It's a fascinating account of religious diversity in all its glory. But it doesn't reveal why they decided to kidnap this particular unfortunate coroner. Had he done something to upset them?
My assumption is that there was some kind of historic grudge relating to some kind of family matter (e.g. a coroner's verdict with which the people involved disagreed) and they then sought out "help" from a dodgy cult leader. I assume the details of the underlying grudge involve other family members who have a right to privacy... and in any event it isn't actually terribly relevant.
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
It would require a nuclear guarantee from the UK and France. Not enough nukes to defeat Russia in an all out war, but enough for MAD.
But Europe definitely needs to get its act together, and part of that is by excluding, or threatening to exclude, bad actors like Hungary or Slovakia under Fico from NATO and the security apparatus of the EU as well as taking away their veto over economic sanctions. The US is going to become semi-detached from NATO even if Harris wins, and potentially actively hostile if Trump does - only mutual hostility to China would remain as common cause, and NATO is not the main geographical player in that theatre.
Any thoughts on simple investment strategies for a Trump win that could hedge against global trade wars?
Buy gold is the traditional one.
Though others are already doing so.
Physical gold and Bitcoin. And have a nice watch as you can use it to secure passage in difficult circumstances - need to get through a checkpoint, hand over the nice watch. I believe US special forces dropped behind enemy lines have been kitted out with rolexes for precisely that reason.
I know you're not a fan of bitcoin, but it's a heck of a lot easier to transfer your wealth out of a country fast on a USB stick or even using a brain wallet than it is to walk across a border with a suitcase full of gold bars. Many Ukrainians arriving in the UK couldn't access their banks but brought crypto with them on memory sticks. Worth keeping a few grand that way, just in case.
Gold is of course a better hedge, but less fungible.
Oh wait, OP said *trade* wars.
Well, if history repeats itself, the real wars will be following soon after.
I consider my real wealth to be what I can get out of the country fast, carrying nothing more than a duffel bag. Everything else is just numbers on a page.
History has proven time and time again that in hard times, everything else can and will be confiscated. Anyone investing in gold would do well to remember Executive Order 6102.
Our vending machines have gone contactless yesterday. Fortunately there is still the cash option as well for people.
Not for much longer, I’d venture. The pool table in my local is now card only. I like to imagine certain PBers discovering this in horror as they furkle in their leather pouches for useless metal!
Our local milk vending machines (supply your own bottle, they supply the milk) are contactless only. A month ago my card got declined (reached its limit for contactless). I could not use it until I went somewhere that allowed me to enter a pin.
Does this happen at the pool table too? I guess you could go to the bar and enter the pin there but I had no way to buy the milk at any of the three milk vending stations I tried.
#Firstworldproblem
Just use your phone/watch to pay – there's no limit to contactless that I have ever encountered.
I don't have watch and don't use my phone to pay for anything.
Our vending machines have gone contactless yesterday. Fortunately there is still the cash option as well for people.
Not for much longer, I’d venture. The pool table in my local is now card only. I like to imagine certain PBers discovering this in horror as they furkle in their leather pouches for useless metal!
Our local milk vending machines (supply your own bottle, they supply the milk) are contactless only. A month ago my card got declined (reached its limit for contactless). I could not use it until I went somewhere that allowed me to enter a pin.
Does this happen at the pool table too? I guess you could go to the bar and enter the pin there but I had no way to buy the milk at any of the three milk vending stations I tried.
#Firstworldproblem
Phones don't have that problem and don't require you to carry obsolete bits of plastic or even a wallet around with you anymore then.
Our vending machines have gone contactless yesterday. Fortunately there is still the cash option as well for people.
Not for much longer, I’d venture. The pool table in my local is now card only. I like to imagine certain PBers discovering this in horror as they furkle in their leather pouches for useless metal!
Our local milk vending machines
Cows?
Intrigued by how one gets the milk out if they've gone contactless!
Our vending machines have gone contactless yesterday. Fortunately there is still the cash option as well for people.
Not for much longer, I’d venture. The pool table in my local is now card only. I like to imagine certain PBers discovering this in horror as they furkle in their leather pouches for useless metal!
Our local milk vending machines (supply your own bottle, they supply the milk) are contactless only. A month ago my card got declined (reached its limit for contactless). I could not use it until I went somewhere that allowed me to enter a pin.
Does this happen at the pool table too? I guess you could go to the bar and enter the pin there but I had no way to buy the milk at any of the three milk vending stations I tried.
#Firstworldproblem
Just use your phone/watch to pay – there's no limit to contactless that I have ever encountered.
I don't have watch and don't use my phone to pay for anything.
Is there a reason why not? Its incredibly convenient and more secure and means I haven't had to carry my wallet with me for years.
Also helpful if you use loyalty cards (I know some do not) as you can keep them in the same wallet app so I can easily swipe between which cards I have to the one of the shop I'm in, and choose which card I'm paying with at the same time.
10y yields up by 25bp and the spread to US 10y yields has increased by 15bp, spread to France by 17bp. The UK does now have a slight risk premium on debt that we didn't have under Rishi and Hunt. So far it isn't as bad as Truss where the idiot premium was about 80bp but that didn't peak until the week after the original announcements.
I really think we're going to be facing the spectre of failed bond auctions over the next few years as the BoE continues to unwind QE and the government writes £150bn in additional debt that needs to be digested. Our debt interest bill is going to be unbearably high by the end of 2029 because we've got about £400bn in gilts to rollover from relatively low interest rates from pre-2020 that will be refinanced with at least 2pp more yield. I wouldn't be surprised if we end up paying more than £100bn per year in debt interest by the time of the next election.
Our vending machines have gone contactless yesterday. Fortunately there is still the cash option as well for people.
Not for much longer, I’d venture. The pool table in my local is now card only. I like to imagine certain PBers discovering this in horror as they furkle in their leather pouches for useless metal!
Our local milk vending machines
Cows?
Intrigued by how one gets the milk out if they've gone contactless!
Anyway before I disappear off into the ether again in the next day ir so, my US prediction is for the following states go be won by Trump in an easy EC victory for him
All of 2020 plus
Pennsylvania Michigan (Coin Toss) Wisconsin Georgia Nevada Arizona (Coin toss) Virginia (Perhaps) New Hampshire
Our vending machines have gone contactless yesterday. Fortunately there is still the cash option as well for people.
Not for much longer, I’d venture. The pool table in my local is now card only. I like to imagine certain PBers discovering this in horror as they furkle in their leather pouches for useless metal!
Our local milk vending machines (supply your own bottle, they supply the milk) are contactless only. A month ago my card got declined (reached its limit for contactless). I could not use it until I went somewhere that allowed me to enter a pin.
Does this happen at the pool table too? I guess you could go to the bar and enter the pin there but I had no way to buy the milk at any of the three milk vending stations I tried.
#Firstworldproblem
Phones don't have that problem and don't require you to carry obsolete bits of plastic or even a wallet around with you anymore then.
Costco fuel (Which is invariably the cheapest on the market due to their subscription model) requires a physical card.
Our vending machines have gone contactless yesterday. Fortunately there is still the cash option as well for people.
Not for much longer, I’d venture. The pool table in my local is now card only. I like to imagine certain PBers discovering this in horror as they furkle in their leather pouches for useless metal!
Our local milk vending machines (supply your own bottle, they supply the milk) are contactless only. A month ago my card got declined (reached its limit for contactless). I could not use it until I went somewhere that allowed me to enter a pin.
Does this happen at the pool table too? I guess you could go to the bar and enter the pin there but I had no way to buy the milk at any of the three milk vending stations I tried.
#Firstworldproblem
Phones don't have that problem and don't require you to carry obsolete bits of plastic or even a wallet around with you anymore then.
Costco fuel (Which is invariably the cheapest on the market due to their subscription model) requires a physical card.
I think all pay at pump does because you can only pre-authorise credit using the pin.
10y yields up by 25bp and the spread to US 10y yields has increased by 15bp, spread to France by 17bp. The UK does now have a slight risk premium on debt that we didn't have under Rishi and Hunt. So far it isn't as bad as Truss where the idiot premium was about 80bp but that didn't peak until the week after the original announcements.
I really think we're going to be facing the spectre of failed bond auctions over the next few years as the BoE continues to unwind QE and the government writes £150bn in additional debt that needs to be digested. Our debt interest bill is going to be unbearably high by the end of 2029 because we've got about £400bn in gilts to rollover from relatively low interest rates from pre-2020 that will be refinanced with at least 2pp more yield. I wouldn't be surprised if we end up paying more than £100bn per year in debt interest by the time of the next election.
It seems like the direct opposite of the Truss budget. She thought tax cuts would generate sufficient economic growth to pay for themselves. Reeves thinks that tax rises and borrowing to pay for additional public expenditure will do the same.
10y yields up by 25bp and the spread to US 10y yields has increased by 15bp, spread to France by 17bp. The UK does now have a slight risk premium on debt that we didn't have under Rishi and Hunt. So far it isn't as bad as Truss where the idiot premium was about 80bp but that didn't peak until the week after the original announcements.
I really think we're going to be facing the spectre of failed bond auctions over the next few years as the BoE continues to unwind QE and the government writes £150bn in additional debt that needs to be digested. Our debt interest bill is going to be unbearably high by the end of 2029 because we've got about £400bn in gilts to rollover from relatively low interest rates from pre-2020 that will be refinanced with at least 2pp more yield. I wouldn't be surprised if we end up paying more than £100bn per year in debt interest by the time of the next election.
Question - why does the yield curve peak at 30 years then go down at 50 ?
I can understand why it goes down for 3 - 5 years (Expectation of lowering interest rates), heads back up (Long term uncertainty) to 30 years but the drop from 30 to 50 ?
Imagine what she'd have done if the black hole actually existed!
A lot of comments are understandably partisan, but the independent organisations including the OBR, IFS, and Resolution Foundation are all singularly critical of the Autum Statement
Steady on. The piece in today's Times by the director of the IFS reads like at least one and a half cheers;
...credit where it’s due. The budget may only have done enough to keep public investment stable as a fraction of national income, but that’s better than the sharp fall pencilled in by Jeremy Hunt. The economic benefits will arrive years, if not decades, down the road. Subject to the money being spent well, this is an encouraging prioritisation of long-term growth...
..As far as the fiscal framework is concerned, targeting a current budget balance in 2029-30 for the next couple of years and then working to a rolling three-year target — ie, looking for a current balance three years out — makes a lot of sense.
We should also give credit for making a big choice: to raise taxes in order to support public services...
Compared with the review of the March 2024 budget, it's positively glowing;
One thing is for certain. Whoever is chancellor after the next election, they are going to have one heck of a difficult circle to square. They will inherit historically high taxes, struggling public services, a big debt interest bill, the highest debt in 60 years, and poor growth. The first post-election budget and spending review will contain some nasty surprises.
Yes, we're still in "somewhat less bad than the other lot" territory. An arresting image from Sam Freedman this morning;
The image that kept occurring to me as I read through the details of the budget was of an Indiana Jones style adventurer stuck in a booby-trapped cave with the walls closing in.
Yesterday’s announcements were the equivalent of slowing down the mechanism using a strategically placed rock. Imminent death is averted but only for so long.
Some more growth has got to come from somewhere, probably by the 2027 spending review. Planning reform is the obvious lever to pull. Fail with that and they, and we, are very deep in the doodoo.
The signs are not good, so far. There's stuff they could already have done, without primary legislation.
Our vending machines have gone contactless yesterday. Fortunately there is still the cash option as well for people.
Not for much longer, I’d venture. The pool table in my local is now card only. I like to imagine certain PBers discovering this in horror as they furkle in their leather pouches for useless metal!
Our local milk vending machines (supply your own bottle, they supply the milk) are contactless only. A month ago my card got declined (reached its limit for contactless). I could not use it until I went somewhere that allowed me to enter a pin.
Does this happen at the pool table too? I guess you could go to the bar and enter the pin there but I had no way to buy the milk at any of the three milk vending stations I tried.
#Firstworldproblem
Phones don't have that problem and don't require you to carry obsolete bits of plastic or even a wallet around with you anymore then.
Costco fuel (Which is invariably the cheapest on the market due to their subscription model) requires a physical card.
I think all pay at pump does because you can only pre-authorise credit using the pin.
10y yields up by 25bp and the spread to US 10y yields has increased by 15bp, spread to France by 17bp. The UK does now have a slight risk premium on debt that we didn't have under Rishi and Hunt. So far it isn't as bad as Truss where the idiot premium was about 80bp but that didn't peak until the week after the original announcements.
I really think we're going to be facing the spectre of failed bond auctions over the next few years as the BoE continues to unwind QE and the government writes £150bn in additional debt that needs to be digested. Our debt interest bill is going to be unbearably high by the end of 2029 because we've got about £400bn in gilts to rollover from relatively low interest rates from pre-2020 that will be refinanced with at least 2pp more yield. I wouldn't be surprised if we end up paying more than £100bn per year in debt interest by the time of the next election.
Question - why does the yield curve peak at 30 years then go down at 50 ?
I can understand why it goes down for 3 - 5 years (Expectation of lowering interest rates), heads back up (Long term uncertainty) to 30 years but the drop from 30 to 50 ?
We discussed this before here between ourselves and others. We need more information on why people are voting Trump. I asked the question and got a lot of helpful replies, but none really totally convinced me. The idea that 50% of Americans are idiots is just daft. So I would really like some more informed feedback and shutting down people who give that is not helpful.
I do think @Sandpit gives a lot of useful stuff and people don't try and shut him down, which is good.
*The one minor point in defence of @Jossiasjessop is that particular poster does post a lot of conspiracy stuff and does link to a lot of exceedingly dodgy stuff. You might have noticed that he referred to that in one of his posts, although none appeared in that exchange. The links seemed straight forward. I would probably have done the same as @JosiasJessop , but it would have been without justification in this instant.
Fair enough. I am a bit sensitive to the pile-ons on any poster who gives a "pro-Trump" angle because I think it's really important to see it from the PoV of an American swing voter and to try to understand that.
I've got no problem with a pro-Trump angle.
I do have a problem with someone insane enough to support Trump and Ukraine, which seems an utterly contradictory position - especially when their 'explanations' are bullshit.
If you gave *any* angle on here, you can expect to get challenged on it.
10y yields up by 25bp and the spread to US 10y yields has increased by 15bp, spread to France by 17bp. The UK does now have a slight risk premium on debt that we didn't have under Rishi and Hunt. So far it isn't as bad as Truss where the idiot premium was about 80bp but that didn't peak until the week after the original announcements.
I really think we're going to be facing the spectre of failed bond auctions over the next few years as the BoE continues to unwind QE and the government writes £150bn in additional debt that needs to be digested. Our debt interest bill is going to be unbearably high by the end of 2029 because we've got about £400bn in gilts to rollover from relatively low interest rates from pre-2020 that will be refinanced with at least 2pp more yield. I wouldn't be surprised if we end up paying more than £100bn per year in debt interest by the time of the next election.
Question - why does the yield curve peak at 30 years then go down at 50 ?
I can understand why it goes down for 3 - 5 years (Expectation of lowering interest rates), heads back up (Long term uncertainty) to 30 years but the drop from 30 to 50 ?
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
You are right. I think social care is an issue a bit like "growth" that we have been talking about, or reforming the tax system.
We all know these are major problems. Few people have a good idea of exactly how to fix those issues. Even fewer are willing to stake the political capital to actually tackle them . So nothing happens from parliament to parliament.
And frankly the UK public would almost certainly reject a party that had good ideas about these issues. Too big a change, too scary, too risky, so keep patching and tweaking the broken systems.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.
It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.
Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.
IHT seems to evoke more emotion than any other tax, which is why there are so many reliefs. Politically extremely difficult.
Yep, although I completely disagree with @hyufd on IHT and I am more in line with @BartholomewRoberts there is no doubting @HYUFD views represent a huge constituency of voters and you have to respect that to some extent.
I do think the pension pot change is right as it was an anomaly, but you can't ignore that it will bring into IHT an awful lot of people who previously were nowhere near it.
It'll trigger behavioural change though. People will take their pensions rather than keeping hold of them. There's a lot to be said for encouraging older people to spend the money and assets they have. Ideally on having a good time rather than social care, but realistically both.
The retired are such a huge proportion of the population now that we rely heavily on them for consumer spending. That's the only way they pay meaningful tax - through VAT - while keeping the economy afloat.
The maths is brutal. You have an ever expanding dependent population with ever increasing health and social care needs, coupled with an ever-decreasing working age population that is only going to shrink further now birth rates have sunk so low (even with significant immigration). So unless the retired either keep working much longer or spend spend spend, the tax on working age people has to rise inexorably simply for public services to stand still.
I agree with all of that except 'It'll trigger behavioural change'. It won't. It is the one time that won't because you don't know when you are going to die. You need the pot to live on so you have to keep it. You won't blow it because otherwise you have nothing to live on. If you remove it and keep it, it still attracts IHT when you die. You might distribute some funds before you die, but again what you have to distribute is unchanged.
It will likely see a further increase in annuities that had become less popular under ultra low interest rates.
Hobson's choice, just means a different set of grifters get your hard earned cash unless you win lottery and live to 100.
Charlie Kirk is upset that Republican women may “undermine their husbands” and secretly vote for Harris while telling their husbands they voted for Trump, even though the husband “works his tail off to make sure that she can have a nice life.” https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1851815354009342217
Seems to be a GOP thing. Here's the Fox News host who just married the researcher he had an affair with, while married to his first wife.
Jesse: if i found out my wife secretly voted for harris, "that's the same thing as having an affair... that violates the sanctity of our marriage... that would be D Day" https://x.com/cynicalzoomer/status/1851744214071332869
The United States really is just turning into Iran with more guns and worse food, isn't it.
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
Leon has received the ban hammer a few nights back.
Don't know if it is Temp or not. It was all somewhat tetchy here at the time.
He went the full racist; Britain for the white British.
Good riddance IMO. He's entertaining, but I don't think that excuses his views.
I don't think he was saying that and, even if he was, I don't think such views should lead to a banning unless it was accompanied by incitement to violence or raw hate.
But, I have a higher spectrum of tolerance for speech (admittedly I can respond very aggressively and rudely to them but I only advocate banning where they are consistently personally abusive or nasty)
You have a higher spectrum of tolerance for speech, except at the end of the last thread, where you told me to 'stop it'.
What Leon said was absolutely racist, and if you cannot see that, you are probably in dire need of some DEI training.
Finally, I never called for Leon to get banned. All I'm saying is that now he is banned; good riddance. You are, of course, entitled to your own view.
Our vending machines have gone contactless yesterday. Fortunately there is still the cash option as well for people.
Not for much longer, I’d venture. The pool table in my local is now card only. I like to imagine certain PBers discovering this in horror as they furkle in their leather pouches for useless metal!
Our local milk vending machines (supply your own bottle, they supply the milk) are contactless only. A month ago my card got declined (reached its limit for contactless). I could not use it until I went somewhere that allowed me to enter a pin.
Does this happen at the pool table too? I guess you could go to the bar and enter the pin there but I had no way to buy the milk at any of the three milk vending stations I tried.
#Firstworldproblem
Just use your phone/watch to pay – there's no limit to contactless that I have ever encountered.
I don't have watch and don't use my phone to pay for anything.
Hence why you are running into problems needlessly.
Our vending machines have gone contactless yesterday. Fortunately there is still the cash option as well for people.
Not for much longer, I’d venture. The pool table in my local is now card only. I like to imagine certain PBers discovering this in horror as they furkle in their leather pouches for useless metal!
Our local milk vending machines (supply your own bottle, they supply the milk) are contactless only. A month ago my card got declined (reached its limit for contactless). I could not use it until I went somewhere that allowed me to enter a pin.
Does this happen at the pool table too? I guess you could go to the bar and enter the pin there but I had no way to buy the milk at any of the three milk vending stations I tried.
#Firstworldproblem
Phones don't have that problem and don't require you to carry obsolete bits of plastic or even a wallet around with you anymore then.
Costco fuel (Which is invariably the cheapest on the market due to their subscription model) requires a physical card.
I think all pay at pump does because you can only pre-authorise credit using the pin.
Anyway before I disappear off into the ether again in the next day ir so, my US prediction is for the following states go be won by Trump in an easy EC victory for him
All of 2020 plus
Pennsylvania Michigan (Coin Toss) Wisconsin Georgia Nevada Arizona (Coin toss) Virginia (Perhaps) New Hampshire
Our vending machines have gone contactless yesterday. Fortunately there is still the cash option as well for people.
Not for much longer, I’d venture. The pool table in my local is now card only. I like to imagine certain PBers discovering this in horror as they furkle in their leather pouches for useless metal!
Our local milk vending machines (supply your own bottle, they supply the milk) are contactless only. A month ago my card got declined (reached its limit for contactless). I could not use it until I went somewhere that allowed me to enter a pin.
Does this happen at the pool table too? I guess you could go to the bar and enter the pin there but I had no way to buy the milk at any of the three milk vending stations I tried.
#Firstworldproblem
Just use your phone/watch to pay – there's no limit to contactless that I have ever encountered.
I don't have watch and don't use my phone to pay for anything.
Is there a reason why not? Its incredibly convenient and more secure and means I haven't had to carry my wallet with me for years.
Also helpful if you use loyalty cards (I know some do not) as you can keep them in the same wallet app so I can easily swipe between which cards I have to the one of the shop I'm in, and choose which card I'm paying with at the same time.
It really is crackers how pointlessly old-school some PBers are. I imagine many of them in grey cardigans and driving gloves, with little leather purses in which they keep their 'pound coins'.
Putting your father to bed at 10:30pm, for him to be up dressed and ready for the next day 1hr later. A smart guy trying to help , he found and took his morning medication. Essentially double dosing warfarin. Dangerous.
He refused to return to bed, and decided to sit the whole night out in his wide awake in his chair. Heartbreaking.
This was not the night he decided to help out, fell down the stairs, broke his shoulder and landed himself in hospital for three months. The interesting thing is that he somehow managed to get back to bed. We only only discovered the massive bruise when he couldn’t get out of bed.
I assure you that this kind of dementia care is beyond the capability of most families. A problem for society as a whole to solve.
Why should the whole of society have responsibility for it?
This might sound harsh but we have a principle here that we deify length of life regardless of quality or cost.
Dementia is a very cruel fate and I wouldn't wish it on anyone but what sort of sense does it make to bankrupt ourselves to keep someone in that condition.
Because like much of life it’s primarily down to luck. So we all carry the burden of ill fortune and share the benefits of good fortune.
My thesis is that individuals should insure and manage more of that risk themselves, and think sometimes throwing it onto "society" is a way for some - not you - getting away from responsibilities for elderly parents or relatives that they'd rather not have to deal with.
Nah. That’s a cold bleak future. We’re all in it together. I have a responsibility to you.
You could buy me a pint, I suppose.
Look, I'm not saying dog eat dog. But I think we have an absurd level of overcommitment to very expensive chronic and morbid conditions atm that are overly socialised and not ensured enough.
Property, pensions and houses should be used to part fund them. As Theresa May argued.
We all need to contribute and share the burden, much as we do with the lottery of cancer.
We need to solve cancer.
That disease is cruel and fucking sick. Took a friend of mine 3 months ago who was my age (42 years old) and mother to a six year old boy.
Haven't cried that much on the way home from a funeral ever.
Cruel disease. I’m sorry. We need to solve cancer.
Motor Neurone Disease is one I want to see gone. Or, at least, treatable. Took our daughter ten years ago, at 49.
Heartbreaking. I’m sorry. Let’s see that one gone too.
Huntington's Disease is another really distressing one - agonisingly painful and degenerative.
A friend (a professor of biochemistry) has a cure for it which works 100% of the time, but unfortunately can't find the funds to get it through the testing process. He often gets emails from people who are suffering from it and beg him to help them but without the relevant approvals there is nothing he can do. They break his heart.
Do you have a link to more information?
I had several relatives who had Huntington's, and went through the genetic counsellng process. It stopped one generation back in my case.
It's using zinc fingers. There's some info online if you use Google - Huntington's Disease and zinc fingers that is. It might as well be in Chinese as far as I'm concerned but sounds convincing when it's described.
Sounds unlikely that he has an infallible cure as you describe, but if so, he should contact these guys... The US biotech which has been working on zinc fingers for three decades (and which acquired the UK outfit doing the same). https://www.sangamo.com I think they have had a Huntingdon's program of some kind for well over a decade ?
Anyway before I disappear off into the ether again in the next day ir so, my US prediction is for the following states go be won by Trump in an easy EC victory for him
All of 2020 plus
Pennsylvania Michigan (Coin Toss) Wisconsin Georgia Nevada Arizona (Coin toss) Virginia (Perhaps) New Hampshire
Why New Hampshire?
Because he'll run her very close there. I think NJ might ge close enough to raise some eyebrows too
IFS - "I am willing to bet a substantial sum that day-to-day public service spending will in fact increase more quickly than supposedly planned after next year. 1.3% a year overall would almost certainly mean real terms cuts for some departments. It would be odd to increase spending rapidly only to start cutting back again in subsequent years.
I’m afraid this looks like the same silly games playing as we got used to with the last lot. Pencil in implausibly low spending increases for the future in order to make the fiscal arithmetic balance. It sounds like it was hard enough to get agreement from departmental ministers to relatively generous settlements in the short term. When it comes to settling with departments for the period after 2025-26 keeping within that 1.3% envelope will be extremely challenging. To put it mildly ….
[Reeves] is meeting her borrowing target only by repeating the same silly manoeuvres as her predecessors used to make it look as if the books will balance. Let’s pretend we’ll increase fuel duties next time, but not do it this year. Let’s pretend that we’ll really rein in spending in a couple of years after splurging this year. That’s not going to happen. The spending plans will not survive contact with her cabinet colleagues."
Clifnotes - Much more tax rises ahead as we aren't getting it from growth....
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
Leon has received the ban hammer a few nights back.
Don't know if it is Temp or not. It was all somewhat tetchy here at the time.
He went the full racist; Britain for the white British.
Good riddance IMO. He's entertaining, but I don't think that excuses his views.
I don't think he was saying that and, even if he was, I don't think such views should lead to a banning unless it was accompanied by incitement to violence or raw hate.
But, I have a higher spectrum of tolerance for speech (admittedly I can respond very aggressively and rudely to them but I only advocate banning where they are consistently personally abusive or nasty)
You have a higher spectrum of tolerance for speech, except at the end of the last thread, where you told me to 'stop it'.
What Leon said was absolutely racist, and if you cannot see that, you are probably in dire need of some DEI training.
Finally, I never called for Leon to get banned. All I'm saying is that now he is banned; good riddance. You are, of course, entitled to your own view.
I have no real opinion on Leon being banned. I don't really like reading some of what he says eg when he says my kids are less welcome than white ones, but to be honest I scroll past him usually because he's such a tiresome attention whore. But at the end of the day I just turn up here occasionally, while TSE devotes considerable energy to the site and keeps it running. If he can't be bothered having to deal with a guy who insults him and his family I am totally OK with him telling Leon to do one. BTW people who think Leon isn't a racist need to really have a think.
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
It would require a nuclear guarantee from the UK and France. Not enough nukes to defeat Russia in an all out war, but enough for MAD.
But Europe definitely needs to get its act together, and part of that is by excluding, or threatening to exclude, bad actors like Hungary or Slovakia under Fico from NATO and the security apparatus of the EU as well as taking away their veto over economic sanctions. The US is going to become semi-detached from NATO even if Harris wins, and potentially actively hostile if Trump does - only mutual hostility to China would remain as common cause, and NATO is not the main geographical player in that theatre.
Any thoughts on simple investment strategies for a Trump win that could hedge against global trade wars?
Buy gold is the traditional one.
Though others are already doing so.
Physical gold and Bitcoin. And have a nice watch as you can use it to secure passage in difficult circumstances - need to get through a checkpoint, hand over the nice watch. I believe US special forces dropped behind enemy lines have been kitted out with rolexes for precisely that reason.
I know you're not a fan of bitcoin, but it's a heck of a lot easier to transfer your wealth out of a country fast on a USB stick or even using a brain wallet than it is to walk across a border with a suitcase full of gold bars. Many Ukrainians arriving in the UK couldn't access their banks but brought crypto with them on memory sticks. Worth keeping a few grand that way, just in case.
Gold is of course a better hedge, but less fungible.
Oh wait, OP said *trade* wars.
Well, if history repeats itself, the real wars will be following soon after.
I consider my real wealth to be what I can get out of the country fast, carrying nothing more than a duffel bag. Everything else is just numbers on a page.
History has proven time and time again that in hard times, everything else can and will be confiscated. Anyone investing in gold would do well to remember Executive Order 6102.
If things really go to shit gold has the added advantage of being able to be melted down for bullets. All self respecting survivalists should have a muzzle loader, bullet moulds and a decent supply of powder.
One of the things that has been missed with no fuel duty increase this year, motorists are getting hammered elsewhere with doubling of VED on ICE cars and company car tax increases.
Anyway before I disappear off into the ether again in the next day ir so, my US prediction is for the following states go be won by Trump in an easy EC victory for him
All of 2020 plus
Pennsylvania Michigan (Coin Toss) Wisconsin Georgia Nevada Arizona (Coin toss) Virginia (Perhaps) New Hampshire
Anyway before I disappear off into the ether again in the next day ir so, my US prediction is for the following states go be won by Trump in an easy EC victory for him
All of 2020 plus
Pennsylvania Michigan (Coin Toss) Wisconsin Georgia Nevada Arizona (Coin toss) Virginia (Perhaps) New Hampshire
Why New Hampshire?
Because he'll run her very close there. I think NJ might ge close enough to raise some eyebrows too
You clearly think the polls are (yet again) seriously understating the Trump vote.
One of the things that has been missed with no fuel duty increase this year, motorists are getting hammered elsewhere with doubling of VED on ICE cars.
The main hammering in recent years has been the absurd rise in insurance premiums. I’m now paying £1,600 for a car worth about 15k. Having recently had an insurance claim for theft (it was then found again) and seen the sharp practices of the repair garages that do insurance work, I am starting to understand why.
Early voting data only means much if you have a recent set of similar data to compare it with. Given the obvious big shift in the willingness of Republicans to vote early, compared with last time around, that just isn't available for this election.
It's just as likely to be as misleading as the early leads on election night in 2020, which got everyone excited for a few states.
Obviously, if you had the choice, you'd want to be in the lead at this point. But it certainly doesn't determine the result.
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
It would require a nuclear guarantee from the UK and France. Not enough nukes to defeat Russia in an all out war, but enough for MAD.
But Europe definitely needs to get its act together, and part of that is by excluding, or threatening to exclude, bad actors like Hungary or Slovakia under Fico from NATO and the security apparatus of the EU as well as taking away their veto over economic sanctions. The US is going to become semi-detached from NATO even if Harris wins, and potentially actively hostile if Trump does - only mutual hostility to China would remain as common cause, and NATO is not the main geographical player in that theatre.
Any thoughts on simple investment strategies for a Trump win that could hedge against global trade wars?
Buy gold is the traditional one.
Though others are already doing so.
Physical gold and Bitcoin. And have a nice watch as you can use it to secure passage in difficult circumstances - need to get through a checkpoint, hand over the nice watch. I believe US special forces dropped behind enemy lines have been kitted out with rolexes for precisely that reason.
I know you're not a fan of bitcoin, but it's a heck of a lot easier to transfer your wealth out of a country fast on a USB stick or even using a brain wallet than it is to walk across a border with a suitcase full of gold bars. Many Ukrainians arriving in the UK couldn't access their banks but brought crypto with them on memory sticks. Worth keeping a few grand that way, just in case.
Gold is of course a better hedge, but less fungible.
Oh wait, OP said *trade* wars.
Well, if history repeats itself, the real wars will be following soon after.
I consider my real wealth to be what I can get out of the country fast, carrying nothing more than a duffel bag. Everything else is just numbers on a page.
History has proven time and time again that in hard times, everything else can and will be confiscated. Anyone investing in gold would do well to remember Executive Order 6102.
One of the things that has been missed with no fuel duty increase this year, motorists are getting hammered elsewhere with doubling of VED on ICE cars.
The main hammering in recent years has been the absurd rise in insurance premiums. I’m now paying £1,600 for a car worth about 15k. Having recently had an insurance claim for theft (it was then found again) and seen the sharp practices of the repair garages that do insurance work, I am starting to understand why.
If I remember isn't part of that is constant increases in insurance taxes, plus car companies have made new cars stupidly expensive to repair e.g. your airbag goes off, it can be a big job to sort it all out. Its the Apple-ification of cars.
Thus, loads of cars get written off as economically unviable to repair, and we all get hammered for the insurance companies paying out. Oh and big increase in car thefts. For Range Rovers people couldn't even get insured, so JLR had to start offering their own insurance.
Charlie Kirk is upset that Republican women may “undermine their husbands” and secretly vote for Harris while telling their husbands they voted for Trump, even though the husband “works his tail off to make sure that she can have a nice life.” https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1851815354009342217
Seems to be a GOP thing. Here's the Fox News host who just married the researcher he had an affair with, while married to his first wife.
Jesse: if i found out my wife secretly voted for harris, "that's the same thing as having an affair... that violates the sanctity of our marriage... that would be D Day" https://x.com/cynicalzoomer/status/1851744214071332869
The United States really is just turning into Iran with more guns and worse food, isn't it.
Anyway before I disappear off into the ether again in the next day ir so, my US prediction is for the following states go be won by Trump in an easy EC victory for him
All of 2020 plus
Pennsylvania Michigan (Coin Toss) Wisconsin Georgia Nevada Arizona (Coin toss) Virginia (Perhaps) New Hampshire
Why New Hampshire?
Because he'll run her very close there. I think NJ might ge close enough to raise some eyebrows too
You clearly think the polls are (yet again) seriously understating the Trump vote.
Is that just a hunch or something more?
A hunch. Harris is a really poor candidate and a severe anchor on the Dems imo, and yes I think Trump understating is again a factor. I cannot provide anything more than feeling for that but not long till we find out.
Charlie Kirk is upset that Republican women may “undermine their husbands” and secretly vote for Harris while telling their husbands they voted for Trump, even though the husband “works his tail off to make sure that she can have a nice life.” https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1851815354009342217
Seems to be a GOP thing. Here's the Fox News host who just married the researcher he had an affair with, while married to his first wife.
Jesse: if i found out my wife secretly voted for harris, "that's the same thing as having an affair... that violates the sanctity of our marriage... that would be D Day" https://x.com/cynicalzoomer/status/1851744214071332869
The United States really is just turning into Iran with more guns and worse food, isn't it.
It's Shi'ite.
Even if Harris wins, the ongoing division means that the outlook for America isn't Sunni.
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
Leon has received the ban hammer a few nights back.
Don't know if it is Temp or not. It was all somewhat tetchy here at the time.
He went the full racist; Britain for the white British.
Good riddance IMO. He's entertaining, but I don't think that excuses his views.
I don't think he was saying that and, even if he was, I don't think such views should lead to a banning unless it was accompanied by incitement to violence or raw hate.
But, I have a higher spectrum of tolerance for speech (admittedly I can respond very aggressively and rudely to them but I only advocate banning where they are consistently personally abusive or nasty)
He literally said that the UK should promote/increase the number of "white babies".
Great Replacement and "14 words" are all that's left from there....
But, that's your extrapolation of what you thought he might subsequently say and mean and not what he actually said.
Just saying we should increase the number of white babies isn't an intrinsically and fundamentally unreasonable thing to say.
The implication is "increase the proportion of white babies", which is.
I have to say I am with @Casino_Royale on this (twice in one day, might have to lie down). See my earlier post.
I was one of the people arguing with @leon. He was putting a point of view that I totally disagreed with and we argued, but it was civilised. There was no abuse. He put an argument. He didn't just come out with racist abuse. His argument to my mind is racist but you have to argue against it not ban it. It is not as if he was chanting racist stuff. He was just putting an argument forward.
Now my only reservation was after the fact when @TheScreamingEagles commented upon the effect it had on him when thinking of his daughter. Something I hadn't considered being white.
Leon's comment is stupid for a whole host of reasons. Stupid, and racist.
As I asked @Andy_JS when he said the comment wasn't racist: my wife is olive-skinned. Is she 'white'? My son is pasty in winter, but tans olive in summer. Is he 'white'? My wife is a joint Turkish/British citizen. Is she 'British'? My son only has a UK passport. Is he 'British'?
People who throw around this sort of stuff are either totally thick, racist, or both.
For many of us, this sort of talk matters, as it means loved ones are not seen as being equal, for dint of skin colour or whatever.
Charlie Kirk is upset that Republican women may “undermine their husbands” and secretly vote for Harris while telling their husbands they voted for Trump, even though the husband “works his tail off to make sure that she can have a nice life.” https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1851815354009342217
Seems to be a GOP thing. Here's the Fox News host who just married the researcher he had an affair with, while married to his first wife.
Jesse: if i found out my wife secretly voted for harris, "that's the same thing as having an affair... that violates the sanctity of our marriage... that would be D Day" https://x.com/cynicalzoomer/status/1851744214071332869
The United States really is just turning into Iran with more guns and worse food, isn't it.
We discussed this before here between ourselves and others. We need more information on why people are voting Trump. I asked the question and got a lot of helpful replies, but none really totally convinced me. The idea that 50% of Americans are idiots is just daft. So I would really like some more informed feedback and shutting down people who give that is not helpful.
I do think @Sandpit gives a lot of useful stuff and people don't try and shut him down, which is good.
*The one minor point in defence of @Jossiasjessop is that particular poster does post a lot of conspiracy stuff and does link to a lot of exceedingly dodgy stuff. You might have noticed that he referred to that in one of his posts, although none appeared in that exchange. The links seemed straight forward. I would probably have done the same as @JosiasJessop , but it would have been without justification in this instant.
Fair enough. I am a bit sensitive to the pile-ons on any poster who gives a "pro-Trump" angle because I think it's really important to see it from the PoV of an American swing voter and to try to understand that.
I've got no problem with a pro-Trump angle.
I do have a problem with someone insane enough to support Trump and Ukraine, which seems an utterly contradictory position - especially when their 'explanations' are bullshit.
If you gave *any* angle on here, you can expect to get challenged on it.
To be honest I think you are very tolerant to continue the discussion with her. You might have noticed whenever she posts conspiracy stuff or links to twitter accounts that are (or link to) alt-right, QAnon or racist stuff I respond to her. And only then.
Charlie Kirk is upset that Republican women may “undermine their husbands” and secretly vote for Harris while telling their husbands they voted for Trump, even though the husband “works his tail off to make sure that she can have a nice life.” https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1851815354009342217
Seems to be a GOP thing. Here's the Fox News host who just married the researcher he had an affair with, while married to his first wife.
Jesse: if i found out my wife secretly voted for harris, "that's the same thing as having an affair... that violates the sanctity of our marriage... that would be D Day" https://x.com/cynicalzoomer/status/1851744214071332869
The United States really is just turning into Iran with more guns and worse food, isn't it.
Putting your father to bed at 10:30pm, for him to be up dressed and ready for the next day 1hr later. A smart guy trying to help , he found and took his morning medication. Essentially double dosing warfarin. Dangerous.
He refused to return to bed, and decided to sit the whole night out in his wide awake in his chair. Heartbreaking.
This was not the night he decided to help out, fell down the stairs, broke his shoulder and landed himself in hospital for three months. The interesting thing is that he somehow managed to get back to bed. We only only discovered the massive bruise when he couldn’t get out of bed.
I assure you that this kind of dementia care is beyond the capability of most families. A problem for society as a whole to solve.
Why should the whole of society have responsibility for it?
This might sound harsh but we have a principle here that we deify length of life regardless of quality or cost.
Dementia is a very cruel fate and I wouldn't wish it on anyone but what sort of sense does it make to bankrupt ourselves to keep someone in that condition.
Because like much of life it’s primarily down to luck. So we all carry the burden of ill fortune and share the benefits of good fortune.
My thesis is that individuals should insure and manage more of that risk themselves, and think sometimes throwing it onto "society" is a way for some - not you - getting away from responsibilities for elderly parents or relatives that they'd rather not have to deal with.
Nah. That’s a cold bleak future. We’re all in it together. I have a responsibility to you.
You could buy me a pint, I suppose.
Look, I'm not saying dog eat dog. But I think we have an absurd level of overcommitment to very expensive chronic and morbid conditions atm that are overly socialised and not ensured enough.
Property, pensions and houses should be used to part fund them. As Theresa May argued.
We all need to contribute and share the burden, much as we do with the lottery of cancer.
We need to solve cancer.
That disease is cruel and fucking sick. Took a friend of mine 3 months ago who was my age (42 years old) and mother to a six year old boy.
Haven't cried that much on the way home from a funeral ever.
Cruel disease. I’m sorry. We need to solve cancer.
Motor Neurone Disease is one I want to see gone. Or, at least, treatable. Took our daughter ten years ago, at 49.
Heartbreaking. I’m sorry. Let’s see that one gone too.
Huntington's Disease is another really distressing one - agonisingly painful and degenerative.
A friend (a professor of biochemistry) has a cure for it which works 100% of the time, but unfortunately can't find the funds to get it through the testing process. He often gets emails from people who are suffering from it and beg him to help them but without the relevant approvals there is nothing he can do. They break his heart.
Can he not find a way of getting it approved somewhere like Mexico, which is well known for being a lot easier than the US and attracts medical tourists for ‘unapproved’ treatments?
Someone crunched the Employer NI figures and came up with the following figures (based on everyone earning £30k but it doesn't actually matter that much it's the end sums that really matter).
😃 If you employ 2 people at a combined salary of £60k pa, you will be BETTER OFF by £768
😃 If you employ 3 people at a combined salary of £90k pa, you will be BETTER OFF by £2,903
😃 If you employ 5 people at a combined salary of £150k pa, you will be BETTER OFF by £1,171
😃 If you employ 6 people at a combined salary of £180k pa, you will be BETTER OFF by £305
😥 It is only when you get to 7 employees at a combined salary of £210k pa that you start to feel the increase - now you are £561 WORSE OFF.
Anyway before I disappear off into the ether again in the next day ir so, my US prediction is for the following states go be won by Trump in an easy EC victory for him
All of 2020 plus
Pennsylvania Michigan (Coin Toss) Wisconsin Georgia Nevada Arizona (Coin toss) Virginia (Perhaps) New Hampshire
Why New Hampshire?
Because he'll run her very close there. I think NJ might ge close enough to raise some eyebrows too
You clearly think the polls are (yet again) seriously understating the Trump vote.
Is that just a hunch or something more?
By his own admission, this poster has a poor record at predictions. DYOR etc etc.
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
Leon has received the ban hammer a few nights back.
Don't know if it is Temp or not. It was all somewhat tetchy here at the time.
He went the full racist; Britain for the white British.
Good riddance IMO. He's entertaining, but I don't think that excuses his views.
I don't think he was saying that and, even if he was, I don't think such views should lead to a banning unless it was accompanied by incitement to violence or raw hate.
But, I have a higher spectrum of tolerance for speech (admittedly I can respond very aggressively and rudely to them but I only advocate banning where they are consistently personally abusive or nasty)
He literally said that the UK should promote/increase the number of "white babies".
Great Replacement and "14 words" are all that's left from there....
But, that's your extrapolation of what you thought he might subsequently say and mean and not what he actually said.
Just saying we should increase the number of white babies isn't an intrinsically and fundamentally unreasonable thing to say.
The implication is "increase the proportion of white babies", which is.
I have to say I am with @Casino_Royale on this (twice in one day, might have to lie down). See my earlier post.
I was one of the people arguing with @leon. He was putting a point of view that I totally disagreed with and we argued, but it was civilised. There was no abuse. He put an argument. He didn't just come out with racist abuse. His argument to my mind is racist but you have to argue against it not ban it. It is not as if he was chanting racist stuff. He was just putting an argument forward.
Now my only reservation was after the fact when @TheScreamingEagles commented upon the effect it had on him when thinking of his daughter. Something I hadn't considered being white.
Leon's comment is stupid for a whole host of reasons. Stupid, and racist.
As I asked @Andy_JS when he said the comment wasn't racist: my wife is olive-skinned. Is she 'white'? My son is pasty in winter, but tans olive in summer. Is he 'white'? My wife is a joint Turkish/British citizen. Is she 'British'? My son only has a UK passport. Is he 'British'?
People who throw around this sort of stuff are either totally thick, racist, or both.
For many of us, this sort of talk matters, as it means loved ones are not seen as being equal, for dint of skin colour or whatever.
I agree, which is why I argued with him and I wanted the right to argue with him.
What I hadn't appreciated, as you can see from my comment about @TheScreamingEagles, was the difference between me arguing with him, but not being hurt because I am white, and others that are hurt by the comments.
Someone crunched the Employer NI figures and came up with the following figures (based on everyone earning £30k but it doesn't actually matter that much it's the end sums that really matter).
😃 If you employ 2 people at a combined salary of £60k pa, you will be BETTER OFF by £768
😃 If you employ 3 people at a combined salary of £90k pa, you will be BETTER OFF by £2,903
😃 If you employ 5 people at a combined salary of £150k pa, you will be BETTER OFF by £1,171
😃 If you employ 6 people at a combined salary of £180k pa, you will be BETTER OFF by £305
😥 It is only when you get to 7 employees at a combined salary of £210k pa that you start to feel the increase - now you are £561 WORSE OFF.
So the opposite of incentive to grow and expand your business once you need more than a single taxi for your Christmas do. The economy is already too heavily skewed between mega corps and micro / one-man band businesses.
That's interesting. Points out that such relief did not exist at all before 1970.
Fun in the comments.
I'm not clued up on the rates pre 1970, but will say a lot more farms were tenanted back then. Also land value has escalated drastically, particularly since the 1990s. Early/mid 90s you could get good arable land in Scotland for £1500/acre, today more likely to be £8000-9000/acre, best will be over 12k/acre. interest rates have slowed purchases in the last 18-24 months in certain areas
One of the things that has been missed with no fuel duty increase this year, motorists are getting hammered elsewhere with doubling of VED on ICE cars and company car tax increases.
for the first year on new ICE cars - the changes don't impact cars that are already on the road..
One of the things that has been missed with no fuel duty increase this year, motorists are getting hammered elsewhere with doubling of VED on ICE cars and company car tax increases.
for the first year on new ICE cars - the changes don't impact cars that are already on the road..
Yes, sorry, that wasn't clear. But with leasing being so popular, people change their changes extremely regularly these days and the lease companies are going to pass on costs.
One worry would also be that there is another squeeze on second hand cars forcing prices up if less people buy new.
Our vending machines have gone contactless yesterday. Fortunately there is still the cash option as well for people.
Not for much longer, I’d venture. The pool table in my local is now card only. I like to imagine certain PBers discovering this in horror as they furkle in their leather pouches for useless metal!
Our local milk vending machines (supply your own bottle, they supply the milk) are contactless only. A month ago my card got declined (reached its limit for contactless). I could not use it until I went somewhere that allowed me to enter a pin.
Does this happen at the pool table too? I guess you could go to the bar and enter the pin there but I had no way to buy the milk at any of the three milk vending stations I tried.
#Firstworldproblem
Just use your phone/watch to pay – there's no limit to contactless that I have ever encountered.
I don't have watch and don't use my phone to pay for anything.
Is there a reason why not? Its incredibly convenient and more secure and means I haven't had to carry my wallet with me for years.
Also helpful if you use loyalty cards (I know some do not) as you can keep them in the same wallet app so I can easily swipe between which cards I have to the one of the shop I'm in, and choose which card I'm paying with at the same time.
Have never yet migrated to paying by phone, but probably will at some point. I'm going to cite inertia.
Freemen on the Land in the wild. Binkety bankety bonkers !
'My car is outside the Jurisdiction of the United Kingdom".It was a banger parked half on the pavement.
Spotted on a vehicle on my constitutional yesterday.
Amusing .
This reminds me of a rightwing equivalent of the "Independebt Republic of Wanstonia", a self-declared hippy Republic under the A40 flyover between the 1960's and '80s.
Players will have to decide whether to enter the auction around their international commitments, because the IPL has introduced a two-year ban on players who pull out of the tournament without certain requirements being met.
Anyway before I disappear off into the ether again in the next day ir so, my US prediction is for the following states go be won by Trump in an easy EC victory for him
All of 2020 plus
Pennsylvania Michigan (Coin Toss) Wisconsin Georgia Nevada Arizona (Coin toss) Virginia (Perhaps) New Hampshire
Why New Hampshire?
Because he'll run her very close there. I think NJ might ge close enough to raise some eyebrows too
You clearly think the polls are (yet again) seriously understating the Trump vote.
Is that just a hunch or something more?
By his own admission, this poster has a poor record at predictions. DYOR etc etc.
'Poor record' is a bit of an overstatement. I've had some clangers but some bangers too. My estimations of the WPB performance in July and which seats might be interesting was almost spot on. My Norfolk seats predictions were also broadly accurate. However, I admit I go a bit on gut feeling and thus would not encourage anyone to gamble based thereon, I'll always say if it's something concrete.
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
Leon has received the ban hammer a few nights back.
Don't know if it is Temp or not. It was all somewhat tetchy here at the time.
He went the full racist; Britain for the white British.
Good riddance IMO. He's entertaining, but I don't think that excuses his views.
I don't think he was saying that and, even if he was, I don't think such views should lead to a banning unless it was accompanied by incitement to violence or raw hate.
But, I have a higher spectrum of tolerance for speech (admittedly I can respond very aggressively and rudely to them but I only advocate banning where they are consistently personally abusive or nasty)
He literally said that the UK should promote/increase the number of "white babies".
Great Replacement and "14 words" are all that's left from there....
But, that's your extrapolation of what you thought he might subsequently say and mean and not what he actually said.
Just saying we should increase the number of white babies isn't an intrinsically and fundamentally unreasonable thing to say.
The implication is "increase the proportion of white babies", which is.
I have to say I am with @Casino_Royale on this (twice in one day, might have to lie down). See my earlier post.
I was one of the people arguing with @leon. He was putting a point of view that I totally disagreed with and we argued, but it was civilised. There was no abuse. He put an argument. He didn't just come out with racist abuse. His argument to my mind is racist but you have to argue against it not ban it. It is not as if he was chanting racist stuff. He was just putting an argument forward.
Now my only reservation was after the fact when @TheScreamingEagles commented upon the effect it had on him when thinking of his daughter. Something I hadn't considered being white.
Leon's comment is stupid for a whole host of reasons. Stupid, and racist.
As I asked @Andy_JS when he said the comment wasn't racist: my wife is olive-skinned. Is she 'white'? My son is pasty in winter, but tans olive in summer. Is he 'white'? My wife is a joint Turkish/British citizen. Is she 'British'? My son only has a UK passport. Is he 'British'?
People who throw around this sort of stuff are either totally thick, racist, or both.
For many of us, this sort of talk matters, as it means loved ones are not seen as being equal, for dint of skin colour or whatever.
Many years ago I had my blood tested by an early research study on human blood genetic markers (I just happened to be walking through the lab to see the prof and a nice young lady came up to me and put me in a chair and produced a needle and ... ). She was delighted with the result, as she said on my next visit: "Hello Carnyx, that blood was really useful as we now have a supply of a blood marker which is really difficult to get here outside subSaharan Africa."
Given I'm the classic pasty freckled Scot phenotype, from rustic ancestors, I've never been very convinced about hard and fast rules ever since. Especially since some people think that a drop of one colour in a pool of the other colour is enough to make it all one colour. I do occasionally wonder about my past - whether some freed slave ended up in a big estate, or whatever. But who knows? And in a sense it doesn't matter, at least to some of us.
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
It would require a nuclear guarantee from the UK and France. Not enough nukes to defeat Russia in an all out war, but enough for MAD.
But Europe definitely needs to get its act together, and part of that is by excluding, or threatening to exclude, bad actors like Hungary or Slovakia under Fico from NATO and the security apparatus of the EU as well as taking away their veto over economic sanctions. The US is going to become semi-detached from NATO even if Harris wins, and potentially actively hostile if Trump does - only mutual hostility to China would remain as common cause, and NATO is not the main geographical player in that theatre.
Any thoughts on simple investment strategies for a Trump win that could hedge against global trade wars?
Buy gold is the traditional one.
Though others are already doing so.
Physical gold and Bitcoin. And have a nice watch as you can use it to secure passage in difficult circumstances - need to get through a checkpoint, hand over the nice watch. I believe US special forces dropped behind enemy lines have been kitted out with rolexes for precisely that reason.
I know you're not a fan of bitcoin, but it's a heck of a lot easier to transfer your wealth out of a country fast on a USB stick or even using a brain wallet than it is to walk across a border with a suitcase full of gold bars. Many Ukrainians arriving in the UK couldn't access their banks but brought crypto with them on memory sticks. Worth keeping a few grand that way, just in case.
Gold is of course a better hedge, but less fungible.
Oh wait, OP said *trade* wars.
Well, if history repeats itself, the real wars will be following soon after.
I consider my real wealth to be what I can get out of the country fast, carrying nothing more than a duffel bag. Everything else is just numbers on a page.
History has proven time and time again that in hard times, everything else can and will be confiscated. Anyone investing in gold would do well to remember Executive Order 6102.
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
Leon has received the ban hammer a few nights back.
Don't know if it is Temp or not. It was all somewhat tetchy here at the time.
He went the full racist; Britain for the white British.
Good riddance IMO. He's entertaining, but I don't think that excuses his views.
I don't think he was saying that and, even if he was, I don't think such views should lead to a banning unless it was accompanied by incitement to violence or raw hate.
But, I have a higher spectrum of tolerance for speech (admittedly I can respond very aggressively and rudely to them but I only advocate banning where they are consistently personally abusive or nasty)
He literally said that the UK should promote/increase the number of "white babies".
Great Replacement and "14 words" are all that's left from there....
But, that's your extrapolation of what you thought he might subsequently say and mean and not what he actually said.
Just saying we should increase the number of white babies isn't an intrinsically and fundamentally unreasonable thing to say.
The implication is "increase the proportion of white babies", which is.
I have to say I am with @Casino_Royale on this (twice in one day, might have to lie down). See my earlier post.
I was one of the people arguing with @leon. He was putting a point of view that I totally disagreed with and we argued, but it was civilised. There was no abuse. He put an argument. He didn't just come out with racist abuse. His argument to my mind is racist but you have to argue against it not ban it. It is not as if he was chanting racist stuff. He was just putting an argument forward.
Now my only reservation was after the fact when @TheScreamingEagles commented upon the effect it had on him when thinking of his daughter. Something I hadn't considered being white.
Leon's comment is stupid for a whole host of reasons. Stupid, and racist.
As I asked @Andy_JS when he said the comment wasn't racist: my wife is olive-skinned. Is she 'white'? My son is pasty in winter, but tans olive in summer. Is he 'white'? My wife is a joint Turkish/British citizen. Is she 'British'? My son only has a UK passport. Is he 'British'?
People who throw around this sort of stuff are either totally thick, racist, or both.
For many of us, this sort of talk matters, as it means loved ones are not seen as being equal, for dint of skin colour or whatever.
I agree, which is why I argued with him and I wanted the right to argue with him.
What I hadn't appreciated, as you can see from my comment about @TheScreamingEagles, was the difference between me arguing with him, but not being hurt because I am white, and others that are hurt by the comments.
I wasn't 'hurt' by his comment, but it is the sort of comment that needs forcibly arguing against. Because the moment it becomes acceptable, we have lost something important.
Mrs J has been in this country for several decades. In that time, she has had no racist comments made against her. That is something to feel proud about our country. In contrast, in our first night on a trip through Germany, she was racially abused by a group of (white) German men.
Then again, she fits in: her spoken English is better than mine, and she dresses in a western style and has a well=paid job. She is a very non-immigranty immigrant, if you know what I mean.
One of the things that has been missed with no fuel duty increase this year, motorists are getting hammered elsewhere with doubling of VED on ICE cars.
The main hammering in recent years has been the absurd rise in insurance premiums. I’m now paying £1,600 for a car worth about 15k. Having recently had an insurance claim for theft (it was then found again) and seen the sharp practices of the repair garages that do insurance work, I am starting to understand why.
Yet motoring costs have increased much more slowly than other forms of transport.
Putting your father to bed at 10:30pm, for him to be up dressed and ready for the next day 1hr later. A smart guy trying to help , he found and took his morning medication. Essentially double dosing warfarin. Dangerous.
He refused to return to bed, and decided to sit the whole night out in his wide awake in his chair. Heartbreaking.
This was not the night he decided to help out, fell down the stairs, broke his shoulder and landed himself in hospital for three months. The interesting thing is that he somehow managed to get back to bed. We only only discovered the massive bruise when he couldn’t get out of bed.
I assure you that this kind of dementia care is beyond the capability of most families. A problem for society as a whole to solve.
Why should the whole of society have responsibility for it?
This might sound harsh but we have a principle here that we deify length of life regardless of quality or cost.
Dementia is a very cruel fate and I wouldn't wish it on anyone but what sort of sense does it make to bankrupt ourselves to keep someone in that condition.
Because like much of life it’s primarily down to luck. So we all carry the burden of ill fortune and share the benefits of good fortune.
My thesis is that individuals should insure and manage more of that risk themselves, and think sometimes throwing it onto "society" is a way for some - not you - getting away from responsibilities for elderly parents or relatives that they'd rather not have to deal with.
Nah. That’s a cold bleak future. We’re all in it together. I have a responsibility to you.
You could buy me a pint, I suppose.
Look, I'm not saying dog eat dog. But I think we have an absurd level of overcommitment to very expensive chronic and morbid conditions atm that are overly socialised and not ensured enough.
Property, pensions and houses should be used to part fund them. As Theresa May argued.
We all need to contribute and share the burden, much as we do with the lottery of cancer.
We need to solve cancer.
That disease is cruel and fucking sick. Took a friend of mine 3 months ago who was my age (42 years old) and mother to a six year old boy.
Haven't cried that much on the way home from a funeral ever.
Cruel disease. I’m sorry. We need to solve cancer.
Motor Neurone Disease is one I want to see gone. Or, at least, treatable. Took our daughter ten years ago, at 49.
Heartbreaking. I’m sorry. Let’s see that one gone too.
Huntington's Disease is another really distressing one - agonisingly painful and degenerative.
A friend (a professor of biochemistry) has a cure for it which works 100% of the time, but unfortunately can't find the funds to get it through the testing process. He often gets emails from people who are suffering from it and beg him to help them but without the relevant approvals there is nothing he can do. They break his heart.
Can he not find a way of getting it approved somewhere like Mexico, which is well known for being a lot easier than the US and attracts medical tourists for ‘unapproved’ treatments?
My guess is it sounds like the old guy in the pub in his cups saying "if only they'd funded me I'd have cured Huntingdon's by now. My method works dammit"...
Freemen on the Land in the wild. Binkety bankety bonkers !
'My car is outside the Jurisdiction of the United Kingdom".It was a banger parked half on the pavement.
Spotted on a vehicle on my constitutional yesterday.
Oh are those nutters still going. I thought that all nonsense about not recognising the UK as having never agreed to it and thus being a Freeman meaning not liable for taxes etc, had died a death.
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
It would require a nuclear guarantee from the UK and France. Not enough nukes to defeat Russia in an all out war, but enough for MAD.
But Europe definitely needs to get its act together, and part of that is by excluding, or threatening to exclude, bad actors like Hungary or Slovakia under Fico from NATO and the security apparatus of the EU as well as taking away their veto over economic sanctions. The US is going to become semi-detached from NATO even if Harris wins, and potentially actively hostile if Trump does - only mutual hostility to China would remain as common cause, and NATO is not the main geographical player in that theatre.
Any thoughts on simple investment strategies for a Trump win that could hedge against global trade wars?
Buy gold is the traditional one.
Though others are already doing so.
Physical gold and Bitcoin. And have a nice watch as you can use it to secure passage in difficult circumstances - need to get through a checkpoint, hand over the nice watch. I believe US special forces dropped behind enemy lines have been kitted out with rolexes for precisely that reason.
I know you're not a fan of bitcoin, but it's a heck of a lot easier to transfer your wealth out of a country fast on a USB stick or even using a brain wallet than it is to walk across a border with a suitcase full of gold bars. Many Ukrainians arriving in the UK couldn't access their banks but brought crypto with them on memory sticks. Worth keeping a few grand that way, just in case.
Gold is of course a better hedge, but less fungible.
Oh wait, OP said *trade* wars.
Well, if history repeats itself, the real wars will be following soon after.
I consider my real wealth to be what I can get out of the country fast, carrying nothing more than a duffel bag. Everything else is just numbers on a page.
History has proven time and time again that in hard times, everything else can and will be confiscated. Anyone investing in gold would do well to remember Executive Order 6102.
One of the things that has been missed with no fuel duty increase this year, motorists are getting hammered elsewhere with doubling of VED on ICE cars and company car tax increases.
The easiest target and disproportionally falling on the second quintile, those working minimum wage or key workers on shifts, who have little choice but to run a car to get to work.
The policy wonks really all need to get out of London once in a while.
Our vending machines have gone contactless yesterday. Fortunately there is still the cash option as well for people.
Not for much longer, I’d venture. The pool table in my local is now card only. I like to imagine certain PBers discovering this in horror as they furkle in their leather pouches for useless metal!
Our local milk vending machines (supply your own bottle, they supply the milk) are contactless only. A month ago my card got declined (reached its limit for contactless). I could not use it until I went somewhere that allowed me to enter a pin.
Does this happen at the pool table too? I guess you could go to the bar and enter the pin there but I had no way to buy the milk at any of the three milk vending stations I tried.
#Firstworldproblem
I have a card with an alt-bank and one can instantly reset the contactless limit using the app on the phone.
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
Leon has received the ban hammer a few nights back.
Don't know if it is Temp or not. It was all somewhat tetchy here at the time.
He went the full racist; Britain for the white British.
Good riddance IMO. He's entertaining, but I don't think that excuses his views.
I don't think he was saying that and, even if he was, I don't think such views should lead to a banning unless it was accompanied by incitement to violence or raw hate.
But, I have a higher spectrum of tolerance for speech (admittedly I can respond very aggressively and rudely to them but I only advocate banning where they are consistently personally abusive or nasty)
He literally said that the UK should promote/increase the number of "white babies".
Great Replacement and "14 words" are all that's left from there....
But, that's your extrapolation of what you thought he might subsequently say and mean and not what he actually said.
Just saying we should increase the number of white babies isn't an intrinsically and fundamentally unreasonable thing to say.
The implication is "increase the proportion of white babies", which is.
I have to say I am with @Casino_Royale on this (twice in one day, might have to lie down). See my earlier post.
I was one of the people arguing with @leon. He was putting a point of view that I totally disagreed with and we argued, but it was civilised. There was no abuse. He put an argument. He didn't just come out with racist abuse. His argument to my mind is racist but you have to argue against it not ban it. It is not as if he was chanting racist stuff. He was just putting an argument forward.
Now my only reservation was after the fact when @TheScreamingEagles commented upon the effect it had on him when thinking of his daughter. Something I hadn't considered being white.
Leon's comment is stupid for a whole host of reasons. Stupid, and racist.
As I asked @Andy_JS when he said the comment wasn't racist: my wife is olive-skinned. Is she 'white'? My son is pasty in winter, but tans olive in summer. Is he 'white'? My wife is a joint Turkish/British citizen. Is she 'British'? My son only has a UK passport. Is he 'British'?
People who throw around this sort of stuff are either totally thick, racist, or both.
For many of us, this sort of talk matters, as it means loved ones are not seen as being equal, for dint of skin colour or whatever.
I agree, which is why I argued with him and I wanted the right to argue with him.
What I hadn't appreciated, as you can see from my comment about @TheScreamingEagles, was the difference between me arguing with him, but not being hurt because I am white, and others that are hurt by the comments.
I wasn't 'hurt' by his comment, but it is the sort of comment that needs forcibly arguing against. Because the moment it becomes acceptable, we have lost something important.
Mrs J has been in this country for several decades. In that time, she has had no racist comments made against her. That is something to feel proud about our country. In contrast, in our first night on a trip through Germany, she was racially abused by a group of (white) German men.
Then again, she fits in: her spoken English is better than mine, and she dresses in a western style and has a well=paid job. She is a very non-immigranty immigrant, if you know what I mean.
A Spanish friend, married to Ghanian, thinks that London is the least problematic place for them. In Spain, he hears stuff all the time - very often they assume that he must be a foreigner and say stuff in Spanish.
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
It would require a nuclear guarantee from the UK and France. Not enough nukes to defeat Russia in an all out war, but enough for MAD.
But Europe definitely needs to get its act together, and part of that is by excluding, or threatening to exclude, bad actors like Hungary or Slovakia under Fico from NATO and the security apparatus of the EU as well as taking away their veto over economic sanctions. The US is going to become semi-detached from NATO even if Harris wins, and potentially actively hostile if Trump does - only mutual hostility to China would remain as common cause, and NATO is not the main geographical player in that theatre.
Any thoughts on simple investment strategies for a Trump win that could hedge against global trade wars?
Buy gold is the traditional one.
Though others are already doing so.
Physical gold and Bitcoin. And have a nice watch as you can use it to secure passage in difficult circumstances - need to get through a checkpoint, hand over the nice watch. I believe US special forces dropped behind enemy lines have been kitted out with rolexes for precisely that reason.
I know you're not a fan of bitcoin, but it's a heck of a lot easier to transfer your wealth out of a country fast on a USB stick or even using a brain wallet than it is to walk across a border with a suitcase full of gold bars. Many Ukrainians arriving in the UK couldn't access their banks but brought crypto with them on memory sticks. Worth keeping a few grand that way, just in case.
Gold is of course a better hedge, but less fungible.
Oh wait, OP said *trade* wars.
Well, if history repeats itself, the real wars will be following soon after.
I consider my real wealth to be what I can get out of the country fast, carrying nothing more than a duffel bag. Everything else is just numbers on a page.
History has proven time and time again that in hard times, everything else can and will be confiscated. Anyone investing in gold would do well to remember Executive Order 6102.
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
Leon has received the ban hammer a few nights back.
Don't know if it is Temp or not. It was all somewhat tetchy here at the time.
He went the full racist; Britain for the white British.
Good riddance IMO. He's entertaining, but I don't think that excuses his views.
I don't think he was saying that and, even if he was, I don't think such views should lead to a banning unless it was accompanied by incitement to violence or raw hate.
But, I have a higher spectrum of tolerance for speech (admittedly I can respond very aggressively and rudely to them but I only advocate banning where they are consistently personally abusive or nasty)
He literally said that the UK should promote/increase the number of "white babies".
Great Replacement and "14 words" are all that's left from there....
But, that's your extrapolation of what you thought he might subsequently say and mean and not what he actually said.
Just saying we should increase the number of white babies isn't an intrinsically and fundamentally unreasonable thing to say.
The implication is "increase the proportion of white babies", which is.
I have to say I am with @Casino_Royale on this (twice in one day, might have to lie down). See my earlier post.
I was one of the people arguing with @leon. He was putting a point of view that I totally disagreed with and we argued, but it was civilised. There was no abuse. He put an argument. He didn't just come out with racist abuse. His argument to my mind is racist but you have to argue against it not ban it. It is not as if he was chanting racist stuff. He was just putting an argument forward.
Now my only reservation was after the fact when @TheScreamingEagles commented upon the effect it had on him when thinking of his daughter. Something I hadn't considered being white.
Leon's comment is stupid for a whole host of reasons. Stupid, and racist.
As I asked @Andy_JS when he said the comment wasn't racist: my wife is olive-skinned. Is she 'white'? My son is pasty in winter, but tans olive in summer. Is he 'white'? My wife is a joint Turkish/British citizen. Is she 'British'? My son only has a UK passport. Is he 'British'?
People who throw around this sort of stuff are either totally thick, racist, or both.
For many of us, this sort of talk matters, as it means loved ones are not seen as being equal, for dint of skin colour or whatever.
I agree, which is why I argued with him and I wanted the right to argue with him.
What I hadn't appreciated, as you can see from my comment about @TheScreamingEagles, was the difference between me arguing with him, but not being hurt because I am white, and others that are hurt by the comments.
I wasn't 'hurt' by his comment, but it is the sort of comment that needs forcibly arguing against. Because the moment it becomes acceptable, we have lost something important.
Mrs J has been in this country for several decades. In that time, she has had no racist comments made against her. That is something to feel proud about our country. In contrast, in our first night on a trip through Germany, she was racially abused by a group of (white) German men.
Then again, she fits in: her spoken English is better than mine, and she dresses in a western style and has a well=paid job. She is a very non-immigranty immigrant, if you know what I mean.
A Spanish friend, married to Ghanian, thinks that London is the least problematic place for them. In Spain, he hears stuff all the time - very often they assume that he must be a foreigner and say stuff in Spanish.
If the overt racism at Spanish football is anything to go by....
On the budget, it seems that there's a trade off between higher personal living standards and better public services - because we can't afford both given the dire state of public finances. I would happily accept my disposable income being pretty static over the next five years if, at the same time, my life was made better and easier by a significantly improved public realm including, but by no means confined to, the NHS. I think that's what Labour is aiming for.
Someone crunched the Employer NI figures and came up with the following figures (based on everyone earning £30k but it doesn't actually matter that much it's the end sums that really matter).
😃 If you employ 2 people at a combined salary of £60k pa, you will be BETTER OFF by £768
😃 If you employ 3 people at a combined salary of £90k pa, you will be BETTER OFF by £2,903
😃 If you employ 5 people at a combined salary of £150k pa, you will be BETTER OFF by £1,171
😃 If you employ 6 people at a combined salary of £180k pa, you will be BETTER OFF by £305
😥 It is only when you get to 7 employees at a combined salary of £210k pa that you start to feel the increase - now you are £561 WORSE OFF.
These are neither strong positive nor negative incentives. At 7 employees (the cutoff point for it becoming worse) it's a <2% hit.
I'm not entirely sure those numbers are right with the £10,500 employer's NI additional relief (and the lifting of the 100k cap).
We are seeing an increase of £3,700 with Class 1 Employer NI of roughly £100k.
Charlie Kirk is upset that Republican women may “undermine their husbands” and secretly vote for Harris while telling their husbands they voted for Trump, even though the husband “works his tail off to make sure that she can have a nice life.” https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1851815354009342217
Seems to be a GOP thing. Here's the Fox News host who just married the researcher he had an affair with, while married to his first wife.
Jesse: if i found out my wife secretly voted for harris, "that's the same thing as having an affair... that violates the sanctity of our marriage... that would be D Day" https://x.com/cynicalzoomer/status/1851744214071332869
The United States really is just turning into Iran with more guns and worse food, isn't it.
It's Shi'ite.
If you want to see a close election, at least hope for good weather.
Anyway before I disappear off into the ether again in the next day ir so, my US prediction is for the following states go be won by Trump in an easy EC victory for him
All of 2020 plus
Pennsylvania Michigan (Coin Toss) Wisconsin Georgia Nevada Arizona (Coin toss) Virginia (Perhaps) New Hampshire
Why New Hampshire?
Because he'll run her very close there. I think NJ might ge close enough to raise some eyebrows too
You clearly think the polls are (yet again) seriously understating the Trump vote.
Is that just a hunch or something more?
By his own admission, this poster has a poor record at predictions. DYOR etc etc.
I'm dyoring all day and all night atm. Exhausting. Will be glad when it's over.
Fwiw I need to post a status change. I've bounced up a notch from 'genuinely hopeful' to 'cautiously optimistic'.
Could 'quietly confident' be back in reach before Tuesday? Probably not but it's possible.
On the budget, it seems that there's a trade off between higher personal living standards and better public services - because we can't afford both given the dire state of public finances. I would happily accept my disposable income being pretty static over the next five years if, at the same time, my life was made better and easier by a significantly improved public realm including, but by no means confined to, the NHS. I think that's what Labour is aiming for.
What happened to the growth agenda....ultimately without growth the problem is never solved, the pain is just delayed.
It is quite impressive they are borrowing masses of money to fund infrastructure, but making growth worse....that is the opposite of what is supposed to happen by such an economic policy e.g. it is why China has repeatedly done it when their economy has slowed.
Also the IFS are making it clear, its all fantasy numbers, they will have to be back to the well for more tax rises unless they are going to enact austerity in 1-2 years. So your disposal income won't be static.
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
Leon has received the ban hammer a few nights back.
Don't know if it is Temp or not. It was all somewhat tetchy here at the time.
He went the full racist; Britain for the white British.
Good riddance IMO. He's entertaining, but I don't think that excuses his views.
I don't think he was saying that and, even if he was, I don't think such views should lead to a banning unless it was accompanied by incitement to violence or raw hate.
But, I have a higher spectrum of tolerance for speech (admittedly I can respond very aggressively and rudely to them but I only advocate banning where they are consistently personally abusive or nasty)
He literally said that the UK should promote/increase the number of "white babies".
Great Replacement and "14 words" are all that's left from there....
But, that's your extrapolation of what you thought he might subsequently say and mean and not what he actually said.
Just saying we should increase the number of white babies isn't an intrinsically and fundamentally unreasonable thing to say.
The implication is "increase the proportion of white babies", which is.
I have to say I am with @Casino_Royale on this (twice in one day, might have to lie down). See my earlier post.
I was one of the people arguing with @leon. He was putting a point of view that I totally disagreed with and we argued, but it was civilised. There was no abuse. He put an argument. He didn't just come out with racist abuse. His argument to my mind is racist but you have to argue against it not ban it. It is not as if he was chanting racist stuff. He was just putting an argument forward.
Now my only reservation was after the fact when @TheScreamingEagles commented upon the effect it had on him when thinking of his daughter. Something I hadn't considered being white.
Leon's comment is stupid for a whole host of reasons. Stupid, and racist.
As I asked @Andy_JS when he said the comment wasn't racist: my wife is olive-skinned. Is she 'white'? My son is pasty in winter, but tans olive in summer. Is he 'white'? My wife is a joint Turkish/British citizen. Is she 'British'? My son only has a UK passport. Is he 'British'?
People who throw around this sort of stuff are either totally thick, racist, or both.
For many of us, this sort of talk matters, as it means loved ones are not seen as being equal, for dint of skin colour or whatever.
I agree, which is why I argued with him and I wanted the right to argue with him.
What I hadn't appreciated, as you can see from my comment about @TheScreamingEagles, was the difference between me arguing with him, but not being hurt because I am white, and others that are hurt by the comments.
If we can step back from the race element then the question of culture is, to me, more important. Do the inhabitants of a village, town, city, county, country have a right to want to maintain their culture? (If that is a reasonable thing, and of course will mean different things to different people). We see when you have immigration from cultures similar to the 'host' country that there are fewer problems with integration etc. What are the rights of the existing population?
Our vending machines have gone contactless yesterday. Fortunately there is still the cash option as well for people.
Not for much longer, I’d venture. The pool table in my local is now card only. I like to imagine certain PBers discovering this in horror as they furkle in their leather pouches for useless metal!
Our local milk vending machines (supply your own bottle, they supply the milk) are contactless only. A month ago my card got declined (reached its limit for contactless). I could not use it until I went somewhere that allowed me to enter a pin.
Does this happen at the pool table too? I guess you could go to the bar and enter the pin there but I had no way to buy the milk at any of the three milk vending stations I tried.
#Firstworldproblem
I have a card with an alt-bank and one can instantly reset the contactless limit using the app on the phone.
Great, but again this is a solution looking for a problem. Just pay with your phone/watch and leave the obsolete bits of plastic at home. And, while you are at it, the physical wallet. Declutter your life.
On the budget, it seems that there's a trade off between higher personal living standards and better public services - because we can't afford both given the dire state of public finances. I would happily accept my disposable income being pretty static over the next five years if, at the same time, my life was made better and easier by a significantly improved public realm including, but by no means confined to, the NHS. I think that's what Labour is aiming for.
What happened to the growth agenda....ultimately without growth the problem is never solved, the pain is just delayed.
It is quite impressive they are borrowing masses of money to fund infrastructure, but making growth worse....that is the opposite of what is supposed to happen by such a policy.
It will take more than 5 years for there to be sufficient growth to enable both higher personal living standards and improved public services. That's why Labour's plan is really a 10-year plan rather than a 5-year plan. They'll reap the benefits in the second term, provided they can secure enough progress to win in 2029.
On the budget, it seems that there's a trade off between higher personal living standards and better public services - because we can't afford both given the dire state of public finances. I would happily accept my disposable income being pretty static over the next five years if, at the same time, my life was made better and easier by a significantly improved public realm including, but by no means confined to, the NHS. I think that's what Labour is aiming for.
What happened to the growth agenda....ultimately without growth the problem is never solved, the pain is just delayed.
It is quite impressive they are borrowing masses of money to fund infrastructure, but making growth worse....that is the opposite of what is supposed to happen by such an economic policy e.g. it is why China has repeatedly done it when their economy has slowed.
Also the IFS are making it clear, its all fantasy numbers, they will have to be back to the well for more tax rises unless they are going to enact austerity in 1-2 years. So your disposal income won't be static.
Presumably, outside of the budget considerations, there’s a massive deregulation and government efficiency bill about to be presented to the Commons?
10y yields up by 25bp and the spread to US 10y yields has increased by 15bp, spread to France by 17bp. The UK does now have a slight risk premium on debt that we didn't have under Rishi and Hunt. So far it isn't as bad as Truss where the idiot premium was about 80bp but that didn't peak until the week after the original announcements.
I really think we're going to be facing the spectre of failed bond auctions over the next few years as the BoE continues to unwind QE and the government writes £150bn in additional debt that needs to be digested. Our debt interest bill is going to be unbearably high by the end of 2029 because we've got about £400bn in gilts to rollover from relatively low interest rates from pre-2020 that will be refinanced with at least 2pp more yield. I wouldn't be surprised if we end up paying more than £100bn per year in debt interest by the time of the next election.
I thought debt interest was already over £100bn pa. Budget documents have it forecast to be 3.6% of GDP throughout or £126bn in 2025-26.
Anyone want to look up how much debt interest Britain was paying in 2009-10?
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
It would require a nuclear guarantee from the UK and France. Not enough nukes to defeat Russia in an all out war, but enough for MAD.
But Europe definitely needs to get its act together, and part of that is by excluding, or threatening to exclude, bad actors like Hungary or Slovakia under Fico from NATO and the security apparatus of the EU as well as taking away their veto over economic sanctions. The US is going to become semi-detached from NATO even if Harris wins, and potentially actively hostile if Trump does - only mutual hostility to China would remain as common cause, and NATO is not the main geographical player in that theatre.
Any thoughts on simple investment strategies for a Trump win that could hedge against global trade wars?
Buy gold is the traditional one.
Though others are already doing so.
Physical gold and Bitcoin. And have a nice watch as you can use it to secure passage in difficult circumstances - need to get through a checkpoint, hand over the nice watch. I believe US special forces dropped behind enemy lines have been kitted out with rolexes for precisely that reason.
I know you're not a fan of bitcoin, but it's a heck of a lot easier to transfer your wealth out of a country fast on a USB stick or even using a brain wallet than it is to walk across a border with a suitcase full of gold bars. Many Ukrainians arriving in the UK couldn't access their banks but brought crypto with them on memory sticks. Worth keeping a few grand that way, just in case.
Gold is of course a better hedge, but less fungible.
Oh wait, OP said *trade* wars.
Well, if history repeats itself, the real wars will be following soon after.
I consider my real wealth to be what I can get out of the country fast, carrying nothing more than a duffel bag. Everything else is just numbers on a page.
History has proven time and time again that in hard times, everything else can and will be confiscated. Anyone investing in gold would do well to remember Executive Order 6102.
Our vending machines have gone contactless yesterday. Fortunately there is still the cash option as well for people.
Not for much longer, I’d venture. The pool table in my local is now card only. I like to imagine certain PBers discovering this in horror as they furkle in their leather pouches for useless metal!
Our local milk vending machines (supply your own bottle, they supply the milk) are contactless only. A month ago my card got declined (reached its limit for contactless). I could not use it until I went somewhere that allowed me to enter a pin.
Does this happen at the pool table too? I guess you could go to the bar and enter the pin there but I had no way to buy the milk at any of the three milk vending stations I tried.
#Firstworldproblem
I have a card with an alt-bank and one can instantly reset the contactless limit using the app on the phone.
Great, but again this is a solution looking for a problem. Just pay with your phone/watch and leave the obsolete bits of plastic at home. And, while you are at it, the physical wallet. Declutter your life.
Question for you. Genuine question. A mate comes up to you in the pub tonight and says “Can I borrow £50 until next Thursday, I’ve not been paid yet but it’s my wife’s birthday tomorrow and I need to buy her something?”, how do you react?
I actually have a hospital appointment this morning. What a budget!
I went to hospital yesterday.
There was a poster by the entrance warning about measles, which we thought had been vanquished in the 1960s, before they invented anti-vaxxers.
But beyond that were electronic signs displaying a message that their software licence had expired (presumably unbeknownst to whoever could either renew the licence or turn the system off to save electricity) and direction signs that stopped well short of their destination. The clock had not been put back an hour at the weekend, or so I thought till I noticed that even then it would be 10 minutes wrong.
People say the NHS needs huge investment. They are right. It does. But it also needs people directly running hospitals and clinics to pick the low hanging fruit.
My wife had a miscarriage at about 9 weeks 18 months or so ago. Turning up at my local large hospital to find there was nowhere to park (we would cheerfully have paid, but the site has about 50% of the parking spaces it needs - we ended up ditching the car in a nearby supermarket carpark), followed by having to find the "early pregnancy unit*" we'd been told to attend and then follow the non-existent signage to it with a tired and distressed wife was one of the less enjoyable experiences of my life, which could have been made vastly for virtually no cost by some decent signage.
I think I've posted before about how I nearly missed an expensive MRI slot because I went to the wrong hospital, thanks to the receptionist at a different hospital using without explanation the abbreviation MRI for Manchester Royal Infirmary, without considering this was also the department I was being sent to see. This was after a previous missed MRI because they failed to book an X-ray to check for steel splinters in my eyes first, despite my ringing them and telling them this exactly as instructed on the paperwork they sent out.
Stuff like this isn't hard, or expensive to fix - but because it's a state monolith entirely run by a mixture of incompetence and producer capture it isn't. Pouring loads more money in the top won't help either - this stuff isn't fixed primarily because nobody cares, rather than anything else.
*It turned out that it has been renamed the "Jasmine Suite" presumably to be more sensitive to people our situation, which is lovely and thoughtful, but does require that people are told to go there. And once we found that bit out, the signage was still rubbish to actually get there.
These are exactly the sorts of problems that arise when you keep cutting costs so there's no-one to check on signage and staff don't have the time to check everything has been understood. They have nothing to do with the system being "a state monolith".
Your claim that "nobody cares" is nonsense (and insulting). NHS staff generally do care, but they're worked off their feet. More money does help.
Nobody cares you just have to deal with it. What would the budget line item be for "checking signage".
I appreciate you evidently love the NHS but it is crap. Or rather, it is brilliant on many measures apart from saving lives and health outcomes.
My sister was just invited for a smear test which is available, apparently, to "all women and those people with cervixes". This is not a political correctness gone mad rant but that is where the money is going. Could the budget used for developing and writing that not have been used to "check signage".
The budget line for "checking signage" would probably be a manager. Politicians keep cutting NHS managers, who get described as "pen pushers". Yet NHS managers do important jobs.
The problem in a nutshell. If you walk into work and there is a crisp packet on the floor do you wait for the person responsible for picking up crisp packets to come along. No. You pick it up or ask for the cleaners to go over the area.
The NHS is full of people who walk past the crisp packet because it isn't their job to pick up crisp packets and meanwhile the place is full to brimming with rubbish. And they don't care enough either to pick the damn thing up or to ask the cleaners to do so.
And Cheese & Onion if you're wondering.
You've got a long patient list, you've just been bleeped, you're already behind on your paperwork.... what do you do? You need to give people capacity.
Anyway before I disappear off into the ether again in the next day ir so, my US prediction is for the following states go be won by Trump in an easy EC victory for him
All of 2020 plus
Pennsylvania Michigan (Coin Toss) Wisconsin Georgia Nevada Arizona (Coin toss) Virginia (Perhaps) New Hampshire
Why New Hampshire?
Because he'll run her very close there. I think NJ might ge close enough to raise some eyebrows too
You clearly think the polls are (yet again) seriously understating the Trump vote.
Is that just a hunch or something more?
By his own admission, this poster has a poor record at predictions. DYOR etc etc.
I'm dyoring all day and all night atm. Exhausting. Will be glad when it's over.
Fwiw I need to post a status change. I've bounced up a notch from 'genuinely hopeful' to 'cautiously optimistic'.
Could 'quietly confident' be back in reach before Tuesday? Probably not but it's possible.
Some of the swing state polling today seems decent for Kamala. But, we watch, and we wait.
Comments
I know you're not a fan of bitcoin, but it's a heck of a lot easier to transfer your wealth out of a country fast on a USB stick or even using a brain wallet than it is to walk across a border with a suitcase full of gold bars. Many Ukrainians arriving in the UK couldn't access their banks but brought crypto with them on memory sticks. Worth keeping a few grand that way, just in case.
Gold is of course a better hedge, but less fungible.
Oh wait, OP said *trade* wars.
Well, if history repeats itself, the real wars will be following soon after.
I consider my real wealth to be what I can get out of the country fast, carrying nothing more than a duffel bag. Everything else is just numbers on a page.
History has proven time and time again that in hard times, everything else can and will be confiscated. Anyone investing in gold would do well to remember Executive Order 6102.
Also helpful if you use loyalty cards (I know some do not) as you can keep them in the same wallet app so I can easily swipe between which cards I have to the one of the shop I'm in, and choose which card I'm paying with at the same time.
I really think we're going to be facing the spectre of failed bond auctions over the next few years as the BoE continues to unwind QE and the government writes £150bn in additional debt that needs to be digested. Our debt interest bill is going to be unbearably high by the end of 2029 because we've got about £400bn in gilts to rollover from relatively low interest rates from pre-2020 that will be refinanced with at least 2pp more yield. I wouldn't be surprised if we end up paying more than £100bn per year in debt interest by the time of the next election.
I can understand why it goes down for 3 - 5 years (Expectation of lowering interest rates), heads back up (Long term uncertainty) to 30 years but the drop from 30 to 50 ?
There's stuff they could already have done, without primary legislation.
I do have a problem with someone insane enough to support Trump and Ukraine, which seems an utterly contradictory position - especially when their 'explanations' are bullshit.
If you gave *any* angle on here, you can expect to get challenged on it.
What Leon said was absolutely racist, and if you cannot see that, you are probably in dire need of some DEI training.
Finally, I never called for Leon to get banned. All I'm saying is that now he is banned; good riddance. You are, of course, entitled to your own view.
The US biotech which has been working on zinc fingers for three decades (and which acquired the UK outfit doing the same).
https://www.sangamo.com
I think they have had a Huntingdon's program of some kind for well over a decade ?
But gene therapy using zinc fingers hasn't proved as easy as originally thought:
https://www.ukri.org/who-we-are/how-we-are-doing/research-outcomes-and-impact/mrc/zinc-finger-protein-research-paves-way-for-in-body-geneediting/
I’m afraid this looks like the same silly games playing as we got used to with the last lot. Pencil in implausibly low spending increases for the future in order to make the fiscal arithmetic balance. It sounds like it was hard enough to get agreement from departmental ministers to relatively generous settlements in the short term. When it comes to settling with departments for the period after 2025-26 keeping within that 1.3% envelope will be extremely challenging. To put it mildly ….
[Reeves] is meeting her borrowing target only by repeating the same silly manoeuvres as her predecessors used to make it look as if the books will balance. Let’s pretend we’ll increase fuel duties next time, but not do it this year. Let’s pretend that we’ll really rein in spending in a couple of years after splurging this year. That’s not going to happen. The spending plans will not survive contact with her cabinet colleagues."
Clifnotes - Much more tax rises ahead as we aren't getting it from growth....
Usual huge caveats about early voting apply... (to both)
https://election.lab.ufl.edu/early-vote/2024-early-voting/2024-general-election-early-vote-pennsylvania/
Fun in the comments.
But at the end of the day I just turn up here occasionally, while TSE devotes considerable energy to the site and keeps it running. If he can't be bothered having to deal with a guy who insults him and his family I am totally OK with him telling Leon to do one.
BTW people who think Leon isn't a racist need to really have a think.
Is that just a hunch or something more?
Given the obvious big shift in the willingness of Republicans to vote early, compared with last time around, that just isn't available for this election.
It's just as likely to be as misleading as the early leads on election night in 2020, which got everyone excited for a few states.
Obviously, if you had the choice, you'd want to be in the lead at this point. But it certainly doesn't determine the result.
Thus, loads of cars get written off as economically unviable to repair, and we all get hammered for the insurance companies paying out. Oh and big increase in car thefts. For Range Rovers people couldn't even get insured, so JLR had to start offering their own insurance.
As I asked @Andy_JS when he said the comment wasn't racist: my wife is olive-skinned. Is she 'white'? My son is pasty in winter, but tans olive in summer. Is he 'white'? My wife is a joint Turkish/British citizen. Is she 'British'? My son only has a UK passport. Is he 'British'?
People who throw around this sort of stuff are either totally thick, racist, or both.
For many of us, this sort of talk matters, as it means loved ones are not seen as being equal, for dint of skin colour or whatever.
'My car is outside the Jurisdiction of the United Kingdom".It was a banger parked half on the pavement.
Spotted on a vehicle on my constitutional yesterday.
😃 If you employ 2 people at a combined salary of £60k pa, you will be BETTER OFF by £768
😃 If you employ 3 people at a combined salary of £90k pa, you will be BETTER OFF by £2,903
😃 If you employ 5 people at a combined salary of £150k pa, you will be BETTER OFF by £1,171
😃 If you employ 6 people at a combined salary of £180k pa, you will be BETTER OFF by £305
😥 It is only when you get to 7 employees at a combined salary of £210k pa that you start to feel the increase - now you are £561 WORSE OFF.
If it gets much higher we might be into Houston..... territory
What I hadn't appreciated, as you can see from my comment about @TheScreamingEagles, was the difference between me arguing with him, but not being hurt because I am white, and others that are hurt by the comments.
One worry would also be that there is another squeeze on second hand cars forcing prices up if less people buy new.
This reminds me of a rightwing equivalent of the "Independebt Republic of Wanstonia", a self-declared hippy Republic under the A40 flyover between the 1960's and '80s.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/articles/c86q3zxnnj0o
Where as in the Hundred loads of players bugger off after a few games to more profitable options.
However, I admit I go a bit on gut feeling and thus would not encourage anyone to gamble based thereon, I'll always say if it's something concrete.
Given I'm the classic pasty freckled Scot phenotype, from rustic ancestors, I've never been very convinced about hard and fast rules ever since. Especially since some people think that a drop of one colour in a pool of the other colour is enough to make it all one colour. I do occasionally wonder about my past - whether some freed slave ended up in a big estate, or whatever. But who knows? And in a sense it doesn't matter, at least to some of us.
Mrs J has been in this country for several decades. In that time, she has had no racist comments made against her. That is something to feel proud about our country. In contrast, in our first night on a trip through Germany, she was racially abused by a group of (white) German men.
Then again, she fits in: her spoken English is better than mine, and she dresses in a western style and has a well=paid job. She is a very non-immigranty immigrant, if you know what I mean.
The policy wonks really all need to get out of London once in a while.
Codex; codexes (though codices is also correct).
I would happily accept my disposable income being pretty static over the next five years if, at the same time, my life was made better and easier by a significantly improved public realm including, but by no means confined to, the NHS. I think that's what Labour is aiming for.
I'm not entirely sure those numbers are right with the £10,500 employer's NI additional relief (and the lifting of the 100k cap).
We are seeing an increase of £3,700 with Class 1 Employer NI of roughly £100k.
It’s always Sunni in Philadelphia.
Fwiw I need to post a status change. I've bounced up a notch from 'genuinely hopeful' to 'cautiously optimistic'.
Could 'quietly confident' be back in reach before Tuesday? Probably not but it's possible.
Presidential Polling:
NC:
Trump (R): 47%
Harris (D): 45%
PA:
Harris (D): 48%
Trump (R): 47%
NH:
Harris (D): 50%
Trump (R): 43%
U. Mass Lowell/YouGov / Oct 23, 2024
https://x.com/USA_Polling/status/1851992448135737848
It is quite impressive they are borrowing masses of money to fund infrastructure, but making growth worse....that is the opposite of what is supposed to happen by such an economic policy e.g. it is why China has repeatedly done it when their economy has slowed.
Also the IFS are making it clear, its all fantasy numbers, they will have to be back to the well for more tax rises unless they are going to enact austerity in 1-2 years. So your disposal income won't be static.
A type of societal aposematism? The warning being you might have to deal with a schizo.
Harris (D): 49%
Trump (R): 45%
U. Mass Lowell/YouGov / Oct 24, 2024 / n=600
...
Michigan Presidential Polling:
Harris (D): 47%
Trump (R): 46%
Washington Post / Oct 28, 2024 / n=1003
https://x.com/USA_Polling/status/1851990201951760699
That's why Labour's plan is really a 10-year plan rather than a 5-year plan. They'll reap the benefits in the second term, provided they can secure enough progress to win in 2029.
Anyone want to look up how much debt interest Britain was paying in 2009-10?
I think it might make me sob.
Harris (D): 51%
Trump (R): 46%
St. Anselm / Oct 29, 2024
https://x.com/USA_Polling/status/1851742980316750214
Concerns over the U.S. election and unpredictable intentional events ?