Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. Sign in or register to get started.

Nikki Haley now clear second favourite for the GOP nomination – politicalbetting.com

1235

Comments

  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,131
    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    rcs1000 said:

    OT - Note that in New Hampshire, Gov. Chris Sununu has endorsed Nikki Haley for POTUS in the upcoming (January 8, 2024) NH Republican presidential Primary.

    Personally think this endorsement has some heft with Granite State voters, more so than endorsement by Iowa Gov of Ron DeSantis in the upcoming (January 15, 2024) Iowa Republican precinct caucuses.

    Perhaps worth noting that, back in 1988, it was endorsement and active support of then-Gov. John Sununu, the current gov's father, of George Bush (nobody called him "George Herbert Walker Bush" back then) that saved Bush the Elder's campaign after he lost the Iowa precinct caucus vote to Bob Dole.

    And the rest, as they say, is history.

    Also note that New Hampshire Democrats led by former Gov. and current US Senator Jeanne Shaheen have just launched their campaign of support for Joe Biden as a WRITE IN candidate for POTUS in the Democratic presidential primary.

    Because due to DNC rule change, advocated by Biden, New Hampshire was replaced (officially anyway) as initial primary of the 2024 nomination season by South Carolina. A decision greeted with virtually universal condemnation, dismay, etc., etc. by New Hampshireites of all political persuasion besides anarchist.

    Why? Because the New Hampshire presidential primary is not just a beloved state institution and one of the few things the state is known for (beside it's "Live Free or Die" license plate motto) but also because the NH Primary is an important quadrennial cottage industry.

    So much so, that it's "First in the Nation" status is enshrined in state law - a statute that only the most foolhardy of NH secretaries of state would dare to violate.

    New Hampshire is also the only State in the US that does not require either seatbelts (for adults) in cars or car insurance.
    The US often confounds doesn't it. You'd have thought that would be somewhere deep red and duelling banjos.
    New Hampshire is famously "Live Free or Die"
    Or with no seat belts more Live Free AND Die.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,140
    Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    I just discovered that Ozempic is FOUR times as expensive in the USA as it is in the UK/EU

    Americans really do get ripped off when it comes to medications and medical treatments. Ridic

    Why is this? Why do medications cost so much in America?

    Everything about their health system seems designed to fuck the average punter. Why don't they rebel?
    By law, the US government (which is by a significant margin the biggest purchaser of prescription drugs in the world), is not allowed to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies.

    This means that the retail and government price is inflated, while the prices paid by private insurers are negotiated (and won't be that different to the UK).

    Big Pharma kicks butt. Then charges though the ass to alleviate the pain in the ass.
    How come there isns't a US politician saying Fuck this, I will make the pharma companies grovel and act more like European pharma? We've had enough of being ripped off

    Surely that would be wildly popular?

    i am not claiming we are much better. The British worship of the mediocre NHS is absurd, surreal and embarrassing, but at least we aren't charged squillions for it
    Biden did that for modern insulins, capping costs at $35 per month. Previously American diabetics could be paying $1 000 a month, or skipping doses, often with tragic consequences:

    https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/03/02/fact-sheet-president-bidens-cap-on-the-cost-of-insulin-could-benefit-millions-of-americans-in-all-50-states/#:~:text=As part of President Biden's,dollars for a month's supply.

    Of course he gets no credit or thanks for that.

    Biden does seem quite unlucky in his unpopularity, on most domestic metrics he has done pretty well
    Biden is doing the best job of any recent President.

    It's one reason the Republicans won't debate any policy.

    Similar to Trump doing nothing except obfuscation and abuse; he has no case and he knows it.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,373
    MattW said:

    Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    I just discovered that Ozempic is FOUR times as expensive in the USA as it is in the UK/EU

    Americans really do get ripped off when it comes to medications and medical treatments. Ridic

    Why is this? Why do medications cost so much in America?

    Everything about their health system seems designed to fuck the average punter. Why don't they rebel?
    By law, the US government (which is by a significant margin the biggest purchaser of prescription drugs in the world), is not allowed to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies.

    This means that the retail and government price is inflated, while the prices paid by private insurers are negotiated (and won't be that different to the UK).

    Big Pharma kicks butt. Then charges though the ass to alleviate the pain in the ass.
    How come there isns't a US politician saying Fuck this, I will make the pharma companies grovel and act more like European pharma? We've had enough of being ripped off

    Surely that would be wildly popular?

    i am not claiming we are much better. The British worship of the mediocre NHS is absurd, surreal and embarrassing, but at least we aren't charged squillions for it
    Biden did that for modern insulins, capping costs at $35 per month. Previously American diabetics could be paying $1 000 a month, or skipping doses, often with tragic consequences:

    https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/03/02/fact-sheet-president-bidens-cap-on-the-cost-of-insulin-could-benefit-millions-of-americans-in-all-50-states/#:~:text=As part of President Biden's,dollars for a month's supply.

    Of course he gets no credit or thanks for that.

    Biden does seem quite unlucky in his unpopularity, on most domestic metrics he has done pretty well
    Biden is doing the best job of any recent President.

    It's one reason the Republicans won't debate any policy.

    Similar to Trump doing nothing except obfuscation and abuse; he has no case and he knows it.
    That's a pretty low bar.

    Clinton, sex pest.
    W, foreign wars.
    Obama, hollow rhetoric
    Trump, well...
  • Leon said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    The peroration of Kenneth Clarke’s Civilisation is quite something


    “All living things are our brothers and sisters”. Amen

    This simple speech is actually pretty good: as an entire philosophy of life

    https://x.com/durhamwasp/status/1679272195627917313?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    An uplifting thought for the day. Thanks.
    I find myself increasingly Green - in the old fashioned sense - as I age. The damage we do to nature, our mother planet, distresses me intensely. Two weeks ago I was on a near-wilderness Cambodian island - probably the most beautiful beach was destroyed by plastic litter

    Ugh

    And the cruelty we inflict on animals: eeesh. They are our brothers and sisters, born at the same moment of Creation. I now eschew red meat unless it can be absolutely and ethically sourced, otherwise I eat sustainable fish, game, veg

    On the other hand I’m all up for a hard right populist government ready to deport everyone to Burundi. So it’s swings and roundabouts
    You have no idea how ethical the grub you're eating is. That dog you were chowing down on a couple of weeks ago, how ethically sourced was that poor fucker?
    I wrote about this earlier today

    The dog restaurant I went to is known for going to rural villages outside the capital and either capturing strays or buying pets, so the dog almost certainly had a better life than most industrially farmed animals in the UK

    Cambodia doesn't have the dog farm industry of Korea, it is a much more niche taste (and dying out)
    Peak PB. Arguing how to eat dogs ethically.

    Mind, they are at the higher end of the trophic chain, so ecologicall unsounds for that alone (and, also, concentrating pollutants in themselves, like tuna and whale and so on).
    Come on! You know that eating a feral dog that has spent its life subsisting on the very best that a Cambodian town dump has to offer is both ethical and nutrious.
    The best bacon I have ever eaten came from the Zabaleen butchers of Moqqatam, Cairo

    The Zabaleen are Coptic Christians, forced to spend their lives clearing the garbage of the city, which they then sort and sell or recycle; their pigs wander around eating the most disgusting stuff, amidst the piles of rotting dreck

    That is what pigs are meant to do, of course, scavenge for anything. The bacon therefore is - or was (I believe the tradition may have died out) the very best in the world. Chefs from top Egyptian hotels would travel for hours to get it

    Perhaps dog meat is similar
    I should really feeds you all dog!
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,631
    MattW said:

    Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    I just discovered that Ozempic is FOUR times as expensive in the USA as it is in the UK/EU

    Americans really do get ripped off when it comes to medications and medical treatments. Ridic

    Why is this? Why do medications cost so much in America?

    Everything about their health system seems designed to fuck the average punter. Why don't they rebel?
    By law, the US government (which is by a significant margin the biggest purchaser of prescription drugs in the world), is not allowed to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies.

    This means that the retail and government price is inflated, while the prices paid by private insurers are negotiated (and won't be that different to the UK).

    Big Pharma kicks butt. Then charges though the ass to alleviate the pain in the ass.
    How come there isns't a US politician saying Fuck this, I will make the pharma companies grovel and act more like European pharma? We've had enough of being ripped off

    Surely that would be wildly popular?

    i am not claiming we are much better. The British worship of the mediocre NHS is absurd, surreal and embarrassing, but at least we aren't charged squillions for it
    Biden did that for modern insulins, capping costs at $35 per month. Previously American diabetics could be paying $1 000 a month, or skipping doses, often with tragic consequences:

    https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/03/02/fact-sheet-president-bidens-cap-on-the-cost-of-insulin-could-benefit-millions-of-americans-in-all-50-states/#:~:text=As part of President Biden's,dollars for a month's supply.

    Of course he gets no credit or thanks for that.

    Biden does seem quite unlucky in his unpopularity, on most domestic metrics he has done pretty well
    Biden is doing the best job of any recent President.

    It's one reason the Republicans won't debate any policy.

    Similar to Trump doing nothing except obfuscation and abuse; he has no case and he knows it.
    Yes, and I think that Trump's achillies heel.

    Sooner or later American voters are going to want to know how the candidates will make their lives better, or at least stop them from getting worse. That means discussing policy rather than pursuing a weird personal vendetta.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,131
    edited December 2023
    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    I just discovered that Ozempic is FOUR times as expensive in the USA as it is in the UK/EU

    Americans really do get ripped off when it comes to medications and medical treatments. Ridic

    Why is this? Why do medications cost so much in America?

    Everything about their health system seems designed to fuck the average punter. Why don't they rebel?
    By law, the US government (which is by a significant margin the biggest purchaser of prescription drugs in the world), is not allowed to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies.

    This means that the retail and government price is inflated, while the prices paid by private insurers are negotiated (and won't be that different to the UK).

    Big Pharma kicks butt. Then charges though the ass to alleviate the pain in the ass.
    How come there isns't a US politician saying Fuck this, I will make the pharma companies grovel and act more like European pharma? We've had enough of being ripped off

    Surely that would be wildly popular?

    i am not claiming we are much better. The British worship of the mediocre NHS is absurd, surreal and embarrassing, but at least we aren't charged squillions for it
    Biden did that for modern insulins, capping costs at $35 per month. Previously American diabetics could be paying $1 000 a month, or skipping doses, often with tragic consequences:

    https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/03/02/fact-sheet-president-bidens-cap-on-the-cost-of-insulin-could-benefit-millions-of-americans-in-all-50-states/#:~:text=As part of President Biden's,dollars for a month's supply.

    Of course he gets no credit or thanks for that.
    It seems that way atm and it is frustrating. But he will win imo if it ends up as a 2020 rerun (and he copes healthwise with the campaign).
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,067
    Pro_Rata said:

    Meanwhile, in "it might be a good thing, but do you really think you're going to make this happen" news,

    EXC: Rishi Sunak's government considers crackdown on young teens' social media use 🧵

    - Possible legal ban on use of social media by under-16s
    - Consultation to begin as soon as January
    - Currently industry standard is for 13+ on Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook
    via twseal and me


    https://twitter.com/kitty_donaldson/status/1735325201372520899

    We're governed by an overbearing 'Tiger Dad'. No TikTok but extra maths. Fuck me, this will do wonders for the future Conservative vote.
    To be fair, I'm sure Rishi flosses.
    Not according to DuraAce - and his wife is a dentist.

  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,140
    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    I just discovered that Ozempic is FOUR times as expensive in the USA as it is in the UK/EU

    Americans really do get ripped off when it comes to medications and medical treatments. Ridic

    Why is this? Why do medications cost so much in America?

    Everything about their health system seems designed to fuck the average punter. Why don't they rebel?
    By law, the US government (which is by a significant margin the biggest purchaser of prescription drugs in the world), is not allowed to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies.

    This means that the retail and government price is inflated, while the prices paid by private insurers are negotiated (and won't be that different to the UK).

    So if you get Ozempic on your health insurance it will cost the same as in the UK?

    But if your insurance won't cover it (which seems to be an issue for many?) then you have to pay the insane price

    Presumably there are Americans coming over to Europe to buy it here, or Japan, or whatever. Given that a year's supply of Ozempic in the UK is about £2500 and in America it is nearer £20,000 the trip would justify itself, pricewise

    Tho my guess is that other companies are about to flood the market with similar drugs, the demand is so huge
    What are the tax complications with importing cheap drugs into the USA, and does the TSA intervene?
  • CatManCatMan Posts: 3,058

    Hurrah.

    The European Council has decided to open accession negotiations with Ukraine & Moldova.

    #EUCO granted candidate status to Georgia. And the EU will open negotiations with Bosnia and Herzegovina once the necessary degree of compliance with the membership criteria is reached and has invited the commission to report by March with a view to taking such a decision.

    A clear signal of hope for their people and for our continent.


    https://twitter.com/CharlesMichel/status/1735350188883968000

    The collapse of the EU gathers pace I see
  • Jim_MillerJim_Miller Posts: 2,998
    Off topic, but very good news:
    "In a major advance, the Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved two gene therapies that target sickle cell disease, one of which is the first commercially available treatment in the United States based on gene-editing technology. The historic move offers hope for a long-overlooked genetic illness that can cause excruciating pain and cut decades off people’s lives. It also cracks the door open for a new era in medicine."
    source$: "https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2023/12/08/fda-approves-sickle-cell-gene-therapies-crispr/

    That's especially good news for West Africa, where sickle cell disease is most common.

    (It is odd to see foreigners complaining about drug costs in the US -- when they benefit so much from drugs that might never be produced, were it not for the prices some Americans pay for drugs.

    I am no defender of our complex drug regulations -- but it is annoying to see them criticized by the free riders in other nations. At least, I think, they should send us a few nice thank-you letters from time to time.)
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,818
    Nigelb said:

    Pro_Rata said:

    Meanwhile, in "it might be a good thing, but do you really think you're going to make this happen" news,

    EXC: Rishi Sunak's government considers crackdown on young teens' social media use 🧵

    - Possible legal ban on use of social media by under-16s
    - Consultation to begin as soon as January
    - Currently industry standard is for 13+ on Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook
    via twseal and me


    https://twitter.com/kitty_donaldson/status/1735325201372520899

    We're governed by an overbearing 'Tiger Dad'. No TikTok but extra maths. Fuck me, this will do wonders for the future Conservative vote.
    To be fair, I'm sure Rishi flosses.
    Not according to DuraAce - and his wife is a dentist.

    How many under-16's vote Tory? And zero under-18s too, except in Scotland and Wales. It's Granny, who doesn't like little Johnny using his mobey at the dinner table, who has the vote.

    They should be bloody grateful they don't have compulsory school uniforms with shorts with elastic belts with snake clasps.
  • Off topic, but very good news:
    "In a major advance, the Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved two gene therapies that target sickle cell disease, one of which is the first commercially available treatment in the United States based on gene-editing technology. The historic move offers hope for a long-overlooked genetic illness that can cause excruciating pain and cut decades off people’s lives. It also cracks the door open for a new era in medicine."
    source$: "https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2023/12/08/fda-approves-sickle-cell-gene-therapies-crispr/

    That's especially good news for West Africa, where sickle cell disease is most common.

    (It is odd to see foreigners complaining about drug costs in the US -- when they benefit so much from drugs that might never be produced, were it not for the prices some Americans pay for drugs.

    I am no defender of our complex drug regulations -- but it is annoying to see them criticized by the free riders in other nations. At least, I think, they should send us a few nice thank-you letters from time to time.)

    Some of us often make this point here. Most medical advances come from the US of A.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,067

    Nigelb said:

    Guardian pick of Xmas movies.
    https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/dec/14/the-25-best-christmas-films-ranked

    Couple of them I might actually hunt out.
    Die Hard is only at 15.

    Their number 1 is right and the list rightly has no place for the excretion that is Love Actually, but It's a Wonderful Life should be in the top 3. Also, where is Bad Santa?
    No such lists are definitive - but it's at least interesting.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,139

    Leon said:

    I just discovered that Ozempic is FOUR times as expensive in the USA as it is in the UK/EU

    Americans really do get ripped off when it comes to medications and medical treatments. Ridic

    I'm not sure how competitive the prices are but in Mexico you can get seemingly any drug you like from a pharmacy without prescription.
    Not quite any drug... there are some restrictions around (for example) stronger opiates.

    However, if you want viagra, ritalin, xanax, ambien, valium or whatever, then you can just walk in and buy it. Prices in the main tourist spots are not great, mind.
  • Jim_MillerJim_Miller Posts: 2,998
    ydoethur - I gather you don't feel George W. Bush deserves any credit for the PEPFAR program, which has, so far, saved about 25 million lives.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,263

    Off topic, but very good news:
    "In a major advance, the Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved two gene therapies that target sickle cell disease, one of which is the first commercially available treatment in the United States based on gene-editing technology. The historic move offers hope for a long-overlooked genetic illness that can cause excruciating pain and cut decades off people’s lives. It also cracks the door open for a new era in medicine."
    source$: "https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2023/12/08/fda-approves-sickle-cell-gene-therapies-crispr/

    That's especially good news for West Africa, where sickle cell disease is most common.

    (It is odd to see foreigners complaining about drug costs in the US -- when they benefit so much from drugs that might never be produced, were it not for the prices some Americans pay for drugs.

    I am no defender of our complex drug regulations -- but it is annoying to see them criticized by the free riders in other nations. At least, I think, they should send us a few nice thank-you letters from time to time.)

    Is that entirely true tho?

    When I think of the obvious wonder drugs of recent years, not so many have come from the USA

    Viagra was invented in the UK (albeit by a US company)
    Ozempic is Danish
    The Pfizer Covid vaccine was actually a German invention (BioNTech)


  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,263
    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    I just discovered that Ozempic is FOUR times as expensive in the USA as it is in the UK/EU

    Americans really do get ripped off when it comes to medications and medical treatments. Ridic

    I'm not sure how competitive the prices are but in Mexico you can get seemingly any drug you like from a pharmacy without prescription.
    Not quite any drug... there are some restrictions around (for example) stronger opiates.

    However, if you want viagra, ritalin, xanax, ambien, valium or whatever, then you can just walk in and buy it. Prices in the main tourist spots are not great, mind.
    Cambodia is great for most of these. Thailand is weirdly relaxed about Tramadol. Vietnam is pretty laid back, as well

    And they are CHEAP
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,139
    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    I just discovered that Ozempic is FOUR times as expensive in the USA as it is in the UK/EU

    Americans really do get ripped off when it comes to medications and medical treatments. Ridic

    Why is this? Why do medications cost so much in America?

    Everything about their health system seems designed to fuck the average punter. Why don't they rebel?
    By law, the US government (which is by a significant margin the biggest purchaser of prescription drugs in the world), is not allowed to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies.

    This means that the retail and government price is inflated, while the prices paid by private insurers are negotiated (and won't be that different to the UK).

    So if you get Ozempic on your health insurance it will cost the same as in the UK?

    But if your insurance won't cover it (which seems to be an issue for many?) then you have to pay the insane price

    Presumably there are Americans coming over to Europe to buy it here, or Japan, or whatever. Given that a year's supply of Ozempic in the UK is about £2500 and in America it is nearer £20,000 the trip would justify itself, pricewise

    Tho my guess is that other companies are about to flood the market with similar drugs, the demand is so huge
    That's pretty much right. Albeit, the negotiations between the insurers and the drug companies are shrouded in secrecy, so you never know exactly how much is being paid.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,131
    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    IanB2 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    I just discovered that Ozempic is FOUR times as expensive in the USA as it is in the UK/EU

    Americans really do get ripped off when it comes to medications and medical treatments. Ridic

    Why is this? Why do medications cost so much in America?

    Everything about their health system seems designed to fuck the average punter. Why don't they rebel?
    How can they rebel when big pharma funds both sides of their politics?
    I guess that must be the reason, or something close to it

    But it seems incredible: the dysfunction. And it's not like the American health system is the best in the world in outcomes, which might justify these insane prices. Life expectancy is one of the lowest in the OECD, they have terrible infant mortality, massive obesity issues, and so on and so forth

    American Healthcare is an object lesson in capitalist failure
    On the contrary, American health care is a capitalist triumph.

    You have the Socialist mindset of someone brought up in a welfare state. The point of American Healthcare is not to prolong life or alleviate suffering but rather to make maximum profits for its shareholders and employees. At that it has no equals.
    But think of the innovation unleashed by those 'animal spirits'. If eternal life is ever cracked it will be there. First for billionaires then 'trickling down' to the middle classes.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,139
    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    IanB2 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    I just discovered that Ozempic is FOUR times as expensive in the USA as it is in the UK/EU

    Americans really do get ripped off when it comes to medications and medical treatments. Ridic

    Why is this? Why do medications cost so much in America?

    Everything about their health system seems designed to fuck the average punter. Why don't they rebel?
    How can they rebel when big pharma funds both sides of their politics?
    I guess that must be the reason, or something close to it

    But it seems incredible: the dysfunction. And it's not like the American health system is the best in the world in outcomes, which might justify these insane prices. Life expectancy is one of the lowest in the OECD, they have terrible infant mortality, massive obesity issues, and so on and so forth

    American Healthcare is an object lesson in capitalist failure
    On the contrary, American health care is a capitalist triumph.

    You have the Socialist mindset of someone brought up in a welfare state. The point of American Healthcare is not to prolong life or alleviate suffering but rather to make maximum profits for its shareholders and employees. At that it has no equals.

    I'm not sure that's quite true: the insurance companies have been pretty terrible investments :smile:
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,067
    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    I just discovered that Ozempic is FOUR times as expensive in the USA as it is in the UK/EU

    Americans really do get ripped off when it comes to medications and medical treatments. Ridic

    Why is this? Why do medications cost so much in America?

    Everything about their health system seems designed to fuck the average punter. Why don't they rebel?
    By law, the US government (which is by a significant margin the biggest purchaser of prescription drugs in the world), is not allowed to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies.

    This means that the retail and government price is inflated, while the prices paid by private insurers are negotiated (and won't be that different to the UK).

    Big Pharma kicks butt. Then charges though the ass to alleviate the pain in the ass.
    How come there isns't a US politician saying Fuck this, I will make the pharma companies grovel and act more like European pharma? We've had enough of being ripped off

    Surely that would be wildly popular?

    i am not claiming we are much better. The British worship of the mediocre NHS is absurd, surreal and embarrassing, but at least we aren't charged squillions for it
    Biden did that for modern insulins, capping costs at $35 per month. Previously American diabetics could be paying $1 000 a month, or skipping doses, often with tragic consequences:

    https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/03/02/fact-sheet-president-bidens-cap-on-the-cost-of-insulin-could-benefit-millions-of-americans-in-all-50-states/#:~:text=As part of President Biden's,dollars for a month's supply.

    Of course he gets no credit or thanks for that.

    Ditto economic growth.
    And core inflation at 3.1% - rather than our 5.7%.

    Though if US interest rates drop significantly next year, that might change.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,263
    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    I just discovered that Ozempic is FOUR times as expensive in the USA as it is in the UK/EU

    Americans really do get ripped off when it comes to medications and medical treatments. Ridic

    Why is this? Why do medications cost so much in America?

    Everything about their health system seems designed to fuck the average punter. Why don't they rebel?
    By law, the US government (which is by a significant margin the biggest purchaser of prescription drugs in the world), is not allowed to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies.

    This means that the retail and government price is inflated, while the prices paid by private insurers are negotiated (and won't be that different to the UK).

    So if you get Ozempic on your health insurance it will cost the same as in the UK?

    But if your insurance won't cover it (which seems to be an issue for many?) then you have to pay the insane price

    Presumably there are Americans coming over to Europe to buy it here, or Japan, or whatever. Given that a year's supply of Ozempic in the UK is about £2500 and in America it is nearer £20,000 the trip would justify itself, pricewise

    Tho my guess is that other companies are about to flood the market with similar drugs, the demand is so huge
    That's pretty much right. Albeit, the negotiations between the insurers and the drug companies are shrouded in secrecy, so you never know exactly how much is being paid.
    The whole US health/pharma system seems entirely fucked up. Even tho I am grateful for the excellent innovations of US pharma companies

    The story of opioids alone, and how pharma marketed them to Americans, is profoundly disturbing
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 8,241
    MattW said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    I just discovered that Ozempic is FOUR times as expensive in the USA as it is in the UK/EU

    Americans really do get ripped off when it comes to medications and medical treatments. Ridic

    Why is this? Why do medications cost so much in America?

    Everything about their health system seems designed to fuck the average punter. Why don't they rebel?
    By law, the US government (which is by a significant margin the biggest purchaser of prescription drugs in the world), is not allowed to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies.

    This means that the retail and government price is inflated, while the prices paid by private insurers are negotiated (and won't be that different to the UK).

    So if you get Ozempic on your health insurance it will cost the same as in the UK?

    But if your insurance won't cover it (which seems to be an issue for many?) then you have to pay the insane price

    Presumably there are Americans coming over to Europe to buy it here, or Japan, or whatever. Given that a year's supply of Ozempic in the UK is about £2500 and in America it is nearer £20,000 the trip would justify itself, pricewise

    Tho my guess is that other companies are about to flood the market with similar drugs, the demand is so huge
    What are the tax complications with importing cheap drugs into the USA, and does the TSA intervene?

    FDA will shut you down

  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,373

    ydoethur - I gather you don't feel George W. Bush deserves any credit for the PEPFAR program, which has, so far, saved about 25 million lives.

    He deserves some. In the same way Obama deserves some credit for Obamacare, and Trump for not blowing the world up over Korea, or Clinton for assisting peace in Northern Ireland.

    Even the worst US Presidents usually have some redeeming features.

    OK, Harrison and Buchanan are exceptional, but they were also a long time ago.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,131

    Carnyx said:

    Nigelb said:

    Pro_Rata said:

    Meanwhile, in "it might be a good thing, but do you really think you're going to make this happen" news,

    EXC: Rishi Sunak's government considers crackdown on young teens' social media use 🧵

    - Possible legal ban on use of social media by under-16s
    - Consultation to begin as soon as January
    - Currently industry standard is for 13+ on Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook
    via twseal and me


    https://twitter.com/kitty_donaldson/status/1735325201372520899

    We're governed by an overbearing 'Tiger Dad'. No TikTok but extra maths. Fuck me, this will do wonders for the future Conservative vote.
    To be fair, I'm sure Rishi flosses.
    Not according to DuraAce - and his wife is a dentist.

    How many under-16's vote Tory? And zero under-18s too, except in Scotland and Wales. It's Granny, who doesn't like little Johnny using his mobey at the dinner table, who has the vote.

    They should be bloody grateful they don't have compulsory school uniforms with shorts with elastic belts with snake clasps.
    Some of us lefties also ban their kids from using phones at the dinner table. A deeply anti-social habit (the phone use, not the banning). Disrupts the discussion of Hegelian dialectics.
    Yep. And I wouldn't let my son watch Top Gear when he was an impressionable teenager. Hearts and minds. This is why we'll prevail in the end.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,067
    MattW said:

    Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    I just discovered that Ozempic is FOUR times as expensive in the USA as it is in the UK/EU

    Americans really do get ripped off when it comes to medications and medical treatments. Ridic

    Why is this? Why do medications cost so much in America?

    Everything about their health system seems designed to fuck the average punter. Why don't they rebel?
    By law, the US government (which is by a significant margin the biggest purchaser of prescription drugs in the world), is not allowed to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies.

    This means that the retail and government price is inflated, while the prices paid by private insurers are negotiated (and won't be that different to the UK).

    Big Pharma kicks butt. Then charges though the ass to alleviate the pain in the ass.
    How come there isns't a US politician saying Fuck this, I will make the pharma companies grovel and act more like European pharma? We've had enough of being ripped off

    Surely that would be wildly popular?

    i am not claiming we are much better. The British worship of the mediocre NHS is absurd, surreal and embarrassing, but at least we aren't charged squillions for it
    Biden did that for modern insulins, capping costs at $35 per month. Previously American diabetics could be paying $1 000 a month, or skipping doses, often with tragic consequences:

    https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/03/02/fact-sheet-president-bidens-cap-on-the-cost-of-insulin-could-benefit-millions-of-americans-in-all-50-states/#:~:text=As part of President Biden's,dollars for a month's supply.

    Of course he gets no credit or thanks for that.

    Biden does seem quite unlucky in his unpopularity, on most domestic metrics he has done pretty well
    Biden is doing the best job of any recent President.

    It's one reason the Republicans won't debate any policy.

    Similar to Trump doing nothing except obfuscation and abuse; he has no case and he knows it.
    Leon said:

    Off topic, but very good news:
    "In a major advance, the Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved two gene therapies that target sickle cell disease, one of which is the first commercially available treatment in the United States based on gene-editing technology. The historic move offers hope for a long-overlooked genetic illness that can cause excruciating pain and cut decades off people’s lives. It also cracks the door open for a new era in medicine."
    source$: "https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2023/12/08/fda-approves-sickle-cell-gene-therapies-crispr/

    That's especially good news for West Africa, where sickle cell disease is most common.

    (It is odd to see foreigners complaining about drug costs in the US -- when they benefit so much from drugs that might never be produced, were it not for the prices some Americans pay for drugs.

    I am no defender of our complex drug regulations -- but it is annoying to see them criticized by the free riders in other nations. At least, I think, they should send us a few nice thank-you letters from time to time.)

    Is that entirely true tho?

    When I think of the obvious wonder drugs of recent years, not so many have come from the USA

    Viagra was invented in the UK (albeit by a US company)
    Ozempic is Danish
    The Pfizer Covid vaccine was actually a German invention (BioNTech)

    Crispr gene editing was also largely a European invention,
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9377665/
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 22,071

    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    Guardian pick of Xmas movies.
    https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/dec/14/the-25-best-christmas-films-ranked

    Couple of them I might actually hunt out.
    Die Hard is only at 15.

    The Silent Partner I have to see, if only for this:
    ...The only ever dramatic theatrical feature film to be scored by Jazz pianist and composer Oscar Peterson who, coincidentally, was a schoolmate of lead actor Christopher Plummer...
    Ah, Christopher Plummer. The best Duke of Wellington on film.

    https://youtu.be/raJe_bVEeVQ?si=zaVqWikE_aWpTzKG
    Canadian. He was William Shatner's acting tutor in acting school (so it's his fault). So Star Trek 6 is a reunion of sorts.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,140

    MattW said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    I just discovered that Ozempic is FOUR times as expensive in the USA as it is in the UK/EU

    Americans really do get ripped off when it comes to medications and medical treatments. Ridic

    Why is this? Why do medications cost so much in America?

    Everything about their health system seems designed to fuck the average punter. Why don't they rebel?
    By law, the US government (which is by a significant margin the biggest purchaser of prescription drugs in the world), is not allowed to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies.

    This means that the retail and government price is inflated, while the prices paid by private insurers are negotiated (and won't be that different to the UK).

    So if you get Ozempic on your health insurance it will cost the same as in the UK?

    But if your insurance won't cover it (which seems to be an issue for many?) then you have to pay the insane price

    Presumably there are Americans coming over to Europe to buy it here, or Japan, or whatever. Given that a year's supply of Ozempic in the UK is about £2500 and in America it is nearer £20,000 the trip would justify itself, pricewise

    Tho my guess is that other companies are about to flood the market with similar drugs, the demand is so huge
    What are the tax complications with importing cheap drugs into the USA, and does the TSA intervene?

    FDA will shut you down

    I mean individuals flying to Europe and back with the drugs.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,818
    Nigelb said:

    MattW said:

    Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    I just discovered that Ozempic is FOUR times as expensive in the USA as it is in the UK/EU

    Americans really do get ripped off when it comes to medications and medical treatments. Ridic

    Why is this? Why do medications cost so much in America?

    Everything about their health system seems designed to fuck the average punter. Why don't they rebel?
    By law, the US government (which is by a significant margin the biggest purchaser of prescription drugs in the world), is not allowed to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies.

    This means that the retail and government price is inflated, while the prices paid by private insurers are negotiated (and won't be that different to the UK).

    Big Pharma kicks butt. Then charges though the ass to alleviate the pain in the ass.
    How come there isns't a US politician saying Fuck this, I will make the pharma companies grovel and act more like European pharma? We've had enough of being ripped off

    Surely that would be wildly popular?

    i am not claiming we are much better. The British worship of the mediocre NHS is absurd, surreal and embarrassing, but at least we aren't charged squillions for it
    Biden did that for modern insulins, capping costs at $35 per month. Previously American diabetics could be paying $1 000 a month, or skipping doses, often with tragic consequences:

    https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/03/02/fact-sheet-president-bidens-cap-on-the-cost-of-insulin-could-benefit-millions-of-americans-in-all-50-states/#:~:text=As part of President Biden's,dollars for a month's supply.

    Of course he gets no credit or thanks for that.

    Biden does seem quite unlucky in his unpopularity, on most domestic metrics he has done pretty well
    Biden is doing the best job of any recent President.

    It's one reason the Republicans won't debate any policy.

    Similar to Trump doing nothing except obfuscation and abuse; he has no case and he knows it.
    Leon said:

    Off topic, but very good news:
    "In a major advance, the Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved two gene therapies that target sickle cell disease, one of which is the first commercially available treatment in the United States based on gene-editing technology. The historic move offers hope for a long-overlooked genetic illness that can cause excruciating pain and cut decades off people’s lives. It also cracks the door open for a new era in medicine."
    source$: "https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2023/12/08/fda-approves-sickle-cell-gene-therapies-crispr/

    That's especially good news for West Africa, where sickle cell disease is most common.

    (It is odd to see foreigners complaining about drug costs in the US -- when they benefit so much from drugs that might never be produced, were it not for the prices some Americans pay for drugs.

    I am no defender of our complex drug regulations -- but it is annoying to see them criticized by the free riders in other nations. At least, I think, they should send us a few nice thank-you letters from time to time.)

    Is that entirely true tho?

    When I think of the obvious wonder drugs of recent years, not so many have come from the USA

    Viagra was invented in the UK (albeit by a US company)
    Ozempic is Danish
    The Pfizer Covid vaccine was actually a German invention (BioNTech)

    Crispr gene editing was also largely a European invention,
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9377665/
    As was *not* keeping the human genome a commercial secret.
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 8,241
    MattW said:

    MattW said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    I just discovered that Ozempic is FOUR times as expensive in the USA as it is in the UK/EU

    Americans really do get ripped off when it comes to medications and medical treatments. Ridic

    Why is this? Why do medications cost so much in America?

    Everything about their health system seems designed to fuck the average punter. Why don't they rebel?
    By law, the US government (which is by a significant margin the biggest purchaser of prescription drugs in the world), is not allowed to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies.

    This means that the retail and government price is inflated, while the prices paid by private insurers are negotiated (and won't be that different to the UK).

    So if you get Ozempic on your health insurance it will cost the same as in the UK?

    But if your insurance won't cover it (which seems to be an issue for many?) then you have to pay the insane price

    Presumably there are Americans coming over to Europe to buy it here, or Japan, or whatever. Given that a year's supply of Ozempic in the UK is about £2500 and in America it is nearer £20,000 the trip would justify itself, pricewise

    Tho my guess is that other companies are about to flood the market with similar drugs, the demand is so huge
    What are the tax complications with importing cheap drugs into the USA, and does the TSA intervene?

    FDA will shut you down

    I mean individuals flying to Europe and back with the drugs.
    TSA doesn’t like it. In theory you are only allowed 1 bottle of medicine in checked baggage. But enforcement is random.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,263
    Slightly ominous noises emanating from OpenAI (and elsewhere) about the imminent arrival of AGI, or maybe even ASI
  • CookieCookie Posts: 13,789
    kinabalu said:

    Carnyx said:

    Nigelb said:

    Pro_Rata said:

    Meanwhile, in "it might be a good thing, but do you really think you're going to make this happen" news,

    EXC: Rishi Sunak's government considers crackdown on young teens' social media use 🧵

    - Possible legal ban on use of social media by under-16s
    - Consultation to begin as soon as January
    - Currently industry standard is for 13+ on Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook
    via twseal and me


    https://twitter.com/kitty_donaldson/status/1735325201372520899

    We're governed by an overbearing 'Tiger Dad'. No TikTok but extra maths. Fuck me, this will do wonders for the future Conservative vote.
    To be fair, I'm sure Rishi flosses.
    Not according to DuraAce - and his wife is a dentist.

    How many under-16's vote Tory? And zero under-18s too, except in Scotland and Wales. It's Granny, who doesn't like little Johnny using his mobey at the dinner table, who has the vote.

    They should be bloody grateful they don't have compulsory school uniforms with shorts with elastic belts with snake clasps.
    Some of us lefties also ban their kids from using phones at the dinner table. A deeply anti-social habit (the phone use, not the banning). Disrupts the discussion of Hegelian dialectics.
    Yep. And I wouldn't let my son watch Top Gear when he was an impressionable teenager. Hearts and minds. This is why we'll prevail in the end.
    There's something in this.
    Lefties do, in my experience, seem much keener to pass their political prejudices on to their offspring.

  • CookieCookie Posts: 13,789
    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    I just discovered that Ozempic is FOUR times as expensive in the USA as it is in the UK/EU

    Americans really do get ripped off when it comes to medications and medical treatments. Ridic

    Why is this? Why do medications cost so much in America?

    Everything about their health system seems designed to fuck the average punter. Why don't they rebel?
    By law, the US government (which is by a significant margin the biggest purchaser of prescription drugs in the world), is not allowed to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies.

    This means that the retail and government price is inflated, while the prices paid by private insurers are negotiated (and won't be that different to the UK).

    Big Pharma kicks butt. Then charges though the ass to alleviate the pain in the ass.
    How come there isns't a US politician saying Fuck this, I will make the pharma companies grovel and act more like European pharma? We've had enough of being ripped off

    Surely that would be wildly popular?

    i am not claiming we are much better. The British worship of the mediocre NHS is absurd, surreal and embarrassing, but at least we aren't charged squillions for it
    Yes, the NHS is mediocre in many ways but really, as far as I can tell, very good value for money compared to the rest of the world.

    On the subject of mediocre institutions, I went to the Post Office today. Why are Post Offices always so shabby and gloomy? I'm sure this wasn't always the case. The Post Office of my home suburb in the 80s was bright an airy and clean. I mean, it wasn't Harrods, but it didn't seem to be actively setting out to try to depress you.
  • Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    I just discovered that Ozempic is FOUR times as expensive in the USA as it is in the UK/EU

    Americans really do get ripped off when it comes to medications and medical treatments. Ridic

    I'm not sure how competitive the prices are but in Mexico you can get seemingly any drug you like from a pharmacy without prescription.
    Not quite any drug... there are some restrictions around (for example) stronger opiates.

    However, if you want viagra, ritalin, xanax, ambien, valium or whatever, then you can just walk in and buy it. Prices in the main tourist spots are not great, mind.
    Cambodia is great for most of these. Thailand is weirdly relaxed about Tramadol. Vietnam is pretty laid back, as well

    And they are CHEAP
    Norway goes the other way. When I worked in Oslo, and commuted home for weekends, work colleagues would ask me to smuggle in Benylin or suchlike.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,373
    viewcode said:

    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    Guardian pick of Xmas movies.
    https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/dec/14/the-25-best-christmas-films-ranked

    Couple of them I might actually hunt out.
    Die Hard is only at 15.

    The Silent Partner I have to see, if only for this:
    ...The only ever dramatic theatrical feature film to be scored by Jazz pianist and composer Oscar Peterson who, coincidentally, was a schoolmate of lead actor Christopher Plummer...
    Ah, Christopher Plummer. The best Duke of Wellington on film.

    https://youtu.be/raJe_bVEeVQ?si=zaVqWikE_aWpTzKG
    Canadian. He was William Shatner's acting tutor in acting school (so it's his fault). So Star Trek 6 is a reunion of sorts.
    That means he is partly to thank for this truly epic moment of TV history:

    https://youtu.be/bAqGRcg7XkE?si=ebxdxtoKaD_omzkb
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,140
    edited December 2023
    Foxy said:

    MattW said:

    Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    I just discovered that Ozempic is FOUR times as expensive in the USA as it is in the UK/EU

    Americans really do get ripped off when it comes to medications and medical treatments. Ridic

    Why is this? Why do medications cost so much in America?

    Everything about their health system seems designed to fuck the average punter. Why don't they rebel?
    By law, the US government (which is by a significant margin the biggest purchaser of prescription drugs in the world), is not allowed to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies.

    This means that the retail and government price is inflated, while the prices paid by private insurers are negotiated (and won't be that different to the UK).

    Big Pharma kicks butt. Then charges though the ass to alleviate the pain in the ass.
    How come there isns't a US politician saying Fuck this, I will make the pharma companies grovel and act more like European pharma? We've had enough of being ripped off

    Surely that would be wildly popular?

    i am not claiming we are much better. The British worship of the mediocre NHS is absurd, surreal and embarrassing, but at least we aren't charged squillions for it
    Biden did that for modern insulins, capping costs at $35 per month. Previously American diabetics could be paying $1 000 a month, or skipping doses, often with tragic consequences:

    https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/03/02/fact-sheet-president-bidens-cap-on-the-cost-of-insulin-could-benefit-millions-of-americans-in-all-50-states/#:~:text=As part of President Biden's,dollars for a month's supply.

    Of course he gets no credit or thanks for that.

    Biden does seem quite unlucky in his unpopularity, on most domestic metrics he has done pretty well
    Biden is doing the best job of any recent President.

    It's one reason the Republicans won't debate any policy.

    Similar to Trump doing nothing except obfuscation and abuse; he has no case and he knows it.
    Yes, and I think that Trump's achillies heel.

    Sooner or later American voters are going to want to know how the candidates will make their lives better, or at least stop them from getting worse. That means discussing policy rather than pursuing a weird personal vendetta.
    Trump's latest motion in the Washington DC Election Manipulation case attempting to delay it further is quite funny.

    Traditionally you open with the strongest argument: 'blatant attempt by Biden to manipulate the next Election.'


    And close with the second strongest: 'the Prosecutor Jack Smith will be the Grinch who Stole Christmas, because his proposed schedule means that the defence attorneys will have to work too hard.'


    I think most Usonians probably want to know whether a Presidential candidate is a criminal who has betrayed the USA and attempted to destroy democracy *before* they vote on whether he should get back in.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,067
    .
    MattW said:

    Foxy said:

    MattW said:

    Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    I just discovered that Ozempic is FOUR times as expensive in the USA as it is in the UK/EU

    Americans really do get ripped off when it comes to medications and medical treatments. Ridic

    Why is this? Why do medications cost so much in America?

    Everything about their health system seems designed to fuck the average punter. Why don't they rebel?
    By law, the US government (which is by a significant margin the biggest purchaser of prescription drugs in the world), is not allowed to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies.

    This means that the retail and government price is inflated, while the prices paid by private insurers are negotiated (and won't be that different to the UK).

    Big Pharma kicks butt. Then charges though the ass to alleviate the pain in the ass.
    How come there isns't a US politician saying Fuck this, I will make the pharma companies grovel and act more like European pharma? We've had enough of being ripped off

    Surely that would be wildly popular?

    i am not claiming we are much better. The British worship of the mediocre NHS is absurd, surreal and embarrassing, but at least we aren't charged squillions for it
    Biden did that for modern insulins, capping costs at $35 per month. Previously American diabetics could be paying $1 000 a month, or skipping doses, often with tragic consequences:

    https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/03/02/fact-sheet-president-bidens-cap-on-the-cost-of-insulin-could-benefit-millions-of-americans-in-all-50-states/#:~:text=As part of President Biden's,dollars for a month's supply.

    Of course he gets no credit or thanks for that.

    Biden does seem quite unlucky in his unpopularity, on most domestic metrics he has done pretty well
    Biden is doing the best job of any recent President.

    It's one reason the Republicans won't debate any policy.

    Similar to Trump doing nothing except obfuscation and abuse; he has no case and he knows it.
    Yes, and I think that Trump's achillies heel.

    Sooner or later American voters are going to want to know how the candidates will make their lives better, or at least stop them from getting worse. That means discussing policy rather than pursuing a weird personal vendetta.
    Trump's latest motion in the Washington DC Election Manipulation case is quite funny.

    Traditionally you open with the strongest argument: 'blatant attempt by Biden to manipulate the next Election.'

    And close with the second strongest: 'the Prosecutor Jack Smith will be the Grinch who Stole Christmas, because his proposed schedule means that the defence attorneys will have to work too hard.'
    As has been pointed out elsewhere, he had his attorneys and other minions working overtime through Christmas 2020 on the coup plan.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,140
    edited December 2023

    MattW said:

    MattW said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    I just discovered that Ozempic is FOUR times as expensive in the USA as it is in the UK/EU

    Americans really do get ripped off when it comes to medications and medical treatments. Ridic

    Why is this? Why do medications cost so much in America?

    Everything about their health system seems designed to fuck the average punter. Why don't they rebel?
    By law, the US government (which is by a significant margin the biggest purchaser of prescription drugs in the world), is not allowed to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies.

    This means that the retail and government price is inflated, while the prices paid by private insurers are negotiated (and won't be that different to the UK).

    So if you get Ozempic on your health insurance it will cost the same as in the UK?

    But if your insurance won't cover it (which seems to be an issue for many?) then you have to pay the insane price

    Presumably there are Americans coming over to Europe to buy it here, or Japan, or whatever. Given that a year's supply of Ozempic in the UK is about £2500 and in America it is nearer £20,000 the trip would justify itself, pricewise

    Tho my guess is that other companies are about to flood the market with similar drugs, the demand is so huge
    What are the tax complications with importing cheap drugs into the USA, and does the TSA intervene?

    FDA will shut you down

    I mean individuals flying to Europe and back with the drugs.
    TSA doesn’t like it. In theory you are only allowed 1 bottle of medicine in checked baggage. But enforcement is random.
    I think enforcement being random is the besetting sin of the TSA.

    BTW @Leon the usual cost difference for insulin between the USA and Europe is more like 5-10x (pre-Biden's intiative, but that may not impact the whole market).
  • Cookie said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    I just discovered that Ozempic is FOUR times as expensive in the USA as it is in the UK/EU

    Americans really do get ripped off when it comes to medications and medical treatments. Ridic

    Why is this? Why do medications cost so much in America?

    Everything about their health system seems designed to fuck the average punter. Why don't they rebel?
    By law, the US government (which is by a significant margin the biggest purchaser of prescription drugs in the world), is not allowed to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies.

    This means that the retail and government price is inflated, while the prices paid by private insurers are negotiated (and won't be that different to the UK).

    Big Pharma kicks butt. Then charges though the ass to alleviate the pain in the ass.
    How come there isns't a US politician saying Fuck this, I will make the pharma companies grovel and act more like European pharma? We've had enough of being ripped off

    Surely that would be wildly popular?

    i am not claiming we are much better. The British worship of the mediocre NHS is absurd, surreal and embarrassing, but at least we aren't charged squillions for it
    Yes, the NHS is mediocre in many ways but really, as far as I can tell, very good value for money compared to the rest of the world.

    On the subject of mediocre institutions, I went to the Post Office today. Why are Post Offices always so shabby and gloomy? I'm sure this wasn't always the case. The Post Office of my home suburb in the 80s was bright an airy and clean. I mean, it wasn't Harrods, but it didn't seem to be actively setting out to try to depress you.
    We do them on the cheap.

    To reanimate the bee from my bonnet:

    Every parish should have a properly dignified Post Office. It can have suitable sidelines, but its primary function is to be a Post Office.

    It shall have its own building (no, not the back of a WH Smiths), with a range of flags and window boxes outside.

    More generally, making the civic realm kempt and cheerful seems like an excellent way of generating happiness per pound. At the moment, it's all dismal
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,373
    Nigelb said:

    .

    MattW said:

    Foxy said:

    MattW said:

    Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    I just discovered that Ozempic is FOUR times as expensive in the USA as it is in the UK/EU

    Americans really do get ripped off when it comes to medications and medical treatments. Ridic

    Why is this? Why do medications cost so much in America?

    Everything about their health system seems designed to fuck the average punter. Why don't they rebel?
    By law, the US government (which is by a significant margin the biggest purchaser of prescription drugs in the world), is not allowed to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies.

    This means that the retail and government price is inflated, while the prices paid by private insurers are negotiated (and won't be that different to the UK).

    Big Pharma kicks butt. Then charges though the ass to alleviate the pain in the ass.
    How come there isns't a US politician saying Fuck this, I will make the pharma companies grovel and act more like European pharma? We've had enough of being ripped off

    Surely that would be wildly popular?

    i am not claiming we are much better. The British worship of the mediocre NHS is absurd, surreal and embarrassing, but at least we aren't charged squillions for it
    Biden did that for modern insulins, capping costs at $35 per month. Previously American diabetics could be paying $1 000 a month, or skipping doses, often with tragic consequences:

    https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/03/02/fact-sheet-president-bidens-cap-on-the-cost-of-insulin-could-benefit-millions-of-americans-in-all-50-states/#:~:text=As part of President Biden's,dollars for a month's supply.

    Of course he gets no credit or thanks for that.

    Biden does seem quite unlucky in his unpopularity, on most domestic metrics he has done pretty well
    Biden is doing the best job of any recent President.

    It's one reason the Republicans won't debate any policy.

    Similar to Trump doing nothing except obfuscation and abuse; he has no case and he knows it.
    Yes, and I think that Trump's achillies heel.

    Sooner or later American voters are going to want to know how the candidates will make their lives better, or at least stop them from getting worse. That means discussing policy rather than pursuing a weird personal vendetta.
    Trump's latest motion in the Washington DC Election Manipulation case is quite funny.

    Traditionally you open with the strongest argument: 'blatant attempt by Biden to manipulate the next Election.'

    And close with the second strongest: 'the Prosecutor Jack Smith will be the Grinch who Stole Christmas, because his proposed schedule means that the defence attorneys will have to work too hard.'
    As has been pointed out elsewhere, he had his attorneys and other minions working overtime through Christmas 2020 on the coup plan.
    Donald Trump's a hypocrite?

    I'm shocked.

    You'll be telling me next that Spielman's an idiot.
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    edited December 2023
    “Creasy spent her early years in Manchester before the family moved to Colchester, where she attended a girls' grammar school (having failed the 11-plus and only been given a second chance because the family moved south, she is opposed to selection)”

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/aug/01/stella-creasy-mp-politics-twitter-tories
  • eekeek Posts: 28,368

    Cookie said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    I just discovered that Ozempic is FOUR times as expensive in the USA as it is in the UK/EU

    Americans really do get ripped off when it comes to medications and medical treatments. Ridic

    Why is this? Why do medications cost so much in America?

    Everything about their health system seems designed to fuck the average punter. Why don't they rebel?
    By law, the US government (which is by a significant margin the biggest purchaser of prescription drugs in the world), is not allowed to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies.

    This means that the retail and government price is inflated, while the prices paid by private insurers are negotiated (and won't be that different to the UK).

    Big Pharma kicks butt. Then charges though the ass to alleviate the pain in the ass.
    How come there isns't a US politician saying Fuck this, I will make the pharma companies grovel and act more like European pharma? We've had enough of being ripped off

    Surely that would be wildly popular?

    i am not claiming we are much better. The British worship of the mediocre NHS is absurd, surreal and embarrassing, but at least we aren't charged squillions for it
    Yes, the NHS is mediocre in many ways but really, as far as I can tell, very good value for money compared to the rest of the world.

    On the subject of mediocre institutions, I went to the Post Office today. Why are Post Offices always so shabby and gloomy? I'm sure this wasn't always the case. The Post Office of my home suburb in the 80s was bright an airy and clean. I mean, it wasn't Harrods, but it didn't seem to be actively setting out to try to depress you.
    We do them on the cheap.

    To reanimate the bee from my bonnet:

    Every parish should have a properly dignified Post Office. It can have suitable sidelines, but its primary function is to be a Post Office.

    It shall have its own building (no, not the back of a WH Smiths), with a range of flags and window boxes outside.

    More generally, making the civic realm kempt and cheerful seems like an excellent way of generating happiness per pound. At the moment, it's all dismal
    And given the closer of every bank in many towns - it should be possible for a post office to make enough money just provided basic banking services to those who need it...
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,373
    eek said:

    Cookie said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    I just discovered that Ozempic is FOUR times as expensive in the USA as it is in the UK/EU

    Americans really do get ripped off when it comes to medications and medical treatments. Ridic

    Why is this? Why do medications cost so much in America?

    Everything about their health system seems designed to fuck the average punter. Why don't they rebel?
    By law, the US government (which is by a significant margin the biggest purchaser of prescription drugs in the world), is not allowed to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies.

    This means that the retail and government price is inflated, while the prices paid by private insurers are negotiated (and won't be that different to the UK).

    Big Pharma kicks butt. Then charges though the ass to alleviate the pain in the ass.
    How come there isns't a US politician saying Fuck this, I will make the pharma companies grovel and act more like European pharma? We've had enough of being ripped off

    Surely that would be wildly popular?

    i am not claiming we are much better. The British worship of the mediocre NHS is absurd, surreal and embarrassing, but at least we aren't charged squillions for it
    Yes, the NHS is mediocre in many ways but really, as far as I can tell, very good value for money compared to the rest of the world.

    On the subject of mediocre institutions, I went to the Post Office today. Why are Post Offices always so shabby and gloomy? I'm sure this wasn't always the case. The Post Office of my home suburb in the 80s was bright an airy and clean. I mean, it wasn't Harrods, but it didn't seem to be actively setting out to try to depress you.
    We do them on the cheap.

    To reanimate the bee from my bonnet:

    Every parish should have a properly dignified Post Office. It can have suitable sidelines, but its primary function is to be a Post Office.

    It shall have its own building (no, not the back of a WH Smiths), with a range of flags and window boxes outside.

    More generally, making the civic realm kempt and cheerful seems like an excellent way of generating happiness per pound. At the moment, it's all dismal
    And given the closer of every bank in many towns - it should be possible for a post office to make enough money just provided basic banking services to those who need it...
    As long as they're not using the Horizon accounting software...
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,131
    edited December 2023
    Cookie said:

    kinabalu said:

    Carnyx said:

    Nigelb said:

    Pro_Rata said:

    Meanwhile, in "it might be a good thing, but do you really think you're going to make this happen" news,

    EXC: Rishi Sunak's government considers crackdown on young teens' social media use 🧵

    - Possible legal ban on use of social media by under-16s
    - Consultation to begin as soon as January
    - Currently industry standard is for 13+ on Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook
    via twseal and me


    https://twitter.com/kitty_donaldson/status/1735325201372520899

    We're governed by an overbearing 'Tiger Dad'. No TikTok but extra maths. Fuck me, this will do wonders for the future Conservative vote.
    To be fair, I'm sure Rishi flosses.
    Not according to DuraAce - and his wife is a dentist.

    How many under-16's vote Tory? And zero under-18s too, except in Scotland and Wales. It's Granny, who doesn't like little Johnny using his mobey at the dinner table, who has the vote.

    They should be bloody grateful they don't have compulsory school uniforms with shorts with elastic belts with snake clasps.
    Some of us lefties also ban their kids from using phones at the dinner table. A deeply anti-social habit (the phone use, not the banning). Disrupts the discussion of Hegelian dialectics.
    Yep. And I wouldn't let my son watch Top Gear when he was an impressionable teenager. Hearts and minds. This is why we'll prevail in the end.
    There's something in this.
    Lefties do, in my experience, seem much keener to pass their political prejudices on to their offspring.
    Well the truth is I didn't. I left him to his own devices on politics. But boy was I relieved (!) when we had our first serious 'man to man' and it became clear he'd landed on the right side of history. I'd have coped if he hadn't but I was glad I didn't have to.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,139
    edited December 2023

    MattW said:

    MattW said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    I just discovered that Ozempic is FOUR times as expensive in the USA as it is in the UK/EU

    Americans really do get ripped off when it comes to medications and medical treatments. Ridic

    Why is this? Why do medications cost so much in America?

    Everything about their health system seems designed to fuck the average punter. Why don't they rebel?
    By law, the US government (which is by a significant margin the biggest purchaser of prescription drugs in the world), is not allowed to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies.

    This means that the retail and government price is inflated, while the prices paid by private insurers are negotiated (and won't be that different to the UK).

    So if you get Ozempic on your health insurance it will cost the same as in the UK?

    But if your insurance won't cover it (which seems to be an issue for many?) then you have to pay the insane price

    Presumably there are Americans coming over to Europe to buy it here, or Japan, or whatever. Given that a year's supply of Ozempic in the UK is about £2500 and in America it is nearer £20,000 the trip would justify itself, pricewise

    Tho my guess is that other companies are about to flood the market with similar drugs, the demand is so huge
    What are the tax complications with importing cheap drugs into the USA, and does the TSA intervene?

    FDA will shut you down

    I mean individuals flying to Europe and back with the drugs.
    TSA doesn’t like it. In theory you are only allowed 1 bottle of medicine in checked baggage. But enforcement is random.
    I was told that you were allowed to bring back one month's supply of a prescription medication (that is not Schedule I-III), and to do so without a prescription.

    So, bringing back a pack of Xanax is fine, but Vicodin is not.

    I was also under the impression that one could bring in more than one type of medication. So Xanax plus Viagra would be OK. (Not that I'm importing prescription medication. Or, for that matter, in an need of Viagra.)
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,139
    edited December 2023
    kinabalu said:

    Carnyx said:

    Nigelb said:

    Pro_Rata said:

    Meanwhile, in "it might be a good thing, but do you really think you're going to make this happen" news,

    EXC: Rishi Sunak's government considers crackdown on young teens' social media use 🧵

    - Possible legal ban on use of social media by under-16s
    - Consultation to begin as soon as January
    - Currently industry standard is for 13+ on Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook
    via twseal and me


    https://twitter.com/kitty_donaldson/status/1735325201372520899

    We're governed by an overbearing 'Tiger Dad'. No TikTok but extra maths. Fuck me, this will do wonders for the future Conservative vote.
    To be fair, I'm sure Rishi flosses.
    Not according to DuraAce - and his wife is a dentist.

    How many under-16's vote Tory? And zero under-18s too, except in Scotland and Wales. It's Granny, who doesn't like little Johnny using his mobey at the dinner table, who has the vote.

    They should be bloody grateful they don't have compulsory school uniforms with shorts with elastic belts with snake clasps.
    Some of us lefties also ban their kids from using phones at the dinner table. A deeply anti-social habit (the phone use, not the banning). Disrupts the discussion of Hegelian dialectics.
    Yep. And I wouldn't let my son watch Top Gear when he was an impressionable teenager. Hearts and minds. This is why we'll prevail in the end.
    I know. I kept my kids away from Top Gear because of the presenters' regrettably pro-EU views.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 9,870
    kinabalu said:

    Cookie said:

    kinabalu said:

    Carnyx said:

    Nigelb said:

    Pro_Rata said:

    Meanwhile, in "it might be a good thing, but do you really think you're going to make this happen" news,

    EXC: Rishi Sunak's government considers crackdown on young teens' social media use 🧵

    - Possible legal ban on use of social media by under-16s
    - Consultation to begin as soon as January
    - Currently industry standard is for 13+ on Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook
    via twseal and me


    https://twitter.com/kitty_donaldson/status/1735325201372520899

    We're governed by an overbearing 'Tiger Dad'. No TikTok but extra maths. Fuck me, this will do wonders for the future Conservative vote.
    To be fair, I'm sure Rishi flosses.
    Not according to DuraAce - and his wife is a dentist.

    How many under-16's vote Tory? And zero under-18s too, except in Scotland and Wales. It's Granny, who doesn't like little Johnny using his mobey at the dinner table, who has the vote.

    They should be bloody grateful they don't have compulsory school uniforms with shorts with elastic belts with snake clasps.
    Some of us lefties also ban their kids from using phones at the dinner table. A deeply anti-social habit (the phone use, not the banning). Disrupts the discussion of Hegelian dialectics.
    Yep. And I wouldn't let my son watch Top Gear when he was an impressionable teenager. Hearts and minds. This is why we'll prevail in the end.
    There's something in this.
    Lefties do, in my experience, seem much keener to pass their political prejudices on to their offspring.
    Well the truth is I didn't. I left him to his own devices on politics. But boy was I relieved (!) when we had our first serious 'man to man' and it became clear he'd landed on the right side of history. I'd have coped if he hadn't but I was glad I didn't have to.
    You do know the left wing will always be on the wrong side of history and will die a short and ignoble death as resources get scarce because your ideology will make people realise you are talking total crap?
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,572
    Leon said:

    Slightly ominous noises emanating from OpenAI (and elsewhere) about the imminent arrival of AGI, or maybe even ASI

    Yawn. Another of the rumours you keep twatting on about, which always seem to be damp squibs?

    Or, in fact, delusions? ;)
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,140
    edited December 2023
    kinabalu said:

    Carnyx said:

    Nigelb said:

    Pro_Rata said:

    Meanwhile, in "it might be a good thing, but do you really think you're going to make this happen" news,

    EXC: Rishi Sunak's government considers crackdown on young teens' social media use 🧵

    - Possible legal ban on use of social media by under-16s
    - Consultation to begin as soon as January
    - Currently industry standard is for 13+ on Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook
    via twseal and me


    https://twitter.com/kitty_donaldson/status/1735325201372520899

    We're governed by an overbearing 'Tiger Dad'. No TikTok but extra maths. Fuck me, this will do wonders for the future Conservative vote.
    To be fair, I'm sure Rishi flosses.
    Not according to DuraAce - and his wife is a dentist.

    How many under-16's vote Tory? And zero under-18s too, except in Scotland and Wales. It's Granny, who doesn't like little Johnny using his mobey at the dinner table, who has the vote.

    They should be bloody grateful they don't have compulsory school uniforms with shorts with elastic belts with snake clasps.
    Some of us lefties also ban their kids from using phones at the dinner table. A deeply anti-social habit (the phone use, not the banning). Disrupts the discussion of Hegelian dialectics.
    Yep. And I wouldn't let my son watch Top Gear when he was an impressionable teenager. Hearts and minds. This is why we'll prevail in the end.
    I think that's actually quite important.

    A lot of young people are playing games of Russian Roulette in their cars or bikes, and losing. There seems to be a serious problem in Wales, but also elsewhere. Drink and Drugs are factors in a lot of it, as is dangerous driving by inexperienced drivers.

    In the St Mellons crash (the one near Cardiff with 3 dead, 2 hospitalised, that lost the VW Estate in the bushes, followed by the 'why did the police not find them' media stuff), all 5 in the car including the driver were tanked up on drink and drugs. Ages 32, 24, 21, 21, 20.

    Then the two teenagers on the Ely Estate killed themselves racing around on an illegal Surron motorbike given to them by parents. Ages 15, 16.

    2 weeks ago we have the four Shrewsbury teenagers killed in "a car that left the road" and ended up in a river near Llanfrothen. Aged 16-18. Causes not yet determined.

    Now we have 3 more killed and 2 more in hospital in a collision on a straight, wide road in Coedely. Ages 19, 19, 18, 18, 18. Causes not yet determined, but local reports are that the road is used like a racetrack.

    I can cope with Russian Roulette playing Darwin Award winners copping themselves, and some problems due to inexperience which we need always to be working on. But I cannot accept the public being put at risk recklessly.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,572

    Off topic, but very good news:
    "In a major advance, the Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved two gene therapies that target sickle cell disease, one of which is the first commercially available treatment in the United States based on gene-editing technology. The historic move offers hope for a long-overlooked genetic illness that can cause excruciating pain and cut decades off people’s lives. It also cracks the door open for a new era in medicine."
    source$: "https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2023/12/08/fda-approves-sickle-cell-gene-therapies-crispr/

    That's especially good news for West Africa, where sickle cell disease is most common.

    (It is odd to see foreigners complaining about drug costs in the US -- when they benefit so much from drugs that might never be produced, were it not for the prices some Americans pay for drugs.

    I am no defender of our complex drug regulations -- but it is annoying to see them criticized by the free riders in other nations. At least, I think, they should send us a few nice thank-you letters from time to time.)

    Some of us often make this point here. Most medical advances come from the US of A.
    From the USA, or from US companies? There can be a significant difference.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,131
    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Cookie said:

    kinabalu said:

    Carnyx said:

    Nigelb said:

    Pro_Rata said:

    Meanwhile, in "it might be a good thing, but do you really think you're going to make this happen" news,

    EXC: Rishi Sunak's government considers crackdown on young teens' social media use 🧵

    - Possible legal ban on use of social media by under-16s
    - Consultation to begin as soon as January
    - Currently industry standard is for 13+ on Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook
    via twseal and me


    https://twitter.com/kitty_donaldson/status/1735325201372520899

    We're governed by an overbearing 'Tiger Dad'. No TikTok but extra maths. Fuck me, this will do wonders for the future Conservative vote.
    To be fair, I'm sure Rishi flosses.
    Not according to DuraAce - and his wife is a dentist.

    How many under-16's vote Tory? And zero under-18s too, except in Scotland and Wales. It's Granny, who doesn't like little Johnny using his mobey at the dinner table, who has the vote.

    They should be bloody grateful they don't have compulsory school uniforms with shorts with elastic belts with snake clasps.
    Some of us lefties also ban their kids from using phones at the dinner table. A deeply anti-social habit (the phone use, not the banning). Disrupts the discussion of Hegelian dialectics.
    Yep. And I wouldn't let my son watch Top Gear when he was an impressionable teenager. Hearts and minds. This is why we'll prevail in the end.
    There's something in this.
    Lefties do, in my experience, seem much keener to pass their political prejudices on to their offspring.
    Well the truth is I didn't. I left him to his own devices on politics. But boy was I relieved (!) when we had our first serious 'man to man' and it became clear he'd landed on the right side of history. I'd have coped if he hadn't but I was glad I didn't have to.
    You do know the left wing will always be on the wrong side of history and will die a short and ignoble death as resources get scarce because your ideology will make people realise you are talking total crap?
    As resources get scarce and growth tails off it becomes ever more pressing to achieve a more equitable distribution of income and wealth.
  • RogerRoger Posts: 19,907

    Gary Lineker has never given the Tories a six-figure donation, set up an £800,000 loan for Boris Johnson or stood as a Conservative council candidate. But the people who did are lecturing him on the need for impartiality at the BBC.
    https://twitter.com/David__Osland/status/1734992127497490873

    A very pertinent observation. As the Scottish bard might have said “o wad some pow'r the giftie gie us to see oursels as ithers see us!”
  • CookieCookie Posts: 13,789
    kinabalu said:

    Cookie said:

    kinabalu said:

    Carnyx said:

    Nigelb said:

    Pro_Rata said:

    Meanwhile, in "it might be a good thing, but do you really think you're going to make this happen" news,

    EXC: Rishi Sunak's government considers crackdown on young teens' social media use 🧵

    - Possible legal ban on use of social media by under-16s
    - Consultation to begin as soon as January
    - Currently industry standard is for 13+ on Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook
    via twseal and me


    https://twitter.com/kitty_donaldson/status/1735325201372520899

    We're governed by an overbearing 'Tiger Dad'. No TikTok but extra maths. Fuck me, this will do wonders for the future Conservative vote.
    To be fair, I'm sure Rishi flosses.
    Not according to DuraAce - and his wife is a dentist.

    How many under-16's vote Tory? And zero under-18s too, except in Scotland and Wales. It's Granny, who doesn't like little Johnny using his mobey at the dinner table, who has the vote.

    They should be bloody grateful they don't have compulsory school uniforms with shorts with elastic belts with snake clasps.
    Some of us lefties also ban their kids from using phones at the dinner table. A deeply anti-social habit (the phone use, not the banning). Disrupts the discussion of Hegelian dialectics.
    Yep. And I wouldn't let my son watch Top Gear when he was an impressionable teenager. Hearts and minds. This is why we'll prevail in the end.
    There's something in this.
    Lefties do, in my experience, seem much keener to pass their political prejudices on to their offspring.
    Well the truth is I didn't. I left him to his own devices on politics. But boy was I relieved (!) when we had our first serious 'man to man' and it became clear he'd landed on the right side of history. I'd have coped if he hadn't but I was glad I didn't have to.
    Too early to tell with mine. But I reckon the oldest will turn out a JohnO style con, the middle a stodge style lib, and the youngest a BJO style awkward-squad lefty.

    Is there anything in the theory that kids get successively more left wing as they go through the birth order?
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,131
    rcs1000 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Carnyx said:

    Nigelb said:

    Pro_Rata said:

    Meanwhile, in "it might be a good thing, but do you really think you're going to make this happen" news,

    EXC: Rishi Sunak's government considers crackdown on young teens' social media use 🧵

    - Possible legal ban on use of social media by under-16s
    - Consultation to begin as soon as January
    - Currently industry standard is for 13+ on Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook
    via twseal and me


    https://twitter.com/kitty_donaldson/status/1735325201372520899

    We're governed by an overbearing 'Tiger Dad'. No TikTok but extra maths. Fuck me, this will do wonders for the future Conservative vote.
    To be fair, I'm sure Rishi flosses.
    Not according to DuraAce - and his wife is a dentist.

    How many under-16's vote Tory? And zero under-18s too, except in Scotland and Wales. It's Granny, who doesn't like little Johnny using his mobey at the dinner table, who has the vote.

    They should be bloody grateful they don't have compulsory school uniforms with shorts with elastic belts with snake clasps.
    Some of us lefties also ban their kids from using phones at the dinner table. A deeply anti-social habit (the phone use, not the banning). Disrupts the discussion of Hegelian dialectics.
    Yep. And I wouldn't let my son watch Top Gear when he was an impressionable teenager. Hearts and minds. This is why we'll prevail in the end.
    I know. I kept my kids away from Top Gear because of the presenters' regrettably pro-EU views.
    Clarkson for Remain, that was a surprise. Totally off brand.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 12,496
    edited December 2023

    Cookie said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    I just discovered that Ozempic is FOUR times as expensive in the USA as it is in the UK/EU

    Americans really do get ripped off when it comes to medications and medical treatments. Ridic

    Why is this? Why do medications cost so much in America?

    Everything about their health system seems designed to fuck the average punter. Why don't they rebel?
    By law, the US government (which is by a significant margin the biggest purchaser of prescription drugs in the world), is not allowed to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies.

    This means that the retail and government price is inflated, while the prices paid by private insurers are negotiated (and won't be that different to the UK).

    Big Pharma kicks butt. Then charges though the ass to alleviate the pain in the ass.
    How come there isns't a US politician saying Fuck this, I will make the pharma companies grovel and act more like European pharma? We've had enough of being ripped off

    Surely that would be wildly popular?

    i am not claiming we are much better. The British worship of the mediocre NHS is absurd, surreal and embarrassing, but at least we aren't charged squillions for it
    Yes, the NHS is mediocre in many ways but really, as far as I can tell, very good value for money compared to the rest of the world.

    On the subject of mediocre institutions, I went to the Post Office today. Why are Post Offices always so shabby and gloomy? I'm sure this wasn't always the case. The Post Office of my home suburb in the 80s was bright an airy and clean. I mean, it wasn't Harrods, but it didn't seem to be actively setting out to try to depress you.
    We do them on the cheap.

    To reanimate the bee from my bonnet:

    Every parish should have a properly dignified Post Office. It can have suitable sidelines, but its primary function is to be a Post Office.

    It shall have its own building (no, not the back of a WH Smiths), with a range of flags and window boxes outside.

    More generally, making the civic realm kempt and cheerful seems like an excellent way of generating happiness per pound. At the moment, it's all dismal
    In a community where public services have failed to keep abreast of private consumption things are very different. Here, in an atmosphere of private opulence and public squalor, the private goods have full sway.

    Galbraith 'The Affluent Society' chapter 18.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 9,870
    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Cookie said:

    kinabalu said:

    Carnyx said:

    Nigelb said:

    Pro_Rata said:

    Meanwhile, in "it might be a good thing, but do you really think you're going to make this happen" news,

    EXC: Rishi Sunak's government considers crackdown on young teens' social media use 🧵

    - Possible legal ban on use of social media by under-16s
    - Consultation to begin as soon as January
    - Currently industry standard is for 13+ on Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook
    via twseal and me


    https://twitter.com/kitty_donaldson/status/1735325201372520899

    We're governed by an overbearing 'Tiger Dad'. No TikTok but extra maths. Fuck me, this will do wonders for the future Conservative vote.
    To be fair, I'm sure Rishi flosses.
    Not according to DuraAce - and his wife is a dentist.

    How many under-16's vote Tory? And zero under-18s too, except in Scotland and Wales. It's Granny, who doesn't like little Johnny using his mobey at the dinner table, who has the vote.

    They should be bloody grateful they don't have compulsory school uniforms with shorts with elastic belts with snake clasps.
    Some of us lefties also ban their kids from using phones at the dinner table. A deeply anti-social habit (the phone use, not the banning). Disrupts the discussion of Hegelian dialectics.
    Yep. And I wouldn't let my son watch Top Gear when he was an impressionable teenager. Hearts and minds. This is why we'll prevail in the end.
    There's something in this.
    Lefties do, in my experience, seem much keener to pass their political prejudices on to their offspring.
    Well the truth is I didn't. I left him to his own devices on politics. But boy was I relieved (!) when we had our first serious 'man to man' and it became clear he'd landed on the right side of history. I'd have coped if he hadn't but I was glad I didn't have to.
    You do know the left wing will always be on the wrong side of history and will die a short and ignoble death as resources get scarce because your ideology will make people realise you are talking total crap?
    As resources get scarce and growth tails off it becomes ever more pressing to achieve a more equitable distribution of income and wealth.
    no it gets more important to keep what is ours than sending it to people. Sorry but thinking when things get scarce we are going to be more charitable is for the dogs. I plan to make sure my family has enough first. You will too when its a choice between your family not having enough and sharing with the neighbours and you all slowly starving
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,140
    edited December 2023
    MattW said:

    kinabalu said:

    Carnyx said:

    Nigelb said:

    Pro_Rata said:

    Meanwhile, in "it might be a good thing, but do you really think you're going to make this happen" news,

    EXC: Rishi Sunak's government considers crackdown on young teens' social media use 🧵

    - Possible legal ban on use of social media by under-16s
    - Consultation to begin as soon as January
    - Currently industry standard is for 13+ on Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook
    via twseal and me


    https://twitter.com/kitty_donaldson/status/1735325201372520899

    We're governed by an overbearing 'Tiger Dad'. No TikTok but extra maths. Fuck me, this will do wonders for the future Conservative vote.
    To be fair, I'm sure Rishi flosses.
    Not according to DuraAce - and his wife is a dentist.

    How many under-16's vote Tory? And zero under-18s too, except in Scotland and Wales. It's Granny, who doesn't like little Johnny using his mobey at the dinner table, who has the vote.

    They should be bloody grateful they don't have compulsory school uniforms with shorts with elastic belts with snake clasps.
    Some of us lefties also ban their kids from using phones at the dinner table. A deeply anti-social habit (the phone use, not the banning). Disrupts the discussion of Hegelian dialectics.
    Yep. And I wouldn't let my son watch Top Gear when he was an impressionable teenager. Hearts and minds. This is why we'll prevail in the end.
    I think that's actually quite important.

    A lot of young people are playing games of Russian Roulette in their cars or bikes, and losing. There seems to be a serious problem in Wales, but also elsewhere. Drink and Drugs are factors in a lot of it, as is dangerous driving by inexperienced drivers.

    In the St Mellons crash (the one near Cardiff with 3 dead, 2 hospitalised, that lost the VW Estate in the bushes, followed by the 'why did the police not find them' media stuff), all 5 in the car including the driver were tanked up on drink and drugs. Ages 32, 24, 21, 21, 20.

    Then the two teenagers on the Ely Estate killed themselves racing around on an illegal Surron motorbike given to them by parents. Ages 15, 16.

    3-4 weeks ago we have the four Shrewsbury teenagers killed in "a car that left the road" and ended up in a river near Llanfrothen. Aged 16-18. Causes not yet determined.

    Now we have 3 more killed and 2 more in hospital in a collision on a straight, wide road in Coedely. Ages 19, 19, 18, 18, 18. Causes not yet determined, but local reports are that the road is used like a racetrack.

    I can cope with Russian Roulette playing Darwin Award winners copping themselves, and some problems due to inexperience which we need always to be working on. But I cannot accept the public being put at risk recklessly.
    And everytime all I hear are fairy stories about "lovely boys" and "popular and loved by the community". If it alcohol or other drugs and driving, or dangerous speed whilst driving, that is pure delusion.
  • ohnotnowohnotnow Posts: 3,779

    Leon said:

    Slightly ominous noises emanating from OpenAI (and elsewhere) about the imminent arrival of AGI, or maybe even ASI

    Yawn. Another of the rumours you keep twatting on about, which always seem to be damp squibs?

    Or, in fact, delusions? ;)
    I was chatting to an ML/AI researcher at work today who was in a tizzy about something claimed to be 'a big thing'. Seems there's some sort of ML/AI conference on just now which is abuzz with rumours.

    Might well just be something that makes fundamental researchers/maths-types excited rather than something the rest of us care about. But there's certainly something in the air.
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 4,579
    kinabalu said:

    rcs1000 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Carnyx said:

    Nigelb said:

    Pro_Rata said:

    Meanwhile, in "it might be a good thing, but do you really think you're going to make this happen" news,

    EXC: Rishi Sunak's government considers crackdown on young teens' social media use 🧵

    - Possible legal ban on use of social media by under-16s
    - Consultation to begin as soon as January
    - Currently industry standard is for 13+ on Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook
    via twseal and me


    https://twitter.com/kitty_donaldson/status/1735325201372520899

    We're governed by an overbearing 'Tiger Dad'. No TikTok but extra maths. Fuck me, this will do wonders for the future Conservative vote.
    To be fair, I'm sure Rishi flosses.
    Not according to DuraAce - and his wife is a dentist.

    How many under-16's vote Tory? And zero under-18s too, except in Scotland and Wales. It's Granny, who doesn't like little Johnny using his mobey at the dinner table, who has the vote.

    They should be bloody grateful they don't have compulsory school uniforms with shorts with elastic belts with snake clasps.
    Some of us lefties also ban their kids from using phones at the dinner table. A deeply anti-social habit (the phone use, not the banning). Disrupts the discussion of Hegelian dialectics.
    Yep. And I wouldn't let my son watch Top Gear when he was an impressionable teenager. Hearts and minds. This is why we'll prevail in the end.
    I know. I kept my kids away from Top Gear because of the presenters' regrettably pro-EU views.
    Clarkson for Remain, that was a surprise. Totally off brand.
    Especially since he lives in the Isle of Man, which has never been in the EU. Good on him for taking the risk of being on the side many of his fans weren't.
  • ohnotnowohnotnow Posts: 3,779
    Cookie said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    I just discovered that Ozempic is FOUR times as expensive in the USA as it is in the UK/EU

    Americans really do get ripped off when it comes to medications and medical treatments. Ridic

    Why is this? Why do medications cost so much in America?

    Everything about their health system seems designed to fuck the average punter. Why don't they rebel?
    By law, the US government (which is by a significant margin the biggest purchaser of prescription drugs in the world), is not allowed to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies.

    This means that the retail and government price is inflated, while the prices paid by private insurers are negotiated (and won't be that different to the UK).

    Big Pharma kicks butt. Then charges though the ass to alleviate the pain in the ass.
    How come there isns't a US politician saying Fuck this, I will make the pharma companies grovel and act more like European pharma? We've had enough of being ripped off

    Surely that would be wildly popular?

    i am not claiming we are much better. The British worship of the mediocre NHS is absurd, surreal and embarrassing, but at least we aren't charged squillions for it
    Yes, the NHS is mediocre in many ways but really, as far as I can tell, very good value for money compared to the rest of the world.

    On the subject of mediocre institutions, I went to the Post Office today. Why are Post Offices always so shabby and gloomy? I'm sure this wasn't always the case. The Post Office of my home suburb in the 80s was bright an airy and clean. I mean, it wasn't Harrods, but it didn't seem to be actively setting out to try to depress you.
    This could also be a description of the British sandwich.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,139
    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    rcs1000 said:

    OT - Note that in New Hampshire, Gov. Chris Sununu has endorsed Nikki Haley for POTUS in the upcoming (January 8, 2024) NH Republican presidential Primary.

    Personally think this endorsement has some heft with Granite State voters, more so than endorsement by Iowa Gov of Ron DeSantis in the upcoming (January 15, 2024) Iowa Republican precinct caucuses.

    Perhaps worth noting that, back in 1988, it was endorsement and active support of then-Gov. John Sununu, the current gov's father, of George Bush (nobody called him "George Herbert Walker Bush" back then) that saved Bush the Elder's campaign after he lost the Iowa precinct caucus vote to Bob Dole.

    And the rest, as they say, is history.

    Also note that New Hampshire Democrats led by former Gov. and current US Senator Jeanne Shaheen have just launched their campaign of support for Joe Biden as a WRITE IN candidate for POTUS in the Democratic presidential primary.

    Because due to DNC rule change, advocated by Biden, New Hampshire was replaced (officially anyway) as initial primary of the 2024 nomination season by South Carolina. A decision greeted with virtually universal condemnation, dismay, etc., etc. by New Hampshireites of all political persuasion besides anarchist.

    Why? Because the New Hampshire presidential primary is not just a beloved state institution and one of the few things the state is known for (beside it's "Live Free or Die" license plate motto) but also because the NH Primary is an important quadrennial cottage industry.

    So much so, that it's "First in the Nation" status is enshrined in state law - a statute that only the most foolhardy of NH secretaries of state would dare to violate.

    New Hampshire is also the only State in the US that does not require either seatbelts (for adults) in cars or car insurance.
    The US often confounds doesn't it. You'd have thought that would be somewhere deep red and duelling banjos.
    New Hampshire is famously "Live Free or Die"
    It's not really "or" though.
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    RobD said:

    Leon said:

    isam said:

    The Motherhood Penalty!

    Someone else looking after her kids all day, and she’s moaning that she can’t get out on the piss after work because of them. Bet they’ll love seeing this when they’re older

    As I walk past everyone going to Christmas parties and drinks on my way to get the kids from nursery, yet again acutely aware the motherhood penalty is just a gift that keeps giving….

    Not just flexible working we need but flexible networking too….


    https://x.com/stellacreasy/status/1735003828775268603?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

    I'm struggling to see the problem with Creasey's comment. It is hard for parents of young children to balance work and family commitments. It gets harder at this time of year when work schedules events outside of normal working hours. Because women still do more than their fair share of childcare duties, and because these after hours events matter, they do face a penalty in the workplace. All seems quite self evident and worth remarking upon.
    She's a rich, privileged upper middle class woman. From her Wiki


    Creasy was born on 5 April 1977 in Sutton Coldfield,[n 1][2] and is the daughter of Corinna Frances Avril (née Martin) and Philip Charles Creasy; her father is a trained opera singer and her mother a headteacher of a special needs school.[2][3] Her elder brother, Matthew Henry Creasy (born 1974), is an academic.[4] Creasy's mother described her own parents as "very aristocratic" and herself as "enormously privileged", which contributed to her decision to join the Labour Party.[2]


    She can easily afford child care. She can shove her whining up her "aristocratic" XXXXXX
    You're quite into identity politics for a woke-finder.
    It's more about class politics.

    She wants society to be organsied so that she can have it all without any trade-offs, but it's clearly impossible for everyone to have it all, so in effect she's demanding privileges for herself.
    She's saying that there are ways of ordering things around work that could make things easier to balance childcare and work responsibilities. You could call that her requesting privileges or you could call it a reasonable suggestion for making things easier for a whole load of people.
    I do find it weird that people on the right complain about immigration and falling birth rates but also seem to be against improving work-life balance, which would help on both fronts. So much easier just to tell women to shut up I suppose.
    Aren’t office parties planned well in advance? I’d have thought it would have been easy to arrange a childminder for one evening with sufficient notice.
    When you’ve got young children, you just can’t go out as much as you could when you had none.

    My partner & I have two preschool age children and as a result have been out together about twice in three years! I used to like going and getting drunk sometimes, but never drink enough to get a hangover now, because I’ve got two young Kids. My girlfriend went out last week for a drink with friends for the first time since before the pandemic! Because we’ve got young kids.

    It’s not societies fault, it’s the result of decisions we made knowing the consequences, and the good outweighs the bad.

    And here is someone on big money, who doesn’t even look after the kids during the day, moaning about missing a Christmas jolly because she’s got to pick her children up??? If I even thought it I’d tell myself off
    Are you dumbfounded by the gall of it? Does it reach that bar?
    No, it’s par for the course from whiny, rich lefties
    To be both wealthy and left wing is to win life's lottery and so any irritations felt by such people should be kept to themselves - would this be a fair summary of your feelings here?
    Oh mate, if I said grass was green you’d probably find a way to disagree in a pseudo intellectual, patronising way - think what you like
    I wasn't disagreeing I was seeking to understand. You talked about "rich whiny lefties". Therefore it's something about that precise combination of attributes that gets your goat no?

    Ok so I postulated a theory that fits. I don't see anything intellectual (pseudo or otherwise) or patronising about it. But you tell me then. Why are you so down on rich lefties who complain about things that irritate them?
    To be fair, lefties who earn good money are entitled to hold on to the views they had before they were rich, and being born into wealth shouldn’t prohibit someone from holding left wing views




  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,263
    kinabalu said:

    rcs1000 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Carnyx said:

    Nigelb said:

    Pro_Rata said:

    Meanwhile, in "it might be a good thing, but do you really think you're going to make this happen" news,

    EXC: Rishi Sunak's government considers crackdown on young teens' social media use 🧵

    - Possible legal ban on use of social media by under-16s
    - Consultation to begin as soon as January
    - Currently industry standard is for 13+ on Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook
    via twseal and me


    https://twitter.com/kitty_donaldson/status/1735325201372520899

    We're governed by an overbearing 'Tiger Dad'. No TikTok but extra maths. Fuck me, this will do wonders for the future Conservative vote.
    To be fair, I'm sure Rishi flosses.
    Not according to DuraAce - and his wife is a dentist.

    How many under-16's vote Tory? And zero under-18s too, except in Scotland and Wales. It's Granny, who doesn't like little Johnny using his mobey at the dinner table, who has the vote.

    They should be bloody grateful they don't have compulsory school uniforms with shorts with elastic belts with snake clasps.
    Some of us lefties also ban their kids from using phones at the dinner table. A deeply anti-social habit (the phone use, not the banning). Disrupts the discussion of Hegelian dialectics.
    Yep. And I wouldn't let my son watch Top Gear when he was an impressionable teenager. Hearts and minds. This is why we'll prevail in the end.
    I know. I kept my kids away from Top Gear because of the presenters' regrettably pro-EU views.
    Clarkson for Remain, that was a surprise. Totally off brand.
    In his pathetic desperation, David Duke, of Brexit, lasso'd Clarkson to the Remain cause a few days before the vote

    LOL
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 9,870
    isam said:

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    RobD said:

    Leon said:

    isam said:

    The Motherhood Penalty!

    Someone else looking after her kids all day, and she’s moaning that she can’t get out on the piss after work because of them. Bet they’ll love seeing this when they’re older

    As I walk past everyone going to Christmas parties and drinks on my way to get the kids from nursery, yet again acutely aware the motherhood penalty is just a gift that keeps giving….

    Not just flexible working we need but flexible networking too….


    https://x.com/stellacreasy/status/1735003828775268603?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

    I'm struggling to see the problem with Creasey's comment. It is hard for parents of young children to balance work and family commitments. It gets harder at this time of year when work schedules events outside of normal working hours. Because women still do more than their fair share of childcare duties, and because these after hours events matter, they do face a penalty in the workplace. All seems quite self evident and worth remarking upon.
    She's a rich, privileged upper middle class woman. From her Wiki


    Creasy was born on 5 April 1977 in Sutton Coldfield,[n 1][2] and is the daughter of Corinna Frances Avril (née Martin) and Philip Charles Creasy; her father is a trained opera singer and her mother a headteacher of a special needs school.[2][3] Her elder brother, Matthew Henry Creasy (born 1974), is an academic.[4] Creasy's mother described her own parents as "very aristocratic" and herself as "enormously privileged", which contributed to her decision to join the Labour Party.[2]


    She can easily afford child care. She can shove her whining up her "aristocratic" XXXXXX
    You're quite into identity politics for a woke-finder.
    It's more about class politics.

    She wants society to be organsied so that she can have it all without any trade-offs, but it's clearly impossible for everyone to have it all, so in effect she's demanding privileges for herself.
    She's saying that there are ways of ordering things around work that could make things easier to balance childcare and work responsibilities. You could call that her requesting privileges or you could call it a reasonable suggestion for making things easier for a whole load of people.
    I do find it weird that people on the right complain about immigration and falling birth rates but also seem to be against improving work-life balance, which would help on both fronts. So much easier just to tell women to shut up I suppose.
    Aren’t office parties planned well in advance? I’d have thought it would have been easy to arrange a childminder for one evening with sufficient notice.
    When you’ve got young children, you just can’t go out as much as you could when you had none.

    My partner & I have two preschool age children and as a result have been out together about twice in three years! I used to like going and getting drunk sometimes, but never drink enough to get a hangover now, because I’ve got two young Kids. My girlfriend went out last week for a drink with friends for the first time since before the pandemic! Because we’ve got young kids.

    It’s not societies fault, it’s the result of decisions we made knowing the consequences, and the good outweighs the bad.

    And here is someone on big money, who doesn’t even look after the kids during the day, moaning about missing a Christmas jolly because she’s got to pick her children up??? If I even thought it I’d tell myself off
    Are you dumbfounded by the gall of it? Does it reach that bar?
    No, it’s par for the course from whiny, rich lefties
    To be both wealthy and left wing is to win life's lottery and so any irritations felt by such people should be kept to themselves - would this be a fair summary of your feelings here?
    Oh mate, if I said grass was green you’d probably find a way to disagree in a pseudo intellectual, patronising way - think what you like
    I wasn't disagreeing I was seeking to understand. You talked about "rich whiny lefties". Therefore it's something about that precise combination of attributes that gets your goat no?

    Ok so I postulated a theory that fits. I don't see anything intellectual (pseudo or otherwise) or patronising about it. But you tell me then. Why are you so down on rich lefties who complain about things that irritate them?
    To be fair, lefties who earn good money are entitled to hold on to the views they had before they were rich, and being born into wealth shouldn’t prohibit someone from holding left wing views




    Nothing should prevent anyone holding any views they like, however they should admit they are deluding themselves when they claim which is what left wing ideology actually is they would starve their kids and themselves to feed their neighbour even if it meant both their family and their neighbours family starved just over a longer period. Survival of the fittest has a scientific basis...it is the the basis of evolution. Left wing ideology is based are fantasies
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,131
    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Cookie said:

    kinabalu said:

    Carnyx said:

    Nigelb said:

    Pro_Rata said:

    Meanwhile, in "it might be a good thing, but do you really think you're going to make this happen" news,

    EXC: Rishi Sunak's government considers crackdown on young teens' social media use 🧵

    - Possible legal ban on use of social media by under-16s
    - Consultation to begin as soon as January
    - Currently industry standard is for 13+ on Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook
    via twseal and me


    https://twitter.com/kitty_donaldson/status/1735325201372520899

    We're governed by an overbearing 'Tiger Dad'. No TikTok but extra maths. Fuck me, this will do wonders for the future Conservative vote.
    To be fair, I'm sure Rishi flosses.
    Not according to DuraAce - and his wife is a dentist.

    How many under-16's vote Tory? And zero under-18s too, except in Scotland and Wales. It's Granny, who doesn't like little Johnny using his mobey at the dinner table, who has the vote.

    They should be bloody grateful they don't have compulsory school uniforms with shorts with elastic belts with snake clasps.
    Some of us lefties also ban their kids from using phones at the dinner table. A deeply anti-social habit (the phone use, not the banning). Disrupts the discussion of Hegelian dialectics.
    Yep. And I wouldn't let my son watch Top Gear when he was an impressionable teenager. Hearts and minds. This is why we'll prevail in the end.
    There's something in this.
    Lefties do, in my experience, seem much keener to pass their political prejudices on to their offspring.
    Well the truth is I didn't. I left him to his own devices on politics. But boy was I relieved (!) when we had our first serious 'man to man' and it became clear he'd landed on the right side of history. I'd have coped if he hadn't but I was glad I didn't have to.
    You do know the left wing will always be on the wrong side of history and will die a short and ignoble death as resources get scarce because your ideology will make people realise you are talking total crap?
    As resources get scarce and growth tails off it becomes ever more pressing to achieve a more equitable distribution of income and wealth.
    no it gets more important to keep what is ours than sending it to people. Sorry but thinking when things get scarce we are going to be more charitable is for the dogs. I plan to make sure my family has enough first. You will too when its a choice between your family not having enough and sharing with the neighbours and you all slowly starving
    Way too doomy. Lord of the Flies was a warning not an instruction manual.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,139
    isam said:

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    RobD said:

    Leon said:

    isam said:

    The Motherhood Penalty!

    Someone else looking after her kids all day, and she’s moaning that she can’t get out on the piss after work because of them. Bet they’ll love seeing this when they’re older

    As I walk past everyone going to Christmas parties and drinks on my way to get the kids from nursery, yet again acutely aware the motherhood penalty is just a gift that keeps giving….

    Not just flexible working we need but flexible networking too….


    https://x.com/stellacreasy/status/1735003828775268603?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

    I'm struggling to see the problem with Creasey's comment. It is hard for parents of young children to balance work and family commitments. It gets harder at this time of year when work schedules events outside of normal working hours. Because women still do more than their fair share of childcare duties, and because these after hours events matter, they do face a penalty in the workplace. All seems quite self evident and worth remarking upon.
    She's a rich, privileged upper middle class woman. From her Wiki


    Creasy was born on 5 April 1977 in Sutton Coldfield,[n 1][2] and is the daughter of Corinna Frances Avril (née Martin) and Philip Charles Creasy; her father is a trained opera singer and her mother a headteacher of a special needs school.[2][3] Her elder brother, Matthew Henry Creasy (born 1974), is an academic.[4] Creasy's mother described her own parents as "very aristocratic" and herself as "enormously privileged", which contributed to her decision to join the Labour Party.[2]


    She can easily afford child care. She can shove her whining up her "aristocratic" XXXXXX
    You're quite into identity politics for a woke-finder.
    It's more about class politics.

    She wants society to be organsied so that she can have it all without any trade-offs, but it's clearly impossible for everyone to have it all, so in effect she's demanding privileges for herself.
    She's saying that there are ways of ordering things around work that could make things easier to balance childcare and work responsibilities. You could call that her requesting privileges or you could call it a reasonable suggestion for making things easier for a whole load of people.
    I do find it weird that people on the right complain about immigration and falling birth rates but also seem to be against improving work-life balance, which would help on both fronts. So much easier just to tell women to shut up I suppose.
    Aren’t office parties planned well in advance? I’d have thought it would have been easy to arrange a childminder for one evening with sufficient notice.
    When you’ve got young children, you just can’t go out as much as you could when you had none.

    My partner & I have two preschool age children and as a result have been out together about twice in three years! I used to like going and getting drunk sometimes, but never drink enough to get a hangover now, because I’ve got two young Kids. My girlfriend went out last week for a drink with friends for the first time since before the pandemic! Because we’ve got young kids.

    It’s not societies fault, it’s the result of decisions we made knowing the consequences, and the good outweighs the bad.

    And here is someone on big money, who doesn’t even look after the kids during the day, moaning about missing a Christmas jolly because she’s got to pick her children up??? If I even thought it I’d tell myself off
    Are you dumbfounded by the gall of it? Does it reach that bar?
    No, it’s par for the course from whiny, rich lefties
    To be both wealthy and left wing is to win life's lottery and so any irritations felt by such people should be kept to themselves - would this be a fair summary of your feelings here?
    Oh mate, if I said grass was green you’d probably find a way to disagree in a pseudo intellectual, patronising way - think what you like
    I wasn't disagreeing I was seeking to understand. You talked about "rich whiny lefties". Therefore it's something about that precise combination of attributes that gets your goat no?

    Ok so I postulated a theory that fits. I don't see anything intellectual (pseudo or otherwise) or patronising about it. But you tell me then. Why are you so down on rich lefties who complain about things that irritate them?
    To be fair, lefties who earn good money are entitled to hold on to the views they had before they were rich, and being born into wealth shouldn’t prohibit someone from holding left wing views




    I agree. I really don't like people being held responsible for decisions that weren't theirs to make. Ms Creacy will have been 10 years old when her parents put her in for the 11-plus.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,263
    isam said:

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    RobD said:

    Leon said:

    isam said:

    The Motherhood Penalty!

    Someone else looking after her kids all day, and she’s moaning that she can’t get out on the piss after work because of them. Bet they’ll love seeing this when they’re older

    As I walk past everyone going to Christmas parties and drinks on my way to get the kids from nursery, yet again acutely aware the motherhood penalty is just a gift that keeps giving….

    Not just flexible working we need but flexible networking too….


    https://x.com/stellacreasy/status/1735003828775268603?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

    I'm struggling to see the problem with Creasey's comment. It is hard for parents of young children to balance work and family commitments. It gets harder at this time of year when work schedules events outside of normal working hours. Because women still do more than their fair share of childcare duties, and because these after hours events matter, they do face a penalty in the workplace. All seems quite self evident and worth remarking upon.
    She's a rich, privileged upper middle class woman. From her Wiki


    Creasy was born on 5 April 1977 in Sutton Coldfield,[n 1][2] and is the daughter of Corinna Frances Avril (née Martin) and Philip Charles Creasy; her father is a trained opera singer and her mother a headteacher of a special needs school.[2][3] Her elder brother, Matthew Henry Creasy (born 1974), is an academic.[4] Creasy's mother described her own parents as "very aristocratic" and herself as "enormously privileged", which contributed to her decision to join the Labour Party.[2]


    She can easily afford child care. She can shove her whining up her "aristocratic" XXXXXX
    You're quite into identity politics for a woke-finder.
    It's more about class politics.

    She wants society to be organsied so that she can have it all without any trade-offs, but it's clearly impossible for everyone to have it all, so in effect she's demanding privileges for herself.
    She's saying that there are ways of ordering things around work that could make things easier to balance childcare and work responsibilities. You could call that her requesting privileges or you could call it a reasonable suggestion for making things easier for a whole load of people.
    I do find it weird that people on the right complain about immigration and falling birth rates but also seem to be against improving work-life balance, which would help on both fronts. So much easier just to tell women to shut up I suppose.
    Aren’t office parties planned well in advance? I’d have thought it would have been easy to arrange a childminder for one evening with sufficient notice.
    When you’ve got young children, you just can’t go out as much as you could when you had none.

    My partner & I have two preschool age children and as a result have been out together about twice in three years! I used to like going and getting drunk sometimes, but never drink enough to get a hangover now, because I’ve got two young Kids. My girlfriend went out last week for a drink with friends for the first time since before the pandemic! Because we’ve got young kids.

    It’s not societies fault, it’s the result of decisions we made knowing the consequences, and the good outweighs the bad.

    And here is someone on big money, who doesn’t even look after the kids during the day, moaning about missing a Christmas jolly because she’s got to pick her children up??? If I even thought it I’d tell myself off
    Are you dumbfounded by the gall of it? Does it reach that bar?
    No, it’s par for the course from whiny, rich lefties
    To be both wealthy and left wing is to win life's lottery and so any irritations felt by such people should be kept to themselves - would this be a fair summary of your feelings here?
    Oh mate, if I said grass was green you’d probably find a way to disagree in a pseudo intellectual, patronising way - think what you like
    I wasn't disagreeing I was seeking to understand. You talked about "rich whiny lefties". Therefore it's something about that precise combination of attributes that gets your goat no?

    Ok so I postulated a theory that fits. I don't see anything intellectual (pseudo or otherwise) or patronising about it. But you tell me then. Why are you so down on rich lefties who complain about things that irritate them?
    To be fair, lefties who earn good money are entitled to hold on to the views they had before they were rich, and being born into wealth shouldn’t prohibit someone from holding left wing views




    Lefties are almost unremitting c*nts, tho, aren't they?

    I think that is the problem, more than the whining. The c*ntishness - lefties are a putrid mix of hyopcrisy, narcissism, vanity, superficiality, and moral myopia, genuinely married to a middlebrow intellect at best, yet one that painfully pretends to greater things

    Roger is a classic example of the lefty, tho at least he admits he is dumb as fuckery. @kinabalu is the more aspiring type, which can be more annoying

    I don't mind Lib Dems
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,139
    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    rcs1000 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Carnyx said:

    Nigelb said:

    Pro_Rata said:

    Meanwhile, in "it might be a good thing, but do you really think you're going to make this happen" news,

    EXC: Rishi Sunak's government considers crackdown on young teens' social media use 🧵

    - Possible legal ban on use of social media by under-16s
    - Consultation to begin as soon as January
    - Currently industry standard is for 13+ on Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook
    via twseal and me


    https://twitter.com/kitty_donaldson/status/1735325201372520899

    We're governed by an overbearing 'Tiger Dad'. No TikTok but extra maths. Fuck me, this will do wonders for the future Conservative vote.
    To be fair, I'm sure Rishi flosses.
    Not according to DuraAce - and his wife is a dentist.

    How many under-16's vote Tory? And zero under-18s too, except in Scotland and Wales. It's Granny, who doesn't like little Johnny using his mobey at the dinner table, who has the vote.

    They should be bloody grateful they don't have compulsory school uniforms with shorts with elastic belts with snake clasps.
    Some of us lefties also ban their kids from using phones at the dinner table. A deeply anti-social habit (the phone use, not the banning). Disrupts the discussion of Hegelian dialectics.
    Yep. And I wouldn't let my son watch Top Gear when he was an impressionable teenager. Hearts and minds. This is why we'll prevail in the end.
    I know. I kept my kids away from Top Gear because of the presenters' regrettably pro-EU views.
    Clarkson for Remain, that was a surprise. Totally off brand.
    In his pathetic desperation, David Duke, of Brexit, lasso'd Clarkson to the Remain cause a few days before the vote

    LOL
    Clarkson had been publicly pro-EU for quite some time. It certainly wasn't a last minute conversion.

    (That whole part of the Oxfordshire countryside is full of Remainers.)
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,131
    edited December 2023
    Cookie said:

    kinabalu said:

    Cookie said:

    kinabalu said:

    Carnyx said:

    Nigelb said:

    Pro_Rata said:

    Meanwhile, in "it might be a good thing, but do you really think you're going to make this happen" news,

    EXC: Rishi Sunak's government considers crackdown on young teens' social media use 🧵

    - Possible legal ban on use of social media by under-16s
    - Consultation to begin as soon as January
    - Currently industry standard is for 13+ on Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook
    via twseal and me


    https://twitter.com/kitty_donaldson/status/1735325201372520899

    We're governed by an overbearing 'Tiger Dad'. No TikTok but extra maths. Fuck me, this will do wonders for the future Conservative vote.
    To be fair, I'm sure Rishi flosses.
    Not according to DuraAce - and his wife is a dentist.

    How many under-16's vote Tory? And zero under-18s too, except in Scotland and Wales. It's Granny, who doesn't like little Johnny using his mobey at the dinner table, who has the vote.

    They should be bloody grateful they don't have compulsory school uniforms with shorts with elastic belts with snake clasps.
    Some of us lefties also ban their kids from using phones at the dinner table. A deeply anti-social habit (the phone use, not the banning). Disrupts the discussion of Hegelian dialectics.
    Yep. And I wouldn't let my son watch Top Gear when he was an impressionable teenager. Hearts and minds. This is why we'll prevail in the end.
    There's something in this.
    Lefties do, in my experience, seem much keener to pass their political prejudices on to their offspring.
    Well the truth is I didn't. I left him to his own devices on politics. But boy was I relieved (!) when we had our first serious 'man to man' and it became clear he'd landed on the right side of history. I'd have coped if he hadn't but I was glad I didn't have to.
    Too early to tell with mine. But I reckon the oldest will turn out a JohnO style con, the middle a stodge style lib, and the youngest a BJO style awkward-squad lefty.

    Is there anything in the theory that kids get successively more left wing as they go through the birth order?
    Not the case with us. I'm the eldest of 4 and my sister has been known to vote Lib Dem. Both bros are quite solid though.
  • ohnotnowohnotnow Posts: 3,779
    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    I just discovered that Ozempic is FOUR times as expensive in the USA as it is in the UK/EU

    Americans really do get ripped off when it comes to medications and medical treatments. Ridic

    Why is this? Why do medications cost so much in America?

    Everything about their health system seems designed to fuck the average punter. Why don't they rebel?
    By law, the US government (which is by a significant margin the biggest purchaser of prescription drugs in the world), is not allowed to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies.

    This means that the retail and government price is inflated, while the prices paid by private insurers are negotiated (and won't be that different to the UK).

    See also their quite 'interesting' patent rules for medicines regarding 'formulation'. Change the tablet to a capsule? New medicine - new patent! Change it from blue sugar-paper to red rice-paper! New patent!...
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    rcs1000 said:

    isam said:

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    RobD said:

    Leon said:

    isam said:

    The Motherhood Penalty!

    Someone else looking after her kids all day, and she’s moaning that she can’t get out on the piss after work because of them. Bet they’ll love seeing this when they’re older

    As I walk past everyone going to Christmas parties and drinks on my way to get the kids from nursery, yet again acutely aware the motherhood penalty is just a gift that keeps giving….

    Not just flexible working we need but flexible networking too….


    https://x.com/stellacreasy/status/1735003828775268603?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

    I'm struggling to see the problem with Creasey's comment. It is hard for parents of young children to balance work and family commitments. It gets harder at this time of year when work schedules events outside of normal working hours. Because women still do more than their fair share of childcare duties, and because these after hours events matter, they do face a penalty in the workplace. All seems quite self evident and worth remarking upon.
    She's a rich, privileged upper middle class woman. From her Wiki


    Creasy was born on 5 April 1977 in Sutton Coldfield,[n 1][2] and is the daughter of Corinna Frances Avril (née Martin) and Philip Charles Creasy; her father is a trained opera singer and her mother a headteacher of a special needs school.[2][3] Her elder brother, Matthew Henry Creasy (born 1974), is an academic.[4] Creasy's mother described her own parents as "very aristocratic" and herself as "enormously privileged", which contributed to her decision to join the Labour Party.[2]


    She can easily afford child care. She can shove her whining up her "aristocratic" XXXXXX
    You're quite into identity politics for a woke-finder.
    It's more about class politics.

    She wants society to be organsied so that she can have it all without any trade-offs, but it's clearly impossible for everyone to have it all, so in effect she's demanding privileges for herself.
    She's saying that there are ways of ordering things around work that could make things easier to balance childcare and work responsibilities. You could call that her requesting privileges or you could call it a reasonable suggestion for making things easier for a whole load of people.
    I do find it weird that people on the right complain about immigration and falling birth rates but also seem to be against improving work-life balance, which would help on both fronts. So much easier just to tell women to shut up I suppose.
    Aren’t office parties planned well in advance? I’d have thought it would have been easy to arrange a childminder for one evening with sufficient notice.
    When you’ve got young children, you just can’t go out as much as you could when you had none.

    My partner & I have two preschool age children and as a result have been out together about twice in three years! I used to like going and getting drunk sometimes, but never drink enough to get a hangover now, because I’ve got two young Kids. My girlfriend went out last week for a drink with friends for the first time since before the pandemic! Because we’ve got young kids.

    It’s not societies fault, it’s the result of decisions we made knowing the consequences, and the good outweighs the bad.

    And here is someone on big money, who doesn’t even look after the kids during the day, moaning about missing a Christmas jolly because she’s got to pick her children up??? If I even thought it I’d tell myself off
    Are you dumbfounded by the gall of it? Does it reach that bar?
    No, it’s par for the course from whiny, rich lefties
    To be both wealthy and left wing is to win life's lottery and so any irritations felt by such people should be kept to themselves - would this be a fair summary of your feelings here?
    Oh mate, if I said grass was green you’d probably find a way to disagree in a pseudo intellectual, patronising way - think what you like
    I wasn't disagreeing I was seeking to understand. You talked about "rich whiny lefties". Therefore it's something about that precise combination of attributes that gets your goat no?

    Ok so I postulated a theory that fits. I don't see anything intellectual (pseudo or otherwise) or patronising about it. But you tell me then. Why are you so down on rich lefties who complain about things that irritate them?
    To be fair, lefties who earn good money are entitled to hold on to the views they had before they were rich, and being born into wealth shouldn’t prohibit someone from holding left wing views

    I agree. I really don't like people being held responsible for decisions that weren't theirs to make. Ms Creacy will have been 10 years old when her parents put her in for the 11-plus.
    Twice

    I’m very dubious about people who have gone from working class backgrounds (not Creasy) and done fabulously well via Grammar Schools who then are not in favour of selective education when they go into politics. I don’t like it

  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,131
    Leon said:

    isam said:

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    RobD said:

    Leon said:

    isam said:

    The Motherhood Penalty!

    Someone else looking after her kids all day, and she’s moaning that she can’t get out on the piss after work because of them. Bet they’ll love seeing this when they’re older

    As I walk past everyone going to Christmas parties and drinks on my way to get the kids from nursery, yet again acutely aware the motherhood penalty is just a gift that keeps giving….

    Not just flexible working we need but flexible networking too….


    https://x.com/stellacreasy/status/1735003828775268603?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

    I'm struggling to see the problem with Creasey's comment. It is hard for parents of young children to balance work and family commitments. It gets harder at this time of year when work schedules events outside of normal working hours. Because women still do more than their fair share of childcare duties, and because these after hours events matter, they do face a penalty in the workplace. All seems quite self evident and worth remarking upon.
    She's a rich, privileged upper middle class woman. From her Wiki


    Creasy was born on 5 April 1977 in Sutton Coldfield,[n 1][2] and is the daughter of Corinna Frances Avril (née Martin) and Philip Charles Creasy; her father is a trained opera singer and her mother a headteacher of a special needs school.[2][3] Her elder brother, Matthew Henry Creasy (born 1974), is an academic.[4] Creasy's mother described her own parents as "very aristocratic" and herself as "enormously privileged", which contributed to her decision to join the Labour Party.[2]


    She can easily afford child care. She can shove her whining up her "aristocratic" XXXXXX
    You're quite into identity politics for a woke-finder.
    It's more about class politics.

    She wants society to be organsied so that she can have it all without any trade-offs, but it's clearly impossible for everyone to have it all, so in effect she's demanding privileges for herself.
    She's saying that there are ways of ordering things around work that could make things easier to balance childcare and work responsibilities. You could call that her requesting privileges or you could call it a reasonable suggestion for making things easier for a whole load of people.
    I do find it weird that people on the right complain about immigration and falling birth rates but also seem to be against improving work-life balance, which would help on both fronts. So much easier just to tell women to shut up I suppose.
    Aren’t office parties planned well in advance? I’d have thought it would have been easy to arrange a childminder for one evening with sufficient notice.
    When you’ve got young children, you just can’t go out as much as you could when you had none.

    My partner & I have two preschool age children and as a result have been out together about twice in three years! I used to like going and getting drunk sometimes, but never drink enough to get a hangover now, because I’ve got two young Kids. My girlfriend went out last week for a drink with friends for the first time since before the pandemic! Because we’ve got young kids.

    It’s not societies fault, it’s the result of decisions we made knowing the consequences, and the good outweighs the bad.

    And here is someone on big money, who doesn’t even look after the kids during the day, moaning about missing a Christmas jolly because she’s got to pick her children up??? If I even thought it I’d tell myself off
    Are you dumbfounded by the gall of it? Does it reach that bar?
    No, it’s par for the course from whiny, rich lefties
    To be both wealthy and left wing is to win life's lottery and so any irritations felt by such people should be kept to themselves - would this be a fair summary of your feelings here?
    Oh mate, if I said grass was green you’d probably find a way to disagree in a pseudo intellectual, patronising way - think what you like
    I wasn't disagreeing I was seeking to understand. You talked about "rich whiny lefties". Therefore it's something about that precise combination of attributes that gets your goat no?

    Ok so I postulated a theory that fits. I don't see anything intellectual (pseudo or otherwise) or patronising about it. But you tell me then. Why are you so down on rich lefties who complain about things that irritate them?
    To be fair, lefties who earn good money are entitled to hold on to the views they had before they were rich, and being born into wealth shouldn’t prohibit someone from holding left wing views




    Lefties are almost unremitting c*nts, tho, aren't they?

    I think that is the problem, more than the whining. The c*ntishness - lefties are a putrid mix of hyopcrisy, narcissism, vanity, superficiality, and moral myopia, genuinely married to a middlebrow intellect at best, yet one that painfully pretends to greater things

    Roger is a classic example of the lefty, tho at least he admits he is dumb as fuckery. @kinabalu is the more aspiring type, which can be more annoying

    I don't mind Lib Dems
    You can go back to ignoring me if you like.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,263
    edited December 2023

    Leon said:

    Slightly ominous noises emanating from OpenAI (and elsewhere) about the imminent arrival of AGI, or maybe even ASI

    Yawn. Another of the rumours you keep twatting on about, which always seem to be damp squibs?

    Or, in fact, delusions? ;)
    What damp squibs? We are mere years - maybe months - from actual AGI

    If that's a damp squib I never want to encounter a DRY squib, it would terrify the fuck out of everyone
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 51,618
    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    rcs1000 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Carnyx said:

    Nigelb said:

    Pro_Rata said:

    Meanwhile, in "it might be a good thing, but do you really think you're going to make this happen" news,

    EXC: Rishi Sunak's government considers crackdown on young teens' social media use 🧵

    - Possible legal ban on use of social media by under-16s
    - Consultation to begin as soon as January
    - Currently industry standard is for 13+ on Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook
    via twseal and me


    https://twitter.com/kitty_donaldson/status/1735325201372520899

    We're governed by an overbearing 'Tiger Dad'. No TikTok but extra maths. Fuck me, this will do wonders for the future Conservative vote.
    To be fair, I'm sure Rishi flosses.
    Not according to DuraAce - and his wife is a dentist.

    How many under-16's vote Tory? And zero under-18s too, except in Scotland and Wales. It's Granny, who doesn't like little Johnny using his mobey at the dinner table, who has the vote.

    They should be bloody grateful they don't have compulsory school uniforms with shorts with elastic belts with snake clasps.
    Some of us lefties also ban their kids from using phones at the dinner table. A deeply anti-social habit (the phone use, not the banning). Disrupts the discussion of Hegelian dialectics.
    Yep. And I wouldn't let my son watch Top Gear when he was an impressionable teenager. Hearts and minds. This is why we'll prevail in the end.
    I know. I kept my kids away from Top Gear because of the presenters' regrettably pro-EU views.
    Clarkson for Remain, that was a surprise. Totally off brand.
    In his pathetic desperation, David Duke, of Brexit, lasso'd Clarkson to the Remain cause a few days before the vote

    LOL
    Clarkson had been publicly pro-EU for quite some time. It certainly wasn't a last minute conversion.

    (That whole part of the Oxfordshire countryside is full of Remainers.)
    For some people, being pro-EU is a polite form of unacknowledged white nationalism.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,263
    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    rcs1000 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Carnyx said:

    Nigelb said:

    Pro_Rata said:

    Meanwhile, in "it might be a good thing, but do you really think you're going to make this happen" news,

    EXC: Rishi Sunak's government considers crackdown on young teens' social media use 🧵

    - Possible legal ban on use of social media by under-16s
    - Consultation to begin as soon as January
    - Currently industry standard is for 13+ on Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook
    via twseal and me


    https://twitter.com/kitty_donaldson/status/1735325201372520899

    We're governed by an overbearing 'Tiger Dad'. No TikTok but extra maths. Fuck me, this will do wonders for the future Conservative vote.
    To be fair, I'm sure Rishi flosses.
    Not according to DuraAce - and his wife is a dentist.

    How many under-16's vote Tory? And zero under-18s too, except in Scotland and Wales. It's Granny, who doesn't like little Johnny using his mobey at the dinner table, who has the vote.

    They should be bloody grateful they don't have compulsory school uniforms with shorts with elastic belts with snake clasps.
    Some of us lefties also ban their kids from using phones at the dinner table. A deeply anti-social habit (the phone use, not the banning). Disrupts the discussion of Hegelian dialectics.
    Yep. And I wouldn't let my son watch Top Gear when he was an impressionable teenager. Hearts and minds. This is why we'll prevail in the end.
    I know. I kept my kids away from Top Gear because of the presenters' regrettably pro-EU views.
    Clarkson for Remain, that was a surprise. Totally off brand.
    In his pathetic desperation, David Duke, of Brexit, lasso'd Clarkson to the Remain cause a few days before the vote

    LOL
    Clarkson had been publicly pro-EU for quite some time. It certainly wasn't a last minute conversion.

    (That whole part of the Oxfordshire countryside is full of Remainers.)
    For sure. I think Hammond was the only Leaver on the team

    I am pointing to the moment when Duke David - or someone sent by him - went in to the BBC Top Gear studio and got an obviously awkward, embarrassed Clarkson to mumble pro-Remain comments

    At least that is how I remember it, maybe my imagination has turned it into a more fantastically cringe episode than it actually was
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,263
    ohnotnow said:

    Leon said:

    Slightly ominous noises emanating from OpenAI (and elsewhere) about the imminent arrival of AGI, or maybe even ASI

    Yawn. Another of the rumours you keep twatting on about, which always seem to be damp squibs?

    Or, in fact, delusions? ;)
    I was chatting to an ML/AI researcher at work today who was in a tizzy about something claimed to be 'a big thing'. Seems there's some sort of ML/AI conference on just now which is abuzz with rumours.

    Might well just be something that makes fundamental researchers/maths-types excited rather than something the rest of us care about. But there's certainly something in the air.
    Yes, there really is, and it is obvious if you know where to look

    @JosiasJessop does not
  • ohnotnowohnotnow Posts: 3,779
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Slightly ominous noises emanating from OpenAI (and elsewhere) about the imminent arrival of AGI, or maybe even ASI

    Yawn. Another of the rumours you keep twatting on about, which always seem to be damp squibs?

    Or, in fact, delusions? ;)
    What damp squibs? We are mere years - maybe months - from actual AGI

    If that's a damp squib I never want to encounter a DRY squib, it would terrify the fuck out of everyone
    We will never be close to AGI as the anti-AGI people keep shifting the goalposts as to what they mean.
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    Leon said:

    isam said:

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    RobD said:

    Leon said:

    isam said:

    The Motherhood Penalty!

    Someone else looking after her kids all day, and she’s moaning that she can’t get out on the piss after work because of them. Bet they’ll love seeing this when they’re older

    As I walk past everyone going to Christmas parties and drinks on my way to get the kids from nursery, yet again acutely aware the motherhood penalty is just a gift that keeps giving….

    Not just flexible working we need but flexible networking too….


    https://x.com/stellacreasy/status/1735003828775268603?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

    I'm struggling to see the problem with Creasey's comment. It is hard for parents of young children to balance work and family commitments. It gets harder at this time of year when work schedules events outside of normal working hours. Because women still do more than their fair share of childcare duties, and because these after hours events matter, they do face a penalty in the workplace. All seems quite self evident and worth remarking upon.
    She's a rich, privileged upper middle class woman. From her Wiki


    Creasy was born on 5 April 1977 in Sutton Coldfield,[n 1][2] and is the daughter of Corinna Frances Avril (née Martin) and Philip Charles Creasy; her father is a trained opera singer and her mother a headteacher of a special needs school.[2][3] Her elder brother, Matthew Henry Creasy (born 1974), is an academic.[4] Creasy's mother described her own parents as "very aristocratic" and herself as "enormously privileged", which contributed to her decision to join the Labour Party.[2]


    She can easily afford child care. She can shove her whining up her "aristocratic" XXXXXX
    You're quite into identity politics for a woke-finder.
    It's more about class politics.

    She wants society to be organsied so that she can have it all without any trade-offs, but it's clearly impossible for everyone to have it all, so in effect she's demanding privileges for herself.
    She's saying that there are ways of ordering things around work that could make things easier to balance childcare and work responsibilities. You could call that her requesting privileges or you could call it a reasonable suggestion for making things easier for a whole load of people.
    I do find it weird that people on the right complain about immigration and falling birth rates but also seem to be against improving work-life balance, which would help on both fronts. So much easier just to tell women to shut up I suppose.
    Aren’t office parties planned well in advance? I’d have thought it would have been easy to arrange a childminder for one evening with sufficient notice.
    When you’ve got young children, you just can’t go out as much as you could when you had none.

    My partner & I have two preschool age children and as a result have been out together about twice in three years! I used to like going and getting drunk sometimes, but never drink enough to get a hangover now, because I’ve got two young Kids. My girlfriend went out last week for a drink with friends for the first time since before the pandemic! Because we’ve got young kids.

    It’s not societies fault, it’s the result of decisions we made knowing the consequences, and the good outweighs the bad.

    And here is someone on big money, who doesn’t even look after the kids during the day, moaning about missing a Christmas jolly because she’s got to pick her children up??? If I even thought it I’d tell myself off
    Are you dumbfounded by the gall of it? Does it reach that bar?
    No, it’s par for the course from whiny, rich lefties
    To be both wealthy and left wing is to win life's lottery and so any irritations felt by such people should be kept to themselves - would this be a fair summary of your feelings here?
    Oh mate, if I said grass was green you’d probably find a way to disagree in a pseudo intellectual, patronising way - think what you like
    I wasn't disagreeing I was seeking to understand. You talked about "rich whiny lefties". Therefore it's something about that precise combination of attributes that gets your goat no?

    Ok so I postulated a theory that fits. I don't see anything intellectual (pseudo or otherwise) or patronising about it. But you tell me then. Why are you so down on rich lefties who complain about things that irritate them?
    To be fair, lefties who earn good money are entitled to hold on to the views they had before they were rich, and being born into wealth shouldn’t prohibit someone from holding left wing views




    Lefties are almost unremitting c*nts, tho, aren't they?

    I think that is the problem, more than the whining. The c*ntishness - lefties are a putrid mix of hyopcrisy, narcissism, vanity, superficiality, and moral myopia, genuinely married to a middlebrow intellect at best, yet one that painfully pretends to greater things

    Roger is a classic example of the lefty, tho at least he admits he is dumb as fuckery. @kinabalu is the more aspiring type, which can be more annoying

    I don't mind Lib Dems
    You can be rich and left wing and be an alright person, but more often than not they are ‘Common People’ by Pulp types and that who I find annoying. Stella Creasy seems to fit this shoe perfectly; grammar school educated, Cambridge Uni then moves to Walthamstow. Thinks she’s some kind of gritty, urban clever clogs, bangs on and on about how unfair everything is when most of the stuff she’s complaining about is neither here nor there to genuine working class people


  • CatManCatMan Posts: 3,058
    edited December 2023
    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    rcs1000 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Carnyx said:

    Nigelb said:

    Pro_Rata said:

    Meanwhile, in "it might be a good thing, but do you really think you're going to make this happen" news,

    EXC: Rishi Sunak's government considers crackdown on young teens' social media use 🧵

    - Possible legal ban on use of social media by under-16s
    - Consultation to begin as soon as January
    - Currently industry standard is for 13+ on Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook
    via twseal and me


    https://twitter.com/kitty_donaldson/status/1735325201372520899

    We're governed by an overbearing 'Tiger Dad'. No TikTok but extra maths. Fuck me, this will do wonders for the future Conservative vote.
    To be fair, I'm sure Rishi flosses.
    Not according to DuraAce - and his wife is a dentist.

    How many under-16's vote Tory? And zero under-18s too, except in Scotland and Wales. It's Granny, who doesn't like little Johnny using his mobey at the dinner table, who has the vote.

    They should be bloody grateful they don't have compulsory school uniforms with shorts with elastic belts with snake clasps.
    Some of us lefties also ban their kids from using phones at the dinner table. A deeply anti-social habit (the phone use, not the banning). Disrupts the discussion of Hegelian dialectics.
    Yep. And I wouldn't let my son watch Top Gear when he was an impressionable teenager. Hearts and minds. This is why we'll prevail in the end.
    I know. I kept my kids away from Top Gear because of the presenters' regrettably pro-EU views.
    Clarkson for Remain, that was a surprise. Totally off brand.
    In his pathetic desperation, David Duke, of Brexit, lasso'd Clarkson to the Remain cause a few days before the vote

    LOL
    Clarkson had been publicly pro-EU for quite some time. It certainly wasn't a last minute conversion.

    (That whole part of the Oxfordshire countryside is full of Remainers.)
    For sure. I think Hammond was the only Leaver on the team

    I am pointing to the moment when Duke David - or someone sent by him - went in to the BBC Top Gear studio and got an obviously awkward, embarrassed Clarkson to mumble pro-Remain comments

    At least that is how I remember it, maybe my imagination has turned it into a more fantastically cringe episode than it actually was
    Clarkson got fired from Top Gear in 2015
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 51,618
    Someone made an interesting point about AI recently that for years everyone was obsessed with the Turing test, but now that it's arguably been passed, it doesn't seem that significant because we take it for granted already and are looking ahead to much bigger things.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,263
    CatMan said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    rcs1000 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Carnyx said:

    Nigelb said:

    Pro_Rata said:

    Meanwhile, in "it might be a good thing, but do you really think you're going to make this happen" news,

    EXC: Rishi Sunak's government considers crackdown on young teens' social media use 🧵

    - Possible legal ban on use of social media by under-16s
    - Consultation to begin as soon as January
    - Currently industry standard is for 13+ on Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook
    via twseal and me


    https://twitter.com/kitty_donaldson/status/1735325201372520899

    We're governed by an overbearing 'Tiger Dad'. No TikTok but extra maths. Fuck me, this will do wonders for the future Conservative vote.
    To be fair, I'm sure Rishi flosses.
    Not according to DuraAce - and his wife is a dentist.

    How many under-16's vote Tory? And zero under-18s too, except in Scotland and Wales. It's Granny, who doesn't like little Johnny using his mobey at the dinner table, who has the vote.

    They should be bloody grateful they don't have compulsory school uniforms with shorts with elastic belts with snake clasps.
    Some of us lefties also ban their kids from using phones at the dinner table. A deeply anti-social habit (the phone use, not the banning). Disrupts the discussion of Hegelian dialectics.
    Yep. And I wouldn't let my son watch Top Gear when he was an impressionable teenager. Hearts and minds. This is why we'll prevail in the end.
    I know. I kept my kids away from Top Gear because of the presenters' regrettably pro-EU views.
    Clarkson for Remain, that was a surprise. Totally off brand.
    In his pathetic desperation, David Duke, of Brexit, lasso'd Clarkson to the Remain cause a few days before the vote

    LOL
    Clarkson had been publicly pro-EU for quite some time. It certainly wasn't a last minute conversion.

    (That whole part of the Oxfordshire countryside is full of Remainers.)
    For sure. I think Hammond was the only Leaver on the team

    I am pointing to the moment when Duke David - or someone sent by him - went in to the BBC Top Gear studio and got an obviously awkward, embarrassed Clarkson to mumble pro-Remain comments

    At least that is how I remember it, maybe my imagination has turned it into a more fantastically cringe episode than it actually was
    Clarkson got fired from Top Gear in 2015
    lol. That is certainly a point against my recollection of this episode

    I shall do some Google-Fu
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,263
    edited December 2023
    Aha

    I have found the video that Cameron and Clarkson and May made, trying to persuade us to vote Remain - and they did do it in the stuido - Grand Tour not Top Gear

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7oOJieTT4k


    As I thought: deeply awkward, and not very persuasive

    Kinda sums up the whole half-arsed Remain referendum effort: weirdly bad in a fundamental way


  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,139
    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    isam said:

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    RobD said:

    Leon said:

    isam said:

    The Motherhood Penalty!

    Someone else looking after her kids all day, and she’s moaning that she can’t get out on the piss after work because of them. Bet they’ll love seeing this when they’re older

    As I walk past everyone going to Christmas parties and drinks on my way to get the kids from nursery, yet again acutely aware the motherhood penalty is just a gift that keeps giving….

    Not just flexible working we need but flexible networking too….


    https://x.com/stellacreasy/status/1735003828775268603?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

    I'm struggling to see the problem with Creasey's comment. It is hard for parents of young children to balance work and family commitments. It gets harder at this time of year when work schedules events outside of normal working hours. Because women still do more than their fair share of childcare duties, and because these after hours events matter, they do face a penalty in the workplace. All seems quite self evident and worth remarking upon.
    She's a rich, privileged upper middle class woman. From her Wiki


    Creasy was born on 5 April 1977 in Sutton Coldfield,[n 1][2] and is the daughter of Corinna Frances Avril (née Martin) and Philip Charles Creasy; her father is a trained opera singer and her mother a headteacher of a special needs school.[2][3] Her elder brother, Matthew Henry Creasy (born 1974), is an academic.[4] Creasy's mother described her own parents as "very aristocratic" and herself as "enormously privileged", which contributed to her decision to join the Labour Party.[2]


    She can easily afford child care. She can shove her whining up her "aristocratic" XXXXXX
    You're quite into identity politics for a woke-finder.
    It's more about class politics.

    She wants society to be organsied so that she can have it all without any trade-offs, but it's clearly impossible for everyone to have it all, so in effect she's demanding privileges for herself.
    She's saying that there are ways of ordering things around work that could make things easier to balance childcare and work responsibilities. You could call that her requesting privileges or you could call it a reasonable suggestion for making things easier for a whole load of people.
    I do find it weird that people on the right complain about immigration and falling birth rates but also seem to be against improving work-life balance, which would help on both fronts. So much easier just to tell women to shut up I suppose.
    Aren’t office parties planned well in advance? I’d have thought it would have been easy to arrange a childminder for one evening with sufficient notice.
    When you’ve got young children, you just can’t go out as much as you could when you had none.

    My partner & I have two preschool age children and as a result have been out together about twice in three years! I used to like going and getting drunk sometimes, but never drink enough to get a hangover now, because I’ve got two young Kids. My girlfriend went out last week for a drink with friends for the first time since before the pandemic! Because we’ve got young kids.

    It’s not societies fault, it’s the result of decisions we made knowing the consequences, and the good outweighs the bad.

    And here is someone on big money, who doesn’t even look after the kids during the day, moaning about missing a Christmas jolly because she’s got to pick her children up??? If I even thought it I’d tell myself off
    Are you dumbfounded by the gall of it? Does it reach that bar?
    No, it’s par for the course from whiny, rich lefties
    To be both wealthy and left wing is to win life's lottery and so any irritations felt by such people should be kept to themselves - would this be a fair summary of your feelings here?
    Oh mate, if I said grass was green you’d probably find a way to disagree in a pseudo intellectual, patronising way - think what you like
    I wasn't disagreeing I was seeking to understand. You talked about "rich whiny lefties". Therefore it's something about that precise combination of attributes that gets your goat no?

    Ok so I postulated a theory that fits. I don't see anything intellectual (pseudo or otherwise) or patronising about it. But you tell me then. Why are you so down on rich lefties who complain about things that irritate them?
    To be fair, lefties who earn good money are entitled to hold on to the views they had before they were rich, and being born into wealth shouldn’t prohibit someone from holding left wing views

    I agree. I really don't like people being held responsible for decisions that weren't theirs to make. Ms Creacy will have been 10 years old when her parents put her in for the 11-plus.
    Twice

    I’m very dubious about people who have gone from working class backgrounds (not Creasy) and done fabulously well via Grammar Schools who then are not in favour of selective education when they go into politics. I don’t like it

    Yeah, but it still wasn't her decision to make. People aren't responsible for their parents.

    Personally, I would be massively more critical of a Labour MP who campaigned against selection, and then sent their kids to a private or grammar school.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,140
    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    isam said:

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    RobD said:

    Leon said:

    isam said:

    The Motherhood Penalty!

    Someone else looking after her kids all day, and she’s moaning that she can’t get out on the piss after work because of them. Bet they’ll love seeing this when they’re older

    As I walk past everyone going to Christmas parties and drinks on my way to get the kids from nursery, yet again acutely aware the motherhood penalty is just a gift that keeps giving….

    Not just flexible working we need but flexible networking too….


    https://x.com/stellacreasy/status/1735003828775268603?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

    I'm struggling to see the problem with Creasey's comment. It is hard for parents of young children to balance work and family commitments. It gets harder at this time of year when work schedules events outside of normal working hours. Because women still do more than their fair share of childcare duties, and because these after hours events matter, they do face a penalty in the workplace. All seems quite self evident and worth remarking upon.
    She's a rich, privileged upper middle class woman. From her Wiki


    Creasy was born on 5 April 1977 in Sutton Coldfield,[n 1][2] and is the daughter of Corinna Frances Avril (née Martin) and Philip Charles Creasy; her father is a trained opera singer and her mother a headteacher of a special needs school.[2][3] Her elder brother, Matthew Henry Creasy (born 1974), is an academic.[4] Creasy's mother described her own parents as "very aristocratic" and herself as "enormously privileged", which contributed to her decision to join the Labour Party.[2]


    She can easily afford child care. She can shove her whining up her "aristocratic" XXXXXX
    You're quite into identity politics for a woke-finder.
    It's more about class politics.

    She wants society to be organsied so that she can have it all without any trade-offs, but it's clearly impossible for everyone to have it all, so in effect she's demanding privileges for herself.
    She's saying that there are ways of ordering things around work that could make things easier to balance childcare and work responsibilities. You could call that her requesting privileges or you could call it a reasonable suggestion for making things easier for a whole load of people.
    I do find it weird that people on the right complain about immigration and falling birth rates but also seem to be against improving work-life balance, which would help on both fronts. So much easier just to tell women to shut up I suppose.
    Aren’t office parties planned well in advance? I’d have thought it would have been easy to arrange a childminder for one evening with sufficient notice.
    When you’ve got young children, you just can’t go out as much as you could when you had none.

    My partner & I have two preschool age children and as a result have been out together about twice in three years! I used to like going and getting drunk sometimes, but never drink enough to get a hangover now, because I’ve got two young Kids. My girlfriend went out last week for a drink with friends for the first time since before the pandemic! Because we’ve got young kids.

    It’s not societies fault, it’s the result of decisions we made knowing the consequences, and the good outweighs the bad.

    And here is someone on big money, who doesn’t even look after the kids during the day, moaning about missing a Christmas jolly because she’s got to pick her children up??? If I even thought it I’d tell myself off
    Are you dumbfounded by the gall of it? Does it reach that bar?
    No, it’s par for the course from whiny, rich lefties
    To be both wealthy and left wing is to win life's lottery and so any irritations felt by such people should be kept to themselves - would this be a fair summary of your feelings here?
    Oh mate, if I said grass was green you’d probably find a way to disagree in a pseudo intellectual, patronising way - think what you like
    I wasn't disagreeing I was seeking to understand. You talked about "rich whiny lefties". Therefore it's something about that precise combination of attributes that gets your goat no?

    Ok so I postulated a theory that fits. I don't see anything intellectual (pseudo or otherwise) or patronising about it. But you tell me then. Why are you so down on rich lefties who complain about things that irritate them?
    To be fair, lefties who earn good money are entitled to hold on to the views they had before they were rich, and being born into wealth shouldn’t prohibit someone from holding left wing views

    I agree. I really don't like people being held responsible for decisions that weren't theirs to make. Ms Creacy will have been 10 years old when her parents put her in for the 11-plus.
    Twice

    I’m very dubious about people who have gone from working class backgrounds (not Creasy) and done fabulously well via Grammar Schools who then are not in favour of selective education when they go into politics. I don’t like it

    Is Stella not actually as Upper Crust as Samantha Cameron?
  • kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Cookie said:

    kinabalu said:

    Carnyx said:

    Nigelb said:

    Pro_Rata said:

    Meanwhile, in "it might be a good thing, but do you really think you're going to make this happen" news,

    EXC: Rishi Sunak's government considers crackdown on young teens' social media use 🧵

    - Possible legal ban on use of social media by under-16s
    - Consultation to begin as soon as January
    - Currently industry standard is for 13+ on Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook
    via twseal and me


    https://twitter.com/kitty_donaldson/status/1735325201372520899

    We're governed by an overbearing 'Tiger Dad'. No TikTok but extra maths. Fuck me, this will do wonders for the future Conservative vote.
    To be fair, I'm sure Rishi flosses.
    Not according to DuraAce - and his wife is a dentist.

    How many under-16's vote Tory? And zero under-18s too, except in Scotland and Wales. It's Granny, who doesn't like little Johnny using his mobey at the dinner table, who has the vote.

    They should be bloody grateful they don't have compulsory school uniforms with shorts with elastic belts with snake clasps.
    Some of us lefties also ban their kids from using phones at the dinner table. A deeply anti-social habit (the phone use, not the banning). Disrupts the discussion of Hegelian dialectics.
    Yep. And I wouldn't let my son watch Top Gear when he was an impressionable teenager. Hearts and minds. This is why we'll prevail in the end.
    There's something in this.
    Lefties do, in my experience, seem much keener to pass their political prejudices on to their offspring.
    Well the truth is I didn't. I left him to his own devices on politics. But boy was I relieved (!) when we had our first serious 'man to man' and it became clear he'd landed on the right side of history. I'd have coped if he hadn't but I was glad I didn't have to.
    You do know the left wing will always be on the wrong side of history and will die a short and ignoble death as resources get scarce because your ideology will make people realise you are talking total crap?
    As resources get scarce and growth tails off it becomes ever more pressing to achieve a more equitable distribution of income and wealth.
    no it gets more important to keep what is ours than sending it to people. Sorry but thinking when things get scarce we are going to be more charitable is for the dogs. I plan to make sure my family has enough first. You will too when its a choice between your family not having enough and sharing with the neighbours and you all slowly starving
    Way too doomy. Lord of the Flies was a warning not an instruction manual.
    Unless you're a fly . . . or Beelzebub . . . buzzzzzz . . .
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    edited December 2023
    rcs1000 said:

    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    isam said:

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    RobD said:

    Leon said:

    isam said:

    The Motherhood Penalty!

    Someone else looking after her kids all day, and she’s moaning that she can’t get out on the piss after work because of them. Bet they’ll love seeing this when they’re older

    As I walk past everyone going to Christmas parties and drinks on my way to get the kids from nursery, yet again acutely aware the motherhood penalty is just a gift that keeps giving….

    Not just flexible working we need but flexible networking too….


    https://x.com/stellacreasy/status/1735003828775268603?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

    I'm struggling to see the problem with Creasey's comment. It is hard for parents of young children to balance work and family commitments. It gets harder at this time of year when work schedules events outside of normal working hours. Because women still do more than their fair share of childcare duties, and because these after hours events matter, they do face a penalty in the workplace. All seems quite self evident and worth remarking upon.
    She's a rich, privileged upper middle class woman. From her Wiki


    Creasy was born on 5 April 1977 in Sutton Coldfield,[n 1][2] and is the daughter of Corinna Frances Avril (née Martin) and Philip Charles Creasy; her father is a trained opera singer and her mother a headteacher of a special needs school.[2][3] Her elder brother, Matthew Henry Creasy (born 1974), is an academic.[4] Creasy's mother described her own parents as "very aristocratic" and herself as "enormously privileged", which contributed to her decision to join the Labour Party.[2]


    She can easily afford child care. She can shove her whining up her "aristocratic" XXXXXX
    You're quite into identity politics for a woke-finder.
    It's more about class politics.

    She wants society to be organsied so that she can have it all without any trade-offs, but it's clearly impossible for everyone to have it all, so in effect she's demanding privileges for herself.
    She's saying that there are ways of ordering things around work that could make things easier to balance childcare and work responsibilities. You could call that her requesting privileges or you could call it a reasonable suggestion for making things easier for a whole load of people.
    I do find it weird that people on the right complain about immigration and falling birth rates but also seem to be against improving work-life balance, which would help on both fronts. So much easier just to tell women to shut up I suppose.
    Aren’t office parties planned well in advance? I’d have thought it would have been easy to arrange a childminder for one evening with sufficient notice.
    When you’ve got young children, you just can’t go out as much as you could when you had none.

    My partner & I have two preschool age children and as a result have been out together about twice in three years! I used to like going and getting drunk sometimes, but never drink enough to get a hangover now, because I’ve got two young Kids. My girlfriend went out last week for a drink with friends for the first time since before the pandemic! Because we’ve got young kids.

    It’s not societies fault, it’s the result of decisions we made knowing the consequences, and the good outweighs the bad.

    And here is someone on big money, who doesn’t even look after the kids during the day, moaning about missing a Christmas jolly because she’s got to pick her children up??? If I even thought it I’d tell myself off
    Are you dumbfounded by the gall of it? Does it reach that bar?
    No, it’s par for the course from whiny, rich lefties
    To be both wealthy and left wing is to win life's lottery and so any irritations felt by such people should be kept to themselves - would this be a fair summary of your feelings here?
    Oh mate, if I said grass was green you’d probably find a way to disagree in a pseudo intellectual, patronising way - think what you like
    I wasn't disagreeing I was seeking to understand. You talked about "rich whiny lefties". Therefore it's something about that precise combination of attributes that gets your goat no?

    Ok so I postulated a theory that fits. I don't see anything intellectual (pseudo or otherwise) or patronising about it. But you tell me then. Why are you so down on rich lefties who complain about things that irritate them?
    To be fair, lefties who earn good money are entitled to hold on to the views they had before they were rich, and being born into wealth shouldn’t prohibit someone from holding left wing views

    I agree. I really don't like people being held responsible for decisions that weren't theirs to make. Ms Creacy will have been 10 years old when her parents put her in for the 11-plus.
    Twice

    I’m very dubious about people who have gone from working class backgrounds (not Creasy) and done fabulously well via Grammar Schools who then are not in favour of selective education when they go into politics. I don’t like it

    Yeah, but it still wasn't her decision to make. People aren't responsible for their parents.

    Personally, I would be massively more critical of a Labour MP who campaigned against selection, and then sent their kids to a private or grammar school.
    Like Diane Abbot

    But yes, not Creasy’s fault that her parents were so determined to get her into a Grammar school that she took the 11+ twice, this despite her mother being a Labour Party member. I still don’t like it though

    That’s neither here or nor there though. I didn’t know about her Grammar school upbringing when I saw her tweet complaining about having to pick the kids up from nursery.

    I remember her saying to Peter Hitchens on QT once “Peter..” (she’s one of those boilerplate centrists who call people by their first name in a faux friendly way when talking down to them) “if you don’t like gay marriage, then don’t marry a man” as if that could possibly be a worthwhile thing to say

    Then she wanted to ban page 3. Not an idea I’d argue about, it seems ludicrous really to have topless women in the daily papers, but surely the logic of her previous argument would be that she should be ok with page 3 girls as long as she didn’t have to be one.

    What she really means is gay marriage is good and having page 3 girls in papers is bad and anyone who disagrees is immoral/just wrong. But plenty of people do disagree and she shouldn’t be using the first argument if she couldn’t handle the second used against her.



  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,263
    "Microsoft is dropping manhattan project level resources on supercompute infrastructure for AGI

    Factoring in inflation,
    @Microsoft
    's >$50 Billion projected spend is greater than the $2.2 Billion the US spent to develop the atomic bomb"

    https://x.com/0xSigil/status/1735371100287320434?s=20

    And that is JUST Microsoft

    Imagine how much China is spending
  • BarnesianBarnesian Posts: 8,580
    IanB2 said:

    TimS said:

    Should be a Lab gain.


    Any local ULEZ-style issues that could stymie this?
    Yeah. Blackpool truly is a shithole.
    I got done by a hobby booby at 11.45pm for being in the wrong lane to turn right.it was my first visit on business.This was

    Early 90s.... Pissing with rain.on the seafront ...Not a car to be seen anywhere ...he must have been.playimg poker as my car was red. Never had a red car since.
    I was so angry I wrote to the Chief Constable about hobby Bobby's attitude.
    Never been to Blackpool since
    Blackpool's the only place I've ever got two parking tickets in one day.

    And the only time I've stayed in a hotel where the bed folded down out of the wardbrobe.
    I worked in Pontins Holdiay camp at Squires Gate in Blackpool in the summer of 63. I had the time of my life. Never forget it. Or her.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,263
    What to make of this?


    A passage from a Brian Cox article on Black Holes. I do not wish to be uncharitable, but this sounds an awful lot like a long-winded way of saying "Christ, it's all mad, I haven't a clue"

    "This ‘dual’ picture – two radically different and yet equivalent views of reality – hints that space and time as we perceive them are not fundamental properties of the universe. It seems that they emerge from, to borrow another phrase from Einstein, something deeply hidden – a quantum theory in which there is no space and no time. And, in an intriguing twist, it appears our reality may be encoded in the underlying quantum theory using a method that computer scientists have discovered that allows for information to be encoded in the memory of quantum computers in an error-tolerant way. I do not think this is evidence we live in a simulation, but it does suggest our universe behaves like a quantum computer."


    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/black-holes-are-changing-our-understanding-of-everything/
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    Leon said:

    What to make of this?


    A passage from a Brian Cox article on Black Holes. I do not wish to be uncharitable, but this sounds an awful lot like a long-winded way of saying "Christ, it's all mad, I haven't a clue"

    "This ‘dual’ picture – two radically different and yet equivalent views of reality – hints that space and time as we perceive them are not fundamental properties of the universe. It seems that they emerge from, to borrow another phrase from Einstein, something deeply hidden – a quantum theory in which there is no space and no time. And, in an intriguing twist, it appears our reality may be encoded in the underlying quantum theory using a method that computer scientists have discovered that allows for information to be encoded in the memory of quantum computers in an error-tolerant way. I do not think this is evidence we live in a simulation, but it does suggest our universe behaves like a quantum computer."


    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/black-holes-are-changing-our-understanding-of-everything/

    Was it Richard Dawkins who said “If you think you understand quantum physics, you don’t understand quantum physics”?
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,263
    isam said:

    Leon said:

    What to make of this?


    A passage from a Brian Cox article on Black Holes. I do not wish to be uncharitable, but this sounds an awful lot like a long-winded way of saying "Christ, it's all mad, I haven't a clue"

    "This ‘dual’ picture – two radically different and yet equivalent views of reality – hints that space and time as we perceive them are not fundamental properties of the universe. It seems that they emerge from, to borrow another phrase from Einstein, something deeply hidden – a quantum theory in which there is no space and no time. And, in an intriguing twist, it appears our reality may be encoded in the underlying quantum theory using a method that computer scientists have discovered that allows for information to be encoded in the memory of quantum computers in an error-tolerant way. I do not think this is evidence we live in a simulation, but it does suggest our universe behaves like a quantum computer."


    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/black-holes-are-changing-our-understanding-of-everything/

    Was it Richard Dawkins who said “If you think you understand quantum physics, you don’t understand quantum physics”?
    Like, what the fuck does this even mean?

    "it appears our reality may be encoded in the underlying quantum theory using a method that computer scientists have discovered that allows for information to be encoded in the memory of quantum computers in an error-tolerant way"
  • Jim_MillerJim_Miller Posts: 2,998
    rcs1000 said: "By law, the US government (which is by a significant margin the biggest purchaser of prescription drugs in the world), is not allowed to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies."

    Actually, since Part D of Medicare was passed, there has been considerable negotiation between drug companies and medical providers."
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_Part_D
    The medical providers are acting, indirectly, as agents of the federal government.

    (Don't tell ydoethur, but Part D is a George W. Bush program.)

    There are similar relationships under Medicare, Part C: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_Advantage (Which covers many other things, as well as drugs.)

    And, rcs1000 is a little out of date, since President Biden has been negotiating prices for months: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/09/13/medicare-drug-companies-incentives-negotiations-price-controls/
    Although "price fixing" might be a more accurate description of what is happening. (McArdle doesn't approve, since she believes it will reduce innovation.)

    (For the record: Last year, I enrolled in Part D with Aetna -- which keeps urging me to use more of their benefits. For example, they want to enroll me in a "silver sneaker" program, which would pay for my visits to an exercise club. And they have increased by social security benefit, by a little.)


  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,263
    This appears to be ChatGPT imaginatively solving fiendish maths problems that have foiled mankind, so far


    https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/funsearch-making-new-discoveries-in-mathematical-sciences-using-large-language-models/

    Nature Paper (published today):

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06924-6

    Is this AGI? Or maybe a narrow form of ASI?

  • Leon said:

    "Microsoft is dropping manhattan project level resources on supercompute infrastructure for AGI

    Factoring in inflation,
    @Microsoft
    's >$50 Billion projected spend is greater than the $2.2 Billion the US spent to develop the atomic bomb"

    https://x.com/0xSigil/status/1735371100287320434?s=20

    And that is JUST Microsoft

    Imagine how much China is spending

    Putin speaks to AI version of himself in news conference
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-europe-67718139
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,307
    eek said:

    From another PB.

    Post-truth

    An interesting omission

    ITV has a new miniseries on the slate for 2024: Mr Bates vs The Post Office. It's a biopic of the Post Office scandal in which an IT fuck-up saw hundreds of employees wrongly accused of theft and fraud, a saga generally considered to be one of the worst miscarriages of justice in UK history.

    A quick look at the cast list shows they've found someone to play Paula Vennells, the CEO of Post Office Ltd at the time, but there's no-one playing Adam Crozier, who was CEO of Royal Mail Ltd.

    Crozier played a significant role in the real-life scandal, but looks to have been snipped out of the dramatisation. Maybe it was just too tricky to write the scene where Crozier left Royal Mail to become CEO of... ITV.

    The royal mail had very little to do with this Post Office scandal - so the likely change is because the writer wished to keep things simple...
    That is not correct. The Post Office was part of Royal Mail until 2012. Adam Crozier was CEO until 2010 and the scandal started from 2000 onwards. So on his watch and under his leadership. See more here - https://www.cyclefree.co.uk/what-are-ministers-for/.
  • mwadamsmwadams Posts: 3,590
    Leon said:

    This appears to be ChatGPT imaginatively solving fiendish maths problems that have foiled mankind, so far


    https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/funsearch-making-new-discoveries-in-mathematical-sciences-using-large-language-models/

    Nature Paper (published today):

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06924-6

    Is this AGI? Or maybe a narrow form of ASI?

    It's using the fact that an LLM is good at fuzzing - creating statistically similar but randomly modified versions of existing algorithms. And then using traditional solvers to verify which of the randomly generated algorithms are in fact correct.

    It's a very clever application of the nature of LLMs.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,263
    mwadams said:

    Leon said:

    This appears to be ChatGPT imaginatively solving fiendish maths problems that have foiled mankind, so far


    https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/funsearch-making-new-discoveries-in-mathematical-sciences-using-large-language-models/

    Nature Paper (published today):

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06924-6

    Is this AGI? Or maybe a narrow form of ASI?

    It's using the fact that an LLM is good at fuzzing - creating statistically similar but randomly modified versions of existing algorithms. And then using traditional solvers to verify which of the randomly generated algorithms are in fact correct.

    It's a very clever application of the nature of LLMs.
    "harnessing the hallucinations"

    Who is to say this isn't how human cognition works? We just do not know. Two black boxes confronting each other
  • CatMan said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    rcs1000 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Carnyx said:

    Nigelb said:

    Pro_Rata said:

    Meanwhile, in "it might be a good thing, but do you really think you're going to make this happen" news,

    EXC: Rishi Sunak's government considers crackdown on young teens' social media use 🧵

    - Possible legal ban on use of social media by under-16s
    - Consultation to begin as soon as January
    - Currently industry standard is for 13+ on Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook
    via twseal and me


    https://twitter.com/kitty_donaldson/status/1735325201372520899

    We're governed by an overbearing 'Tiger Dad'. No TikTok but extra maths. Fuck me, this will do wonders for the future Conservative vote.
    To be fair, I'm sure Rishi flosses.
    Not according to DuraAce - and his wife is a dentist.

    How many under-16's vote Tory? And zero under-18s too, except in Scotland and Wales. It's Granny, who doesn't like little Johnny using his mobey at the dinner table, who has the vote.

    They should be bloody grateful they don't have compulsory school uniforms with shorts with elastic belts with snake clasps.
    Some of us lefties also ban their kids from using phones at the dinner table. A deeply anti-social habit (the phone use, not the banning). Disrupts the discussion of Hegelian dialectics.
    Yep. And I wouldn't let my son watch Top Gear when he was an impressionable teenager. Hearts and minds. This is why we'll prevail in the end.
    I know. I kept my kids away from Top Gear because of the presenters' regrettably pro-EU views.
    Clarkson for Remain, that was a surprise. Totally off brand.
    In his pathetic desperation, David Duke, of Brexit, lasso'd Clarkson to the Remain cause a few days before the vote

    LOL
    Clarkson had been publicly pro-EU for quite some time. It certainly wasn't a last minute conversion.

    (That whole part of the Oxfordshire countryside is full of Remainers.)
    For sure. I think Hammond was the only Leaver on the team

    I am pointing to the moment when Duke David - or someone sent by him - went in to the BBC Top Gear studio and got an obviously awkward, embarrassed Clarkson to mumble pro-Remain comments

    At least that is how I remember it, maybe my imagination has turned it into a more fantastically cringe episode than it actually was
    Clarkson got fired from Top Gear in 2015
    "AI is like doing a jigsaw - a pointless way to pass the time until you die!"
  • BarnesianBarnesian Posts: 8,580
    edited December 2023
    Leon said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    What to make of this?


    A passage from a Brian Cox article on Black Holes. I do not wish to be uncharitable, but this sounds an awful lot like a long-winded way of saying "Christ, it's all mad, I haven't a clue"

    "This ‘dual’ picture – two radically different and yet equivalent views of reality – hints that space and time as we perceive them are not fundamental properties of the universe. It seems that they emerge from, to borrow another phrase from Einstein, something deeply hidden – a quantum theory in which there is no space and no time. And, in an intriguing twist, it appears our reality may be encoded in the underlying quantum theory using a method that computer scientists have discovered that allows for information to be encoded in the memory of quantum computers in an error-tolerant way. I do not think this is evidence we live in a simulation, but it does suggest our universe behaves like a quantum computer."


    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/black-holes-are-changing-our-understanding-of-everything/

    Was it Richard Dawkins who said “If you think you understand quantum physics, you don’t understand quantum physics”?
    Like, what the fuck does this even mean?

    "it appears our reality may be encoded in the underlying quantum theory using a method that computer scientists have discovered that allows for information to be encoded in the memory of quantum computers in an error-tolerant way"
    The statement suggests that the principles of quantum mechanics, which govern the behavior of subatomic particles, may also underlie the fundamental nature of reality itself. This idea is based on the observation that quantum mechanics allows for information to be stored in a way that is inherently error-tolerant, much like the way that our universe appears to be stable and consistent despite the constant interactions of its constituent particles.

    The development of error-tolerant quantum memory techniques has provided further support for this hypothesis. These techniques rely on the principles of quantum error correction, which enable the preservation of quantum information even in the presence of environmental disturbances. This suggests that the underlying structure of reality may be inherently robust and resistant to change, much like the error-tolerant nature of quantum memory.

    While this idea is still speculative, it has the potential to revolutionize our understanding of the universe. If our reality is indeed encoded in the principles of quantum mechanics, it could mean that we are living in a fundamentally quantum system, and that the laws of classical physics are just approximations that apply to macroscopic objects. This would have profound implications for our understanding of consciousness, the nature of time and space, and the possibility of alternative realities.

    EDIT: That's what Bard says, and he knows you know.
This discussion has been closed.