That said, there’s nothing I’d personally like more than an SNP implosion. I don’t like those who wish to break up the country, and have many family and friends in Scotland.
No matter one’s opinions about the characters involved in the recent IPSO decision, do we respect freedom of the press, or do we regulate the media by loud activist groups?
I was very critical of the political media, and their bosses, during the pandemic, and continue to think that politics is debased, and good people don’t stand for election, because of the media environment - but also that freedom of the press is a mark of a democratic western society, and if powerful people can force opinions and jokes to be silenced there’s a big problem.
I am unconvinced by the regulator, the Sun and Fraser. What Fraser is actually saying is that the police and no-one else should be the regulator of opinion under hate crime law. This isn't going to happen as he well knows.
Read literally Clarkson's words may be properly read as incitement to a criminal offence - assault.
Suppose some writer in a paper had said, instead of the parading naked stuff, that "It would be a good idea, though illegal, for X (a major public figure) to be raped, strangled and murdered, and in my opinion it would be excellent if some public spirited person carried this out '.
This too is the expression of opinion. Are we sure that this should be entirely unregulated except through the criminal courts?
Aiui Clarkson's defence and/or mitigation was that the words complained of were not incitement to assault but a reference to a scene in Game of Thrones.
But I never understood that. Most bad things have happened in fiction. When I said the victim needed a good shanking I was merely alluding to the play Julius Caesar, yr honner.
It is quite common to use phrases that are clearly not incitement to violence, although the words individually might appear to be so. How many have used the phrase 'will be the first against the wall' or 'should be shot'. We don't mean it literally and nobody takes it so. Most of us can tell the difference between hate and colourful use of the language.
Alan Hansen saying that Argentina defender "should be shot" for some terrible defending a few days after Andrés Escobar was actually shot, was quite funny.
It's not just PMQs (as the header notes, two questions a week against one every blue moon) but also invitations to Question Time and invitations to comment on news and current events generally.
Quite right; the exclusion of the LibDems from such programmes has been scandalous, especially when looks at the time given to the Faragists and similar potential demagogues.
And Good Morning to one and all.
Agreed. It's not been fair on the LDs, and reflects very badly on the primitive procedures of the HoC.
I suppose the problem is, there are eleven recognised parties in the House of Commons: Tories, Labour, SNP, DUP, Sinn Fein (sort of) Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru, SDLP, Alliance, Greens and Reclaim (sort of).
If each of them had two questions for the leader, plus six for Labour less 2 for SF that's 22 questions. That's a lot to cram in and get backbenchers in too.
Even if you said they must have at least five MPs, that still leaves 12 to get in. Not much room for more.
So the line has to be drawn somewhere. It may be unfair on the Lib Dems but ultimately you could make a case it was their own fault they collapsed so much (they were not actually forced to support the disastrous Browne report).
I don't think anyone was suggesting that every party should get 2 questions, but the fourth party could get, say, a question every other week. That would address the issue without making PMQs unwieldy.
How about allocating questions on the basis of seat (or even vote!) share? With a lower number for the party of government We could call it proportional questionisation.
Mind you, that would have left the LDs with ~1 question between GEs, recently!
Because most who subscribe are swiveleyed nutters that are unrepresentative of anyone with a brain. I imagine if you polled them before 2016 the vast majority would have thought that ECHR was part of EU.
Almost as cheap as the bottle of wine Sunak donated.
Our school has a summer fare and Christmas fare where bottles are donated in the build-up and then won at tombolas and I swear the same bottles keep getting recycled. Its highly efficient if you think about it.
Last summer we won a bottle of mulled wine at the summer fare, I'm guessing whoever donated that had won it the previous Christmas fare as its an odd thing to donate at summer otherwise. We donated it back six months later for the Christmas fare. At Christmas we then won some other bottles, we drank one of those and the others we donated back to the summer fare.
The school makes its money from a tombola with these bottles. They don't care about the price tag of the bottles, or if its the first of 7th time the same bottle has gone around so long as its in date, they're getting their funds either way each time its done. 🤷♂️
It's not just PMQs (as the header notes, two questions a week against one every blue moon) but also invitations to Question Time and invitations to comment on news and current events generally.
Quite right; the exclusion of the LibDems from such programmes has been scandalous, especially when looks at the time given to the Faragists and similar potential demagogues.
And Good Morning to one and all.
Agreed. It's not been fair on the LDs, and reflects very badly on the primitive procedures of the HoC.
I suppose the problem is, there are eleven recognised parties in the House of Commons: Tories, Labour, SNP, DUP, Sinn Fein (sort of) Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru, SDLP, Alliance, Greens and Reclaim (sort of).
If each of them had two questions for the leader, plus six for Labour less 2 for SF that's 22 questions. That's a lot to cram in and get backbenchers in too.
Even if you said they must have at least five MPs, that still leaves 12 to get in. Not much room for more.
So the line has to be drawn somewhere. It may be unfair on the Lib Dems but ultimately you could make a case it was their own fault they collapsed so much (they were not actually forced to support the disastrous Browne report).
I don't think anyone was suggesting that every party should get 2 questions, but the fourth party could get, say, a question every other week. That would address the issue without making PMQs unwieldy.
How about allocating questions on the basis of seat (or even vote!) share? With a lower number for the party of government We could call it proportional questionisation.
Mind you, that would have left the LDs with ~1 question between GEs, recently!
Almost as cheap as the bottle of wine Sunak donated.
Our school has a summer fare and Christmas fare where bottles are donated in the build-up and then won at tombolas and I swear the same bottles keep getting recycled. Its highly efficient if you think about it.
Last summer we won a bottle of mulled wine at the summer fare, I'm guessing whoever donated that had won it the previous Christmas fare as its an odd thing to donate at summer otherwise. We donated it back six months later for the Christmas fare. At Christmas we then won some other bottles, we drank one of those and the others we donated back to the summer fare.
The school makes its money from a tombola with these bottles. They don't care about the price tag of the bottles, or if its the first of 7th time the same bottle has gone around so long as its in date, they're getting their funds either way each time its done. 🤷♂️
Does nothing for GDP though and surely that is the aim of the school governers.
No matter one’s opinions about the characters involved in the recent IPSO decision, do we respect freedom of the press, or do we regulate the media by loud activist groups?
I was very critical of the political media, and their bosses, during the pandemic, and continue to think that politics is debased, and good people don’t stand for election, because of the media environment - but also that freedom of the press is a mark of a democratic western society, and if powerful people can force opinions and jokes to be silenced there’s a big problem.
I wonder if the article had been about Farage being paraded naked and dung thrown at him because of Brexit, if the response would have been the same. I somehow doubt it. This is not about sexism, its about the selectiveness of the social media outrage. Equal under the law and all that.
I'm sure Megan would have been offended by it. Tough. I get offended by stuff too. Tough.
Because most who subscribe are swiveleyed nutters that are unrepresentative of anyone with a brain. I imagine if you polled them before 2016 the vast majority would have thought that ECHR was part of EU.
It's all Yerp, isn't it?
And imagine the knock-on effects of leaving the ECHR (no NI agreement, no Windsor agreement, USA coming down on us like a tonne of bricks...) Yes, the UK has the sovereign freedom to leave, but it's hard to imagine circumstances where it's a good idea.
Almost as cheap as the bottle of wine Sunak donated.
Our school has a summer fare and Christmas fare where bottles are donated in the build-up and then won at tombolas and I swear the same bottles keep getting recycled. Its highly efficient if you think about it.
Last summer we won a bottle of mulled wine at the summer fare, I'm guessing whoever donated that had won it the previous Christmas fare as its an odd thing to donate at summer otherwise. We donated it back six months later for the Christmas fare. At Christmas we then won some other bottles, we drank one of those and the others we donated back to the summer fare.
The school makes its money from a tombola with these bottles. They don't care about the price tag of the bottles, or if its the first of 7th time the same bottle has gone around so long as its in date, they're getting their funds either way each time its done. 🤷♂️
Does nothing for GDP though and surely that is the aim of the school governers.
Y = C + I + G + (X - M)
Giving them money they can then spend (C) without buying a bottle of imported wine (M) boosts Y.
Features Leon's sniper among the rioters, who was apparently very well prepared, having taken up position over a year ago!
At least those riots vindicate one of Remain's projections.
We may still be waiting for international irrelevance or five million unemployed, but Brexit has indeed been followed by violence in the streets, social disorder, civil breakdown and national division.
(Admittedly in France, not here, but let's not get hung up on details).
Exhibit A: Cardiff riots Exhibit B: Orkney buggering off to rejoin the EU take up another semi-detached position
Fundraising for the family of a French police officer who shot dead a teenager has attracted more than €860,000 (£739,000), far more than a similar campaign for the victim’s relatives.
The fund, set up by Jean Messiha, an independent right-wing populist, has been inundated with donations, and a separate fund set up by the policeman’s colleagues, has raised more than €50,000. This compares with about €150,000 (£128,000) sent to the family of Nahel Merzouk, who was shot dead in his car at point-blank range on Tuesday in a killing that prompted six nights of rioting.
Almost as cheap as the bottle of wine Sunak donated.
Our school has a summer fare and Christmas fare where bottles are donated in the build-up and then won at tombolas and I swear the same bottles keep getting recycled. Its highly efficient if you think about it.
Last summer we won a bottle of mulled wine at the summer fare, I'm guessing whoever donated that had won it the previous Christmas fare as its an odd thing to donate at summer otherwise. We donated it back six months later for the Christmas fare. At Christmas we then won some other bottles, we drank one of those and the others we donated back to the summer fare.
The school makes its money from a tombola with these bottles. They don't care about the price tag of the bottles, or if its the first of 7th time the same bottle has gone around so long as its in date, they're getting their funds either way each time its done. 🤷♂️
Does nothing for GDP though and surely that is the aim of the school governers.
Y = C + I + G + (X - M)
Giving them money they can then spend (C) without buying a bottle of imported wine (M) boosts Y.
The bottle of wine was part of I in the year of its import. It cannot be counted twice.
Edit: and if it was a British bottle of wine then it is a second hand good and hence it would be the same as two people swapping a five pound note.
Almost as cheap as the bottle of wine Sunak donated.
Our school has a summer fare and Christmas fare where bottles are donated in the build-up and then won at tombolas and I swear the same bottles keep getting recycled. Its highly efficient if you think about it.
Last summer we won a bottle of mulled wine at the summer fare, I'm guessing whoever donated that had won it the previous Christmas fare as its an odd thing to donate at summer otherwise. We donated it back six months later for the Christmas fare. At Christmas we then won some other bottles, we drank one of those and the others we donated back to the summer fare.
The school makes its money from a tombola with these bottles. They don't care about the price tag of the bottles, or if its the first of 7th time the same bottle has gone around so long as its in date, they're getting their funds either way each time its done. 🤷♂️
Does nothing for GDP though and surely that is the aim of the school governers.
Y = C + I + G + (X - M)
Giving them money they can then spend (C) without buying a bottle of imported wine (M) boosts Y.
The bottle of wine was part of I in the year of its import. It cannot be counted twice.
Edit: and if it was a British bottle of wine then it is a second hand good and hence it would be the same as two people swapping a five pound note.
I is Investment, M is iMports and M is a negative not a positive on the equation.
That is the point, a second hand bottle of wine doesn't increase M, whereas a newly imported bottle of wine would.
The money the school raises from the Tombola does boost C when they spend it.
Almost as cheap as the bottle of wine Sunak donated.
Our school has a summer fare and Christmas fare where bottles are donated in the build-up and then won at tombolas and I swear the same bottles keep getting recycled. Its highly efficient if you think about it.
Last summer we won a bottle of mulled wine at the summer fare, I'm guessing whoever donated that had won it the previous Christmas fare as its an odd thing to donate at summer otherwise. We donated it back six months later for the Christmas fare. At Christmas we then won some other bottles, we drank one of those and the others we donated back to the summer fare.
The school makes its money from a tombola with these bottles. They don't care about the price tag of the bottles, or if its the first of 7th time the same bottle has gone around so long as its in date, they're getting their funds either way each time its done. 🤷♂️
There's a bottle of mulled wine at our local junior school which we've won and regifted at least twice.
I should say, we do send in a 'proper' bottle which we'd be pleased to win as well. Everyone does. The tombola itself is great value, because it's subsidised by pretty much every family spending between two and five pounds on donations. We did send in a bottle of Harrods champagne once. It should never, technically, have been in our possession: it was an unsolicited gift for a neighbour, for whom we took it in because, it turned out, he had emigrated, never to return. I don't particularly like champagne and my wife doesn't drink. I thought he'd be less disgruntled to know it had gone as a prize for school funds than to think the neighbours he briefly had and didn't really know had drunk it. I was actually on the bottle tombola stand for that summer fair, and it was quite fun to see the face of the person who won it, who, naturally, was expecting a bottle of mulled wine or Dr. Pepper or at best a bottle of Doom Bar.
Almost as cheap as the bottle of wine Sunak donated.
Our school has a summer fare and Christmas fare where bottles are donated in the build-up and then won at tombolas and I swear the same bottles keep getting recycled. Its highly efficient if you think about it.
Last summer we won a bottle of mulled wine at the summer fare, I'm guessing whoever donated that had won it the previous Christmas fare as its an odd thing to donate at summer otherwise. We donated it back six months later for the Christmas fare. At Christmas we then won some other bottles, we drank one of those and the others we donated back to the summer fare.
The school makes its money from a tombola with these bottles. They don't care about the price tag of the bottles, or if its the first of 7th time the same bottle has gone around so long as its in date, they're getting their funds either way each time its done. 🤷♂️
Does nothing for GDP though and surely that is the aim of the school governers.
Y = C + I + G + (X - M)
Giving them money they can then spend (C) without buying a bottle of imported wine (M) boosts Y.
The bottle of wine was part of I in the year of its import. It cannot be counted twice.
Edit: and if it was a British bottle of wine then it is a second hand good and hence it would be the same as two people swapping a five pound note.
It was more like swapping a five pound note for a fifty pound note, as the school’s tombola fund benefitted from all the non-wining tickets being sold.
No matter one’s opinions about the characters involved in the recent IPSO decision, do we respect freedom of the press, or do we regulate the media by loud activist groups?
I was very critical of the political media, and their bosses, during the pandemic, and continue to think that politics is debased, and good people don’t stand for election, because of the media environment - but also that freedom of the press is a mark of a democratic western society, and if powerful people can force opinions and jokes to be silenced there’s a big problem.
I am unconvinced by the regulator, the Sun and Fraser. What Fraser is actually saying is that the police and no-one else should be the regulator of opinion under hate crime law. This isn't going to happen as he well knows.
Read literally Clarkson's words may be properly read as incitement to a criminal offence - assault.
Suppose some writer in a paper had said, instead of the parading naked stuff, that "It would be a good idea, though illegal, for X (a major public figure) to be raped, strangled and murdered, and in my opinion it would be excellent if some public spirited person carried this out '.
This too is the expression of opinion. Are we sure that this should be entirely unregulated except through the criminal courts?
Aiui Clarkson's defence and/or mitigation was that the words complained of were not incitement to assault but a reference to a scene in Game of Thrones.
But I never understood that. Most bad things have happened in fiction. When I said the victim needed a good shanking I was merely alluding to the play Julius Caesar, yr honner.
It is quite common to use phrases that are clearly not incitement to violence, although the words individually might appear to be so. How many have used the phrase 'will be the first against the wall' or 'should be shot'. We don't mean it literally and nobody takes it so. Most of us can tell the difference between hate and colourful use of the language.
It’s a question of both the language and the target.
There are groups who are already being targeted for violence. Public figures are one of those groups. Advocating violence against such groups has a different context and implied meaning.
I agree. All these things depend on context. For instance I thought Clarkson (of whom I am a fan) was over the top, but then I had never seen Game of Thrones (difficult as that is to believe) so the context was lost on me. Once I knew I saw it in a different light.
And there are numerous different contexts that can apply, but generally we are all able to appreciate the difference between something being funny, in bad taste, hateful or likely to incite violence.
As @BartholomewRoberts points out we have the law and juries to decide. There might also be other sanctions from say an employer if you bring them into disrepute by what you say.
No matter one’s opinions about the characters involved in the recent IPSO decision, do we respect freedom of the press, or do we regulate the media by loud activist groups?
I was very critical of the political media, and their bosses, during the pandemic, and continue to think that politics is debased, and good people don’t stand for election, because of the media environment - but also that freedom of the press is a mark of a democratic western society, and if powerful people can force opinions and jokes to be silenced there’s a big problem.
I wonder if the article had been about Farage being paraded naked and dung thrown at him because of Brexit, if the response would have been the same. I somehow doubt it. This is not about sexism, its about the selectiveness of the social media outrage. Equal under the law and all that.
I'm sure Megan would have been offended by it. Tough. I get offended by stuff too. Tough.
The concept of Farage being paraded naked is even more troubling to me!
Almost as cheap as the bottle of wine Sunak donated.
Our school has a summer fare and Christmas fare where bottles are donated in the build-up and then won at tombolas and I swear the same bottles keep getting recycled. Its highly efficient if you think about it.
Last summer we won a bottle of mulled wine at the summer fare, I'm guessing whoever donated that had won it the previous Christmas fare as its an odd thing to donate at summer otherwise. We donated it back six months later for the Christmas fare. At Christmas we then won some other bottles, we drank one of those and the others we donated back to the summer fare.
The school makes its money from a tombola with these bottles. They don't care about the price tag of the bottles, or if its the first of 7th time the same bottle has gone around so long as its in date, they're getting their funds either way each time its done. 🤷♂️
Does nothing for GDP though and surely that is the aim of the school governers.
Y = C + I + G + (X - M)
Giving them money they can then spend (C) without buying a bottle of imported wine (M) boosts Y.
The bottle of wine was part of I in the year of its import. It cannot be counted twice.
Edit: and if it was a British bottle of wine then it is a second hand good and hence it would be the same as two people swapping a five pound note.
I is Investment, M is iMports and M is a negative not a positive on the equation.
That is the point, a second hand bottle of wine doesn't increase M, whereas a newly imported bottle of wine would.
The money the school raises from the Tombola does boost C when they spend it.
Hence Y goes up.
But you were talking about second hand (revolving) bottles of wine.
Almost as cheap as the bottle of wine Sunak donated.
Our school has a summer fare and Christmas fare where bottles are donated in the build-up and then won at tombolas and I swear the same bottles keep getting recycled. Its highly efficient if you think about it.
Last summer we won a bottle of mulled wine at the summer fare, I'm guessing whoever donated that had won it the previous Christmas fare as its an odd thing to donate at summer otherwise. We donated it back six months later for the Christmas fare. At Christmas we then won some other bottles, we drank one of those and the others we donated back to the summer fare.
The school makes its money from a tombola with these bottles. They don't care about the price tag of the bottles, or if its the first of 7th time the same bottle has gone around so long as its in date, they're getting their funds either way each time its done. 🤷♂️
Does nothing for GDP though and surely that is the aim of the school governers.
Y = C + I + G + (X - M)
Giving them money they can then spend (C) without buying a bottle of imported wine (M) boosts Y.
The bottle of wine was part of I in the year of its import. It cannot be counted twice.
Edit: and if it was a British bottle of wine then it is a second hand good and hence it would be the same as two people swapping a five pound note.
It was more like swapping a five pound note for a fifty pound note, as the school’s tombola fund benefitted from all the non-wining tickets being sold.
Of course, as a good Lib Dem myself, excepting the 2015 GE, the Lib Dems were never NOT the third party.
Their vote share has been third every time except GE2015.
The failures of FPTP.........
"The failures of FPTP". Harsh, but fair (on the Lib Dems)
ETA: Always third on vote share, too? Or would that have been UKIP in 2015, say? E2TA: Ah yes, definitely UKIP in 2015. 12.6% v 7.9% E3TA: And, of course, this point was made in the very post I'm replying to, d'oh!
It's not just PMQs (as the header notes, two questions a week against one every blue moon) but also invitations to Question Time and invitations to comment on news and current events generally.
Quite right; the exclusion of the LibDems from such programmes has been scandalous, especially when looks at the time given to the Faragists and similar potential demagogues.
And Good Morning to one and all.
Agreed. It's not been fair on the LDs, and reflects very badly on the primitive procedures of the HoC.
I suppose the problem is, there are eleven recognised parties in the House of Commons: Tories, Labour, SNP, DUP, Sinn Fein (sort of) Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru, SDLP, Alliance, Greens and Reclaim (sort of).
If each of them had two questions for the leader, plus six for Labour less 2 for SF that's 22 questions. That's a lot to cram in and get backbenchers in too.
Even if you said they must have at least five MPs, that still leaves 12 to get in. Not much room for more.
So the line has to be drawn somewhere. It may be unfair on the Lib Dems but ultimately you could make a case it was their own fault they collapsed so much (they were not actually forced to support the disastrous Browne report).
I don't think anyone was suggesting that every party should get 2 questions, but the fourth party could get, say, a question every other week. That would address the issue without making PMQs unwieldy.
How about allocating questions on the basis of seat (or even vote!) share? With a lower number for the party of government We could call it proportional questionisation.
Mind you, that would have left the LDs with ~1 question between GEs, recently!
Or, bring back twice weekly PMQ.
Wasn't that two times 15 mins vs the current one times 30 mins though?
No matter one’s opinions about the characters involved in the recent IPSO decision, do we respect freedom of the press, or do we regulate the media by loud activist groups?
I was very critical of the political media, and their bosses, during the pandemic, and continue to think that politics is debased, and good people don’t stand for election, because of the media environment - but also that freedom of the press is a mark of a democratic western society, and if powerful people can force opinions and jokes to be silenced there’s a big problem.
I am unconvinced by the regulator, the Sun and Fraser. What Fraser is actually saying is that the police and no-one else should be the regulator of opinion under hate crime law. This isn't going to happen as he well knows.
Read literally Clarkson's words may be properly read as incitement to a criminal offence - assault.
Suppose some writer in a paper had said, instead of the parading naked stuff, that "It would be a good idea, though illegal, for X (a major public figure) to be raped, strangled and murdered, and in my opinion it would be excellent if some public spirited person carried this out '.
This too is the expression of opinion. Are we sure that this should be entirely unregulated except through the criminal courts?
Aiui Clarkson's defence and/or mitigation was that the words complained of were not incitement to assault but a reference to a scene in Game of Thrones.
But I never understood that. Most bad things have happened in fiction. When I said the victim needed a good shanking I was merely alluding to the play Julius Caesar, yr honner.
It is quite common to use phrases that are clearly not incitement to violence, although the words individually might appear to be so. How many have used the phrase 'will be the first against the wall' or 'should be shot'. We don't mean it literally and nobody takes it so. Most of us can tell the difference between hate and colourful use of the language.
Alan Hansen saying that Argentina defender "should be shot" for some terrible defending a few days after Andrés Escobar was actually shot, was quite funny.
Yes maybe a bit tactless! Foot and mouth comes to mind.
Almost as cheap as the bottle of wine Sunak donated.
Our school has a summer fare and Christmas fare where bottles are donated in the build-up and then won at tombolas and I swear the same bottles keep getting recycled. Its highly efficient if you think about it.
Last summer we won a bottle of mulled wine at the summer fare, I'm guessing whoever donated that had won it the previous Christmas fare as its an odd thing to donate at summer otherwise. We donated it back six months later for the Christmas fare. At Christmas we then won some other bottles, we drank one of those and the others we donated back to the summer fare.
The school makes its money from a tombola with these bottles. They don't care about the price tag of the bottles, or if its the first of 7th time the same bottle has gone around so long as its in date, they're getting their funds either way each time its done. 🤷♂️
Does nothing for GDP though and surely that is the aim of the school governers.
Y = C + I + G + (X - M)
Giving them money they can then spend (C) without buying a bottle of imported wine (M) boosts Y.
The bottle of wine was part of I in the year of its import. It cannot be counted twice.
Edit: and if it was a British bottle of wine then it is a second hand good and hence it would be the same as two people swapping a five pound note.
I is Investment, M is iMports and M is a negative not a positive on the equation.
That is the point, a second hand bottle of wine doesn't increase M, whereas a newly imported bottle of wine would.
The money the school raises from the Tombola does boost C when they spend it.
Hence Y goes up.
But you were talking about second hand (revolving) bottles of wine.
Yep - and 1 way of increasing GDP is to increase the velocity of money - i.e. how many times it's spent over a year.
No matter one’s opinions about the characters involved in the recent IPSO decision, do we respect freedom of the press, or do we regulate the media by loud activist groups?
I was very critical of the political media, and their bosses, during the pandemic, and continue to think that politics is debased, and good people don’t stand for election, because of the media environment - but also that freedom of the press is a mark of a democratic western society, and if powerful people can force opinions and jokes to be silenced there’s a big problem.
I wonder if the article had been about Farage being paraded naked and dung thrown at him because of Brexit, if the response would have been the same. I somehow doubt it. This is not about sexism, its about the selectiveness of the social media outrage. Equal under the law and all that.
I'm sure Megan would have been offended by it. Tough. I get offended by stuff too. Tough.
The concept of Farage being paraded naked is even more troubling to me!
No-one is suggesting you have to watch, unless you've been very naughty...
Almost as cheap as the bottle of wine Sunak donated.
Our school has a summer fare and Christmas fare where bottles are donated in the build-up and then won at tombolas and I swear the same bottles keep getting recycled. Its highly efficient if you think about it.
Last summer we won a bottle of mulled wine at the summer fare, I'm guessing whoever donated that had won it the previous Christmas fare as its an odd thing to donate at summer otherwise. We donated it back six months later for the Christmas fare. At Christmas we then won some other bottles, we drank one of those and the others we donated back to the summer fare.
The school makes its money from a tombola with these bottles. They don't care about the price tag of the bottles, or if its the first of 7th time the same bottle has gone around so long as its in date, they're getting their funds either way each time its done. 🤷♂️
Does nothing for GDP though and surely that is the aim of the school governers.
There is bound to be a scholarly article on the economics of this. FWIW:
1) A tombola run on traditional lines gets people to donate prizes for gambling. Both donors and (losing) gamblers are providing funds for the school. For canny punters quite often there is a disproportionate advantage in favour of the punter (William Hills are not organising this) who can on average get more than he spends. Schools should of course limit this to maximise their take. But their take and profit is guaranteed by the donations being free. The bottle donor is often not donating as much as they imagine, but will still feel good.
2) In a permanent recycling tombola the bottles (presumably being rubbish ones) are tokens without value; they function only as an excuse to ask people to donate money without doing so openly. The gamblers (PBers will avoid these events) are giving money for no return, except the limited excitement of winning a valueless token. The donors are giving nothing of value and are not entitled to feel good.
The first sort of tombola adds slightly to the excitements of dull provincial life - the sort I live. The question of which old lady will win the gin is one of the big issues of the Christmas bazaar.The second sort should be confined to the pages of the Economist and the recyclers should feel abject shame.
Almost as cheap as the bottle of wine Sunak donated.
Our school has a summer fare and Christmas fare where bottles are donated in the build-up and then won at tombolas and I swear the same bottles keep getting recycled. Its highly efficient if you think about it.
Last summer we won a bottle of mulled wine at the summer fare, I'm guessing whoever donated that had won it the previous Christmas fare as its an odd thing to donate at summer otherwise. We donated it back six months later for the Christmas fare. At Christmas we then won some other bottles, we drank one of those and the others we donated back to the summer fare.
The school makes its money from a tombola with these bottles. They don't care about the price tag of the bottles, or if its the first of 7th time the same bottle has gone around so long as its in date, they're getting their funds either way each time its done. 🤷♂️
Does nothing for GDP though and surely that is the aim of the school governers.
Y = C + I + G + (X - M)
Giving them money they can then spend (C) without buying a bottle of imported wine (M) boosts Y.
The bottle of wine was part of I in the year of its import. It cannot be counted twice.
Edit: and if it was a British bottle of wine then it is a second hand good and hence it would be the same as two people swapping a five pound note.
I is Investment, M is iMports and M is a negative not a positive on the equation.
That is the point, a second hand bottle of wine doesn't increase M, whereas a newly imported bottle of wine would.
The money the school raises from the Tombola does boost C when they spend it.
Hence Y goes up.
But you were talking about second hand (revolving) bottles of wine.
Yep - and 1 way of increasing GDP is to increase the velocity of money - i.e. how many times it's spent over a year.
No it isn't. If there is increased activity then velocity of money might be expected to increase but if you and I handed each other £5 20 times every hour for the same bottle of wine that would do nothing for GDP.
It's not just PMQs (as the header notes, two questions a week against one every blue moon) but also invitations to Question Time and invitations to comment on news and current events generally.
Quite right; the exclusion of the LibDems from such programmes has been scandalous, especially when looks at the time given to the Faragists and similar potential demagogues.
And Good Morning to one and all.
Agreed. It's not been fair on the LDs, and reflects very badly on the primitive procedures of the HoC.
I suppose the problem is, there are eleven recognised parties in the House of Commons: Tories, Labour, SNP, DUP, Sinn Fein (sort of) Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru, SDLP, Alliance, Greens and Reclaim (sort of).
If each of them had two questions for the leader, plus six for Labour less 2 for SF that's 22 questions. That's a lot to cram in and get backbenchers in too.
Even if you said they must have at least five MPs, that still leaves 12 to get in. Not much room for more.
So the line has to be drawn somewhere. It may be unfair on the Lib Dems but ultimately you could make a case it was their own fault they collapsed so much (they were not actually forced to support the disastrous Browne report).
I don't think anyone was suggesting that every party should get 2 questions, but the fourth party could get, say, a question every other week. That would address the issue without making PMQs unwieldy.
How about allocating questions on the basis of seat (or even vote!) share? With a lower number for the party of government We could call it proportional questionisation.
Mind you, that would have left the LDs with ~1 question between GEs, recently!
Or, bring back twice weekly PMQ.
Wasn't that two times 15 mins vs the current one times 30 mins though?
Who follows PMQs? Wonks know to avoid it as waste of time, except when PM is on the ropes - about once a year. Normal people have other things to do.
I try to feel proud of our island heritage, but thinking a large pit makes a decent monument is a bit primitive even for 10,000 BC, is it not? A bit off the Gobekli Tepe pace.
No matter one’s opinions about the characters involved in the recent IPSO decision, do we respect freedom of the press, or do we regulate the media by loud activist groups?
I was very critical of the political media, and their bosses, during the pandemic, and continue to think that politics is debased, and good people don’t stand for election, because of the media environment - but also that freedom of the press is a mark of a democratic western society, and if powerful people can force opinions and jokes to be silenced there’s a big problem.
I wonder if the article had been about Farage being paraded naked and dung thrown at him because of Brexit, if the response would have been the same. I somehow doubt it. This is not about sexism, its about the selectiveness of the social media outrage. Equal under the law and all that.
I'm sure Megan would have been offended by it. Tough. I get offended by stuff too. Tough.
The concept of Farage being paraded naked is even more troubling to me!
Chucking the excrement at him would make it all worthwhile though.
It's not just PMQs (as the header notes, two questions a week against one every blue moon) but also invitations to Question Time and invitations to comment on news and current events generally.
Quite right; the exclusion of the LibDems from such programmes has been scandalous, especially when looks at the time given to the Faragists and similar potential demagogues.
And Good Morning to one and all.
Agreed. It's not been fair on the LDs, and reflects very badly on the primitive procedures of the HoC.
I suppose the problem is, there are eleven recognised parties in the House of Commons: Tories, Labour, SNP, DUP, Sinn Fein (sort of) Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru, SDLP, Alliance, Greens and Reclaim (sort of).
If each of them had two questions for the leader, plus six for Labour less 2 for SF that's 22 questions. That's a lot to cram in and get backbenchers in too.
Even if you said they must have at least five MPs, that still leaves 12 to get in. Not much room for more.
So the line has to be drawn somewhere. It may be unfair on the Lib Dems but ultimately you could make a case it was their own fault they collapsed so much (they were not actually forced to support the disastrous Browne report).
I don't think anyone was suggesting that every party should get 2 questions, but the fourth party could get, say, a question every other week. That would address the issue without making PMQs unwieldy.
How about allocating questions on the basis of seat (or even vote!) share? With a lower number for the party of government We could call it proportional questionisation.
Mind you, that would have left the LDs with ~1 question between GEs, recently!
Or, bring back twice weekly PMQ.
Wasn't that two times 15 mins vs the current one times 30 mins though?
Who follows PMQs? Wonks know to avoid it as waste of time, except when PM is on the ropes - about once a year. Normal people have other things to do.
PMQ's for the opposition (and probably the PM) is mainly about getting that one clip on the headline news. Most normal people don't engage, just as they don't apply to go on Question Time.
It's not just PMQs (as the header notes, two questions a week against one every blue moon) but also invitations to Question Time and invitations to comment on news and current events generally.
Quite right; the exclusion of the LibDems from such programmes has been scandalous, especially when looks at the time given to the Faragists and similar potential demagogues.
And Good Morning to one and all.
Agreed. It's not been fair on the LDs, and reflects very badly on the primitive procedures of the HoC.
I suppose the problem is, there are eleven recognised parties in the House of Commons: Tories, Labour, SNP, DUP, Sinn Fein (sort of) Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru, SDLP, Alliance, Greens and Reclaim (sort of).
If each of them had two questions for the leader, plus six for Labour less 2 for SF that's 22 questions. That's a lot to cram in and get backbenchers in too.
Even if you said they must have at least five MPs, that still leaves 12 to get in. Not much room for more.
So the line has to be drawn somewhere. It may be unfair on the Lib Dems but ultimately you could make a case it was their own fault they collapsed so much (they were not actually forced to support the disastrous Browne report).
I don't think anyone was suggesting that every party should get 2 questions, but the fourth party could get, say, a question every other week. That would address the issue without making PMQs unwieldy.
How about allocating questions on the basis of seat (or even vote!) share? With a lower number for the party of government We could call it proportional questionisation.
Mind you, that would have left the LDs with ~1 question between GEs, recently!
Or, bring back twice weekly PMQ.
Wasn't that two times 15 mins vs the current one times 30 mins though?
Who follows PMQs? Wonks know to avoid it as waste of time, except when PM is on the ropes - about once a year. Normal people have other things to do.
True, but it's also the one bit of parliamentary business that tends to cut through into reality-land, because it's the most widely reported on.
It's kind of shame really, as it's the least representative session of parliament, and essentially entirely performative.
Almost as cheap as the bottle of wine Sunak donated.
Our school has a summer fare and Christmas fare where bottles are donated in the build-up and then won at tombolas and I swear the same bottles keep getting recycled. Its highly efficient if you think about it.
Last summer we won a bottle of mulled wine at the summer fare, I'm guessing whoever donated that had won it the previous Christmas fare as its an odd thing to donate at summer otherwise. We donated it back six months later for the Christmas fare. At Christmas we then won some other bottles, we drank one of those and the others we donated back to the summer fare.
The school makes its money from a tombola with these bottles. They don't care about the price tag of the bottles, or if its the first of 7th time the same bottle has gone around so long as its in date, they're getting their funds either way each time its done. 🤷♂️
Does nothing for GDP though and surely that is the aim of the school governers.
There is bound to be a scholarly article on the economics of this. FWIW:
1) A tombola run on traditional lines gets people to donate prizes for gambling. Both donors and (losing) gamblers are providing funds for the school. For canny punters quite often there is a disproportionate advantage in favour of the punter (William Hills are not organising this) who can on average get more than he spends. Schools should of course limit this to maximise their take. But their take and profit is guaranteed by the donations being free. The bottle donor is often not donating as much as they imagine, but will still feel good.
2) In a permanent recycling tombola the bottles (presumably being rubbish ones) are tokens without value; they function only as an excuse to ask people to donate money without doing so openly. The gamblers (PBers will avoid these events) are giving money for no return, except the limited excitement of winning a valueless token. The donors are giving nothing of value and are not entitled to feel good.
The first sort of tombola adds slightly to the excitements of dull provincial life - the sort I live. The question of which old lady will win the gin is one of the big issues of the Christmas bazaar.The second sort should be confined to the pages of the Economist and the recyclers should feel abject shame.
It's quite fun to have some recycling though. A booby prize adds to the hilarity of the whole event.
There is also a fair bit of once-around-the-block recycling. The spiced rum which we got from the Christmas Fair was never going to get drunk in this house and got regifted. But that's not to say no-one will drink it.
Basically you are paying the school a reasonably set amount (£3 or so) to enter a game of 'buy a random drink and get given a random drink'. The £3 shouldn't be seen as part of the economics of winning or not but as the money you pay for the amusement of the whole process (like putting a pound into a pinball machine). 'Winning' here is getting a better drink than the one you donated, but you can enjoy the process without winning. Like stumping a batsman who thinks the over has finished, winning by donating nothing is quite legitimate but not really in the spirit of the game.
Indeed. Such a poll would also no doubt find a plurality amongst that demographic in favour of summary execution for immigrants, chemical castration for gay people (what HY would call "homosexuals") and possibly flogging for shop lifting and the return of the poorhouse.
It would be like asking a Labour equivalent website whether they believe in nationalisation of everything.
Indeed. Such a poll would also no doubt find a plurality amongst that demographic in favour of summary execution for immigrants, chemical castration for gay people (what HY would call "homosexuals") and possibly flogging for shop lifting and the return of the poorhouse.
It would be like asking a Labour equivalent website whether they believe in nationalisation of everything.
Most Corbyn 2019 voters probably would back the nationalisation of nearly everything
Almost as cheap as the bottle of wine Sunak donated.
Our school has a summer fare and Christmas fare where bottles are donated in the build-up and then won at tombolas and I swear the same bottles keep getting recycled. Its highly efficient if you think about it.
Last summer we won a bottle of mulled wine at the summer fare, I'm guessing whoever donated that had won it the previous Christmas fare as its an odd thing to donate at summer otherwise. We donated it back six months later for the Christmas fare. At Christmas we then won some other bottles, we drank one of those and the others we donated back to the summer fare.
The school makes its money from a tombola with these bottles. They don't care about the price tag of the bottles, or if its the first of 7th time the same bottle has gone around so long as its in date, they're getting their funds either way each time its done. 🤷♂️
Does nothing for GDP though and surely that is the aim of the school governers.
Y = C + I + G + (X - M)
Giving them money they can then spend (C) without buying a bottle of imported wine (M) boosts Y.
The bottle of wine was part of I in the year of its import. It cannot be counted twice.
Edit: and if it was a British bottle of wine then it is a second hand good and hence it would be the same as two people swapping a five pound note.
I is Investment, M is iMports and M is a negative not a positive on the equation.
That is the point, a second hand bottle of wine doesn't increase M, whereas a newly imported bottle of wine would.
The money the school raises from the Tombola does boost C when they spend it.
Hence Y goes up.
But you were talking about second hand (revolving) bottles of wine.
Yep - and 1 way of increasing GDP is to increase the velocity of money - i.e. how many times it's spent over a year.
No it isn't. If there is increased activity then velocity of money might be expected to increase but if you and I handed each other £5 20 times every hour for the same bottle of wine that would do nothing for GDP.
That would be the case if the prizes where monetary - but the money goes from the parent to the school and then from the school to a book shop, from the shop to the wholesaler.....
That said, there’s nothing I’d personally like more than an SNP implosion. I don’t like those who wish to break up the country, and have many family and friends in Scotland.
Mid Bedfordshire is not even in the top 100 LD target seats
I think Labour and the Lib Dems will split the anti-Tory vote and the Tories will retain this seat. A value bet at 3.5 on Betfair.
It would be interesting to know what percentage of these deep thinkers thinks that the ECHR is something to do with the EU. I suspect it is high.
Indeed, its nothing to do with the EU. The EU has much higher standards of democracy and human rights than the Council of Europe.
Instead it had Vladimir Putin's Russia as a full and unsanctioned member as recently as January last year, despite Russia's total lack of a free press, free society, free democracy or any kind of reasonable Human Rights.
I wouldn't vote to leave the ECHR probably as doing so is more hassle than its worth, but as far as a guarantor of Human Rights is concerned its an abject failure.
I assume nobody is using cash for these school tombolas?!
In the far northern England outpost where I live cash remains king for these sorts of events, and I seldom pass the cash machine (which I use regularly) without seeing a user, and sometimes a queue.
Cash needs to remain normative for exactly the small aspects of real life which enhance the day to day - charity shops, the retail lives of children, small transactions in small shops, flag days, boxes in churches, birthday presents.
Also cash is needed for drug dealing, tax avoiding, private betting, Saturday roofers, money laundering, protection rackets and so on. But the village fete and the sweet shop is the best reason.
I assume nobody is using cash for these school tombolas?!
8 year olds tend not to be awash with non-cash options!
Tell that to some of the posters on here...
Used quite a bit of cash myself over the last week or so. Kid's school trip pocket money and for rides and stall at a local festival, among other things.
It's not just PMQs (as the header notes, two questions a week against one every blue moon) but also invitations to Question Time and invitations to comment on news and current events generally.
Quite right; the exclusion of the LibDems from such programmes has been scandalous, especially when looks at the time given to the Faragists and similar potential demagogues.
And Good Morning to one and all.
Agreed. It's not been fair on the LDs, and reflects very badly on the primitive procedures of the HoC.
Almost as cheap as the bottle of wine Sunak donated.
Our school has a summer fare and Christmas fare where bottles are donated in the build-up and then won at tombolas and I swear the same bottles keep getting recycled. Its highly efficient if you think about it.
Last summer we won a bottle of mulled wine at the summer fare, I'm guessing whoever donated that had won it the previous Christmas fare as its an odd thing to donate at summer otherwise. We donated it back six months later for the Christmas fare. At Christmas we then won some other bottles, we drank one of those and the others we donated back to the summer fare.
The school makes its money from a tombola with these bottles. They don't care about the price tag of the bottles, or if its the first of 7th time the same bottle has gone around so long as its in date, they're getting their funds either way each time its done. 🤷♂️
Does nothing for GDP though and surely that is the aim of the school governers.
Y = C + I + G + (X - M)
Giving them money they can then spend (C) without buying a bottle of imported wine (M) boosts Y.
The bottle of wine was part of I in the year of its import. It cannot be counted twice.
Edit: and if it was a British bottle of wine then it is a second hand good and hence it would be the same as two people swapping a five pound note.
I is Investment, M is iMports and M is a negative not a positive on the equation.
That is the point, a second hand bottle of wine doesn't increase M, whereas a newly imported bottle of wine would.
The money the school raises from the Tombola does boost C when they spend it.
Hence Y goes up.
But you were talking about second hand (revolving) bottles of wine.
Yep - and 1 way of increasing GDP is to increase the velocity of money - i.e. how many times it's spent over a year.
No it isn't. If there is increased activity then velocity of money might be expected to increase but if you and I handed each other £5 20 times every hour for the same bottle of wine that would do nothing for GDP.
You don't seem to be grasping the whole concept.
I and all other parents donate a prize to the school in the build-up to the fare. This was done twice in recent weeks where the school had a casual clothes Friday and asked for a donation to the fare as the 'fee' for the casual clothes each time.
I and other parents then pay money to the school to take part in the tombola where as a class the parents win back the prizes they just donated, but shuffled around essentially.
This ends with the parents having swapped around bottles basically, while the school ends up with money without paying out anything.
The school can then spend its money as it sees fit. Which presumably is not bottles of wine.
The school spending the money it received from the tombola absolutely does do something for GDP.
If you and I hand the school £5 20 times for the same bottle of wine, then it ends up with the wine remaining with one of us where it started and the school £100 up. And that £100 being spent on supplies for the school does do something for GDP.
If the 2 of us are swapping the same bottle of wine ad nauseum then we are not handing the £5 to each other each time, we're handing it to the school each time.
No matter one’s opinions about the characters involved in the recent IPSO decision, do we respect freedom of the press, or do we regulate the media by loud activist groups?
I was very critical of the political media, and their bosses, during the pandemic, and continue to think that politics is debased, and good people don’t stand for election, because of the media environment - but also that freedom of the press is a mark of a democratic western society, and if powerful people can force opinions and jokes to be silenced there’s a big problem.
Another important point being lost in all of this is that IPSO is "a self-regulator paid for by its member publishers though the Regulatory Funding Company".
"We" are not regulating the media in this case - they are effectively doing so themselves (note the FT and Guardian aren't even members).
Of course, as a good Lib Dem myself, excepting the 2015 GE, the Lib Dems were never NOT the third party.
Their vote share has been third every time except GE2015.
The failures of FPTP.........
"The failures of FPTP". Harsh, but fair (on the Lib Dems)
ETA: Always third on vote share, too? Or would that have been UKIP in 2015, say? E2TA: Ah yes, definitely UKIP in 2015. 12.6% v 7.9% E3TA: And, of course, this point was made in the very post I'm replying to, d'oh!
This post is an exemplar of a lot of science, but reproducibility is important.
even in 2015, when the Liberal Democrats fell to 8 seats and the SNP got 50 seats, the Lib Dems polled more than twice the vote that the SNP did. The party never stopped being the third party in the country.
Doesn't count, any more than surplus votes in a Red Labour seat do. FPTP and numbers of MPs is where it's at, whether we like it or not.
And the LDs seem very antipathetic towards the only other sizeable party interested in changing this form of representation.
Almost as cheap as the bottle of wine Sunak donated.
Our school has a summer fare and Christmas fare where bottles are donated in the build-up and then won at tombolas and I swear the same bottles keep getting recycled. Its highly efficient if you think about it.
Last summer we won a bottle of mulled wine at the summer fare, I'm guessing whoever donated that had won it the previous Christmas fare as its an odd thing to donate at summer otherwise. We donated it back six months later for the Christmas fare. At Christmas we then won some other bottles, we drank one of those and the others we donated back to the summer fare.
The school makes its money from a tombola with these bottles. They don't care about the price tag of the bottles, or if its the first of 7th time the same bottle has gone around so long as its in date, they're getting their funds either way each time its done. 🤷♂️
Does nothing for GDP though and surely that is the aim of the school governers.
There is bound to be a scholarly article on the economics of this. FWIW:
1) A tombola run on traditional lines gets people to donate prizes for gambling. Both donors and (losing) gamblers are providing funds for the school. For canny punters quite often there is a disproportionate advantage in favour of the punter (William Hills are not organising this) who can on average get more than he spends. Schools should of course limit this to maximise their take. But their take and profit is guaranteed by the donations being free. The bottle donor is often not donating as much as they imagine, but will still feel good.
2) In a permanent recycling tombola the bottles (presumably being rubbish ones) are tokens without value; they function only as an excuse to ask people to donate money without doing so openly. The gamblers (PBers will avoid these events) are giving money for no return, except the limited excitement of winning a valueless token. The donors are giving nothing of value and are not entitled to feel good.
The first sort of tombola adds slightly to the excitements of dull provincial life - the sort I live. The question of which old lady will win the gin is one of the big issues of the Christmas bazaar.The second sort should be confined to the pages of the Economist and the recyclers should feel abject shame.
It's quite fun to have some recycling though. A booby prize adds to the hilarity of the whole event.
There is also a fair bit of once-around-the-block recycling. The spiced rum which we got from the Christmas Fair was never going to get drunk in this house and got regifted. But that's not to say no-one will drink it.
Basically you are paying the school a reasonably set amount (£3 or so) to enter a game of 'buy a random drink and get given a random drink'. The £3 shouldn't be seen as part of the economics of winning or not but as the money you pay for the amusement of the whole process (like putting a pound into a pinball machine). 'Winning' here is getting a better drink than the one you donated, but you can enjoy the process without winning. Like stumping a batsman who thinks the over has finished, winning by donating nothing is quite legitimate but not really in the spirit of the game.
Yes. Spot on. Like other people I support various charities and good causes, mostly in dull tax effective ways.
But once or twice a year I support one of these, to which I might give £x in the usual way, by going to their event with a pocket fill of notes and coins amounting to £x. This gets spent on: Junk; tombolas (often net profit making, see above); raffles; woolly hats; jam and cakes; the children's name the bear/spot the treasure game; the book stall (an average one is better searching than any WH Smiths); nameless blue liquid masquerading as a drink.
Does some good. Is therapy for the anguished soul. You meet an array of eccentrics. Cash continues as king. Recommended.
Almost as cheap as the bottle of wine Sunak donated.
At least it wasn’t Buckfast!
An American wine connoisseur made the mistake of reviewing buckfast… Here’s their tasting notes:
Buckfast Tonic Wine (No Vintage)
Screw cap, took it off about 30 minutes before to bring in some air. Apparently made by monks in England. Decided to try while cooking dinner. Poured into a glass, first glance has a very inky almost brownish color that you see in older wines. Very syrupy, liquid clings to the side of the glass when swirled. Almost 15% ABV.
Stuck my nose in and was hit with something I’ve never experienced before. Barnyardy funk (in a bad way) almost like a dead animal in a bird’s nest. A mix of flat Coca Cola and caramel with a whiff of gun metal.
On the palate, overwhelming sweetness and sugar. Cherry Cola mixed with Benadryl. Unlike anything I’ve tasted. I’m not sure what this liquid is but it is not wine, I’m actually not sure what it is but it tastes like something a doctor would prescribe. A chemical concoction of the highest degree. Can only compare it to a Four Loko.
Managed to make it through a couple small glasses but not much more. Has absolutely ruined the evening drinking-wise for me as I tried to drink a nice Bordeaux after but the iron-like metallic sweet aftertaste I just couldn’t get out of my mouth even after a few glasses of water. I don’t drink a lot of coffee regularly so I also have mild heart palpitations from the caffeine after just drinking a bit of this and feel a slight migraine.
An ungodly concoction made by seemingly godly men. I believe the Vatican needs to send an exorcist over to Buckfast Abbey as the devil’s works are cleary present there. After tasting this “wine,” the way I feel can only be described as akin to being under a bridge on one’s knees orally pleasing a vagrant while simultaneously drinking liquified meth through a dirty rag.
I’ve drank a lot of wines in my life and will never forget this one.
Almost as cheap as the bottle of wine Sunak donated.
Our school has a summer fare and Christmas fare where bottles are donated in the build-up and then won at tombolas and I swear the same bottles keep getting recycled. Its highly efficient if you think about it.
Last summer we won a bottle of mulled wine at the summer fare, I'm guessing whoever donated that had won it the previous Christmas fare as its an odd thing to donate at summer otherwise. We donated it back six months later for the Christmas fare. At Christmas we then won some other bottles, we drank one of those and the others we donated back to the summer fare.
The school makes its money from a tombola with these bottles. They don't care about the price tag of the bottles, or if its the first of 7th time the same bottle has gone around so long as its in date, they're getting their funds either way each time its done. 🤷♂️
Does nothing for GDP though and surely that is the aim of the school governers.
There is bound to be a scholarly article on the economics of this. FWIW:
1) A tombola run on traditional lines gets people to donate prizes for gambling. Both donors and (losing) gamblers are providing funds for the school. For canny punters quite often there is a disproportionate advantage in favour of the punter (William Hills are not organising this) who can on average get more than he spends. Schools should of course limit this to maximise their take. But their take and profit is guaranteed by the donations being free. The bottle donor is often not donating as much as they imagine, but will still feel good.
2) In a permanent recycling tombola the bottles (presumably being rubbish ones) are tokens without value; they function only as an excuse to ask people to donate money without doing so openly. The gamblers (PBers will avoid these events) are giving money for no return, except the limited excitement of winning a valueless token. The donors are giving nothing of value and are not entitled to feel good.
The first sort of tombola adds slightly to the excitements of dull provincial life - the sort I live. The question of which old lady will win the gin is one of the big issues of the Christmas bazaar.The second sort should be confined to the pages of the Economist and the recyclers should feel abject shame.
It's quite fun to have some recycling though. A booby prize adds to the hilarity of the whole event.
There is also a fair bit of once-around-the-block recycling. The spiced rum which we got from the Christmas Fair was never going to get drunk in this house and got regifted. But that's not to say no-one will drink it.
Basically you are paying the school a reasonably set amount (£3 or so) to enter a game of 'buy a random drink and get given a random drink'. The £3 shouldn't be seen as part of the economics of winning or not but as the money you pay for the amusement of the whole process (like putting a pound into a pinball machine). 'Winning' here is getting a better drink than the one you donated, but you can enjoy the process without winning. Like stumping a batsman who thinks the over has finished, winning by donating nothing is quite legitimate but not really in the spirit of the game.
Yes. Spot on. Like other people I support various charities and good causes, mostly in dull tax effective ways.
But once or twice a year I support one of these, to which I might give £x in the usual way, by going to their event with a pocket fill of notes and coins amounting to £x. This gets spent on: Junk; tombolas (often net profit making, see above); raffles; woolly hats; jam and cakes; the children's name the bear/spot the treasure game; the book stall (an average one is better searching than any WH Smiths); nameless blue liquid masquerading as a drink.
Does some good. Is therapy for the anguished soul. You meet an array of eccentrics. Cash continues as king. Recommended.
Even better, you can now pay contactless with just a tap of your phone and no need to mess around with cash. 👍
Almost as cheap as the bottle of wine Sunak donated.
Our school has a summer fare and Christmas fare where bottles are donated in the build-up and then won at tombolas and I swear the same bottles keep getting recycled. Its highly efficient if you think about it.
Last summer we won a bottle of mulled wine at the summer fare, I'm guessing whoever donated that had won it the previous Christmas fare as its an odd thing to donate at summer otherwise. We donated it back six months later for the Christmas fare. At Christmas we then won some other bottles, we drank one of those and the others we donated back to the summer fare.
The school makes its money from a tombola with these bottles. They don't care about the price tag of the bottles, or if its the first of 7th time the same bottle has gone around so long as its in date, they're getting their funds either way each time its done. 🤷♂️
Does nothing for GDP though and surely that is the aim of the school governers.
Y = C + I + G + (X - M)
Giving them money they can then spend (C) without buying a bottle of imported wine (M) boosts Y.
The bottle of wine was part of I in the year of its import. It cannot be counted twice.
Edit: and if it was a British bottle of wine then it is a second hand good and hence it would be the same as two people swapping a five pound note.
I is Investment, M is iMports and M is a negative not a positive on the equation.
That is the point, a second hand bottle of wine doesn't increase M, whereas a newly imported bottle of wine would.
The money the school raises from the Tombola does boost C when they spend it.
Hence Y goes up.
But you were talking about second hand (revolving) bottles of wine.
Yep - and 1 way of increasing GDP is to increase the velocity of money - i.e. how many times it's spent over a year.
No it isn't. If there is increased activity then velocity of money might be expected to increase but if you and I handed each other £5 20 times every hour for the same bottle of wine that would do nothing for GDP.
You don't seem to be grasping the whole concept.
I and all other parents donate a prize to the school in the build-up to the fare. This was done twice in recent weeks where the school had a casual clothes Friday and asked for a donation to the fare as the 'fee' for the casual clothes each time.
I and other parents then pay money to the school to take part in the tombola where as a class the parents win back the prizes they just donated, but shuffled around essentially.
This ends with the parents having swapped around bottles basically, while the school ends up with money without paying out anything.
The school can then spend its money as it sees fit. Which presumably is not bottles of wine.
The school spending the money it received from the tombola absolutely does do something for GDP.
If you and I hand the school £5 20 times for the same bottle of wine, then it ends up with the wine remaining with one of us where it started and the school £100 up. And that £100 being spent on supplies for the school does do something for GDP.
If the 2 of us are swapping the same bottle of wine ad nauseum then we are not handing the £5 to each other each time, we're handing it to the school each time.
We can forget the wine as it is an existing asset. Buying or selling it has no effect on GDP. So you are in effect handing the school £5. So the school has +£5 and you have -£5. C is unaffected.
Almost as cheap as the bottle of wine Sunak donated.
Our school has a summer fare and Christmas fare where bottles are donated in the build-up and then won at tombolas and I swear the same bottles keep getting recycled. Its highly efficient if you think about it.
Last summer we won a bottle of mulled wine at the summer fare, I'm guessing whoever donated that had won it the previous Christmas fare as its an odd thing to donate at summer otherwise. We donated it back six months later for the Christmas fare. At Christmas we then won some other bottles, we drank one of those and the others we donated back to the summer fare.
The school makes its money from a tombola with these bottles. They don't care about the price tag of the bottles, or if its the first of 7th time the same bottle has gone around so long as its in date, they're getting their funds either way each time its done. 🤷♂️
Does nothing for GDP though and surely that is the aim of the school governers.
There is bound to be a scholarly article on the economics of this. FWIW:
1) A tombola run on traditional lines gets people to donate prizes for gambling. Both donors and (losing) gamblers are providing funds for the school. For canny punters quite often there is a disproportionate advantage in favour of the punter (William Hills are not organising this) who can on average get more than he spends. Schools should of course limit this to maximise their take. But their take and profit is guaranteed by the donations being free. The bottle donor is often not donating as much as they imagine, but will still feel good.
2) In a permanent recycling tombola the bottles (presumably being rubbish ones) are tokens without value; they function only as an excuse to ask people to donate money without doing so openly. The gamblers (PBers will avoid these events) are giving money for no return, except the limited excitement of winning a valueless token. The donors are giving nothing of value and are not entitled to feel good.
The first sort of tombola adds slightly to the excitements of dull provincial life - the sort I live. The question of which old lady will win the gin is one of the big issues of the Christmas bazaar.The second sort should be confined to the pages of the Economist and the recyclers should feel abject shame.
It's quite fun to have some recycling though. A booby prize adds to the hilarity of the whole event.
There is also a fair bit of once-around-the-block recycling. The spiced rum which we got from the Christmas Fair was never going to get drunk in this house and got regifted. But that's not to say no-one will drink it.
Basically you are paying the school a reasonably set amount (£3 or so) to enter a game of 'buy a random drink and get given a random drink'. The £3 shouldn't be seen as part of the economics of winning or not but as the money you pay for the amusement of the whole process (like putting a pound into a pinball machine). 'Winning' here is getting a better drink than the one you donated, but you can enjoy the process without winning. Like stumping a batsman who thinks the over has finished, winning by donating nothing is quite legitimate but not really in the spirit of the game.
Yes. Spot on. Like other people I support various charities and good causes, mostly in dull tax effective ways.
But once or twice a year I support one of these, to which I might give £x in the usual way, by going to their event with a pocket fill of notes and coins amounting to £x. This gets spent on: Junk; tombolas (often net profit making, see above); raffles; woolly hats; jam and cakes; the children's name the bear/spot the treasure game; the book stall (an average one is better searching than any WH Smiths); nameless blue liquid masquerading as a drink.
Does some good. Is therapy for the anguished soul. You meet an array of eccentrics. Cash continues as king. Recommended.
Even better, you can now pay contactless with just a tap of your phone and no need to mess around with cash. 👍
Good luck with that one. Don't go to a fete etc in large chunks of northern England.
BREAKING: Partygate investigator Sue Gray broke civil service rules “as a result of the undeclared contact” between her and the Labour Party, according to a Whitehall investigation. https://twitter.com/TalkTV/status/1675807612070252545
Almost as cheap as the bottle of wine Sunak donated.
Our school has a summer fare and Christmas fare where bottles are donated in the build-up and then won at tombolas and I swear the same bottles keep getting recycled. Its highly efficient if you think about it.
Last summer we won a bottle of mulled wine at the summer fare, I'm guessing whoever donated that had won it the previous Christmas fare as its an odd thing to donate at summer otherwise. We donated it back six months later for the Christmas fare. At Christmas we then won some other bottles, we drank one of those and the others we donated back to the summer fare.
The school makes its money from a tombola with these bottles. They don't care about the price tag of the bottles, or if its the first of 7th time the same bottle has gone around so long as its in date, they're getting their funds either way each time its done. 🤷♂️
Does nothing for GDP though and surely that is the aim of the school governers.
Y = C + I + G + (X - M)
Giving them money they can then spend (C) without buying a bottle of imported wine (M) boosts Y.
The bottle of wine was part of I in the year of its import. It cannot be counted twice.
Edit: and if it was a British bottle of wine then it is a second hand good and hence it would be the same as two people swapping a five pound note.
I is Investment, M is iMports and M is a negative not a positive on the equation.
That is the point, a second hand bottle of wine doesn't increase M, whereas a newly imported bottle of wine would.
The money the school raises from the Tombola does boost C when they spend it.
Hence Y goes up.
But you were talking about second hand (revolving) bottles of wine.
Yep - and 1 way of increasing GDP is to increase the velocity of money - i.e. how many times it's spent over a year.
No it isn't. If there is increased activity then velocity of money might be expected to increase but if you and I handed each other £5 20 times every hour for the same bottle of wine that would do nothing for GDP.
You don't seem to be grasping the whole concept.
I and all other parents donate a prize to the school in the build-up to the fare. This was done twice in recent weeks where the school had a casual clothes Friday and asked for a donation to the fare as the 'fee' for the casual clothes each time.
I and other parents then pay money to the school to take part in the tombola where as a class the parents win back the prizes they just donated, but shuffled around essentially.
This ends with the parents having swapped around bottles basically, while the school ends up with money without paying out anything.
The school can then spend its money as it sees fit. Which presumably is not bottles of wine.
The school spending the money it received from the tombola absolutely does do something for GDP.
If you and I hand the school £5 20 times for the same bottle of wine, then it ends up with the wine remaining with one of us where it started and the school £100 up. And that £100 being spent on supplies for the school does do something for GDP.
If the 2 of us are swapping the same bottle of wine ad nauseum then we are not handing the £5 to each other each time, we're handing it to the school each time.
We can forget the wine as it is an existing asset. Buying or selling it has no effect on GDP. So you are in effect handing the school £5. So the school has +£5 and you have -£5. C is unaffected.
Which brings us full circle to what I said at the start.
The school won't save the money, they will spend it, and as they do, C goes up, so GDP goes up.
Almost as cheap as the bottle of wine Sunak donated.
Our school has a summer fare and Christmas fare where bottles are donated in the build-up and then won at tombolas and I swear the same bottles keep getting recycled. Its highly efficient if you think about it.
Last summer we won a bottle of mulled wine at the summer fare, I'm guessing whoever donated that had won it the previous Christmas fare as its an odd thing to donate at summer otherwise. We donated it back six months later for the Christmas fare. At Christmas we then won some other bottles, we drank one of those and the others we donated back to the summer fare.
The school makes its money from a tombola with these bottles. They don't care about the price tag of the bottles, or if its the first of 7th time the same bottle has gone around so long as its in date, they're getting their funds either way each time its done. 🤷♂️
Does nothing for GDP though and surely that is the aim of the school governers.
There is bound to be a scholarly article on the economics of this. FWIW:
1) A tombola run on traditional lines gets people to donate prizes for gambling. Both donors and (losing) gamblers are providing funds for the school. For canny punters quite often there is a disproportionate advantage in favour of the punter (William Hills are not organising this) who can on average get more than he spends. Schools should of course limit this to maximise their take. But their take and profit is guaranteed by the donations being free. The bottle donor is often not donating as much as they imagine, but will still feel good.
2) In a permanent recycling tombola the bottles (presumably being rubbish ones) are tokens without value; they function only as an excuse to ask people to donate money without doing so openly. The gamblers (PBers will avoid these events) are giving money for no return, except the limited excitement of winning a valueless token. The donors are giving nothing of value and are not entitled to feel good.
The first sort of tombola adds slightly to the excitements of dull provincial life - the sort I live. The question of which old lady will win the gin is one of the big issues of the Christmas bazaar.The second sort should be confined to the pages of the Economist and the recyclers should feel abject shame.
It's quite fun to have some recycling though. A booby prize adds to the hilarity of the whole event.
There is also a fair bit of once-around-the-block recycling. The spiced rum which we got from the Christmas Fair was never going to get drunk in this house and got regifted. But that's not to say no-one will drink it.
Basically you are paying the school a reasonably set amount (£3 or so) to enter a game of 'buy a random drink and get given a random drink'. The £3 shouldn't be seen as part of the economics of winning or not but as the money you pay for the amusement of the whole process (like putting a pound into a pinball machine). 'Winning' here is getting a better drink than the one you donated, but you can enjoy the process without winning. Like stumping a batsman who thinks the over has finished, winning by donating nothing is quite legitimate but not really in the spirit of the game.
Yes. Spot on. Like other people I support various charities and good causes, mostly in dull tax effective ways.
But once or twice a year I support one of these, to which I might give £x in the usual way, by going to their event with a pocket fill of notes and coins amounting to £x. This gets spent on: Junk; tombolas (often net profit making, see above); raffles; woolly hats; jam and cakes; the children's name the bear/spot the treasure game; the book stall (an average one is better searching than any WH Smiths); nameless blue liquid masquerading as a drink.
Does some good. Is therapy for the anguished soul. You meet an array of eccentrics. Cash continues as king. Recommended.
Even better, you can now pay contactless with just a tap of your phone and no need to mess around with cash. 👍
Good luck with that one. Don't go to a fete etc in large chunks of northern England.
I do live in the North you know? 🤷♂️
The school has had tiny contactless terminals for use for years now.
Heck, when I took my kids to see Santa last Christmas which was put on by a local charity, they had a contactless terminal next to the collection tin too.
Almost as cheap as the bottle of wine Sunak donated.
At least it wasn’t Buckfast!
An American wine connoisseur made the mistake of reviewing buckfast… Here’s their tasting notes:
Buckfast Tonic Wine (No Vintage)
Screw cap, took it off about 30 minutes before to bring in some air. Apparently made by monks in England. Decided to try while cooking dinner. Poured into a glass, first glance has a very inky almost brownish color that you see in older wines. Very syrupy, liquid clings to the side of the glass when swirled. Almost 15% ABV.
Stuck my nose in and was hit with something I’ve never experienced before. Barnyardy funk (in a bad way) almost like a dead animal in a bird’s nest. A mix of flat Coca Cola and caramel with a whiff of gun metal.
On the palate, overwhelming sweetness and sugar. Cherry Cola mixed with Benadryl. Unlike anything I’ve tasted. I’m not sure what this liquid is but it is not wine, I’m actually not sure what it is but it tastes like something a doctor would prescribe. A chemical concoction of the highest degree. Can only compare it to a Four Loko.
Managed to make it through a couple small glasses but not much more. Has absolutely ruined the evening drinking-wise for me as I tried to drink a nice Bordeaux after but the iron-like metallic sweet aftertaste I just couldn’t get out of my mouth even after a few glasses of water. I don’t drink a lot of coffee regularly so I also have mild heart palpitations from the caffeine after just drinking a bit of this and feel a slight migraine.
An ungodly concoction made by seemingly godly men. I believe the Vatican needs to send an exorcist over to Buckfast Abbey as the devil’s works are cleary present there. After tasting this “wine,” the way I feel can only be described as akin to being under a bridge on one’s knees orally pleasing a vagrant while simultaneously drinking liquified meth through a dirty rag.
I’ve drank a lot of wines in my life and will never forget this one.
Buckfast Powersmash is one of those drinks so awful that it's good. Was in the tattier of the village shops when a guy was in buying a few bottles. And looked like he is a regular drinker of the stuff.
Was then amazed to see a Buckie trade stand at a food expo a few months back. They were pushing the "made by monks" line really hard and getting "ooh that's interesting" responses from trade buyers. FFS no, you really don't need Buckfast punters in your shop. Its like being a proud seller of Lambrini and McEwan's Export.
I try to feel proud of our island heritage, but thinking a large pit makes a decent monument is a bit primitive even for 10,000 BC, is it not? A bit off the Gobekli Tepe pace.
Proto-Keynesians, no doubt. Location checks out.
Bit difficult to develop an advanced civilisation form scratch in glacial or permafrost conditions.
No matter one’s opinions about the characters involved in the recent IPSO decision, do we respect freedom of the press, or do we regulate the media by loud activist groups?
I was very critical of the political media, and their bosses, during the pandemic, and continue to think that politics is debased, and good people don’t stand for election, because of the media environment - but also that freedom of the press is a mark of a democratic western society, and if powerful people can force opinions and jokes to be silenced there’s a big problem.
I am unconvinced by the regulator, the Sun and Fraser. What Fraser is actually saying is that the police and no-one else should be the regulator of opinion under hate crime law. This isn't going to happen as he well knows.
Read literally Clarkson's words may be properly read as incitement to a criminal offence - assault.
Suppose some writer in a paper had said, instead of the parading naked stuff, that "It would be a good idea, though illegal, for X (a major public figure) to be raped, strangled and murdered, and in my opinion it would be excellent if some public spirited person carried this out '.
This too is the expression of opinion. Are we sure that this should be entirely unregulated except through the criminal courts?
Aiui Clarkson's defence and/or mitigation was that the words complained of were not incitement to assault but a reference to a scene in Game of Thrones.
But I never understood that. Most bad things have happened in fiction. When I said the victim needed a good shanking I was merely alluding to the play Julius Caesar, yr honner.
It is quite common to use phrases that are clearly not incitement to violence, although the words individually might appear to be so. How many have used the phrase 'will be the first against the wall' or 'should be shot'. We don't mean it literally and nobody takes it so. Most of us can tell the difference between hate and colourful use of the language.
It’s a question of both the language and the target.
There are groups who are already being targeted for violence. Public figures are one of those groups. Advocating violence against such groups has a different context and implied meaning.
I agree. All these things depend on context. For instance I thought Clarkson (of whom I am a fan) was over the top, but then I had never seen Game of Thrones (difficult as that is to believe) so the context was lost on me. Once I knew I saw it in a different light.
And there are numerous different contexts that can apply, but generally we are all able to appreciate the difference between something being funny, in bad taste, hateful or likely to incite violence.
As @BartholomewRoberts points out we have the law and juries to decide. There might also be other sanctions from say an employer if you bring them into disrepute by what you say.
On the other hand, one might wonder, in such cases in general, and not specifically this one, whether the shirt was worn, or tweet posted, etc., with the intent to go something like "Officer? Me provoke hatred? No, the slogan on my tummy '**** the *******ish" is a witty reference to the Papal Bull 'Cum inter nonnullos' of 1323 as any idiot can see. Any reference to beating up the ***** is purely coincidental and the thought had never entered my mind."
Edit: but that is of course what juries are for, in part.
Almost as cheap as the bottle of wine Sunak donated.
Our school has a summer fare and Christmas fare where bottles are donated in the build-up and then won at tombolas and I swear the same bottles keep getting recycled. Its highly efficient if you think about it.
Last summer we won a bottle of mulled wine at the summer fare, I'm guessing whoever donated that had won it the previous Christmas fare as its an odd thing to donate at summer otherwise. We donated it back six months later for the Christmas fare. At Christmas we then won some other bottles, we drank one of those and the others we donated back to the summer fare.
The school makes its money from a tombola with these bottles. They don't care about the price tag of the bottles, or if its the first of 7th time the same bottle has gone around so long as its in date, they're getting their funds either way each time its done. 🤷♂️
Does nothing for GDP though and surely that is the aim of the school governers.
Y = C + I + G + (X - M)
Giving them money they can then spend (C) without buying a bottle of imported wine (M) boosts Y.
The bottle of wine was part of I in the year of its import. It cannot be counted twice.
Edit: and if it was a British bottle of wine then it is a second hand good and hence it would be the same as two people swapping a five pound note.
I is Investment, M is iMports and M is a negative not a positive on the equation.
That is the point, a second hand bottle of wine doesn't increase M, whereas a newly imported bottle of wine would.
The money the school raises from the Tombola does boost C when they spend it.
Hence Y goes up.
But you were talking about second hand (revolving) bottles of wine.
Yep - and 1 way of increasing GDP is to increase the velocity of money - i.e. how many times it's spent over a year.
No it isn't. If there is increased activity then velocity of money might be expected to increase but if you and I handed each other £5 20 times every hour for the same bottle of wine that would do nothing for GDP.
You don't seem to be grasping the whole concept.
I and all other parents donate a prize to the school in the build-up to the fare. This was done twice in recent weeks where the school had a casual clothes Friday and asked for a donation to the fare as the 'fee' for the casual clothes each time.
I and other parents then pay money to the school to take part in the tombola where as a class the parents win back the prizes they just donated, but shuffled around essentially.
This ends with the parents having swapped around bottles basically, while the school ends up with money without paying out anything.
The school can then spend its money as it sees fit. Which presumably is not bottles of wine.
The school spending the money it received from the tombola absolutely does do something for GDP.
If you and I hand the school £5 20 times for the same bottle of wine, then it ends up with the wine remaining with one of us where it started and the school £100 up. And that £100 being spent on supplies for the school does do something for GDP.
If the 2 of us are swapping the same bottle of wine ad nauseum then we are not handing the £5 to each other each time, we're handing it to the school each time.
We can forget the wine as it is an existing asset. Buying or selling it has no effect on GDP. So you are in effect handing the school £5. So the school has +£5 and you have -£5. C is unaffected.
Which brings us full circle to what I said at the start.
The school won't save the money, they will spend it, and as they do, C goes up, so GDP goes up.
You said "Giving them money they can then spend (C) without buying a bottle of imported wine (M) boosts Y."
Which is irrelevant to our discussion.
You gave the school £5 but you now can't spend it. If you are talking about consumption vs savings then you should have made that explicit.
I try to feel proud of our island heritage, but thinking a large pit makes a decent monument is a bit primitive even for 10,000 BC, is it not? A bit off the Gobekli Tepe pace.
Proto-Keynesians, no doubt. Location checks out.
Bit difficult to develop an advanced civilisation form scratch in glacial or permafrost conditions.
BREAKING: Partygate investigator Sue Gray broke civil service rules “as a result of the undeclared contact” between her and the Labour Party, according to a Whitehall investigation. https://twitter.com/TalkTV/status/1675807612070252545
Boy, Simon Case really is as nasty and vindictive as he's useless isn't he?
Almost as cheap as the bottle of wine Sunak donated.
At least it wasn’t Buckfast!
An American wine connoisseur made the mistake of reviewing buckfast… Here’s their tasting notes:
Buckfast Tonic Wine (No Vintage)
Screw cap, took it off about 30 minutes before to bring in some air. Apparently made by monks in England. Decided to try while cooking dinner. Poured into a glass, first glance has a very inky almost brownish color that you see in older wines. Very syrupy, liquid clings to the side of the glass when swirled. Almost 15% ABV.
Stuck my nose in and was hit with something I’ve never experienced before. Barnyardy funk (in a bad way) almost like a dead animal in a bird’s nest. A mix of flat Coca Cola and caramel with a whiff of gun metal.
On the palate, overwhelming sweetness and sugar. Cherry Cola mixed with Benadryl. Unlike anything I’ve tasted. I’m not sure what this liquid is but it is not wine, I’m actually not sure what it is but it tastes like something a doctor would prescribe. A chemical concoction of the highest degree. Can only compare it to a Four Loko.
Managed to make it through a couple small glasses but not much more. Has absolutely ruined the evening drinking-wise for me as I tried to drink a nice Bordeaux after but the iron-like metallic sweet aftertaste I just couldn’t get out of my mouth even after a few glasses of water. I don’t drink a lot of coffee regularly so I also have mild heart palpitations from the caffeine after just drinking a bit of this and feel a slight migraine.
An ungodly concoction made by seemingly godly men. I believe the Vatican needs to send an exorcist over to Buckfast Abbey as the devil’s works are cleary present there. After tasting this “wine,” the way I feel can only be described as akin to being under a bridge on one’s knees orally pleasing a vagrant while simultaneously drinking liquified meth through a dirty rag.
I’ve drank a lot of wines in my life and will never forget this one.
Buckfast Powersmash is one of those drinks so awful that it's good. Was in the tattier of the village shops when a guy was in buying a few bottles. And looked like he is a regular drinker of the stuff.
Was then amazed to see a Buckie trade stand at a food expo a few months back. They were pushing the "made by monks" line really hard and getting "ooh that's interesting" responses from trade buyers. FFS no, you really don't need Buckfast punters in your shop. Its like being a proud seller of Lambrini and McEwan's Export.
Amazingly The Whisky Exchange which I’d assumed was an aspirational up-its-own-arse affair sells Buckie on its site.
BREAKING: Partygate investigator Sue Gray broke civil service rules “as a result of the undeclared contact” between her and the Labour Party, according to a Whitehall investigation. https://twitter.com/TalkTV/status/1675807612070252545
Boy, Simon Case really is as nasty and vindictive as he's useless isn't he?
I try to feel proud of our island heritage, but thinking a large pit makes a decent monument is a bit primitive even for 10,000 BC, is it not? A bit off the Gobekli Tepe pace.
Proto-Keynesians, no doubt. Location checks out.
Bit difficult to develop an advanced civilisation form scratch in glacial or permafrost conditions.
Also, bloody difficult digging pits.
Interestding that in the Neolithic they ended up with not so much pits but monumental shafts. Bloody difficult to excavate today, never mind dig in the first placer with nobbut wood and antler picks. Some in a complex at Dorchester in Dorset IIRC:
Almost as cheap as the bottle of wine Sunak donated.
Our school has a summer fare and Christmas fare where bottles are donated in the build-up and then won at tombolas and I swear the same bottles keep getting recycled. Its highly efficient if you think about it.
Last summer we won a bottle of mulled wine at the summer fare, I'm guessing whoever donated that had won it the previous Christmas fare as its an odd thing to donate at summer otherwise. We donated it back six months later for the Christmas fare. At Christmas we then won some other bottles, we drank one of those and the others we donated back to the summer fare.
The school makes its money from a tombola with these bottles. They don't care about the price tag of the bottles, or if its the first of 7th time the same bottle has gone around so long as its in date, they're getting their funds either way each time its done. 🤷♂️
Does nothing for GDP though and surely that is the aim of the school governers.
Y = C + I + G + (X - M)
Giving them money they can then spend (C) without buying a bottle of imported wine (M) boosts Y.
The bottle of wine was part of I in the year of its import. It cannot be counted twice.
Edit: and if it was a British bottle of wine then it is a second hand good and hence it would be the same as two people swapping a five pound note.
I is Investment, M is iMports and M is a negative not a positive on the equation.
That is the point, a second hand bottle of wine doesn't increase M, whereas a newly imported bottle of wine would.
The money the school raises from the Tombola does boost C when they spend it.
Hence Y goes up.
But you were talking about second hand (revolving) bottles of wine.
Yep - and 1 way of increasing GDP is to increase the velocity of money - i.e. how many times it's spent over a year.
No it isn't. If there is increased activity then velocity of money might be expected to increase but if you and I handed each other £5 20 times every hour for the same bottle of wine that would do nothing for GDP.
You don't seem to be grasping the whole concept.
I and all other parents donate a prize to the school in the build-up to the fare. This was done twice in recent weeks where the school had a casual clothes Friday and asked for a donation to the fare as the 'fee' for the casual clothes each time.
I and other parents then pay money to the school to take part in the tombola where as a class the parents win back the prizes they just donated, but shuffled around essentially.
This ends with the parents having swapped around bottles basically, while the school ends up with money without paying out anything.
The school can then spend its money as it sees fit. Which presumably is not bottles of wine.
The school spending the money it received from the tombola absolutely does do something for GDP.
If you and I hand the school £5 20 times for the same bottle of wine, then it ends up with the wine remaining with one of us where it started and the school £100 up. And that £100 being spent on supplies for the school does do something for GDP.
If the 2 of us are swapping the same bottle of wine ad nauseum then we are not handing the £5 to each other each time, we're handing it to the school each time.
We can forget the wine as it is an existing asset. Buying or selling it has no effect on GDP. So you are in effect handing the school £5. So the school has +£5 and you have -£5. C is unaffected.
Which brings us full circle to what I said at the start.
The school won't save the money, they will spend it, and as they do, C goes up, so GDP goes up.
You said "Giving them money they can then spend (C) without buying a bottle of imported wine (M) boosts Y."
Which is irrelevant to our discussion.
You gave the school £5 but you now can't spend it. If you are talking about consumption vs savings then you should have made that explicit.
They can spend (C)
Yes I can't spend it, but that's neither here nor there unless I was going to spend it. They can. That is C, that is velocity of money, that is GDP.
Yes I may have equally spent it, in which case if I had that would have also been contributing to GDP, but that is neither here nor there.
BREAKING: Partygate investigator Sue Gray broke civil service rules “as a result of the undeclared contact” between her and the Labour Party, according to a Whitehall investigation. https://twitter.com/TalkTV/status/1675807612070252545
Boy, Simon Case really is as nasty and vindictive as he's useless isn't he?
"Send an email immediately. Call a celebratory party".
Almost as cheap as the bottle of wine Sunak donated.
Our school has a summer fare and Christmas fare where bottles are donated in the build-up and then won at tombolas and I swear the same bottles keep getting recycled. Its highly efficient if you think about it.
Last summer we won a bottle of mulled wine at the summer fare, I'm guessing whoever donated that had won it the previous Christmas fare as its an odd thing to donate at summer otherwise. We donated it back six months later for the Christmas fare. At Christmas we then won some other bottles, we drank one of those and the others we donated back to the summer fare.
The school makes its money from a tombola with these bottles. They don't care about the price tag of the bottles, or if its the first of 7th time the same bottle has gone around so long as its in date, they're getting their funds either way each time its done. 🤷♂️
Does nothing for GDP though and surely that is the aim of the school governers.
Y = C + I + G + (X - M)
Giving them money they can then spend (C) without buying a bottle of imported wine (M) boosts Y.
The bottle of wine was part of I in the year of its import. It cannot be counted twice.
Edit: and if it was a British bottle of wine then it is a second hand good and hence it would be the same as two people swapping a five pound note.
I is Investment, M is iMports and M is a negative not a positive on the equation.
That is the point, a second hand bottle of wine doesn't increase M, whereas a newly imported bottle of wine would.
The money the school raises from the Tombola does boost C when they spend it.
Hence Y goes up.
But you were talking about second hand (revolving) bottles of wine.
Yep - and 1 way of increasing GDP is to increase the velocity of money - i.e. how many times it's spent over a year.
No it isn't. If there is increased activity then velocity of money might be expected to increase but if you and I handed each other £5 20 times every hour for the same bottle of wine that would do nothing for GDP.
You don't seem to be grasping the whole concept.
I and all other parents donate a prize to the school in the build-up to the fare. This was done twice in recent weeks where the school had a casual clothes Friday and asked for a donation to the fare as the 'fee' for the casual clothes each time.
I and other parents then pay money to the school to take part in the tombola where as a class the parents win back the prizes they just donated, but shuffled around essentially.
This ends with the parents having swapped around bottles basically, while the school ends up with money without paying out anything.
The school can then spend its money as it sees fit. Which presumably is not bottles of wine.
The school spending the money it received from the tombola absolutely does do something for GDP.
If you and I hand the school £5 20 times for the same bottle of wine, then it ends up with the wine remaining with one of us where it started and the school £100 up. And that £100 being spent on supplies for the school does do something for GDP.
If the 2 of us are swapping the same bottle of wine ad nauseum then we are not handing the £5 to each other each time, we're handing it to the school each time.
We can forget the wine as it is an existing asset. Buying or selling it has no effect on GDP. So you are in effect handing the school £5. So the school has +£5 and you have -£5. C is unaffected.
Which brings us full circle to what I said at the start.
The school won't save the money, they will spend it, and as they do, C goes up, so GDP goes up.
You said "Giving them money they can then spend (C) without buying a bottle of imported wine (M) boosts Y."
Which is irrelevant to our discussion.
You gave the school £5 but you now can't spend it. If you are talking about consumption vs savings then you should have made that explicit.
They can spend (C)
Yes I can't spend it, but that's neither here nor there unless I was going to spend it. They can. That is C, that is velocity of money, that is GDP.
Yes I may have equally spent it, in which case if I had that would have also been contributing to GDP, but that is neither here nor there.
You could have spent it or they could have spent it. But giving a recycled bottle of wine to a school tombola doesn't affect GDP because you both could spend the £5. You are just outsourcing your consumption to the school.
Almost as cheap as the bottle of wine Sunak donated.
At least it wasn’t Buckfast!
An American wine connoisseur made the mistake of reviewing buckfast… Here’s their tasting notes:
Buckfast Tonic Wine (No Vintage)
Screw cap, took it off about 30 minutes before to bring in some air. Apparently made by monks in England. Decided to try while cooking dinner. Poured into a glass, first glance has a very inky almost brownish color that you see in older wines. Very syrupy, liquid clings to the side of the glass when swirled. Almost 15% ABV.
Stuck my nose in and was hit with something I’ve never experienced before. Barnyardy funk (in a bad way) almost like a dead animal in a bird’s nest. A mix of flat Coca Cola and caramel with a whiff of gun metal.
On the palate, overwhelming sweetness and sugar. Cherry Cola mixed with Benadryl. Unlike anything I’ve tasted. I’m not sure what this liquid is but it is not wine, I’m actually not sure what it is but it tastes like something a doctor would prescribe. A chemical concoction of the highest degree. Can only compare it to a Four Loko.
Managed to make it through a couple small glasses but not much more. Has absolutely ruined the evening drinking-wise for me as I tried to drink a nice Bordeaux after but the iron-like metallic sweet aftertaste I just couldn’t get out of my mouth even after a few glasses of water. I don’t drink a lot of coffee regularly so I also have mild heart palpitations from the caffeine after just drinking a bit of this and feel a slight migraine.
An ungodly concoction made by seemingly godly men. I believe the Vatican needs to send an exorcist over to Buckfast Abbey as the devil’s works are cleary present there. After tasting this “wine,” the way I feel can only be described as akin to being under a bridge on one’s knees orally pleasing a vagrant while simultaneously drinking liquified meth through a dirty rag.
I’ve drank a lot of wines in my life and will never forget this one.
Buckfast Powersmash is one of those drinks so awful that it's good. Was in the tattier of the village shops when a guy was in buying a few bottles. And looked like he is a regular drinker of the stuff.
Was then amazed to see a Buckie trade stand at a food expo a few months back. They were pushing the "made by monks" line really hard and getting "ooh that's interesting" responses from trade buyers. FFS no, you really don't need Buckfast punters in your shop. Its like being a proud seller of Lambrini and McEwan's Export.
Buckie punters are actually *upmarket* by the standards of your average jaikie on Union Street or the Sautmarket. Before the alcohol pricing controls came in in particular, you could get smashed far more cheaply on other stuff, and I believe the differential is still there even now if not so marked. (Sudden thought: does the origin of Buckie correlate with its sales in Glasgow to different football club supporters? Never heard of such a thing, though.)
It's not just PMQs (as the header notes, two questions a week against one every blue moon) but also invitations to Question Time and invitations to comment on news and current events generally.
Quite right; the exclusion of the LibDems from such programmes has been scandalous, especially when looks at the time given to the Faragists and similar potential demagogues.
And Good Morning to one and all.
Agreed. It's not been fair on the LDs, and reflects very badly on the primitive procedures of the HoC.
I suppose the problem is, there are eleven recognised parties in the House of Commons: Tories, Labour, SNP, DUP, Sinn Fein (sort of) Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru, SDLP, Alliance, Greens and Reclaim (sort of).
If each of them had two questions for the leader, plus six for Labour less 2 for SF that's 22 questions. That's a lot to cram in and get backbenchers in too.
Even if you said they must have at least five MPs, that still leaves 12 to get in. Not much room for more.
So the line has to be drawn somewhere. It may be unfair on the Lib Dems but ultimately you could make a case it was their own fault they collapsed so much (they were not actually forced to support the disastrous Browne report).
I don't think anyone was suggesting that every party should get 2 questions, but the fourth party could get, say, a question every other week. That would address the issue without making PMQs unwieldy.
How about allocating questions on the basis of seat (or even vote!) share? With a lower number for the party of government We could call it proportional questionisation.
Mind you, that would have left the LDs with ~1 question between GEs, recently!
Or, bring back twice weekly PMQ.
The fourth question slot should be alternated weekly between any parties that have gained 5 or more seats. Currently that would be the Lib Dems and the DUP. It would also include Sinn Fein if they attended.
Almost as cheap as the bottle of wine Sunak donated.
Our school has a summer fare and Christmas fare where bottles are donated in the build-up and then won at tombolas and I swear the same bottles keep getting recycled. Its highly efficient if you think about it.
Last summer we won a bottle of mulled wine at the summer fare, I'm guessing whoever donated that had won it the previous Christmas fare as its an odd thing to donate at summer otherwise. We donated it back six months later for the Christmas fare. At Christmas we then won some other bottles, we drank one of those and the others we donated back to the summer fare.
The school makes its money from a tombola with these bottles. They don't care about the price tag of the bottles, or if its the first of 7th time the same bottle has gone around so long as its in date, they're getting their funds either way each time its done. 🤷♂️
Does nothing for GDP though and surely that is the aim of the school governers.
Y = C + I + G + (X - M)
Giving them money they can then spend (C) without buying a bottle of imported wine (M) boosts Y.
The bottle of wine was part of I in the year of its import. It cannot be counted twice.
Edit: and if it was a British bottle of wine then it is a second hand good and hence it would be the same as two people swapping a five pound note.
I is Investment, M is iMports and M is a negative not a positive on the equation.
That is the point, a second hand bottle of wine doesn't increase M, whereas a newly imported bottle of wine would.
The money the school raises from the Tombola does boost C when they spend it.
Hence Y goes up.
But you were talking about second hand (revolving) bottles of wine.
Yep - and 1 way of increasing GDP is to increase the velocity of money - i.e. how many times it's spent over a year.
No it isn't. If there is increased activity then velocity of money might be expected to increase but if you and I handed each other £5 20 times every hour for the same bottle of wine that would do nothing for GDP.
You don't seem to be grasping the whole concept.
I and all other parents donate a prize to the school in the build-up to the fare. This was done twice in recent weeks where the school had a casual clothes Friday and asked for a donation to the fare as the 'fee' for the casual clothes each time.
I and other parents then pay money to the school to take part in the tombola where as a class the parents win back the prizes they just donated, but shuffled around essentially.
This ends with the parents having swapped around bottles basically, while the school ends up with money without paying out anything.
The school can then spend its money as it sees fit. Which presumably is not bottles of wine.
The school spending the money it received from the tombola absolutely does do something for GDP.
If you and I hand the school £5 20 times for the same bottle of wine, then it ends up with the wine remaining with one of us where it started and the school £100 up. And that £100 being spent on supplies for the school does do something for GDP.
If the 2 of us are swapping the same bottle of wine ad nauseum then we are not handing the £5 to each other each time, we're handing it to the school each time.
We can forget the wine as it is an existing asset. Buying or selling it has no effect on GDP. So you are in effect handing the school £5. So the school has +£5 and you have -£5. C is unaffected.
Which brings us full circle to what I said at the start.
The school won't save the money, they will spend it, and as they do, C goes up, so GDP goes up.
You said "Giving them money they can then spend (C) without buying a bottle of imported wine (M) boosts Y."
Which is irrelevant to our discussion.
You gave the school £5 but you now can't spend it. If you are talking about consumption vs savings then you should have made that explicit.
They can spend (C)
Yes I can't spend it, but that's neither here nor there unless I was going to spend it. They can. That is C, that is velocity of money, that is GDP.
Yes I may have equally spent it, in which case if I had that would have also been contributing to GDP, but that is neither here nor there.
You could have spent it or they could have spent it. But giving a recycled bottle of wine to a school tombola doesn't affect GDP because you both could spend the £5. You are just outsourcing your consumption to the school.
Hmm, the school loses the Gift Aid of £1.25 which it would get if one gave it the money directly.(But can schools claim gift aid? Depends on the school, presumably.)
Sue Gray banged to rights by a Cabinet Office inquiry.
Gove Boris his job back!
It would probably be the Tories’ best bet for the election.
Don't be silly. Johnson has been completely rumbled by the electorate. He is a liar and completely unfit for office. Boris Johnson and his populist apologists are the reason the Conservative Party is where it is. He is the cause of the problem certainly not the solution
Almost as cheap as the bottle of wine Sunak donated.
Our school has a summer fare and Christmas fare where bottles are donated in the build-up and then won at tombolas and I swear the same bottles keep getting recycled. Its highly efficient if you think about it.
Last summer we won a bottle of mulled wine at the summer fare, I'm guessing whoever donated that had won it the previous Christmas fare as its an odd thing to donate at summer otherwise. We donated it back six months later for the Christmas fare. At Christmas we then won some other bottles, we drank one of those and the others we donated back to the summer fare.
The school makes its money from a tombola with these bottles. They don't care about the price tag of the bottles, or if its the first of 7th time the same bottle has gone around so long as its in date, they're getting their funds either way each time its done. 🤷♂️
Does nothing for GDP though and surely that is the aim of the school governers.
Y = C + I + G + (X - M)
Giving them money they can then spend (C) without buying a bottle of imported wine (M) boosts Y.
The bottle of wine was part of I in the year of its import. It cannot be counted twice.
Edit: and if it was a British bottle of wine then it is a second hand good and hence it would be the same as two people swapping a five pound note.
I is Investment, M is iMports and M is a negative not a positive on the equation.
That is the point, a second hand bottle of wine doesn't increase M, whereas a newly imported bottle of wine would.
The money the school raises from the Tombola does boost C when they spend it.
Hence Y goes up.
But you were talking about second hand (revolving) bottles of wine.
Yep - and 1 way of increasing GDP is to increase the velocity of money - i.e. how many times it's spent over a year.
No it isn't. If there is increased activity then velocity of money might be expected to increase but if you and I handed each other £5 20 times every hour for the same bottle of wine that would do nothing for GDP.
You don't seem to be grasping the whole concept.
I and all other parents donate a prize to the school in the build-up to the fare. This was done twice in recent weeks where the school had a casual clothes Friday and asked for a donation to the fare as the 'fee' for the casual clothes each time.
I and other parents then pay money to the school to take part in the tombola where as a class the parents win back the prizes they just donated, but shuffled around essentially.
This ends with the parents having swapped around bottles basically, while the school ends up with money without paying out anything.
The school can then spend its money as it sees fit. Which presumably is not bottles of wine.
The school spending the money it received from the tombola absolutely does do something for GDP.
If you and I hand the school £5 20 times for the same bottle of wine, then it ends up with the wine remaining with one of us where it started and the school £100 up. And that £100 being spent on supplies for the school does do something for GDP.
If the 2 of us are swapping the same bottle of wine ad nauseum then we are not handing the £5 to each other each time, we're handing it to the school each time.
We can forget the wine as it is an existing asset. Buying or selling it has no effect on GDP. So you are in effect handing the school £5. So the school has +£5 and you have -£5. C is unaffected.
Which brings us full circle to what I said at the start.
The school won't save the money, they will spend it, and as they do, C goes up, so GDP goes up.
You said "Giving them money they can then spend (C) without buying a bottle of imported wine (M) boosts Y."
Which is irrelevant to our discussion.
You gave the school £5 but you now can't spend it. If you are talking about consumption vs savings then you should have made that explicit.
They can spend (C)
Yes I can't spend it, but that's neither here nor there unless I was going to spend it. They can. That is C, that is velocity of money, that is GDP.
Yes I may have equally spent it, in which case if I had that would have also been contributing to GDP, but that is neither here nor there.
You could have spent it or they could have spent it. But giving a recycled bottle of wine to a school tombola doesn't affect GDP because you both could spend the £5. You are just outsourcing your consumption to the school.
You don't know that I and every other parent who engaged in the tombola will have spent that money.
We do know that the school will.
So no, consumption is not unchanged unless every single penny of the school's expenditure is met by a corresponding reduction in consumption by every single parent who took part.
Sue Gray. Cleared by ACOBA. Still being pursued by Tories pissed off that their target has wriggled off the hook by means of not having done the thing they accused her of.
Bless them. They should have put "STOP SUE GRAY" on a lectern and claimed it to be one of the people's priorities.
BREAKING: Partygate investigator Sue Gray broke civil service rules “as a result of the undeclared contact” between her and the Labour Party, according to a Whitehall investigation. https://twitter.com/TalkTV/status/1675807612070252545
Boy, Simon Case really is as nasty and vindictive as he's useless isn't he?
You just hope that somebody did a bit of due diligence before launching an inquiry and checked there were no emails from Sue Gray...
I can see it now. PMQs on Wednesday. The PM criticises the LOTO. Throws in a jibe about Sue Gray. The LOTO stands up and says no rules were broken. "Here's the email from Sue Gray to the Cabinet Secretary. I was copied into it. It's not my fault that he doesn't open or read his emails".
I have a feeling that this will come back to bite the Government on the backside.
I try to feel proud of our island heritage, but thinking a large pit makes a decent monument is a bit primitive even for 10,000 BC, is it not? A bit off the Gobekli Tepe pace.
Proto-Keynesians, no doubt. Location checks out.
Bit difficult to develop an advanced civilisation form scratch in glacial or permafrost conditions.
Also, bloody difficult digging pits.
The pits are presumably artefacts of the large scale reoccupation of the land as it became more habitable.
Almost as cheap as the bottle of wine Sunak donated.
At least it wasn’t Buckfast!
An American wine connoisseur made the mistake of reviewing buckfast… Here’s their tasting notes:
Buckfast Tonic Wine (No Vintage)
Screw cap, took it off about 30 minutes before to bring in some air. Apparently made by monks in England. Decided to try while cooking dinner. Poured into a glass, first glance has a very inky almost brownish color that you see in older wines. Very syrupy, liquid clings to the side of the glass when swirled. Almost 15% ABV.
Stuck my nose in and was hit with something I’ve never experienced before. Barnyardy funk (in a bad way) almost like a dead animal in a bird’s nest. A mix of flat Coca Cola and caramel with a whiff of gun metal.
On the palate, overwhelming sweetness and sugar. Cherry Cola mixed with Benadryl. Unlike anything I’ve tasted. I’m not sure what this liquid is but it is not wine, I’m actually not sure what it is but it tastes like something a doctor would prescribe. A chemical concoction of the highest degree. Can only compare it to a Four Loko.
Managed to make it through a couple small glasses but not much more. Has absolutely ruined the evening drinking-wise for me as I tried to drink a nice Bordeaux after but the iron-like metallic sweet aftertaste I just couldn’t get out of my mouth even after a few glasses of water. I don’t drink a lot of coffee regularly so I also have mild heart palpitations from the caffeine after just drinking a bit of this and feel a slight migraine.
An ungodly concoction made by seemingly godly men. I believe the Vatican needs to send an exorcist over to Buckfast Abbey as the devil’s works are cleary present there. After tasting this “wine,” the way I feel can only be described as akin to being under a bridge on one’s knees orally pleasing a vagrant while simultaneously drinking liquified meth through a dirty rag.
I’ve drank a lot of wines in my life and will never forget this one.
And this is a bad thing because why?
What's he moaning about? He can tick off his bucket list "Visit Hielanman's Umbrella at 2am on a Sunday" without having to go there.
Comments
https://conservativehome.com/2023/07/03/our-survey-seven-in-ten-conservative-activists-believe-that-the-uk-should-leave-the-echr/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Newsletter for Monday 3rd July 2023&utm_content=Newsletter for Monday 3rd July 2023+CID_ee1d3bd0d9dc4443fa9e0e30e051473f&utm_source=Daily Email&utm_term=Our survey Seven in ten Conservative activists believe that the UK should leave the ECHR
Mind you, that would have left the LDs with ~1 question between GEs, recently!
I am shocked, shocked at this turn of events.
Last summer we won a bottle of mulled wine at the summer fare, I'm guessing whoever donated that had won it the previous Christmas fare as its an odd thing to donate at summer otherwise. We donated it back six months later for the Christmas fare. At Christmas we then won some other bottles, we drank one of those and the others we donated back to the summer fare.
The school makes its money from a tombola with these bottles. They don't care about the price tag of the bottles, or if its the first of 7th time the same bottle has gone around so long as its in date, they're getting their funds either way each time its done. 🤷♂️
I'm sure Megan would have been offended by it. Tough. I get offended by stuff too. Tough.
And imagine the knock-on effects of leaving the ECHR (no NI agreement, no Windsor agreement, USA coming down on us like a tonne of bricks...)
Yes, the UK has the sovereign freedom to leave, but it's hard to imagine circumstances where it's a good idea.
Giving them money they can then spend (C) without buying a bottle of imported wine (M) boosts Y.
Exhibit B: Orkney buggering off to rejoin the EU take up another semi-detached position
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/stop-rioting-nahel-merzouks-grandmother-tells-france-80vcxtzll
Fundraising for the family of a French police officer who shot dead a teenager has attracted more than €860,000 (£739,000), far more than a similar campaign for the victim’s relatives.
The fund, set up by Jean Messiha, an independent right-wing populist, has been inundated with donations, and a separate fund set up by the policeman’s colleagues, has raised more than €50,000. This compares with about €150,000 (£128,000) sent to the family of Nahel Merzouk, who was shot dead in his car at point-blank range on Tuesday in a killing that prompted six nights of rioting.
Edit: and if it was a British bottle of wine then it is a second hand good and hence it would be the same as two people swapping a five pound note.
That is the point, a second hand bottle of wine doesn't increase M, whereas a newly imported bottle of wine would.
The money the school raises from the Tombola does boost C when they spend it.
Hence Y goes up.
I should say, we do send in a 'proper' bottle which we'd be pleased to win as well. Everyone does. The tombola itself is great value, because it's subsidised by pretty much every family spending between two and five pounds on donations.
We did send in a bottle of Harrods champagne once. It should never, technically, have been in our possession: it was an unsolicited gift for a neighbour, for whom we took it in because, it turned out, he had emigrated, never to return. I don't particularly like champagne and my wife doesn't drink. I thought he'd be less disgruntled to know it had gone as a prize for school funds than to think the neighbours he briefly had and didn't really know had drunk it.
I was actually on the bottle tombola stand for that summer fair, and it was quite fun to see the face of the person who won it, who, naturally, was expecting a bottle of mulled wine or Dr. Pepper or at best a bottle of Doom Bar.
And there are numerous different contexts that can apply, but generally we are all able to appreciate the difference between something being funny, in bad taste, hateful or likely to incite violence.
As @BartholomewRoberts points out we have the law and juries to decide. There might also be other sanctions from say an employer if you bring them into disrepute by what you say.
Their vote share has been third every time except GE2015.
The failures of FPTP.........
ETA: Always third on vote share, too? Or would that have been UKIP in 2015, say?
E2TA: Ah yes, definitely UKIP in 2015. 12.6% v 7.9%
E3TA: And, of course, this point was made in the very post I'm replying to, d'oh!
Linmere site has more monumental pits in a single area than anywhere else in England and Wales
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/jul/03/discovery-25-mesolithic-pits-bedfordshire-astounds-archaeologists
Anyway, Anderson, Gullis and Cates want "foreigners" to go home. Even those working in healthcare, care homes and fruit picking.
These "New Conservatives", growth coalition patriots are absolute stars!
1) A tombola run on traditional lines gets people to donate prizes for gambling. Both donors and (losing) gamblers are providing funds for the school. For canny punters quite often there is a disproportionate advantage in favour of the punter (William Hills are not organising this) who can on average get more than he spends. Schools should of course limit this to maximise their take. But their take and profit is guaranteed by the donations being free. The bottle donor is often not donating as much as they imagine, but will still feel good.
2) In a permanent recycling tombola the bottles (presumably being rubbish ones) are tokens without value; they function only as an excuse to ask people to donate money without doing so openly. The gamblers (PBers will avoid these events) are giving money for no return, except the limited excitement of winning a valueless token. The donors are giving nothing of value and are not entitled to feel good.
The first sort of tombola adds slightly to the excitements of dull provincial life - the sort I live. The question of which old lady will win the gin is one of the big issues of the Christmas bazaar.The second sort should be confined to the pages of the Economist and the recyclers should feel abject shame.
Proto-Keynesians, no doubt. Location checks out.
Most normal people don't engage, just as they don't apply to go on Question Time.
It's kind of shame really, as it's the least representative session of parliament, and essentially entirely performative.
There is also a fair bit of once-around-the-block recycling. The spiced rum which we got from the Christmas Fair was never going to get drunk in this house and got regifted. But that's not to say no-one will drink it.
Basically you are paying the school a reasonably set amount (£3 or so) to enter a game of 'buy a random drink and get given a random drink'. The £3 shouldn't be seen as part of the economics of winning or not but as the money you pay for the amusement of the whole process (like putting a pound into a pinball machine). 'Winning' here is getting a better drink than the one you donated, but you can enjoy the process without winning. Like stumping a batsman who thinks the over has finished, winning by donating nothing is quite legitimate but not really in the spirit of the game.
45% of Leave voters also want to withdraw from the ECHR to 33% who want to remain in it
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2023/02/07/ce218/1
It would be like asking a Labour equivalent website whether they believe in nationalisation of everything.
Instead it had Vladimir Putin's Russia as a full and unsanctioned member as recently as January last year, despite Russia's total lack of a free press, free society, free democracy or any kind of reasonable Human Rights.
I wouldn't vote to leave the ECHR probably as doing so is more hassle than its worth, but as far as a guarantor of Human Rights is concerned its an abject failure.
Cash needs to remain normative for exactly the small aspects of real life which enhance the day to day - charity shops, the retail lives of children, small transactions in small shops, flag days, boxes in churches, birthday presents.
Also cash is needed for drug dealing, tax avoiding, private betting, Saturday roofers, money laundering, protection rackets and so on. But the village fete and the sweet shop is the best reason.
Used quite a bit of cash myself over the last week or so. Kid's school trip pocket money and for rides and stall at a local festival, among other things.
I and all other parents donate a prize to the school in the build-up to the fare. This was done twice in recent weeks where the school had a casual clothes Friday and asked for a donation to the fare as the 'fee' for the casual clothes each time.
I and other parents then pay money to the school to take part in the tombola where as a class the parents win back the prizes they just donated, but shuffled around essentially.
This ends with the parents having swapped around bottles basically, while the school ends up with money without paying out anything.
The school can then spend its money as it sees fit. Which presumably is not bottles of wine.
The school spending the money it received from the tombola absolutely does do something for GDP.
If you and I hand the school £5 20 times for the same bottle of wine, then it ends up with the wine remaining with one of us where it started and the school £100 up. And that £100 being spent on supplies for the school does do something for GDP.
If the 2 of us are swapping the same bottle of wine ad nauseum then we are not handing the £5 to each other each time, we're handing it to the school each time.
"We" are not regulating the media in this case - they are effectively doing so themselves (note the FT and Guardian aren't even members).
https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/07/03/on-bill-barr-and-sex-workers-whistleblower-x-called-hunter-bidens-baby-momma-a-prostitute/
Their credibility is not great.
But once or twice a year I support one of these, to which I might give £x in the usual way, by going to their event with a pocket fill of notes and coins amounting to £x. This gets spent on: Junk; tombolas (often net profit making, see above); raffles; woolly hats; jam and cakes; the children's name the bear/spot the treasure game; the book stall (an average one is better searching than any WH Smiths); nameless blue liquid masquerading as a drink.
Does some good. Is therapy for the anguished soul. You meet an array of eccentrics. Cash continues as king. Recommended.
An American wine connoisseur made the mistake of reviewing buckfast… Here’s their tasting notes:
Buckfast Tonic Wine (No Vintage)
Screw cap, took it off about 30 minutes before to bring in some air. Apparently made by monks in England. Decided to try while cooking dinner. Poured into a glass, first glance has a very inky almost brownish color that you see in older wines. Very syrupy, liquid clings to the side of the glass when swirled. Almost 15% ABV.
Stuck my nose in and was hit with something I’ve never experienced before. Barnyardy funk (in a bad way) almost like a dead animal in a bird’s nest. A mix of flat Coca Cola and caramel with a whiff of gun metal.
On the palate, overwhelming sweetness and sugar. Cherry Cola mixed with Benadryl. Unlike anything I’ve tasted. I’m not sure what this liquid is but it is not wine, I’m actually not sure what it is but it tastes like something a doctor would prescribe. A chemical concoction of the highest degree. Can only compare it to a Four Loko.
Managed to make it through a couple small glasses but not much more. Has absolutely ruined the evening drinking-wise for me as I tried to drink a nice Bordeaux after but the iron-like metallic sweet aftertaste I just couldn’t get out of my mouth even after a few glasses of water. I don’t drink a lot of coffee regularly so I also have mild heart palpitations from the caffeine after just drinking a bit of this and feel a slight migraine.
An ungodly concoction made by seemingly godly men. I believe the Vatican needs to send an exorcist over to Buckfast Abbey as the devil’s works are cleary present there. After tasting this “wine,” the way I feel can only be described as akin to being under a bridge on one’s knees orally pleasing a vagrant while simultaneously drinking liquified meth through a dirty rag.
I’ve drank a lot of wines in my life and will never forget this one.
https://twitter.com/TalkTV/status/1675807612070252545
The school won't save the money, they will spend it, and as they do, C goes up, so GDP goes up.
The school has had tiny contactless terminals for use for years now.
Heck, when I took my kids to see Santa last Christmas which was put on by a local charity, they had a contactless terminal next to the collection tin too.
Was then amazed to see a Buckie trade stand at a food expo a few months back. They were pushing the "made by monks" line really hard and getting "ooh that's interesting" responses from trade buyers. FFS no, you really don't need Buckfast punters in your shop. Its like being a proud seller of Lambrini and McEwan's Export.
They just can't stop talking about Nadine, can they?
Edit: but that is of course what juries are for, in part.
Which is irrelevant to our discussion.
You gave the school £5 but you now can't spend it. If you are talking about consumption vs savings then you should have made that explicit.
Gove Boris his job back!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maumbury_Rings
(not thinking of flint mines such as Grime's Graves - presumably different kettle of fish)
Yes I can't spend it, but that's neither here nor there unless I was going to spend it. They can. That is C, that is velocity of money, that is GDP.
Yes I may have equally spent it, in which case if I had that would have also been contributing to GDP, but that is neither here nor there.
Mordaunt or someone from that neck of the Conservative hinterland would be a better bet.
We do know that the school will.
So no, consumption is not unchanged unless every single penny of the school's expenditure is met by a corresponding reduction in consumption by every single parent who took part.
Bless them. They should have put "STOP SUE GRAY" on a lectern and claimed it to be one of the people's priorities.
I can see it now. PMQs on Wednesday. The PM criticises the LOTO. Throws in a jibe about Sue Gray. The LOTO stands up and says no rules were broken. "Here's the email from Sue Gray to the Cabinet Secretary. I was copied into it. It's not my fault that he doesn't open or read his emails".
I have a feeling that this will come back to bite the Government on the backside.