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 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
The suggestion that no one in the UK is so poor that they have to do strange things to save two pence is contestable. While it is true that the UK has a relatively high standard of living compared to many other countries, there are still people in the UK who struggle with poverty and financial insecurity. For these individuals, even small amounts of money can make a significant difference in their ability to meet their basic needs. As a result, it is possible that some people in the UK may be so poor that they are willing to do strange things in order to save a small amount of money, such as two pence.
Furthermore, the suggestion that only mad people would do such things is not necessarily accurate. While it is true that some people who are experiencing poverty may have mental health issues, it is not fair to assume that all poor people are mad. Poverty can have many different causes and can affect people from all walks of life, regardless of their mental health status. In conclusion, the suggestion that no one in the UK is so poor that they have to do strange things to save two pence is contestable, and the assumption that only mad people would do such things is not necessarily accurate.
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.
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.
Dr Foxy is an avid football watcher I believe, club and nationally.
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?
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.
There is quite a bit of fear and misunderstanding. Someone I know was saying she is 'too scared' to turn the heating on for more than one hour a day. But they are going to freeze and probably the pipes etc are going to freeze as well. It's better to just turn the theromostat down.
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.
Dr Foxy is an avid football watcher I believe, club and nationally.
True. One day he posted in his pants after Leicester won the Premier League.
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 think a significant obstacle to England men achieving a major football trophy is that arrogant sense that we deserve it because of history. Brazil fell over for the same reason. The 3 lions song has become an emblem of that entitlement, whatever a fisking of the lyrics says.
We have great players in the world's most watched national league, but that is not enough. Indeed that is part of the problem. Foreign coaches are familiar with our players, tactics and weaknesses in a depth that just doesn't apply to teams like Morrocco and Croatia. Who knew that the Croat goalie was so good? or how the Morocco team play with a narrow back and midfield?
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?
?
East Germany never joined the EU
Last time I visited Rostock it was firmly 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.
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?
?
East Germany never joined the EU
That’s the obvious solution. Scotland joins another member state. The Republic of Ireland?
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.
The cost of a flight to Bangkok - where @Heathener might spend a warm Asian winter - is around £1100 at the moment
If @Heathener saves the cost of 2 boiled kettles every day for a year, that saves £14.56 a year. So she would only have to keep this up for seventy five years, and she’ll have saved enough money to fly to Bangkok. But then there’s the price of a hotel
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.
Not nonsense at all. Pipes freezing can be due to numerous factors such as the condition of the pipes, the volume of water and the age and condition of the pipes as well as where they are located and the insulation. Lagging them helps too.
Your old house is not representative of the U.K. housing stock.
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?
Which area of Scotland do you think voted to leave the EU?
True but the alternative reality where the UK narrowly voted to stay in the EU thanks entirely to Scotland would have been hilarious. The absolute scenes on here, can you even imagine? The SNP let us all down there.
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
The suggestion that no one in the UK is so poor that they have to do strange things to save two pence is contestable. While it is true that the UK has a relatively high standard of living compared to many other countries, there are still people in the UK who struggle with poverty and financial insecurity. For these individuals, even small amounts of money can make a significant difference in their ability to meet their basic needs. As a result, it is possible that some people in the UK may be so poor that they are willing to do strange things in order to save a small amount of money, such as two pence.
Furthermore, the suggestion that only mad people would do such things is not necessarily accurate. While it is true that some people who are experiencing poverty may have mental health issues, it is not fair to assume that all poor people are mad. Poverty can have many different causes and can affect people from all walks of life, regardless of their mental health status. In conclusion, the suggestion that no one in the UK is so poor that they have to do strange things to save two pence is contestable, and the assumption that only mad people would do such things is not necessarily accurate.
Please put down the GPT. Or make it funny or ridiculous
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.
The cost of a flight to Bangkok - where @Heathener might spend a warm Asian winter - is around £1100 at the moment
If @Heathener saves the cost of 2 boiled kettles every day for a year, that saves £14.56 a year. So she would only have to keep this up for seventy five years, and she’ll have saved enough money to fly to Bangkok. But then there’s the price of a hotel
Yes, it is somewhat contradictory. Maybe she has free flights through a loyalty scheme ?
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.
There is quite a bit of fear and misunderstanding. Someone I know was saying she is 'too scared' to turn the heating on for more than one hour a day. But they are going to freeze and probably the pipes etc are going to freeze as well. It's better to just turn the theromostat down.
Misunderstanding is on your part. Internal pipes are at utterly minimal risk of freezing in an inhabited UK house. My interior temp hasn't dropped below 10C this last week, and that's with a couple of nights I have been out and not had a fire or other heating for 36 hours. It's vacant houses you have to worry about, or turn off the stopcock.
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.
Dr Foxy is an avid football watcher I believe, club and nationally.
True. One day he posted in his pants after Leicester won the Premier League.
Quite a few Leicester fans mugged off the bookies that year too.
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.
Dr Foxy is an avid football watcher I believe, club and nationally.
Club certainly, but nationally only on telly. I have never been to an England game. I went with my boys to the 2018 World Cup, but to the other semi-final! That is the problem with booking tickets ahead of the tournament. I saw a cracking France Belgium game.
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.
Dr Foxy is an avid football watcher I believe, club and nationally.
True. One day he posted in his pants after Leicester won the Premier League.
Quite a few Leicester fans mugged off the bookies that year too.
I had £1 e/w at 3000/1. More on a CL and top 6 place at decent odds.
I was tipping Leicester to win on here at Christmas 2015, at about 20/1. We had been top for a month at that point, but people still wouldn't have it. @isam poo-pooed my tip.
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.
Not nonsense at all. Pipes freezing can be due to numerous factors such as the condition of the pipes, the volume of water and the age and condition of the pipes as well as where they are located and the insulation. Lagging them helps too.
Your old house is not representative of the U.K. housing stock.
It is complete balls. Pipework and tanks in lofts are at risk precisely because those are unheated spaces anyway, so fiddling with the radiators makes no odds. Otherwise it just does not happen.
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.
Dr Foxy is an avid football watcher I believe, club and nationally.
True. One day he posted in his pants after Leicester won the Premier League.
Quite a few Leicester fans mugged off the bookies that year too.
I had £1 e/w at 3000/1. More on a CL and top 6 place at decent odds.
I was tipping Leicester to win on here at Christmas 2015, at about 20/1. We had been top for a month at that point, but people still wouldn't have it. @isam poo-pooed my tip.
Good for you. Well done. I wasn’t here at the time but I’m surprised, given your knowledge of the team, you were poo-pooed on it (reminds me of a black adder quote) I’d have had a few quid on the back of it.
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.
Dr Foxy is an avid football watcher I believe, club and nationally.
Club certainly, but nationally only on telly. I have never been to an England game. I went with my boys to the 2018 World Cup, but to the other semi-final! That is the problem with booking tickets ahead of the tournament. I saw a cracking France Belgium game.
In '94 I was in the right place at the right time to just mosey along to the stadium and buy entrance to the Brazil-Russia match. Great fun to mingle with the Brazilian supporters who were on carnival setting. Less conveniently in '70 our son was born at half-time in the England-Brazil match.
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.
Spare time can also often be a drain on money, whereas posting here is cost-free (other than the psychological damage from reading some of Leon’s more ranty posts)
Just as an aside from all this, I have found that posting on here has been quite good in improving my written communication skills. I did it a lot during an extended break from work, and on returning to my career I find that has helped me with a lot of 'professional' correspondence. I thought at the time it was mindless procrastination. But actually I've found that my emails etc are now a lot more persuasive, so it was time well spent.
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?
?
East Germany never joined the EU
Last time I visited Rostock it was firmly in the EU.
?
Last time I visited Rostock it was in the federal republic. It has never been in East Germany and the EU at the same time.
I have no idea how difficult it would have been for an independent Scotland to join the EU (Spain having reasons to make it difficult for example), but it doesn't seem similar to the former DDR being absorbed into Germany.
It would be slightly similar to Northern Ireland becoming part of the EU by becoming part of a united Ireland. I've no idea if other member states would have a veto on that these days, but I'm guessing nobody would object?
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.
Not nonsense at all. Pipes freezing can be due to numerous factors such as the condition of the pipes, the volume of water and the age and condition of the pipes as well as where they are located and the insulation. Lagging them helps too.
Your old house is not representative of the U.K. housing stock.
It is complete balls. Pipework and tanks in lofts are at risk precisely because those are unheated spaces anyway, so fiddling with the radiators makes no odds. Otherwise it just does not happen.
Oh jog on you drunken old loon and your latest sock puppet. Only you could seek a confrontation on this. How inadequate is someone who has to keep coming back to a site they are regularly banned from. Not got the message ?
You’re also wrong. I’ve worked in this area in a past life and seen it first hand.
If asked I would say that our heating is not as hot* as I like or on for as long as I like but that is because I hate waste and am frugal expense-wise - but I always have been. I would have answered the same ten and twenty years ago. Nothing to do with energy prices (which are moderated now anyway due to gov assistance).
* also the word "hot" is leading. It assumes the correct temp in a house should be hot.
Calm yourselves. If we get a prolonged cold period over the Christmas holidays, then there will be a spate of burst pipes and flooded houses...but really only in the properties that were left empty for the Christmas break. Places like student houses and where people have gone away for a while. The pipes freeze, pop a dodgy joint, and once thawed, flood the gaff, or the next door neighbour or the flat downstairs. The Fire Service will spend the next few days after the thaw breaking into properties and turning stopcocks off. I've never been to a house with a burst pipe caused by freezing that was occupied.
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.
The cost of a flight to Bangkok - where @Heathener might spend a warm Asian winter - is around £1100 at the moment
If @Heathener saves the cost of 2 boiled kettles every day for a year, that saves £14.56 a year. So she would only have to keep this up for seventy five years, and she’ll have saved enough money to fly to Bangkok. But then there’s the price of a hotel
Yes, it is somewhat contradictory. Maybe she has free flights through a loyalty scheme ?
Either that or it's fictional. She says "I turn it off altogether at night" - who leaves their heating on at night?
Base editing: Revolutionary therapy clears girl's incurable cancer
... All other treatments for Alyssa's leukaemia had failed. ... The team at Great Ormond Street used a technology called base editing, which was invented only six years ago. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-63859184
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.
Especially when it was never invented in England but in Scotland and will not be home in the forseeable future.
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 don 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?
Which area of Scotland do you think voted to leave the EU?
Shocking that Remain only got 62% in Scotland. In Yoon world that sort of polling barely gives a country the right to reconsider membership of a ‘voluntary’ 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 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.
The cost of a flight to Bangkok - where @Heathener might spend a warm Asian winter - is around £1100 at the moment
If @Heathener saves the cost of 2 boiled kettles every day for a year, that saves £14.56 a year. So she would only have to keep this up for seventy five years, and she’ll have saved enough money to fly to Bangkok. But then there’s the price of a hotel
Yes, it is somewhat contradictory. Maybe she has free flights through a loyalty scheme ?
Either that or it's fictional. She says "I turn it off altogether at night" - who leaves their heating on at night?
Calm yourselves. If we get a prolonged cold period over the Christmas holidays, then there will be a spate of burst pipes and flooded houses...but really only in the properties that were left empty for the Christmas break. Places like student houses and where people have gone away for a while. The pipes freeze, pop a dodgy joint, and once thawed, flood the gaff, or the next door neighbour or the flat downstairs. The Fire Service will spend the next few days after the thaw breaking into properties and turning stopcocks off. I've never been to a house with a burst pipe caused by freezing that was occupied.
Base editing: Revolutionary therapy clears girl's incurable cancer
... All other treatments for Alyssa's leukaemia had failed. ... The team at Great Ormond Street used a technology called base editing, which was invented only six years ago. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-63859184
Almost as impressive as GPTchat.
That is brilliant. Hopefully it is as effective as it seems. A real game changer for a lot of diseases.
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.
Not nonsense at all. Pipes freezing can be due to numerous factors such as the condition of the pipes, the volume of water and the age and condition of the pipes as well as where they are located and the insulation. Lagging them helps too.
Your old house is not representative of the U.K. housing stock.
It is complete balls. Pipework and tanks in lofts are at risk precisely because those are unheated spaces anyway, so fiddling with the radiators makes no odds. Otherwise it just does not happen.
Oh jog on you drunken old loon and your latest sock puppet. Only you could seek a confrontation on this. How inadequate is someone who has to keep coming back to a site they are regularly banned from. Not got the message ?
You’re also wrong. I’ve worked in this area in a past life and seen it first hand.
I think you are confusing me with someone else?
There must be an element of deliberate self-harm in your persistent, low octane, gamma minus wrongness about everything. See twistedfirestopper, who really has "worked in this area."
Base editing: Revolutionary therapy clears girl's incurable cancer
... All other treatments for Alyssa's leukaemia had failed. ... The team at Great Ormond Street used a technology called base editing, which was invented only six years ago. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-63859184
Almost as impressive as GPTchat.
That is brilliant. Hopefully it is as effective as it seems. A real game changer for a lot of diseases.
Fantastic. Sadly too late for my brother who died of a leukaemia related disease this year but what hope for the future.
Calm yourselves. If we get a prolonged cold period over the Christmas holidays, then there will be a spate of burst pipes and flooded houses...but really only in the properties that were left empty for the Christmas break. Places like student houses and where people have gone away for a while. The pipes freeze, pop a dodgy joint, and once thawed, flood the gaff, or the next door neighbour or the flat downstairs. The Fire Service will spend the next few days after the thaw breaking into properties and turning stopcocks off. I've never been to a house with a burst pipe caused by freezing that was occupied.
That's exactly what happened in our house one Christmas. Went away for a week, foolishly turned the heating off, and came back to an indoor swimming pool.
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.
The cost of a flight to Bangkok - where @Heathener might spend a warm Asian winter - is around £1100 at the moment
If @Heathener saves the cost of 2 boiled kettles every day for a year, that saves £14.56 a year. So she would only have to keep this up for seventy five years, and she’ll have saved enough money to fly to Bangkok. But then there’s the price of a hotel
Yes, it is somewhat contradictory. Maybe she has free flights through a loyalty scheme ?
Either that or it's fictional. She says "I turn it off altogether at night" - who leaves their heating on at night?
We turn the thermostat down, but it will still fire up if it needs to.
Calm yourselves. If we get a prolonged cold period over the Christmas holidays, then there will be a spate of burst pipes and flooded houses...but really only in the properties that were left empty for the Christmas break. Places like student houses and where people have gone away for a while. The pipes freeze, pop a dodgy joint, and once thawed, flood the gaff, or the next door neighbour or the flat downstairs. The Fire Service will spend the next few days after the thaw breaking into properties and turning stopcocks off. I've never been to a house with a burst pipe caused by freezing that was occupied.
The consequences will be different in every case but it certainly does happen. It is an area however where it is probably better to defer to professional advice from a surveyor, rather than using PB.
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?
?
East Germany never joined the EU
Last time I visited Rostock it was firmly in the EU.
?
Last time I visited Rostock it was in the federal republic. It has never been in East Germany and the EU at the same time.
I have no idea how difficult it would have been for an independent Scotland to join the EU (Spain having reasons to make it difficult for example), but it doesn't seem similar to the former DDR being absorbed into Germany.
It would be slightly similar to Northern Ireland becoming part of the EU by becoming part of a united Ireland. I've no idea if other member states would have a veto on that these days, but I'm guessing nobody would object?
The point is the EU is quite happy to ignore it's own rules when it comes to maintaining/extending its territorial reach. I am less interested in the precise mechanisms used.
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.
Dr Foxy is an avid football watcher I believe, club and nationally.
True. One day he posted in his pants after Leicester won the Premier League.
Base editing: Revolutionary therapy clears girl's incurable cancer
... All other treatments for Alyssa's leukaemia had failed. ... The team at Great Ormond Street used a technology called base editing, which was invented only six years ago. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-63859184
Almost as impressive as GPTchat.
That is brilliant. Hopefully it is as effective as it seems. A real game changer for a lot of diseases.
Fantastic. Sadly too late for my brother who died of a leukaemia related disease this year but what hope for the future.
Ah sorry David. My FiL died of it a few years ago. It would be really wonderous to make it a thing of the past.
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?
?
East Germany never joined the EU
Last time I visited Rostock it was firmly in the EU.
?
Last time I visited Rostock it was in the federal republic. It has never been in East Germany and the EU at the same time.
I have no idea how difficult it would have been for an independent Scotland to join the EU (Spain having reasons to make it difficult for example), but it doesn't seem similar to the former DDR being absorbed into Germany.
It would be slightly similar to Northern Ireland becoming part of the EU by becoming part of a united Ireland. I've no idea if other member states would have a veto on that these days, but I'm guessing nobody would object?
The point is the EU is quite happy to ignore it's own rules when it comes to maintaining/extending its territorial reach. I am less interested in the precise mechanisms used.
There is a fundamental difference.
East Germany was absorbed by the Federal Republic. Every institution and law in the East was disbanded. The EU (not that it was even called the EU at the time) didn't get a say.
The accession of any country requires a treaty signed by every member state. The EU is literally a collection of treaties.
Calm yourselves. If we get a prolonged cold period over the Christmas holidays, then there will be a spate of burst pipes and flooded houses...but really only in the properties that were left empty for the Christmas break. Places like student houses and where people have gone away for a while. The pipes freeze, pop a dodgy joint, and once thawed, flood the gaff, or the next door neighbour or the flat downstairs. The Fire Service will spend the next few days after the thaw breaking into properties and turning stopcocks off. I've never been to a house with a burst pipe caused by freezing that was occupied.
The consequences will be different in every case but it certainly does happen. It is an area however where it is probably better to defer to professional advice from a surveyor, rather than using PB.
It is pretty simple physics. A pipe in a room will freeze iff a cup of water placed on a table in the same room, will freeze, when the ambient temperature reaches 0C. People may think they live in those conditions but not for very long, they don't.
We have lowered our thermostat setting by day and by night. Wearing jumpers and have put an extra bedspread on top of the duvet.
Its the naturists I feel sorry for.
Not changed any habits , never heat my bedroom in any event. Though I should start putting a jumper on I reckon. Homeless I feel sorry for, sleeping outdoors must be real tough.
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
The suggestion that no one in the UK is so poor that they have to do strange things to save two pence is contestable. While it is true that the UK has a relatively high standard of living compared to many other countries, there are still people in the UK who struggle with poverty and financial insecurity. For these individuals, even small amounts of money can make a significant difference in their ability to meet their basic needs. As a result, it is possible that some people in the UK may be so poor that they are willing to do strange things in order to save a small amount of money, such as two pence.
Furthermore, the suggestion that only mad people would do such things is not necessarily accurate. While it is true that some people who are experiencing poverty may have mental health issues, it is not fair to assume that all poor people are mad. Poverty can have many different causes and can affect people from all walks of life, regardless of their mental health status. In conclusion, the suggestion that no one in the UK is so poor that they have to do strange things to save two pence is contestable, and the assumption that only mad people would do such things is not necessarily accurate.
Please put down the GPT. Or make it funny or ridiculous
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
The suggestion that no one in the UK is so poor that they have to do strange things to save two pence is contestable. While it is true that the UK has a relatively high standard of living compared to many other countries, there are still people in the UK who struggle with poverty and financial insecurity. For these individuals, even small amounts of money can make a significant difference in their ability to meet their basic needs. As a result, it is possible that some people in the UK may be so poor that they are willing to do strange things in order to save a small amount of money, such as two pence.
Furthermore, the suggestion that only mad people would do such things is not necessarily accurate. While it is true that some people who are experiencing poverty may have mental health issues, it is not fair to assume that all poor people are mad. Poverty can have many different causes and can affect people from all walks of life, regardless of their mental health status. In conclusion, the suggestion that no one in the UK is so poor that they have to do strange things to save two pence is contestable, and the assumption that only mad people would do such things is not necessarily accurate.
Please put down the GPT. Or make it funny or ridiculous
Relatedly, here is a paper you might appreciate Leon: “Talking About Large Language Models”, Murray Shanahan, Imperial College London https://arxiv.org/pdf/2212.03551.pdf
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?
?
East Germany never joined the EU
Pedantic, they let the new Germany join immediately when the two countries merged.
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?
?
East Germany never joined the EU
Last time I visited Rostock it was firmly in the EU.
?
Last time I visited Rostock it was in the federal republic. It has never been in East Germany and the EU at the same time.
I have no idea how difficult it would have been for an independent Scotland to join the EU (Spain having reasons to make it difficult for example), but it doesn't seem similar to the former DDR being absorbed into Germany.
It would be slightly similar to Northern Ireland becoming part of the EU by becoming part of a united Ireland. I've no idea if other member states would have a veto on that these days, but I'm guessing nobody would object?
The point is the EU is quite happy to ignore it's own rules when it comes to maintaining/extending its territorial reach. I am less interested in the precise mechanisms used.
There is a fundamental difference.
East Germany was absorbed by the Federal Republic. Every institution and law in the East was disbanded. The EU (not that it was even called the EU at the time) didn't get a say.
The accession of any country requires a treaty signed by every member state. The EU is literally a collection of treaties.
It did get a say. The price that Germany agreed to (although you will never find it written in a treaty document) was the existence of the Euro.
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?
?
East Germany never joined the EU
Pedantic, they let the new Germany join immediately when the two countries merged.
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.
The cost of a flight to Bangkok - where @Heathener might spend a warm Asian winter - is around £1100 at the moment
If @Heathener saves the cost of 2 boiled kettles every day for a year, that saves £14.56 a year. So she would only have to keep this up for seventy five years, and she’ll have saved enough money to fly to Bangkok. But then there’s the price of a hotel
Yes, it is somewhat contradictory. Maybe she has free flights through a loyalty scheme ?
Either that or it's fictional. She says "I turn it off altogether at night" - who leaves their heating on at night?
It remains a curious world - today's turf race meeting at Southwell is on but the meeting on the synthetic surface at Newcastle is off.
The morning after the disappointment before - perhaps. I think if you'd asked people how we were going to go once the draw and schedule came out, a quarter final defeat to France would have been high on the list of scenarios.
I keep hearing how much we've improved - we were Euro 2020 (or 2021) finalists yet in a tournament dominated by European sides (and without the Euro tournament winner) we've failed to get past the quarter final. We got close to France (as we might have done in the 2018 final but we couldn't get past Croatia who may yet be France's opponent again in the final).
Let's play Devil's Advocate - we played two matches against European teams and one of them was Wales. Won one, lost one. Yes, we beat Iran and Senegal convincingly and they were decent sides in FIFA ranking terms but we were Euro 2020 finalists and frankly should be beating teams like those.
I don't see this "improvement" others see - potential definitely and some fine young players (Bellingham and Saka to name but two) but how do we get that to take the next step? My view is we spend too much time playing qualification matches against weak countries whom we beat convincingly - we need to be playing the likes of Spain, France, Portugal and Croatia regularly in competitive tournaments.
In our Euro 2024 qualifying group, we do at least have Italy and Ukraine who should be decent opponents. We also have North Macedonia (FIFA ranking 65) and Malta (167) so that's four games which will tell us nothing.
Calm yourselves. If we get a prolonged cold period over the Christmas holidays, then there will be a spate of burst pipes and flooded houses...but really only in the properties that were left empty for the Christmas break. Places like student houses and where people have gone away for a while. The pipes freeze, pop a dodgy joint, and once thawed, flood the gaff, or the next door neighbour or the flat downstairs. The Fire Service will spend the next few days after the thaw breaking into properties and turning stopcocks off. I've never been to a house with a burst pipe caused by freezing that was occupied.
The consequences will be different in every case but it certainly does happen. It is an area however where it is probably better to defer to professional advice from a surveyor, rather than using PB.
I'm not saying it can't happen, but I think it takes a few things to align to go bang. We inherited a small wooden property by the river, the walls are basically 50mm of insulation sandwiched between ply with some wooden cladding on the exterior. The plan is to sell our place and move into the riverside place and to do a Grand Design job on it. I use Alexa to monitor temperature and humidity in the cabin and have rigged up a couple of electric heaters on a smart WiFi plug so that I can turn the heating on from home if needed. I'm currently running an experiment to see how cold it gets during this cold snap. It got down to 2.4°c last night in the coldest part of the cabin. If anyone has any ideas or experience on heating a wooden property via electricity longterm that doesn't include a heat pump, I'd like to hear from you!
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?
?
East Germany never joined the EU
Pedantic, they let the new Germany join immediately when the two countries merged.
Didn’t East Germany join West Germany?
potato patato , they merged in some fashion but it certainly was seen as two countries beforehand and became one different named single country.
The 2014 referendum envisioned a gap of, iirc, around 18 months between the referendum and independence, which was explicitly for Scotland to negotiate it's day 1 position.
There is no reason to think the UK and the EU would not authorise negotiations to proceed in that interrim and, although there were some moving parts and difficulties between different negotiations (currency in particular), there was no reason to think those negotiations would not have been progressed constructively and positively, so that there could not be an agreed day 1 membership deal
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?
?
East Germany never joined the EU
Pedantic, they let the new Germany join immediately when the two countries merged.
Didn’t East Germany join West Germany?
potato patato , they merged in some fashion but it certainly was seen as two countries beforehand and became one different named single country.
A quite distinct process. East Germany joined West Germany, then the name was changed. No successor state or anything.
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
The suggestion that no one in the UK is so poor that they have to do strange things to save two pence is contestable. While it is true that the UK has a relatively high standard of living compared to many other countries, there are still people in the UK who struggle with poverty and financial insecurity. For these individuals, even small amounts of money can make a significant difference in their ability to meet their basic needs. As a result, it is possible that some people in the UK may be so poor that they are willing to do strange things in order to save a small amount of money, such as two pence.
Furthermore, the suggestion that only mad people would do such things is not necessarily accurate. While it is true that some people who are experiencing poverty may have mental health issues, it is not fair to assume that all poor people are mad. Poverty can have many different causes and can affect people from all walks of life, regardless of their mental health status. In conclusion, the suggestion that no one in the UK is so poor that they have to do strange things to save two pence is contestable, and the assumption that only mad people would do such things is not necessarily accurate.
Please put down the GPT. Or make it funny or ridiculous
Relatedly, here is a paper you might appreciate Leon: “Talking About Large Language Models”, Murray Shanahan, Imperial College London https://arxiv.org/pdf/2212.03551.pdf
That paper is an absolute load of clueless, inane, feeble-minded bollocks from beginning to end
The 2014 referendum envisioned a gap of, iirc, around 18 months between the referendum and independence, which was explicitly for Scotland to negotiate it's day 1 position.
There is no reason to think the UK and the EU would not authorise negotiations to proceed in that interrim and, although there were some moving parts and difficulties between different negotiations (currency in particular), there was no reason to think those negotiations would not have been progressed constructively and positively, so that there could not be an agreed day 1 membership deal
At the time, JY Le Drian said iScotland would have 'sa propre place' in the EU.
I doubt it would have been a completely trouble free accession but there's no doubt it would have happened and relatively quickly. Unless Ingerland vetoed Scotland's membership which, I suppose, was entirely possible.
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?
?
East Germany never joined the EU
Last time I visited Rostock it was firmly in the EU.
?
Last time I visited Rostock it was in the federal republic. It has never been in East Germany and the EU at the same time.
I have no idea how difficult it would have been for an independent Scotland to join the EU (Spain having reasons to make it difficult for example), but it doesn't seem similar to the former DDR being absorbed into Germany.
It would be slightly similar to Northern Ireland becoming part of the EU by becoming part of a united Ireland. I've no idea if other member states would have a veto on that these days, but I'm guessing nobody would object?
I think this is very accurate. There is a big difference between an existing EU member gaining territory (as in the case of Germany or Ireland under the circumstances you describe) and a new country joining the EU from scratch.
That said, whilst I think a newly independent Scotland would be daft to join the EU, whether or not there would be any barriers would depend almost entirely on the regional and national politics at the time. It would depend on the attitude of other EU member states - Spain as you mention being obvious but also other more intransigent EU states such as Hungary who might view blocking Scottish accession as a good way to mess things up for the EU.
It would also depend on the attitude of England, and I don't say this to rile Scots. If the rump UK Government have decided to be sensible, pragmatic and reasonable (please stop laughing at the back) then the Independence negotiations would have dealt with things like trade, borders, economics, shared services and the general relationship between Scotland and the rest of the UK. If the result is a well developed system of mutual benefit then perversely it might make it more difficult for Scotland to join the EU.
To be honest I think trying to predict how easy or difficult Scottish accession might be from where we are at present is a bit of a fool's game. So much can, and probably will, change between now and 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.
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?
?
East Germany never joined the EU
Last time I visited Rostock it was firmly in the EU.
?
Last time I visited Rostock it was in the federal republic. It has never been in East Germany and the EU at the same time.
I have no idea how difficult it would have been for an independent Scotland to join the EU (Spain having reasons to make it difficult for example), but it doesn't seem similar to the former DDR being absorbed into Germany.
It would be slightly similar to Northern Ireland becoming part of the EU by becoming part of a united Ireland. I've no idea if other member states would have a veto on that these days, but I'm guessing nobody would object?
The point is the EU is quite happy to ignore it's own rules when it comes to maintaining/extending its territorial reach. I am less interested in the precise mechanisms used.
There is a fundamental difference.
East Germany was absorbed by the Federal Republic. Every institution and law in the East was disbanded. The EU (not that it was even called the EU at the time) didn't get a say.
The accession of any country requires a treaty signed by every member state. The EU is literally a collection of treaties.
It did get a say. The price that Germany agreed to (although you will never find it written in a treaty document) was the existence of the Euro.
By what mechanism would the EC have had a say?
The Federal Republic of Germany (an EC member) absorbed the DDR. And the FDR was a member of the EC.
The 2014 referendum envisioned a gap of, iirc, around 18 months between the referendum and independence, which was explicitly for Scotland to negotiate it's day 1 position.
There is no reason to think the UK and the EU would not authorise negotiations to proceed in that interrim and, although there were some moving parts and difficulties between different negotiations (currency in particular), there was no reason to think those negotiations would not have been progressed constructively and positively, so that there could not be an agreed day 1 membership deal
Arrant nonsense. The rUK and Scotland would have had to settle their divorce, entirely - from currency to nukes to pensions to fishing - before the EU could even begin negotiations on “re-admission”. Coz the EU would need to know IScotland’s final status, and thus what kind of country it would be allowing in
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?
?
East Germany never joined the EU
Pedantic, they let the new Germany join immediately when the two countries merged.
Didn’t East Germany join West Germany?
potato patato , they merged in some fashion but it certainly was seen as two countries beforehand and became one different named single country.
A quite distinct process. East Germany joined West Germany, then the name was changed. No successor state or anything.
Actually, it even has the same name, FRG/BRD.
Exactly. All existing treaties (you know, like NATO) applied to the new Germany. They didn't need to reapply, or to ask permission from anyone.
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?
?
East Germany never joined the EU
Pedantic, they let the new Germany join immediately when the two countries merged.
Didn’t East Germany join West Germany?
potato patato , they merged in some fashion but it certainly was seen as two countries beforehand and became one different named single country.
A quite distinct process. East Germany joined West Germany, then the name was changed. No successor state or anything.
Actually, it even has the same name, FRG/BRD.
If Ukraine joined the EU, and at some future date was intimidated into merging with Russia, would the new Greater Russia automatically become a member of the EU?
It remains a curious world - today's turf race meeting at Southwell is on but the meeting on the synthetic surface at Newcastle is off.
The morning after the disappointment before - perhaps. I think if you'd asked people how we were going to go once the draw and schedule came out, a quarter final defeat to France would have been high on the list of scenarios.
I keep hearing how much we've improved - we were Euro 2020 (or 2021) finalists yet in a tournament dominated by European sides (and without the Euro tournament winner) we've failed to get past the quarter final. We got close to France (as we might have done in the 2018 final but we couldn't get past Croatia who may yet be France's opponent again in the final).
Let's play Devil's Advocate - we played two matches against European teams and one of them was Wales. Won one, lost one. Yes, we beat Iran and Senegal convincingly and they were decent sides in FIFA ranking terms but we were Euro 2020 finalists and frankly should be beating teams like those.
I don't see this "improvement" others see - potential definitely and some fine young players (Bellingham and Saka to name but two) but how do we get that to take the next step? My view is we spend too much time playing qualification matches against weak countries whom we beat convincingly - we need to be playing the likes of Spain, France, Portugal and Croatia regularly in competitive tournaments.
In our Euro 2024 qualifying group, we do at least have Italy and Ukraine who should be decent opponents. We also have North Macedonia (FIFA ranking 65) and Malta (167) so that's four games which will tell us nothing.
I think that’s harsh. Last night’s game was easily the best (in terms of quality) that I’ve seen this tournament. This scenario reminds me a bit of 2002. We were Brazil’s toughest opponents that year, I think the same will be true of France this year. The difference is that whilst I think we were well beaten in 2002, we were a bit unlucky last night.
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?
?
East Germany never joined the EU
Last time I visited Rostock it was firmly in the EU.
?
Last time I visited Rostock it was in the federal republic. It has never been in East Germany and the EU at the same time.
I have no idea how difficult it would have been for an independent Scotland to join the EU (Spain having reasons to make it difficult for example), but it doesn't seem similar to the former DDR being absorbed into Germany.
It would be slightly similar to Northern Ireland becoming part of the EU by becoming part of a united Ireland. I've no idea if other member states would have a veto on that these days, but I'm guessing nobody would object?
The point is the EU is quite happy to ignore it's own rules when it comes to maintaining/extending its territorial reach. I am less interested in the precise mechanisms used.
There is a fundamental difference.
East Germany was absorbed by the Federal Republic. Every institution and law in the East was disbanded. The EU (not that it was even called the EU at the time) didn't get a say.
The accession of any country requires a treaty signed by every member state. The EU is literally a collection of treaties.
It did get a say. The price that Germany agreed to (although you will never find it written in a treaty document) was the existence of the Euro.
By what mechanism would the EC have had a say?
The Federal Republic of Germany (an EC member) absorbed the DDR. And the FDR was a member of the EC.
Through the leaders of the sovereign countries that comprised the EC. Such as Mitterrand. Hence the Euro exists rather than being an obscure economic attempt to manage currency movements.
The 2014 referendum envisioned a gap of, iirc, around 18 months between the referendum and independence, which was explicitly for Scotland to negotiate it's day 1 position.
There is no reason to think the UK and the EU would not authorise negotiations to proceed in that interrim and, although there were some moving parts and difficulties between different negotiations (currency in particular), there was no reason to think those negotiations would not have been progressed constructively and positively, so that there could not be an agreed day 1 membership deal
At the time, JY Le Drian said iScotland would have 'sa propre place' in the EU.
I doubt it would have been a completely trouble free accession but there's no doubt it would have happened and relatively quickly. Unless Ingerland vetoed Scotland's membership which, I suppose, was entirely possible.
This airy fairy drivel is uncannily similar to the hand waving shite the stupidest Brexiteers pumped out during Brexit
“there's no doubt Scottish accession would have happened and relatively quickly” Dura Ace
“Getting out of the EU can be quick and easy – the UK holds most of the cards.' John Redwood, July 2016
'The day after we vote to leave, we hold all the cards and we can choose the path we want.' Michael Gove, April 2016
Coming to a free trade agreement with the EU should be "one of the easiest in human history.' Liam Fox, July 2017
The blithe assurance - “there’s no doubt” - is the tell. Pack of lies compounded with wishful thinking. There is every doubt
Calm yourselves. If we get a prolonged cold period over the Christmas holidays, then there will be a spate of burst pipes and flooded houses...but really only in the properties that were left empty for the Christmas break. Places like student houses and where people have gone away for a while. The pipes freeze, pop a dodgy joint, and once thawed, flood the gaff, or the next door neighbour or the flat downstairs. The Fire Service will spend the next few days after the thaw breaking into properties and turning stopcocks off. I've never been to a house with a burst pipe caused by freezing that was occupied.
The consequences will be different in every case but it certainly does happen. It is an area however where it is probably better to defer to professional advice from a surveyor, rather than using PB.
I'm not saying it can't happen, but I think it takes a few things to align to go bang. We inherited a small wooden property by the river, the walls are basically 50mm of insulation sandwiched between ply with some wooden cladding on the exterior. The plan is to sell our place and move into the riverside place and to do a Grand Design job on it. I use Alexa to monitor temperature and humidity in the cabin and have rigged up a couple of electric heaters on a smart WiFi plug so that I can turn the heating on from home if needed. I'm currently running an experiment to see how cold it gets during this cold snap. It got down to 2.4°c last night in the coldest part of the cabin. If anyone has any ideas or experience on heating a wooden property via electricity longterm that doesn't include a heat pump, I'd like to hear from you!
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?
?
East Germany never joined the EU
Last time I visited Rostock it was firmly in the EU.
?
Last time I visited Rostock it was in the federal republic. It has never been in East Germany and the EU at the same time.
I have no idea how difficult it would have been for an independent Scotland to join the EU (Spain having reasons to make it difficult for example), but it doesn't seem similar to the former DDR being absorbed into Germany.
It would be slightly similar to Northern Ireland becoming part of the EU by becoming part of a united Ireland. I've no idea if other member states would have a veto on that these days, but I'm guessing nobody would object?
The point is the EU is quite happy to ignore it's own rules when it comes to maintaining/extending its territorial reach. I am less interested in the precise mechanisms used.
There is a fundamental difference.
East Germany was absorbed by the Federal Republic. Every institution and law in the East was disbanded. The EU (not that it was even called the EU at the time) didn't get a say.
The accession of any country requires a treaty signed by every member state. The EU is literally a collection of treaties.
It did get a say. The price that Germany agreed to (although you will never find it written in a treaty document) was the existence of the Euro.
By what mechanism would the EC have had a say?
The Federal Republic of Germany (an EC member) absorbed the DDR. And the FDR was a member of the EC.
Through the leaders of the sovereign countries that comprised the EC. Such as Mitterrand. Hence the Euro exists rather than being an obscure economic attempt to manage currency movements.
My understanding was that the EC involvement was limited to a deal on who would help to pay for the costs of the reunification rather than any say over whether it actually happened.
It remains a curious world - today's turf race meeting at Southwell is on but the meeting on the synthetic surface at Newcastle is off.
The morning after the disappointment before - perhaps. I think if you'd asked people how we were going to go once the draw and schedule came out, a quarter final defeat to France would have been high on the list of scenarios.
I keep hearing how much we've improved - we were Euro 2020 (or 2021) finalists yet in a tournament dominated by European sides (and without the Euro tournament winner) we've failed to get past the quarter final. We got close to France (as we might have done in the 2018 final but we couldn't get past Croatia who may yet be France's opponent again in the final).
Let's play Devil's Advocate - we played two matches against European teams and one of them was Wales. Won one, lost one. Yes, we beat Iran and Senegal convincingly and they were decent sides in FIFA ranking terms but we were Euro 2020 finalists and frankly should be beating teams like those.
I don't see this "improvement" others see - potential definitely and some fine young players (Bellingham and Saka to name but two) but how do we get that to take the next step? My view is we spend too much time playing qualification matches against weak countries whom we beat convincingly - we need to be playing the likes of Spain, France, Portugal and Croatia regularly in competitive tournaments.
In our Euro 2024 qualifying group, we do at least have Italy and Ukraine who should be decent opponents. We also have North Macedonia (FIFA ranking 65) and Malta (167) so that's four games which will tell us nothing.
I think that’s harsh. Last night’s game was easily the best (in terms of quality) that I’ve seen this tournament. This scenario reminds me a bit of 2002. We were Brazil’s toughest opponents that year, I think the same will be true of France this year. The difference is that whilst I think we were well beaten in 2002, we were a bit unlucky last night.
Last night's match was proper banging. I usually lose concentration trying to watch footie and have to wait for the replays to see the goals; last night I was so rivetted, I saw them all in real time.
The 2014 referendum envisioned a gap of, iirc, around 18 months between the referendum and independence, which was explicitly for Scotland to negotiate it's day 1 position.
There is no reason to think the UK and the EU would not authorise negotiations to proceed in that interrim and, although there were some moving parts and difficulties between different negotiations (currency in particular), there was no reason to think those negotiations would not have been progressed constructively and positively, so that there could not be an agreed day 1 membership deal
Arrant nonsense. The rUK and Scotland would have had to settle their divorce, entirely - from currency to nukes to pensions to fishing - before the EU could even begin negotiations on “re-admission”. Coz the EU would need to know IScotland’s final status, and thus what kind of country it would be allowing in
Would likely have taken a decade to sort it out
I think it's highly unlikely Scotland could have joined the EU on day one. I think it's also highly unlikely that it would have been ejected from the single market on day one. The most likely course would have been a one or two year transition period followed by Efta followed by EU membership 5-10 years down the line, with minimal disruption to trade. The powerful arguments against independence are the currency and the fiscal deficit. And now Brexit complicates things on the border. But whether or not Scotland would have been allowed to join the EU and how quickly is a red herring IMHO.
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?
?
East Germany never joined the EU
Pedantic, they let the new Germany join immediately when the two countries merged.
Didn’t East Germany join West Germany?
potato patato , they merged in some fashion but it certainly was seen as two countries beforehand and became one different named single country.
A quite distinct process. East Germany joined West Germany, then the name was changed. No successor state or anything.
Actually, it even has the same name, FRG/BRD.
If Ukraine joined the EU, and at some future date was intimidated into merging with Russia, would the new Greater Russia automatically become a member of the EU?
Depends on how close to the Urals the border with China was?
Enough to raise the hackles of any true Scot. I’m English and trying (and failing) to make decent porridge for my boys.
Easy peasy , 1 cup oats and two cups water with a pinch of salt. Heat slowly stirring with your spurtle till good consistency.
Best left overnight and reheated. This is traditional in Scotland - they used to pour it in the kitchen table draw. Eliminates the phytic acid in the grains and brings out the nutrition.
Personally, I'd make the porridge as per Malc's suggestion, squeeze in some lemon juice, leave in the fridge overnight, reheat in the morning adding butter and some honey or molasses. Delicious and good for you. I used to do this but stopped having breakfast.
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?
?
East Germany never joined the EU
Last time I visited Rostock it was firmly in the EU.
?
Last time I visited Rostock it was in the federal republic. It has never been in East Germany and the EU at the same time.
I have no idea how difficult it would have been for an independent Scotland to join the EU (Spain having reasons to make it difficult for example), but it doesn't seem similar to the former DDR being absorbed into Germany.
It would be slightly similar to Northern Ireland becoming part of the EU by becoming part of a united Ireland. I've no idea if other member states would have a veto on that these days, but I'm guessing nobody would object?
The point is the EU is quite happy to ignore it's own rules when it comes to maintaining/extending its territorial reach. I am less interested in the precise mechanisms used.
There is a fundamental difference.
East Germany was absorbed by the Federal Republic. Every institution and law in the East was disbanded. The EU (not that it was even called the EU at the time) didn't get a say.
The accession of any country requires a treaty signed by every member state. The EU is literally a collection of treaties.
It did get a say. The price that Germany agreed to (although you will never find it written in a treaty document) was the existence of the Euro.
By what mechanism would the EC have had a say?
The Federal Republic of Germany (an EC member) absorbed the DDR. And the FDR was a member of the EC.
Through the leaders of the sovereign countries that comprised the EC. Such as Mitterrand. Hence the Euro exists rather than being an obscure economic attempt to manage currency movements.
That doesn't make any sense.
The Federal Republic continued to exist and maintained all its treaty obligations, such as membership of the EC and NATO.
There was no mechanism by which the FDR could be evicted from the EC due it absorbing its neighbor.
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.
The cost of a flight to Bangkok - where @Heathener might spend a warm Asian winter - is around £1100 at the moment
If @Heathener saves the cost of 2 boiled kettles every day for a year, that saves £14.56 a year. So she would only have to keep this up for seventy five years, and she’ll have saved enough money to fly to Bangkok. But then there’s the price of a hotel
Yes, it is somewhat contradictory. Maybe she has free flights through a loyalty scheme ?
It may just be a little out of date. A few years ago, I got return tickets to Bangkok for £400 with a post-crash Turkish Airlines, and a flat in Chiang Mai for £200 a month.
Not possible now, alas. I have just paid almost £1000 for a return to Tokyo with BA. Good hotels in Japan can be had from £30 a night at the moment, though, due to the weak Yen and covid. If you've always wanted to go to Japan for a few weeks, now is a good time.
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?
?
East Germany never joined the EU
Pedantic, they let the new Germany join immediately when the two countries merged.
Didn’t East Germany join West Germany?
potato patato , they merged in some fashion but it certainly was seen as two countries beforehand and became one different named single country.
A quite distinct process. East Germany joined West Germany, then the name was changed. No successor state or anything.
Actually, it even has the same name, FRG/BRD.
If Ukraine joined the EU, and at some future date was intimidated into merging with Russia, would the new Greater Russia automatically become a member of the EU?
Depends on how close to the Urals the border with China was?
Considering Greenland used to be part of the EU, I don't think that would be a criterion.
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?
?
East Germany never joined the EU
Pedantic, they let the new Germany join immediately when the two countries merged.
Didn’t East Germany join West Germany?
potato patato , they merged in some fashion but it certainly was seen as two countries beforehand and became one different named single country.
A quite distinct process. East Germany joined West Germany, then the name was changed. No successor state or anything.
Actually, it even has the same name, FRG/BRD.
If Ukraine joined the EU, and at some future date was intimidated into merging with Russia, would the new Greater Russia automatically become a member of the EU?
Depends on how close to the Urals the border with China was?
Considering Greenland used to be part of the EU, I don't think that would be a criterion.
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?
?
East Germany never joined the EU
Pedantic, they let the new Germany join immediately when the two countries merged.
Didn’t East Germany join West Germany?
potato patato , they merged in some fashion but it certainly was seen as two countries beforehand and became one different named single country.
A quite distinct process. East Germany joined West Germany, then the name was changed. No successor state or anything.
Actually, it even has the same name, FRG/BRD.
Plan was not to change Scotland's name , it has been a country forever so why different except in the mind of unionists.
The 2014 referendum envisioned a gap of, iirc, around 18 months between the referendum and independence, which was explicitly for Scotland to negotiate it's day 1 position.
There is no reason to think the UK and the EU would not authorise negotiations to proceed in that interrim and, although there were some moving parts and difficulties between different negotiations (currency in particular), there was no reason to think those negotiations would not have been progressed constructively and positively, so that there could not be an agreed day 1 membership deal
Arrant nonsense. The rUK and Scotland would have had to settle their divorce, entirely - from currency to nukes to pensions to fishing - before the EU could even begin negotiations on “re-admission”. Coz the EU would need to know IScotland’s final status, and thus what kind of country it would be allowing in
Would likely have taken a decade to sort it out
I think it's highly unlikely Scotland could have joined the EU on day one. I think it's also highly unlikely that it would have been ejected from the single market on day one. The most likely course would have been a one or two year transition period followed by Efta followed by EU membership 5-10 years down the line, with minimal disruption to trade. The powerful arguments against independence are the currency and the fiscal deficit. And now Brexit complicates things on the border. But whether or not Scotland would have been allowed to join the EU and how quickly is a red herring IMHO.
But again this is just weak-minded hopecasting. “Oh it’ll probably be fine”. “Oh they’ll let us stay in that bit”. “Let’s not worry about it”
What is it about the EU that makes you think they would have or will be totally chilled about a new country in the Single Market and won’t cause any fuss about a breakaway nation?
There is zero evidence of the EU ever behaving like this. It is a huge lumbering legalistic beast (deliberately so) which proceeds at the speed of the slowest ship in the convoy of 27
Everything about dealing with it is painful and prolonged. It doesn’t do brisk and casual. It can’t
If Scotland ever goes indy and decides to join the process will be difficult and slow, as it always is
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?
?
East Germany never joined the EU
Last time I visited Rostock it was firmly in the EU.
?
Last time I visited Rostock it was in the federal republic. It has never been in East Germany and the EU at the same time.
I have no idea how difficult it would have been for an independent Scotland to join the EU (Spain having reasons to make it difficult for example), but it doesn't seem similar to the former DDR being absorbed into Germany.
It would be slightly similar to Northern Ireland becoming part of the EU by becoming part of a united Ireland. I've no idea if other member states would have a veto on that these days, but I'm guessing nobody would object?
The point is the EU is quite happy to ignore it's own rules when it comes to maintaining/extending its territorial reach. I am less interested in the precise mechanisms used.
There is a fundamental difference.
East Germany was absorbed by the Federal Republic. Every institution and law in the East was disbanded. The EU (not that it was even called the EU at the time) didn't get a say.
The accession of any country requires a treaty signed by every member state. The EU is literally a collection of treaties.
It did get a say. The price that Germany agreed to (although you will never find it written in a treaty document) was the existence of the Euro.
By what mechanism would the EC have had a say?
The Federal Republic of Germany (an EC member) absorbed the DDR. And the FDR was a member of the EC.
Through the leaders of the sovereign countries that comprised the EC. Such as Mitterrand. Hence the Euro exists rather than being an obscure economic attempt to manage currency movements.
That doesn't make any sense.
The Federal Republic continued to exist and maintained all its treaty obligations, such as membership of the EC and NATO.
There was no mechanism by which the FDR could be evicted from the EC due it absorbing its neighbor.
The BRD's constitution of course theoretically covered all of Germany within its 1945 borders including the DDR (and Berlin). It did not, therefore, change its de jure national status on reunification, just the de facto rule of the government in Bonn.
A bit like Northern Ireland rejoining Ireland before 1999.
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.
The cost of a flight to Bangkok - where @Heathener might spend a warm Asian winter - is around £1100 at the moment
If @Heathener saves the cost of 2 boiled kettles every day for a year, that saves £14.56 a year. So she would only have to keep this up for seventy five years, and she’ll have saved enough money to fly to Bangkok. But then there’s the price of a hotel
Yes, it is somewhat contradictory. Maybe she has free flights through a loyalty scheme ?
It may just be a little out of date. A few years ago, I got return tickets to Bangkok for £400 with a post-crash Turkish Airlines, and a flat in Chiang Mai for £200 a month.
Not possible now, alas. I have just paid almost £1000 for a return to Tokyo with BA. Good hotels in Japan can be had from £30 a night at the moment, though, due to the weak Yen and covid. If you've always wanted to go to Japan for a few weeks, now is a good time.
Calm yourselves. If we get a prolonged cold period over the Christmas holidays, then there will be a spate of burst pipes and flooded houses...but really only in the properties that were left empty for the Christmas break. Places like student houses and where people have gone away for a while. The pipes freeze, pop a dodgy joint, and once thawed, flood the gaff, or the next door neighbour or the flat downstairs. The Fire Service will spend the next few days after the thaw breaking into properties and turning stopcocks off. I've never been to a house with a burst pipe caused by freezing that was occupied.
The consequences will be different in every case but it certainly does happen. It is an area however where it is probably better to defer to professional advice from a surveyor, rather than using PB.
I'm not saying it can't happen, but I think it takes a few things to align to go bang. We inherited a small wooden property by the river, the walls are basically 50mm of insulation sandwiched between ply with some wooden cladding on the exterior. The plan is to sell our place and move into the riverside place and to do a Grand Design job on it. I use Alexa to monitor temperature and humidity in the cabin and have rigged up a couple of electric heaters on a smart WiFi plug so that I can turn the heating on from home if needed. I'm currently running an experiment to see how cold it gets during this cold snap. It got down to 2.4°c last night in the coldest part of the cabin. If anyone has any ideas or experience on heating a wooden property via electricity longterm that doesn't include a heat pump, I'd like to hear from you!
My family own two wooden houses in Finland used as summerhouses. Not quite comparable in terms of climate but perhaps of some anecdotal relevance when it comes to discussing this issue. One is heated up to 5 degrees in winter with panel heaters. It is technically habitable year round and can be used as a summerhouse but the pipes froze out many years ago and there is no drainage/water supply to the house. It is not used in winter.
The other house is heated to 15 degrees and used occasionally in winter. There is an electronic heating system that involves pumping hot air throughout the house but the bills were halved when an air source heat pump was added.
The total energy consumption for the two houses is around 15,000 kwh per year (as summerhouses, not inhabited in winter), which is supposedly the same as Stuart Dickson's house in Sweden which he lives in all year round.
The long term plan is to put in an air source heat pump in the other house, that is what most people in Finland do to these houses, replacing panel heaters or oil powered central heating. No other energy saving measures (including solar panels) are economic, even with the current rise in prices. Solar Panels and battery storage are not viable if you have to borrow money to install them, but they are good for the environment - but there is a problem in that the roof areas are not quite orientated correctly and there are protected trees that shade them.
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.
The cost of a flight to Bangkok - where @Heathener might spend a warm Asian winter - is around £1100 at the moment
If @Heathener saves the cost of 2 boiled kettles every day for a year, that saves £14.56 a year. So she would only have to keep this up for seventy five years, and she’ll have saved enough money to fly to Bangkok. But then there’s the price of a hotel
Yes, it is somewhat contradictory. Maybe she has free flights through a loyalty scheme ?
It may just be a little out of date. A few years ago, I got return tickets to Bangkok for £400 with a post-crash Turkish Airlines, and a flat in Chiang Mai for £200 a month.
Not possible now, alas. I have just paid almost £1000 for a return to Tokyo with BA. Good hotels in Japan can be had from £30 a night at the moment, though, due to the weak Yen and covid. If you've always wanted to go to Japan for a few weeks, now is a good time.
Flights to Asia are hideously pricey now
And longer, in the case of Japan and some others which used to go over Russia. I am not looking forward to 13.5 hours in economy. Previously 11.5. So that's almost 20% more fuel, which partly explains the cost increase.
Might have got a lot of Wagner Group bods, in which case yay.
OTOH Himars + M30A1 (200,000 ball bearings) warhead makes you wonder what the Geneva Conventions are for if this sort of shit isn't banned. I think there was a UK infantry officer who resigned in protest against us adopting similar stuff.
Bit shaken to find Google auto suggesting Where can I buy a claymore mine? as a search.
Calm yourselves. If we get a prolonged cold period over the Christmas holidays, then there will be a spate of burst pipes and flooded houses...but really only in the properties that were left empty for the Christmas break. Places like student houses and where people have gone away for a while. The pipes freeze, pop a dodgy joint, and once thawed, flood the gaff, or the next door neighbour or the flat downstairs. The Fire Service will spend the next few days after the thaw breaking into properties and turning stopcocks off. I've never been to a house with a burst pipe caused by freezing that was occupied.
That's not a terribly reassuring thought given I'm responsible for an empty house following its owner's death last month.
I have left the heating on though, and not just on frost protect. I have had the boiler serviced. And I am trying to go in once a week to check on things.
I'm just hoping I can clear it and then drain the system and turn everything off early in January.
Without a shadow of a doubt the EU would let indy Scotland back in. They'd want to cause as much trouble as possible for ROUK, exceptions would be made. I would also be certain that adopting the euro would be a condition. Depending on how strong the EU felt their hand was (pretty strong I'd say) they might also demand that the proceeds of North Sea Oil be divided between member states. This has long been a wish of France. Overall, I suspect very little net extra in the way of Scottish sovereignty would result, with Scotland exchanging a fairly large representation within the UK, for a tiny one within the EU. For many, if this meant being with the nice Europeans and not the hated English, these prices would be worth paying.
The 2014 referendum envisioned a gap of, iirc, around 18 months between the referendum and independence, which was explicitly for Scotland to negotiate it's day 1 position.
There is no reason to think the UK and the EU would not authorise negotiations to proceed in that interrim and, although there were some moving parts and difficulties between different negotiations (currency in particular), there was no reason to think those negotiations would not have been progressed constructively and positively, so that there could not be an agreed day 1 membership deal
Arrant nonsense. The rUK and Scotland would have had to settle their divorce, entirely - from currency to nukes to pensions to fishing - before the EU could even begin negotiations on “re-admission”. Coz the EU would need to know IScotland’s final status, and thus what kind of country it would be allowing in
Would likely have taken a decade to sort it out
I think it's highly unlikely Scotland could have joined the EU on day one. I think it's also highly unlikely that it would have been ejected from the single market on day one. The most likely course would have been a one or two year transition period followed by Efta followed by EU membership 5-10 years down the line, with minimal disruption to trade. The powerful arguments against independence are the currency and the fiscal deficit. And now Brexit complicates things on the border. But whether or not Scotland would have been allowed to join the EU and how quickly is a red herring IMHO.
But again this is just weak-minded hopecasting. “Oh it’ll probably be fine”. “Oh they’ll let us stay in that bit”. “Let’s not worry about it”
What is it about the EU that makes you think they would have or will be totally chilled about a new country in the Single Market and won’t cause any fuss about a breakaway nation?
There is zero evidence of the EU ever behaving like this. It is a huge lumbering legalistic beast (deliberately so) which proceeds at the speed of the slowest ship in the convoy of 27
Everything about dealing with it is painful and prolonged. It doesn’t do brisk and casual. It can’t
If Scotland ever goes indy and decides to join the process will be difficult and slow, as it always is
It's not wish casting, it's simply a rational analysis of the most likely outcome. Of course nothing is certain in life except death and taxes. But if the EU rolled out a bespoke transition arrangement (and would have extended it longer if needed) for a country leaving the EU it almost certainly would have done so for a country that was desperate to rejoin and had no desire to ever diverge from EU laws and standards. Similarly, it's hard to imagine why the Efta countries would have blocked Scotland joining. Then EU membership can take as long as it needs to. Like Isay, if you want to argue against Scottish independence, there are far more plausible avenues to pursue than this one.
Comments
Its the naturists I feel sorry for.
Furthermore, the suggestion that only mad people would do such things is not necessarily accurate. While it is true that some people who are experiencing poverty may have mental health issues, it is not fair to assume that all poor people are mad. Poverty can have many different causes and can affect people from all walks of life, regardless of their mental health status. In conclusion, the suggestion that no one in the UK is so poor that they have to do strange things to save two pence is contestable, and the assumption that only mad people would do such things is not necessarily accurate.
East Germany never joined the EU
We have great players in the world's most watched national league, but that is not enough. Indeed that is part of the problem. Foreign coaches are familiar with our players, tactics and weaknesses in a depth that just doesn't apply to teams like Morrocco and Croatia. Who knew that the Croat goalie was so good? or how the Morocco team play with a narrow back and midfield?
If @Heathener saves the cost of 2 boiled kettles every day for a year, that saves £14.56 a year. So she would only have to keep this up for seventy five years, and she’ll have saved enough money to fly to Bangkok. But then there’s the price of a hotel
Your old house is not representative of the U.K. housing stock.
I was tipping Leicester to win on here at Christmas 2015, at about 20/1. We had been top for a month at that point, but people still wouldn't have it. @isam poo-pooed my tip.
Last time I visited Rostock it was in the federal republic. It has never been in East Germany and the EU at the same time.
I have no idea how difficult it would have been for an independent Scotland to join the EU (Spain having reasons to make it difficult for example), but it doesn't seem similar to the former DDR being absorbed into Germany.
It would be slightly similar to Northern Ireland becoming part of the EU by becoming part of a united Ireland. I've no idea if other member states would have a veto on that these days, but I'm guessing nobody would object?
You’re also wrong. I’ve worked in this area in a past life and seen it first hand.
If asked I would say that our heating is not as hot* as I like or on for as long as I like but that is because I hate waste and am frugal expense-wise - but I always have been. I would have answered the same ten and twenty years ago.
Nothing to do with energy prices (which are moderated now anyway due to gov assistance).
* also the word "hot" is leading. It assumes the correct temp in a house should be hot.
If we get a prolonged cold period over the Christmas holidays, then there will be a spate of burst pipes and flooded houses...but really only in the properties that were left empty for the Christmas break. Places like student houses and where people have gone away for a while. The pipes freeze, pop a dodgy joint, and once thawed, flood the gaff, or the next door neighbour or the flat downstairs. The Fire Service will spend the next few days after the thaw breaking into properties and turning stopcocks off. I've never been to a house with a burst pipe caused by freezing that was occupied.
...
All other treatments for Alyssa's leukaemia had failed.
...
The team at Great Ormond Street used a technology called base editing, which was invented only six years ago.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-63859184
Almost as impressive as GPTchat.
There must be an element of deliberate self-harm in your persistent, low octane, gamma minus wrongness about everything. See twistedfirestopper, who really has "worked in this area."
It is an area however where it is probably better to defer to professional advice from a surveyor, rather than using PB.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDmkNZMD0c0
Nicola Sturgeon warns Theresa May: I'm not bluffing about independence vote
14th October 2016
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/14801465.nicola-sturgeon-warns-theresa-may-not-bluffing-independence-vote/
East Germany was absorbed by the Federal Republic. Every institution and law in the East was disbanded. The EU (not that it was even called the EU at the time) didn't get a say.
The accession of any country requires a treaty signed by every member state. The EU is literally a collection of treaties.
It remains a curious world - today's turf race meeting at Southwell is on but the meeting on the synthetic surface at Newcastle is off.
The morning after the disappointment before - perhaps. I think if you'd asked people how we were going to go once the draw and schedule came out, a quarter final defeat to France would have been high on the list of scenarios.
I keep hearing how much we've improved - we were Euro 2020 (or 2021) finalists yet in a tournament dominated by European sides (and without the Euro tournament winner) we've failed to get past the quarter final. We got close to France (as we might have done in the 2018 final but we couldn't get past Croatia who may yet be France's opponent again in the final).
Let's play Devil's Advocate - we played two matches against European teams and one of them was Wales. Won one, lost one. Yes, we beat Iran and Senegal convincingly and they were decent sides in FIFA ranking terms but we were Euro 2020 finalists and frankly should be beating teams like those.
I don't see this "improvement" others see - potential definitely and some fine young players (Bellingham and Saka to name but two) but how do we get that to take the next step? My view is we spend too much time playing qualification matches against weak countries whom we beat convincingly - we need to be playing the likes of Spain, France, Portugal and Croatia regularly in competitive tournaments.
In our Euro 2024 qualifying group, we do at least have Italy and Ukraine who should be decent opponents. We also have North Macedonia (FIFA ranking 65) and Malta (167) so that's four games which will tell us nothing.
I seem to recall there was a twat on here that fixed upon Kriss Donald’s murder during one of their race war spasms.
We inherited a small wooden property by the river, the walls are basically 50mm of insulation sandwiched between ply with some wooden cladding on the exterior. The plan is to sell our place and move into the riverside place and to do a Grand Design job on it. I use Alexa to monitor temperature and humidity in the cabin and have rigged up a couple of electric heaters on a smart WiFi plug so that I can turn the heating on from home if needed. I'm currently running an experiment to see how cold it gets during this cold snap. It got down to 2.4°c last night in the coldest part of the cabin.
If anyone has any ideas or experience on heating a wooden property via electricity longterm that doesn't include a heat pump, I'd like to hear from you!
Not necessarily.
The 2014 referendum envisioned a gap of, iirc, around 18 months between the referendum and independence, which was explicitly for Scotland to negotiate it's day 1 position.
There is no reason to think the UK and the EU would not authorise negotiations to proceed in that interrim and, although there were some moving parts and difficulties between different negotiations (currency in particular), there was no reason to think those negotiations would not have been progressed constructively and positively, so that there could not be an agreed day 1 membership deal
Actually, it even has the same name, FRG/BRD.
I doubt it would have been a completely trouble free accession but there's no doubt it would have happened and relatively quickly. Unless Ingerland vetoed Scotland's membership which, I suppose, was entirely possible.
That said, whilst I think a newly independent Scotland would be daft to join the EU, whether or not there would be any barriers would depend almost entirely on the regional and national politics at the time. It would depend on the attitude of other EU member states - Spain as you mention being obvious but also other more intransigent EU states such as Hungary who might view blocking Scottish accession as a good way to mess things up for the EU.
It would also depend on the attitude of England, and I don't say this to rile Scots. If the rump UK Government have decided to be sensible, pragmatic and reasonable (please stop laughing at the back) then the Independence negotiations would have dealt with things like trade, borders, economics, shared services and the general relationship between Scotland and the rest of the UK. If the result is a well developed system of mutual benefit then perversely it might make it more difficult for Scotland to join the EU.
To be honest I think trying to predict how easy or difficult Scottish accession might be from where we are at present is a bit of a fool's game. So much can, and probably will, change between now and then.
The Federal Republic of Germany (an EC member) absorbed the DDR. And the FDR was a member of the EC.
Would likely have taken a decade to sort it out
https://twitter.com/francis_scarr/status/1601635260630208512?s=61&t=oX8EhARbeuC0lSHSJygWnQ
“there's no doubt Scottish accession would have happened and relatively quickly” Dura Ace
“Getting out of the EU can be quick and easy – the UK holds most of the cards.' John Redwood, July
2016
'The day after we vote to leave, we hold all the cards and we can choose the path we want.' Michael Gove, April 2016
Coming to a free trade agreement with the EU should be "one of the easiest in human history.' Liam Fox, July 2017
The blithe assurance - “there’s no doubt” - is the tell. Pack of lies compounded with wishful thinking. There is every doubt
The powerful arguments against independence are the currency and the fiscal deficit. And now Brexit complicates things on the border. But whether or not Scotland would have been allowed to join the EU and how quickly is a red herring IMHO.
Personally, I'd make the porridge as per Malc's suggestion, squeeze in some lemon juice, leave in the fridge overnight, reheat in the morning adding butter and some honey or molasses. Delicious and good for you. I used to do this but stopped having breakfast.
The Federal Republic continued to exist and maintained all its treaty obligations, such as membership of the EC and NATO.
There was no mechanism by which the FDR could be evicted from the EC due it absorbing its neighbor.
Not possible now, alas. I have just paid almost £1000 for a return to Tokyo with BA. Good hotels in Japan can be had from £30 a night at the moment, though, due to the weak Yen and covid. If you've always wanted to go to Japan for a few weeks, now is a good time.
What is it about the EU that makes you think they would have or will be totally chilled about a new country in the Single Market and won’t cause any fuss about a breakaway nation?
There is zero evidence of the EU ever behaving like this. It is a huge lumbering legalistic beast (deliberately so) which proceeds at the speed of the slowest ship in the convoy of 27
Everything about dealing with it is painful and prolonged. It doesn’t do brisk and casual. It can’t
If Scotland ever goes indy and decides to join the process will be difficult and slow, as it always is
A bit like Northern Ireland rejoining Ireland before 1999.
🙏
The other house is heated to 15 degrees and used occasionally in winter. There is an electronic heating system that involves pumping hot air throughout the house but the bills were halved when an air source heat pump was added.
The total energy consumption for the two houses is around 15,000 kwh per year (as summerhouses, not inhabited in winter), which is supposedly the same as Stuart Dickson's house in Sweden which he lives in all year round.
The long term plan is to put in an air source heat pump in the other house, that is what most people in Finland do to these houses, replacing panel heaters or oil powered central heating. No other energy saving measures (including solar panels) are economic, even with the current rise in prices. Solar Panels and battery storage are not viable if you have to borrow money to install them, but they are good for the environment - but there is a problem in that the roof areas are not quite orientated correctly and there are protected trees that shade them.
Might have got a lot of Wagner Group bods, in which case yay.
OTOH Himars + M30A1 (200,000 ball bearings) warhead makes you wonder what the Geneva Conventions are for if this sort of shit isn't banned. I think there was a UK infantry officer who resigned in protest against us adopting similar stuff.
Bit shaken to find Google auto suggesting Where can I buy a claymore mine? as a search.
I have left the heating on though, and not just on frost protect. I have had the boiler serviced. And I am trying to go in once a week to check on things.
I'm just hoping I can clear it and then drain the system and turn everything off early in January.
Like Isay, if you want to argue against Scottish independence, there are far more plausible avenues to pursue than this one.