UKIP support free trade with the EU, don't they? So this is a bullshit criticism.
More frothers railing against the Mail = more moolah from advertising. Bullshit it may be, but why anyone would think the Mail is guided by truth and ethical journalism is beyond me. (I don't mean you, Socrates. I'd be genuinely astonished if you held that view!).
As an aside, I must have watched Bill & Teds too much as a student, as my mind rebelliously pronounces Socrates as "So Crates" about 50% of the time.
UKIP support free trade with the EU, don't they? So this is a bullshit criticism.
More frothers railing against the Mail = more moolah from advertising. Bullshit it may be, but why anyone would think the Mail is guided by truth and ethical journalism is beyond me. (I don't mean you, Socrates. I'd be genuinely astonished if you held that view!).
As an aside, I must have watched Bill & Teds too much as a student, as my mind rebelliously pronounces Socrates as "So Crates" about 50% of the time!
Americans can't pronounce Greek names properly, they completely mangle Hippocrates.
What a great thread - engaging, varied and makes me want to meet everyone (i.e. come to the next PB gathering).
On that particular idea - it's a variant on the concept, common in Eastern Europe, of allowing taxpayers to nominate a charity to receive (part of) their taxes. I know of worthy organisations which get most of their income from that. The general problem is that there are some very attractive things that get wildly oversubscribed (e.g. cancer research probably attracts more money than it can sensibly spend, as I believe do donkey sanctuaries) while some unsexy things which most people would if pressed concede were important get nothing. Another snag is that the bodies competing for attention spend a lot of money on advertising themselves (I remember a long train journey in Poland with nothing to do except read all the rival ads for tax money), which seems a poor way to spend a chunk of the revenue.
I am not sure whether you read my OP. Interesting what you say. I would envisage excluding quite a few things which current law defines as charitable from the scheme (e.g. (and I know you wont like this) animal charities*). That some areas get much more attention than others is inevitable though and this degree of agency would hopefully sweeten the pill from the perspective of the very wealthy at which it was targeted. What dissapoints me somewhat about your account is (and maybe is a consequence of how the system is run in E.Europe) is that the givers obviously do not have that much contact with the charity to which they are being obliged to give. My concept is that this should be a supplement to the existing tax system and only apply to individuals high up the income/wealth scale (top 10% or even top 1%) as a means of generating some extra investment in the public space and some re-distributive effect. Maybe I am being a bit over-optimistic about human nature but I would hope that they would then develop their pet projects in the arts/education/health etc and get involved in the management as well as the financing. As I said I think Frank Field was interested in the idea at some point but he seems to have gone quiet on it more recently.
* Why do people give so much money to Donkeys in particular? Even without a 'forced giving' scheme the Donkey Sanctuary in Devon is rolling in it. My godfather (a noted misanthropist who was Chairman of Britoil when it was privatised in the 1980s) bequeathed half his not inconsiderable fortune to the Donkey hospital in Cairo so perhaps I am guilty of sour grapes!
Mr Khan said unemployment fell 14.6 per cent among white people in the past year, but rose 4.5 per cent among blacks and Afro-Caribbeans, 3.3 per cent in Bangladeshi communities and 5.4 per cent among people of mixed race.
Why are the Pakistani, Jewish, Indian and Chinese figures not mentioned ? That paragraph is selective in it's ethnic minorities...
I am not sure whether you read my OP. Interesting what you say. I would envisage excluding quite a few things which current law defines as charitable from the scheme (e.g. (and I know you wont like this) animal charities*). That some areas get much more attention than others is inevitable though and this degree of agency would hopefully sweeten the pill from the perspective of the very wealthy at which it was targeted. What dissapoints me somewhat about your account is (and maybe is a consequence of how the system is run in E.Europe) is that the givers obviously do not have that much contact with the charity to which they are being obliged to give. My concept is that this should be a supplement to the existing tax system and only apply to individuals high up the income/wealth scale (top 10% or even top 1%) as a means of generating some extra investment in the public space and some re-distributive effect. Maybe I am being a bit over-optimistic about human nature but I would hope that they would then develop their pet projects in the arts/education/health etc and get involved in the management as well as the financing. As I said I think Frank Field was interested in the idea at some point but he seems to have gone quiet on it more recently.
* Why do people give so much money to Donkeys in particular? Even without a 'forced giving' scheme the Donkey Sanctuary in Devon is rolling in it. My godfather (a noted misanthropist who was Chairman of Britoil when it was privatised in the 1980s) bequeathed half his not inconsiderable fortune to the Donkey hospital in Cairo so perhaps I am guilty of sour grapes!
Many moons ago, and on a fine Sunday morning, I was at Bannockburn .... no not for the battle .... when I was taken up in conversation by a wildly eccentric and determined lady who it turned out was a Christadelphian.
After some discourse she advised me in a thoroughly charming fashion that I would being going to hell, to which my rejoinder was that I recently passed through there having just spent an overnight ferry passage in a lavatory from Lerwick to Aberdeen in stormy seas.
Apparently there is a little enclave of these believers in the Stirling area.
Mr Khan said unemployment fell 14.6 per cent among white people in the past year, but rose 4.5 per cent among blacks and Afro-Caribbeans, 3.3 per cent in Bangladeshi communities and 5.4 per cent among people of mixed race.
Why are the Pakistani, Jewish, Indian and Chinese figures not mentioned ? That paragraph is selective in it's ethnic minorities...
And what were the figures for PB posters and lurkers - surely they must be an important minority group?
NOTE OF CLARIFICATION: The man who runs ComRes political polling, Tom Mludzinski has asked me to make clear that the firm is offering all the party options on the first page of its Euro2014 online voting questionnaire. This is in spite of the fact that on the poll's official documentation the question is worded in this way: "If there were an election for the European Parliament tomorrow, would you vote Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat or for some other party?"
Mr. Jim, to be fair, they pronounce 'Colin' differently as well. And 'Tara'.
That was just Mr Powell, wasn't it? I thought Colin was the same to most Brits and Americans. And how the hell can they get "Tara" wrong? To rhyme with Sarah?
NOTE OF CLARIFICATION: The man who runs ComRes political polling, Tom Mludzinski has asked me to make clear that the firm is offering all the party options on the first page of its Euro2014 online voting questionnaire. This is in spite of the fact that on the poll's official documentation the question is worded in this way: "If there were an election for the European Parliament tomorrow, would you vote Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat or for some other party?"
Sadly I have come across a lot of shoddy documentation in my time.
This does mean that the largest UKIP share came from the poll which prompted for all the party options, which makes the thread header rather redundant.
Time for a new thread? Perhaps a reminder of the unofficial pb get together in Yorkshire?
Asian students have higher average SAT scores than any other group, including whites. A study by Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade examined applicants to top colleges from 1997, when the maximum SAT score was 1600 (today it's 2400). Espenshade found that Asian-Americans needed a 1550 SAT to have an equal chance of getting into an elite college as white students with a 1410 or black students with an 1100.
Many moons ago, and on a fine Sunday morning, I was at Bannockburn .... no not for the battle .... when I was taken up in conversation by a wildly eccentric and determined lady who it turned out was a Christadelphian.
After some discourse she advised me in a thoroughly charming fashion that I would being going to hell, to which my rejoinder was that I recently passed through there having just spent an overnight ferry passage in a lavatory from Lerwick to Aberdeen in stormy seas.
Apparently there is a little enclave of these believers in the Stirling area.
While visiting a University outreach project in Bangkok I complimented one of the students on his English. Turned out he was a Jehovahs Witness and had a Bible study class each week conducted in English.
The EU's coups in Greece and Italy are starting to unravel.
Seeing as where possible the EU seem to prefer installing ex commissioners as the new governors after a coup if they did it here we might one day end up with Proconsul Clegg running the country. Wouldn't that be good.
The EU's coups in Greece and Italy are starting to unravel.
Seeing as where possible the EU seem to prefer installing ex commissioners as the new governors after a coup if they did it here we might one day end up with Proconsul Clegg running the country. Wouldn't that be good.
Clegg hasn't been a commissioner, so it would be Cathy Ashton
I am not sure whether you read my OP. Interesting what you say. I would envisage excluding quite a few things which current law defines as charitable from the scheme (e.g. (and I know you wont like this) animal charities*). That some areas get much more attention than others is inevitable though and this degree of agency would hopefully sweeten the pill from the perspective of the very wealthy at which it was targeted. What dissapoints me somewhat about your account is (and maybe is a consequence of how the system is run in E.Europe) is that the givers obviously do not have that much contact with the charity to which they are being obliged to give. My concept is that this should be a supplement to the existing tax system and only apply to individuals high up the income/wealth scale (top 10% or even top 1%) as a means of generating some extra investment in the public space and some re-distributive effect. Maybe I am being a bit over-optimistic about human nature but I would hope that they would then develop their pet projects in the arts/education/health etc and get involved in the management as well as the financing. As I said I think Frank Field was interested in the idea at some point but he seems to have gone quiet on it more recently.
* Why do people give so much money to Donkeys in particular? Even without a 'forced giving' scheme the Donkey Sanctuary in Devon is rolling in it. My godfather (a noted misanthropist who was Chairman of Britoil when it was privatised in the 1980s) bequeathed half his not inconsiderable fortune to the Donkey hospital in Cairo so perhaps I am guilty of sour grapes!
Mr. U., If you are going to start defining what sort of charity people can give to then perhaps you really have answered your own question as to why Frank Field gave up on the idea.
The EU's coups in Greece and Italy are starting to unravel.
Seeing as where possible the EU seem to prefer installing ex commissioners as the new governors after a coup if they did it here we might one day end up with Proconsul Clegg running the country. Wouldn't that be good.
Clegg hasn't been a commissioner, so it would be Cathy Ashton
Ahhhh She could repay the favour Gordon did for her, and apiont him as CofE.
You're lucky to just have polls to digest - we have a primary here May 20th, and my land line voice mail is now averaging over 30 messages a day: so much so I've turned the ringer off.
It's not enough that I get messages from candidates urging me to support them for every office from county commissioner to congressman to senator to state house or state senator, from secretary for education to who knows what - that's ignoring the "press 1 if you're going to vote in the Republican primary, 3 if you're not sure, 4 if you need transport" stuff.
Because of my zip code , I don't get Democratic calls.
I'm noticing a new wrinkle as the frequency of calls ramps up ever higher - now candidates are calling urging me to join them and support other candidates for office - xxx who is running for xxx office, as if their own 'vote for me' message wasn't enough.
There is a national 'do not call' list maintained by the feds, to prevent unsolicited marketing calls, and folks can get fined if you're on the list and they call you.
I'm on the list - but political campaigning isn't included, as it's 'free speech'.
Looking at the difference between general election voters and local election voters this gives a difference of about 1.5m. In the main these would be registered EU voters (plus peers etc.)
Daemon barber has it nailed. To take the example of Christianity (for so I was raised), and to review the conversation in the pub the other night. Am I truly expected accept that I have free will, which I never asked for and existence I never craved which must be spent in a world full of injustice, disease and destruction with a personal fight against mental illness and watching those I love, friends, family and acquaintances fight their own battles, with the associated trauma and tragedy of life, only at the end of it to be expected to bow my knee in front of the creator of this chaos, sacrifice my free will, apologise for my 'sins' and spend eternity in slavery to a psychopath? No thanks.
Couldn't reply earlier but the New Testament has a lot to answer for.
The idea that God is a reasonable, Guardian-reading sort of chap, presiding benignly over some sort of celestial welfare state seems an absurdity, not least because it flies in the face of so much evidence.
"Why does God let so many bad things happen?" Because he (or they) can. Hence the arrogance that God/s can be argued with as equals and demanded apologies from. Truly men raise themselves thus to be gods - and lo, the world shook about them.
I'm not terribly inclined towards religion but if I was, I think the old-fashioned pagan / Greek / Roman / Norse gods would have a lot more going for them conceptually; ones who exist on their own plane and who interfere in the world for their own amusement or ends, though who can, as the mood takes them, reward acts of charity, justice and nobility.
When we have held the Indy Referendum, and after the Scots overwhelming vote No. The Yes campaign will start their post mortem on why they failed to move Scots opinion nearer Independence after such a lengthy campaign, and with an SNP majority at Holyrood and Salmond at the helm as FM. I suspect that then we will be revisiting this very clear and developing problem for the Nationalists, and why it turned the campaign so nasty and bitter before the result was even declared. There is going to be a real and lingering bitterness left, and one that really saw Scot pitted against Scot rather than the rest of the UK as some in the SNP had hoped.
Thanks for that. A curious document, not least because it comes from the newspaper which has published Mr A. Cochrane's reportage for years. But perhaps they think any form of dissent by those of 'pro-independence' views is nasty, you know, really violent stuff like giving cinema ads the raspberry (I wonder, how do we know the audience weren't just dissatisfied with the camerawork of the auteur in question?).
In any case, fro those interested (and others are cheerfully encouraged to look away now), this gives a rather different perspective on the same issue, from a Unionist newspaper too -
When we have held the Indy Referendum, and after the Scots overwhelming vote No. The Yes campaign will start their post mortem on why they failed to move Scots opinion nearer Independence after such a lengthy campaign, and with an SNP majority at Holyrood and Salmond at the helm as FM. I suspect that then we will be revisiting this very clear and developing problem for the Nationalists, and why it turned the campaign so nasty and bitter before the result was even declared. There is going to be a real and lingering bitterness left, and one that really saw Scot pitted against Scot rather than the rest of the UK as some in the SNP had hoped.
Thanks for that. A curious document, not least because it comes from the newspaper which has published Mr A. Cochrane's reportage for years. But perhaps they think any form of dissent by those of 'pro-independence' views is nasty, you know, really violent stuff like giving cinema ads the raspberry (I wonder, how do we know the audience weren't just dissatisfied with the camerawork of the auteur in question?).
In any case, fro those interested (and others are cheerfully encouraged to look away now), this gives a rather different perspective on the same issue, from a Unionist newspaper too -
Comments
As an aside, I must have watched Bill & Teds too much as a student, as my mind rebelliously pronounces Socrates as "So Crates" about 50% of the time.
Why are the Pakistani, Jewish, Indian and Chinese figures not mentioned ? That paragraph is selective in it's ethnic minorities...
Having to sign-in repeatedly to Vanilla is but a small inconvenience in comparison.
I am not sure whether you read my OP. Interesting what you say. I would envisage excluding quite a few things which current law defines as charitable from the scheme (e.g. (and I know you wont like this) animal charities*). That some areas get much more attention than others is inevitable though and this degree of agency would hopefully sweeten the pill from the perspective of the very wealthy at which it was targeted. What dissapoints me somewhat about your account is (and maybe is a consequence of how the system is run in E.Europe) is that the givers obviously do not have that much contact with the charity to which they are being obliged to give. My concept is that this should be a supplement to the existing tax system and only apply to individuals high up the income/wealth scale (top 10% or even top 1%) as a means of generating some extra investment in the public space and some re-distributive effect. Maybe I am being a bit over-optimistic about human nature but I would hope that they would then develop their pet projects in the arts/education/health etc and get involved in the management as well as the financing. As I said I think Frank Field was interested in the idea at some point but he seems to have gone quiet on it more recently.
* Why do people give so much money to Donkeys in particular? Even without a 'forced giving' scheme the Donkey Sanctuary in Devon is rolling in it. My godfather (a noted misanthropist who was Chairman of Britoil when it was privatised in the 1980s) bequeathed half his not inconsiderable fortune to the Donkey hospital in Cairo so perhaps I am guilty of sour grapes!
After some discourse she advised me in a thoroughly charming fashion that I would being going to hell, to which my rejoinder was that I recently passed through there having just spent an overnight ferry passage in a lavatory from Lerwick to Aberdeen in stormy seas.
Apparently there is a little enclave of these believers in the Stirling area.
NOTE OF CLARIFICATION: The man who runs ComRes political polling, Tom Mludzinski has asked me to make clear that the firm is offering all the party options on the first page of its Euro2014 online voting questionnaire. This is in spite of the fact that on the poll's official documentation the question is worded in this way: "If there were an election for the European Parliament tomorrow, would you vote Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat or for some other party?"
In the font of knowledge that is Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Tara is pronounced something like 'Tera'.
This does mean that the largest UKIP share came from the poll which prompted for all the party options, which makes the thread header rather redundant.
Time for a new thread? Perhaps a reminder of the unofficial pb get together in Yorkshire?
And, business editor for ITV News, Redcar.
Asian students have higher average SAT scores than any other group, including whites. A study by Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade examined applicants to top colleges from 1997, when the maximum SAT score was 1600 (today it's 2400). Espenshade found that Asian-Americans needed a 1550 SAT to have an equal chance of getting into an elite college as white students with a 1410 or black students with an 1100.
...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2629390/Over-half-public-want-stay-EU-just-FOUR-cent-voters-say-definitely-Ukip-general-election.html
http://order-order.com/2014/05/15/guy-news-special-would-you-really-vote-for-the-libdems/
Made my excuses etc.
And now we're back to religion. Thanks Internets!
The EU's coups in Greece and Italy are starting to unravel.
Seeing as where possible the EU seem to prefer installing ex commissioners as the new governors after a coup if they did it here we might one day end up with Proconsul Clegg running the country. Wouldn't that be good.
That would make us all happy!
It's not enough that I get messages from candidates urging me to support them for every office from county commissioner to congressman to senator to state house or state senator, from secretary for education to who knows what - that's ignoring the "press 1 if you're going to vote in the Republican primary, 3 if you're not sure, 4 if you need transport" stuff.
Because of my zip code , I don't get Democratic calls.
I'm noticing a new wrinkle as the frequency of calls ramps up ever higher - now candidates are calling urging me to join them and support other candidates for office - xxx who is running for xxx office, as if their own 'vote for me' message wasn't enough.
There is a national 'do not call' list maintained by the feds, to prevent unsolicited marketing calls, and folks can get fined if you're on the list and they call you.
I'm on the list - but political campaigning isn't included, as it's 'free speech'.
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/pop-estimate/electoral-statistics-for-uk/2013/stb---2013-electoral-statistics.html
Looking at the difference between general election voters and local election voters this gives a difference of about 1.5m. In the main these would be registered EU voters (plus peers etc.)
The idea that God is a reasonable, Guardian-reading sort of chap, presiding benignly over some sort of celestial welfare state seems an absurdity, not least because it flies in the face of so much evidence.
"Why does God let so many bad things happen?" Because he (or they) can. Hence the arrogance that God/s can be argued with as equals and demanded apologies from. Truly men raise themselves thus to be gods - and lo, the world shook about them.
I'm not terribly inclined towards religion but if I was, I think the old-fashioned pagan / Greek / Roman / Norse gods would have a lot more going for them conceptually; ones who exist on their own plane and who interfere in the world for their own amusement or ends, though who can, as the mood takes them, reward acts of charity, justice and nobility.