fucked to least fucked of all the countries I have visited this year. This is purely subjective. Just what I *feel* on the ground
Most fucked…
Armenia Sri Lanka Georgia Turkey Greece Montenegro United States Portugal Italy United Kingdom Spain Germany Iceland
…. Least fucked
The Courts and Land Registry are probably the worst. The introduction of new IT systems, designed to make things function better, seem to make things function worse. The Land Registry and Probate Registries can't complain of lack of resources, since they charge substantial fees to their users and they have a monopoly. I think both institutions actually take a great deal of pride in delivering terrible service to the public.
OTOH, the Courts were positively Dickensian back in the late eighties. There was a big improvement under Major and Blair, before things started to go backwards.
One question for the lawyers among us:
Why the f*** do so many court cases last so long these days? Not so long ago a trial was considered a bit of a monster if it lasted more than a week. Now, some drag on for months if not years.
Legal aid rates are terrible, which makes it hard to get people to conduct criminal defence work. Half the courts have been closed down, so there are delays in getting to trial. Countries like Japan or the US get around these problems by just letting the police beat confessions out of suspects, but we stopped doing that with PACE.
That may well all be true, but isn't what I asked. Why, when they come to trial, do they take so long in actually being heard?
@DavidL gives some insight above - three days to go through something that should really have taken four hours.
Some of those points do also lead to delays at the trial too though presumably, as even on the day things haven't arrived or been supplied, with additional delays etc.
But it does still seem baffling. It's not just here, in the US it seems like cases takes weeks or months, which even for complex matters seems like it shouldn't be necessary.
This is how things were traditionally done:-
Dudley Smith: Edmund, you're a political animal. You have the eye for human weakness, but not the stomach.
Ed Exley: You're wrong, sir.
Captain Dudley Smith: Would you be willing to plant corroborative evidence on a suspect you knew to be guilty, in order to ensure an indictment?
Ed Exley: Dudley, we've been over this.
Captain Dudley Smith: Yes or no, Edmund?
Ed Exley: No!
Captain Dudley Smith: Would you be willing to beat a confession out of a suspect you knew to be guilty?
Ed Exley: No.
Captain Dudley Smith: Would you be willing to shoot a hardened criminal in the back, in order to offset the chance that some... lawyer...
Ed Exley: No.
Captain Dudley Smith: Then, for the love of God, don't be a detective. Stick to assignments where you don't have...
Ed Exley: Dudley, I know you mean well, but I don't need to do it the way you did. Or my father.
I honestly think that is one of the best films ever made. They were extremely fortunate to compile a cast who almost all went on to do bigger if not better things. It's a work of genius.
Would you be willing to shoot a hardened criminal in the back, in order to offset the chance that some... lawyer...
The number of people who I know who watched the film to the end, who still don’t get the joke….
This person is an "epidemiologist and federal disaster medicine team member". Covid really has driven some people completely mad.
@maolesen Some perspective for those who still don't get it: If I were forced to be infected by either HIV or COVID, I would choose HIV without hesitation.
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
Lisbon is becoming a bit of a tech hub at the moment, alongside London. It's easy to get staff, and office rents are very low. Infrastructure is not bad either.
It's not perfect (nowhere is), but I'd regard it as significantly more likely to succeed in the medium term than Italy.
The food is fucking dismal, once you get behind sardines, custard tarts, and that saffron rice fish cataplana genre
They do like large dry lumps of pork, I've noticed. It is noticeably worse for food than the poor parts of Spain.
i recently did a Gazette trip to Portugal. At the start the food was apparently delightful, if simple. The sardines, the cataplana thing, the pastel de Nata, some pleasant cheeses and charcuterie. Then I realised that was basically it. And as the trip went on the food got worse and worse until I was being served shit I would have left uneaten in my state school in the 1970s. The worst food I’ve had in Europe that I can remember, apart from a trip to the Rhineland in about 2017
This morning I watched the local news as usual (mostly for the weather) and heard the usual examples of failures of our courts to treat criminals as criminals. For example, a man with a long criminal record, more than 60 arrests, most in California, was released after an attack in downtown Seattle, and, two days, later murdered a couple. Starbucks has closed a number of stores because of the crime problems in Seattle, and other businesses are moving out, or giving up.
And then I read a comment here from Sean_F about how American policemen beat confessions out of suspects. Perhaps he has read too many old American detective stories.
(Do a few American policemen still use the "third degree"? No doubt, but I can honestly say that I haven't heard of many cases in recent decades -- and that is in a country with a population of more than 330 million, and thousands of police forces, with wide variations in their training and practices.)
Incidentally, the voters of Seattle -- which is not a conservative city -- appear to think that too little policing is the problem there, not too much, since they recently elected a Republican as city attorney: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Davison_(politician)
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
Portugal has been doing quite well lately. Booming digital economy in Lisbon, for example.
Of course it is poorer than the rest of Western Europe, always has been, but it’s catching up.
Covid response was also notably coherent, belying stereotypes.
I don’t recognise Leon’s judgement that it is “fucked”. It seems to my eyes that it is slowly but surely de-fucking.
In your view Britain is and must be fucked because of Brexit and nowhere else can be as bad.
It's as simple as that.
Perhaps if you lived here and extracted your head from your arse you'd realise things here actually aren't that bad.
What an odd comment. I guess it is pissed-and-dyspeptic o’clock at yours.
At the end of the day, despite sleeping with a Union Jack bedspread, most of your political positions are actively harmful to the country you love.
Take responsibility instead of randomly dishing out insults.
That really is the pot calling the kettle black.
I suppose you could always go back and live in New Xi-Land, which is too busy sucking on CCP cock to do anything about standing up for Western values x
Sleeplessness + Alcohol + Jingoistic Mental Retardation is a hell of a combo.
Tell you what, when you start living here again, and you learn again what the fuck you're talking about, then I'll start listening about your views on what life is like in the UK.
Until then either shut the fuck up or fuck the fuck off.
Haven’t you got an refugee centre to firebomb or something?
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
Lisbon is becoming a bit of a tech hub at the moment, alongside London. It's easy to get staff, and office rents are very low. Infrastructure is not bad either.
It's not perfect (nowhere is), but I'd regard it as significantly more likely to succeed in the medium term than Italy.
The food is fucking dismal, once you get behind sardines, custard tarts, and that saffron rice fish cataplana genre
Yes, I agree with this. Don’t forget the sherry though.
The weather is good, though. Better than Wales at least.
And I like that it’s unassuming. Unlike the Spanish, the Portuguese don’t pretend they are anything more than they are.
In almost any Welsh town you will be able to get a decent curry, Thai, Chinese. It matters
And Portugal is seriously culturally remote, once you get outside Lisbon, Porto, or the flashier bits of the Algarve. It is boring. And poor
A lovely place to visit, but a place to live? Hmm. I used to think so, but as I get wiser and older - I wonder
And of course in 20 years southern Portugal could have weeks of 50C. It is now a factor to consider
Good place to evacuate to ahead of nuclear war though, for similar reasons.
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
Lisbon is becoming a bit of a tech hub at the moment, alongside London. It's easy to get staff, and office rents are very low. Infrastructure is not bad either.
It's not perfect (nowhere is), but I'd regard it as significantly more likely to succeed in the medium term than Italy.
The food is fucking dismal, once you get behind sardines, custard tarts, and that saffron rice fish cataplana genre
They do like large dry lumps of pork, I've noticed. It is noticeably worse for food than the poor parts of Spain.
i recently did a Gazette trip to Portugal. At the start the food was apparently delightful, if simple. The sardines, the cataplana thing, the pastel de Nata, some pleasant cheeses and charcuterie. Then I realised that was basically it. And as the trip went on the food got worse and worse until I was being served shit I would have left uneaten in my state school in the 1970s. The worst food I’ve had in Europe that I can remember, apart from a trip to the Rhineland in about 2017
Wine is also, imho, not generally great. Exceptions of course.
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
Lisbon is becoming a bit of a tech hub at the moment, alongside London. It's easy to get staff, and office rents are very low. Infrastructure is not bad either.
It's not perfect (nowhere is), but I'd regard it as significantly more likely to succeed in the medium term than Italy.
The food is fucking dismal, once you get behind sardines, custard tarts, and that saffron rice fish cataplana genre
They do like large dry lumps of pork, I've noticed. It is noticeably worse for food than the poor parts of Spain.
i recently did a Gazette trip to Portugal. At the start the food was apparently delightful, if simple. The sardines, the cataplana thing, the pastel de Nata, some pleasant cheeses and charcuterie. Then I realised that was basically it. And as the trip went on the food got worse and worse until I was being served shit I would have left uneaten in my state school in the 1970s. The worst food I’ve had in Europe that I can remember, apart from a trip to the Rhineland in about 2017
I've had lots of good seafood in Portugal: tiny little shellfish, beautifully well cooked whitefish with a simple olive oil based sauce, salt cod, octopus stewed in olive oil with perfect little potatoes, and deep, rich dishes that were halfway between soup and stew.
Apparently, they do very good pork there too. Not as good as in Spain, but still pretty good.
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
Portugal has been doing quite well lately. Booming digital economy in Lisbon, for example.
Of course it is poorer than the rest of Western Europe, always has been, but it’s catching up.
Covid response was also notably coherent, belying stereotypes.
I don’t recognise Leon’s judgement that it is “fucked”. It seems to my eyes that it is slowly but surely de-fucking.
Er, my table - as I explicitly say - went from Most Fucked - Armenia - to Least Fucked - Iceland
Portugal is towards the Least Fucked end, because I agree with all of this. It’s a poor country by Western European standards, but it is safe, sunny, and doing really quite well in solving some of its problems
Iceland? What a financial crash can lead to! I liked the stories about the private jets all whooshing out one evening as the super-cars got blown up for the insurance.
The recovery in the Icelandic economy is phenomenal. Not just after the GFC but also Covid (tourism is their biggest earner)
Yet here we are, in Reykjavik, and it is full of happy drunken people, eating pretty good food (at absurd prices: but they can afford them). There is impressive construction everywhere. The new housing looks notably high quality
And it is no illusion. In GDP per capita they are just behind the USA and ahead of Australia, not far off Singapore
Did you go to Hlíðarendi? (Bit recherche: but it's where Gunnar of the Saga of Burnt Njal used to live. No idea if there is anything to see, but it's a pretty famous book if you are into NW maritime Europe lit.)
We went to a few places named in the Sagas. Including Njals. Tbh I dunno which was which
The best one was this place. The temple church. A known pagan temple where they built a church on top. They used to do horse sacrifices here and maybe humans, and the pagan temple stones are incorporated into the church. And even now it feels really pagan
Mentioned in several texts and sagas
That was fairly common practice across Northern Europe - plonk the church in the places the people do the old religion. That's why you so often get yew trees - which the ancient Britons saw as sacred, inasmuch as that word makes any sense when applied to pre-Christian religions - in churchyards.
Seems torture for her if she turns out to be innocent and for the parents, if guilty. You would have thought they could have cherrypicked the best two or three specimen cases and gone with those.
I think part of the evidence is the high number of unexplained deaths, hence the need to detail them all.
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
Lisbon is becoming a bit of a tech hub at the moment, alongside London. It's easy to get staff, and office rents are very low. Infrastructure is not bad either.
It's not perfect (nowhere is), but I'd regard it as significantly more likely to succeed in the medium term than Italy.
The food is fucking dismal, once you get behind sardines, custard tarts, and that saffron rice fish cataplana genre
They do like large dry lumps of pork, I've noticed. It is noticeably worse for food than the poor parts of Spain.
i recently did a Gazette trip to Portugal. At the start the food was apparently delightful, if simple. The sardines, the cataplana thing, the pastel de Nata, some pleasant cheeses and charcuterie. Then I realised that was basically it. And as the trip went on the food got worse and worse until I was being served shit I would have left uneaten in my state school in the 1970s. The worst food I’ve had in Europe that I can remember, apart from a trip to the Rhineland in about 2017
Wine is also, imho, not generally great. Exceptions of course.
People saying Portugal, well its not fucked, its great compared to the UK...
For the record, the average monthly wage in Portugal stood at €1,180 per month in 2019, compared to around €4,000 in Germany. Many Portuguese earn far less and try to get by on the monthly minimum wage of €741 a month, less than half the levels seen in Germany (€1,584), the UK (€1,600) or the Netherlands (€1,636). Moreover, Portugal is not a cheap country to live in. The cost of housing, energy, food, and many electronic goods is as high if not higher than in other European countries. So, life for many families is very tough indeed....
Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has stalled as a result of low investment in information technology, labour market rigidities and the allocation of labour and capital to industries partly dominated by state-owned firms or those less open to competition, according to the economist Ricardo Pinheiro Alves.
Lisbon is becoming a bit of a tech hub at the moment, alongside London. It's easy to get staff, and office rents are very low. Infrastructure is not bad either.
It's not perfect (nowhere is), but I'd regard it as significantly more likely to succeed in the medium term than Italy.
The food is fucking dismal, once you get behind sardines, custard tarts, and that saffron rice fish cataplana genre
They do like large dry lumps of pork, I've noticed. It is noticeably worse for food than the poor parts of Spain.
i recently did a Gazette trip to Portugal. At the start the food was apparently delightful, if simple. The sardines, the cataplana thing, the pastel de Nata, some pleasant cheeses and charcuterie. Then I realised that was basically it. And as the trip went on the food got worse and worse until I was being served shit I would have left uneaten in my state school in the 1970s. The worst food I’ve had in Europe that I can remember, apart from a trip to the Rhineland in about 2017
Wine is also, imho, not generally great. Exceptions of course.
Port?
Sorry, yes, I mean unfortified. Port and sherry are not insignificant exceptions!
Comments
That'll be the Thanet underworld. Or if it's not them, then whoever it is had better watch out.
And look who's been housing refugees in Hove... Step forward, Nicholas van Hoogstraten:
https://www.brightonandhovenews.org/2022/02/12/violent-convict-who-calls-himself-adolf-given-taxpayer-millions-to-house-vulnerable-children-in-hove/
"Some of the children have gone missing during their stay".
Kudos to Hove's Labour MP, Peter Kyle, for kicking up a fuss.
Asking for a friend.
Tonight's #WaughOnPolitics is in your inbox
https://inews.co.uk/opinion/brexiteer-sunak-should-watch-out-2024-could-be-the-remainers-revenge-election-1954359
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/11/04/should-suspend-fewer-mps-wrongdoing-says-parliaments-new-standards/
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/19/british-voters-second-referendum-on-brexit
The election showed that Brexit continues to divide the British people. Some have argued that the country is united around it since 87% of voters – the total percentage of votes cast for the two major parties – supported parties favouring Brexit. But that is absurd. For, clearly, many Remainers voted Conservative or Labour and there is evidence that the swing to Labour was caused in part by Remainers seeking revenge.
As it turned out, Vernon Bogdanor is as thick as mince. God bless Jeremy Corbyn.
So long as it does become outright rare as a sanction, since most of the cases we have seen it applied appear reasonable.
Portugal is towards the Least Fucked end, because I agree with all of this. It’s a poor country by Western European standards, but it is safe, sunny, and doing really quite well in solving some of its problems
Now, that is batshit crazy to think the Govt can be arsed to go down into the metadata (or you would hope so). However, we can't have it both ways - if we think that a good % of the GOP voting base are loons, then Trafalgar's explanation of the difference in voting preferences has to be considered. Saying that 'yeah, they are paranoid loons but they will tell the truth to a NYT poll' isn't really a strong argument.
It could be any of the parties!
Thought experiment. Modern Moral Dilemma
What would you do if an old friend clearly-accidentally forwarded some voicemails from someone else - and because you are an inquisitive bastard - you opened them - and they revealed this friend was in an absolutely toxic relationship?
Not violent, but highly abusive
Keep quiet? Because you should not have listened to the voicemails? Or say something, to the friend or other friends who might help?
Portugal (or at least its cities) also has the usual house price bubble, which the locals could do without.
Yet here we are, in Reykjavik, and it is full of happy drunken people, eating pretty good food (at absurd prices: but they can afford them). There is impressive construction everywhere. The new housing looks notably high quality
And it is no illusion. In GDP per capita they are just behind the USA and ahead of Australia, not far off Singapore
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita
I recall PB saying they don't actually do polling, just adjust others figures, but have proven guessing ability.
https://www.businessinsider.co.za/private-jets-go-russia-dubai-after-putin-pledges-self-cleansing-2022-3
Covid has pretty low mortality now, mostly due to being less lung and more throat.
It isn't a choice though.
The best one was this place. The temple church. A known pagan temple where they built a church on top. They used to do horse sacrifices here and maybe humans, and the pagan temple stones are incorporated into the church. And even now it feels really pagan
Mentioned in several texts and sagas
Meanwhile Britain and Europe tried to "save the world" by not letting failed businesses fail.
The Icelandics supported their local banks with massive bailouts, but they let the foreign subsidiaries (where the worst of the liabilities were) go bust.
Tourism seems to have helped a lot too. Completely taken off in the last decade.
I wonder if any ambitious welsh nationalist has ever drafted a plan to link the North and South Walean economies? I assume they are essentially separate, and each more closely linked to their respective neighbouring English economies than to each other.
Percentage of Republicans who say we're doing "too much" to support Ukraine:
March (WSJ): 6%
March (Pew): 9%
May (Pew): 17%
Sept. (Pew): 32%
Today (WSJ): 48%
https://twitter.com/AaronBlake/status/1588129623161839617?cxt=HHwWgoCx3cvelYosAAAA
But something like two thirds of the Welsh population live in South Wales, so any serious attempts to grow the Welsh economy starts with “Greater Cardiff”.
It's not perfect (nowhere is), but I'd regard it as significantly more likely to succeed in the medium term than Italy.
The lunacy of most corporate email use is something the book _A World Without Email_ looks at -- the author's conclusion is that it's kind of the default state you end up in if you don't step back and think about what you're doing and what might be workable processes for carrying it out. It's very short-term attractive but long-term incredibly inefficient.
It's as simple as that.
Perhaps if you lived here and extracted your head from your arse you'd realise things here actually aren't that bad.
And, fwiw, if what he was saying was true, then Fox News would get much better Republican numbers.
The problem is, most of them have no idea what that means, or how to use it. Most small business has either no IT guy, a paid-by-the-hour junior contractor, or one of the managers can set up the email addresses. Occasionally, there will be a info@ email on the website, which someone might check once a week.
After a decade of scepticism, I finally came around to Office 365 a few years back. The latest version is genuinely a fully-featured Enterprise Exchange server on the backend.
Relationships are weird and you can't really stop people from being in ones that are utterly toxic and harmful. All you can do is offer your support, and be there for them when they finally decide enough is enough.
But getting involved will only draw you into their world of pain. Be there as a friend, but don't get involved.
So below replacement
However Iceland is so rich it can import guest workers, despite the climate. Armenian, erm, not so much. Tho they do have the diaspora - which essentially funds Yerevan, which is a vivacious and surprisingly diverting city
I guess it is pissed-and-dyspeptic o’clock at yours.
At the end of the day, despite sleeping with a Union Jack bedspread, most of your political positions are actively harmful to the country you love.
Take responsibility instead of randomly dishing out insults.
But maybe I should just butt out. And yet these hate-filled voicemails! UGH
I suppose you could always go back and live in New Xi-Land, which is too busy sucking on CCP cock to do anything about standing up for Western values x
Personally I don't think the Conservatives have a hope of overthrowing Labour in Wales so long as the private sector remains anaemic. Scottish Labour collapsed because their voters switched to one specific alternative, the SNP. In Wales the opposition is split between Tory/Plaid/Lib Dem/Reform. None of them individually strong enough and alliance friendly.
No one recovers from HIV, even if the worst of the symptoms can be ameliorated.
Mark Drakeford just looks like - in every way, the way he looks, dressed and talks - like he should be living in 1974.
The weather is good, though.
Better than Wales at least.
And I like that it’s unassuming. Unlike the Spanish, the Portuguese don’t pretend they are anything more than they are.
In US government aerospace this has resulted in literally 6 people tightening one bolt. 1 to do the job, the others to checkbox each other. The fact that, quite often, the bolt has been incorrectly torqued, but signed off anyway…. Fuck it, there is infinite money to pay for it.
The UK had deposit guarantee schemes in place, that were capped in theory, but when the crisis hit all that went completely out of the window.
And Portugal is seriously culturally remote, once you get outside Lisbon, Porto, or the flashier bits of the Algarve. It is boring. And poor
A lovely place to visit, but a place to live? Hmm. I used to think so, but as I get wiser and older - I wonder
And of course in 20 years southern Portugal could have weeks of 50C. It is now a factor to consider
Until then either shut the fuck up or fuck the fuck off.
The number of people who I know who watched the film to the end, who still don’t get the joke….
And then I read a comment here from Sean_F about how American policemen beat confessions out of suspects. Perhaps he has read too many old American detective stories.
(Do a few American policemen still use the "third degree"? No doubt, but I can honestly say that I haven't heard of many cases in recent decades -- and that is in a country with a population of more than 330 million, and thousands of police forces, with wide variations in their training and practices.)
Incidentally, the voters of Seattle -- which is not a conservative city -- appear to think that too little policing is the problem there, not too much, since they recently elected a Republican as city attorney: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Davison_(politician)
Exceptions of course.
Apparently, they do very good pork there too. Not as good as in Spain, but still pretty good.
Port and sherry are not insignificant exceptions!