The 1/6 still heating their homes as much as they want are a failure of energy and/or taxation policy. The amount you heat your home should be mitigated by the fact that heating your home costs you money.
I’ve read your post six times, and I still don’t understand what you are saying. Do you mean that there is something intrinsically wrong with the aspiration to have a pleasant, comfortable interior air quality and temperature in your abode? Seems like a fairly basic foundation stone of the essence of humanity, indeed the very essence of all animal and plant life on the planet: we are all seeking a pleasant, comfortable existence.
But punishing oneself, and others, for simply existing, seems to be in the zeitgeist.
The context is that there is a policy designed to reduce gas and electricity consumption due the war with Russia. I think if 5 out of 6 people are acting on it then it is working pretty well.
The real problem here is not interior temperatures, it is the shocking state of building standards on the daft island.
In the Nordic countries we are acutely aware of the war nearby, and it is going to be between -8 and -40 in the coming days (it’s minus eight outside as I write this, and I’m cosy inside in a t-shirt). Almost none of us will be enduring interior temperatures under 18 degrees, for a wide range of reasons. But the elephant in the room is building standards. We construct incredible amounts of insulation into buildings, and triple-glazing is near universal. Not to mention that heating and hot water is built in to all rental contracts and bostadsrättsföreningar (I don’t know how to translate that*): you save zilch by turning down a radiator in most apartments.
Local authorities don’t cut it. It requires decisive central government cultural change. The Wimpy House mindset needs to be totally crushed. As does the idiocy of building on flood plains.
The problem with the Tories is that they are quick-buck chancers, spivs and mountebanks, eager to fill the pockets of their chums on the boards of construction companies.
The problem with Labour is that they seek a pain free existence. They are essentially cowards.
The latest crap from Wes Streeting shows that there is little point in voting Labour. They are marginally better than the kleptocrats in power at present, but only by the thinnest of margins.
Inflation plus 5% would be near enough a 20% pay rise.
That's not going to happen under any administration.
See the front page of the Observer. 7 or 8% would stop the strikes and not be inflationary:
The government wants the strikes. It gives them someone fresh to pin the blame on. It’s a political football
Sunak feels that unlimited bonuses for bankers are not inflationary, and necessary to motivate, but ordinary workers should suck up real terms pay cuts of 5 to 9%.
Appeal to news websites. Everyone who cares about Football already knows England lost, it doesn’t need to be the headline. It’s just doom porn. Put the cricket there instead. What’s going on Pakistan is news.
I am sure it’s shows a mental weakness on my part, but I find those advocating leaving the U.K. criticising those that wanted to leave the EU (and vice versa) somewhat hypocritical.
Well, one organisation allows members to decide on continuing membership, the other doesn't. That's before one even considers the different amounts of sovereignty allowed. As ever X is not the same as Y.
That’s true. The nationalist politics that is driving all this is very similar. Brexit folk and SNP folk should understand and perhaps sympathise with one another.
I'm a simple soul, I tend to think people who support and vote for an explicitly Brexit supporting party are Brexit folk.
'So let me be very clear: with Labour, Britain will not go back into the EU. We will not be joining the single market. We will not be joining a customs union.'
It’s a question of priorities. Is fixing Brexit our priority? It’s a decent question. It wasn’t 12 months ago. It might be now. (FWIW I want a change of government at Westminster and some focus on public services. )
Anecdotally it impacts retail politics. There was vocal criticism of Brexit in the post office queue yesterday as people struggled to complete customs declarations on Xmas presents being sent to the EU.
'Look, my party doesn't really believe in Brexit but it has to hoor itself for the votes of Brexiteers so it can prioritise all the good stuff like stopping the NHS being dependent on immigrants and GPS tracking for asylum seekers. Surely you can see that's the principled position?'
The 1/6 still heating their homes as much as they want are a failure of energy and/or taxation policy. The amount you heat your home should be mitigated by the fact that heating your home costs you money.
I’ve read your post six times, and I still don’t understand what you are saying. Do you mean that there is something intrinsically wrong with the aspiration to have a pleasant, comfortable interior air quality and temperature in your abode? Seems like a fairly basic foundation stone of the essence of humanity, indeed the very essence of all animal and plant life on the planet: we are all seeking a pleasant, comfortable existence.
But punishing oneself, and others, for simply existing, seems to be in the zeitgeist.
The context is that there is a policy designed to reduce gas and electricity consumption due the war with Russia. I think if 5 out of 6 people are acting on it then it is working pretty well.
The real problem here is not interior temperatures, it is the shocking state of building standards on the daft island.
In the Nordic countries we are acutely aware of the war nearby, and it is going to be between -8 and -40 in the coming days (it’s minus eight outside as I write this, and I’m cosy inside in a t-shirt). Almost none of us will be enduring interior temperatures under 18 degrees, for a wide range of reasons. But the elephant in the room is building standards. We construct incredible amounts of insulation into buildings, and triple-glazing is near universal. Not to mention that heating and hot water is built in to all rental contracts and bostadsrättsföreningar (I don’t know how to translate that*): you save zilch by turning down a radiator in most apartments.
Local authorities don’t cut it. It requires decisive central government cultural change. The Wimpy House mindset needs to be totally crushed. As does the idiocy of building on flood plains.
The problem with the Tories is that they are quick-buck chancers, spivs and mountebanks, eager to fill the pockets of their chums on the boards of construction companies.
The problem with Labour is that they seek a pain free existence. They are essentially cowards.
The latest crap from Wes Streeting shows that there is little point in voting Labour. They are marginally better than the kleptocrats in power at present, but only by the thinnest of margins.
Sounds like Wes has been listening to Tony Blair about the need to "reform the public services" which was never defined other than as creeping privatisation.
I left the Labour Party 20 years ago over the Iraq war-mongering and New Labour's NHS policy which was a direct reversal of its 1997 pledge. I haven't voted Labour since, and see nothing to tempt me back.
In a Tory/Labour marginal I hope you would do the decent thing under FPTP.
Looks like many current Tory seats will be such marginals, perhaps half of them.
It would have to be a good local candidate opposed to Brexit and to Streetings NHS policy to even slightly tempt me.
The 1/6 still heating their homes as much as they want are a failure of energy and/or taxation policy. The amount you heat your home should be mitigated by the fact that heating your home costs you money.
I’ve read your post six times, and I still don’t understand what you are saying. Do you mean that there is something intrinsically wrong with the aspiration to have a pleasant, comfortable interior air quality and temperature in your abode? Seems like a fairly basic foundation stone of the essence of humanity, indeed the very essence of all animal and plant life on the planet: we are all seeking a pleasant, comfortable existence.
But punishing oneself, and others, for simply existing, seems to be in the zeitgeist.
The context is that there is a policy designed to reduce gas and electricity consumption due the war with Russia. I think if 5 out of 6 people are acting on it then it is working pretty well.
The real problem here is not interior temperatures, it is the shocking state of building standards on the daft island.
In the Nordic countries we are acutely aware of the war nearby, and it is going to be between -8 and -40 in the coming days (it’s minus eight outside as I write this, and I’m cosy inside in a t-shirt). Almost none of us will be enduring interior temperatures under 18 degrees, for a wide range of reasons. But the elephant in the room is building standards. We construct incredible amounts of insulation into buildings, and triple-glazing is near universal. Not to mention that heating and hot water is built in to all rental contracts and bostadsrättsföreningar (I don’t know how to translate that*): you save zilch by turning down a radiator in most apartments.
Local authorities don’t cut it. It requires decisive central government cultural change. The Wimpy House mindset needs to be totally crushed. As does the idiocy of building on flood plains.
The problem with the Tories is that they are quick-buck chancers, spivs and mountebanks, eager to fill the pockets of their chums on the boards of construction companies.
The problem with Labour is that they seek a pain free existence. They are essentially cowards.
The latest crap from Wes Streeting shows that there is little point in voting Labour. They are marginally better than the kleptocrats in power at present, but only by the thinnest of margins.
Inflation plus 5% would be near enough a 20% pay rise.
That's not going to happen under any administration.
See the front page of the Observer. 7 or 8% would stop the strikes and not be inflationary:
The government wants the strikes. It gives them someone fresh to pin the blame on. It’s a political football
Sunak feels that unlimited bonuses for bankers are not inflationary, and necessary to motivate, but ordinary workers should suck up real terms pay cuts of 5 to 9%.
Sunak wants a dog whistle to endear him to suspicious Tory voters. Since the Tories have already wrecked the economy, old standards like kicking the unions are what he has left to fall back on. He needs a fight. He needs a diversion. The strikes are here to stay.
I am sure it’s shows a mental weakness on my part, but I find those advocating leaving the U.K. criticising those that wanted to leave the EU (and vice versa) somewhat hypocritical.
The irony of course, as Mr Dancer noted, is that the SNP did want to leave the EU - just not in the way they ended up doing so.
The SNP wanted to leave the UK permanently, entailing a (hopefully) temporary exit from the EU by necessity not by design. To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off. I say this as someone who doesn't particularly like the SNP and has come to support Scottish independence lukewarmly and reluctantly.
The 1/6 still heating their homes as much as they want are a failure of energy and/or taxation policy. The amount you heat your home should be mitigated by the fact that heating your home costs you money.
I’ve read your post six times, and I still don’t understand what you are saying. Do you mean that there is something intrinsically wrong with the aspiration to have a pleasant, comfortable interior air quality and temperature in your abode? Seems like a fairly basic foundation stone of the essence of humanity, indeed the very essence of all animal and plant life on the planet: we are all seeking a pleasant, comfortable existence.
But punishing oneself, and others, for simply existing, seems to be in the zeitgeist.
The context is that there is a policy designed to reduce gas and electricity consumption due the war with Russia. I think if 5 out of 6 people are acting on it then it is working pretty well.
The real problem here is not interior temperatures, it is the shocking state of building standards on the daft island.
In the Nordic countries we are acutely aware of the war nearby, and it is going to be between -8 and -40 in the coming days (it’s minus eight outside as I write this, and I’m cosy inside in a t-shirt). Almost none of us will be enduring interior temperatures under 18 degrees, for a wide range of reasons. But the elephant in the room is building standards. We construct incredible amounts of insulation into buildings, and triple-glazing is near universal. Not to mention that heating and hot water is built in to all rental contracts and bostadsrättsföreningar (I don’t know how to translate that*): you save zilch by turning down a radiator in most apartments.
Local authorities don’t cut it. It requires decisive central government cultural change. The Wimpy House mindset needs to be totally crushed. As does the idiocy of building on flood plains.
The problem with the Tories is that they are quick-buck chancers, spivs and mountebanks, eager to fill the pockets of their chums on the boards of construction companies.
The problem with Labour is that they seek a pain free existence. They are essentially cowards.
The latest crap from Wes Streeting shows that there is little point in voting Labour. They are marginally better than the kleptocrats in power at present, but only by the thinnest of margins.
I have been slowly coming to the conclusion the problem in our system must be elsewhere. We have five different parties in power one way or another at a high level in the country - Tories in London, SNP in Edinburgh, Labour in Cardiff and off and on the DUP and Sinn Fein in Belfast.
And they all seem to have in common that they are more bent than a wire coat hanger with an elephant dangling off it, and completely incapable of making intelligent decisions for the benefit of the people they’re meant to be governing.
Admittedly, that’s not a problem confined to the UK. You could say the same about most countries. France, Germany, Spain, Hungary, Poland within the EU, India, China, the Philippines, Israel, America, Mexico, Brazil…
Something is very wrong in the world right now. And I’ve no idea what it is. @BartholomewRoberts has suggested Twitter may be the problem in the past as it leads to sound bites and shot termism rather than reasoned analysis. But you could see the rot with Blair and Brown, or Chavez, Netanyahu and Sarkozy, and they predated Twitter.
Worth noting that ending the winter strikes would cost about £5 billion. Chicken feed in terms of national finances and a real lifeline to services on the edge of collapse.
Here is a question.
One thing I am getting back from schools is that actually, the only way to get meaningful reform and get rid of most of the problems (e.g. the DfE and its corrupt acolytes) is for the system to very publicly implode.
It has already effectively collapsed, as in, statutory obligations and contracts are not being honoured because of funding shortages and a recruitment crisis, but so far the children and parents haven't noticed because of the efforts staff are making to keep things going.
This, even more than pay - because teachers are not actually that badly paid - is what is driving the strikes. It's also driving the wave of people leaving which is only going to get worse with the coming crunch in recruitment.
Is there any sign of something similar in the NHS?
I am sure it’s shows a mental weakness on my part, but I find those advocating leaving the U.K. criticising those that wanted to leave the EU (and vice versa) somewhat hypocritical.
The irony of course, as Mr Dancer noted, is that the SNP did want to leave the EU - just not in the way they ended up doing so.
The SNP wanted to leave the UK permanently, entailing a (hopefully) temporary exit from the EU by necessity not by design. To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off. I say this as someone who doesn't particularly like the SNP and has come to support Scottish independence lukewarmly and reluctantly.
That's still leaving the EU.
Also, I would point out they claimed that leaving the UK wouldn't mean leaving the EU, although Barroso noted this wasn't correct.
I am sure it’s shows a mental weakness on my part, but I find those advocating leaving the U.K. criticising those that wanted to leave the EU (and vice versa) somewhat hypocritical.
Well, one organisation allows members to decide on continuing membership, the other doesn't. That's before one even considers the different amounts of sovereignty allowed. As ever X is not the same as Y.
That’s true. The nationalist politics that is driving all this is very similar. Brexit folk and SNP folk should understand and perhaps sympathise with one another.
I'm a simple soul, I tend to think people who support and vote for an explicitly Brexit supporting party are Brexit folk.
'So let me be very clear: with Labour, Britain will not go back into the EU. We will not be joining the single market. We will not be joining a customs union.'
It’s a question of priorities. Is fixing Brexit our priority? It’s a decent question. It wasn’t 12 months ago. It might be now. (FWIW I want a change of government at Westminster and some focus on public services. )
Anecdotally it impacts retail politics. There was vocal criticism of Brexit in the post office queue yesterday as people struggled to complete customs declarations on Xmas presents being sent to the EU.
'Look, my party doesn't really believe in Brexit but it has to hoor itself for the votes of Brexiteers so it can prioritise all the good stuff like stopping the NHS being dependent on immigrants and GPS tracking for asylum seekers. Surely you can see that's the principled position?'
Labour has other priorities than Brexit. Politically it doesn’t want to fight the election on the same ground as 2019. That seems sensible. Not only did it not work last time. It would let the Tories off the hook for their terrible record since.
I can see why the SNP might like a rerun though. They need the Tories in power.
Mr. Boy, that's true, although the claims of almost immediate return were optimistic at best and nonsense at worst (see also "if we leave the English, Welsh, and Northern Irish will pay our pensions").
The fact is the SNP saw leaving the EU (albeit temporarily) at the same time as leaving the UK as in Scotland's interest. The supreme irony is that if they had broken up the UK, the remainder would still be in the EU.
I am sure it’s shows a mental weakness on my part, but I find those advocating leaving the U.K. criticising those that wanted to leave the EU (and vice versa) somewhat hypocritical.
The irony of course, as Mr Dancer noted, is that the SNP did want to leave the EU - just not in the way they ended up doing so.
The SNP wanted to leave the UK permanently, entailing a (hopefully) temporary exit from the EU by necessity not by design. To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off. I say this as someone who doesn't particularly like the SNP and has come to support Scottish independence lukewarmly and reluctantly.
That's still leaving the EU.
Also, I would point out they claimed that leaving the UK wouldn't mean leaving the EU, although Barroso noted this wasn't correct.
If England had left the U.K. and the U.K. had stayed in the EU, I suspect Brexiteers and Scottish independence supporters would have been delighted.
I am sure it’s shows a mental weakness on my part, but I find those advocating leaving the U.K. criticising those that wanted to leave the EU (and vice versa) somewhat hypocritical.
The irony of course, as Mr Dancer noted, is that the SNP did want to leave the EU - just not in the way they ended up doing so.
The SNP wanted to leave the UK permanently, entailing a (hopefully) temporary exit from the EU by necessity not by design. To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off. I say this as someone who doesn't particularly like the SNP and has come to support Scottish independence lukewarmly and reluctantly.
That's still leaving the EU.
Also, I would point out they claimed that leaving the UK wouldn't mean leaving the EU, although Barroso noted this wasn't correct.
I've always found the SNP a bit dishonest, which I think is true of a lot of idealogues, eg Brexiteers, which is why I don't like them. But I think recently unionists have become just as dishonest, maybe more so. This claim that the SNP "wanted" to leave the EU is one example of that.
The 1/6 still heating their homes as much as they want are a failure of energy and/or taxation policy. The amount you heat your home should be mitigated by the fact that heating your home costs you money.
I’ve read your post six times, and I still don’t understand what you are saying. Do you mean that there is something intrinsically wrong with the aspiration to have a pleasant, comfortable interior air quality and temperature in your abode? Seems like a fairly basic foundation stone of the essence of humanity, indeed the very essence of all animal and plant life on the planet: we are all seeking a pleasant, comfortable existence.
But punishing oneself, and others, for simply existing, seems to be in the zeitgeist.
The context is that there is a policy designed to reduce gas and electricity consumption due the war with Russia. I think if 5 out of 6 people are acting on it then it is working pretty well.
The real problem here is not interior temperatures, it is the shocking state of building standards on the daft island.
In the Nordic countries we are acutely aware of the war nearby, and it is going to be between -8 and -40 in the coming days (it’s minus eight outside as I write this, and I’m cosy inside in a t-shirt). Almost none of us will be enduring interior temperatures under 18 degrees, for a wide range of reasons. But the elephant in the room is building standards. We construct incredible amounts of insulation into buildings, and triple-glazing is near universal. Not to mention that heating and hot water is built in to all rental contracts and bostadsrättsföreningar (I don’t know how to translate that*): you save zilch by turning down a radiator in most apartments.
Local authorities don’t cut it. It requires decisive central government cultural change. The Wimpy House mindset needs to be totally crushed. As does the idiocy of building on flood plains.
The problem with the Tories is that they are quick-buck chancers, spivs and mountebanks, eager to fill the pockets of their chums on the boards of construction companies.
The problem with Labour is that they seek a pain free existence. They are essentially cowards.
The latest crap from Wes Streeting shows that there is little point in voting Labour. They are marginally better than the kleptocrats in power at present, but only by the thinnest of margins.
I have been slowly coming to the conclusion the problem in our system must be elsewhere. We have five different parties in power one way or another at a high level in the country - Tories in London, SNP in Edinburgh, Labour in Cardiff and off and on the DUP and Sinn Fein in Belfast.
And they all seem to have in common that they are more bent than a wire coat hanger with an elephant dangling off it, and completely incapable of making intelligent decisions for the benefit of the people they’re meant to be governing.
Admittedly, that’s not a problem confined to the UK. You could say the same about most countries. France, Germany, Spain, Hungary, Poland within the EU, India, China, the Philippines, Israel, America, Mexico, Brazil…
Something is very wrong in the world right now. And I’ve no idea what it is. @BartholomewRoberts has suggested Twitter may be the problem in the past as it leads to sound bites and shot termism rather than reasoned analysis. But you could see the rot with Blair and Brown, or Chavez, Netanyahu and Sarkozy, and they predated Twitter.
Worth noting that ending the winter strikes would cost about £5 billion. Chicken feed in terms of national finances and a real lifeline to services on the edge of collapse.
Here is a question.
One thing I am getting back from schools is that actually, the only way to get meaningful reform and get rid of most of the problems (e.g. the DfE and its corrupt acolytes) is for the system to very publicly implode.
It has already effectively collapsed, as in, statutory obligations and contracts are not being honoured because of funding shortages and a recruitment crisis, but so far the children and parents haven't noticed because of the efforts staff are making to keep things going.
This, even more than pay - because teachers are not actually that badly paid - is what is driving the strikes. It's also driving the wave of people leaving which is only going to get worse with the coming crunch in recruitment.
Is there any sign of something similar in the NHS?
Pretty much. Pay matters in such times, but is also deeply symbolic about how much the government cares about staff. I don't wish collapse on the NHS system though, as I rely on it too. Private care simply doesn't cover emergencies, nor does it include those with significant co-morbidities.
I am sure it’s shows a mental weakness on my part, but I find those advocating leaving the U.K. criticising those that wanted to leave the EU (and vice versa) somewhat hypocritical.
The irony of course, as Mr Dancer noted, is that the SNP did want to leave the EU - just not in the way they ended up doing so.
The SNP wanted to leave the UK permanently, entailing a (hopefully) temporary exit from the EU by necessity not by design. To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off. I say this as someone who doesn't particularly like the SNP and has come to support Scottish independence lukewarmly and reluctantly.
That's still leaving the EU.
Also, I would point out they claimed that leaving the UK wouldn't mean leaving the EU, although Barroso noted this wasn't correct.
I've always found the SNP a bit dishonest, which I think is true of a lot of idealogues, eg Brexiteers, which is why I don't like them. But I think recently unionists have become just as dishonest, maybe more so. This claim that the SNP "wanted" to leave the EU is one example of that.
One implies the other.
If you say you want to drink 15 glasses of wine, that also involves 'wanting' to get drunk. Even if you'd rather not.
We turned the thermostat down to 18 degrees which is the lowest recommended safe temperature and our bills are lower than last year saving us quite a bit of money (due to the subsidy) against our expectations. A lot of people are turning the heating off completely but end up at risk of other problems (respiratory illnesses, frozen pipes, etc)
Turning your heating off is an incredibly stupid action. By all means lower the temperature (if you are really, really broke you could maybe even take it down to 14 degrees, but only in a dire emergency situation), but never ever actually switch it off during the winter. If you do you will almost inevitably cause structural damage to the fabric of the property.
And that’s before you even start looking at the damage you would be doing to your health.
Act in haste, repent at leisure.
This is all true but I simply cannot afford to keep either my body or my house healthy. I don't have enough money to do so.
I don’t mean to be rude, but if your personal finances really are that perilous then you are making a profoundly unwise choice investing your valuable time posting on an obscure blog. Time really is money. Use it more wisely.
If that bad then you would be due pots of cash from government, I have a relative on pension credits as poor and she has had 4 figures towards her energy bills already and more to come. She is in credit never mind unable to put heating on.
We turned the thermostat down to 18 degrees which is the lowest recommended safe temperature and our bills are lower than last year saving us quite a bit of money (due to the subsidy) against our expectations. A lot of people are turning the heating off completely but end up at risk of other problems (respiratory illnesses, frozen pipes, etc)
Turning your heating off is an incredibly stupid action. By all means lower the temperature (if you are really, really broke you could maybe even take it down to 14 degrees, but only in a dire emergency situation), but never ever actually switch it off during the winter. If you do you will almost inevitably cause structural damage to the fabric of the property.
And that’s before you even start looking at the damage you would be doing to your health.
Act in haste, repent at leisure.
This is all true but I simply cannot afford to keep either my body or my house healthy. I don't have enough money to do so.
I don’t mean to be rude, but if your personal finances really are that perilous then you are making a profoundly unwise choice investing your valuable time posting on an obscure blog. Time really is money. Use it more wisely.
If that bad then you would be due pots of cash from government, I have a relative on pension credits as poor and she has had 4 figures towards her energy bills already and more to come. She is in credit never mind unable to put heating on.
Surely people aren’t accusing Heathener of being an unreliable witness! Shock horror!
I am sure it’s shows a mental weakness on my part, but I find those advocating leaving the U.K. criticising those that wanted to leave the EU (and vice versa) somewhat hypocritical.
The irony of course, as Mr Dancer noted, is that the SNP did want to leave the EU - just not in the way they ended up doing so.
The SNP wanted to leave the UK permanently, entailing a (hopefully) temporary exit from the EU by necessity not by design. To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off. I say this as someone who doesn't particularly like the SNP and has come to support Scottish independence lukewarmly and reluctantly.
That's still leaving the EU.
Also, I would point out they claimed that leaving the UK wouldn't mean leaving the EU, although Barroso noted this wasn't correct.
I've always found the SNP a bit dishonest, which I think is true of a lot of idealogues, eg Brexiteers, which is why I don't like them. But I think recently unionists have become just as dishonest, maybe more so. This claim that the SNP "wanted" to leave the EU is one example of that.
One implies the other.
If you say you want to drink 15 glasses of wine, that also involves 'wanting' to get drunk. Even if you'd rather not.
Like I said, if this is the standard of argument on the unionist side then it's fucked.
And it's actually cheaper for me to shut down the house and live in Asia through winter.
Only if you don’t need aircon. Asian countries that rely on LNG have the same cost pressures.
Obviously it depends where you go but for example if you were in Bangkok right now, it's averaging say 28°C, whereas if you're in Leeds it's like 0°C. If a normal target for reasonable comfort is 18°C to 25°C, you only need to change the temperature by 3°C in Bangkok, but you're looking at 18°C in Leeds.
Somebody with better physics than me can correct me if I'm wrong but IIUC with a normal reasonably efficient heat pump type thing, which is about the best you can get for electric-powered heating, changing the temperature by 1°C upwards will use about the same amount of power as changing it by 1°C downwards. So adding 18°C of heat is going to use way more power than removing 3°C.
I am sure it’s shows a mental weakness on my part, but I find those advocating leaving the U.K. criticising those that wanted to leave the EU (and vice versa) somewhat hypocritical.
Well, one organisation allows members to decide on continuing membership, the other doesn't. That's before one even considers the different amounts of sovereignty allowed. As ever X is not the same as Y.
That’s true. The nationalist politics that is driving all this is very similar. Brexit folk and SNP folk should understand and perhaps sympathise with one another.
I'm a simple soul, I tend to think people who support and vote for an explicitly Brexit supporting party are Brexit folk.
'So let me be very clear: with Labour, Britain will not go back into the EU. We will not be joining the single market. We will not be joining a customs union.'
I am heating only one room and that is set to a maximum of 17C at day and I turn it off altogether at night. I do have an electric blanket which is great. In the evenings I wear several layers and wrap a blanket around me. Whenever I boil a kettle I fill a flask with any residual hot water to re-use later.
My whole habits have altered and I am being extremely frugal. I now shop at Lidl and make things go further. I walk there and have sold my car and now only use public transport, but walk everywhere I can.
The CoL crisis is scarring a generation.
Sincere sympathies - but this doesn’t quite accord with several other things you’ve told us
Weren’t you living in a comfortable detached house in the Home Counties? Now you’re suddenly impoverished and heating only one room and you save heated water?!
I am sure it’s shows a mental weakness on my part, but I find those advocating leaving the U.K. criticising those that wanted to leave the EU (and vice versa) somewhat hypocritical.
The irony of course, as Mr Dancer noted, is that the SNP did want to leave the EU - just not in the way they ended up doing so.
The SNP wanted to leave the UK permanently, entailing a (hopefully) temporary exit from the EU by necessity not by design. To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off. I say this as someone who doesn't particularly like the SNP and has come to support Scottish independence lukewarmly and reluctantly.
That's still leaving the EU.
Also, I would point out they claimed that leaving the UK wouldn't mean leaving the EU, although Barroso noted this wasn't correct.
I've always found the SNP a bit dishonest, which I think is true of a lot of idealogues, eg Brexiteers, which is why I don't like them. But I think recently unionists have become just as dishonest, maybe more so. This claim that the SNP "wanted" to leave the EU is one example of that.
One implies the other.
If you say you want to drink 15 glasses of wine, that also involves 'wanting' to get drunk. Even if you'd rather not.
Like I said, if this is the standard of argument on the unionist side then it's fucked.
You put forward this argument:
To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off.
Which was a nonsensical argument. Because that wasn't inevitable. Most rock climbers do not have to saw their arms off. Only when things go disastrously wrong.
But it *was* inevitable that leaving the UK would mean Scotland leaving the EU. As in, drinking too much leads to getting drunk.
Your argument - forgive me - and your response is very typical unfortunately of the Nationalist agenda in Scotland (and Wales, which is why I've drifted away from it). You put forward a ludicrous argument, are shown why it's wrong, and then refuse to engage saying you're right and reality is wrong because you don't want reality to be right.
Which, ironically, does show why Unionism in Scotland may be 'fucked' because their strongest argument is that becoming independent would be disastrous for Scotland. If independence supporters either don't care or are wilfully blind to that it's difficult to see how they won't keep hammering away until finally they're sent off to get out of everyone's hair.
At that point, as with Brexit, it will be realised they were lying and all the more sensible predictions of Remainers come true...
I am heating only one room and that is set to a maximum of 17C at day and I turn it off altogether at night. I do have an electric blanket which is great. In the evenings I wear several layers and wrap a blanket around me. Whenever I boil a kettle I fill a flask with any residual hot water to re-use later.
My whole habits have altered and I am being extremely frugal. I now shop at Lidl and make things go further. I walk there and have sold my car and now only use public transport, but walk everywhere I can.
The CoL crisis is scarring a generation.
Sincere sympathies - but this doesn’t quite accord with several other things you’ve told us
Weren’t you living in a comfortable detached house in the Home Counties? Now you’re suddenly impoverished and heating only one room and you save heated water?!
I don’t believe it. Sorry
Maybe, maybe not, but you are perhaps a little *bold* to go challenging other posters' purported life stories!
The 1/6 still heating their homes as much as they want are a failure of energy and/or taxation policy. The amount you heat your home should be mitigated by the fact that heating your home costs you money.
I’ve read your post six times, and I still don’t understand what you are saying. Do you mean that there is something intrinsically wrong with the aspiration to have a pleasant, comfortable interior air quality and temperature in your abode? Seems like a fairly basic foundation stone of the essence of humanity, indeed the very essence of all animal and plant life on the planet: we are all seeking a pleasant, comfortable existence.
But punishing oneself, and others, for simply existing, seems to be in the zeitgeist.
The context is that there is a policy designed to reduce gas and electricity consumption due the war with Russia. I think if 5 out of 6 people are acting on it then it is working pretty well.
The real problem here is not interior temperatures, it is the shocking state of building standards on the daft island.
In the Nordic countries we are acutely aware of the war nearby, and it is going to be between -8 and -40 in the coming days (it’s minus eight outside as I write this, and I’m cosy inside in a t-shirt). Almost none of us will be enduring interior temperatures under 18 degrees, for a wide range of reasons. But the elephant in the room is building standards. We construct incredible amounts of insulation into buildings, and triple-glazing is near universal. Not to mention that heating and hot water is built in to all rental contracts and bostadsrättsföreningar (I don’t know how to translate that*): you save zilch by turning down a radiator in most apartments.
Local authorities don’t cut it. It requires decisive central government cultural change. The Wimpy House mindset needs to be totally crushed. As does the idiocy of building on flood plains.
The problem with the Tories is that they are quick-buck chancers, spivs and mountebanks, eager to fill the pockets of their chums on the boards of construction companies.
The problem with Labour is that they seek a pain free existence. They are essentially cowards.
The latest crap from Wes Streeting shows that there is little point in voting Labour. They are marginally better than the kleptocrats in power at present, but only by the thinnest of margins.
At heart Wes is an authoritarian centraliser, as are many in Labour, which is why I will believe Starmer’s handing power over to local authorities when I see it. My guess is that, if if happens, it will come with a whole package of targets and strings such that Whitehall really won’t have given up very much power at all.
Just like Scottish devolution, all the pain and none of the power devolved.
I am heating only one room and that is set to a maximum of 17C at day and I turn it off altogether at night. I do have an electric blanket which is great. In the evenings I wear several layers and wrap a blanket around me. Whenever I boil a kettle I fill a flask with any residual hot water to re-use later.
My whole habits have altered and I am being extremely frugal. I now shop at Lidl and make things go further. I walk there and have sold my car and now only use public transport, but walk everywhere I can.
The CoL crisis is scarring a generation.
Sincere sympathies - but this doesn’t quite accord with several other things you’ve told us
Weren’t you living in a comfortable detached house in the Home Counties? Now you’re suddenly impoverished and heating only one room and you save heated water?!
I don’t believe it. Sorry
Maybe, maybe not, but you are perhaps a little *bold* to go challenging other posters' purported life stories!
Are you suggesting that a person who knaps flint dildos for a living may actually have a secret existence where he does something boring like, say, write opinion pieces for a small magazine?
I am sure it’s shows a mental weakness on my part, but I find those advocating leaving the U.K. criticising those that wanted to leave the EU (and vice versa) somewhat hypocritical.
The irony of course, as Mr Dancer noted, is that the SNP did want to leave the EU - just not in the way they ended up doing so.
The SNP wanted to leave the UK permanently, entailing a (hopefully) temporary exit from the EU by necessity not by design. To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off. I say this as someone who doesn't particularly like the SNP and has come to support Scottish independence lukewarmly and reluctantly.
That's still leaving the EU.
Also, I would point out they claimed that leaving the UK wouldn't mean leaving the EU, although Barroso noted this wasn't correct.
Bollocks again, people on here have strange memories that someone saying something off the cuff is actually written in statutes. Utter crap and Barroso could not make that decision just as Westminster cannot decide to make Scotland a colony and try to pretend the referendum was once in the history of the world.
I am sure it’s shows a mental weakness on my part, but I find those advocating leaving the U.K. criticising those that wanted to leave the EU (and vice versa) somewhat hypocritical.
The irony of course, as Mr Dancer noted, is that the SNP did want to leave the EU - just not in the way they ended up doing so.
The SNP wanted to leave the UK permanently, entailing a (hopefully) temporary exit from the EU by necessity not by design. To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off. I say this as someone who doesn't particularly like the SNP and has come to support Scottish independence lukewarmly and reluctantly.
That's still leaving the EU.
Also, I would point out they claimed that leaving the UK wouldn't mean leaving the EU, although Barroso noted this wasn't correct.
I've always found the SNP a bit dishonest, which I think is true of a lot of idealogues, eg Brexiteers, which is why I don't like them. But I think recently unionists have become just as dishonest, maybe more so. This claim that the SNP "wanted" to leave the EU is one example of that.
One implies the other.
If you say you want to drink 15 glasses of wine, that also involves 'wanting' to get drunk. Even if you'd rather not.
Like I said, if this is the standard of argument on the unionist side then it's fucked.
You put forward this argument:
To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off.
Which was a nonsensical argument. Because that wasn't inevitable. Most rock climbers do not have to saw their arms off. Only when things go disastrously wrong.
But it *was* inevitable that leaving the UK would mean Scotland leaving the EU. As in, drinking too much leads to getting drunk.
Your argument - forgive me - and your response is very typical unfortunately of the Nationalist agenda in Scotland (and Wales, which is why I've drifted away from it). You put forward a ludicrous argument, are shown why it's wrong, and then refuse to engage saying your right and reality is wrong because you don't want reality to be right.
Which, ironically, does show why Unionism in Scotland may be 'fucked' because their strongest argument is that becoming independent would be disastrous for Scotland. If independence supporters either don't care or are wilfully blind to that it's difficult to see how they won't keep hammering away until finally they're sent off to get out of everyone's hair.
At that point, as with Brexit, it will be realised they were lying and all the more sensible predictions of Remainers come true...
I'm not a nationalist, I'm a floating voter on this issue, someone who used to be a moderate unionist who has come to see the case for independence after Brexit but remains in two minds about it because of the obvious economic costs involved, in the short term at least. I'm giving you some honest advice - saying that the SNP wanted to leave the EU just isn't a convincing or meaningful argument that will sway anyone in the middle. It's just the kind of smug sophistry that will make unionists feel they are being terribly clever but to anyone who is in the centre on this issue it just sounds like bollocks. Feel free to disregard this advice of course if sounding clever is more important to you than convincing people.
With a sick son, I thought screw it and turned up the heating. It’s -5 outside.
I have a sick daughter too.
Hope your son gets well soon mate.
Hope your daughter is a bit better this morning. Any luck finding a GP?
Nope. She's mainly clinging to me like a limpet.
Sorry to hear this. I haven't any practical advice to offer but I do hope she improves soon.
After my NHS experience with my latest broken wrist I am going to get Mrs DA to drive me to CHU Rennes via Eurotunnel should I become unexpectedly and seriously ill.
I am sure it’s shows a mental weakness on my part, but I find those advocating leaving the U.K. criticising those that wanted to leave the EU (and vice versa) somewhat hypocritical.
The irony of course, as Mr Dancer noted, is that the SNP did want to leave the EU - just not in the way they ended up doing so.
The SNP wanted to leave the UK permanently, entailing a (hopefully) temporary exit from the EU by necessity not by design. To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off. I say this as someone who doesn't particularly like the SNP and has come to support Scottish independence lukewarmly and reluctantly.
That's still leaving the EU.
Also, I would point out they claimed that leaving the UK wouldn't mean leaving the EU, although Barroso noted this wasn't correct.
I've always found the SNP a bit dishonest, which I think is true of a lot of idealogues, eg Brexiteers, which is why I don't like them. But I think recently unionists have become just as dishonest, maybe more so. This claim that the SNP "wanted" to leave the EU is one example of that.
One implies the other.
If you say you want to drink 15 glasses of wine, that also involves 'wanting' to get drunk. Even if you'd rather not.
Like I said, if this is the standard of argument on the unionist side then it's fucked.
You put forward this argument:
To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off.
Which was a nonsensical argument. Because that wasn't inevitable. Most rock climbers do not have to saw their arms off. Only when things go disastrously wrong.
But it *was* inevitable that leaving the UK would mean Scotland leaving the EU. As in, drinking too much leads to getting drunk.
Your argument - forgive me - and your response is very typical unfortunately of the Nationalist agenda in Scotland (and Wales, which is why I've drifted away from it). You put forward a ludicrous argument, are shown why it's wrong, and then refuse to engage saying your right and reality is wrong because you don't want reality to be right.
Which, ironically, does show why Unionism in Scotland may be 'fucked' because their strongest argument is that becoming independent would be disastrous for Scotland. If independence supporters either don't care or are wilfully blind to that it's difficult to see how they won't keep hammering away until finally they're sent off to get out of everyone's hair.
At that point, as with Brexit, it will be realised they were lying and all the more sensible predictions of Remainers come true...
I'm not a nationalist, I'm a floating voter on this issue, someone who used to be a moderate unionist who has come to see the case for independence after Brexit but remains in two minds about it because of the obvious economic costs involved, in the short term at least. I'm giving you some honest advice - saying that the SNP wanted to leave the EU just isn't a convincing or meaningful argument that will sway anyone in the middle. It's just the kind of smug sophistry that will make unionists feel they are being terribly clever but to anyone who is in the centre on this issue it just sounds like bollocks. Feel free to disregard this advice of course if sounding clever is more important to you than convincing people.
Personally, I don’t care if Scotland stay or go. I want another vote just so we can stop discussing this on here.
Whilst I think a vote to leave the UK was also a vote to leave EU - perhaps temporarily, perhaps not - it doesn’t matter now. What matters is that it is SNP policy to join the EU after independence from the UK. That means a hard border with England.
Appeal to news websites. Everyone who cares about Football already knows England lost, it doesn’t need to be the headline. It’s just doom porn. Put the cricket there instead. What’s going on Pakistan is news.
It was inevitable that they were out when they met a decent team.
I am sure it’s shows a mental weakness on my part, but I find those advocating leaving the U.K. criticising those that wanted to leave the EU (and vice versa) somewhat hypocritical.
The irony of course, as Mr Dancer noted, is that the SNP did want to leave the EU - just not in the way they ended up doing so.
The SNP wanted to leave the UK permanently, entailing a (hopefully) temporary exit from the EU by necessity not by design. To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off. I say this as someone who doesn't particularly like the SNP and has come to support Scottish independence lukewarmly and reluctantly.
That's still leaving the EU.
Also, I would point out they claimed that leaving the UK wouldn't mean leaving the EU, although Barroso noted this wasn't correct.
I've always found the SNP a bit dishonest, which I think is true of a lot of idealogues, eg Brexiteers, which is why I don't like them. But I think recently unionists have become just as dishonest, maybe more so. This claim that the SNP "wanted" to leave the EU is one example of that.
One implies the other.
If you say you want to drink 15 glasses of wine, that also involves 'wanting' to get drunk. Even if you'd rather not.
Like I said, if this is the standard of argument on the unionist side then it's fucked.
You put forward this argument:
To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off.
Which was a nonsensical argument. Because that wasn't inevitable. Most rock climbers do not have to saw their arms off. Only when things go disastrously wrong.
But it *was* inevitable that leaving the UK would mean Scotland leaving the EU. As in, drinking too much leads to getting drunk.
Your argument - forgive me - and your response is very typical unfortunately of the Nationalist agenda in Scotland (and Wales, which is why I've drifted away from it). You put forward a ludicrous argument, are shown why it's wrong, and then refuse to engage saying your right and reality is wrong because you don't want reality to be right.
Which, ironically, does show why Unionism in Scotland may be 'fucked' because their strongest argument is that becoming independent would be disastrous for Scotland. If independence supporters either don't care or are wilfully blind to that it's difficult to see how they won't keep hammering away until finally they're sent off to get out of everyone's hair.
At that point, as with Brexit, it will be realised they were lying and all the more sensible predictions of Remainers come true...
I'm not a nationalist, I'm a floating voter on this issue, someone who used to be a moderate unionist who has come to see the case for independence after Brexit but remains in two minds about it because of the obvious economic costs involved, in the short term at least. I'm giving you some honest advice - saying that the SNP wanted to leave the EU just isn't a convincing or meaningful argument that will sway anyone in the middle. It's just the kind of smug sophistry that will make unionists feel they are being terribly clever but to anyone who is in the centre on this issue it just sounds like bollocks. Feel free to disregard this advice of course if sounding clever is more important to you than convincing people.
You accuse someone else of smug sophistry?
Good grief.
Edit - the SNP put forward a prospectus that would have involved leaving the EU. That is a fact. They lied and said it wouldn't. That is also a fact. They may have been able to return to the EU later - in fact I think they probably would have done - but it would have had to be a medium term aspiration, as in probably 7-10 years. That is not a fact, but it's a reasonable interpretation of the situation and rules of the time.
It was this kind of nonsense that put me off them having as a (now former) Plaid supporter always rather admired them up to then.
I am sure it’s shows a mental weakness on my part, but I find those advocating leaving the U.K. criticising those that wanted to leave the EU (and vice versa) somewhat hypocritical.
The irony of course, as Mr Dancer noted, is that the SNP did want to leave the EU - just not in the way they ended up doing so.
The SNP wanted to leave the UK permanently, entailing a (hopefully) temporary exit from the EU by necessity not by design. To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off. I say this as someone who doesn't particularly like the SNP and has come to support Scottish independence lukewarmly and reluctantly.
That's still leaving the EU.
Also, I would point out they claimed that leaving the UK wouldn't mean leaving the EU, although Barroso noted this wasn't correct.
I've always found the SNP a bit dishonest, which I think is true of a lot of idealogues, eg Brexiteers, which is why I don't like them. But I think recently unionists have become just as dishonest, maybe more so. This claim that the SNP "wanted" to leave the EU is one example of that.
One implies the other.
If you say you want to drink 15 glasses of wine, that also involves 'wanting' to get drunk. Even if you'd rather not.
Like I said, if this is the standard of argument on the unionist side then it's fucked.
You put forward this argument:
To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off.
Which was a nonsensical argument. Because that wasn't inevitable. Most rock climbers do not have to saw their arms off. Only when things go disastrously wrong.
But it *was* inevitable that leaving the UK would mean Scotland leaving the EU. As in, drinking too much leads to getting drunk.
Your argument - forgive me - and your response is very typical unfortunately of the Nationalist agenda in Scotland (and Wales, which is why I've drifted away from it). You put forward a ludicrous argument, are shown why it's wrong, and then refuse to engage saying your right and reality is wrong because you don't want reality to be right.
Which, ironically, does show why Unionism in Scotland may be 'fucked' because their strongest argument is that becoming independent would be disastrous for Scotland. If independence supporters either don't care or are wilfully blind to that it's difficult to see how they won't keep hammering away until finally they're sent off to get out of everyone's hair.
At that point, as with Brexit, it will be realised they were lying and all the more sensible predictions of Remainers come true...
I'm not a nationalist, I'm a floating voter on this issue, someone who used to be a moderate unionist who has come to see the case for independence after Brexit but remains in two minds about it because of the obvious economic costs involved, in the short term at least. I'm giving you some honest advice - saying that the SNP wanted to leave the EU just isn't a convincing or meaningful argument that will sway anyone in the middle. It's just the kind of smug sophistry that will make unionists feel they are being terribly clever but to anyone who is in the centre on this issue it just sounds like bollocks. Feel free to disregard this advice of course if sounding clever is more important to you than convincing people.
Personally, I don’t care if Scotland stay or go. I want another vote just so we can stop discussing this on here.
Whilst I think a vote to leave the UK was also a vote to leave EU - perhaps temporarily, perhaps not - it doesn’t matter now. What matters is that it is SNP policy to join the EU after independence from the UK. That means a hard border with England.
Perhaps the prospect of a hard border north as well as south would help to persuade England to rethink its absurd decision to leave the EU single market.
If anyone had told me three weeks ago that Pakistan would be chasing 355 to win at home against England while 1-0 down and would have lost their top three clean bowled to an England seam attack, I would have asked for some of whatever they were smoking.
With a sick son, I thought screw it and turned up the heating. It’s -5 outside.
I have a sick daughter too.
Hope your son gets well soon mate.
Hope your daughter is a bit better this morning. Any luck finding a GP?
Nope. She's mainly clinging to me like a limpet.
Sorry to hear this. I haven't any practical advice to offer but I do hope she improves soon.
After my NHS experience with my latest broken wrist I am going to get Mrs DA to drive me to CHU Rennes via Eurotunnel should I become unexpectedly and seriously ill.
NHS is really knackered, my brother had a hernia about 6 months ago , told there was a waiting list. He could hardly walk more than 5 yards and constant pain. I told him to go private but he was reluctant to jump the queue as he saw it. Eventually he saw sense and was fixed in 2 weeks. He got his follow up letter from NHS last week to tell him waiting list was at least 3 years now.
Appeal to news websites. Everyone who cares about Football already knows England lost, it doesn’t need to be the headline. It’s just doom porn. Put the cricket there instead. What’s going on Pakistan is news.
It was inevitable that they were out when they met a decent team.
From my point of view, they’re a decent team, but one that lacks that leadership edge on and off the pitch that marks out winners from runners up. I cite the English cricket team. You can see the difference there. You can get a long way in life through hard work, planning and discipline, but to be the very best takes something more.
I am heating only one room and that is set to a maximum of 17C at day and I turn it off altogether at night. I do have an electric blanket which is great. In the evenings I wear several layers and wrap a blanket around me. Whenever I boil a kettle I fill a flask with any residual hot water to re-use later.
My whole habits have altered and I am being extremely frugal. I now shop at Lidl and make things go further. I walk there and have sold my car and now only use public transport, but walk everywhere I can.
The CoL crisis is scarring a generation.
Sincere sympathies - but this doesn’t quite accord with several other things you’ve told us
Weren’t you living in a comfortable detached house in the Home Counties? Now you’re suddenly impoverished and heating only one room and you save heated water?!
I don’t believe it. Sorry
Maybe, maybe not, but you are perhaps a little *bold* to go challenging other posters' purported life stories!
True. And I apologise to @Heathener if she is giving us the facts. But I find the claim she is “saving boiled water for later” quite hard to accept
Because it doesn’t make sense. ChatGPT tells me it costs between 1 and 3 pence to boil a kettle. No one in the UK is so poor they have to do strange things to save two pence. Unless they are mad
I am sure it’s shows a mental weakness on my part, but I find those advocating leaving the U.K. criticising those that wanted to leave the EU (and vice versa) somewhat hypocritical.
The irony of course, as Mr Dancer noted, is that the SNP did want to leave the EU - just not in the way they ended up doing so.
The SNP wanted to leave the UK permanently, entailing a (hopefully) temporary exit from the EU by necessity not by design. To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off. I say this as someone who doesn't particularly like the SNP and has come to support Scottish independence lukewarmly and reluctantly.
That's still leaving the EU.
Also, I would point out they claimed that leaving the UK wouldn't mean leaving the EU, although Barroso noted this wasn't correct.
Bollocks again, people on here have strange memories that someone saying something off the cuff is actually written in statutes. Utter crap and Barroso could not make that decision just as Westminster cannot decide to make Scotland a colony and try to pretend the referendum was once in the history of the world.
All Barroso said was that Scotland would not automatically be a member and would have to apply under Article 49. This would mean meeting the admissions criteria.
Which was clearly true. Just as Algeria and Greenland are no longer members after leaving France and Denmark respectively. He was not making any 'decision.'
Similarly, as was pointed out by Remainers in 2016, people voting to leave the EU are voting to leave. Not to cherry pick what suits them.
I am sure it’s shows a mental weakness on my part, but I find those advocating leaving the U.K. criticising those that wanted to leave the EU (and vice versa) somewhat hypocritical.
The irony of course, as Mr Dancer noted, is that the SNP did want to leave the EU - just not in the way they ended up doing so.
The SNP wanted to leave the UK permanently, entailing a (hopefully) temporary exit from the EU by necessity not by design. To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off. I say this as someone who doesn't particularly like the SNP and has come to support Scottish independence lukewarmly and reluctantly.
That's still leaving the EU.
Also, I would point out they claimed that leaving the UK wouldn't mean leaving the EU, although Barroso noted this wasn't correct.
I've always found the SNP a bit dishonest, which I think is true of a lot of idealogues, eg Brexiteers, which is why I don't like them. But I think recently unionists have become just as dishonest, maybe more so. This claim that the SNP "wanted" to leave the EU is one example of that.
One implies the other.
If you say you want to drink 15 glasses of wine, that also involves 'wanting' to get drunk. Even if you'd rather not.
Like I said, if this is the standard of argument on the unionist side then it's fucked.
You put forward this argument:
To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off.
Which was a nonsensical argument. Because that wasn't inevitable. Most rock climbers do not have to saw their arms off. Only when things go disastrously wrong.
But it *was* inevitable that leaving the UK would mean Scotland leaving the EU. As in, drinking too much leads to getting drunk.
Your argument - forgive me - and your response is very typical unfortunately of the Nationalist agenda in Scotland (and Wales, which is why I've drifted away from it). You put forward a ludicrous argument, are shown why it's wrong, and then refuse to engage saying your right and reality is wrong because you don't want reality to be right.
Which, ironically, does show why Unionism in Scotland may be 'fucked' because their strongest argument is that becoming independent would be disastrous for Scotland. If independence supporters either don't care or are wilfully blind to that it's difficult to see how they won't keep hammering away until finally they're sent off to get out of everyone's hair.
At that point, as with Brexit, it will be realised they were lying and all the more sensible predictions of Remainers come true...
I'm not a nationalist, I'm a floating voter on this issue, someone who used to be a moderate unionist who has come to see the case for independence after Brexit but remains in two minds about it because of the obvious economic costs involved, in the short term at least. I'm giving you some honest advice - saying that the SNP wanted to leave the EU just isn't a convincing or meaningful argument that will sway anyone in the middle. It's just the kind of smug sophistry that will make unionists feel they are being terribly clever but to anyone who is in the centre on this issue it just sounds like bollocks. Feel free to disregard this advice of course if sounding clever is more important to you than convincing people.
Personally, I don’t care if Scotland stay or go. I want another vote just so we can stop discussing this on here.
Whilst I think a vote to leave the UK was also a vote to leave EU - perhaps temporarily, perhaps not - it doesn’t matter now. What matters is that it is SNP policy to join the EU after independence from the UK. That means a hard border with England.
Perhaps the prospect of a hard border north as well as south would help to persuade England to rethink its absurd decision to leave the EU single market.
Lol, “hard border on island of Britain, England cut off.”
I am sure it’s shows a mental weakness on my part, but I find those advocating leaving the U.K. criticising those that wanted to leave the EU (and vice versa) somewhat hypocritical.
The irony of course, as Mr Dancer noted, is that the SNP did want to leave the EU - just not in the way they ended up doing so.
The SNP wanted to leave the UK permanently, entailing a (hopefully) temporary exit from the EU by necessity not by design. To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off. I say this as someone who doesn't particularly like the SNP and has come to support Scottish independence lukewarmly and reluctantly.
That's still leaving the EU.
Also, I would point out they claimed that leaving the UK wouldn't mean leaving the EU, although Barroso noted this wasn't correct.
I've always found the SNP a bit dishonest, which I think is true of a lot of idealogues, eg Brexiteers, which is why I don't like them. But I think recently unionists have become just as dishonest, maybe more so. This claim that the SNP "wanted" to leave the EU is one example of that.
One implies the other.
If you say you want to drink 15 glasses of wine, that also involves 'wanting' to get drunk. Even if you'd rather not.
Like I said, if this is the standard of argument on the unionist side then it's fucked.
You put forward this argument:
To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off.
Which was a nonsensical argument. Because that wasn't inevitable. Most rock climbers do not have to saw their arms off. Only when things go disastrously wrong.
But it *was* inevitable that leaving the UK would mean Scotland leaving the EU. As in, drinking too much leads to getting drunk.
Your argument - forgive me - and your response is very typical unfortunately of the Nationalist agenda in Scotland (and Wales, which is why I've drifted away from it). You put forward a ludicrous argument, are shown why it's wrong, and then refuse to engage saying your right and reality is wrong because you don't want reality to be right.
Which, ironically, does show why Unionism in Scotland may be 'fucked' because their strongest argument is that becoming independent would be disastrous for Scotland. If independence supporters either don't care or are wilfully blind to that it's difficult to see how they won't keep hammering away until finally they're sent off to get out of everyone's hair.
At that point, as with Brexit, it will be realised they were lying and all the more sensible predictions of Remainers come true...
I'm not a nationalist, I'm a floating voter on this issue, someone who used to be a moderate unionist who has come to see the case for independence after Brexit but remains in two minds about it because of the obvious economic costs involved, in the short term at least. I'm giving you some honest advice - saying that the SNP wanted to leave the EU just isn't a convincing or meaningful argument that will sway anyone in the middle. It's just the kind of smug sophistry that will make unionists feel they are being terribly clever but to anyone who is in the centre on this issue it just sounds like bollocks. Feel free to disregard this advice of course if sounding clever is more important to you than convincing people.
You accuse someone else of smug sophistry?
Good grief.
Edit - the SNP put forward a prospectus that would have involved leaving the EU. That is a fact. They lied and said it wouldn't. That is also a fact. They may have been able to return to the EU later - in fact I think they probably would have done - but it would have had to be a medium term aspiration, as in probably 7-10 years. That is not a fact, but it's a reasonable interpretation of the situation and rules of the time.
It was this kind of nonsense that put me off them having as a (now former) Plaid supporter always rather admired them up to then.
Again smug unionist imagination, you nor anyone else know what would have happened and whether it would have taken a day or years to rejoin. Any sensible person would have imagined it would have benn a fast track deal as everything was in place. Your interpretation is very far from a reasonable assumption, rather a unionist wish.
Appeal to news websites. Everyone who cares about Football already knows England lost, it doesn’t need to be the headline. It’s just doom porn. Put the cricket there instead. What’s going on Pakistan is news.
It was inevitable that they were out when they met a decent team.
From my point of view, they’re a decent team, but one that lacks that leadership edge on and off the pitch that marks out winners from runners up. I cite the English cricket team. You can see the difference there. You can get a long way in life through hard work, planning and discipline, but to be the very best takes something more.
Footballers are overpaid spoilt brats nowadays and none more so than England players. They are stupid enough to believe the hype from the English media which is stomach churning.
I am sure it’s shows a mental weakness on my part, but I find those advocating leaving the U.K. criticising those that wanted to leave the EU (and vice versa) somewhat hypocritical.
The irony of course, as Mr Dancer noted, is that the SNP did want to leave the EU - just not in the way they ended up doing so.
The SNP wanted to leave the UK permanently, entailing a (hopefully) temporary exit from the EU by necessity not by design. To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off. I say this as someone who doesn't particularly like the SNP and has come to support Scottish independence lukewarmly and reluctantly.
That's still leaving the EU.
Also, I would point out they claimed that leaving the UK wouldn't mean leaving the EU, although Barroso noted this wasn't correct.
I've always found the SNP a bit dishonest, which I think is true of a lot of idealogues, eg Brexiteers, which is why I don't like them. But I think recently unionists have become just as dishonest, maybe more so. This claim that the SNP "wanted" to leave the EU is one example of that.
One implies the other.
If you say you want to drink 15 glasses of wine, that also involves 'wanting' to get drunk. Even if you'd rather not.
Like I said, if this is the standard of argument on the unionist side then it's fucked.
You put forward this argument:
To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off.
Which was a nonsensical argument. Because that wasn't inevitable. Most rock climbers do not have to saw their arms off. Only when things go disastrously wrong.
But it *was* inevitable that leaving the UK would mean Scotland leaving the EU. As in, drinking too much leads to getting drunk.
Your argument - forgive me - and your response is very typical unfortunately of the Nationalist agenda in Scotland (and Wales, which is why I've drifted away from it). You put forward a ludicrous argument, are shown why it's wrong, and then refuse to engage saying your right and reality is wrong because you don't want reality to be right.
Which, ironically, does show why Unionism in Scotland may be 'fucked' because their strongest argument is that becoming independent would be disastrous for Scotland. If independence supporters either don't care or are wilfully blind to that it's difficult to see how they won't keep hammering away until finally they're sent off to get out of everyone's hair.
At that point, as with Brexit, it will be realised they were lying and all the more sensible predictions of Remainers come true...
I'm not a nationalist, I'm a floating voter on this issue, someone who used to be a moderate unionist who has come to see the case for independence after Brexit but remains in two minds about it because of the obvious economic costs involved, in the short term at least. I'm giving you some honest advice - saying that the SNP wanted to leave the EU just isn't a convincing or meaningful argument that will sway anyone in the middle. It's just the kind of smug sophistry that will make unionists feel they are being terribly clever but to anyone who is in the centre on this issue it just sounds like bollocks. Feel free to disregard this advice of course if sounding clever is more important to you than convincing people.
You accuse someone else of smug sophistry?
Good grief.
Edit - the SNP put forward a prospectus that would have involved leaving the EU. That is a fact. They lied and said it wouldn't. That is also a fact. They may have been able to return to the EU later - in fact I think they probably would have done - but it would have had to be a medium term aspiration, as in probably 7-10 years. That is not a fact, but it's a reasonable interpretation of the situation and rules of the time.
It was this kind of nonsense that put me off them having as a (now former) Plaid supporter always rather admired them up to then.
Again smug unionist imagination, you nor anyone else know what would have happened and whether it would have taken a day or years to rejoin. Any sensible person would have imagined it would have benn a fast track deal as everything was in place. Your interpretation is very far from a reasonable assumption, rather a unionist wish.
No, Malc, I don't know what would have happened. As I said. Very clearly.
But I know what the rules were. As did Salmond and Sturgeon. As did Barroso. There was no mechanism for a 'fast track' deal and in any case one would have required the UK's co-operation which certainly wasn't a given. That's not what 'sensible people would have imagined' because it's manifestly wishful thinking and self-delusion. For a start, it would have required Scotland to create its own currency or informally adopt the Euro. Both of which the Leave (sic) campaign had ruled out.
The Scottish National Party as you never tire of telling us are not sensible people anyway.
I am sure it’s shows a mental weakness on my part, but I find those advocating leaving the U.K. criticising those that wanted to leave the EU (and vice versa) somewhat hypocritical.
The irony of course, as Mr Dancer noted, is that the SNP did want to leave the EU - just not in the way they ended up doing so.
The SNP wanted to leave the UK permanently, entailing a (hopefully) temporary exit from the EU by necessity not by design. To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off. I say this as someone who doesn't particularly like the SNP and has come to support Scottish independence lukewarmly and reluctantly.
That's still leaving the EU.
Also, I would point out they claimed that leaving the UK wouldn't mean leaving the EU, although Barroso noted this wasn't correct.
I've always found the SNP a bit dishonest, which I think is true of a lot of idealogues, eg Brexiteers, which is why I don't like them. But I think recently unionists have become just as dishonest, maybe more so. This claim that the SNP "wanted" to leave the EU is one example of that.
One implies the other.
If you say you want to drink 15 glasses of wine, that also involves 'wanting' to get drunk. Even if you'd rather not.
Like I said, if this is the standard of argument on the unionist side then it's fucked.
You put forward this argument:
To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off.
Which was a nonsensical argument. Because that wasn't inevitable. Most rock climbers do not have to saw their arms off. Only when things go disastrously wrong.
But it *was* inevitable that leaving the UK would mean Scotland leaving the EU. As in, drinking too much leads to getting drunk.
Your argument - forgive me - and your response is very typical unfortunately of the Nationalist agenda in Scotland (and Wales, which is why I've drifted away from it). You put forward a ludicrous argument, are shown why it's wrong, and then refuse to engage saying your right and reality is wrong because you don't want reality to be right.
Which, ironically, does show why Unionism in Scotland may be 'fucked' because their strongest argument is that becoming independent would be disastrous for Scotland. If independence supporters either don't care or are wilfully blind to that it's difficult to see how they won't keep hammering away until finally they're sent off to get out of everyone's hair.
At that point, as with Brexit, it will be realised they were lying and all the more sensible predictions of Remainers come true...
I'm not a nationalist, I'm a floating voter on this issue, someone who used to be a moderate unionist who has come to see the case for independence after Brexit but remains in two minds about it because of the obvious economic costs involved, in the short term at least. I'm giving you some honest advice - saying that the SNP wanted to leave the EU just isn't a convincing or meaningful argument that will sway anyone in the middle. It's just the kind of smug sophistry that will make unionists feel they are being terribly clever but to anyone who is in the centre on this issue it just sounds like bollocks. Feel free to disregard this advice of course if sounding clever is more important to you than convincing people.
Personally, I don’t care if Scotland stay or go. I want another vote just so we can stop discussing this on here.
Whilst I think a vote to leave the UK was also a vote to leave EU - perhaps temporarily, perhaps not - it doesn’t matter now. What matters is that it is SNP policy to join the EU after independence from the UK. That means a hard border with England.
Perhaps the prospect of a hard border north as well as south would help to persuade England to rethink its absurd decision to leave the EU single market.
Lol, “hard border on island of Britain, England cut off.”
Most Scottish exports go to England, more their problem.
Scottish independence entrenches hard Brexit terms in England further. No concessions to the SNP and border posts built the next day if they leave UK and rejoin the EU
The 1/6 still heating their homes as much as they want are a failure of energy and/or taxation policy. The amount you heat your home should be mitigated by the fact that heating your home costs you money.
I’ve read your post six times, and I still don’t understand what you are saying. Do you mean that there is something intrinsically wrong with the aspiration to have a pleasant, comfortable interior air quality and temperature in your abode? Seems like a fairly basic foundation stone of the essence of humanity, indeed the very essence of all animal and plant life on the planet: we are all seeking a pleasant, comfortable existence.
But punishing oneself, and others, for simply existing, seems to be in the zeitgeist.
The question wasn't "pleasant", it was "as much as you want".
Nearly everything you buy is a tradeoff between how much you want of something and how much you want to spend on it.
And that choice is up to individuals. It is none of your business.
I’m making the (reasonable) assumption that nobody is heating up their abode to the extent that it is unpleasantly hot.
You don't heat it so that it's unpleasantly hot, but most people, even quite rich people, don't heat as much as they would if the heating was free.
I've turned my thermostat down 2 degrees to 20 (18 overnight) - perfectly comfortable with a jumper on. As Felix mentioned upthread, some appear to believe there should be protection from the consequences of actions. In this case, the price mechanism is working.
Appeal to news websites. Everyone who cares about Football already knows England lost, it doesn’t need to be the headline. It’s just doom porn. Put the cricket there instead. What’s going on Pakistan is news.
It was inevitable that they were out when they met a decent team.
From my point of view, they’re a decent team, but one that lacks that leadership edge on and off the pitch that marks out winners from runners up. I cite the English cricket team. You can see the difference there. You can get a long way in life through hard work, planning and discipline, but to be the very best takes something more.
Yes. Which is why Southgate - amiable as he is - ain’t the man. There are rumours he might stay til the next World Cup. FFS
I am sure it’s shows a mental weakness on my part, but I find those advocating leaving the U.K. criticising those that wanted to leave the EU (and vice versa) somewhat hypocritical.
The irony of course, as Mr Dancer noted, is that the SNP did want to leave the EU - just not in the way they ended up doing so.
The SNP wanted to leave the UK permanently, entailing a (hopefully) temporary exit from the EU by necessity not by design. To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off. I say this as someone who doesn't particularly like the SNP and has come to support Scottish independence lukewarmly and reluctantly.
That's still leaving the EU.
Also, I would point out they claimed that leaving the UK wouldn't mean leaving the EU, although Barroso noted this wasn't correct.
I've always found the SNP a bit dishonest, which I think is true of a lot of idealogues, eg Brexiteers, which is why I don't like them. But I think recently unionists have become just as dishonest, maybe more so. This claim that the SNP "wanted" to leave the EU is one example of that.
One implies the other.
If you say you want to drink 15 glasses of wine, that also involves 'wanting' to get drunk. Even if you'd rather not.
Like I said, if this is the standard of argument on the unionist side then it's fucked.
You put forward this argument:
To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off.
Which was a nonsensical argument. Because that wasn't inevitable. Most rock climbers do not have to saw their arms off. Only when things go disastrously wrong.
But it *was* inevitable that leaving the UK would mean Scotland leaving the EU. As in, drinking too much leads to getting drunk.
Your argument - forgive me - and your response is very typical unfortunately of the Nationalist agenda in Scotland (and Wales, which is why I've drifted away from it). You put forward a ludicrous argument, are shown why it's wrong, and then refuse to engage saying your right and reality is wrong because you don't want reality to be right.
Which, ironically, does show why Unionism in Scotland may be 'fucked' because their strongest argument is that becoming independent would be disastrous for Scotland. If independence supporters either don't care or are wilfully blind to that it's difficult to see how they won't keep hammering away until finally they're sent off to get out of everyone's hair.
At that point, as with Brexit, it will be realised they were lying and all the more sensible predictions of Remainers come true...
I'm not a nationalist, I'm a floating voter on this issue, someone who used to be a moderate unionist who has come to see the case for independence after Brexit but remains in two minds about it because of the obvious economic costs involved, in the short term at least. I'm giving you some honest advice - saying that the SNP wanted to leave the EU just isn't a convincing or meaningful argument that will sway anyone in the middle. It's just the kind of smug sophistry that will make unionists feel they are being terribly clever but to anyone who is in the centre on this issue it just sounds like bollocks. Feel free to disregard this advice of course if sounding clever is more important to you than convincing people.
You accuse someone else of smug sophistry?
Good grief.
Edit - the SNP put forward a prospectus that would have involved leaving the EU. That is a fact. They lied and said it wouldn't. That is also a fact. They may have been able to return to the EU later - in fact I think they probably would have done - but it would have had to be a medium term aspiration, as in probably 7-10 years. That is not a fact, but it's a reasonable interpretation of the situation and rules of the time.
It was this kind of nonsense that put me off them having as a (now former) Plaid supporter always rather admired them up to then.
Like I said, I've always found the SNP a bit dishonest, I think it goes with the nationalist territory. Before Brexit I saw independence as an unnecessary risk but now I can see big risks of staying in the UK. What are the English going to force on us next? There are plenty of good arguments against independence. But claiming that the SNP wanted Scotland to leave the EU when they hoped (probably unrealistically) to avoid that and at worst saw it as a temporary state just isn't one of them. Especially when Scotland voted to stay in the UK and was then dragged out of the EU - apparently permanently - anyway.
I am heating only one room and that is set to a maximum of 17C at day and I turn it off altogether at night. I do have an electric blanket which is great. In the evenings I wear several layers and wrap a blanket around me. Whenever I boil a kettle I fill a flask with any residual hot water to re-use later.
My whole habits have altered and I am being extremely frugal. I now shop at Lidl and make things go further. I walk there and have sold my car and now only use public transport, but walk everywhere I can.
The CoL crisis is scarring a generation.
Sincere sympathies - but this doesn’t quite accord with several other things you’ve told us
Weren’t you living in a comfortable detached house in the Home Counties? Now you’re suddenly impoverished and heating only one room and you save heated water?!
I don’t believe it. Sorry
Maybe, maybe not, but you are perhaps a little *bold* to go challenging other posters' purported life stories!
True. And I apologise to @Heathener if she is giving us the facts. But I find the claim she is “saving boiled water for later” quite hard to accept
Because it doesn’t make sense. ChatGPT tells me it costs between 1 and 3 pence to boil a kettle. No one in the UK is so poor they have to do strange things to save two pence. Unless they are mad
Nor me, having seen the benefits people get it should not be impossible to survive, may not be rich but given rent paid, council tax reduced and a fair amount of money plus several top ups it is more than enough to survive on and have some heat and food. It is as much as many people working are getting.
Appeal to news websites. Everyone who cares about Football already knows England lost, it doesn’t need to be the headline. It’s just doom porn. Put the cricket there instead. What’s going on Pakistan is news.
It was inevitable that they were out when they met a decent team.
From my point of view, they’re a decent team, but one that lacks that leadership edge on and off the pitch that marks out winners from runners up. I cite the English cricket team. You can see the difference there. You can get a long way in life through hard work, planning and discipline, but to be the very best takes something more.
Footballers are overpaid spoilt brats nowadays and none more so than England players. They are stupid enough to believe the hype from the English media which is stomach churning.
The media hype and romantic twaddle about ‘hurt’ definitely holds England back. Scotland suffers similarly if not worse. Alas. A Scotland England World Cup final is some way off.
I am sure it’s shows a mental weakness on my part, but I find those advocating leaving the U.K. criticising those that wanted to leave the EU (and vice versa) somewhat hypocritical.
The irony of course, as Mr Dancer noted, is that the SNP did want to leave the EU - just not in the way they ended up doing so.
The SNP wanted to leave the UK permanently, entailing a (hopefully) temporary exit from the EU by necessity not by design. To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off. I say this as someone who doesn't particularly like the SNP and has come to support Scottish independence lukewarmly and reluctantly.
That's still leaving the EU.
Also, I would point out they claimed that leaving the UK wouldn't mean leaving the EU, although Barroso noted this wasn't correct.
I've always found the SNP a bit dishonest, which I think is true of a lot of idealogues, eg Brexiteers, which is why I don't like them. But I think recently unionists have become just as dishonest, maybe more so. This claim that the SNP "wanted" to leave the EU is one example of that.
One implies the other.
If you say you want to drink 15 glasses of wine, that also involves 'wanting' to get drunk. Even if you'd rather not.
Like I said, if this is the standard of argument on the unionist side then it's fucked.
You put forward this argument:
To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off.
Which was a nonsensical argument. Because that wasn't inevitable. Most rock climbers do not have to saw their arms off. Only when things go disastrously wrong.
But it *was* inevitable that leaving the UK would mean Scotland leaving the EU. As in, drinking too much leads to getting drunk.
Your argument - forgive me - and your response is very typical unfortunately of the Nationalist agenda in Scotland (and Wales, which is why I've drifted away from it). You put forward a ludicrous argument, are shown why it's wrong, and then refuse to engage saying your right and reality is wrong because you don't want reality to be right.
Which, ironically, does show why Unionism in Scotland may be 'fucked' because their strongest argument is that becoming independent would be disastrous for Scotland. If independence supporters either don't care or are wilfully blind to that it's difficult to see how they won't keep hammering away until finally they're sent off to get out of everyone's hair.
At that point, as with Brexit, it will be realised they were lying and all the more sensible predictions of Remainers come true...
I'm not a nationalist, I'm a floating voter on this issue, someone who used to be a moderate unionist who has come to see the case for independence after Brexit but remains in two minds about it because of the obvious economic costs involved, in the short term at least. I'm giving you some honest advice - saying that the SNP wanted to leave the EU just isn't a convincing or meaningful argument that will sway anyone in the middle. It's just the kind of smug sophistry that will make unionists feel they are being terribly clever but to anyone who is in the centre on this issue it just sounds like bollocks. Feel free to disregard this advice of course if sounding clever is more important to you than convincing people.
You accuse someone else of smug sophistry?
Good grief.
Edit - the SNP put forward a prospectus that would have involved leaving the EU. That is a fact. They lied and said it wouldn't. That is also a fact. They may have been able to return to the EU later - in fact I think they probably would have done - but it would have had to be a medium term aspiration, as in probably 7-10 years. That is not a fact, but it's a reasonable interpretation of the situation and rules of the time.
It was this kind of nonsense that put me off them having as a (now former) Plaid supporter always rather admired them up to then.
I love a good back and forward on the replies on here. Just catching up on this one, and I'm with OLB. I don't think they're being smug, and I think their last post captures the point really rather well.
They started the chain with this comment: The SNP wanted to leave the UK permanently, entailing a (hopefully) temporary exit from the EU by necessity not by design. This is almost exactly what you've put in your edit ydoethur. I think you two are going down a rabbit hole because you're getting frustrated with each other, but you're basically agreeing about what the SNP wants.
I think OLB's original point, that the SNP had no desire to leave EU but couldn't see an alternative way back into the EU after UK voted to leave, is a good one, and leaves me, like OLB, sympathetic to their position even though I don't want independence to happen because I think it will shower more economic pain on us all. I think you arguing against it ydoethur is simple semantics (cf your drinking analogy - its no more valid than OLB's rock climbing one), and so his sophistry claim is valid (less so the smug, perhaps).
I am sure it’s shows a mental weakness on my part, but I find those advocating leaving the U.K. criticising those that wanted to leave the EU (and vice versa) somewhat hypocritical.
The irony of course, as Mr Dancer noted, is that the SNP did want to leave the EU - just not in the way they ended up doing so.
The SNP wanted to leave the UK permanently, entailing a (hopefully) temporary exit from the EU by necessity not by design. To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off. I say this as someone who doesn't particularly like the SNP and has come to support Scottish independence lukewarmly and reluctantly.
That's still leaving the EU.
Also, I would point out they claimed that leaving the UK wouldn't mean leaving the EU, although Barroso noted this wasn't correct.
I've always found the SNP a bit dishonest, which I think is true of a lot of idealogues, eg Brexiteers, which is why I don't like them. But I think recently unionists have become just as dishonest, maybe more so. This claim that the SNP "wanted" to leave the EU is one example of that.
One implies the other.
If you say you want to drink 15 glasses of wine, that also involves 'wanting' to get drunk. Even if you'd rather not.
Like I said, if this is the standard of argument on the unionist side then it's fucked.
You put forward this argument:
To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off.
Which was a nonsensical argument. Because that wasn't inevitable. Most rock climbers do not have to saw their arms off. Only when things go disastrously wrong.
But it *was* inevitable that leaving the UK would mean Scotland leaving the EU. As in, drinking too much leads to getting drunk.
Your argument - forgive me - and your response is very typical unfortunately of the Nationalist agenda in Scotland (and Wales, which is why I've drifted away from it). You put forward a ludicrous argument, are shown why it's wrong, and then refuse to engage saying your right and reality is wrong because you don't want reality to be right.
Which, ironically, does show why Unionism in Scotland may be 'fucked' because their strongest argument is that becoming independent would be disastrous for Scotland. If independence supporters either don't care or are wilfully blind to that it's difficult to see how they won't keep hammering away until finally they're sent off to get out of everyone's hair.
At that point, as with Brexit, it will be realised they were lying and all the more sensible predictions of Remainers come true...
I'm not a nationalist, I'm a floating voter on this issue, someone who used to be a moderate unionist who has come to see the case for independence after Brexit but remains in two minds about it because of the obvious economic costs involved, in the short term at least. I'm giving you some honest advice - saying that the SNP wanted to leave the EU just isn't a convincing or meaningful argument that will sway anyone in the middle. It's just the kind of smug sophistry that will make unionists feel they are being terribly clever but to anyone who is in the centre on this issue it just sounds like bollocks. Feel free to disregard this advice of course if sounding clever is more important to you than convincing people.
You accuse someone else of smug sophistry?
Good grief.
Edit - the SNP put forward a prospectus that would have involved leaving the EU. That is a fact. They lied and said it wouldn't. That is also a fact. They may have been able to return to the EU later - in fact I think they probably would have done - but it would have had to be a medium term aspiration, as in probably 7-10 years. That is not a fact, but it's a reasonable interpretation of the situation and rules of the time.
It was this kind of nonsense that put me off them having as a (now former) Plaid supporter always rather admired them up to then.
Again smug unionist imagination, you nor anyone else know what would have happened and whether it would have taken a day or years to rejoin. Any sensible person would have imagined it would have benn a fast track deal as everything was in place. Your interpretation is very far from a reasonable assumption, rather a unionist wish.
No, Malc, I don't know what would have happened. As I said. Very clearly.
But I know what the rules were. As did Salmond and Sturgeon. As did Barroso. There was no mechanism for a 'fast track' deal and in any case one would have required the UK's co-operation which certainly wasn't a given. That's not what 'sensible people would have imagined' because it's manifestly wishful thinking and self-delusion. For a start, it would have required Scotland to create its own currency or informally adopt the Euro. Both of which the Leave (sic) campaign had ruled out.
The Scottish National Party as you never tire of telling us are not sensible people anyway.
They were a lot better in those days, it is only since Imelda took over that they have gone downhill very quickly. Still it would have been a quick and simple process for rejoining Europe and there was never a chance that they would stay with English pound post independence, it would always have been move to Scottish pound whether they wanted it or not.
I am sure it’s shows a mental weakness on my part, but I find those advocating leaving the U.K. criticising those that wanted to leave the EU (and vice versa) somewhat hypocritical.
The irony of course, as Mr Dancer noted, is that the SNP did want to leave the EU - just not in the way they ended up doing so.
The SNP wanted to leave the UK permanently, entailing a (hopefully) temporary exit from the EU by necessity not by design. To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off. I say this as someone who doesn't particularly like the SNP and has come to support Scottish independence lukewarmly and reluctantly.
That's still leaving the EU.
Also, I would point out they claimed that leaving the UK wouldn't mean leaving the EU, although Barroso noted this wasn't correct.
I've always found the SNP a bit dishonest, which I think is true of a lot of idealogues, eg Brexiteers, which is why I don't like them. But I think recently unionists have become just as dishonest, maybe more so. This claim that the SNP "wanted" to leave the EU is one example of that.
One implies the other.
If you say you want to drink 15 glasses of wine, that also involves 'wanting' to get drunk. Even if you'd rather not.
Like I said, if this is the standard of argument on the unionist side then it's fucked.
You put forward this argument:
To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off.
Which was a nonsensical argument. Because that wasn't inevitable. Most rock climbers do not have to saw their arms off. Only when things go disastrously wrong.
But it *was* inevitable that leaving the UK would mean Scotland leaving the EU. As in, drinking too much leads to getting drunk.
Your argument - forgive me - and your response is very typical unfortunately of the Nationalist agenda in Scotland (and Wales, which is why I've drifted away from it). You put forward a ludicrous argument, are shown why it's wrong, and then refuse to engage saying your right and reality is wrong because you don't want reality to be right.
Which, ironically, does show why Unionism in Scotland may be 'fucked' because their strongest argument is that becoming independent would be disastrous for Scotland. If independence supporters either don't care or are wilfully blind to that it's difficult to see how they won't keep hammering away until finally they're sent off to get out of everyone's hair.
At that point, as with Brexit, it will be realised they were lying and all the more sensible predictions of Remainers come true...
I'm not a nationalist, I'm a floating voter on this issue, someone who used to be a moderate unionist who has come to see the case for independence after Brexit but remains in two minds about it because of the obvious economic costs involved, in the short term at least. I'm giving you some honest advice - saying that the SNP wanted to leave the EU just isn't a convincing or meaningful argument that will sway anyone in the middle. It's just the kind of smug sophistry that will make unionists feel they are being terribly clever but to anyone who is in the centre on this issue it just sounds like bollocks. Feel free to disregard this advice of course if sounding clever is more important to you than convincing people.
You accuse someone else of smug sophistry?
Good grief.
Edit - the SNP put forward a prospectus that would have involved leaving the EU. That is a fact. They lied and said it wouldn't. That is also a fact. They may have been able to return to the EU later - in fact I think they probably would have done - but it would have had to be a medium term aspiration, as in probably 7-10 years. That is not a fact, but it's a reasonable interpretation of the situation and rules of the time.
It was this kind of nonsense that put me off them having as a (now former) Plaid supporter always rather admired them up to then.
Like I said, I've always found the SNP a bit dishonest, I think it goes with the nationalist territory. Before Brexit I saw independence as an unnecessary risk but now I can see big risks of staying in the UK. What are the English going to force on us next? There are plenty of good arguments against independence. But claiming that the SNP wanted Scotland to leave the EU when they hoped (probably unrealistically) to avoid that and at worst saw it as a temporary state just isn't one of them. Especially when Scotland voted to stay in the UK and was then dragged out of the EU - apparently permanently - anyway.
I will agree that one thing that did annoy me on this was the Remainer (sic) argument 'to stay in the EU vote to stay in the UK.' Because it was obvious there would at some point be a referendum on our membership and although I thought Remain would win I knew it wasn't a certainty. It would have been better to just focus on 'leaving the UK means leaving the EU.' Which was true.
But there is no way Salmond hoped to remain in the EU. He may be unsafe around women but stupid he is not. He knew that Scotland would have to leave the EU. He clearly thought that a price worth paying, as did his supporters apart from those who genuinely didn't grasp the system Article 49 required.* So I'm struggling to see what your point is.
*i don't have the polling to hand but if I remember correctly around a third of independence voters also voted Leave in 2016. So for some but not a majority it was presumably an added bonus.
With a sick son, I thought screw it and turned up the heating. It’s -5 outside.
I have a sick daughter too.
Hope your son gets well soon mate.
Hope your daughter is a bit better this morning. Any luck finding a GP?
Nope. She's mainly clinging to me like a limpet.
Sorry to hear this. I haven't any practical advice to offer but I do hope she improves soon.
After my NHS experience with my latest broken wrist I am going to get Mrs DA to drive me to CHU Rennes via Eurotunnel should I become unexpectedly and seriously ill.
NHS is really knackered, my brother had a hernia about 6 months ago , told there was a waiting list. He could hardly walk more than 5 yards and constant pain. I told him to go private but he was reluctant to jump the queue as he saw it. Eventually he saw sense and was fixed in 2 weeks. He got his follow up letter from NHS last week to tell him waiting list was at least 3 years now.
I wouldn't believe that 3 year figure. Waiting lists are such a mess that no one knows. There are a very large number of non-urgent referrals that are yet to be seen, often over a years worth in some specialities, and no one knows what the conversion rate to surgery or other treatment will be.
Waiting lists are not up do date with a real need for data cleansing as a substantial number on lists are no longer wanting surgery, because done by other providers or no longer well enough. Your brother is an example of this.
We prioritise urgent stuff and often get appointments out for a few weeks when time critical, but this has a number of effects:
1) As people are constantly entering the queue near the front, the tail of the queue hardly moves.
2) Patients pitch up in ED as that is the only place where they will actually be seen, and often because the worsening of their symptoms demands it. A bowel surgeon told me the other day that 50% of their cancer cases present with bowel obstruction via ED.
3) Often conditions become more complex to treat because of delayed presentation. @OldKingCole seems to have been a recent example of this with his slow recovery.
4) GP appointment slots are taken up by people who they have already referred, either to manage symptoms or to push for priority. A GP friend told me that this is now about a third of his slots, and very little he can do for them.
The problem ultimately is one of lack of capacity log jamming the system, not helped by multiple vacancies in NHS, and the failure of social care. We are running on empty and can only treat urgent stuff that we know about. Anything requiring an elective hospital bed or a general anaesthetic will be waiting a long time.
I am heating only one room and that is set to a maximum of 17C at day and I turn it off altogether at night. I do have an electric blanket which is great. In the evenings I wear several layers and wrap a blanket around me. Whenever I boil a kettle I fill a flask with any residual hot water to re-use later.
My whole habits have altered and I am being extremely frugal. I now shop at Lidl and make things go further. I walk there and have sold my car and now only use public transport, but walk everywhere I can.
The CoL crisis is scarring a generation.
Sincere sympathies - but this doesn’t quite accord with several other things you’ve told us
Weren’t you living in a comfortable detached house in the Home Counties? Now you’re suddenly impoverished and heating only one room and you save heated water?!
I don’t believe it. Sorry
Maybe, maybe not, but you are perhaps a little *bold* to go challenging other posters' purported life stories!
True. And I apologise to @Heathener if she is giving us the facts. But I find the claim she is “saving boiled water for later” quite hard to accept
Because it doesn’t make sense. ChatGPT tells me it costs between 1 and 3 pence to boil a kettle. No one in the UK is so poor they have to do strange things to save two pence. Unless they are mad
Nor me, having seen the benefits people get it should not be impossible to survive, may not be rich but given rent paid, council tax reduced and a fair amount of money plus several top ups it is more than enough to survive on and have some heat and food. It is as much as many people working are getting.
If you avoided the cost of two boiled kettles a day, that would mean you save 4p every 24 hours. Which is 28p a week
No one is so skint they urgently need to save 28p a week. So it’s either a fantasy, or something else is going on
I am sure it’s shows a mental weakness on my part, but I find those advocating leaving the U.K. criticising those that wanted to leave the EU (and vice versa) somewhat hypocritical.
The irony of course, as Mr Dancer noted, is that the SNP did want to leave the EU - just not in the way they ended up doing so.
The SNP wanted to leave the UK permanently, entailing a (hopefully) temporary exit from the EU by necessity not by design. To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off. I say this as someone who doesn't particularly like the SNP and has come to support Scottish independence lukewarmly and reluctantly.
That's still leaving the EU.
Also, I would point out they claimed that leaving the UK wouldn't mean leaving the EU, although Barroso noted this wasn't correct.
I've always found the SNP a bit dishonest, which I think is true of a lot of idealogues, eg Brexiteers, which is why I don't like them. But I think recently unionists have become just as dishonest, maybe more so. This claim that the SNP "wanted" to leave the EU is one example of that.
One implies the other.
If you say you want to drink 15 glasses of wine, that also involves 'wanting' to get drunk. Even if you'd rather not.
Like I said, if this is the standard of argument on the unionist side then it's fucked.
You put forward this argument:
To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off.
Which was a nonsensical argument. Because that wasn't inevitable. Most rock climbers do not have to saw their arms off. Only when things go disastrously wrong.
But it *was* inevitable that leaving the UK would mean Scotland leaving the EU. As in, drinking too much leads to getting drunk.
Your argument - forgive me - and your response is very typical unfortunately of the Nationalist agenda in Scotland (and Wales, which is why I've drifted away from it). You put forward a ludicrous argument, are shown why it's wrong, and then refuse to engage saying your right and reality is wrong because you don't want reality to be right.
Which, ironically, does show why Unionism in Scotland may be 'fucked' because their strongest argument is that becoming independent would be disastrous for Scotland. If independence supporters either don't care or are wilfully blind to that it's difficult to see how they won't keep hammering away until finally they're sent off to get out of everyone's hair.
At that point, as with Brexit, it will be realised they were lying and all the more sensible predictions of Remainers come true...
I'm not a nationalist, I'm a floating voter on this issue, someone who used to be a moderate unionist who has come to see the case for independence after Brexit but remains in two minds about it because of the obvious economic costs involved, in the short term at least. I'm giving you some honest advice - saying that the SNP wanted to leave the EU just isn't a convincing or meaningful argument that will sway anyone in the middle. It's just the kind of smug sophistry that will make unionists feel they are being terribly clever but to anyone who is in the centre on this issue it just sounds like bollocks. Feel free to disregard this advice of course if sounding clever is more important to you than convincing people.
You accuse someone else of smug sophistry?
Good grief.
Edit - the SNP put forward a prospectus that would have involved leaving the EU. That is a fact. They lied and said it wouldn't. That is also a fact. They may have been able to return to the EU later - in fact I think they probably would have done - but it would have had to be a medium term aspiration, as in probably 7-10 years. That is not a fact, but it's a reasonable interpretation of the situation and rules of the time.
It was this kind of nonsense that put me off them having as a (now former) Plaid supporter always rather admired them up to then.
I love a good back and forward on the replies on here. Just catching up on this one, and I'm with OLB. I don't think they're being smug, and I think their last post captures the point really rather well.
They started the chain with this comment: The SNP wanted to leave the UK permanently, entailing a (hopefully) temporary exit from the EU by necessity not by design. This is almost exactly what you've put in your edit ydoethur. I think you two are going down a rabbit hole because you're getting frustrated with each other, but you're basically agreeing about what the SNP wants.
I think OLB's original point, that the SNP had no desire to leave EU but couldn't see an alternative way back into the EU after UK voted to leave, is a good one, and leaves me, like OLB, sympathetic to their position even though I don't want independence to happen because I think it will shower more economic pain on us all. I think you arguing against it ydoethur is simple semantics (cf your drinking analogy - its no more valid than OLB's rock climbing one), and so his sophistry claim is valid (less so the smug, perhaps).
"It is open to question whether such actions are voluntary or involuntary. A somewhat similar case is when cargo is jettisoned in a storm; apart from circumstances, no one voluntarily throws away his property, but to save his own life and that of his shipmates any sane man would do so. Acts of this kind, then, are ‘mixed’ or compositea; but they approximate rather to the voluntary class. For at the actual time when they are done they are chosen or willed; and the end or motive of an act varies with the occasion, so that the terms ‘voluntary’ and ‘involuntary’ should be used with reference to the time of action; now the actual deed in the cases in question is done voluntarily, for the origin of the movement of the parts of the body instrumental to the act lies in the agent; and when the origin of an action is in oneself, it is in one’s own power to do it or not. Such acts therefore are voluntary, though perhaps involuntary apart from circumstances—for no one would choose to do any such action in and for itself."
Appeal to news websites. Everyone who cares about Football already knows England lost, it doesn’t need to be the headline. It’s just doom porn. Put the cricket there instead. What’s going on Pakistan is news.
It was inevitable that they were out when they met a decent team.
From my point of view, they’re a decent team, but one that lacks that leadership edge on and off the pitch that marks out winners from runners up. I cite the English cricket team. You can see the difference there. You can get a long way in life through hard work, planning and discipline, but to be the very best takes something more.
Footballers are overpaid spoilt brats nowadays and none more so than England players. They are stupid enough to believe the hype from the English media which is stomach churning.
The media hype and romantic twaddle about ‘hurt’ definitely holds England back. Scotland suffers similarly if not worse. Alas. A Scotland England World Cup final is some way off.
"Hurt" of course is in there because it rhymes with shirt. I agree it sounds awful whiny.
I am sure it’s shows a mental weakness on my part, but I find those advocating leaving the U.K. criticising those that wanted to leave the EU (and vice versa) somewhat hypocritical.
The irony of course, as Mr Dancer noted, is that the SNP did want to leave the EU - just not in the way they ended up doing so.
The SNP wanted to leave the UK permanently, entailing a (hopefully) temporary exit from the EU by necessity not by design. To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off. I say this as someone who doesn't particularly like the SNP and has come to support Scottish independence lukewarmly and reluctantly.
That's still leaving the EU.
Also, I would point out they claimed that leaving the UK wouldn't mean leaving the EU, although Barroso noted this wasn't correct.
I've always found the SNP a bit dishonest, which I think is true of a lot of idealogues, eg Brexiteers, which is why I don't like them. But I think recently unionists have become just as dishonest, maybe more so. This claim that the SNP "wanted" to leave the EU is one example of that.
One implies the other.
If you say you want to drink 15 glasses of wine, that also involves 'wanting' to get drunk. Even if you'd rather not.
Like I said, if this is the standard of argument on the unionist side then it's fucked.
You put forward this argument:
To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off.
Which was a nonsensical argument. Because that wasn't inevitable. Most rock climbers do not have to saw their arms off. Only when things go disastrously wrong.
But it *was* inevitable that leaving the UK would mean Scotland leaving the EU. As in, drinking too much leads to getting drunk.
Your argument - forgive me - and your response is very typical unfortunately of the Nationalist agenda in Scotland (and Wales, which is why I've drifted away from it). You put forward a ludicrous argument, are shown why it's wrong, and then refuse to engage saying your right and reality is wrong because you don't want reality to be right.
Which, ironically, does show why Unionism in Scotland may be 'fucked' because their strongest argument is that becoming independent would be disastrous for Scotland. If independence supporters either don't care or are wilfully blind to that it's difficult to see how they won't keep hammering away until finally they're sent off to get out of everyone's hair.
At that point, as with Brexit, it will be realised they were lying and all the more sensible predictions of Remainers come true...
I'm not a nationalist, I'm a floating voter on this issue, someone who used to be a moderate unionist who has come to see the case for independence after Brexit but remains in two minds about it because of the obvious economic costs involved, in the short term at least. I'm giving you some honest advice - saying that the SNP wanted to leave the EU just isn't a convincing or meaningful argument that will sway anyone in the middle. It's just the kind of smug sophistry that will make unionists feel they are being terribly clever but to anyone who is in the centre on this issue it just sounds like bollocks. Feel free to disregard this advice of course if sounding clever is more important to you than convincing people.
You accuse someone else of smug sophistry?
Good grief.
Edit - the SNP put forward a prospectus that would have involved leaving the EU. That is a fact. They lied and said it wouldn't. That is also a fact. They may have been able to return to the EU later - in fact I think they probably would have done - but it would have had to be a medium term aspiration, as in probably 7-10 years. That is not a fact, but it's a reasonable interpretation of the situation and rules of the time.
It was this kind of nonsense that put me off them having as a (now former) Plaid supporter always rather admired them up to then.
I love a good back and forward on the replies on here. Just catching up on this one, and I'm with OLB. I don't think they're being smug, and I think their last post captures the point really rather well.
They started the chain with this comment: The SNP wanted to leave the UK permanently, entailing a (hopefully) temporary exit from the EU by necessity not by design. This is almost exactly what you've put in your edit ydoethur. I think you two are going down a rabbit hole because you're getting frustrated with each other, but you're basically agreeing about what the SNP wants.
I think OLB's original point, that the SNP had no desire to leave EU but couldn't see an alternative way back into the EU after UK voted to leave, is a good one, and leaves me, like OLB, sympathetic to their position even though I don't want independence to happen because I think it will shower more economic pain on us all. I think you arguing against it ydoethur is simple semantics (cf your drinking analogy - its no more valid than OLB's rock climbing one), and so his sophistry claim is valid (less so the smug, perhaps).
But if you design something that creates that necessity, it is by design.
Ultimately, for good or ill the SNP in 2014 put independence from the UK ahead of membership of the EU. The irony that they may end up losing both by their actions is not altogether amusing.
I am sure it’s shows a mental weakness on my part, but I find those advocating leaving the U.K. criticising those that wanted to leave the EU (and vice versa) somewhat hypocritical.
The irony of course, as Mr Dancer noted, is that the SNP did want to leave the EU - just not in the way they ended up doing so.
The SNP wanted to leave the UK permanently, entailing a (hopefully) temporary exit from the EU by necessity not by design. To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off. I say this as someone who doesn't particularly like the SNP and has come to support Scottish independence lukewarmly and reluctantly.
That's still leaving the EU.
Also, I would point out they claimed that leaving the UK wouldn't mean leaving the EU, although Barroso noted this wasn't correct.
I've always found the SNP a bit dishonest, which I think is true of a lot of idealogues, eg Brexiteers, which is why I don't like them. But I think recently unionists have become just as dishonest, maybe more so. This claim that the SNP "wanted" to leave the EU is one example of that.
One implies the other.
If you say you want to drink 15 glasses of wine, that also involves 'wanting' to get drunk. Even if you'd rather not.
Like I said, if this is the standard of argument on the unionist side then it's fucked.
You put forward this argument:
To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off.
Which was a nonsensical argument. Because that wasn't inevitable. Most rock climbers do not have to saw their arms off. Only when things go disastrously wrong.
But it *was* inevitable that leaving the UK would mean Scotland leaving the EU. As in, drinking too much leads to getting drunk.
Your argument - forgive me - and your response is very typical unfortunately of the Nationalist agenda in Scotland (and Wales, which is why I've drifted away from it). You put forward a ludicrous argument, are shown why it's wrong, and then refuse to engage saying your right and reality is wrong because you don't want reality to be right.
Which, ironically, does show why Unionism in Scotland may be 'fucked' because their strongest argument is that becoming independent would be disastrous for Scotland. If independence supporters either don't care or are wilfully blind to that it's difficult to see how they won't keep hammering away until finally they're sent off to get out of everyone's hair.
At that point, as with Brexit, it will be realised they were lying and all the more sensible predictions of Remainers come true...
I'm not a nationalist, I'm a floating voter on this issue, someone who used to be a moderate unionist who has come to see the case for independence after Brexit but remains in two minds about it because of the obvious economic costs involved, in the short term at least. I'm giving you some honest advice - saying that the SNP wanted to leave the EU just isn't a convincing or meaningful argument that will sway anyone in the middle. It's just the kind of smug sophistry that will make unionists feel they are being terribly clever but to anyone who is in the centre on this issue it just sounds like bollocks. Feel free to disregard this advice of course if sounding clever is more important to you than convincing people.
You accuse someone else of smug sophistry?
Good grief.
Edit - the SNP put forward a prospectus that would have involved leaving the EU. That is a fact. They lied and said it wouldn't. That is also a fact. They may have been able to return to the EU later - in fact I think they probably would have done - but it would have had to be a medium term aspiration, as in probably 7-10 years. That is not a fact, but it's a reasonable interpretation of the situation and rules of the time.
It was this kind of nonsense that put me off them having as a (now former) Plaid supporter always rather admired them up to then.
Like I said, I've always found the SNP a bit dishonest, I think it goes with the nationalist territory. Before Brexit I saw independence as an unnecessary risk but now I can see big risks of staying in the UK. What are the English going to force on us next? There are plenty of good arguments against independence. But claiming that the SNP wanted Scotland to leave the EU when they hoped (probably unrealistically) to avoid that and at worst saw it as a temporary state just isn't one of them. Especially when Scotland voted to stay in the UK and was then dragged out of the EU - apparently permanently - anyway.
Quite right. I|td should also be remembered that in reality negotiations with the EU would hasve begun the morning after a Yes vote, telescoping the transition period considerably and possibly eliminating it by a provisional status in this situation (bearing in mind that Scots law was already EU compliant, for instance). Look what happened to Slovakia and Czechia.
The Better Together campaign very firmly highlighted their assertion that Yes meant leaving the EU. Just like that. In its marketing, tweets, bumf sent out to friendly media. And Cameron tried to get his chums in Europe to agree the Scots wouldn't be let back in, with only mediocre success even before one started digging under the weasel wording, given the basic fact that the referendum was legal. I remember those very well indeed, but then I was in Scotland at the time, which helped. OLB is more correct than Ydoethur here, certainly in terms of the actual campaigning, and therefore in terms of the actual political impact of Brexit despite those promises/assurances.
The 1/6 still heating their homes as much as they want are a failure of energy and/or taxation policy. The amount you heat your home should be mitigated by the fact that heating your home costs you money.
I’ve read your post six times, and I still don’t understand what you are saying. Do you mean that there is something intrinsically wrong with the aspiration to have a pleasant, comfortable interior air quality and temperature in your abode? Seems like a fairly basic foundation stone of the essence of humanity, indeed the very essence of all animal and plant life on the planet: we are all seeking a pleasant, comfortable existence.
But punishing oneself, and others, for simply existing, seems to be in the zeitgeist.
The question wasn't "pleasant", it was "as much as you want".
Nearly everything you buy is a tradeoff between how much you want of something and how much you want to spend on it.
And that choice is up to individuals. It is none of your business.
I’m making the (reasonable) assumption that nobody is heating up their abode to the extent that it is unpleasantly hot.
You don't heat it so that it's unpleasantly hot, but most people, even quite rich people, don't heat as much as they would if the heating was free.
I've turned my thermostat down 2 degrees to 20 (18 overnight) - perfectly comfortable with a jumper on. As Felix mentioned upthread, some appear to believe there should be protection from the consequences of actions. In this case, the price mechanism is working.
18 was apparently "far too hot" for my better half when we turned it up the other day.
Appeal to news websites. Everyone who cares about Football already knows England lost, it doesn’t need to be the headline. It’s just doom porn. Put the cricket there instead. What’s going on Pakistan is news.
It was inevitable that they were out when they met a decent team.
From my point of view, they’re a decent team, but one that lacks that leadership edge on and off the pitch that marks out winners from runners up. I cite the English cricket team. You can see the difference there. You can get a long way in life through hard work, planning and discipline, but to be the very best takes something more.
Footballers are overpaid spoilt brats nowadays and none more so than England players. They are stupid enough to believe the hype from the English media which is stomach churning.
The media hype and romantic twaddle about ‘hurt’ definitely holds England back. Scotland suffers similarly if not worse. Alas. A Scotland England World Cup final is some way off.
"30 years of hurt" (now stretching to 60...) is a real sense of entitlement. Same too for "footballs coming home". The football world doesn't owe us a trophy, we have to be good enough to earn it.
I am sure it’s shows a mental weakness on my part, but I find those advocating leaving the U.K. criticising those that wanted to leave the EU (and vice versa) somewhat hypocritical.
The irony of course, as Mr Dancer noted, is that the SNP did want to leave the EU - just not in the way they ended up doing so.
The SNP wanted to leave the UK permanently, entailing a (hopefully) temporary exit from the EU by necessity not by design. To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off. I say this as someone who doesn't particularly like the SNP and has come to support Scottish independence lukewarmly and reluctantly.
That's still leaving the EU.
Also, I would point out they claimed that leaving the UK wouldn't mean leaving the EU, although Barroso noted this wasn't correct.
I've always found the SNP a bit dishonest, which I think is true of a lot of idealogues, eg Brexiteers, which is why I don't like them. But I think recently unionists have become just as dishonest, maybe more so. This claim that the SNP "wanted" to leave the EU is one example of that.
One implies the other.
If you say you want to drink 15 glasses of wine, that also involves 'wanting' to get drunk. Even if you'd rather not.
Like I said, if this is the standard of argument on the unionist side then it's fucked.
You put forward this argument:
To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off.
Which was a nonsensical argument. Because that wasn't inevitable. Most rock climbers do not have to saw their arms off. Only when things go disastrously wrong.
But it *was* inevitable that leaving the UK would mean Scotland leaving the EU. As in, drinking too much leads to getting drunk.
Your argument - forgive me - and your response is very typical unfortunately of the Nationalist agenda in Scotland (and Wales, which is why I've drifted away from it). You put forward a ludicrous argument, are shown why it's wrong, and then refuse to engage saying your right and reality is wrong because you don't want reality to be right.
Which, ironically, does show why Unionism in Scotland may be 'fucked' because their strongest argument is that becoming independent would be disastrous for Scotland. If independence supporters either don't care or are wilfully blind to that it's difficult to see how they won't keep hammering away until finally they're sent off to get out of everyone's hair.
At that point, as with Brexit, it will be realised they were lying and all the more sensible predictions of Remainers come true...
I'm not a nationalist, I'm a floating voter on this issue, someone who used to be a moderate unionist who has come to see the case for independence after Brexit but remains in two minds about it because of the obvious economic costs involved, in the short term at least. I'm giving you some honest advice - saying that the SNP wanted to leave the EU just isn't a convincing or meaningful argument that will sway anyone in the middle. It's just the kind of smug sophistry that will make unionists feel they are being terribly clever but to anyone who is in the centre on this issue it just sounds like bollocks. Feel free to disregard this advice of course if sounding clever is more important to you than convincing people.
You accuse someone else of smug sophistry?
Good grief.
Edit - the SNP put forward a prospectus that would have involved leaving the EU. That is a fact. They lied and said it wouldn't. That is also a fact. They may have been able to return to the EU later - in fact I think they probably would have done - but it would have had to be a medium term aspiration, as in probably 7-10 years. That is not a fact, but it's a reasonable interpretation of the situation and rules of the time.
It was this kind of nonsense that put me off them having as a (now former) Plaid supporter always rather admired them up to then.
Like I said, I've always found the SNP a bit dishonest, I think it goes with the nationalist territory. Before Brexit I saw independence as an unnecessary risk but now I can see big risks of staying in the UK. What are the English going to force on us next? There are plenty of good arguments against independence. But claiming that the SNP wanted Scotland to leave the EU when they hoped (probably unrealistically) to avoid that and at worst saw it as a temporary state just isn't one of them. Especially when Scotland voted to stay in the UK and was then dragged out of the EU - apparently permanently - anyway.
Quite right. I|td should also be remembered that in reality negotiations with the EU would hasve begun the morning after a Yes vote, telescoping the transition period considerably and possibly eliminating it by a provisional status in this situation (bearing in mind that Scots law was already EU compliant, for instance). Look what happened to Slovakia and Czechia.
The Better Together campaign very firmly highlighted their assertion that Yes meant leaving the EU. Just like that. In its marketing, tweets, bumf sent out to friendly media. And Cameron tried to get his chums in Europe to agree the Scots wouldn't be let back in, with only mediocre success even before one started digging under the weasel wording, given the basic fact that the referendum was legal. I remember those very well indeed, but then I was in Scotland at the time, which helped. OLB is more correct than Ydoethur here, certainly in terms of the actual campaigning, and therefore in terms of the actual political impact of Brexit despite those promises/assurances.
Cameron wouldn't have had to get them to agree. He or his successor could just have vetoed.
Barroso was not doing Cameron a favour, whatever you may think. He was stating the obvious.
And the negotiations would have been protracted whether Scotland liked it or not because they always are. The EU is a bit of a dinosaur. Small at the top and moves only slowly.
I confess the thought of leaving it on overnight never even occurred to me. I need to figure out the time so it turns on without my input in the morning though.
Appeal to news websites. Everyone who cares about Football already knows England lost, it doesn’t need to be the headline. It’s just doom porn. Put the cricket there instead. What’s going on Pakistan is news.
It was inevitable that they were out when they met a decent team.
From my point of view, they’re a decent team, but one that lacks that leadership edge on and off the pitch that marks out winners from runners up. I cite the English cricket team. You can see the difference there. You can get a long way in life through hard work, planning and discipline, but to be the very best takes something more.
Footballers are overpaid spoilt brats nowadays and none more so than England players. They are stupid enough to believe the hype from the English media which is stomach churning.
The media hype and romantic twaddle about ‘hurt’ definitely holds England back. Scotland suffers similarly if not worse. Alas. A Scotland England World Cup final is some way off.
"30 years of hurt" (now stretching to 60...) is a real sense of entitlement. Same too for "footballs coming home". The football world doesn't owe us a trophy, we have to be good enough to earn it.
I find it astonishing that anyone asserts that Scotland suffers similarly. The Scots gave up about 4 decades ago and now just enjoy the fun as best they can.
I am heating only one room and that is set to a maximum of 17C at day and I turn it off altogether at night. I do have an electric blanket which is great. In the evenings I wear several layers and wrap a blanket around me. Whenever I boil a kettle I fill a flask with any residual hot water to re-use later.
My whole habits have altered and I am being extremely frugal. I now shop at Lidl and make things go further. I walk there and have sold my car and now only use public transport, but walk everywhere I can.
The CoL crisis is scarring a generation.
Sincere sympathies - but this doesn’t quite accord with several other things you’ve told us
Weren’t you living in a comfortable detached house in the Home Counties? Now you’re suddenly impoverished and heating only one room and you save heated water?!
I don’t believe it. Sorry
Maybe, maybe not, but you are perhaps a little *bold* to go challenging other posters' purported life stories!
True. And I apologise to @Heathener if she is giving us the facts. But I find the claim she is “saving boiled water for later” quite hard to accept
Because it doesn’t make sense. ChatGPT tells me it costs between 1 and 3 pence to boil a kettle. No one in the UK is so poor they have to do strange things to save two pence. Unless they are mad
Nor me, having seen the benefits people get it should not be impossible to survive, may not be rich but given rent paid, council tax reduced and a fair amount of money plus several top ups it is more than enough to survive on and have some heat and food. It is as much as many people working are getting.
If you avoided the cost of two boiled kettles a day, that would mean you save 4p every 24 hours. Which is 28p a week
No one is so skint they urgently need to save 28p a week. So it’s either a fantasy, or something else is going on
If you live alone I don't really see the hardship in heating just one room anyway, provided it contains your TV and Internet. I hated heated bedrooms anyway.
I am heating only one room and that is set to a maximum of 17C at day and I turn it off altogether at night. I do have an electric blanket which is great. In the evenings I wear several layers and wrap a blanket around me. Whenever I boil a kettle I fill a flask with any residual hot water to re-use later.
My whole habits have altered and I am being extremely frugal. I now shop at Lidl and make things go further. I walk there and have sold my car and now only use public transport, but walk everywhere I can.
The CoL crisis is scarring a generation.
Sincere sympathies - but this doesn’t quite accord with several other things you’ve told us
Weren’t you living in a comfortable detached house in the Home Counties? Now you’re suddenly impoverished and heating only one room and you save heated water?!
I don’t believe it. Sorry
Maybe, maybe not, but you are perhaps a little *bold* to go challenging other posters' purported life stories!
True. And I apologise to @Heathener if she is giving us the facts. But I find the claim she is “saving boiled water for later” quite hard to accept
Because it doesn’t make sense. ChatGPT tells me it costs between 1 and 3 pence to boil a kettle. No one in the UK is so poor they have to do strange things to save two pence. Unless they are mad
Nor me, having seen the benefits people get it should not be impossible to survive, may not be rich but given rent paid, council tax reduced and a fair amount of money plus several top ups it is more than enough to survive on and have some heat and food. It is as much as many people working are getting.
If you avoided the cost of two boiled kettles a day, that would mean you save 4p every 24 hours. Which is 28p a week
No one is so skint they urgently need to save 28p a week. So it’s either a fantasy, or something else is going on
I may be misremembering but I thought you owned up to Heathener being one of yours? When they first joined I assumed they were a Russian chaos agent. If it’s not you being silly then I haven’t really changed my mind given the bizarre posting behaviour, compromised vpn and activity always starting as the sun rises over St Petersburg.
The 1/6 still heating their homes as much as they want are a failure of energy and/or taxation policy. The amount you heat your home should be mitigated by the fact that heating your home costs you money.
I’ve read your post six times, and I still don’t understand what you are saying. Do you mean that there is something intrinsically wrong with the aspiration to have a pleasant, comfortable interior air quality and temperature in your abode? Seems like a fairly basic foundation stone of the essence of humanity, indeed the very essence of all animal and plant life on the planet: we are all seeking a pleasant, comfortable existence.
But punishing oneself, and others, for simply existing, seems to be in the zeitgeist.
The context is that there is a policy designed to reduce gas and electricity consumption due the war with Russia. I think if 5 out of 6 people are acting on it then it is working pretty well.
The real problem here is not interior temperatures, it is the shocking state of building standards on the daft island.
In the Nordic countries we are acutely aware of the war nearby, and it is going to be between -8 and -40 in the coming days (it’s minus eight outside as I write this, and I’m cosy inside in a t-shirt). Almost none of us will be enduring interior temperatures under 18 degrees, for a wide range of reasons. But the elephant in the room is building standards. We construct incredible amounts of insulation into buildings, and triple-glazing is near universal. Not to mention that heating and hot water is built in to all rental contracts and bostadsrättsföreningar (I don’t know how to translate that*): you save zilch by turning down a radiator in most apartments.
Local authorities don’t cut it. It requires decisive central government cultural change. The Wimpy House mindset needs to be totally crushed. As does the idiocy of building on flood plains.
The problem with the Tories is that they are quick-buck chancers, spivs and mountebanks, eager to fill the pockets of their chums on the boards of construction companies.
The problem with Labour is that they seek a pain free existence. They are essentially cowards.
The latest crap from Wes Streeting shows that there is little point in voting Labour. They are marginally better than the kleptocrats in power at present, but only by the thinnest of margins.
I am heating only one room and that is set to a maximum of 17C at day and I turn it off altogether at night. I do have an electric blanket which is great. In the evenings I wear several layers and wrap a blanket around me. Whenever I boil a kettle I fill a flask with any residual hot water to re-use later.
My whole habits have altered and I am being extremely frugal. I now shop at Lidl and make things go further. I walk there and have sold my car and now only use public transport, but walk everywhere I can.
The CoL crisis is scarring a generation.
Sincere sympathies - but this doesn’t quite accord with several other things you’ve told us
Weren’t you living in a comfortable detached house in the Home Counties? Now you’re suddenly impoverished and heating only one room and you save heated water?!
I don’t believe it. Sorry
Maybe, maybe not, but you are perhaps a little *bold* to go challenging other posters' purported life stories!
True. And I apologise to @Heathener if she is giving us the facts. But I find the claim she is “saving boiled water for later” quite hard to accept
Because it doesn’t make sense. ChatGPT tells me it costs between 1 and 3 pence to boil a kettle. No one in the UK is so poor they have to do strange things to save two pence. Unless they are mad
Nor me, having seen the benefits people get it should not be impossible to survive, may not be rich but given rent paid, council tax reduced and a fair amount of money plus several top ups it is more than enough to survive on and have some heat and food. It is as much as many people working are getting.
If you avoided the cost of two boiled kettles a day, that would mean you save 4p every 24 hours. Which is 28p a week
No one is so skint they urgently need to save 28p a week. So it’s either a fantasy, or something else is going on
I may be misremembering but I thought you owned up to Heathener being one of yours? When they first joined I assumed they were a Russian chaos agent. If it’s not you being silly then I haven’t really changed my mind given the bizarre posting behaviour, compromised vpn and activity always starting as the sun rises over St Petersburg.
Not one of mine
If she’s a Russian bot she’s not very good. She never touches on Putin-ist talking points
Appeal to news websites. Everyone who cares about Football already knows England lost, it doesn’t need to be the headline. It’s just doom porn. Put the cricket there instead. What’s going on Pakistan is news.
It was inevitable that they were out when they met a decent team.
From my point of view, they’re a decent team, but one that lacks that leadership edge on and off the pitch that marks out winners from runners up. I cite the English cricket team. You can see the difference there. You can get a long way in life through hard work, planning and discipline, but to be the very best takes something more.
Footballers are overpaid spoilt brats nowadays and none more so than England players. They are stupid enough to believe the hype from the English media which is stomach churning.
The media hype and romantic twaddle about ‘hurt’ definitely holds England back. Scotland suffers similarly if not worse. Alas. A Scotland England World Cup final is some way off.
"30 years of hurt" (now stretching to 60...) is a real sense of entitlement. Same too for "footballs coming home". The football world doesn't owe us a trophy, we have to be good enough to earn it.
‘Coming home’ was fine. Euro 96 was in England. Apart from that, there’s something weird about the expectation and the romantic twaddle.
I heard from a colleague at UCLA who told me they have no idea what to do with essays at the end of the current term, where they’re getting hundreds per course and thousands per department, because they have no idea anymore what’s fake and what’s not.
...
There can’t be anything we take home. More stuff must be done orally, and what does that mean? It means school just became much more expensive, much more artisanal, much smaller and at the exact time that we’re trying to do the opposite. The consequences for higher education are devastating in terms of actually delivering a service anymore.
GPT disrupting education now, not just in the foreseeable future
His "make more stuff oral" fix works for a decade, max, before we all get Internet in the head implants, which work a treat if you can interface entirely by natural language.
True. And I apologise to @Heathener if she is giving us the facts. But I find the claim she is “saving boiled water for later” quite hard to accept
Because it doesn’t make sense. ChatGPT tells me it costs between 1 and 3 pence to boil a kettle. No one in the UK is so poor they have to do strange things to save two pence. Unless they are mad
...or misinformed. I suspect many people don't have a very clear idea of the costs of the various things they use electricity for. (Not helped by the media, who sometimes focus on small things like appliances on 'standby' and ignore more significant power drains.) So I can easily imagine people taking actions which seem like they're saving money without realizing that the amounts involved turn out to be very small.
I am sure it’s shows a mental weakness on my part, but I find those advocating leaving the U.K. criticising those that wanted to leave the EU (and vice versa) somewhat hypocritical.
The irony of course, as Mr Dancer noted, is that the SNP did want to leave the EU - just not in the way they ended up doing so.
The SNP wanted to leave the UK permanently, entailing a (hopefully) temporary exit from the EU by necessity not by design. To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off. I say this as someone who doesn't particularly like the SNP and has come to support Scottish independence lukewarmly and reluctantly.
That's still leaving the EU.
Also, I would point out they claimed that leaving the UK wouldn't mean leaving the EU, although Barroso noted this wasn't correct.
I've always found the SNP a bit dishonest, which I think is true of a lot of idealogues, eg Brexiteers, which is why I don't like them. But I think recently unionists have become just as dishonest, maybe more so. This claim that the SNP "wanted" to leave the EU is one example of that.
One implies the other.
If you say you want to drink 15 glasses of wine, that also involves 'wanting' to get drunk. Even if you'd rather not.
Like I said, if this is the standard of argument on the unionist side then it's fucked.
You put forward this argument:
To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off.
Which was a nonsensical argument. Because that wasn't inevitable. Most rock climbers do not have to saw their arms off. Only when things go disastrously wrong.
But it *was* inevitable that leaving the UK would mean Scotland leaving the EU. As in, drinking too much leads to getting drunk.
Your argument - forgive me - and your response is very typical unfortunately of the Nationalist agenda in Scotland (and Wales, which is why I've drifted away from it). You put forward a ludicrous argument, are shown why it's wrong, and then refuse to engage saying your right and reality is wrong because you don't want reality to be right.
Which, ironically, does show why Unionism in Scotland may be 'fucked' because their strongest argument is that becoming independent would be disastrous for Scotland. If independence supporters either don't care or are wilfully blind to that it's difficult to see how they won't keep hammering away until finally they're sent off to get out of everyone's hair.
At that point, as with Brexit, it will be realised they were lying and all the more sensible predictions of Remainers come true...
I'm not a nationalist, I'm a floating voter on this issue, someone who used to be a moderate unionist who has come to see the case for independence after Brexit but remains in two minds about it because of the obvious economic costs involved, in the short term at least. I'm giving you some honest advice - saying that the SNP wanted to leave the EU just isn't a convincing or meaningful argument that will sway anyone in the middle. It's just the kind of smug sophistry that will make unionists feel they are being terribly clever but to anyone who is in the centre on this issue it just sounds like bollocks. Feel free to disregard this advice of course if sounding clever is more important to you than convincing people.
You accuse someone else of smug sophistry?
Good grief.
Edit - the SNP put forward a prospectus that would have involved leaving the EU. That is a fact. They lied and said it wouldn't. That is also a fact. They may have been able to return to the EU later - in fact I think they probably would have done - but it would have had to be a medium term aspiration, as in probably 7-10 years. That is not a fact, but it's a reasonable interpretation of the situation and rules of the time.
It was this kind of nonsense that put me off them having as a (now former) Plaid supporter always rather admired them up to then.
Like I said, I've always found the SNP a bit dishonest, I think it goes with the nationalist territory. Before Brexit I saw independence as an unnecessary risk but now I can see big risks of staying in the UK. What are the English going to force on us next? There are plenty of good arguments against independence. But claiming that the SNP wanted Scotland to leave the EU when they hoped (probably unrealistically) to avoid that and at worst saw it as a temporary state just isn't one of them. Especially when Scotland voted to stay in the UK and was then dragged out of the EU - apparently permanently - anyway.
I will agree that one thing that did annoy me on this was the Remainer (sic) argument 'to stay in the EU vote to stay in the UK.' Because it was obvious there would at some point be a referendum on our membership and although I thought Remain would win I knew it wasn't a certainty. It would have been better to just focus on 'leaving the UK means leaving the EU.' Which was true.
But there is no way Salmond hoped to remain in the EU. He may be unsafe around women but stupid he is not. He knew that Scotland would have to leave the EU. He clearly thought that a price worth paying, as did his supporters apart from those who genuinely didn't grasp the system Article 49 required.* So I'm struggling to see what your point is.
*i don't have the polling to hand but if I remember correctly around a third of independence voters also voted Leave in 2016. So for some but not a majority it was presumably an added bonus.
I am sure that Scotland would have had to leave the EU. The question is what that would have entailed. You will recall that the UK negotiated a transition arrangement with the EU that kept the UK in the single market until a new permanent trade relationship had been negotiated. If the EU had been willing to negotiate that with a country trying to leave permanently then I think it's highly likely they'd have done something similar with a country that aspired to be a member. None of us know what might have happened. But for me the most plausible scenario is a two year transition while Scotland joined Efta followed after 5 to 10 years by EU membership. That is far more likely than the EU throwing Scotland out of the single market on day one.
PATIENTS with concerns about trans women being placed on female-only hospital wards are comparable to racists, a controversial NHS policy suggests. Health chiefs tonight said they were “reviewing” the guidance containing the hardline stance as a feminist think-tank branded it “offensive”.
The NHS Ayrshire and Arran policy, titled “Supporting Trans Service Users”, also told how female patients who complain about male-bodied people being placed on their ward may have to be “removed”.
In a real-life scenario set out in the document, it tells of a situation where a woman patient “explains she didn’t expect to be sharing the ward with a man and points to the bed opposite”. Nurses are told in the policy to “reiterate” to any female patient who raises such concerns “that the ward is indeed female only and that there are no men present”. It adds: “Ultimately it may be the complainant who is required to be removed.”
Appeal to news websites. Everyone who cares about Football already knows England lost, it doesn’t need to be the headline. It’s just doom porn. Put the cricket there instead. What’s going on Pakistan is news.
It was inevitable that they were out when they met a decent team.
From my point of view, they’re a decent team, but one that lacks that leadership edge on and off the pitch that marks out winners from runners up. I cite the English cricket team. You can see the difference there. You can get a long way in life through hard work, planning and discipline, but to be the very best takes something more.
Footballers are overpaid spoilt brats nowadays and none more so than England players. They are stupid enough to believe the hype from the English media which is stomach churning.
The media hype and romantic twaddle about ‘hurt’ definitely holds England back. Scotland suffers similarly if not worse. Alas. A Scotland England World Cup final is some way off.
"Hurt" of course is in there because it rhymes with shirt. I agree it sounds awful whiny.
No it doesn't its just bog standard sporting over emotion. Other places don't get histrionic about sporting failure?
We'll be on to complaints Three Lions is a triumphalist song next.
I heard from a colleague at UCLA who told me they have no idea what to do with essays at the end of the current term, where they’re getting hundreds per course and thousands per department, because they have no idea anymore what’s fake and what’s not.
...
There can’t be anything we take home. More stuff must be done orally, and what does that mean? It means school just became much more expensive, much more artisanal, much smaller and at the exact time that we’re trying to do the opposite. The consequences for higher education are devastating in terms of actually delivering a service anymore.
GPT disrupting education now, not just in the foreseeable future
His "make more stuff oral" fix works for a decade, max, before we all get Internet in the head implants, which work a treat if you can interface entirely by natural language.
More face to face discussion and socratic argument with a tutor? Sounds like a distinct improvement in HE, though an expensive one to deliver.
I heard from a colleague at UCLA who told me they have no idea what to do with essays at the end of the current term, where they’re getting hundreds per course and thousands per department, because they have no idea anymore what’s fake and what’s not.
...
There can’t be anything we take home. More stuff must be done orally, and what does that mean? It means school just became much more expensive, much more artisanal, much smaller and at the exact time that we’re trying to do the opposite. The consequences for higher education are devastating in terms of actually delivering a service anymore.
GPT disrupting education now, not just in the foreseeable future
His "make more stuff oral" fix works for a decade, max, before we all get Internet in the head implants, which work a treat if you can interface entirely by natural language.
It’s not that tricky. Hand written exams in person.
I am heating only one room and that is set to a maximum of 17C at day and I turn it off altogether at night. I do have an electric blanket which is great. In the evenings I wear several layers and wrap a blanket around me. Whenever I boil a kettle I fill a flask with any residual hot water to re-use later.
My whole habits have altered and I am being extremely frugal. I now shop at Lidl and make things go further. I walk there and have sold my car and now only use public transport, but walk everywhere I can.
The CoL crisis is scarring a generation.
Sincere sympathies - but this doesn’t quite accord with several other things you’ve told us
Weren’t you living in a comfortable detached house in the Home Counties? Now you’re suddenly impoverished and heating only one room and you save heated water?!
I don’t believe it. Sorry
Maybe, maybe not, but you are perhaps a little *bold* to go challenging other posters' purported life stories!
True. And I apologise to @Heathener if she is giving us the facts. But I find the claim she is “saving boiled water for later” quite hard to accept
Because it doesn’t make sense. ChatGPT tells me it costs between 1 and 3 pence to boil a kettle. No one in the UK is so poor they have to do strange things to save two pence. Unless they are mad
Nor me, having seen the benefits people get it should not be impossible to survive, may not be rich but given rent paid, council tax reduced and a fair amount of money plus several top ups it is more than enough to survive on and have some heat and food. It is as much as many people working are getting.
If you avoided the cost of two boiled kettles a day, that would mean you save 4p every 24 hours. Which is 28p a week
No one is so skint they urgently need to save 28p a week. So it’s either a fantasy, or something else is going on
If you live alone I don't really see the hardship in heating just one room anyway, provided it contains your TV and Internet. I hated heated bedrooms anyway.
Rooms heat up pretty quickly, and surely most radiators can be individually adjusted, so minimising use is not difficult.
Appeal to news websites. Everyone who cares about Football already knows England lost, it doesn’t need to be the headline. It’s just doom porn. Put the cricket there instead. What’s going on Pakistan is news.
It was inevitable that they were out when they met a decent team.
From my point of view, they’re a decent team, but one that lacks that leadership edge on and off the pitch that marks out winners from runners up. I cite the English cricket team. You can see the difference there. You can get a long way in life through hard work, planning and discipline, but to be the very best takes something more.
Footballers are overpaid spoilt brats nowadays and none more so than England players. They are stupid enough to believe the hype from the English media which is stomach churning.
The media hype and romantic twaddle about ‘hurt’ definitely holds England back. Scotland suffers similarly if not worse. Alas. A Scotland England World Cup final is some way off.
"30 years of hurt" (now stretching to 60...) is a real sense of entitlement. Same too for "footballs coming home". The football world doesn't owe us a trophy, we have to be good enough to earn it.
Football's Coming Home is not about entitlement, it is about near misses, and how despite 56 years of hurt (or 20 weeks of hurt for the women's game) we still believe. Take last night: one badly-struck penalty and/or some terrible refereeing decisions meant yet another "oh so near".
I am heating only one room and that is set to a maximum of 17C at day and I turn it off altogether at night. I do have an electric blanket which is great. In the evenings I wear several layers and wrap a blanket around me. Whenever I boil a kettle I fill a flask with any residual hot water to re-use later.
My whole habits have altered and I am being extremely frugal. I now shop at Lidl and make things go further. I walk there and have sold my car and now only use public transport, but walk everywhere I can.
The CoL crisis is scarring a generation.
Sincere sympathies - but this doesn’t quite accord with several other things you’ve told us
Weren’t you living in a comfortable detached house in the Home Counties? Now you’re suddenly impoverished and heating only one room and you save heated water?!
I don’t believe it. Sorry
Maybe, maybe not, but you are perhaps a little *bold* to go challenging other posters' purported life stories!
True. And I apologise to @Heathener if she is giving us the facts. But I find the claim she is “saving boiled water for later” quite hard to accept
Because it doesn’t make sense. ChatGPT tells me it costs between 1 and 3 pence to boil a kettle. No one in the UK is so poor they have to do strange things to save two pence. Unless they are mad
Nor me, having seen the benefits people get it should not be impossible to survive, may not be rich but given rent paid, council tax reduced and a fair amount of money plus several top ups it is more than enough to survive on and have some heat and food. It is as much as many people working are getting.
If you avoided the cost of two boiled kettles a day, that would mean you save 4p every 24 hours. Which is 28p a week
No one is so skint they urgently need to save 28p a week. So it’s either a fantasy, or something else is going on
I may be misremembering but I thought you owned up to Heathener being one of yours? When they first joined I assumed they were a Russian chaos agent. If it’s not you being silly then I haven’t really changed my mind given the bizarre posting behaviour, compromised vpn and activity always starting as the sun rises over St Petersburg.
Not one of mine
If she’s a Russian bot she’s not very good. She never touches on Putin-ist talking points
But yes, her persona doesn’t add up
I'm calling it. moonshine is one of yours, Leon, and this is masterful distraction tactics. 9 years in the making, but still...
I am heating only one room and that is set to a maximum of 17C at day and I turn it off altogether at night. I do have an electric blanket which is great. In the evenings I wear several layers and wrap a blanket around me. Whenever I boil a kettle I fill a flask with any residual hot water to re-use later.
My whole habits have altered and I am being extremely frugal. I now shop at Lidl and make things go further. I walk there and have sold my car and now only use public transport, but walk everywhere I can.
The CoL crisis is scarring a generation.
Sincere sympathies - but this doesn’t quite accord with several other things you’ve told us
Weren’t you living in a comfortable detached house in the Home Counties? Now you’re suddenly impoverished and heating only one room and you save heated water?!
I don’t believe it. Sorry
Maybe, maybe not, but you are perhaps a little *bold* to go challenging other posters' purported life stories!
True. And I apologise to @Heathener if she is giving us the facts. But I find the claim she is “saving boiled water for later” quite hard to accept
Because it doesn’t make sense. ChatGPT tells me it costs between 1 and 3 pence to boil a kettle. No one in the UK is so poor they have to do strange things to save two pence. Unless they are mad
Nor me, having seen the benefits people get it should not be impossible to survive, may not be rich but given rent paid, council tax reduced and a fair amount of money plus several top ups it is more than enough to survive on and have some heat and food. It is as much as many people working are getting.
If you avoided the cost of two boiled kettles a day, that would mean you save 4p every 24 hours. Which is 28p a week
No one is so skint they urgently need to save 28p a week. So it’s either a fantasy, or something else is going on
If you live alone I don't really see the hardship in heating just one room anyway, provided it contains your TV and Internet. I hated heated bedrooms anyway.
Rooms heat up pretty quickly, and surely most radiators can be individually adjusted, so minimising use is not difficult.
Still needs to ensure the house is sufficiently warm in a cold snap to prevent pipes freezing. Adjustable heating settings on radiatiors can do that. Better that than not heating a room full stop.
I am heating only one room and that is set to a maximum of 17C at day and I turn it off altogether at night. I do have an electric blanket which is great. In the evenings I wear several layers and wrap a blanket around me. Whenever I boil a kettle I fill a flask with any residual hot water to re-use later.
My whole habits have altered and I am being extremely frugal. I now shop at Lidl and make things go further. I walk there and have sold my car and now only use public transport, but walk everywhere I can.
The CoL crisis is scarring a generation.
Sincere sympathies - but this doesn’t quite accord with several other things you’ve told us
Weren’t you living in a comfortable detached house in the Home Counties? Now you’re suddenly impoverished and heating only one room and you save heated water?!
I don’t believe it. Sorry
Maybe, maybe not, but you are perhaps a little *bold* to go challenging other posters' purported life stories!
True. And I apologise to @Heathener if she is giving us the facts. But I find the claim she is “saving boiled water for later” quite hard to accept
Because it doesn’t make sense. ChatGPT tells me it costs between 1 and 3 pence to boil a kettle. No one in the UK is so poor they have to do strange things to save two pence. Unless they are mad
Nor me, having seen the benefits people get it should not be impossible to survive, may not be rich but given rent paid, council tax reduced and a fair amount of money plus several top ups it is more than enough to survive on and have some heat and food. It is as much as many people working are getting.
If you avoided the cost of two boiled kettles a day, that would mean you save 4p every 24 hours. Which is 28p a week
No one is so skint they urgently need to save 28p a week. So it’s either a fantasy, or something else is going on
If you live alone I don't really see the hardship in heating just one room anyway, provided it contains your TV and Internet. I hated heated bedrooms anyway.
The problem is if the place gets damp, and then mouldy, that can be extremely unhealthy
With a sick son, I thought screw it and turned up the heating. It’s -5 outside.
I have a sick daughter too.
Hope your son gets well soon mate.
Hope your daughter is a bit better this morning. Any luck finding a GP?
Nope. She's mainly clinging to me like a limpet.
Sorry to hear this. I haven't any practical advice to offer but I do hope she improves soon.
After my NHS experience with my latest broken wrist I am going to get Mrs DA to drive me to CHU Rennes via Eurotunnel should I become unexpectedly and seriously ill.
NHS is really knackered, my brother had a hernia about 6 months ago , told there was a waiting list. He could hardly walk more than 5 yards and constant pain. I told him to go private but he was reluctant to jump the queue as he saw it. Eventually he saw sense and was fixed in 2 weeks. He got his follow up letter from NHS last week to tell him waiting list was at least 3 years now.
I wouldn't believe that 3 year figure. Waiting lists are such a mess that no one knows. There are a very large number of non-urgent referrals that are yet to be seen, often over a years worth in some specialities, and no one knows what the conversion rate to surgery or other treatment will be.
Waiting lists are not up do date with a real need for data cleansing as a substantial number on lists are no longer wanting surgery, because done by other providers or no longer well enough. Your brother is an example of this.
We prioritise urgent stuff and often get appointments out for a few weeks when time critical, but this has a number of effects:
1) As people are constantly entering the queue near the front, the tail of the queue hardly moves.
2) Patients pitch up in ED as that is the only place where they will actually be seen, and often because the worsening of their symptoms demands it. A bowel surgeon told me the other day that 50% of their cancer cases present with bowel obstruction via ED.
3) Often conditions become more complex to treat because of delayed presentation. @OldKingCole seems to have been a recent example of this with his slow recovery.
4) GP appointment slots are taken up by people who they have already referred, either to manage symptoms or to push for priority. A GP friend told me that this is now about a third of his slots, and very little he can do for them.
The problem ultimately is one of lack of capacity log jamming the system, not helped by multiple vacancies in NHS, and the failure of social care. We are running on empty and can only treat urgent stuff that we know about. Anything requiring an elective hospital bed or a general anaesthetic will be waiting a long time.
Is what you're describing still a national health service?
To me it sounds like a national emergency service... with elective healthcare privatised or wait until you get seriously sick.
From a health economics perspective this is seriously bad. It's going to push up cost per patient enormously.
I heard from a colleague at UCLA who told me they have no idea what to do with essays at the end of the current term, where they’re getting hundreds per course and thousands per department, because they have no idea anymore what’s fake and what’s not.
...
There can’t be anything we take home. More stuff must be done orally, and what does that mean? It means school just became much more expensive, much more artisanal, much smaller and at the exact time that we’re trying to do the opposite. The consequences for higher education are devastating in terms of actually delivering a service anymore.
GPT disrupting education now, not just in the foreseeable future
His "make more stuff oral" fix works for a decade, max, before we all get Internet in the head implants, which work a treat if you can interface entirely by natural language.
It’s not that tricky. Hand written exams in person.
Head implants?
Faraday cage possibly, but GPT currently works offline anyway.
I am sure it’s shows a mental weakness on my part, but I find those advocating leaving the U.K. criticising those that wanted to leave the EU (and vice versa) somewhat hypocritical.
The irony of course, as Mr Dancer noted, is that the SNP did want to leave the EU - just not in the way they ended up doing so.
The SNP wanted to leave the UK permanently, entailing a (hopefully) temporary exit from the EU by necessity not by design. To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off. I say this as someone who doesn't particularly like the SNP and has come to support Scottish independence lukewarmly and reluctantly.
That's still leaving the EU.
Also, I would point out they claimed that leaving the UK wouldn't mean leaving the EU, although Barroso noted this wasn't correct.
I've always found the SNP a bit dishonest, which I think is true of a lot of idealogues, eg Brexiteers, which is why I don't like them. But I think recently unionists have become just as dishonest, maybe more so. This claim that the SNP "wanted" to leave the EU is one example of that.
One implies the other.
If you say you want to drink 15 glasses of wine, that also involves 'wanting' to get drunk. Even if you'd rather not.
Like I said, if this is the standard of argument on the unionist side then it's fucked.
You put forward this argument:
To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off.
Which was a nonsensical argument. Because that wasn't inevitable. Most rock climbers do not have to saw their arms off. Only when things go disastrously wrong.
But it *was* inevitable that leaving the UK would mean Scotland leaving the EU. As in, drinking too much leads to getting drunk.
Your argument - forgive me - and your response is very typical unfortunately of the Nationalist agenda in Scotland (and Wales, which is why I've drifted away from it). You put forward a ludicrous argument, are shown why it's wrong, and then refuse to engage saying your right and reality is wrong because you don't want reality to be right.
Which, ironically, does show why Unionism in Scotland may be 'fucked' because their strongest argument is that becoming independent would be disastrous for Scotland. If independence supporters either don't care or are wilfully blind to that it's difficult to see how they won't keep hammering away until finally they're sent off to get out of everyone's hair.
At that point, as with Brexit, it will be realised they were lying and all the more sensible predictions of Remainers come true...
I'm not a nationalist, I'm a floating voter on this issue, someone who used to be a moderate unionist who has come to see the case for independence after Brexit but remains in two minds about it because of the obvious economic costs involved, in the short term at least. I'm giving you some honest advice - saying that the SNP wanted to leave the EU just isn't a convincing or meaningful argument that will sway anyone in the middle. It's just the kind of smug sophistry that will make unionists feel they are being terribly clever but to anyone who is in the centre on this issue it just sounds like bollocks. Feel free to disregard this advice of course if sounding clever is more important to you than convincing people.
You accuse someone else of smug sophistry?
Good grief.
Edit - the SNP put forward a prospectus that would have involved leaving the EU. That is a fact. They lied and said it wouldn't. That is also a fact. They may have been able to return to the EU later - in fact I think they probably would have done - but it would have had to be a medium term aspiration, as in probably 7-10 years. That is not a fact, but it's a reasonable interpretation of the situation and rules of the time.
It was this kind of nonsense that put me off them having as a (now former) Plaid supporter always rather admired them up to then.
Like I said, I've always found the SNP a bit dishonest, I think it goes with the nationalist territory. Before Brexit I saw independence as an unnecessary risk but now I can see big risks of staying in the UK. What are the English going to force on us next? There are plenty of good arguments against independence. But claiming that the SNP wanted Scotland to leave the EU when they hoped (probably unrealistically) to avoid that and at worst saw it as a temporary state just isn't one of them. Especially when Scotland voted to stay in the UK and was then dragged out of the EU - apparently permanently - anyway.
Quite right. I|td should also be remembered that in reality negotiations with the EU would hasve begun the morning after a Yes vote, telescoping the transition period considerably and possibly eliminating it by a provisional status in this situation (bearing in mind that Scots law was already EU compliant, for instance). Look what happened to Slovakia and Czechia.
The Better Together campaign very firmly highlighted their assertion that Yes meant leaving the EU. Just like that. In its marketing, tweets, bumf sent out to friendly media. And Cameron tried to get his chums in Europe to agree the Scots wouldn't be let back in, with only mediocre success even before one started digging under the weasel wording, given the basic fact that the referendum was legal. I remember those very well indeed, but then I was in Scotland at the time, which helped. OLB is more correct than Ydoethur here, certainly in terms of the actual campaigning, and therefore in terms of the actual political impact of Brexit despite those promises/assurances.
If the SNP was so pro "staying in the EU" why did they spend less campaigning to do so than they did in a single by election?
Appeal to news websites. Everyone who cares about Football already knows England lost, it doesn’t need to be the headline. It’s just doom porn. Put the cricket there instead. What’s going on Pakistan is news.
It was inevitable that they were out when they met a decent team.
From my point of view, they’re a decent team, but one that lacks that leadership edge on and off the pitch that marks out winners from runners up. I cite the English cricket team. You can see the difference there. You can get a long way in life through hard work, planning and discipline, but to be the very best takes something more.
Footballers are overpaid spoilt brats nowadays and none more so than England players. They are stupid enough to believe the hype from the English media which is stomach churning.
The media hype and romantic twaddle about ‘hurt’ definitely holds England back. Scotland suffers similarly if not worse. Alas. A Scotland England World Cup final is some way off.
"30 years of hurt" (now stretching to 60...) is a real sense of entitlement. Same too for "footballs coming home". The football world doesn't owe us a trophy, we have to be good enough to earn it.
Football's Coming Home is not about entitlement, it is about near misses, and how despite 56 years of hurt (or 20 weeks of hurt for the women's game) we still believe. Take last night: one badly-struck penalty and/or some terrible refereeing decisions meant yet another "oh so near".
I'm amazed a proven proper footy fan like Foxy would make such a bullcrap argument about the song and its core refrain, completely misinterpreting its meaning. It's not like it's not obvious from the lyrics.
I guess 'I'll be watching you' is also a charming love song.
I am heating only one room and that is set to a maximum of 17C at day and I turn it off altogether at night. I do have an electric blanket which is great. In the evenings I wear several layers and wrap a blanket around me. Whenever I boil a kettle I fill a flask with any residual hot water to re-use later.
My whole habits have altered and I am being extremely frugal. I now shop at Lidl and make things go further. I walk there and have sold my car and now only use public transport, but walk everywhere I can.
The CoL crisis is scarring a generation.
Sincere sympathies - but this doesn’t quite accord with several other things you’ve told us
Weren’t you living in a comfortable detached house in the Home Counties? Now you’re suddenly impoverished and heating only one room and you save heated water?!
I don’t believe it. Sorry
Maybe, maybe not, but you are perhaps a little *bold* to go challenging other posters' purported life stories!
True. And I apologise to @Heathener if she is giving us the facts. But I find the claim she is “saving boiled water for later” quite hard to accept
Because it doesn’t make sense. ChatGPT tells me it costs between 1 and 3 pence to boil a kettle. No one in the UK is so poor they have to do strange things to save two pence. Unless they are mad
Nor me, having seen the benefits people get it should not be impossible to survive, may not be rich but given rent paid, council tax reduced and a fair amount of money plus several top ups it is more than enough to survive on and have some heat and food. It is as much as many people working are getting.
If you avoided the cost of two boiled kettles a day, that would mean you save 4p every 24 hours. Which is 28p a week
No one is so skint they urgently need to save 28p a week. So it’s either a fantasy, or something else is going on
I may be misremembering but I thought you owned up to Heathener being one of yours? When they first joined I assumed they were a Russian chaos agent. If it’s not you being silly then I haven’t really changed my mind given the bizarre posting behaviour, compromised vpn and activity always starting as the sun rises over St Petersburg.
Not one of mine
If she’s a Russian bot she’s not very good. She never touches on Putin-ist talking points
But yes, her persona doesn’t add up
Maybe but I have no doubt Heathener is a genuine person. Not a Russian bot. Thanks to her sage advice I backed the Lib Dems to take Woking in the council elections. She is local to the area.
There is certainly something odd about the story that she cannot afford to heat her house but can afford to,winter in Asia. But we all lead different lives.
Appeal to news websites. Everyone who cares about Football already knows England lost, it doesn’t need to be the headline. It’s just doom porn. Put the cricket there instead. What’s going on Pakistan is news.
It was inevitable that they were out when they met a decent team.
From my point of view, they’re a decent team, but one that lacks that leadership edge on and off the pitch that marks out winners from runners up. I cite the English cricket team. You can see the difference there. You can get a long way in life through hard work, planning and discipline, but to be the very best takes something more.
Footballers are overpaid spoilt brats nowadays and none more so than England players. They are stupid enough to believe the hype from the English media which is stomach churning.
The media hype and romantic twaddle about ‘hurt’ definitely holds England back. Scotland suffers similarly if not worse. Alas. A Scotland England World Cup final is some way off.
"Hurt" of course is in there because it rhymes with shirt. I agree it sounds awful whiny.
No it doesn't its just bog standard sporting over emotion. Other places don't get histrionic about sporting failure?
We'll be on to complaints Three Lions is a triumphalist song next.
England a bit unlucky to get knocked out yesterday.
If only we hadn't left the EU, Musiala would be playing for England rather than Germany, and we'd have surely beaten France with Musiala on the pitch. Blame Brexit!
Appeal to news websites. Everyone who cares about Football already knows England lost, it doesn’t need to be the headline. It’s just doom porn. Put the cricket there instead. What’s going on Pakistan is news.
It was inevitable that they were out when they met a decent team.
From my point of view, they’re a decent team, but one that lacks that leadership edge on and off the pitch that marks out winners from runners up. I cite the English cricket team. You can see the difference there. You can get a long way in life through hard work, planning and discipline, but to be the very best takes something more.
Footballers are overpaid spoilt brats nowadays and none more so than England players. They are stupid enough to believe the hype from the English media which is stomach churning.
The media hype and romantic twaddle about ‘hurt’ definitely holds England back. Scotland suffers similarly if not worse. Alas. A Scotland England World Cup final is some way off.
"30 years of hurt" (now stretching to 60...) is a real sense of entitlement. Same too for "footballs coming home". The football world doesn't owe us a trophy, we have to be good enough to earn it.
Football's Coming Home is not about entitlement, it is about near misses, and how despite 56 years of hurt (or 20 weeks of hurt for the women's game) we still believe. Take last night: one badly-struck penalty and/or some terrible refereeing decisions meant yet another "oh so near".
I'm amazed a proven proper footy fan like Foxy would make such a bullcrap argument about the song and its core refrain, completely misinterpreting its meaning. It's not like it's not obvious from the lyrics.
I guess 'I'll be watching you' is also a charming love song.
Maybe he’s a proper fan in the same sense the John Thompson Fast Show character was.
Soccer fans, even non soccer fans, do get the meaning of the song.
I am sure it’s shows a mental weakness on my part, but I find those advocating leaving the U.K. criticising those that wanted to leave the EU (and vice versa) somewhat hypocritical.
The irony of course, as Mr Dancer noted, is that the SNP did want to leave the EU - just not in the way they ended up doing so.
The SNP wanted to leave the UK permanently, entailing a (hopefully) temporary exit from the EU by necessity not by design. To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off. I say this as someone who doesn't particularly like the SNP and has come to support Scottish independence lukewarmly and reluctantly.
That's still leaving the EU.
Also, I would point out they claimed that leaving the UK wouldn't mean leaving the EU, although Barroso noted this wasn't correct.
I've always found the SNP a bit dishonest, which I think is true of a lot of idealogues, eg Brexiteers, which is why I don't like them. But I think recently unionists have become just as dishonest, maybe more so. This claim that the SNP "wanted" to leave the EU is one example of that.
One implies the other.
If you say you want to drink 15 glasses of wine, that also involves 'wanting' to get drunk. Even if you'd rather not.
Like I said, if this is the standard of argument on the unionist side then it's fucked.
You put forward this argument:
To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off.
Which was a nonsensical argument. Because that wasn't inevitable. Most rock climbers do not have to saw their arms off. Only when things go disastrously wrong.
But it *was* inevitable that leaving the UK would mean Scotland leaving the EU. As in, drinking too much leads to getting drunk.
Your argument - forgive me - and your response is very typical unfortunately of the Nationalist agenda in Scotland (and Wales, which is why I've drifted away from it). You put forward a ludicrous argument, are shown why it's wrong, and then refuse to engage saying your right and reality is wrong because you don't want reality to be right.
Which, ironically, does show why Unionism in Scotland may be 'fucked' because their strongest argument is that becoming independent would be disastrous for Scotland. If independence supporters either don't care or are wilfully blind to that it's difficult to see how they won't keep hammering away until finally they're sent off to get out of everyone's hair.
At that point, as with Brexit, it will be realised they were lying and all the more sensible predictions of Remainers come true...
I'm not a nationalist, I'm a floating voter on this issue, someone who used to be a moderate unionist who has come to see the case for independence after Brexit but remains in two minds about it because of the obvious economic costs involved, in the short term at least. I'm giving you some honest advice - saying that the SNP wanted to leave the EU just isn't a convincing or meaningful argument that will sway anyone in the middle. It's just the kind of smug sophistry that will make unionists feel they are being terribly clever but to anyone who is in the centre on this issue it just sounds like bollocks. Feel free to disregard this advice of course if sounding clever is more important to you than convincing people.
You accuse someone else of smug sophistry?
Good grief.
Edit - the SNP put forward a prospectus that would have involved leaving the EU. That is a fact. They lied and said it wouldn't. That is also a fact. They may have been able to return to the EU later - in fact I think they probably would have done - but it would have had to be a medium term aspiration, as in probably 7-10 years. That is not a fact, but it's a reasonable interpretation of the situation and rules of the time.
It was this kind of nonsense that put me off them having as a (now former) Plaid supporter always rather admired them up to then.
The EU let East Germany join seconds after being a communist state. You really think they'd have put up significant barriers to an independent Scotland joining?
Appeal to news websites. Everyone who cares about Football already knows England lost, it doesn’t need to be the headline. It’s just doom porn. Put the cricket there instead. What’s going on Pakistan is news.
It was inevitable that they were out when they met a decent team.
From my point of view, they’re a decent team, but one that lacks that leadership edge on and off the pitch that marks out winners from runners up. I cite the English cricket team. You can see the difference there. You can get a long way in life through hard work, planning and discipline, but to be the very best takes something more.
Footballers are overpaid spoilt brats nowadays and none more so than England players. They are stupid enough to believe the hype from the English media which is stomach churning.
The media hype and romantic twaddle about ‘hurt’ definitely holds England back. Scotland suffers similarly if not worse. Alas. A Scotland England World Cup final is some way off.
"30 years of hurt" (now stretching to 60...) is a real sense of entitlement. Same too for "footballs coming home". The football world doesn't owe us a trophy, we have to be good enough to earn it.
Football's Coming Home is not about entitlement, it is about near misses, and how despite 56 years of hurt (or 20 weeks of hurt for the women's game) we still believe. Take last night: one badly-struck penalty and/or some terrible refereeing decisions meant yet another "oh so near".
I'm amazed a proven proper footy fan like Foxy would make such a bullcrap argument about the song and its core refrain, completely misinterpreting its meaning. It's not like it's not obvious from the lyrics.
I guess 'I'll be watching you' is also a charming love song.
I heard from a colleague at UCLA who told me they have no idea what to do with essays at the end of the current term, where they’re getting hundreds per course and thousands per department, because they have no idea anymore what’s fake and what’s not.
...
There can’t be anything we take home. More stuff must be done orally, and what does that mean? It means school just became much more expensive, much more artisanal, much smaller and at the exact time that we’re trying to do the opposite. The consequences for higher education are devastating in terms of actually delivering a service anymore.
GPT disrupting education now, not just in the foreseeable future
His "make more stuff oral" fix works for a decade, max, before we all get Internet in the head implants, which work a treat if you can interface entirely by natural language.
It’s not that tricky. Hand written exams in person.
Head implants?
Faraday cage possibly, but GPT currently works offline anyway.
If they’ve gone to the trouble of head implants, then let ‘em cheat.
Appeal to news websites. Everyone who cares about Football already knows England lost, it doesn’t need to be the headline. It’s just doom porn. Put the cricket there instead. What’s going on Pakistan is news.
It was inevitable that they were out when they met a decent team.
From my point of view, they’re a decent team, but one that lacks that leadership edge on and off the pitch that marks out winners from runners up. I cite the English cricket team. You can see the difference there. You can get a long way in life through hard work, planning and discipline, but to be the very best takes something more.
Footballers are overpaid spoilt brats nowadays and none more so than England players. They are stupid enough to believe the hype from the English media which is stomach churning.
The media hype and romantic twaddle about ‘hurt’ definitely holds England back. Scotland suffers similarly if not worse. Alas. A Scotland England World Cup final is some way off.
"30 years of hurt" (now stretching to 60...) is a real sense of entitlement. Same too for "footballs coming home". The football world doesn't owe us a trophy, we have to be good enough to earn it.
I find it astonishing that anyone asserts that Scotland suffers similarly. The Scots gave up about 4 decades ago and now just enjoy the fun as best they can.
By cheering on England’s opponents.
Worth remembering Croatia has a smaller population than Scotland. It’s interesting that population doesn’t make all that much difference other than it tends to guarantee a few nations tend to always be quite good (though it didn’t stop Italy failing to qualify for the last two World Cups).
I had some chatGPT fun. For a laugh, I asked it for a recipe for Toad in the Hole with an Indian twist and it came up with something worth trying. To test it , I asked for a version of the recipe I could cook in 10mins. It couldn’t do that, quite understandably, but offered me another fusion recipe I could cook in 10 mins. Clever.
I am heating only one room and that is set to a maximum of 17C at day and I turn it off altogether at night. I do have an electric blanket which is great. In the evenings I wear several layers and wrap a blanket around me. Whenever I boil a kettle I fill a flask with any residual hot water to re-use later.
My whole habits have altered and I am being extremely frugal. I now shop at Lidl and make things go further. I walk there and have sold my car and now only use public transport, but walk everywhere I can.
The CoL crisis is scarring a generation.
Sincere sympathies - but this doesn’t quite accord with several other things you’ve told us
Weren’t you living in a comfortable detached house in the Home Counties? Now you’re suddenly impoverished and heating only one room and you save heated water?!
I don’t believe it. Sorry
Maybe, maybe not, but you are perhaps a little *bold* to go challenging other posters' purported life stories!
True. And I apologise to @Heathener if she is giving us the facts. But I find the claim she is “saving boiled water for later” quite hard to accept
Because it doesn’t make sense. ChatGPT tells me it costs between 1 and 3 pence to boil a kettle. No one in the UK is so poor they have to do strange things to save two pence. Unless they are mad
Nor me, having seen the benefits people get it should not be impossible to survive, may not be rich but given rent paid, council tax reduced and a fair amount of money plus several top ups it is more than enough to survive on and have some heat and food. It is as much as many people working are getting.
If you avoided the cost of two boiled kettles a day, that would mean you save 4p every 24 hours. Which is 28p a week
No one is so skint they urgently need to save 28p a week. So it’s either a fantasy, or something else is going on
I may be misremembering but I thought you owned up to Heathener being one of yours? When they first joined I assumed they were a Russian chaos agent. If it’s not you being silly then I haven’t really changed my mind given the bizarre posting behaviour, compromised vpn and activity always starting as the sun rises over St Petersburg.
Not one of mine
If she’s a Russian bot she’s not very good. She never touches on Putin-ist talking points
But yes, her persona doesn’t add up
Maybe but I have no doubt Heathener is a genuine person. Not a Russian bot. Thanks to her sage advice I backed the Lib Dems to take Woking in the council elections. She is local to the area.
There is certainly something odd about the story that she cannot afford to heat her house but can afford to,winter in Asia. But we all lead different lives.
Leaving aside individual PBers, there may be a general lack of knowledge about energy. I still hear people talk about turning the lights off when leaving a room.
I am heating only one room and that is set to a maximum of 17C at day and I turn it off altogether at night. I do have an electric blanket which is great. In the evenings I wear several layers and wrap a blanket around me. Whenever I boil a kettle I fill a flask with any residual hot water to re-use later.
My whole habits have altered and I am being extremely frugal. I now shop at Lidl and make things go further. I walk there and have sold my car and now only use public transport, but walk everywhere I can.
The CoL crisis is scarring a generation.
Sincere sympathies - but this doesn’t quite accord with several other things you’ve told us
Weren’t you living in a comfortable detached house in the Home Counties? Now you’re suddenly impoverished and heating only one room and you save heated water?!
I don’t believe it. Sorry
Maybe, maybe not, but you are perhaps a little *bold* to go challenging other posters' purported life stories!
True. And I apologise to @Heathener if she is giving us the facts. But I find the claim she is “saving boiled water for later” quite hard to accept
Because it doesn’t make sense. ChatGPT tells me it costs between 1 and 3 pence to boil a kettle. No one in the UK is so poor they have to do strange things to save two pence. Unless they are mad
Nor me, having seen the benefits people get it should not be impossible to survive, may not be rich but given rent paid, council tax reduced and a fair amount of money plus several top ups it is more than enough to survive on and have some heat and food. It is as much as many people working are getting.
If you avoided the cost of two boiled kettles a day, that would mean you save 4p every 24 hours. Which is 28p a week
No one is so skint they urgently need to save 28p a week. So it’s either a fantasy, or something else is going on
I may be misremembering but I thought you owned up to Heathener being one of yours? When they first joined I assumed they were a Russian chaos agent. If it’s not you being silly then I haven’t really changed my mind given the bizarre posting behaviour, compromised vpn and activity always starting as the sun rises over St Petersburg.
Not one of mine
If she’s a Russian bot she’s not very good. She never touches on Putin-ist talking points
But yes, her persona doesn’t add up
Maybe but I have no doubt Heathener is a genuine person. Not a Russian bot. Thanks to her sage advice I backed the Lib Dems to take Woking in the council elections. She is local to the area.
There is certainly something odd about the story that she cannot afford to heat her house but can afford to,winter in Asia. But we all lead different lives.
She also presents as both old (with children) and young ( banging on about oldies not understanding the yoof of the day). A contradiction.
I am heating only one room and that is set to a maximum of 17C at day and I turn it off altogether at night. I do have an electric blanket which is great. In the evenings I wear several layers and wrap a blanket around me. Whenever I boil a kettle I fill a flask with any residual hot water to re-use later.
My whole habits have altered and I am being extremely frugal. I now shop at Lidl and make things go further. I walk there and have sold my car and now only use public transport, but walk everywhere I can.
The CoL crisis is scarring a generation.
Sincere sympathies - but this doesn’t quite accord with several other things you’ve told us
Weren’t you living in a comfortable detached house in the Home Counties? Now you’re suddenly impoverished and heating only one room and you save heated water?!
I don’t believe it. Sorry
Maybe, maybe not, but you are perhaps a little *bold* to go challenging other posters' purported life stories!
True. And I apologise to @Heathener if she is giving us the facts. But I find the claim she is “saving boiled water for later” quite hard to accept
Because it doesn’t make sense. ChatGPT tells me it costs between 1 and 3 pence to boil a kettle. No one in the UK is so poor they have to do strange things to save two pence. Unless they are mad
Nor me, having seen the benefits people get it should not be impossible to survive, may not be rich but given rent paid, council tax reduced and a fair amount of money plus several top ups it is more than enough to survive on and have some heat and food. It is as much as many people working are getting.
If you avoided the cost of two boiled kettles a day, that would mean you save 4p every 24 hours. Which is 28p a week
No one is so skint they urgently need to save 28p a week. So it’s either a fantasy, or something else is going on
If you live alone I don't really see the hardship in heating just one room anyway, provided it contains your TV and Internet. I hated heated bedrooms anyway.
Rooms heat up pretty quickly, and surely most radiators can be individually adjusted, so minimising use is not difficult.
Still needs to ensure the house is sufficiently warm in a cold snap to prevent pipes freezing. Adjustable heating settings on radiatiors can do that. Better that than not heating a room full stop.
Complete and utter nonsense, I grew up in a one coal fire, ice on the inside of the windows, cottage in Lancashire and pipes never froze, let alone froze to bursting point, inside. That is a problem of houses left uninhabited all winter.
Comments
It would have to be a good local candidate opposed to Brexit and to Streetings NHS policy to even slightly tempt me.
One thing I am getting back from schools is that actually, the only way to get meaningful reform and get rid of most of the problems (e.g. the DfE and its corrupt acolytes) is for the system to very publicly implode.
It has already effectively collapsed, as in, statutory obligations and contracts are not being honoured because of funding shortages and a recruitment crisis, but so far the children and parents haven't noticed because of the efforts staff are making to keep things going.
This, even more than pay - because teachers are not actually that badly paid - is what is driving the strikes. It's also driving the wave of people leaving which is only going to get worse with the coming crunch in recruitment.
Is there any sign of something similar in the NHS?
Also, I would point out they claimed that leaving the UK wouldn't mean leaving the EU, although Barroso noted this wasn't correct.
I can see why the SNP might like a rerun though. They need the Tories in power.
The fact is the SNP saw leaving the EU (albeit temporarily) at the same time as leaving the UK as in Scotland's interest. The supreme irony is that if they had broken up the UK, the remainder would still be in the EU.
If you say you want to drink 15 glasses of wine, that also involves 'wanting' to get drunk. Even if you'd rather not.
Somebody with better physics than me can correct me if I'm wrong but IIUC with a normal reasonably efficient heat pump type thing, which is about the best you can get for electric-powered heating, changing the temperature by 1°C upwards will use about the same amount of power as changing it by 1°C downwards. So adding 18°C of heat is going to use way more power than removing 3°C.
Weren’t you living in a comfortable detached house in the Home Counties? Now you’re suddenly impoverished and heating only one room and you save heated water?!
I don’t believe it. Sorry
To say that that equates to wanting to leave the EU is like saying that the guy who went rock climbing and ended up having to saw his own arm off in order to get out alive wanted to saw his arm off.
Which was a nonsensical argument. Because that wasn't inevitable. Most rock climbers do not have to saw their arms off. Only when things go disastrously wrong.
But it *was* inevitable that leaving the UK would mean Scotland leaving the EU. As in, drinking too much leads to getting drunk.
Your argument - forgive me - and your response is very typical unfortunately of the Nationalist agenda in Scotland (and Wales, which is why I've drifted away from it). You put forward a ludicrous argument, are shown why it's wrong, and then refuse to engage saying you're right and reality is wrong because you don't want reality to be right.
Which, ironically, does show why Unionism in Scotland may be 'fucked' because their strongest argument is that becoming independent would be disastrous for Scotland. If independence supporters either don't care or are wilfully blind to that it's difficult to see how they won't keep hammering away until finally they're sent off to get out of everyone's hair.
At that point, as with Brexit, it will be realised they were lying and all the more sensible predictions of Remainers come true...
Whilst I think a vote to leave the UK was also a vote to leave EU - perhaps temporarily, perhaps not - it doesn’t matter now. What matters is that it is SNP policy to join the EU after independence from the UK. That means a hard border with England.
Good grief.
Edit - the SNP put forward a prospectus that would have involved leaving the EU. That is a fact. They lied and said it wouldn't. That is also a fact. They may have been able to return to the EU later - in fact I think they probably would have done - but it would have had to be a medium term aspiration, as in probably 7-10 years. That is not a fact, but it's a reasonable interpretation of the situation and rules of the time.
It was this kind of nonsense that put me off them having as a (now former) Plaid supporter always rather admired them up to then.
True. And I apologise to @Heathener if she is giving us the facts. But I find the claim she is “saving boiled water for later” quite hard to accept
Because it doesn’t make sense. ChatGPT tells me it costs between 1 and 3 pence to boil a kettle. No one in the UK is so poor they have to do strange things to save two pence. Unless they are mad
Which was clearly true. Just as Algeria and Greenland are no longer members after leaving France and Denmark respectively. He was not making any 'decision.'
Similarly, as was pointed out by Remainers in 2016, people voting to leave the EU are voting to leave. Not to cherry pick what suits them.
But I know what the rules were. As did Salmond and Sturgeon. As did Barroso. There was no mechanism for a 'fast track' deal and in any case one would have required the UK's co-operation which certainly wasn't a given. That's not what 'sensible people would have imagined' because it's manifestly wishful thinking and self-delusion. For a start, it would have required Scotland to create its own currency or informally adopt the Euro. Both of which the Leave (sic) campaign had ruled out.
The Scottish National Party as you never tire of telling us are not sensible people anyway.
Scottish independence entrenches hard Brexit terms in England further. No concessions to the SNP and border posts built the next day if they leave UK and rejoin the EU
There are plenty of good arguments against independence. But claiming that the SNP wanted Scotland to leave the EU when they hoped (probably unrealistically) to avoid that and at worst saw it as a temporary state just isn't one of them. Especially when Scotland voted to stay in the UK and was then dragged out of the EU - apparently permanently - anyway.
They started the chain with this comment: The SNP wanted to leave the UK permanently, entailing a (hopefully) temporary exit from the EU by necessity not by design. This is almost exactly what you've put in your edit ydoethur. I think you two are going down a rabbit hole because you're getting frustrated with each other, but you're basically agreeing about what the SNP wants.
I think OLB's original point, that the SNP had no desire to leave EU but couldn't see an alternative way back into the EU after UK voted to leave, is a good one, and leaves me, like OLB, sympathetic to their position even though I don't want independence to happen because I think it will shower more economic pain on us all. I think you arguing against it ydoethur is simple semantics (cf your drinking analogy - its no more valid than OLB's rock climbing one), and so his sophistry claim is valid (less so the smug, perhaps).
But there is no way Salmond hoped to remain in the EU. He may be unsafe around women but stupid he is not. He knew that Scotland would have to leave the EU. He clearly thought that a price worth paying, as did his supporters apart from those who genuinely didn't grasp the system Article 49 required.* So I'm struggling to see what your point is.
*i don't have the polling to hand but if I remember correctly around a third of independence voters also voted Leave in 2016. So for some but not a majority it was presumably an added bonus.
Waiting lists are not up do date with a real need for data cleansing as a substantial number on lists are no longer wanting surgery, because done by other providers or no longer well enough. Your brother is an example of this.
We prioritise urgent stuff and often get appointments out for a few weeks when time critical, but this has a number of effects:
1) As people are constantly entering the queue near the front, the tail of the queue hardly moves.
2) Patients pitch up in ED as that is the only place where they will actually be seen, and often because the worsening of their symptoms demands it. A bowel surgeon told me the other day that 50% of their cancer cases present with bowel obstruction via ED.
3) Often conditions become more complex to treat because of delayed presentation. @OldKingCole seems to have been a recent example of this with his slow recovery.
4) GP appointment slots are taken up by people who they have already referred, either to manage symptoms or to push for priority. A GP friend told me that this is now about a third of his slots, and very little he can do for them.
The problem ultimately is one of lack of capacity log jamming the system, not helped by multiple vacancies in NHS, and the failure of social care. We are running on empty and can only treat urgent stuff that we know about. Anything requiring an elective hospital bed or a general anaesthetic will be waiting a long time.
If you avoided the cost of two boiled kettles a day, that would mean you save 4p every 24 hours. Which is 28p a week
No one is so skint they urgently need to save 28p a week. So it’s either a fantasy, or something else is going on
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
Ultimately, for good or ill the SNP in 2014 put independence from the UK ahead of membership of the EU. The irony that they may end up losing both by their actions is not altogether amusing.
The Better Together campaign very firmly highlighted their assertion that Yes meant leaving the EU. Just like that. In its marketing, tweets, bumf sent out to friendly media. And Cameron tried to get his chums in Europe to agree the Scots wouldn't be let back in, with only mediocre success even before one started digging under the weasel wording, given the basic fact that the referendum was legal. I remember those very well indeed, but then I was in Scotland at the time, which helped. OLB is more correct than Ydoethur here, certainly in terms of the actual campaigning, and therefore in terms of the actual political impact of Brexit despite those promises/assurances.
Barroso was not doing Cameron a favour, whatever you may think. He was stating the obvious.
And the negotiations would have been protracted whether Scotland liked it or not because they always are. The EU is a bit of a dinosaur. Small at the top and moves only slowly.
Anyway, I have work to do. Have a good morning.
They cannot both be right. I'm with the strikers on this one, I don't think the government want this, they are being opportunistic once it happens.
If she’s a Russian bot she’s not very good. She never touches on Putin-ist talking points
But yes, her persona doesn’t add up
Anyway, enough of this nonsense for two years.
...
There can’t be anything we take home. More stuff must be done orally, and what does that mean? It means school just became much more expensive, much more artisanal, much smaller and at the exact time that we’re trying to do the opposite. The consequences for higher education are devastating in terms of actually delivering a service anymore.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/09/is-chatgpt-a-virus-that-has-been-released-into-the-wild/amp/?
GPT disrupting education now, not just in the foreseeable future
His "make more stuff oral" fix works for a decade, max, before we all get Internet in the head implants, which work a treat if you can interface entirely by natural language.
PATIENTS with concerns about trans women being placed on female-only hospital wards are comparable to racists, a controversial NHS policy suggests. Health chiefs tonight said they were “reviewing” the guidance containing the hardline stance as a feminist think-tank branded it “offensive”.
The NHS Ayrshire and Arran policy, titled “Supporting Trans Service Users”, also told how female patients who complain about male-bodied people being placed on their ward may have to be “removed”.
In a real-life scenario set out in the document, it tells of a situation where a woman patient “explains she didn’t expect to be sharing the ward with a man and points to the bed opposite”. Nurses are told in the policy to “reiterate” to any female patient who raises such concerns “that the ward is indeed female only and that there are no men present”. It adds: “Ultimately it may be the complainant who is required to be removed.”
https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/9904200/nhs-policy-trans-women-female-only-wards-comparable-racism/
We'll be on to complaints Three Lions is a triumphalist song next.
While not having to worry about the central heating.
To me it sounds like a national emergency service... with elective healthcare privatised or wait until you get seriously sick.
From a health economics perspective this is seriously bad. It's going to push up cost per patient enormously.
Faraday cage possibly, but GPT currently works offline anyway.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/14934241.snp-spent-less-eu-vote-fighting-by-election-glenrothes/
I guess 'I'll be watching you' is also a charming love song.
There is certainly something odd about the story that she cannot afford to heat her house but can afford to,winter in Asia. But we all lead different lives.
If only we hadn't left the EU, Musiala would be playing for England rather than Germany, and we'd have surely beaten France with Musiala on the pitch. Blame Brexit!
Soccer fans, even non soccer fans, do get the meaning of the song.
Worth remembering Croatia has a smaller population than Scotland. It’s interesting that population doesn’t make all that much difference other than it tends to guarantee a few nations tend to always be quite good (though it didn’t stop Italy failing to qualify for the last two World Cups).