Could we combine 1 and 2 and send our pensioners to Rwanda? The state pension would stretch a lot further there - heating bills are zero - and we have already established that Rwanda is a land of unprecedented opportunities with an unblemished human rights record so nobody could possibly object to being sent there. I bet they've got trad toilets, too. It's a 3 in 1 policy with something for everybody, Tory victory nailed on.
I believe the Rwandan government has been pushing the learning of English over French as well, so they wouldn't need to worry so much about hearing heathen tongues.
At least Leon is getting a few hours of cricket to view in between slips of a ice cool glass of vino. He could easily have been packing up to come home before getting through his first bottle.
Whilst popping diet pills and booking a table at Le Gavroche. (No idea what that place is like, just googled "London expensive restaurants)!
Was it the 80s where speed was marketed as diet pills. Can you imagine Leon on those things.
This is a compound of the Tamworth 2022 LE results and the 2021 Staffordshire results for Lichfield Rural East and South wards, weighted to 70% to account the amount of these wards in the constituency.
Overall about 80% of the constituency is in Tamworth, 20% in Lichfield Rural
RESULTS: Con 11412 (53.0) Lab 7547 (35.1) Ind 1789 (8.3) LD 520 (2.4) Grn 263 (1.2)
Had these had locals in 2023, the par swing to Labour would have been about 3.2%, plus the bit of national swing that has occurred since May. Par overall swing from the above, then, estimated at about 6%.
This would give around a 47 / 41 result to the Cons. Labour would need a lot of those Independent Tamworth voters to pull off a coup.
I notice that although I live a long way from Selby, the emails from Labour are now ignoring Uxbridge and urging me to pitch into the "marginal" of Selby. I've yet to receive a request to go to Somerton and think that the party is concentrating entirely on winning the other two.
LDs focusing on Somerton, so Labour focusing on Selby and on that Opinium poll putting them not the LDs ahead in Mid Beds will push there too if Dorries does stand down.
Uxbridge it seems Labour now taking for granted as a gain. Yet with a strong pro Rishi Hindu vote there, still a Tory held council and the Tory candidate a local councillor and the Labour candidate from Camden sounds a bit complacent
I think the Telegraph are just mischief making re Mid Beds to try and split the vote for a Conservative hold and it might work. Labour won't win it. The LDs could, but not if people think Labour might. That poll is not untypical of a LD/Tory marginal when Labour are doing well nationally and the local campaign is just underway. Eg a poll in SW Surrey prior to 1997 put Labour ahead of the LDs by some way. The LDs came within under a 1000 votes of winning with Lab nowhere.
Russian missiles are built with western machinery, contd.
Between 2016-2020 the Votkinsk Plant, sole producer of the solid-propellant missiles (ICBM Yars, SLBM Bulava, ballistic missiles for the SRBM Iskander) in Russia constructed a new forging plant. It ordered the forging press from the Danieli Breda https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1675459630032461825
Everyone's at it because the Russians will make it rain money. The Ukrainian Motor Sich factory was still selling them helicopter engines until last October when Green T-Shirt locked up the CEO and nationalised the company.
Won't go down well with the cattle and sheep farmers in the rural bits of the constituency though and am not sure there are enough vegans in Frome to make up for it
Would actually be much more in favour of food production at home, i.e. in the UK, than the current "Conservative" government, which seems to be in favour of outsourcing it to all sorts of overseas sources of doubtful reliability and energetic extravagance.
Here's an idea which I don't think I've ever heard mentioned but does, I think, have real world merit.
Its not the effort in cooking which puts people off but the effort in washing up afterwards.
The affluent have dishwashers and so have minimal washing up, takeaways also have minimal washing up and eating out has none.
But to personally wash a big pile of pans and plates after you've eaten really is such a drag that it pushes people to an easier option.
Genuinely think this is correct, which I've also not seen before. I cook and bake occasionally, and it's a right hassle.
Yes, definitely. Last time I had people round to dinner, I picked out some recipes I'd saved as interesting. When I looked in detail, one of the starters required something like six pans I would have had to cook it, stop, wash up everything and then start on the next dish. I chose something that cooked in one pan. Not as exciting, but I wasn't prepared to do all that.
At least Leon is getting a few hours of cricket to view in between slips of a ice cool glass of vino. He could easily have been packing up to come home before getting through his first bottle.
Whilst popping diet pills and booking a table at Le Gavroche. (No idea what that place is like, just googled "London expensive restaurants)!
Was it the 80s where speed was marketed as diet pills. Can you imagine Leon on those things.
Some good news for Rishi, Nigel Farage considering emigrating after he is denied a UK bank account. '"I've been considering over the course of the day, my options, I've spent time talking to lawyers, I've been considering legal action. I've been asking myself whether frankly, it's even worth staying in this country," he said." https://www.euronews.com/2023/06/30/brexit-leader-nigel-farage-considering-leaving-britain Perhaps a pad in Florida, near Mar a Lago?
Florida would result in a small fish/big pond situation for NF. He's not going fucking anywhere.
Telegraph publish a Conservative hit piece. The piece shows that she has talked to Extinction Rebellion, not that she’s an Extinction Rebellion supporter.
Completely off topic for now just something I was thinking about.
The first weekend of the month I normally have my father, his girlfriend and my ex stepbrother round on sunday for a meal. Out of curiousity because we keep getting told eating properly is too expensive for the poor I looked at my bill for the meal especially given the cost of living rise.
Ingredients cost me 40£ This will give 4 adults a 3 course meal today and all will take home enough left overs for a main meal tomorrow. That means 5£ a head for 2 days food.
If you take out the 3 course part the cost of ingredients according to my receipt is 25£. So for 4 adults to have a decent main meal for 2 days comes to £3.12
Prep time is about half an hour for the main meal and I think if you compare £3.12 to a big mac meal (£6.09) it comes out pretty decently. The claim the poor can't afford to eat well sorry doesn't stack up
Not everyone has the skills and confidence you do in the kitchen. And people make poor decisions when stressed and overworked.
And if I may say so, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If it were so easy to eat well, why do you think so many do not? Your "analysis" seems to show that food is cheap enough, so what are the reasons?
Laziness. I left home at 16 unable to cook and this preinternet as it was 1983.
Today I am serving up pomegranite and goats cheese mousse drizzled in balsamic glaze, traditional spaghetti bolognese and an orange chocolate cheesecake.
If I can teach myself to that level from scratch I think its fair to say anyone could learn to make basic meals if they can be bothered. My point is the problem for the poor is not the cost of eating decently it is the motivation to do so.
Keep going. Where has this "laziness" come from?
Its a luxury because people aren't going hungry, so there's no "need" to learn as much as people had to in the past.
That's not such a bad thing.
A bag of apples costs less than a bag of crisps but people like crisps so choose to buy them.
Right, now we're getting somewhere. So people are driven to choices by things other than cost and effort. We also have preference on the table now, as well as the subtler point of convenience undermining the motivation to learn to do things the "hard" way. This is good work.
I'd say "Big Food" is the problem. A handful of transnational companies industrially manufacture all the edible products that supermarkets sell as food and advertise them as the perfect food for our lifestyle. It's chock full of cheap substitutes for natural ingredients that provide less nutrition than fresh cooked food and doesn't sate you as much. It's almost addictive as it hits the bliss point of salt, fat, and sweeteners to make you want more. And it's cheap, colourful and might even say the words "healthy" "low fat" "light" and "sugar free " on the labels. It's quick to prepare and eat, with little fibre in it and made to be soft so you eat quicker and want more. That's why poor people eat bad diets.
No analysis of the problem of poor diet is complete without including what you've just said. Thank you.
I think too that we cannot ignore that a lot of people lead pretty bleak lives, of relentless grind to make ends nearly meet, and simple pleasures are desired at the end of the day. Much the same reason poor people also smoke more, are more often addicts, have worse mental health, more STDs and unplanned pregnancies etc.
Working class motivation for self improvement, and upward mobility still exists as it always has, but has never been universal.
To quote Orwell :
“Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome things like oranges and wholemeal bread or if they even, like the writer of the letter to the New Statesman, saved on fuel and ate their carrots raw? Yes, it would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do such a thing. The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an unemployed man doesn't. Here the tendency of which I spoke at the end of the last chapter comes into play. When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don't want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit 'tasty'. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you.”
On the laziness issue, I think as humans, we are genetically hard wired to be "lazy", otherwise known as conserving energy. For millennia our hunter gatherer species has lived in times of food uncertainty if not scarcity. Even when we moved to agriculture, crops could fail. We are programmed to conserve energy (I read recently that analysis of existing hunter gatherer groups shows they don't expend much more energy than those in modern societies) and also to stuff our faces in times of plenty, because until the last couple of centuries, while many would not be able to predict when the next famine/food shortage would be, we knew it would happen at some point. Stored fat would help us through it.
I can't remember his name, but I remember a professor from St Andrews university saying "that guy at the caveman campfire, the one who got up and said 'I'm just off to put in a 10K run before I sleep' - he's not the one who survived to pass on his genes!"
Russian missiles are built with western machinery, contd.
Between 2016-2020 the Votkinsk Plant, sole producer of the solid-propellant missiles (ICBM Yars, SLBM Bulava, ballistic missiles for the SRBM Iskander) in Russia constructed a new forging plant. It ordered the forging press from the Danieli Breda https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1675459630032461825
Everyone's at it because the Russians will make it rain money. The Ukrainian Motor Sich factory was still selling them helicopter engines until last October when Green T-Shirt locked up the CEO and nationalised the company.
Indeed. Effective sanctions on machine tool supplies would probably shut down half their industry in six months. And it would take only Germany, Japan, the US, S Korea and Italy.
Won't go down well with the cattle and sheep farmers in the rural bits of the constituency though and am not sure there are enough vegans in Frome to make up for it
Have you counted the Hindus HAVE YOU COUNTED THE HINDUS?
Cattle farmers and Hindus vote Tory unfortunate juxtaposition of the day.
Some good news for Rishi, Nigel Farage considering emigrating after he is denied a UK bank account. '"I've been considering over the course of the day, my options, I've spent time talking to lawyers, I've been considering legal action. I've been asking myself whether frankly, it's even worth staying in this country," he said." https://www.euronews.com/2023/06/30/brexit-leader-nigel-farage-considering-leaving-britain Perhaps a pad in Florida, near Mar a Lago?
Florida would result in a small fish/big pond situation for NF. He's not going fucking anywhere.
All England players just now need to see about double their averages to win - easy.
If they manage that then perhaps Sunak has a better chance of weather his years of discontent than I thought.
What are their fourth innings averages ?
I don't think they will reach them, whatever they are.
But I'm surprised they've just about made it to lunch. If they can scratch it out to tea time then they will have truly exceeded expectations. The goal is to lose by less than 100, which means it at least looks close, despite being outplayed entirely.
Completely off topic for now just something I was thinking about.
The first weekend of the month I normally have my father, his girlfriend and my ex stepbrother round on sunday for a meal. Out of curiousity because we keep getting told eating properly is too expensive for the poor I looked at my bill for the meal especially given the cost of living rise.
Ingredients cost me 40£ This will give 4 adults a 3 course meal today and all will take home enough left overs for a main meal tomorrow. That means 5£ a head for 2 days food.
If you take out the 3 course part the cost of ingredients according to my receipt is 25£. So for 4 adults to have a decent main meal for 2 days comes to £3.12
Prep time is about half an hour for the main meal and I think if you compare £3.12 to a big mac meal (£6.09) it comes out pretty decently. The claim the poor can't afford to eat well sorry doesn't stack up
Not everyone has the skills and confidence you do in the kitchen. And people make poor decisions when stressed and overworked.
And if I may say so, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If it were so easy to eat well, why do you think so many do not? Your "analysis" seems to show that food is cheap enough, so what are the reasons?
Laziness. I left home at 16 unable to cook and this preinternet as it was 1983.
Today I am serving up pomegranite and goats cheese mousse drizzled in balsamic glaze, traditional spaghetti bolognese and an orange chocolate cheesecake.
If I can teach myself to that level from scratch I think its fair to say anyone could learn to make basic meals if they can be bothered. My point is the problem for the poor is not the cost of eating decently it is the motivation to do so.
Keep going. Where has this "laziness" come from?
Its a luxury because people aren't going hungry, so there's no "need" to learn as much as people had to in the past.
That's not such a bad thing.
A bag of apples costs less than a bag of crisps but people like crisps so choose to buy them.
Right, now we're getting somewhere. So people are driven to choices by things other than cost and effort. We also have preference on the table now, as well as the subtler point of convenience undermining the motivation to learn to do things the "hard" way. This is good work.
I'd say "Big Food" is the problem. A handful of transnational companies industrially manufacture all the edible products that supermarkets sell as food and advertise them as the perfect food for our lifestyle. It's chock full of cheap substitutes for natural ingredients that provide less nutrition than fresh cooked food and doesn't sate you as much. It's almost addictive as it hits the bliss point of salt, fat, and sweeteners to make you want more. And it's cheap, colourful and might even say the words "healthy" "low fat" "light" and "sugar free " on the labels. It's quick to prepare and eat, with little fibre in it and made to be soft so you eat quicker and want more. That's why poor people eat bad diets.
No analysis of the problem of poor diet is complete without including what you've just said. Thank you.
I think too that we cannot ignore that a lot of people lead pretty bleak lives, of relentless grind to make ends nearly meet, and simple pleasures are desired at the end of the day. Much the same reason poor people also smoke more, are more often addicts, have worse mental health, more STDs and unplanned pregnancies etc.
Working class motivation for self improvement, and upward mobility still exists as it always has, but has never been universal.
To quote Orwell :
“Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome things like oranges and wholemeal bread or if they even, like the writer of the letter to the New Statesman, saved on fuel and ate their carrots raw? Yes, it would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do such a thing. The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an unemployed man doesn't. Here the tendency of which I spoke at the end of the last chapter comes into play. When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don't want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit 'tasty'. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you.”
On the laziness issue, I think as humans, we are genetically hard wired to be "lazy", otherwise known as conserving energy. For millennia our hunter gatherer species has lived in times of food uncertainty if not scarcity. Even when we moved to agriculture, crops could fail. We are programmed to conserve energy (I read recently that analysis of existing hunter gatherer groups shows they don't expend much more energy than those in modern societies) and also to stuff our faces in times of plenty, because until the last couple of centuries, while many would not be able to predict when the next famine/food shortage would be, we knew it would happen at some point. Stored fat would help us through it.
I can't remember his name, but I remember a professor from St Andrews university saying "that guy at the caveman campfire, the one who got up and said 'I'm just off to put in a 10K run before I sleep' - he's not the one who survived to pass on his genes!"
There are any number of great quotes saying similar things.
Robert Heinlein - “Progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things.”
Agatha Christie - "I don’t think necessity is the mother of invention – invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble."
My favourite seen recently (messing with JFK's great quote) but unsourced
"“We do these things not because they are easy, but because we thought they were going to be easy”
Some good news for Rishi, Nigel Farage considering emigrating after he is denied a UK bank account. '"I've been considering over the course of the day, my options, I've spent time talking to lawyers, I've been considering legal action. I've been asking myself whether frankly, it's even worth staying in this country," he said." https://www.euronews.com/2023/06/30/brexit-leader-nigel-farage-considering-leaving-britain Perhaps a pad in Florida, near Mar a Lago?
Florida would result in a small fish/big pond situation for NF. He's not going fucking anywhere.
Farage is a Trump loyalist though, unlike governor De Santis and most of his supporters in the Florida state legislature.
F;orida also has a smaller population than the UK.
You need to be born in the US to be President, not to be a governor or be elected to the US Congress
What think you of this? https://www.sealionpress.co.uk/post/other-ideologies-4-eurocommunism --------------- It's a good article and generally fair, though I disagree with some bits. He's spot on about the basic appeal - aim for society based on solidarity and partnership rather than dominated by corporate influence, while avoiding the oppression of dictatorial states. I used to read Marxism Today with enthusiasm, but he's right that it was aimed at a very intellectual market. I think he overstates the dependence on the Soviet Union - given that part of the raison d'etre was to reject the dictatorial approach. IMO the movement largely failed by being too intellectual and also too naive - there's a panoply of democratic left leaders from Gorbachev to Corbyn who largely rejected expulsions and suppression of dissent in favour of a belief that you could win in the end simply by persistent, tireless argument.
The basic concept retains its appeal for me and for many (I've never apologised for my sympathies for it or tried to cover them up, even when I was an MP in a marginal), and influences more mainstream thinking, because most people feel uneasy about a society effectively run by large companies and media billionaires. But Gorbachev eventually concluded after losing power that the Scandinavian model of private enterprise married to high taxes and great social services was the way to go, and it remains IMO the model that demonstrably works better than the alternatives.
Thank you, that's very interesting. I chanced upon that series on Sea Lion Press and when I saw the Eurocommunism article, I figured you'd be the only person on PB who could give a sensible analysis.
Post-Truss, the Conservatives no longer have a theoretical underpinning and have retreated into technocratic managerialism. Starmer is similarly afflicted. I can't generate new ideas for the future but I can explore existing ones. You know about Eurocommunism, I - implausibly - know a bit about Social Credit, I can work thru the rest.
Vegan XR supporter will go down well in Frome. It full of upper middle class hippy dippy types.
Is that necessarily a bad thing? Are they worse than Tory voters? I'm a working class hippy dippy so probably biased!
Actually they caused quite a local issue. Loads of them moved out of places like London, drove the house prices up, sent their kids to the Steiner school...that went to shit, then they all appeared at the local state school causing increased pressure on resources, totally unable to do the basics and requiring even more additional help because they had all sent years just digging holes in the dirt and hand painting, rather than learning to read and write.
Frome is a very odd place. You have this new-ish segment of independently wealthy hippy types mixed with quite poor, low achieving population.
Completely off topic for now just something I was thinking about.
The first weekend of the month I normally have my father, his girlfriend and my ex stepbrother round on sunday for a meal. Out of curiousity because we keep getting told eating properly is too expensive for the poor I looked at my bill for the meal especially given the cost of living rise.
Ingredients cost me 40£ This will give 4 adults a 3 course meal today and all will take home enough left overs for a main meal tomorrow. That means 5£ a head for 2 days food.
If you take out the 3 course part the cost of ingredients according to my receipt is 25£. So for 4 adults to have a decent main meal for 2 days comes to £3.12
Prep time is about half an hour for the main meal and I think if you compare £3.12 to a big mac meal (£6.09) it comes out pretty decently. The claim the poor can't afford to eat well sorry doesn't stack up
Not everyone has the skills and confidence you do in the kitchen. And people make poor decisions when stressed and overworked.
And if I may say so, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If it were so easy to eat well, why do you think so many do not? Your "analysis" seems to show that food is cheap enough, so what are the reasons?
Laziness. I left home at 16 unable to cook and this preinternet as it was 1983.
Today I am serving up pomegranite and goats cheese mousse drizzled in balsamic glaze, traditional spaghetti bolognese and an orange chocolate cheesecake.
If I can teach myself to that level from scratch I think its fair to say anyone could learn to make basic meals if they can be bothered. My point is the problem for the poor is not the cost of eating decently it is the motivation to do so.
Keep going. Where has this "laziness" come from?
Its a luxury because people aren't going hungry, so there's no "need" to learn as much as people had to in the past.
That's not such a bad thing.
A bag of apples costs less than a bag of crisps but people like crisps so choose to buy them.
Right, now we're getting somewhere. So people are driven to choices by things other than cost and effort. We also have preference on the table now, as well as the subtler point of convenience undermining the motivation to learn to do things the "hard" way. This is good work.
I'd say "Big Food" is the problem. A handful of transnational companies industrially manufacture all the edible products that supermarkets sell as food and advertise them as the perfect food for our lifestyle. It's chock full of cheap substitutes for natural ingredients that provide less nutrition than fresh cooked food and doesn't sate you as much. It's almost addictive as it hits the bliss point of salt, fat, and sweeteners to make you want more. And it's cheap, colourful and might even say the words "healthy" "low fat" "light" and "sugar free " on the labels. It's quick to prepare and eat, with little fibre in it and made to be soft so you eat quicker and want more. That's why poor people eat bad diets.
No analysis of the problem of poor diet is complete without including what you've just said. Thank you.
I think too that we cannot ignore that a lot of people lead pretty bleak lives, of relentless grind to make ends nearly meet, and simple pleasures are desired at the end of the day. Much the same reason poor people also smoke more, are more often addicts, have worse mental health, more STDs and unplanned pregnancies etc.
Working class motivation for self improvement, and upward mobility still exists as it always has, but has never been universal.
To quote Orwell :
“Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome things like oranges and wholemeal bread or if they even, like the writer of the letter to the New Statesman, saved on fuel and ate their carrots raw? Yes, it would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do such a thing. The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an unemployed man doesn't. Here the tendency of which I spoke at the end of the last chapter comes into play. When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don't want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit 'tasty'. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you.”
On the laziness issue, I think as humans, we are genetically hard wired to be "lazy", otherwise known as conserving energy. For millennia our hunter gatherer species has lived in times of food uncertainty if not scarcity. Even when we moved to agriculture, crops could fail. We are programmed to conserve energy (I read recently that analysis of existing hunter gatherer groups shows they don't expend much more energy than those in modern societies) and also to stuff our faces in times of plenty, because until the last couple of centuries, while many would not be able to predict when the next famine/food shortage would be, we knew it would happen at some point. Stored fat would help us through it.
I can't remember his name, but I remember a professor from St Andrews university saying "that guy at the caveman campfire, the one who got up and said 'I'm just off to put in a 10K run before I sleep' - he's not the one who survived to pass on his genes!"
There are any number of great quotes saying similar things.
Robert Heinlein - “Progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things.”
Agatha Christie - "I don’t think necessity is the mother of invention – invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble."
My favourite seen recently (messing with JFK's great quote) but unsourced
"“We do these things not because they are easy, but because we thought they were going to be easy”
The Australians will say only fair because they were cheated last night (or something like that).
They were a bunch of crybabies about that. McGrath in particular is a joke, basically whinging that he doesn't understand the rules and that is unfair to enforce a rule he apparently has never looked up.
This is a little different, in that the rule itself is a bit more ambiguous and there is a judgement call to be made about when the ball is dead, but the call is at least understandable.
Won't go down well with the cattle and sheep farmers in the rural bits of the constituency though and am not sure there are enough vegans in Frome to make up for it
Have you counted the Hindus HAVE YOU COUNTED THE HINDUS?
I can say the Hindu vote in Someton and Frome is no more than the UK average if that.
Whereas Uxbridge is in the top 20 most Hindu constituencies in the UK
Vegan XR supporter will go down well in Frome. It full of upper middle class hippy dippy types.
Is that necessarily a bad thing? Are they worse than Tory voters? I'm a working class hippy dippy so probably biased!
Actually they caused quite a local issue. Loads of them moved out of places like London, drove the house prices up, sent their kids to a Steiner school...that went to shit, then they all appeared at the local state school causing increased pressure on resources and totally unable to do the basics.
Completely off topic for now just something I was thinking about.
The first weekend of the month I normally have my father, his girlfriend and my ex stepbrother round on sunday for a meal. Out of curiousity because we keep getting told eating properly is too expensive for the poor I looked at my bill for the meal especially given the cost of living rise.
Ingredients cost me 40£ This will give 4 adults a 3 course meal today and all will take home enough left overs for a main meal tomorrow. That means 5£ a head for 2 days food.
If you take out the 3 course part the cost of ingredients according to my receipt is 25£. So for 4 adults to have a decent main meal for 2 days comes to £3.12
Prep time is about half an hour for the main meal and I think if you compare £3.12 to a big mac meal (£6.09) it comes out pretty decently. The claim the poor can't afford to eat well sorry doesn't stack up
Not everyone has the skills and confidence you do in the kitchen. And people make poor decisions when stressed and overworked.
And if I may say so, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If it were so easy to eat well, why do you think so many do not? Your "analysis" seems to show that food is cheap enough, so what are the reasons?
Laziness. I left home at 16 unable to cook and this preinternet as it was 1983.
Today I am serving up pomegranite and goats cheese mousse drizzled in balsamic glaze, traditional spaghetti bolognese and an orange chocolate cheesecake.
If I can teach myself to that level from scratch I think its fair to say anyone could learn to make basic meals if they can be bothered. My point is the problem for the poor is not the cost of eating decently it is the motivation to do so.
Keep going. Where has this "laziness" come from?
Its a luxury because people aren't going hungry, so there's no "need" to learn as much as people had to in the past.
That's not such a bad thing.
A bag of apples costs less than a bag of crisps but people like crisps so choose to buy them.
Right, now we're getting somewhere. So people are driven to choices by things other than cost and effort. We also have preference on the table now, as well as the subtler point of convenience undermining the motivation to learn to do things the "hard" way. This is good work.
I'd say "Big Food" is the problem. A handful of transnational companies industrially manufacture all the edible products that supermarkets sell as food and advertise them as the perfect food for our lifestyle. It's chock full of cheap substitutes for natural ingredients that provide less nutrition than fresh cooked food and doesn't sate you as much. It's almost addictive as it hits the bliss point of salt, fat, and sweeteners to make you want more. And it's cheap, colourful and might even say the words "healthy" "low fat" "light" and "sugar free " on the labels. It's quick to prepare and eat, with little fibre in it and made to be soft so you eat quicker and want more. That's why poor people eat bad diets.
No analysis of the problem of poor diet is complete without including what you've just said. Thank you.
I think too that we cannot ignore that a lot of people lead pretty bleak lives, of relentless grind to make ends nearly meet, and simple pleasures are desired at the end of the day. Much the same reason poor people also smoke more, are more often addicts, have worse mental health, more STDs and unplanned pregnancies etc.
Working class motivation for self improvement, and upward mobility still exists as it always has, but has never been universal.
Quite often, we'd attend an incident in a councill house or flat on the Saff, or Brauny or Beaumont Leys, and the occupants would have nothing of any real worth in the place, but maybe a big TV and a PlayStation. It used to really get to me, the unending bleakness of the places we make people live in. When Goscote House was emptied, we had access to it for a few months as a training site (genuinely really useful, some if the most helpful training I ever did, even though it was later in my career! ) and the grimness of the place was overwhelming. 20 floors up, in a concrete block, windows that only open up an inch, scary, dangerous stairs, crime, drugs. We broke a door in during entry training to find the usual, basic, scruffy flat. One one small bedroom was a nursery, with nice baby wallpaper on, actual carpet and a mobile hanging above where the cot would have been. It really bought home to you how we treat those less well off, and how they still strive to create happiness. Are they lazy, or just not as fortunate as others?
Since it's Sunday Morning, it's the thing the Anglo Catholics (many of whom were politically on the left).
Material charity to lift people out of poverty. Education to keep them there. Beauty (for want of a better word) to soothe people's spirits to be able to process the other stuff profitably.
Even if you don't believe the underlying story, the beauty still works. Perhaps the lack of beauty is why post war socialism or Thatcherism struggled to lift people off the very bottom.
I was pondering 'lack of beauty' the other day. When I was a callow youth popular music was all about love. Nowadays the little I hear emanating from young people's cars seems to be all about hate.
#3 in the single chart, “Miracle” by Calvin Harris and Ellie Goulding: When you hold me There's a place I go It's a different high Oh, no When you touch me I get vulnerable In a different light Oh, no
#4, “Giving Me” by Jazzy: This feeling that I know you're giving me No lies or loving me, hugging me, touching me
#5, “Dancing is Healing”, by Rudimental etc.: Dancin' is healin', love is the answer Dancin' is healin', love is the answer, yeah, yeah, yeah When you need space, when you need time, when it gets heavy on your mind When you lose faith, put your hand in mine, when it gets heavy Dancin' is healin', love is the answer
Brilliant. I love house music lyrics, always uplifting and positive. Very different to rap and hip-hop.
Some good news for Rishi, Nigel Farage considering emigrating after he is denied a UK bank account. '"I've been considering over the course of the day, my options, I've spent time talking to lawyers, I've been considering legal action. I've been asking myself whether frankly, it's even worth staying in this country," he said." https://www.euronews.com/2023/06/30/brexit-leader-nigel-farage-considering-leaving-britain Perhaps a pad in Florida, near Mar a Lago?
Florida would result in a small fish/big pond situation for NF. He's not going fucking anywhere.
Farage is a Trump loyalist though, unlike governor De Santis and most of his supporters in the Florida state legislature.
F;orida also has a smaller population than the UK.
You need to be born in the US to be President, not to be a governor or be elected to the US Congress
Is Mr Farage a Hindu, though? So very important psephologically, you tell us.
Completely off topic for now just something I was thinking about.
The first weekend of the month I normally have my father, his girlfriend and my ex stepbrother round on sunday for a meal. Out of curiousity because we keep getting told eating properly is too expensive for the poor I looked at my bill for the meal especially given the cost of living rise.
Ingredients cost me 40£ This will give 4 adults a 3 course meal today and all will take home enough left overs for a main meal tomorrow. That means 5£ a head for 2 days food.
If you take out the 3 course part the cost of ingredients according to my receipt is 25£. So for 4 adults to have a decent main meal for 2 days comes to £3.12
Prep time is about half an hour for the main meal and I think if you compare £3.12 to a big mac meal (£6.09) it comes out pretty decently. The claim the poor can't afford to eat well sorry doesn't stack up
Not everyone has the skills and confidence you do in the kitchen. And people make poor decisions when stressed and overworked.
And if I may say so, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If it were so easy to eat well, why do you think so many do not? Your "analysis" seems to show that food is cheap enough, so what are the reasons?
Laziness. I left home at 16 unable to cook and this preinternet as it was 1983.
Today I am serving up pomegranite and goats cheese mousse drizzled in balsamic glaze, traditional spaghetti bolognese and an orange chocolate cheesecake.
If I can teach myself to that level from scratch I think its fair to say anyone could learn to make basic meals if they can be bothered. My point is the problem for the poor is not the cost of eating decently it is the motivation to do so.
Keep going. Where has this "laziness" come from?
Simply put too many prefer to sit on their ass watching Jeremey kyle etc and tap a phone to order deliveroo. Then complain they can't afford to eat properly. How hard is it to make mashed potato, grill a few sausages and make some instant gravy......A meal that costs little compared to a big mac?
People need to help themselves a bit not just whinge that they need more money and its not their fault they don't eat healthily.
You're just restating the point. I get it. People are lazy. Why are they lazy? Were they always this way or was there... how can I put this?... some golden age when you were younger when people were better?
There was indeed, back in the mists of time if you did not work you did not eat, there was no free money for gazillions of reasons, no free rents, council tax, tax credits , and the million other stupid ideas since. They are indulged to be lazy by free money.
So would you say free money is morally corrosive? Is that where you're coming from?
Yes , if long term and not just a short term safety net.
Does it matter whether the free money is from the state, or does the same apply to rent, interest, dividends, and capital gains?
That is not "Free money", you are putting up your own earned money and risking losing it, no clue on capital gains mind you as never made any. Have paid interest, lost money renting and on shares etc where dividends rarely cover loss of capital unless you are lucky.
No free money isn't morally corrosive. What I was trying to get across is continually making excuses for why people act the way they do is morally corrosive.
person A :I am obese because I live on take aways and ready meals
Farooq : Thats because you can't afford to buy ingredients, you dont have time to cook, you cant cook and can't be expected to learn.....take your pick of excuses as its definitely not your fault and you can't change it
person A: thanks Farooq now I feel better its not my fault I am fat its the governments and societies....heads off to mcDonalds
Easy come easy go , if it is free it is not respected
The BBC is free and respected. The NHS is free and respected.
It’s not a blow to Sunak, but rather another example of our offshoring the benefits of U.K. research and development.
Free market, open investment, and zero effective industrial policy, together regularly mean we lose businesses overseas after they start up here. In a similar manner to that in which we’ve allowed much of the benefits of running privatised monopolies to go offshore.
Clearly the opposite if all this - statist policies - isn’t really the answer either. But the consensus Thatcher established has proven economically malign for much of the country. Those at the center of power have done fine out of it, so I’m not sure many of them are really even fully aware of the process - or they don’t give a damn.
That's not quite fair. The Thatcher model mandated low taxes and light regulation to attract investment. We don't do that bit - we're highly regulated and have high taxes. Combining that with an orthodox laissez faire approach to mergers and takeovers is the worst of all worlds.
The utilities clearly aren’t highly regulated. Tory MP on R4 this morning suggesting that several of the water companies have issued debt paying well over market rates - to connected companies. So they have been reducing reported profits artificially - and thus paid less U.K. tax - while remitting them overseas via debt interest payments.
If this is the case with Thames, there is an excellent opportunity (and overwhelming case) to take it down, rather than allowing it to refinance at the expense of its customers - which is what the industry is proposing.
And of course tech companies aren’t leaving because of regulation, but the massively greater availability of capital - from both the market and government - in the US.
None of which undermines the central point - if we were the best and most economical environment for business in the (at least Western) world, we would be able to afford some churn. As we're not every loss hurts all the more. Water companies are a very specific sector and I agree with you that the usual rules don't really apply.
Won't go down well with the cattle and sheep farmers in the rural bits of the constituency though and am not sure there are enough vegans in Frome to make up for it
Have you counted the Hindus HAVE YOU COUNTED THE HINDUS?
I can say the Hindu vote in Someton and Frome is no more than the UK average if that.
Whereas Uxbridge is in the top 20 most Hindu constituencies in the UK
I think we should divide all constituencies into five categories, running from most to fewest Hindus Hinduest Hinduer Hindu Mindu Hindon't
Only by this method can we truly know what will happen in a by-election.
Plus LD vote.
Low LD vote in 2019 and high Hindu vote in the seat = Rishi's best hope of holding a seat in a by election.
The Australians will say only fair because they were cheated last night (or something like that).
Nope. They were attempting to cheat last night and they got away with cheating this morning. In the end the only certainty is that the Aussies cheat.
I know it’s not politically correct to call them the convicts any more, but Warner and Smith have both actually served substantial bans for cheating.
They would find it hard to sustain an objection to being labelled as cheaters by the crowds, since it is provably true. What would they complain about, that they don't cheat anymore?
This is a compound of the Tamworth 2022 LE results and the 2021 Staffordshire results for Lichfield Rural East and South wards, weighted to 70% to account the amount of these wards in the constituency.
Overall about 80% of the constituency is in Tamworth, 20% in Lichfield Rural
RESULTS: Con 11412 (53.0) Lab 7547 (35.1) Ind 1789 (8.3) LD 520 (2.4) Grn 263 (1.2)
Had these had locals in 2023, the par swing to Labour would have been about 3.2%, plus the bit of national swing that has occurred since May. Par overall swing from the above, then, estimated at about 6%.
This would give around a 47 / 41 result to the Cons. Labour would need a lot of those Independent Tamworth voters to pull off a coup.
Completely off topic for now just something I was thinking about.
The first weekend of the month I normally have my father, his girlfriend and my ex stepbrother round on sunday for a meal. Out of curiousity because we keep getting told eating properly is too expensive for the poor I looked at my bill for the meal especially given the cost of living rise.
Ingredients cost me 40£ This will give 4 adults a 3 course meal today and all will take home enough left overs for a main meal tomorrow. That means 5£ a head for 2 days food.
If you take out the 3 course part the cost of ingredients according to my receipt is 25£. So for 4 adults to have a decent main meal for 2 days comes to £3.12
Prep time is about half an hour for the main meal and I think if you compare £3.12 to a big mac meal (£6.09) it comes out pretty decently. The claim the poor can't afford to eat well sorry doesn't stack up
Not everyone has the skills and confidence you do in the kitchen. And people make poor decisions when stressed and overworked.
And if I may say so, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If it were so easy to eat well, why do you think so many do not? Your "analysis" seems to show that food is cheap enough, so what are the reasons?
Laziness. I left home at 16 unable to cook and this preinternet as it was 1983.
Today I am serving up pomegranite and goats cheese mousse drizzled in balsamic glaze, traditional spaghetti bolognese and an orange chocolate cheesecake.
If I can teach myself to that level from scratch I think its fair to say anyone could learn to make basic meals if they can be bothered. My point is the problem for the poor is not the cost of eating decently it is the motivation to do so.
Keep going. Where has this "laziness" come from?
Its a luxury because people aren't going hungry, so there's no "need" to learn as much as people had to in the past.
That's not such a bad thing.
A bag of apples costs less than a bag of crisps but people like crisps so choose to buy them.
Right, now we're getting somewhere. So people are driven to choices by things other than cost and effort. We also have preference on the table now, as well as the subtler point of convenience undermining the motivation to learn to do things the "hard" way. This is good work.
I'd say "Big Food" is the problem. A handful of transnational companies industrially manufacture all the edible products that supermarkets sell as food and advertise them as the perfect food for our lifestyle. It's chock full of cheap substitutes for natural ingredients that provide less nutrition than fresh cooked food and doesn't sate you as much. It's almost addictive as it hits the bliss point of salt, fat, and sweeteners to make you want more. And it's cheap, colourful and might even say the words "healthy" "low fat" "light" and "sugar free " on the labels. It's quick to prepare and eat, with little fibre in it and made to be soft so you eat quicker and want more. That's why poor people eat bad diets.
No analysis of the problem of poor diet is complete without including what you've just said. Thank you.
I think too that we cannot ignore that a lot of people lead pretty bleak lives, of relentless grind to make ends nearly meet, and simple pleasures are desired at the end of the day. Much the same reason poor people also smoke more, are more often addicts, have worse mental health, more STDs and unplanned pregnancies etc.
Working class motivation for self improvement, and upward mobility still exists as it always has, but has never been universal.
Quite often, we'd attend an incident in a councill house or flat on the Saff, or Brauny or Beaumont Leys, and the occupants would have nothing of any real worth in the place, but maybe a big TV and a PlayStation. It used to really get to me, the unending bleakness of the places we make people live in. When Goscote House was emptied, we had access to it for a few months as a training site (genuinely really useful, some if the most helpful training I ever did, even though it was later in my career! ) and the grimness of the place was overwhelming. 20 floors up, in a concrete block, windows that only open up an inch, scary, dangerous stairs, crime, drugs. We broke a door in during entry training to find the usual, basic, scruffy flat. One one small bedroom was a nursery, with nice baby wallpaper on, actual carpet and a mobile hanging above where the cot would have been. It really bought home to you how we treat those less well off, and how they still strive to create happiness. Are they lazy, or just not as fortunate as others?
Since it's Sunday Morning, it's the thing the Anglo Catholics (many of whom were politically on the left).
Material charity to lift people out of poverty. Education to keep them there. Beauty (for want of a better word) to soothe people's spirits to be able to process the other stuff profitably.
Even if you don't believe the underlying story, the beauty still works. Perhaps the lack of beauty is why post war socialism or Thatcherism struggled to lift people off the very bottom.
I was pondering 'lack of beauty' the other day. When I was a callow youth popular music was all about love. Nowadays the little I hear emanating from young people's cars seems to be all about hate.
#3 in the single chart, “Miracle” by Calvin Harris and Ellie Goulding: When you hold me There's a place I go It's a different high Oh, no When you touch me I get vulnerable In a different light Oh, no
#4, “Giving Me” by Jazzy: This feeling that I know you're giving me No lies or loving me, hugging me, touching me
#5, “Dancing is Healing”, by Rudimental etc.: Dancin' is healin', love is the answer Dancin' is healin', love is the answer, yeah, yeah, yeah When you need space, when you need time, when it gets heavy on your mind When you lose faith, put your hand in mine, when it gets heavy Dancin' is healin', love is the answer
Thanks for reminding me why I don't listen to the radio.
Looks like Stokes is going to try and score 150 on his own in 10 overs. If only we had 10 other Ben Stokes.
Stokes is essentially out there on his own, with 4 players who can at best stick around for an hour if lucky. All he needs to do is farm the strike and score 40 an hour.
I do feel for Bairstow a bit. It was still foolish, but he did do a little pause and a foot press before walking out, he was just 1-2 seconds too early setting off.
The Australians will say only fair because they were cheated last night (or something like that).
Nope. They were attempting to cheat last night and they got away with cheating this morning. In the end the only certainty is that the Aussies cheat.
They will seek to draw and equivalence, anda there is one, but not the one they will draw.
Last night they did not know or care about the law as written and pouted like children as it bit them. Today they have benefited from a reading of the law as written, but through acting positively in a way which is not very sportsmanlike.
I felt a great disturbance in the force as millions of voices cried out ‘Aussie cheats are following the rules’. I fear something terrible has happened.
I do feel for Bairstow a bit. It was still foolish, but he did do a little pause and a foot press before walking out, he was just 1-2 seconds too early setting off.
I think the keeper must have noted he was in the habit of walking out of his crease very early, rather than it being something he'd just noticed for the first time just then, as a spur of the moment thing. In a way that would make it more of a legitimate dismissal IMO.
Some good news for Rishi, Nigel Farage considering emigrating after he is denied a UK bank account. '"I've been considering over the course of the day, my options, I've spent time talking to lawyers, I've been considering legal action. I've been asking myself whether frankly, it's even worth staying in this country," he said." https://www.euronews.com/2023/06/30/brexit-leader-nigel-farage-considering-leaving-britain Perhaps a pad in Florida, near Mar a Lago?
Florida would result in a small fish/big pond situation for NF. He's not going fucking anywhere.
Farage is a Trump loyalist though, unlike governor De Santis and most of his supporters in the Florida state legislature.
F;orida also has a smaller population than the UK.
You need to be born in the US to be President, not to be a governor or be elected to the US Congress
Farage would not even be in the top 100 utterly detestable right wing shits in Tampa, never mind the rest of the state. He just could not live with that level of irrelevance.
Completely off topic for now just something I was thinking about.
The first weekend of the month I normally have my father, his girlfriend and my ex stepbrother round on sunday for a meal. Out of curiousity because we keep getting told eating properly is too expensive for the poor I looked at my bill for the meal especially given the cost of living rise.
Ingredients cost me 40£ This will give 4 adults a 3 course meal today and all will take home enough left overs for a main meal tomorrow. That means 5£ a head for 2 days food.
If you take out the 3 course part the cost of ingredients according to my receipt is 25£. So for 4 adults to have a decent main meal for 2 days comes to £3.12
Prep time is about half an hour for the main meal and I think if you compare £3.12 to a big mac meal (£6.09) it comes out pretty decently. The claim the poor can't afford to eat well sorry doesn't stack up
Not everyone has the skills and confidence you do in the kitchen. And people make poor decisions when stressed and overworked.
And if I may say so, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If it were so easy to eat well, why do you think so many do not? Your "analysis" seems to show that food is cheap enough, so what are the reasons?
Laziness. I left home at 16 unable to cook and this preinternet as it was 1983.
Today I am serving up pomegranite and goats cheese mousse drizzled in balsamic glaze, traditional spaghetti bolognese and an orange chocolate cheesecake.
If I can teach myself to that level from scratch I think its fair to say anyone could learn to make basic meals if they can be bothered. My point is the problem for the poor is not the cost of eating decently it is the motivation to do so.
Keep going. Where has this "laziness" come from?
Its a luxury because people aren't going hungry, so there's no "need" to learn as much as people had to in the past.
That's not such a bad thing.
A bag of apples costs less than a bag of crisps but people like crisps so choose to buy them.
Right, now we're getting somewhere. So people are driven to choices by things other than cost and effort. We also have preference on the table now, as well as the subtler point of convenience undermining the motivation to learn to do things the "hard" way. This is good work.
I'd say "Big Food" is the problem. A handful of transnational companies industrially manufacture all the edible products that supermarkets sell as food and advertise them as the perfect food for our lifestyle. It's chock full of cheap substitutes for natural ingredients that provide less nutrition than fresh cooked food and doesn't sate you as much. It's almost addictive as it hits the bliss point of salt, fat, and sweeteners to make you want more. And it's cheap, colourful and might even say the words "healthy" "low fat" "light" and "sugar free " on the labels. It's quick to prepare and eat, with little fibre in it and made to be soft so you eat quicker and want more. That's why poor people eat bad diets.
No analysis of the problem of poor diet is complete without including what you've just said. Thank you.
I think too that we cannot ignore that a lot of people lead pretty bleak lives, of relentless grind to make ends nearly meet, and simple pleasures are desired at the end of the day. Much the same reason poor people also smoke more, are more often addicts, have worse mental health, more STDs and unplanned pregnancies etc.
Working class motivation for self improvement, and upward mobility still exists as it always has, but has never been universal.
Quite often, we'd attend an incident in a councill house or flat on the Saff, or Brauny or Beaumont Leys, and the occupants would have nothing of any real worth in the place, but maybe a big TV and a PlayStation. It used to really get to me, the unending bleakness of the places we make people live in. When Goscote House was emptied, we had access to it for a few months as a training site (genuinely really useful, some if the most helpful training I ever did, even though it was later in my career! ) and the grimness of the place was overwhelming. 20 floors up, in a concrete block, windows that only open up an inch, scary, dangerous stairs, crime, drugs. We broke a door in during entry training to find the usual, basic, scruffy flat. One one small bedroom was a nursery, with nice baby wallpaper on, actual carpet and a mobile hanging above where the cot would have been. It really bought home to you how we treat those less well off, and how they still strive to create happiness. Are they lazy, or just not as fortunate as others?
Since it's Sunday Morning, it's the thing the Anglo Catholics (many of whom were politically on the left).
Material charity to lift people out of poverty. Education to keep them there. Beauty (for want of a better word) to soothe people's spirits to be able to process the other stuff profitably.
Even if you don't believe the underlying story, the beauty still works. Perhaps the lack of beauty is why post war socialism or Thatcherism struggled to lift people off the very bottom.
I was pondering 'lack of beauty' the other day. When I was a callow youth popular music was all about love. Nowadays the little I hear emanating from young people's cars seems to be all about hate.
#3 in the single chart, “Miracle” by Calvin Harris and Ellie Goulding: When you hold me There's a place I go It's a different high Oh, no When you touch me I get vulnerable In a different light Oh, no
#4, “Giving Me” by Jazzy: This feeling that I know you're giving me No lies or loving me, hugging me, touching me
#5, “Dancing is Healing”, by Rudimental etc.: Dancin' is healin', love is the answer Dancin' is healin', love is the answer, yeah, yeah, yeah When you need space, when you need time, when it gets heavy on your mind When you lose faith, put your hand in mine, when it gets heavy Dancin' is healin', love is the answer
Thanks for reminding me why I don't listen to the radio.
I don’t think the kids today listen to anything on the radio.
Completely off topic for now just something I was thinking about.
The first weekend of the month I normally have my father, his girlfriend and my ex stepbrother round on sunday for a meal. Out of curiousity because we keep getting told eating properly is too expensive for the poor I looked at my bill for the meal especially given the cost of living rise.
Ingredients cost me 40£ This will give 4 adults a 3 course meal today and all will take home enough left overs for a main meal tomorrow. That means 5£ a head for 2 days food.
If you take out the 3 course part the cost of ingredients according to my receipt is 25£. So for 4 adults to have a decent main meal for 2 days comes to £3.12
Prep time is about half an hour for the main meal and I think if you compare £3.12 to a big mac meal (£6.09) it comes out pretty decently. The claim the poor can't afford to eat well sorry doesn't stack up
Not everyone has the skills and confidence you do in the kitchen. And people make poor decisions when stressed and overworked.
And if I may say so, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If it were so easy to eat well, why do you think so many do not? Your "analysis" seems to show that food is cheap enough, so what are the reasons?
Laziness. I left home at 16 unable to cook and this preinternet as it was 1983.
Today I am serving up pomegranite and goats cheese mousse drizzled in balsamic glaze, traditional spaghetti bolognese and an orange chocolate cheesecake.
If I can teach myself to that level from scratch I think its fair to say anyone could learn to make basic meals if they can be bothered. My point is the problem for the poor is not the cost of eating decently it is the motivation to do so.
Keep going. Where has this "laziness" come from?
Its a luxury because people aren't going hungry, so there's no "need" to learn as much as people had to in the past.
That's not such a bad thing.
A bag of apples costs less than a bag of crisps but people like crisps so choose to buy them.
Right, now we're getting somewhere. So people are driven to choices by things other than cost and effort. We also have preference on the table now, as well as the subtler point of convenience undermining the motivation to learn to do things the "hard" way. This is good work.
I'd say "Big Food" is the problem. A handful of transnational companies industrially manufacture all the edible products that supermarkets sell as food and advertise them as the perfect food for our lifestyle. It's chock full of cheap substitutes for natural ingredients that provide less nutrition than fresh cooked food and doesn't sate you as much. It's almost addictive as it hits the bliss point of salt, fat, and sweeteners to make you want more. And it's cheap, colourful and might even say the words "healthy" "low fat" "light" and "sugar free " on the labels. It's quick to prepare and eat, with little fibre in it and made to be soft so you eat quicker and want more. That's why poor people eat bad diets.
No analysis of the problem of poor diet is complete without including what you've just said. Thank you.
I think too that we cannot ignore that a lot of people lead pretty bleak lives, of relentless grind to make ends nearly meet, and simple pleasures are desired at the end of the day. Much the same reason poor people also smoke more, are more often addicts, have worse mental health, more STDs and unplanned pregnancies etc.
Working class motivation for self improvement, and upward mobility still exists as it always has, but has never been universal.
Quite often, we'd attend an incident in a councill house or flat on the Saff, or Brauny or Beaumont Leys, and the occupants would have nothing of any real worth in the place, but maybe a big TV and a PlayStation. It used to really get to me, the unending bleakness of the places we make people live in. When Goscote House was emptied, we had access to it for a few months as a training site (genuinely really useful, some if the most helpful training I ever did, even though it was later in my career! ) and the grimness of the place was overwhelming. 20 floors up, in a concrete block, windows that only open up an inch, scary, dangerous stairs, crime, drugs. We broke a door in during entry training to find the usual, basic, scruffy flat. One one small bedroom was a nursery, with nice baby wallpaper on, actual carpet and a mobile hanging above where the cot would have been. It really bought home to you how we treat those less well off, and how they still strive to create happiness. Are they lazy, or just not as fortunate as others?
Since it's Sunday Morning, it's the thing the Anglo Catholics (many of whom were politically on the left).
Material charity to lift people out of poverty. Education to keep them there. Beauty (for want of a better word) to soothe people's spirits to be able to process the other stuff profitably.
Even if you don't believe the underlying story, the beauty still works. Perhaps the lack of beauty is why post war socialism or Thatcherism struggled to lift people off the very bottom.
I was pondering 'lack of beauty' the other day. When I was a callow youth popular music was all about love. Nowadays the little I hear emanating from young people's cars seems to be all about hate.
#3 in the single chart, “Miracle” by Calvin Harris and Ellie Goulding: When you hold me There's a place I go It's a different high Oh, no When you touch me I get vulnerable In a different light Oh, no
#4, “Giving Me” by Jazzy: This feeling that I know you're giving me No lies or loving me, hugging me, touching me
#5, “Dancing is Healing”, by Rudimental etc.: Dancin' is healin', love is the answer Dancin' is healin', love is the answer, yeah, yeah, yeah When you need space, when you need time, when it gets heavy on your mind When you lose faith, put your hand in mine, when it gets heavy Dancin' is healin', love is the answer
Thanks for reminding me why I don't listen to the radio.
I don’t think the kids today listen to anything on the radio.
Completely off topic for now just something I was thinking about.
The first weekend of the month I normally have my father, his girlfriend and my ex stepbrother round on sunday for a meal. Out of curiousity because we keep getting told eating properly is too expensive for the poor I looked at my bill for the meal especially given the cost of living rise.
Ingredients cost me 40£ This will give 4 adults a 3 course meal today and all will take home enough left overs for a main meal tomorrow. That means 5£ a head for 2 days food.
If you take out the 3 course part the cost of ingredients according to my receipt is 25£. So for 4 adults to have a decent main meal for 2 days comes to £3.12
Prep time is about half an hour for the main meal and I think if you compare £3.12 to a big mac meal (£6.09) it comes out pretty decently. The claim the poor can't afford to eat well sorry doesn't stack up
Not everyone has the skills and confidence you do in the kitchen. And people make poor decisions when stressed and overworked.
And if I may say so, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If it were so easy to eat well, why do you think so many do not? Your "analysis" seems to show that food is cheap enough, so what are the reasons?
Laziness. I left home at 16 unable to cook and this preinternet as it was 1983.
Today I am serving up pomegranite and goats cheese mousse drizzled in balsamic glaze, traditional spaghetti bolognese and an orange chocolate cheesecake.
If I can teach myself to that level from scratch I think its fair to say anyone could learn to make basic meals if they can be bothered. My point is the problem for the poor is not the cost of eating decently it is the motivation to do so.
Keep going. Where has this "laziness" come from?
Its a luxury because people aren't going hungry, so there's no "need" to learn as much as people had to in the past.
That's not such a bad thing.
A bag of apples costs less than a bag of crisps but people like crisps so choose to buy them.
Right, now we're getting somewhere. So people are driven to choices by things other than cost and effort. We also have preference on the table now, as well as the subtler point of convenience undermining the motivation to learn to do things the "hard" way. This is good work.
I'd say "Big Food" is the problem. A handful of transnational companies industrially manufacture all the edible products that supermarkets sell as food and advertise them as the perfect food for our lifestyle. It's chock full of cheap substitutes for natural ingredients that provide less nutrition than fresh cooked food and doesn't sate you as much. It's almost addictive as it hits the bliss point of salt, fat, and sweeteners to make you want more. And it's cheap, colourful and might even say the words "healthy" "low fat" "light" and "sugar free " on the labels. It's quick to prepare and eat, with little fibre in it and made to be soft so you eat quicker and want more. That's why poor people eat bad diets.
No analysis of the problem of poor diet is complete without including what you've just said. Thank you.
I think too that we cannot ignore that a lot of people lead pretty bleak lives, of relentless grind to make ends nearly meet, and simple pleasures are desired at the end of the day. Much the same reason poor people also smoke more, are more often addicts, have worse mental health, more STDs and unplanned pregnancies etc.
Working class motivation for self improvement, and upward mobility still exists as it always has, but has never been universal.
Quite often, we'd attend an incident in a councill house or flat on the Saff, or Brauny or Beaumont Leys, and the occupants would have nothing of any real worth in the place, but maybe a big TV and a PlayStation. It used to really get to me, the unending bleakness of the places we make people live in. When Goscote House was emptied, we had access to it for a few months as a training site (genuinely really useful, some if the most helpful training I ever did, even though it was later in my career! ) and the grimness of the place was overwhelming. 20 floors up, in a concrete block, windows that only open up an inch, scary, dangerous stairs, crime, drugs. We broke a door in during entry training to find the usual, basic, scruffy flat. One one small bedroom was a nursery, with nice baby wallpaper on, actual carpet and a mobile hanging above where the cot would have been. It really bought home to you how we treat those less well off, and how they still strive to create happiness. Are they lazy, or just not as fortunate as others?
Since it's Sunday Morning, it's the thing the Anglo Catholics (many of whom were politically on the left).
Material charity to lift people out of poverty. Education to keep them there. Beauty (for want of a better word) to soothe people's spirits to be able to process the other stuff profitably.
Even if you don't believe the underlying story, the beauty still works. Perhaps the lack of beauty is why post war socialism or Thatcherism struggled to lift people off the very bottom.
I was pondering 'lack of beauty' the other day. When I was a callow youth popular music was all about love. Nowadays the little I hear emanating from young people's cars seems to be all about hate.
#3 in the single chart, “Miracle” by Calvin Harris and Ellie Goulding: When you hold me There's a place I go It's a different high Oh, no When you touch me I get vulnerable In a different light Oh, no
#4, “Giving Me” by Jazzy: This feeling that I know you're giving me No lies or loving me, hugging me, touching me
#5, “Dancing is Healing”, by Rudimental etc.: Dancin' is healin', love is the answer Dancin' is healin', love is the answer, yeah, yeah, yeah When you need space, when you need time, when it gets heavy on your mind When you lose faith, put your hand in mine, when it gets heavy Dancin' is healin', love is the answer
Thanks for reminding me why I don't listen to the radio.
I don’t think the kids today listen to anything on the radio.
Yes and no. They do today's radio - podcats.
I am all for pods with cats, but, no, I don’t think that’s how kids today listen to music either. They use streaming services.
Some good news for Rishi, Nigel Farage considering emigrating after he is denied a UK bank account. '"I've been considering over the course of the day, my options, I've spent time talking to lawyers, I've been considering legal action. I've been asking myself whether frankly, it's even worth staying in this country," he said." https://www.euronews.com/2023/06/30/brexit-leader-nigel-farage-considering-leaving-britain Perhaps a pad in Florida, near Mar a Lago?
The only time I ever saw Farage in person was when I walked past him, with his minder in tow, outside Coutts on The Strand. I thought he was heading in there. Often thought it wouldn't do much for his man-of-the-people image if that was indeed where he banked.
The Australians will say only fair because they were cheated last night (or something like that).
Nope. They were attempting to cheat last night and they got away with cheating this morning. In the end the only certainty is that the Aussies cheat.
They will seek to draw and equivalence, anda there is one, but not the one they will draw.
Last night they did not know or care about the law as written and pouted like children as it bit them. Today they have benefited from a reading of the law as written, but through acting positively in a way which is not very sportsmanlike.
If they did F1 they’d be Red Bull - a bunch of undoubtedly skilled people, who like to win in the worst way possible for the sport, turning neutrals against them but loving the football-fan partisanship their behaviour encourages.
Is Ben Stokes going to be remember as England's most iconic cricketer?
Not the best averages at batting or bowling, but some how the time comes and Stokes just becomes superman.
I've never heard a Lord's crowd like this before.
It's just like being at Edgbaston or Headingley.
Having watched the documentary about him, it makes his performances even more amazing. The manner and loss of his father hit him so hard, the murder of his step brothers / sisters being leaked around the same time. His knee is clearly f##ked for life. Yet he still has superman mode under the most enormous pressure.
I notice that although I live a long way from Selby, the emails from Labour are now ignoring Uxbridge and urging me to pitch into the "marginal" of Selby. I've yet to receive a request to go to Somerton and think that the party is concentrating entirely on winning the other two.
LDs focusing on Somerton, so Labour focusing on Selby and on that Opinium poll putting them not the LDs ahead in Mid Beds will push there too if Dorries does stand down.
Uxbridge it seems Labour now taking for granted as a gain. Yet with a strong pro Rishi Hindu vote there, still a Tory held council and the Tory candidate a local councillor and the Labour candidate from Camden sounds a bit complacent
Yes, soon after I wrote that I did get a separate email urging me to help in Uxbridge. Dead slience on Somerton though.
If someone says that was against the spirit of the game, the problem is in that case they're saying the keeper should never be allowed to do anything about a batsman who habitually wanders out of his crease when the ball is still live. The keeper has two options in those circumstances. He can stand up to the stumps in order to stop the batsman wandering out, or he can do what Carey did. Because it isn't practical to stand up for some bowlers.
Comments
Set a man on fire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
This is a compound of the Tamworth 2022 LE results and the 2021 Staffordshire results for Lichfield Rural East and South wards, weighted to 70% to account the amount of these wards in the constituency.
Overall about 80% of the constituency is in Tamworth, 20% in Lichfield Rural
RESULTS:
Con 11412 (53.0)
Lab 7547 (35.1)
Ind 1789 (8.3)
LD 520 (2.4)
Grn 263 (1.2)
Had these had locals in 2023, the par swing to Labour would have been about 3.2%, plus the bit of national swing that has occurred since May. Par overall swing from the above, then, estimated at about 6%.
This would give around a 47 / 41 result to the Cons. Labour would need a lot of those Independent Tamworth voters to pull off a coup.
When I looked in detail, one of the starters required something like six pans
I would have had to cook it, stop, wash up everything and then start on the next dish. I chose something that cooked in one pan. Not as exciting, but I wasn't prepared to do all that.
Especially when you got the rub of the green by playing to the letter of the law the day prior.
Given how long the tail is thesedays I would think 30-50 runs more, unless someone can pull an Leach.
I can't remember his name, but I remember a professor from St Andrews university saying "that guy at the caveman campfire, the one who got up and said 'I'm just off to put in a 10K run before I sleep' - he's not the one who survived to pass on his genes!"
Effective sanctions on machine tool supplies would probably shut down half their industry in six months.
And it would take only Germany, Japan, the US, S Korea and Italy.
But I'm surprised they've just about made it to lunch. If they can scratch it out to tea time then they will have truly exceeded expectations. The goal is to lose by less than 100, which means it at least looks close, despite being outplayed entirely.
Just pause for a second or two before wandering off and they cannot violate the spirit!
Robert Heinlein - “Progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things.”
Agatha Christie - "I don’t think necessity is the mother of invention – invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble."
My favourite seen recently (messing with JFK's great quote) but unsourced
"“We do these things not because they are easy, but because we thought they were going to be easy”
Absolute shithousery from the Aussies.
F;orida also has a smaller population than the UK.
You need to be born in the US to be President, not to be a governor or be elected to the US Congress
Post-Truss, the Conservatives no longer have a theoretical underpinning and have retreated into technocratic managerialism. Starmer is similarly afflicted. I can't generate new ideas for the future but I can explore existing ones. You know about Eurocommunism, I - implausibly - know a bit about Social Credit, I can work thru the rest.
Frome is a very odd place. You have this new-ish segment of independently wealthy hippy types mixed with quite poor, low achieving population.
This is a little different, in that the rule itself is a bit more ambiguous and there is a judgement call to be made about when the ball is dead, but the call is at least understandable.
Whereas Uxbridge is in the top 20 most Hindu constituencies in the UK
Expel all Aussies from the UK.
63% think the Privileges Cttee verdict was unfair
https://conservativehome.com/2023/07/02/our-survey-half-of-our-panel-of-conservative-members-think-that-johnson-should-be-a-tory-candidate-at-the-next-election/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Sunday 2nd July 2023&utm_content=Sunday 2nd July 2023+CID_351776f381e6389ff90d85b3236b1091&utm_source=Daily Email&utm_term=Our survey Half of our panel of Conservative members think that Johnson should be a Tory candidate at the next election
Perun 20230702: "Wagner's Mutiny - what it means for Putin's Russia (and Coups 101)"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tP8VPkWXOfU
But that'll better then TCW.
Conservative Home is the home of the deranged grievance monger.
Low LD vote in 2019 and high Hindu vote in the seat = Rishi's best hope of holding a seat in a by election.
Hence Uxbridge I still think may be a Tory hold
Last night they did not know or care about the law as written and pouted like children as it bit them. Today they have benefited from a reading of the law as written, but through acting positively in a way which is not very sportsmanlike.
Not the best averages at batting or bowling, but some how the time comes and Stokes just becomes superman.
It's just like being at Edgbaston or Headingley.
So they just do that again for 2 hours, match won by 2 wickets.
Pitty they are breaking for lunch!
James Lowe: If you can make first session Lord's sound like evening session Hollies you’ve obviously done something egregious