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Ruthless: RBG’s death has given Trump a Black Swan to exploit – politicalbetting.com

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  • FrankBoothFrankBooth Posts: 9,005
    Malmesbury - sounds rather like the argument of Lord Sumption who's magisterial Reith lectures were too easily dismissed by many progressives. Was it wrong for the US to make abortion a supreme court issue?

    I don't doubt the sincerity of much of the anti-abortion movement but I can't help but feel that for some conservatives it is a matter of revenge. And that some men want to put women off having sex - unless it is with them.
  • nichomar said:

    Looks like winter is going to come early in my part of Spain with more restaurants and bars shutting down earlier than usual. There is just not enough business to go around with few second home owners or relatives coming out. Those that stay open will have to compete for a limited clientele who perversely have more money in their pockets, no trips back to the UK, No cruises or short breaks in Benidorm. As Felix said there is unlikely to be a second national lockdown with localized measures the preferred approach. So we will still get to go out for a beer and a meal, just with reduced choice.

    What is left by next spring is anybody’s guess but the sun shines most of the time, outside daytime living is year round so not too difficult to bear, bloody hard for the businesses though.

    Certainly be more pleasant than what we can expect here in winter.
  • Scott_xP said:
    Does this mean Labour aren't for the many anymore?
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575
    edited September 2020
    Cyclefree said:

    Alistair said:

    Cyclefree said:

    HYUFD said:

    I doubt there will be any confirmed appointment to replace Bader Ginsburg until after the election. Trump and the Republicans know in particular that there will be huge evangelical turnout at the prospect of replacing the most pro abortion Justice on the court with a conservative.

    It was high evangelical support which proved pivotal in 2004 in winning George W Bush a second term, the last re elected Republican president

    Doesn’t it also work the other way: those groups worried about just such a development also have an incentive to turn out?
    Dem voters seemingly don't give a shit about the SC.
    Why on earth not?

    A genuine question this: it was victories in the SC which helped advance equal rights for black people and women and gays etc. Surely this is understood and that changes in the court’s composition therefore matter?

    And if not, why not?
    They are, and more so since it became evident that the more conservative justices wish to outlaw Obamacare.
    Republicans were the first to weaponise the appointment of Justices as a political wedge issue, and seem wholly to have abandoned the idea of the Court as anything but another venue for partisan politics.
    The attitude of liberals to the court is rather more nuanced than that.
    Obama put it quite well:
    ... A basic principle of the law — and of everyday fairness — is that we apply rules with consistency, and not based on what’s convenient or advantageous in the moment. The rule of law, the legitimacy of our courts, the fundamental workings of our democracy all depend on that basic principle....
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,624
    edited September 2020

    Alistair said:



    Anyone blaming lack of a cheap pot and a few spoons and knives etc for eating fast food is at the kidding. Ready made crap from supermarkets is more expensive than buying cheap cuts and vegetables and making your own. Does not take much to knock up a pot of soup , or stovies and such like, mince and tatties and veg etc. There are low cost variants of all those that are far cheaper than fast crap.

    The working poor do not have time to faff around making food that takes ages to cook. One of the features of the working poor is not just being cash poor but being time poor. And the notion they can do it for less than the price of pizza's and ready meals from Lidl/Iceland is for the birds.

    Someone was saying they should roast a £2.5 chicken, as if they have over an hour to cook dinner, or the cost of the electricity to run the oven for so long.

    Never mind that a £2.50 chicken is a piece of crap nutritionally - a Goodfella's Pepperoni pizza is less Fat than a shite factory farmed bird and only half the protein per 100g.
    Electricity costs between 12 and 24p per kWh in the UK, for domestic consumption.

    An oven running at highish power - 180c - would use around 1.5kW

    So the electricity cost of cooking for 1 hour would be 18-36p, depending on your supplier.
    Yes but that extra 18p means it is cheaper to take the family to Burger King every night apparently.
    I think it quite possible that the cost of running an oven is believed to be orders of magnitude more than it really is.

    Interesting to see Nick Palmer illustrating the classic block to cooking - "I've never done it?"

    As to why he should - to learn about the food you eat. To improve your diet. To do something different in your life.

    The time taken to cook is also massively over estimated by many people. 2 hours in the oven doesn't mean 2 hours staring at the oven like a TV.

    I have considered writing a cook book for the lazy and indolent. People like me, really.

    For example - to make roast duck.

    1) 1 whole duck.
    2) Rub with salt, and score the skin with a knife - 2 minutes
    3) Stuff with fruit - oranges and tangerines, peeled - 2 minutes.
    4) Put in the oven at 120c
    5) Watch the Cruel Sea
    6) Watch the Sound Barrier
    7) Watch the Malta story
    8) Done.
  • IshmaelZ said:

    HYUFD said:

    OK, I know the PM's salary now does not quite get you into the top 1% of earners for which you need to earn £160,000 a year or more but nonetheless he and Carrie have Chequers, a big 16th century mansion in the Buckinghamshire countryside at weekends, it is not as if all the PM has is the Downing Street flat
    And he can borrow against future prospects. If even Brown and May can make a killing on the lecture circuit, what can he reasonably expect? I'd have thought a £100m Netflix deal if he wants one.
    I do wonder if politicians ever give those lectures they are so lucratively paid for.

    Or whether its a way of bunging them money for a nominal reason.
  • ydoethur said:

    DavidL said:

    ydoethur said:

    IanB2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    IanB2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    IanB2 said:

    Food prices appear to have gone up considerable these last few weeks?

    We’ve had the worst harvest in many years in this country due to dry weather followed by raging storms. So all our food has to be imported.

    And while there is a surplus elsewhere in the world as Canada and Oz have done OK, our currency has been tanking due to Cummings being mad as a box of frogs, so prices of imports have gone up.

    It’s a good job we’re not planning to do anything reckless, like, say, cut off trading links with our largest suppliers of foodstuffs.

    Ah...

    https://www.eadt.co.uk/business/farming/east-anglian-cereal-yields-hit-by-extreme-weather-1-6781165

    Edit - this situation may also be why the government is panicking over the food security of Northern Ireland, of course.
    Thanks, that would explain it. Replicating supermarket orders I placed in August for delivery in October, the same items cost in total between 5-10% more. This isn’t showing in the CPI given the reduction due to Rishi’s Covid dinners and other virus related price falls.
    I am afraid that situation is going to get worse before it gets better. February looks alarmingly like the potential for a perfect storm in terms of food security, between the ongoing disruption of trade due to Covid, Brexit, poor global weather and a lack of port capacity. We could easily see really massive price hikes leading into next spring.
    Tough on poor people, who need to buy food, but won’t be able to enjoy the price reductions in meals out, travel, and the rest. And will have any wage or benefit or pension income frozen if CPI stays negligible.

    Maybe I should fill the car with food before I return to the UK.
    I think it is going to be tough on rather more than just poor people. It’s going to hit food banks hard, of course, and those on benefits. But I can easily see a lot of middle income people being pulled into this as well given how insecure our food supples are looking. I’m expecting an awful lot of signs of undernourishment in children next year.
    Oh don't be ridiculous. The mark of poverty in this country is obesity. This will not change.
    Hi David

    It’s quite easy to be both obese and undernourished. Cheap, high fat food often has limited nutritional value.

    And that’s the option an increasing number of people may have to go for with the pressure on food supplies.
    Isn't "malnourished" the broader term generally used to encompass a very poor diet, rather than "undernourished" which implies sheer lack of quantity?
  • BluestBlueBluestBlue Posts: 4,556
    edited September 2020
    nichomar said:

    It is now 44 days to the US election, and a gigantic black swan has upended the balance of the Presidential race.

    Meanwhile, many on PB are certain that they can predict the outcome of a General Election 4 years away on the basis of the Tories polling 3 points off a 40-year record high vote share during the biggest domestic crisis in 100 years.

    Never change, PB, never change... :wink:

    Surely the death is priced in, it’s not a surprise as it was on the cards and would already affect people’s thinking so is it really that big a potential game changer?
    It most probably can't swing the election by itself, but what if it takes the national conversation for the last 6 weeks of the campaign away from Covid, Trump's leadership, etc. and onto a culture war battle royale? Trump only needs the national polls to tighten a few points to have a fighting chance.
  • Loads of healthy food / meals don't take hours to prep or cook e.g. porridge, 5 mins max....grilled chicken with steamed veg and rice, 15 mins with all that is needed is george foreman grill, a pan and a bamboo steamer.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,851
    RBG -

    RIP to a great life.

    Re WH2020, it could play either way or make no difference but it's good for Donald Trump in the sense that it's an injection of fresh narrative into an election which looks and feels like a done deal. The cake is almost baked but this just marginally ups the chance of him unplugging the oven.

    I have moved my Trump EC central forecast up from 205 to 210.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880
    IshmaelZ said:

    HYUFD said:

    OK, I know the PM's salary now does not quite get you into the top 1% of earners for which you need to earn £160,000 a year or more but nonetheless he and Carrie have Chequers, a big 16th century mansion in the Buckinghamshire countryside at weekends, it is not as if all the PM has is the Downing Street flat
    And he can borrow against future prospects. If even Brown and May can make a killing on the lecture circuit, what can he reasonably expect? I'd have thought a £100m Netflix deal if he wants one.
    The Lying King starring Matt Lucas as Johnson, Toby Jones as Cummings and Miranda Hart as Carrie.

    I mean, I wouldn't watch it at gunpoint, but it is definitely something that could exist.
  • Alistair said:



    Anyone blaming lack of a cheap pot and a few spoons and knives etc for eating fast food is at the kidding. Ready made crap from supermarkets is more expensive than buying cheap cuts and vegetables and making your own. Does not take much to knock up a pot of soup , or stovies and such like, mince and tatties and veg etc. There are low cost variants of all those that are far cheaper than fast crap.

    The working poor do not have time to faff around making food that takes ages to cook. One of the features of the working poor is not just being cash poor but being time poor. And the notion they can do it for less than the price of pizza's and ready meals from Lidl/Iceland is for the birds.

    Someone was saying they should roast a £2.5 chicken, as if they have over an hour to cook dinner, or the cost of the electricity to run the oven for so long.

    Never mind that a £2.50 chicken is a piece of crap nutritionally - a Goodfella's Pepperoni pizza is less Fat than a shite factory farmed bird and only half the protein per 100g.
    Electricity costs between 12 and 24p per kWh in the UK, for domestic consumption.

    An oven running at highish power - 180c - would use around 1.5kW

    So the electricity cost of cooking for 1 hour would be 18-36p, depending on your supplier.
    Yes but that extra 18p means it is cheaper to take the family to Burger King every night apparently.
    I think it quite possible that the cost of running an oven is believed to be orders of magnitude more than it really is.

    Interesting to see Nick Palmer illustrating the classic block to cooking - "I've never done it?"

    As to why he should - to learn about the food you eat. To improve your diet. To do something different in your life.

    The time taken to cook is also massively over estimated by many people. 2 hours in the oven doesn't mean 2 hours staring at the oven like a TV.

    I have considered writing a cook book for the lazy and indolent. People like me, really.

    For example - to make roast duck.

    1) 1 whole duck.
    2) Rub with salt, and score the skin with a knife - 2 minutes
    3) Stuff with fruit - oranges and tangerines, peeled - 2 minutes.
    4) Put in the oven at 120c
    5) Watch the Cruel Sea
    6) Watch the Sound Barrier
    7) Watch the Malta story
    8) Done.
    But what about the vegetables ?

    If you're cooking from raw that takes quite a bit of work.

    Even if you have a TV in the kitchen to watch it still takes time and effort.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,624

    Malmesbury - sounds rather like the argument of Lord Sumption who's magisterial Reith lectures were too easily dismissed by many progressives. Was it wrong for the US to make abortion a supreme court issue?

    I don't doubt the sincerity of much of the anti-abortion movement but I can't help but feel that for some conservatives it is a matter of revenge. And that some men want to put women off having sex - unless it is with them.

    In a constitutional democracy, the highest constitutional court will always be busy. It was inevitable that abortion would have ended up there.

    The problem is that progressive law revision has taken the place of progressive law *making*

    What should have happened next was an Amendment to the US constitution. But the progressive side thought they would lose that fight..... They gave up on democracy, with that.
  • Loads of healthy food / meals don't take hours to prep or cook e.g. porridge, 5 mins max....grilled chicken with steamed veg and rice, 15 mins with all that is needed is george foreman grill, a pan and a bamboo steamer.

    Exactly
  • Dura_Ace said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    HYUFD said:

    OK, I know the PM's salary now does not quite get you into the top 1% of earners for which you need to earn £160,000 a year or more but nonetheless he and Carrie have Chequers, a big 16th century mansion in the Buckinghamshire countryside at weekends, it is not as if all the PM has is the Downing Street flat
    And he can borrow against future prospects. If even Brown and May can make a killing on the lecture circuit, what can he reasonably expect? I'd have thought a £100m Netflix deal if he wants one.
    The Lying King starring Matt Lucas as Johnson, Toby Jones as Cummings and Miranda Hart as Carrie.

    I mean, I wouldn't watch it at gunpoint, but it is definitely something that could exist.
    Or Little Britain, starring Boris Johnson as Matt Lucas?
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670

    Alistair said:



    Anyone blaming lack of a cheap pot and a few spoons and knives etc for eating fast food is at the kidding. Ready made crap from supermarkets is more expensive than buying cheap cuts and vegetables and making your own. Does not take much to knock up a pot of soup , or stovies and such like, mince and tatties and veg etc. There are low cost variants of all those that are far cheaper than fast crap.

    The working poor do not have time to faff around making food that takes ages to cook. One of the features of the working poor is not just being cash poor but being time poor. And the notion they can do it for less than the price of pizza's and ready meals from Lidl/Iceland is for the birds.

    Someone was saying they should roast a £2.5 chicken, as if they have over an hour to cook dinner, or the cost of the electricity to run the oven for so long.

    Never mind that a £2.50 chicken is a piece of crap nutritionally - a Goodfella's Pepperoni pizza is less Fat than a shite factory farmed bird and only half the protein per 100g.
    Electricity costs between 12 and 24p per kWh in the UK, for domestic consumption.

    An oven running at highish power - 180c - would use around 1.5kW

    So the electricity cost of cooking for 1 hour would be 18-36p, depending on your supplier.
    Yes but that extra 18p means it is cheaper to take the family to Burger King every night apparently.
    No one is talking about going to burger King every night. Its is the comparison between a meal that takes and hour and a half to cook vs a 800 calorie 49p pizza from Lidl.
  • Nigelb said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Alistair said:

    Cyclefree said:

    HYUFD said:

    I doubt there will be any confirmed appointment to replace Bader Ginsburg until after the election. Trump and the Republicans know in particular that there will be huge evangelical turnout at the prospect of replacing the most pro abortion Justice on the court with a conservative.

    It was high evangelical support which proved pivotal in 2004 in winning George W Bush a second term, the last re elected Republican president

    Doesn’t it also work the other way: those groups worried about just such a development also have an incentive to turn out?
    Dem voters seemingly don't give a shit about the SC.
    Why on earth not?

    A genuine question this: it was victories in the SC which helped advance equal rights for black people and women and gays etc. Surely this is understood and that changes in the court’s composition therefore matter?

    And if not, why not?
    They are, and more so since it became evident that the more conservative justices wish to outlaw Obamacare.
    Republicans were the first to weaponise the appointment of Justices as a political wedge issue, and seem wholly to have abandoned the idea of the Court as anything but another venue for partisan politics.
    The attitude of liberals to the court is rather more nuanced than that.
    Obama put it quite well:
    ... A basic principle of the law — and of everyday fairness — is that we apply rules with consistency, and not based on what’s convenient or advantageous in the moment. The rule of law, the legitimacy of our courts, the fundamental workings of our democracy all depend on that basic principle....
    So how many times did a Clinton or Obama appointed judge vote against the liberal line ?
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,751
    edited September 2020

    https://twitter.com/OwenJones84/status/1307251327739858944

    A rare interesting-ish comment from Owen Jones.

    Labour got what 43% in 1997, they did poll much higher but that was their best electoral result.

    They're on 40 now, so they probably have another few percent to grow, I think Corbyn got to 45% once?

    However, that was the only time they have polled significantly above 40% of the vote since 1970.*

    Labour’s problem is their natural vote share seems to be stubbornly stuck in the low to mid-30s unless something really unusual happens, such as Tony Blair or Theresa May+complacent Remainers.

    By contrast, the Tories seem to have a natural floor in the high 30s, unless something unusual happens (Black Wednesday). So they can be awkward for their electoral opponents just by standing still.

    This isn’t an unusual situation either. Between 1886 and 1935 the Unionists/Conservatives comfortably topped the popular vote in every election with one very spectacular exception. And they spent, in those years, just 15 years out of power. By 2024 they will have been in power for 32 of the previous 45 years. Again.

    Starmer, for all he is progress from Corbyn, isn’t Blair. We wait to find out who Johnson’s replacement will be to see how this latest run plays out.

    *In 2001 it was bang on 40%, in 2017 just under.
  • One of the biggest hacks myself and Mrs U found for healthy breakfast. Overnight oats. Mix together big batch on Sunday night, takes 5 mins to prep, leave overnight, portion up, week of breakfast sitting there ready in the fridge for the whole work week. Can easily be eaten on the go.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074

    Cyclefree said:

    DavidL said:

    Foxy said:

    alex_ said:

    On past history Trump is bound to nominate somebody who is forced to withdraw, so may well become moot. There is also the outside possibility he chooses somebody who is vulnerable to a Democrat impeachment if they take House and Senate.

    Surely, it is the Senate confirmation hearings that will be the bulk of the delay. They seemed to go on ages with Brett Kavanaugh.

    Tis a pity that judicial ability, and Constitutional competence will barely be considered in the appointment process.
    |I don't think that is the real pity. The real pity is that the appointment of a judge whose job is to apply the law impartially is a political matter. Add in the absurd powers given to the SC under the Constitution (arguably the most overrated document in history) and you have a recipe for disaster.

    Edit, those who spent much of this week wittering on about the importance of the rule of law really should reflect on this. Is this what they want?
    With the greatest respect, what a very silly comment to make.

    You really think that how one country appoints judges is an argument against the rule of law?

    It is worth considering the danger of using Judicial control to effect change.

    Every single one of my American relatives thought that since they controlled the law (via the Supreme Court), that racial equality, gay rights etc etc were protected.

    Then right wings judges started getting on the court....

    The problem was that while (for example) a solemnly built bridge from personal privacy to abortion is a wonderful philosophical construct, it has a couple of defects.

    - To the voters it sounds rather like "Screw you and who you vote for - we own the law". The classic line "Keep the coinage and the courts. Let the rabble have the rest." also comes to mind.
    - The suspension of belief required to think that, say, for the abortion issue, personal privacy encompasses abortion, but there is no right to privacy concerning a woman ingesting alcohol or drugs while pregnant. The argument was made up to achieve a goal.

    The result is that the what the courts do in the US is, increasingly, legislate by seeing how far you can wordspin the existing laws.

    Judicial activism without legislative activism simply builds a bridge without real support, in a democracy.
    A very thoughtful post. And there is much in what you say.

    But none of that is an argument against the rule of law - which is what @DavidL seemed to be saying.

    It is an argument for realising that when you change things you have to try and bring people with you. On the whole I prefer it if it is Parliament which makes changes. But it does raise the issue of what do you do if a legislature enacts a change which is beyond all moral decency - denying a group the right to vote, say. Should courts have no say?

    It is a complicated issue though because if you look at the history of civil rights in the US, it was the SC’s decision on education in the 1950’s and the reaction to that by the police and others in Southern states which helped galvanise the civil rights movement and which led to the legislative changes eventually made by LBJ. Arguably without the court’s ruling it would have been much harder to make people realise the extent of discrimination and fight for change.
  • contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818
    DavidL said:

    Alistair said:

    Some things to consider -

    - Very limited time to push through an appointment before the election. I believe that there are something like 13 days of Senate business planned before the election.
    - All the senators are out campaigning.
    - A lame duck appointment could happen.
    - Given the voter suppression and other crap planned by various Republicans from Trump down, another vote in the Court would be very, very useful in the event of a contested election.

    I can *just about* see McConnell pushing a candidate through in a 10 minute session, but that would be a reach, even for him.

    McConnell is an absolute bastard. I put nothing past him.
    I am sure Nicola thinks the same. Something in the name?
    After Sunak briefed the Mail on his 'pleading' with Johnson about the impact of a second lockdown on the economy, I wonder what odds I would actually get on his not presenting the next budget. Might not actually be that high now!

    How can you run an economy with this stuff going on?

  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,739

    grilled chicken with steamed veg and rice, 15 mins with all that is needed is george foreman grill, a pan and a bamboo steamer.

    I don't own a George Foreman Grill. I do own a bamboo steamer, but the pan big enough for the steamer is not deep enough for the rice...

    Even if I had all the stuff (and I do) it's still not as tasty as a takeaway curry.

    But what about the vegetables ?

    If you're cooking from raw that takes quite a bit of work.

    Even if you have a TV in the kitchen to watch it still takes time and effort.

    If you can take the time a trouble to cook a duck with all the trimmings, depending on how many are eating you can freeze some portions for later (if you have a freezer)

    Then the next roast duck dinner just means sticking the frozen parcel in the oven for an hour

    But that still takes an hour, and assumes the energy costs are not prohibitive.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,751

    Alistair said:



    Anyone blaming lack of a cheap pot and a few spoons and knives etc for eating fast food is at the kidding. Ready made crap from supermarkets is more expensive than buying cheap cuts and vegetables and making your own. Does not take much to knock up a pot of soup , or stovies and such like, mince and tatties and veg etc. There are low cost variants of all those that are far cheaper than fast crap.

    The working poor do not have time to faff around making food that takes ages to cook. One of the features of the working poor is not just being cash poor but being time poor. And the notion they can do it for less than the price of pizza's and ready meals from Lidl/Iceland is for the birds.

    Someone was saying they should roast a £2.5 chicken, as if they have over an hour to cook dinner, or the cost of the electricity to run the oven for so long.

    Never mind that a £2.50 chicken is a piece of crap nutritionally - a Goodfella's Pepperoni pizza is less Fat than a shite factory farmed bird and only half the protein per 100g.
    Electricity costs between 12 and 24p per kWh in the UK, for domestic consumption.

    An oven running at highish power - 180c - would use around 1.5kW

    So the electricity cost of cooking for 1 hour would be 18-36p, depending on your supplier.
    Yes but that extra 18p means it is cheaper to take the family to Burger King every night apparently.
    I think it quite possible that the cost of running an oven is believed to be orders of magnitude more than it really is.

    Interesting to see Nick Palmer illustrating the classic block to cooking - "I've never done it?"

    As to why he should - to learn about the food you eat. To improve your diet. To do something different in your life.

    The time taken to cook is also massively over estimated by many people. 2 hours in the oven doesn't mean 2 hours staring at the oven like a TV.

    I have considered writing a cook book for the lazy and indolent. People like me, really.

    For example - to make roast duck.

    1) 1 whole duck.
    2) Rub with salt, and score the skin with a knife - 2 minutes
    3) Stuff with fruit - oranges and tangerines, peeled - 2 minutes.
    4) Put in the oven at 120c
    5) Watch the Cruel Sea
    6) Watch the Sound Barrier
    7) Watch the Malta story
    8) Done.
    You take six and a half hours to roast a duck?

    How big is it, FFS?
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,718
    edited September 2020

    Nigelb said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Alistair said:

    Cyclefree said:

    HYUFD said:

    I doubt there will be any confirmed appointment to replace Bader Ginsburg until after the election. Trump and the Republicans know in particular that there will be huge evangelical turnout at the prospect of replacing the most pro abortion Justice on the court with a conservative.

    It was high evangelical support which proved pivotal in 2004 in winning George W Bush a second term, the last re elected Republican president

    Doesn’t it also work the other way: those groups worried about just such a development also have an incentive to turn out?
    Dem voters seemingly don't give a shit about the SC.
    Why on earth not?

    A genuine question this: it was victories in the SC which helped advance equal rights for black people and women and gays etc. Surely this is understood and that changes in the court’s composition therefore matter?

    And if not, why not?
    They are, and more so since it became evident that the more conservative justices wish to outlaw Obamacare.
    Republicans were the first to weaponise the appointment of Justices as a political wedge issue, and seem wholly to have abandoned the idea of the Court as anything but another venue for partisan politics.
    The attitude of liberals to the court is rather more nuanced than that.
    Obama put it quite well:
    ... A basic principle of the law — and of everyday fairness — is that we apply rules with consistency, and not based on what’s convenient or advantageous in the moment. The rule of law, the legitimacy of our courts, the fundamental workings of our democracy all depend on that basic principle....
    So how many times did a Clinton or Obama appointed judge vote against the liberal line ?
    What is the point of appointing a judge to opine on the law when you've pre-determined what he or she will say? I know we've expressed doubts on here's to whether one can really describe the US as a democracy and this just adding weight to the evidence!
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,751

    ydoethur said:

    DavidL said:

    ydoethur said:

    IanB2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    IanB2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    IanB2 said:

    Food prices appear to have gone up considerable these last few weeks?

    We’ve had the worst harvest in many years in this country due to dry weather followed by raging storms. So all our food has to be imported.

    And while there is a surplus elsewhere in the world as Canada and Oz have done OK, our currency has been tanking due to Cummings being mad as a box of frogs, so prices of imports have gone up.

    It’s a good job we’re not planning to do anything reckless, like, say, cut off trading links with our largest suppliers of foodstuffs.

    Ah...

    https://www.eadt.co.uk/business/farming/east-anglian-cereal-yields-hit-by-extreme-weather-1-6781165

    Edit - this situation may also be why the government is panicking over the food security of Northern Ireland, of course.
    Thanks, that would explain it. Replicating supermarket orders I placed in August for delivery in October, the same items cost in total between 5-10% more. This isn’t showing in the CPI given the reduction due to Rishi’s Covid dinners and other virus related price falls.
    I am afraid that situation is going to get worse before it gets better. February looks alarmingly like the potential for a perfect storm in terms of food security, between the ongoing disruption of trade due to Covid, Brexit, poor global weather and a lack of port capacity. We could easily see really massive price hikes leading into next spring.
    Tough on poor people, who need to buy food, but won’t be able to enjoy the price reductions in meals out, travel, and the rest. And will have any wage or benefit or pension income frozen if CPI stays negligible.

    Maybe I should fill the car with food before I return to the UK.
    I think it is going to be tough on rather more than just poor people. It’s going to hit food banks hard, of course, and those on benefits. But I can easily see a lot of middle income people being pulled into this as well given how insecure our food supples are looking. I’m expecting an awful lot of signs of undernourishment in children next year.
    Oh don't be ridiculous. The mark of poverty in this country is obesity. This will not change.
    Hi David

    It’s quite easy to be both obese and undernourished. Cheap, high fat food often has limited nutritional value.

    And that’s the option an increasing number of people may have to go for with the pressure on food supplies.
    Isn't "malnourished" the broader term generally used to encompass a very poor diet, rather than "undernourished" which implies sheer lack of quantity?
    If you prefer. I’m not dogmatic either way.

    The key point is they are not getting enough nutrition.
  • nichomarnichomar Posts: 7,483

    Alistair said:



    Anyone blaming lack of a cheap pot and a few spoons and knives etc for eating fast food is at the kidding. Ready made crap from supermarkets is more expensive than buying cheap cuts and vegetables and making your own. Does not take much to knock up a pot of soup , or stovies and such like, mince and tatties and veg etc. There are low cost variants of all those that are far cheaper than fast crap.

    The working poor do not have time to faff around making food that takes ages to cook. One of the features of the working poor is not just being cash poor but being time poor. And the notion they can do it for less than the price of pizza's and ready meals from Lidl/Iceland is for the birds.

    Someone was saying they should roast a £2.5 chicken, as if they have over an hour to cook dinner, or the cost of the electricity to run the oven for so long.

    Never mind that a £2.50 chicken is a piece of crap nutritionally - a Goodfella's Pepperoni pizza is less Fat than a shite factory farmed bird and only half the protein per 100g.
    Electricity costs between 12 and 24p per kWh in the UK, for domestic consumption.

    An oven running at highish power - 180c - would use around 1.5kW

    So the electricity cost of cooking for 1 hour would be 18-36p, depending on your supplier.
    Yes but that extra 18p means it is cheaper to take the family to Burger King every night apparently.
    I think it quite possible that the cost of running an oven is believed to be orders of magnitude more than it really is.

    Interesting to see Nick Palmer illustrating the classic block to cooking - "I've never done it?"

    As to why he should - to learn about the food you eat. To improve your diet. To do something different in your life.

    The time taken to cook is also massively over estimated by many people. 2 hours in the oven doesn't mean 2 hours staring at the oven like a TV.

    I have considered writing a cook book for the lazy and indolent. People like me, really.

    For example - to make roast duck.

    1) 1 whole duck.
    2) Rub with salt, and score the skin with a knife - 2 minutes
    3) Stuff with fruit - oranges and tangerines, peeled - 2 minutes.
    4) Put in the oven at 120c
    5) Watch the Cruel Sea
    6) Watch the Sound Barrier
    7) Watch the Malta story
    8) Done.
    But what about the vegetables ?

    If you're cooking from raw that takes quite a bit of work.

    Even if you have a TV in the kitchen to watch it still takes time and effort.
    Roast Sunday lunch from scratch takes about thirty minutes actively doing, the washing up is more of a pain.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,751
    Dura_Ace said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    HYUFD said:

    OK, I know the PM's salary now does not quite get you into the top 1% of earners for which you need to earn £160,000 a year or more but nonetheless he and Carrie have Chequers, a big 16th century mansion in the Buckinghamshire countryside at weekends, it is not as if all the PM has is the Downing Street flat
    And he can borrow against future prospects. If even Brown and May can make a killing on the lecture circuit, what can he reasonably expect? I'd have thought a £100m Netflix deal if he wants one.
    The Lying King starring Matt Lucas as Johnson, Toby Jones as Cummings and Miranda Hart as Carrie.

    I mean, I wouldn't watch it at gunpoint, but it is definitely something that could exist.
    I wouldn’t watch anything at gun point. It would definitely spoil my enjoyment of anything on the box to have a gun pointed at me.
  • contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818
    Its funny but I thought Trump was more sincere about his regret at Ginsberg passing than Biden.

    Something very odd about Biden's delivery....
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670

    Alistair said:



    Anyone blaming lack of a cheap pot and a few spoons and knives etc for eating fast food is at the kidding. Ready made crap from supermarkets is more expensive than buying cheap cuts and vegetables and making your own. Does not take much to knock up a pot of soup , or stovies and such like, mince and tatties and veg etc. There are low cost variants of all those that are far cheaper than fast crap.

    The working poor do not have time to faff around making food that takes ages to cook. One of the features of the working poor is not just being cash poor but being time poor. And the notion they can do it for less than the price of pizza's and ready meals from Lidl/Iceland is for the birds.

    Someone was saying they should roast a £2.5 chicken, as if they have over an hour to cook dinner, or the cost of the electricity to run the oven for so long.

    Never mind that a £2.50 chicken is a piece of crap nutritionally - a Goodfella's Pepperoni pizza is less Fat than a shite factory farmed bird and only half the protein per 100g.
    Good pot of soup and cheap cuts of meat can be done in bulk and frozen. Then you just cook some cheap spuds and a few vegetables.
    However I cannot really comment as we eat nearly all organic if at all possible and chickens cost 12 quid upwards. My wife does cook everything from scratch and makes lots of soup which is relatively inexpensive, but it does involve time and effort. It is tempting to take the easy option but is not necessary if you have the gumption, it is personal choice.
    A great deal of rented accommodation at the low end of the market has appalling cooking facilities. We are talking no hob at all, only an oven. Sometimes not even that.
  • nichomarnichomar Posts: 7,483

    Its funny but I thought Trump was more sincere about his regret at Ginsberg passing than Biden.

    Something very odd about Biden's delivery....

    Trump was lucky with the background music playing, it added gravitas to his words.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,739

    Something very odd about Biden's delivery....

    Maybe the teleprompter was stuck...
  • Worth noting that the new congress sits slightly earlier than the new president is inaugurated (3rd January vs 20th January)
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    Hello, I've just got in at 8pm after a 10 hour shift in the warehouse.

    I know, I will put on a meal that takes 2 hours to cook.

    That makes sense.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941
    Alistair said:

    Hello, I've just got in at 8pm after a 10 hour shift in the warehouse.

    I know, I will put on a meal that takes 2 hours to cook.

    That makes sense.

    When I had a really long commute I'd reheat stuff made at the weekend all week. Lots of time at the weekend, but two minutes to stick it in the microwave when I got home.
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,072
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    In other news, the overnight YouGov is interesting in that it shows the government's strategy of throwing out Brexit and culture wars red meat out there to keep its voting coalition together and to depress Labour support is not working. Should that become established, and with what is coming, what else do the Tories have except the nuclear option of changing leader?

    Notably, this was the first YouGov to give Labour 40% or more of the vote share since July 2018.

    Actually if you look at the details of the poll the LDs are down 5% from 11% to 6% since GE19 and Labour up 8% from 32% to 40%, the Tories are only down 3% from 43% to 40%.

    So the Tories are still holding most of their vote, the main movement is still Remainers from the LDs to Starmer Labour, that would leave the Tories as largest party but Starmer able to become PM with SNP and LD support in a hung parliament
    Labour are two or three points off their peak. Davey, however could pick up a handful of points from the Tories. The combination of the two puts the Conservatives in the deep stuff, even if they keep parts of the Red Wall they are not looking secure.
    If we go to No Deal Brexit there may be some movement from Remain voting Tories to the LDs and Starmer Labour in the Home Counties and London but the Red Wall will see far less movement, for them 2019 was a cultural shift to the Tories on a pro Brexit agenda
    Evidence please? All the evidence I’ve seen suggests a greater swing back to Labour already in the red wall.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,624
    nichomar said:

    Alistair said:



    Anyone blaming lack of a cheap pot and a few spoons and knives etc for eating fast food is at the kidding. Ready made crap from supermarkets is more expensive than buying cheap cuts and vegetables and making your own. Does not take much to knock up a pot of soup , or stovies and such like, mince and tatties and veg etc. There are low cost variants of all those that are far cheaper than fast crap.

    The working poor do not have time to faff around making food that takes ages to cook. One of the features of the working poor is not just being cash poor but being time poor. And the notion they can do it for less than the price of pizza's and ready meals from Lidl/Iceland is for the birds.

    Someone was saying they should roast a £2.5 chicken, as if they have over an hour to cook dinner, or the cost of the electricity to run the oven for so long.

    Never mind that a £2.50 chicken is a piece of crap nutritionally - a Goodfella's Pepperoni pizza is less Fat than a shite factory farmed bird and only half the protein per 100g.
    Electricity costs between 12 and 24p per kWh in the UK, for domestic consumption.

    An oven running at highish power - 180c - would use around 1.5kW

    So the electricity cost of cooking for 1 hour would be 18-36p, depending on your supplier.
    Yes but that extra 18p means it is cheaper to take the family to Burger King every night apparently.
    I think it quite possible that the cost of running an oven is believed to be orders of magnitude more than it really is.

    Interesting to see Nick Palmer illustrating the classic block to cooking - "I've never done it?"

    As to why he should - to learn about the food you eat. To improve your diet. To do something different in your life.

    The time taken to cook is also massively over estimated by many people. 2 hours in the oven doesn't mean 2 hours staring at the oven like a TV.

    I have considered writing a cook book for the lazy and indolent. People like me, really.

    For example - to make roast duck.

    1) 1 whole duck.
    2) Rub with salt, and score the skin with a knife - 2 minutes
    3) Stuff with fruit - oranges and tangerines, peeled - 2 minutes.
    4) Put in the oven at 120c
    5) Watch the Cruel Sea
    6) Watch the Sound Barrier
    7) Watch the Malta story
    8) Done.
    But what about the vegetables ?

    If you're cooking from raw that takes quite a bit of work.

    Even if you have a TV in the kitchen to watch it still takes time and effort.
    Roast Sunday lunch from scratch takes about thirty minutes actively doing, the washing up is more of a pain.
    My mother gave me a steamer - a stainless steel pot with a couple of perforated pans to sit on top - when I went to university. Decades later I am still using it.

    Chop up your carrots etc. Put them in the perforated pans. Put some boiling water in the pans below. 15 - 20 min later, crisp vegetables.

    One advantage of this method is that the vegetables get steam cleaned - so removing any traces of pesticides etc.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575

    Nigelb said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Alistair said:

    Cyclefree said:

    HYUFD said:

    I doubt there will be any confirmed appointment to replace Bader Ginsburg until after the election. Trump and the Republicans know in particular that there will be huge evangelical turnout at the prospect of replacing the most pro abortion Justice on the court with a conservative.

    It was high evangelical support which proved pivotal in 2004 in winning George W Bush a second term, the last re elected Republican president

    Doesn’t it also work the other way: those groups worried about just such a development also have an incentive to turn out?
    Dem voters seemingly don't give a shit about the SC.
    Why on earth not?

    A genuine question this: it was victories in the SC which helped advance equal rights for black people and women and gays etc. Surely this is understood and that changes in the court’s composition therefore matter?

    And if not, why not?
    They are, and more so since it became evident that the more conservative justices wish to outlaw Obamacare.
    Republicans were the first to weaponise the appointment of Justices as a political wedge issue, and seem wholly to have abandoned the idea of the Court as anything but another venue for partisan politics.
    The attitude of liberals to the court is rather more nuanced than that.
    Obama put it quite well:
    ... A basic principle of the law — and of everyday fairness — is that we apply rules with consistency, and not based on what’s convenient or advantageous in the moment. The rule of law, the legitimacy of our courts, the fundamental workings of our democracy all depend on that basic principle....
    So how many times did a Clinton or Obama appointed judge vote against the liberal line ?
    Ginsburg was approved 96-3 by the then Senate.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074
    edited September 2020

    Malmesbury - sounds rather like the argument of Lord Sumption who's magisterial Reith lectures were too easily dismissed by many progressives. Was it wrong for the US to make abortion a supreme court issue?

    I don't doubt the sincerity of much of the anti-abortion movement but I can't help but feel that for some conservatives it is a matter of revenge. And that some men want to put women off having sex - unless it is with them.

    In a constitutional democracy, the highest constitutional court will always be busy. It was inevitable that abortion would have ended up there.

    The problem is that progressive law revision has taken the place of progressive law *making*

    What should have happened next was an Amendment to the US constitution. But the progressive side thought they would lose that fight..... They gave up on democracy, with that.
    The issue is what happens if a people democratically vote for something which thoroughly evil. Eg there is a vote in the legislature to take away all rights from a minority religious group and send them to camps.

    Is that ok because it is democratic? Or are there some limits even on what a people can democratically choose to do? There are competing values here: democracy and morality.

    Most civilised countries have some sort of foundational set of beliefs setting boundaries beyond which one doesn’t go - the US Constitution, the ECHR etc and these change over time. But very few believe that there should be no limits on what even a democratically elected legislature can do. And how that gets resolved - usually via some appeal to law, even if that too changes over time.

    The US Constitution is one way of trying to resolve those tensions. Other countries have different ways of doing so. There is no perfect answer.

    But those who think that it is enough simply to enact a democratic vote need to answer the question: would they be happy with that if a people democratically decided that every person called “David” should be taken out and shot every Tuesday, for instance?

    And if not, then they too see a role for some sort of higher moral law and we are then simply arguing about where its boundaries should be and how it should be interpreted and who by.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575
    ydoethur said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    HYUFD said:

    OK, I know the PM's salary now does not quite get you into the top 1% of earners for which you need to earn £160,000 a year or more but nonetheless he and Carrie have Chequers, a big 16th century mansion in the Buckinghamshire countryside at weekends, it is not as if all the PM has is the Downing Street flat
    And he can borrow against future prospects. If even Brown and May can make a killing on the lecture circuit, what can he reasonably expect? I'd have thought a £100m Netflix deal if he wants one.
    The Lying King starring Matt Lucas as Johnson, Toby Jones as Cummings and Miranda Hart as Carrie.

    I mean, I wouldn't watch it at gunpoint, but it is definitely something that could exist.
    I wouldn’t watch anything at gun point. It would definitely spoil my enjoyment of anything on the box to have a gun pointed at me.
    @Dura_Ace is made of sterner stuff.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,624
    Alistair said:

    Alistair said:



    Anyone blaming lack of a cheap pot and a few spoons and knives etc for eating fast food is at the kidding. Ready made crap from supermarkets is more expensive than buying cheap cuts and vegetables and making your own. Does not take much to knock up a pot of soup , or stovies and such like, mince and tatties and veg etc. There are low cost variants of all those that are far cheaper than fast crap.

    The working poor do not have time to faff around making food that takes ages to cook. One of the features of the working poor is not just being cash poor but being time poor. And the notion they can do it for less than the price of pizza's and ready meals from Lidl/Iceland is for the birds.

    Someone was saying they should roast a £2.5 chicken, as if they have over an hour to cook dinner, or the cost of the electricity to run the oven for so long.

    Never mind that a £2.50 chicken is a piece of crap nutritionally - a Goodfella's Pepperoni pizza is less Fat than a shite factory farmed bird and only half the protein per 100g.
    Good pot of soup and cheap cuts of meat can be done in bulk and frozen. Then you just cook some cheap spuds and a few vegetables.
    However I cannot really comment as we eat nearly all organic if at all possible and chickens cost 12 quid upwards. My wife does cook everything from scratch and makes lots of soup which is relatively inexpensive, but it does involve time and effort. It is tempting to take the easy option but is not necessary if you have the gumption, it is personal choice.
    A great deal of rented accommodation at the low end of the market has appalling cooking facilities. We are talking no hob at all, only an oven. Sometimes not even that.
    The appalling cooking facilities are related to the fact that they don't get used, if provided. Which is first? The chicken or the egg.

    For myself, I would simply legislate that such facilities are the minimum required to class a property as habitable....
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,263
    edited September 2020

    Loads of healthy food / meals don't take hours to prep or cook e.g. porridge, 5 mins max....grilled chicken with steamed veg and rice, 15 mins with all that is needed is george foreman grill, a pan and a bamboo steamer.

    Exactly
    I have no idea what a George Foreman grill or a bamboo steamer is - that sort of jargon illustrates the access barrier for non-foodies to getting into it. And I can make myself a microwaved meal literally in 6 minutes while I'm doing something else.

    I take the point that exploring cooking for oneself from scratch is probably interesting, and i've been experimenting a little on the hob - making an omelette, getting advice from Cyclefree on making pasta. But I have a really full life (4 jobs at the moment, though one is voluntary) and I never have a waking hour when I'm not choosing between interesting things to do or things I *ought* to do. Food isn't very important to me, so it's not a priority to experiment - maybe if I ever retire I'll have a more serious go.

    What I do is of course irrelevant to the main discussion about what people on low incomes should do. But I referred to it to illustrate the point that if you've got a hectic life, there isn't a strong incentive - financial, intellectual, or healthwise - to get into serious cooking, unless you happen to enjoy it. Advice and suggestions are welcome, but people who DO enjoy it too sometimes try to insist that we all ought to give it priority, and they can, with respect, bugger off.
  • Nigelb said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Alistair said:

    Cyclefree said:

    HYUFD said:

    I doubt there will be any confirmed appointment to replace Bader Ginsburg until after the election. Trump and the Republicans know in particular that there will be huge evangelical turnout at the prospect of replacing the most pro abortion Justice on the court with a conservative.

    It was high evangelical support which proved pivotal in 2004 in winning George W Bush a second term, the last re elected Republican president

    Doesn’t it also work the other way: those groups worried about just such a development also have an incentive to turn out?
    Dem voters seemingly don't give a shit about the SC.
    Why on earth not?

    A genuine question this: it was victories in the SC which helped advance equal rights for black people and women and gays etc. Surely this is understood and that changes in the court’s composition therefore matter?

    And if not, why not?
    They are, and more so since it became evident that the more conservative justices wish to outlaw Obamacare.
    Republicans were the first to weaponise the appointment of Justices as a political wedge issue, and seem wholly to have abandoned the idea of the Court as anything but another venue for partisan politics.
    The attitude of liberals to the court is rather more nuanced than that.
    Obama put it quite well:
    ... A basic principle of the law — and of everyday fairness — is that we apply rules with consistency, and not based on what’s convenient or advantageous in the moment. The rule of law, the legitimacy of our courts, the fundamental workings of our democracy all depend on that basic principle....
    So how many times did a Clinton or Obama appointed judge vote against the liberal line ?
    What is the point of appointing a judge to opine on the law when you've pre-determined what he or she will say? I know we've expressed doubts on here's to whether one can really describe the US as a democracy and this just adding weight to the evidence!
    I don't actually criticize for any US judge voting a certain way - that is after all what they've been appointed to do.

    But I think we should all recognise that and not pretend one side are honest keepers of the flame of justice while the other side are unqualified puppets.

    The US constitution and its 'separation of powers' perhaps does not function well in the current world.
  • glwglw Posts: 9,535

    pre-announcing that in mid-october there is going to be a to be a lockdown is really going to work isn't it.

    lots of people will prioritise seeing mates, family, pub get togethers and so on for next two weeks knowing the lockdown is coming and may not end after the two weeks. could be last chance now this side of new year.

    shambles.

    There are probably hundreds of thousands of parties, dinners, and outings being brought forward to avoid the new lockdown, almost all ignoring the rule of six, and it's entirely predictable that this will in itself lead to increase in virus transmission.

    You probably can't bring in new measures immediately, but notice should be as short as is practically possible, anything beyond a few days invites people to do the very things we are trying to stop.
  • https://twitter.com/SebastianEPayne/status/1307264009700364289

    He was never good, he was never going to be good.

    He wins things, he is terrible at running things
  • I say this as someone who hates Cameron for running away and leaving us with this mess but bring him back, at least he was competent
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    RobD said:

    Alistair said:

    Hello, I've just got in at 8pm after a 10 hour shift in the warehouse.

    I know, I will put on a meal that takes 2 hours to cook.

    That makes sense.

    When I had a really long commute I'd reheat stuff made at the weekend all week. Lots of time at the weekend, but two minutes to stick it in the microwave when I got home.
    Surprise, low end rental accommodation fails to have a fridge and or freezer.

    The number of barriers for those on the poverty line being able to do all these time/money saving cooking tips is staggeringly large.

    Even if they have all the facilities necessary to cook then it takes only a single financial emergency from them having to spend money on the financial emergency rather than feeding the prepay meter and the that's all your frozen food spoiled.
  • Cyclefree said:

    HYUFD said:

    alex_ said:

    HYUFD said:

    I doubt there will be any confirmed appointment to replace Bader Ginsburg until after the election. Trump and the Republicans know in particular that there will be huge evangelical turnout at the prospect of replacing the most pro abortion Justice on the court with a conservative.

    It was high evangelical support which proved pivotal in 2004 in winning George W Bush a second term, the last re elected Republican president

    You’re assuming that Republican senators want him re-elected. Maybe some of them would happily trade his defeat for securing a long term majority on the court. Some might even see it secretly as a win-win.

    There is another angle to this though. A Republican nominee would fix the court balance decisively for a generation. Even worse the next change is likely to be neutral for the Democrats at best. Doesn’t it actually suit Republicans (Pres candidates and Senators alike) for the balance of the Supreme Court to be a live issue? Remove this issue and for the foreseeable future Republicans are going to need to find other reasons to get voters to support them.
    Republican Senators up for re election this year will also want a delay to ensure high evangelical turnout for them
    I do find it baffling that so many US evangelicals are obsessed with abortion but don’t care about infidelity, lying or fraud. Do they perhaps have a different version of the 10 Commandments?
    It's logical.

    Abortion is a terrible crime committed against a completely innocent victim, and American has a lot of it.

    This is much more important than picking one president over another because he's marginally less of a sliezeball.

    Also, the abortion issue is likely to be settled for 50 years by a rebalanced SC, Trump will be gone in 4 years regardless.
  • contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818

    I say this as someone who hates Cameron for running away and leaving us with this mess but bring him back, at least he was competent

    Conservative leaders who are a lot less popular than their party (as seems to be the case) do not last long.
  • https://twitter.com/OwenJones84/status/1307251327739858944

    A rare interesting-ish comment from Owen Jones.

    Labour got what 43% in 1997, they did poll much higher but that was their best electoral result.

    They're on 40 now, so they probably have another few percent to grow, I think Corbyn got to 45% once?

    Labour's medium term problem is that it has to announce some policies at some point.

    So all the people who were won over be Corbyn's bribes - students and WASPIs for example - might be somewhat disappointed when they realise they wont get whet they were told they were entitled to.
    Corbyn's "bribes" (or "eye-catching pledges" if you prefer) were unsuccessful for a couple of reasons.

    Firstly, they generally targeted the wrong people - they were premised on the theory of driving up turnout in historically low turnout groups rather than winning converts.

    Secondly, they made the mistake of thinking what people want is big promises which poll well in isolation but fail to add up to a credible programme. What people actually vote for is things they can envisage happening. Hence Johnson's "oven ready deal" (it wasn't true as it transpires, but was sold as a quick and easy way out) and Blair's pledge card (the pledges actually being very modest in scope and scale).
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,624
    Cyclefree said:

    Cyclefree said:

    DavidL said:

    Foxy said:

    alex_ said:

    On past history Trump is bound to nominate somebody who is forced to withdraw, so may well become moot. There is also the outside possibility he chooses somebody who is vulnerable to a Democrat impeachment if they take House and Senate.

    Surely, it is the Senate confirmation hearings that will be the bulk of the delay. They seemed to go on ages with Brett Kavanaugh.

    Tis a pity that judicial ability, and Constitutional competence will barely be considered in the appointment process.
    |I don't think that is the real pity. The real pity is that the appointment of a judge whose job is to apply the law impartially is a political matter. Add in the absurd powers given to the SC under the Constitution (arguably the most overrated document in history) and you have a recipe for disaster.

    Edit, those who spent much of this week wittering on about the importance of the rule of law really should reflect on this. Is this what they want?
    With the greatest respect, what a very silly comment to make.

    You really think that how one country appoints judges is an argument against the rule of law?

    It is worth considering the danger of using Judicial control to effect change.

    Every single one of my American relatives thought that since they controlled the law (via the Supreme Court), that racial equality, gay rights etc etc were protected.

    Then right wings judges started getting on the court....

    The problem was that while (for example) a solemnly built bridge from personal privacy to abortion is a wonderful philosophical construct, it has a couple of defects.

    - To the voters it sounds rather like "Screw you and who you vote for - we own the law". The classic line "Keep the coinage and the courts. Let the rabble have the rest." also comes to mind.
    - The suspension of belief required to think that, say, for the abortion issue, personal privacy encompasses abortion, but there is no right to privacy concerning a woman ingesting alcohol or drugs while pregnant. The argument was made up to achieve a goal.

    The result is that the what the courts do in the US is, increasingly, legislate by seeing how far you can wordspin the existing laws.

    Judicial activism without legislative activism simply builds a bridge without real support, in a democracy.
    A very thoughtful post. And there is much in what you say.

    But none of that is an argument against the rule of law - which is what @DavidL seemed to be saying.

    It is an argument for realising that when you change things you have to try and bring people with you. On the whole I prefer it if it is Parliament which makes changes. But it does raise the issue of what do you do if a legislature enacts a change which is beyond all moral decency - denying a group the right to vote, say. Should courts have no say?

    It is a complicated issue though because if you look at the history of civil rights in the US, it was the SC’s decision on education in the 1950’s and the reaction to that by the police and others in Southern states which helped galvanise the civil rights movement and which led to the legislative changes eventually made by LBJ. Arguably without the court’s ruling it would have been much harder to make people realise the extent of discrimination and fight for change.
    I would agree that judicial branch ruling are a very important part of the process. The problem comes when they *are the process*. Note that LBJ didn't just sit on his well padded arse. He legislated like fury on the subject - following up on and improving upon SC rulings, in a number of cases.

    The Rule of Law is a bit like Motherhood and Apple Pie. Everyone is in favour, but definitions differ.

    One position is that the framework of Human Rights/Constitutional Law is all powerful and all encompassing. And that it binds the legislature.

    Another is the minimalist position that there is very little the legislative branch can't do. It is only bound not to self perpetuate and a few other things. In all else, its word is final.

    Consider the recent ruling on pension ages for women. A couple of lawyers I know, of the first group (above), were furious. They wanted to extend the idea that certain actions of government were *beyond legislative reach* - they were quite clear that they wanted a situation where, no matter what laws the government *passed in parliament*, they would be ruled illegal.
  • glwglw Posts: 9,535

    That was pretty much my reaction. And I'm not American.

    She asks whether this year can get any worse.

    Oh yes. Much, much worse...

    I suspect that 2021 isn't going to be any better than 2020.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,624
    ydoethur said:

    Alistair said:



    Anyone blaming lack of a cheap pot and a few spoons and knives etc for eating fast food is at the kidding. Ready made crap from supermarkets is more expensive than buying cheap cuts and vegetables and making your own. Does not take much to knock up a pot of soup , or stovies and such like, mince and tatties and veg etc. There are low cost variants of all those that are far cheaper than fast crap.

    The working poor do not have time to faff around making food that takes ages to cook. One of the features of the working poor is not just being cash poor but being time poor. And the notion they can do it for less than the price of pizza's and ready meals from Lidl/Iceland is for the birds.

    Someone was saying they should roast a £2.5 chicken, as if they have over an hour to cook dinner, or the cost of the electricity to run the oven for so long.

    Never mind that a £2.50 chicken is a piece of crap nutritionally - a Goodfella's Pepperoni pizza is less Fat than a shite factory farmed bird and only half the protein per 100g.
    Electricity costs between 12 and 24p per kWh in the UK, for domestic consumption.

    An oven running at highish power - 180c - would use around 1.5kW

    So the electricity cost of cooking for 1 hour would be 18-36p, depending on your supplier.
    Yes but that extra 18p means it is cheaper to take the family to Burger King every night apparently.
    I think it quite possible that the cost of running an oven is believed to be orders of magnitude more than it really is.

    Interesting to see Nick Palmer illustrating the classic block to cooking - "I've never done it?"

    As to why he should - to learn about the food you eat. To improve your diet. To do something different in your life.

    The time taken to cook is also massively over estimated by many people. 2 hours in the oven doesn't mean 2 hours staring at the oven like a TV.

    I have considered writing a cook book for the lazy and indolent. People like me, really.

    For example - to make roast duck.

    1) 1 whole duck.
    2) Rub with salt, and score the skin with a knife - 2 minutes
    3) Stuff with fruit - oranges and tangerines, peeled - 2 minutes.
    4) Put in the oven at 120c
    5) Watch the Cruel Sea
    6) Watch the Sound Barrier
    7) Watch the Malta story
    8) Done.
    You take six and a half hours to roast a duck?

    How big is it, FFS?
    The 120c is the point. Low and slow.

    The end result falls apart at the touch. Perfect with some Chinese pancakes and Hosin sauce....
  • Cracks beginning to appear it seems, the secrets are starting to leak out. Look who else was in the whatsapp group of schemers.

    Police probing alleged leaked Alex Salmond WhatsApp messages sent by Nicola Sturgeon's husband
    Police have launched a probe into alleged leaked documents which suggest Nicola Sturgeon’s husband appeared to back police action against Alex Salmond.

    The Crown Office instructed officers to investigate how WhatsApp messages appearing to show SNP chief executive Peter Murrell calling for pressure to be put on the police over the Salmond case were made public.

    Another message appears to show Murrell supporting action by prosecutors in relation to the former first minister.

    The wording of the messages can be revealed today.

    Earlier this week, The Record revealed senior SNP MP Kenny MacAskill had demanded an investigation after being anonymously passed a document relating to the messages.

    MacAskill passed the information to a Holyrood committee that is investigating the Salmond controversy, as well as to the Crown Office.

    The first message states: “Totally agree folk should be asking the police questions…..report now with the PF on charges which leaves police twiddling their thumbs. So good time to be pressurising them. Would be good to know Met looking at events in London.”

    The second message states: “TBH the more fronts he is having to firefight on the better for all complainers. so CPS action would be a good thing.”
  • Labour's pledges should be something like:

    Mend the railways
    Invest in the NHS

    I'm not a PR guy, as you can see
  • From a country perceptive, the best long-term investment any leader could make is full FTTP
  • https://twitter.com/SebastianEPayne/status/1307264009700364289

    He was never good, he was never going to be good.

    He wins things, he is terrible at running things

    That was priced in; "It'll be like London, he'll do the photo ops and get competent assistants to actually run things."

    Unfortunately...
    1 You can't do that as PM.
    2 Johnson could appoint competent Deputy Mayors; they were clearly and permanently subservient. Johnson can't appoint competent ministers, lest they become rivals.
    3 His chief assistant is no good at running things apart from one-shot political campaigns.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    theProle said:

    Cyclefree said:

    HYUFD said:

    alex_ said:

    HYUFD said:

    I doubt there will be any confirmed appointment to replace Bader Ginsburg until after the election. Trump and the Republicans know in particular that there will be huge evangelical turnout at the prospect of replacing the most pro abortion Justice on the court with a conservative.

    It was high evangelical support which proved pivotal in 2004 in winning George W Bush a second term, the last re elected Republican president

    You’re assuming that Republican senators want him re-elected. Maybe some of them would happily trade his defeat for securing a long term majority on the court. Some might even see it secretly as a win-win.

    There is another angle to this though. A Republican nominee would fix the court balance decisively for a generation. Even worse the next change is likely to be neutral for the Democrats at best. Doesn’t it actually suit Republicans (Pres candidates and Senators alike) for the balance of the Supreme Court to be a live issue? Remove this issue and for the foreseeable future Republicans are going to need to find other reasons to get voters to support them.
    Republican Senators up for re election this year will also want a delay to ensure high evangelical turnout for them
    I do find it baffling that so many US evangelicals are obsessed with abortion but don’t care about infidelity, lying or fraud. Do they perhaps have a different version of the 10 Commandments?
    It's logical.

    Abortion is a terrible crime committed against a completely innocent victim, and American has a lot of it.
    It's not though. When Roe vs Wade was initially decided the evangelical community welcomed the decision. Opposition to abortion was viewed as a papist activity.

    Evangelicals didn't care.

    However in the 70s the federal government started stripping the Evangelicals segregated colleges of charity status.

    This Evangelicals did care about, they wanted to be left in peace to be racist. The Heritage Foundation saw an oppeetunity - it has spent the last decade trying to 'activate' the Evangelicals and this was their opening.

    They managed to reframe abortion as a privilege overused by African-Americans, they literally turned it into a Racial issue and that - at the start of the 80s got the Evangelicals on the path to total opposition.
  • malcolmg22malcolmg22 Posts: 327
    edited September 2020
    Scott_xP said:

    grilled chicken with steamed veg and rice, 15 mins with all that is needed is george foreman grill, a pan and a bamboo steamer.

    I don't own a George Foreman Grill. I do own a bamboo steamer, but the pan big enough for the steamer is not deep enough for the rice...

    Even if I had all the stuff (and I do) it's still not as tasty as a takeaway curry.

    But what about the vegetables ?

    If you're cooking from raw that takes quite a bit of work.

    Even if you have a TV in the kitchen to watch it still takes time and effort.

    If you can take the time a trouble to cook a duck with all the trimmings, depending on how many are eating you can freeze some portions for later (if you have a freezer)

    Then the next roast duck dinner just means sticking the frozen parcel in the oven for an hour

    But that still takes an hour, and assumes the energy costs are not prohibitive.
    you would be a fat unhealthy fecker if you ate takeaway curry every night plus it totally ignores the "POOR" discussion
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074
    I would rather garden than cook TBH. But I will add in my advice.

    Salads: lettuce, spinach, avocado, tomatoes, nuts, feta or mozzarella, sliced carrot, spring onion etc + some lovely fresh dressing and good bread. Rice or pasta could be added; artichokes or a hard-boiled egg or peppers. Followed by some fruit.

    What more could you possibly want.

    In winter: take some scraggy old meat or bones, carrots, onions and celery, cover with water, simmer gently for hours while you watch Casablanca or The Third Man or the racing. Or do some more gardening. Then switch off cooker and you have delicious broth which can be eaten on its own or with pastina and some grated Parmesan or used as the base for a heartier soup.

  • BarnesianBarnesian Posts: 7,979
    edited September 2020

    I find myself becoming a Metaphysical Solipsist. The world exists purely for my entertainment. No other explanation makes any sense.

    My explanation of existence is that we live in a simulation produced by a very technically advanced alien civilisation.

    See Nick Bostrom.
    https://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html

    The simulation we all live in is being run by an alien child who has got bored and has ticked the "disaster mode" checkbox to jazz it up a bit.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074

    Cyclefree said:

    Cyclefree said:

    DavidL said:

    Foxy said:

    alex_ said:

    On past history Trump is bound to nominate somebody who is forced to withdraw, so may well become moot. There is also the outside possibility he chooses somebody who is vulnerable to a Democrat impeachment if they take House and Senate.

    Surely, it is the Senate confirmation hearings that will be the bulk of the delay. They seemed to go on ages with Brett Kavanaugh.

    Tis a pity that judicial ability, and Constitutional competence will barely be considered in the appointment process.
    |I don't think that is the real pity. The real pity is that the appointment of a judge whose job is to apply the law impartially is a political matter. Add in the absurd powers given to the SC under the Constitution (arguably the most overrated document in history) and you have a recipe for disaster.

    Edit, those who spent much of this week wittering on about the importance of the rule of law really should reflect on this. Is this what they want?
    With the greatest respect, what a very silly comment to make.

    You really think that how one country appoints judges is an argument against the rule of law?

    It is worth considering the danger of using Judicial control to effect change.

    Every single one of my American relatives thought that since they controlled the law (via the Supreme Court), that racial equality, gay rights etc etc were protected.

    Then right wings judges started getting on the court....

    The problem was that while (for example) a solemnly built bridge from personal privacy to abortion is a wonderful philosophical construct, it has a couple of defects.

    - To the voters it sounds rather like "Screw you and who you vote for - we own the law". The classic line "Keep the coinage and the courts. Let the rabble have the rest." also comes to mind.
    - The suspension of belief required to think that, say, for the abortion issue, personal privacy encompasses abortion, but there is no right to privacy concerning a woman ingesting alcohol or drugs while pregnant. The argument was made up to achieve a goal.

    The result is that the what the courts do in the US is, increasingly, legislate by seeing how far you can wordspin the existing laws.

    Judicial activism without legislative activism simply builds a bridge without real support, in a democracy.
    A very thoughtful post. And there is much in what you say.

    But none of that is an argument against the rule of law - which is what @DavidL seemed to be saying.

    It is an argument for realising that when you change things you have to try and bring people with you. On the whole I prefer it if it is Parliament which makes changes. But it does raise the issue of what do you do if a legislature enacts a change which is beyond all moral decency - denying a group the right to vote, say. Should courts have no say?

    It is a complicated issue though because if you look at the history of civil rights in the US, it was the SC’s decision on education in the 1950’s and the reaction to that by the police and others in Southern states which helped galvanise the civil rights movement and which led to the legislative changes eventually made by LBJ. Arguably without the court’s ruling it would have been much harder to make people realise the extent of discrimination and fight for change.
    I would agree that judicial branch ruling are a very important part of the process. The problem comes when they *are the process*. Note that LBJ didn't just sit on his well padded arse. He legislated like fury on the subject - following up on and improving upon SC rulings, in a number of cases.

    The Rule of Law is a bit like Motherhood and Apple Pie. Everyone is in favour, but definitions differ.

    One position is that the framework of Human Rights/Constitutional Law is all powerful and all encompassing. And that it binds the legislature.

    Another is the minimalist position that there is very little the legislative branch can't do. It is only bound not to self perpetuate and a few other things. In all else, its word is final.

    Consider the recent ruling on pension ages for women. A couple of lawyers I know, of the first group (above), were furious. They wanted to extend the idea that certain actions of government were *beyond legislative reach* - they were quite clear that they wanted a situation where, no matter what laws the government *passed in parliament*, they would be ruled illegal.
    But if the legislature’s final word is, say, let’s kill all the Jews, what then? Would the minimalists really be prepared to countenance that?
  • Alistair said:

    Hello, I've just got in at 8pm after a 10 hour shift in the warehouse.

    I know, I will put on a meal that takes 2 hours to cook.

    That makes sense.

    Very very very few meals take two hours and if they do you are not involved for the majority of the two hours , just a bit of prep and stick in oven, feet up with a beer watching the box and wait the remainder of the two hours. Stop digging Alistair.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,624
    Cyclefree said:

    I would rather garden than cook TBH. But I will add in my advice.

    Salads: lettuce, spinach, avocado, tomatoes, nuts, feta or mozzarella, sliced carrot, spring onion etc + some lovely fresh dressing and good bread. Rice or pasta could be added; artichokes or a hard-boiled egg or peppers. Followed by some fruit.

    What more could you possibly want.

    In winter: take some scraggy old meat or bones, carrots, onions and celery, cover with water, simmer gently for hours while you watch Casablanca or The Third Man or the racing. Or do some more gardening. Then switch off cooker and you have delicious broth which can be eaten on its own or with pastina and some grated Parmesan or used as the base for a heartier soup.

    The later - the bones soup - is a perfect end for the chicken or duck carcase.

    In my version, I cook it up, strain out the bones and cartilage, and then cook in some rice. To the point it absorbs all the broth.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670

    Alistair said:

    Hello, I've just got in at 8pm after a 10 hour shift in the warehouse.

    I know, I will put on a meal that takes 2 hours to cook.

    That makes sense.

    Very very very few meals take two hours and if they do you are not involved for the majority of the two hours , just a bit of prep and stick in oven, feet up with a beer watching the box and wait the remainder of the two hours. Stop digging Alistair.
    Still talking about the hypothetical roast chicken dinner. It doesn't matter if that 2 hours is spent working on it or feet up it is the delay before eating that is important.

    If you are working shifts and coming home late the idea you will wait hours before eating is nonsense.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074
    theProle said:

    Cyclefree said:

    HYUFD said:

    alex_ said:

    HYUFD said:

    I doubt there will be any confirmed appointment to replace Bader Ginsburg until after the election. Trump and the Republicans know in particular that there will be huge evangelical turnout at the prospect of replacing the most pro abortion Justice on the court with a conservative.

    It was high evangelical support which proved pivotal in 2004 in winning George W Bush a second term, the last re elected Republican president

    You’re assuming that Republican senators want him re-elected. Maybe some of them would happily trade his defeat for securing a long term majority on the court. Some might even see it secretly as a win-win.

    There is another angle to this though. A Republican nominee would fix the court balance decisively for a generation. Even worse the next change is likely to be neutral for the Democrats at best. Doesn’t it actually suit Republicans (Pres candidates and Senators alike) for the balance of the Supreme Court to be a live issue? Remove this issue and for the foreseeable future Republicans are going to need to find other reasons to get voters to support them.
    Republican Senators up for re election this year will also want a delay to ensure high evangelical turnout for them
    I do find it baffling that so many US evangelicals are obsessed with abortion but don’t care about infidelity, lying or fraud. Do they perhaps have a different version of the 10 Commandments?
    It's logical.

    Abortion is a terrible crime committed against a completely innocent victim, and American has a lot of it.

    This is much more important than picking one president over another because he's marginally less of a sliezeball.

    Also, the abortion issue is likely to be settled for 50 years by a rebalanced SC, Trump will be gone in 4 years regardless.
    The abortion issue won’t be settled. All that will happen is that there will be illegal abortions and deaths of women and abandoned babies, as there were before. The evangelicals will conveniently refuse to care about those innocents.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842
    If Trump was supremely decent he'd give Garland the role to bring the USA together. If he was smart he'd wait till after the election to create a wedge issue. As is, along with Mitch McConnell looks like they're going to go for a conservative justice right before the election.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,624
    Alistair said:

    Hello, I've just got in at 8pm after a 10 hour shift in the warehouse.

    I know, I will put on a meal that takes 2 hours to cook.

    That makes sense.

    Consider what poor people used to do. When working hours were much, much longer.

    Lots of pre-cooking, batches etc.

    I have 2-3 dishes in the fridge already cooked, quite often. In a sense, I make my own ready meals....
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,618
    People who cannot be bothered to learn to cook or care nothing about food piss me off.

    Sorry for being reactionary but there it is.
  • Alistair said:

    Alistair said:

    Hello, I've just got in at 8pm after a 10 hour shift in the warehouse.

    I know, I will put on a meal that takes 2 hours to cook.

    That makes sense.

    Very very very few meals take two hours and if they do you are not involved for the majority of the two hours , just a bit of prep and stick in oven, feet up with a beer watching the box and wait the remainder of the two hours. Stop digging Alistair.
    Still talking about the hypothetical roast chicken dinner. It doesn't matter if that 2 hours is spent working on it or feet up it is the delay before eating that is important.

    If you are working shifts and coming home late the idea you will wait hours before eating is nonsense.
    Cook it the night before and it is sitting waiting for you , have it with some hot gravy and hey presto, you could have made a lovely coleslaw as well and you have perfection , or have some spuds , vegetables or even oven chips, five to twenty minutes max depending on your choice
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,765
    Cyclefree said:

    I would rather garden than cook TBH. But I will add in my advice.

    Salads: lettuce, spinach, avocado, tomatoes, nuts, feta or mozzarella, sliced carrot, spring onion etc + some lovely fresh dressing and good bread. Rice or pasta could be added; artichokes or a hard-boiled egg or peppers. Followed by some fruit.

    What more could you possibly want.

    In winter: take some scraggy old meat or bones, carrots, onions and celery, cover with water, simmer gently for hours while you watch Casablanca or The Third Man or the racing. Or do some more gardening. Then switch off cooker and you have delicious broth which can be eaten on its own or with pastina and some grated Parmesan or used as the base for a heartier soup.

    I had to learn to cook, when I lived on my own, and I don't think it's difficult.
  • Have to say the American system of keeping the old Congress/ President around for months after the election is utterly absurd. I much prefer our system of kicking out the losers by lunchtime the day after the election.
  • Alistair said:

    Alistair said:

    Hello, I've just got in at 8pm after a 10 hour shift in the warehouse.

    I know, I will put on a meal that takes 2 hours to cook.

    That makes sense.

    Very very very few meals take two hours and if they do you are not involved for the majority of the two hours , just a bit of prep and stick in oven, feet up with a beer watching the box and wait the remainder of the two hours. Stop digging Alistair.
    Still talking about the hypothetical roast chicken dinner. It doesn't matter if that 2 hours is spent working on it or feet up it is the delay before eating that is important.

    If you are working shifts and coming home late the idea you will wait hours before eating is nonsense.
    There's plenty of other meals that are faster to cook or can be cooked in advance.

    Last weekend I got a kg of beef mince for £3, large bag of onions for 40p, garlic for 30p, two tins of tomatoes for 60p and diced a carrot for around 10p and made bolognese for 3 days as I knew I was going to be working a lot the next week. Got a tin of kidney beans and some cumin and made chilli with the leftovers.

    The idea that this sort of thing is impossible and the only option is frozen pizzas every day is quite frankly bollocks.

  • glw said:

    That was pretty much my reaction. And I'm not American.

    She asks whether this year can get any worse.

    Oh yes. Much, much worse...

    I suspect that 2021 isn't going to be any better than 2020.
    It could be ;-

    Trump gone, Biden President
    US rejoins Paris Agreement
    Coronavirus vaccine approved
    Electric cars become cheaper than ICE vehicles

    In fact at least some of those stand a good chance of happening.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    edited September 2020

    Alistair said:

    Alistair said:

    Hello, I've just got in at 8pm after a 10 hour shift in the warehouse.

    I know, I will put on a meal that takes 2 hours to cook.

    That makes sense.

    Very very very few meals take two hours and if they do you are not involved for the majority of the two hours , just a bit of prep and stick in oven, feet up with a beer watching the box and wait the remainder of the two hours. Stop digging Alistair.
    Still talking about the hypothetical roast chicken dinner. It doesn't matter if that 2 hours is spent working on it or feet up it is the delay before eating that is important.

    If you are working shifts and coming home late the idea you will wait hours before eating is nonsense.
    There's plenty of other meals that are faster to cook or can be cooked in advance.

    Last weekend I got a kg of beef mince for £3, large bag of onions for 40p, garlic for 30p, two tins of tomatoes for 60p and diced a carrot for around 10p and made bolognese for 3 days as I knew I was going to be working a lot the next week. Got a tin of kidney beans and some cumin and made chilli with the leftovers.

    The idea that this sort of thing is impossible and the only option is frozen pizzas every day is quite frankly bollocks.

    That's great. Now do it in a kitchen with no fridge and a single hotplate.

    And once again the point is not that it is the only option but that it is clearly easier and cheaper to get the frozen pizza than it is to cook from scratch.
  • https://twitter.com/SebastianEPayne/status/1307264009700364289

    He was never good, he was never going to be good.

    He wins things, he is terrible at running things

    Brexit done him in.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,718

    Have to say the American system of keeping the old Congress/ President around for months after the election is utterly absurd. I much prefer our system of kicking out the losers by lunchtime the day after the election.

    Another example of the fine cloak that is 'American Democracy'. It really is moth-eaten and shabby!
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    Alistair said:

    RobD said:

    Alistair said:

    Hello, I've just got in at 8pm after a 10 hour shift in the warehouse.

    I know, I will put on a meal that takes 2 hours to cook.

    That makes sense.

    When I had a really long commute I'd reheat stuff made at the weekend all week. Lots of time at the weekend, but two minutes to stick it in the microwave when I got home.
    Surprise, low end rental accommodation fails to have a fridge and or freezer.

    The number of barriers for those on the poverty line being able to do all these time/money saving cooking tips is staggeringly large.

    Even if they have all the facilities necessary to cook then it takes only a single financial emergency from them having to spend money on the financial emergency rather than feeding the prepay meter and the that's all your frozen food spoiled.
    Had not thought of that final point, though I had thought that posters seem to think the capital expenditure on a freezer is trivial for everybody. Lots of letthemeatcakery about.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,751

    glw said:

    That was pretty much my reaction. And I'm not American.

    She asks whether this year can get any worse.

    Oh yes. Much, much worse...

    I suspect that 2021 isn't going to be any better than 2020.
    It could be ;-

    Trump gone, Biden President
    US rejoins Paris Agreement
    Coronavirus vaccine approved
    Electric cars become cheaper than ICE vehicles

    In fact at least some of those stand a good chance of happening.
    Until they have a comparable range and a reasonable recharge time, ‘being cheaper’ than ICE isn’t going to help much.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842
    Alistair said:

    Alistair said:

    Alistair said:

    Hello, I've just got in at 8pm after a 10 hour shift in the warehouse.

    I know, I will put on a meal that takes 2 hours to cook.

    That makes sense.

    Very very very few meals take two hours and if they do you are not involved for the majority of the two hours , just a bit of prep and stick in oven, feet up with a beer watching the box and wait the remainder of the two hours. Stop digging Alistair.
    Still talking about the hypothetical roast chicken dinner. It doesn't matter if that 2 hours is spent working on it or feet up it is the delay before eating that is important.

    If you are working shifts and coming home late the idea you will wait hours before eating is nonsense.
    There's plenty of other meals that are faster to cook or can be cooked in advance.

    Last weekend I got a kg of beef mince for £3, large bag of onions for 40p, garlic for 30p, two tins of tomatoes for 60p and diced a carrot for around 10p and made bolognese for 3 days as I knew I was going to be working a lot the next week. Got a tin of kidney beans and some cumin and made chilli with the leftovers.

    The idea that this sort of thing is impossible and the only option is frozen pizzas every day is quite frankly bollocks.

    That's great. Now do it in a kitchen with no fridge and a single hotplate.
    The sad truth is - like housing & credit costs, it's expensive to be poor when it comes to food.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,851
    theProle said:

    Cyclefree said:

    HYUFD said:

    alex_ said:

    HYUFD said:

    I doubt there will be any confirmed appointment to replace Bader Ginsburg until after the election. Trump and the Republicans know in particular that there will be huge evangelical turnout at the prospect of replacing the most pro abortion Justice on the court with a conservative.

    It was high evangelical support which proved pivotal in 2004 in winning George W Bush a second term, the last re elected Republican president

    You’re assuming that Republican senators want him re-elected. Maybe some of them would happily trade his defeat for securing a long term majority on the court. Some might even see it secretly as a win-win.

    There is another angle to this though. A Republican nominee would fix the court balance decisively for a generation. Even worse the next change is likely to be neutral for the Democrats at best. Doesn’t it actually suit Republicans (Pres candidates and Senators alike) for the balance of the Supreme Court to be a live issue? Remove this issue and for the foreseeable future Republicans are going to need to find other reasons to get voters to support them.
    Republican Senators up for re election this year will also want a delay to ensure high evangelical turnout for them
    I do find it baffling that so many US evangelicals are obsessed with abortion but don’t care about infidelity, lying or fraud. Do they perhaps have a different version of the 10 Commandments?
    It's logical.

    Abortion is a terrible crime committed against a completely innocent victim, and American has a lot of it.

    This is much more important than picking one president over another because he's marginally less of a sliezeball.

    Also, the abortion issue is likely to be settled for 50 years by a rebalanced SC, Trump will be gone in 4 years regardless.
    Those who would legally remove a woman's right to choose (with safeguards and within limits) whether to give birth or not are primitive zealots whose views have no place in a civilized society.

    And regardless of Trump or no Trump, or the precise composition of the SC, such a radical diminution in the status of women would IMO not be tolerated in America, or indeed in any Western society. It's a reactionaries unicorn.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,718
    Pulpstar said:

    Alistair said:

    Alistair said:

    Alistair said:

    Hello, I've just got in at 8pm after a 10 hour shift in the warehouse.

    I know, I will put on a meal that takes 2 hours to cook.

    That makes sense.

    Very very very few meals take two hours and if they do you are not involved for the majority of the two hours , just a bit of prep and stick in oven, feet up with a beer watching the box and wait the remainder of the two hours. Stop digging Alistair.
    Still talking about the hypothetical roast chicken dinner. It doesn't matter if that 2 hours is spent working on it or feet up it is the delay before eating that is important.

    If you are working shifts and coming home late the idea you will wait hours before eating is nonsense.
    There's plenty of other meals that are faster to cook or can be cooked in advance.

    Last weekend I got a kg of beef mince for £3, large bag of onions for 40p, garlic for 30p, two tins of tomatoes for 60p and diced a carrot for around 10p and made bolognese for 3 days as I knew I was going to be working a lot the next week. Got a tin of kidney beans and some cumin and made chilli with the leftovers.

    The idea that this sort of thing is impossible and the only option is frozen pizzas every day is quite frankly bollocks.

    That's great. Now do it in a kitchen with no fridge and a single hotplate.
    The sad truth is - like housing & credit costs, it's expensive to be poor when it comes to food.
    In my CAB days we often used to see that. There was, too, a small district in S Essex where credit was, apparently, impossible for the residents to obtain.
  • Alistair said:

    Alistair said:

    Alistair said:

    Hello, I've just got in at 8pm after a 10 hour shift in the warehouse.

    I know, I will put on a meal that takes 2 hours to cook.

    That makes sense.

    Very very very few meals take two hours and if they do you are not involved for the majority of the two hours , just a bit of prep and stick in oven, feet up with a beer watching the box and wait the remainder of the two hours. Stop digging Alistair.
    Still talking about the hypothetical roast chicken dinner. It doesn't matter if that 2 hours is spent working on it or feet up it is the delay before eating that is important.

    If you are working shifts and coming home late the idea you will wait hours before eating is nonsense.
    There's plenty of other meals that are faster to cook or can be cooked in advance.

    Last weekend I got a kg of beef mince for £3, large bag of onions for 40p, garlic for 30p, two tins of tomatoes for 60p and diced a carrot for around 10p and made bolognese for 3 days as I knew I was going to be working a lot the next week. Got a tin of kidney beans and some cumin and made chilli with the leftovers.

    The idea that this sort of thing is impossible and the only option is frozen pizzas every day is quite frankly bollocks.

    That's great. Now do it in a kitchen with no fridge and a single hotplate.

    And once again the point is not that it is the only option but that it is clearly easier and cheaper to get the frozen pizza than it is to cook from scratch.
    Lol talk about moving the goal posts, first it was due to the cost, then it was a lack of time and now finally they don't have a proper kitchen now all your other arguments have been shown to be nonsense.

    How can they store frozen pizza without a freezer and cook it without an oven? Your hypotheticals don't even make sense now. Time to admit defeat on this one.
  • ydoethur said:

    glw said:

    That was pretty much my reaction. And I'm not American.

    She asks whether this year can get any worse.

    Oh yes. Much, much worse...

    I suspect that 2021 isn't going to be any better than 2020.
    It could be ;-

    Trump gone, Biden President
    US rejoins Paris Agreement
    Coronavirus vaccine approved
    Electric cars become cheaper than ICE vehicles

    In fact at least some of those stand a good chance of happening.
    Until they have a comparable range and a reasonable recharge time, ‘being cheaper’ than ICE isn’t going to help much.
    An average EV can get 250 miles and it will be fully charged each morning (so you'll not need to charge for most trips and if you do it can be done in 30 minutes). Not enough? Some can already get 400 miles.
    Also see 'Battery Day' next Tuesday.
  • EndaEnda Posts: 17
    eek said:

    It's probably worth saying that the Corona Virus testing website is currently completely down - I can see a lot of people either self-isolating for 2 weeks as no testing is available.

    It was barely functioning yesterday when I persisted with trying to book a test for one of my children!

    I have been trying to book since Wednesday evening when one of my young kids developed a fever of over 37.8C and, taking account of the PHE guidelines concerning COVID-19, meant we should stay at home and try and get a test. I informed the school on Thursday of the children's absence even though the fever had already passed and this was likely to be a cold symptom.

    On Friday, I spoke to the head of the school of my sheer frustration of my children's exclusion from school (after 6 month), that one of us is a frontline worker, that we believe we've already has COVID-19 in March (no testing was available then) and, without being able to obtain a test, having to self-isolate for 14 days. Apparently quite a few other families are in the same boat at this one small school. This is only the beginning and with risk assessments for schools being based on current PHE guidelines concerning COVID-19, it is entirely inevitable schools are going to close again soon, despite what our Government proclaims, if we can't rely on testing to distinguish with common respiratory illnesses.

    As somebody who has not been particularly critical of our Government's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, I am seething. I am seething at the sheer ineptitude of experts like Prof Neil Ferguson within SAGE and the Goverment who have formulated our entire approach to the COVID-19 when they couldn't even foresee the demand for tests from possibly symptomatic children in schools who are more likely to have a common cold or flu.

    I have also picked up several friends and family being openly and uncharacteristically critical this week of our approach to the COVID-19 pandemic. Any attempt at a second enforced lockdown in the UK may prove very problematic nevermind that Iran is reporting a third wave. Critics of Sweden's divergent approach with their apocalyptic predictions of millions of deaths seem to have gone very quiet with total deaths standing at 5,865. My young children deserve better.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670

    Alistair said:

    Alistair said:

    Alistair said:

    Hello, I've just got in at 8pm after a 10 hour shift in the warehouse.

    I know, I will put on a meal that takes 2 hours to cook.

    That makes sense.

    Very very very few meals take two hours and if they do you are not involved for the majority of the two hours , just a bit of prep and stick in oven, feet up with a beer watching the box and wait the remainder of the two hours. Stop digging Alistair.
    Still talking about the hypothetical roast chicken dinner. It doesn't matter if that 2 hours is spent working on it or feet up it is the delay before eating that is important.

    If you are working shifts and coming home late the idea you will wait hours before eating is nonsense.
    There's plenty of other meals that are faster to cook or can be cooked in advance.

    Last weekend I got a kg of beef mince for £3, large bag of onions for 40p, garlic for 30p, two tins of tomatoes for 60p and diced a carrot for around 10p and made bolognese for 3 days as I knew I was going to be working a lot the next week. Got a tin of kidney beans and some cumin and made chilli with the leftovers.

    The idea that this sort of thing is impossible and the only option is frozen pizzas every day is quite frankly bollocks.

    That's great. Now do it in a kitchen with no fridge and a single hotplate.

    And once again the point is not that it is the only option but that it is clearly easier and cheaper to get the frozen pizza than it is to cook from scratch.
    Lol talk about moving the goal posts, first it was due to the cost, then it was a lack of time and now finally they don't have a proper kitchen now all your other arguments have been shown to be nonsense.

    How can they store frozen pizza without a freezer and cook it without an oven? Your hypotheticals don't even make sense now. Time to admit defeat on this one.
    You pick it up on the way home! This isn't hard.

    Your contention was that it was cheaper to make food fresh than buy prepared food.

    I showed that not only was it cheaper but that cooking fresh was harder due to poor facilities, lack of time and lack of storage.

    I like that you have constructed this as a win in your head.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    edited September 2020

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    In other news, the overnight YouGov is interesting in that it shows the government's strategy of throwing out Brexit and culture wars red meat out there to keep its voting coalition together and to depress Labour support is not working. Should that become established, and with what is coming, what else do the Tories have except the nuclear option of changing leader?

    Notably, this was the first YouGov to give Labour 40% or more of the vote share since July 2018.

    Actually if you look at the details of the poll the LDs are down 5% from 11% to 6% since GE19 and Labour up 8% from 32% to 40%, the Tories are only down 3% from 43% to 40%.

    So the Tories are still holding most of their vote, the main movement is still Remainers from the LDs to Starmer Labour, that would leave the Tories as largest party but Starmer able to become PM with SNP and LD support in a hung parliament
    Labour are two or three points off their peak. Davey, however could pick up a handful of points from the Tories. The combination of the two puts the Conservatives in the deep stuff, even if they keep parts of the Red Wall they are not looking secure.
    If we go to No Deal Brexit there may be some movement from Remain voting Tories to the LDs and Starmer Labour in the Home Counties and London but the Red Wall will see far less movement, for them 2019 was a cultural shift to the Tories on a pro Brexit agenda
    Evidence please? All the evidence I’ve seen suggests a greater swing back to Labour already in the red wall.
    Labour leads in London by 63% to 24% for the Tories in the new Yougov for which the data is now out, however Labour only leads the Tories by 49% to 36% in the North and in the Midlands and Wales the Tories still lead Labour 43% to 41%.

    Labour now leads the Tories by 43% to 37% with middle class ABC1 voters with the LDs on 8% but the Tories still lead Labour by 45% to 34% with working class C2DEs.

    54% of Remainers now back Starmer Labour with only 19% backing the Tories but 68% of Leavers still back the Tories with only 19% backing Labour

    https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/0jur4htqeh/YouGov Times VI 17 Sep 2020.pdf
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    edited September 2020
    Fast recipes for midweek cooking:

    1. Put the kettle on
    2. Chop 1 large onion
    3. Heat an extra large shallow frying pan with 5 tablespoons of good olive oil and fry the chopped onions
    4. Put the boiled water in a pan and salt it, add 300g of tagliatelle.
    5. As the onions are frying on a medium heat chop slice 3 cloves of garlic and add them in.
    6. After frying those off for a few minutes add 2 tablespoons of chilli flakes and 1 tablespoon of dried oregano.
    7. Add 350g of passata and 3 more tablespoons of olive oil.
    8. Put the tagliatelle directly from the water into the sauce and cook for a further two mins, add salt, sugar and pepper to taste. Add fresh basi as garnish if you have it.

    The whole process takes about 12 mins from beginning to end and it's an exceptionally tasty and cheap meal. There are about a thousand variations of it too, I add spicy Calabrian sausages to it.

    A different easy pasta dish I've made many, many times:

    1. Boil water etc...
    2. Slice 6 good quality plum tomatoes into 5mm thick slices.
    3. Fry them in a large shallow pan with olive oil at high heat then set to one side.
    4. Add 100g of butter into the same large shallow frying pan.
    5. Slice 6 cloves of garlic and add them to the the pan at low to medium heat.
    6. Roughly chop 50g of fresh Italian basil add it to the pan.
    7. Add 50g of canned or jarred anchovy fillets.
    8. Salt the water and add 500g of linguine.
    8. Add two tablespoons of chilli flakes.
    9. Optionally add 3 tablespoons of chopped capers.
    10. Grate 200g of parmesan cheese (extra mature cheddar works but it's not as good).
    11. Add the cheese to the pan and a full ladle of water from the pasta pan, stir the mixture and then add the linguine directly from the pan with a pair of tongs, stir in and then add the tomatoes.
    12. Toss the mixture and serve.

    That's about 20 mins from beginning to end and uses just one frying pan and one pan for boiling pasta so there's basically no washing up either.

    Fast midweek cooking lesson ends.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074
    kinabalu said:

    theProle said:

    Cyclefree said:

    HYUFD said:

    alex_ said:

    HYUFD said:

    I doubt there will be any confirmed appointment to replace Bader Ginsburg until after the election. Trump and the Republicans know in particular that there will be huge evangelical turnout at the prospect of replacing the most pro abortion Justice on the court with a conservative.

    It was high evangelical support which proved pivotal in 2004 in winning George W Bush a second term, the last re elected Republican president

    You’re assuming that Republican senators want him re-elected. Maybe some of them would happily trade his defeat for securing a long term majority on the court. Some might even see it secretly as a win-win.

    There is another angle to this though. A Republican nominee would fix the court balance decisively for a generation. Even worse the next change is likely to be neutral for the Democrats at best. Doesn’t it actually suit Republicans (Pres candidates and Senators alike) for the balance of the Supreme Court to be a live issue? Remove this issue and for the foreseeable future Republicans are going to need to find other reasons to get voters to support them.
    Republican Senators up for re election this year will also want a delay to ensure high evangelical turnout for them
    I do find it baffling that so many US evangelicals are obsessed with abortion but don’t care about infidelity, lying or fraud. Do they perhaps have a different version of the 10 Commandments?
    It's logical.

    Abortion is a terrible crime committed against a completely innocent victim, and American has a lot of it.

    This is much more important than picking one president over another because he's marginally less of a sliezeball.

    Also, the abortion issue is likely to be settled for 50 years by a rebalanced SC, Trump will be gone in 4 years regardless.
    Those who would legally remove a woman's right to choose (with safeguards and within limits) whether to give birth or not are primitive zealots whose views have no place in a civilized society.

    And regardless of Trump or no Trump, or the precise composition of the SC, such a radical diminution in the status of women would IMO not be tolerated in America, or indeed in any Western society. It's a reactionaries unicorn.
    You may think that this should not be tolerated. I agree. But I can easily see how it could be tolerated - in America and elsewhere.

    America is tolerating changes to voter eligibility rules (in part because of a recent SC decision - listen to The Crisis of American Democracy on iPlayer to get the details) which are unpicking the right to vote so painfully won in the 1960’s. Change does not go always go in the same direction.

  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,751
    edited September 2020

    ydoethur said:

    glw said:

    That was pretty much my reaction. And I'm not American.

    She asks whether this year can get any worse.

    Oh yes. Much, much worse...

    I suspect that 2021 isn't going to be any better than 2020.
    It could be ;-

    Trump gone, Biden President
    US rejoins Paris Agreement
    Coronavirus vaccine approved
    Electric cars become cheaper than ICE vehicles

    In fact at least some of those stand a good chance of happening.
    Until they have a comparable range and a reasonable recharge time, ‘being cheaper’ than ICE isn’t going to help much.
    An average EV can get 250 miles and it will be fully charged each morning (so you'll not need to charge for most trips and if you do it can be done in 30 minutes). Not enough? Some can already get 400 miles.
    Also see 'Battery Day' next Tuesday.
    My quite cheap diesel can do 800 miles and takes seven minutes to refuel.

    When an average EV can do 500 miles on one charge and fully recharge in 45 minutes ICE will be done.

    Edit - I would also like to know which EVs can do 400. The one with the best range I know of is the Kona at 259 miles. Even allowing for good driving I don’t think that would go 400 miles.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    Alistair said:

    Alistair said:

    Alistair said:

    Hello, I've just got in at 8pm after a 10 hour shift in the warehouse.

    I know, I will put on a meal that takes 2 hours to cook.

    That makes sense.

    Very very very few meals take two hours and if they do you are not involved for the majority of the two hours , just a bit of prep and stick in oven, feet up with a beer watching the box and wait the remainder of the two hours. Stop digging Alistair.
    Still talking about the hypothetical roast chicken dinner. It doesn't matter if that 2 hours is spent working on it or feet up it is the delay before eating that is important.

    If you are working shifts and coming home late the idea you will wait hours before eating is nonsense.
    There's plenty of other meals that are faster to cook or can be cooked in advance.

    Last weekend I got a kg of beef mince for £3, large bag of onions for 40p, garlic for 30p, two tins of tomatoes for 60p and diced a carrot for around 10p and made bolognese for 3 days as I knew I was going to be working a lot the next week. Got a tin of kidney beans and some cumin and made chilli with the leftovers.

    The idea that this sort of thing is impossible and the only option is frozen pizzas every day is quite frankly bollocks.

    That's great. Now do it in a kitchen with no fridge and a single hotplate.

    And once again the point is not that it is the only option but that it is clearly easier and cheaper to get the frozen pizza than it is to cook from scratch.
    Lol talk about moving the goal posts, first it was due to the cost, then it was a lack of time and now finally they don't have a proper kitchen now all your other arguments have been shown to be nonsense.

    How can they store frozen pizza without a freezer and cook it without an oven? Your hypotheticals don't even make sense now. Time to admit defeat on this one.
    You think there are no people who lack all three of money, and time, and decent living conditions? Thank Goodness for that.

    You are offering reheated Spectator bore fare. Why oh why do the poor fritter money away on Iceland pizzas when you can get scrag end of oxtail and offcuts of pig's cheeks for next to nothing from any good butcher, stick'em in a le Creuset with some onions from the walled garden and pop it in the Aga warming oven for a fortnight?
  • kinabalu said:

    theProle said:

    Cyclefree said:

    HYUFD said:

    alex_ said:

    HYUFD said:

    I doubt there will be any confirmed appointment to replace Bader Ginsburg until after the election. Trump and the Republicans know in particular that there will be huge evangelical turnout at the prospect of replacing the most pro abortion Justice on the court with a conservative.

    It was high evangelical support which proved pivotal in 2004 in winning George W Bush a second term, the last re elected Republican president

    You’re assuming that Republican senators want him re-elected. Maybe some of them would happily trade his defeat for securing a long term majority on the court. Some might even see it secretly as a win-win.

    There is another angle to this though. A Republican nominee would fix the court balance decisively for a generation. Even worse the next change is likely to be neutral for the Democrats at best. Doesn’t it actually suit Republicans (Pres candidates and Senators alike) for the balance of the Supreme Court to be a live issue? Remove this issue and for the foreseeable future Republicans are going to need to find other reasons to get voters to support them.
    Republican Senators up for re election this year will also want a delay to ensure high evangelical turnout for them
    I do find it baffling that so many US evangelicals are obsessed with abortion but don’t care about infidelity, lying or fraud. Do they perhaps have a different version of the 10 Commandments?
    It's logical.

    Abortion is a terrible crime committed against a completely innocent victim, and American has a lot of it.

    This is much more important than picking one president over another because he's marginally less of a sliezeball.

    Also, the abortion issue is likely to be settled for 50 years by a rebalanced SC, Trump will be gone in 4 years regardless.
    Those who would legally remove a woman's right to choose (with safeguards and within limits) whether to give birth or not are primitive zealots whose views have no place in a civilized society.

    And regardless of Trump or no Trump, or the precise composition of the SC, such a radical diminution in the status of women would IMO not be tolerated in America, or indeed in any Western society. It's a reactionaries unicorn.
    Anyone who disagrees with you on abortion has no place in a civilised society...right.

    On balance I am for abortion, but it's pretty grim. The child can smile and laugh before the arbitrary cut off point for abortion and screams when killed.

    They have even had "partial-bith abortions" in the US under planned parenthood, where babies have been terminated after the mother has given birth.

    The fact that you see anyone that can be against this practice as totally abhorrent because it inconveniences women says more about you than it does about them.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    IshmaelZ said:

    Alistair said:

    RobD said:

    Alistair said:

    Hello, I've just got in at 8pm after a 10 hour shift in the warehouse.

    I know, I will put on a meal that takes 2 hours to cook.

    That makes sense.

    When I had a really long commute I'd reheat stuff made at the weekend all week. Lots of time at the weekend, but two minutes to stick it in the microwave when I got home.
    Surprise, low end rental accommodation fails to have a fridge and or freezer.

    The number of barriers for those on the poverty line being able to do all these time/money saving cooking tips is staggeringly large.

    Even if they have all the facilities necessary to cook then it takes only a single financial emergency from them having to spend money on the financial emergency rather than feeding the prepay meter and the that's all your frozen food spoiled.
    Had not thought of that final point, though I had thought that posters seem to think the capital expenditure on a freezer is trivial for everybody. Lots of letthemeatcakery about.
    There is also the joy that if you are renting a place on the low end of the market with a fridge/freezer they are often 20 year old piece of shit with the energy efficiency of a thing that is not energy efficient.

    They may cost pennies to run per day but if you are poor then, by definition, pennies matter.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,624
    Pulpstar said:

    Alistair said:

    Alistair said:

    Alistair said:

    Hello, I've just got in at 8pm after a 10 hour shift in the warehouse.

    I know, I will put on a meal that takes 2 hours to cook.

    That makes sense.

    Very very very few meals take two hours and if they do you are not involved for the majority of the two hours , just a bit of prep and stick in oven, feet up with a beer watching the box and wait the remainder of the two hours. Stop digging Alistair.
    Still talking about the hypothetical roast chicken dinner. It doesn't matter if that 2 hours is spent working on it or feet up it is the delay before eating that is important.

    If you are working shifts and coming home late the idea you will wait hours before eating is nonsense.
    There's plenty of other meals that are faster to cook or can be cooked in advance.

    Last weekend I got a kg of beef mince for £3, large bag of onions for 40p, garlic for 30p, two tins of tomatoes for 60p and diced a carrot for around 10p and made bolognese for 3 days as I knew I was going to be working a lot the next week. Got a tin of kidney beans and some cumin and made chilli with the leftovers.

    The idea that this sort of thing is impossible and the only option is frozen pizzas every day is quite frankly bollocks.

    That's great. Now do it in a kitchen with no fridge and a single hotplate.
    The sad truth is - like housing & credit costs, it's expensive to be poor when it comes to food.
    When a kitchen was being rebuilt, I lived off a single electric hotplate for a while. Tricky, but it is possible to cook for 4 like that.

    Ended up getting a rice cooker as well, in the end. The Japanese have created a zillion dishes that can be cooked in a rice cooker - due to mini apartments with no cooking facilities....
  • IshmaelZ said:

    Alistair said:

    Alistair said:

    Alistair said:

    Hello, I've just got in at 8pm after a 10 hour shift in the warehouse.

    I know, I will put on a meal that takes 2 hours to cook.

    That makes sense.

    Very very very few meals take two hours and if they do you are not involved for the majority of the two hours , just a bit of prep and stick in oven, feet up with a beer watching the box and wait the remainder of the two hours. Stop digging Alistair.
    Still talking about the hypothetical roast chicken dinner. It doesn't matter if that 2 hours is spent working on it or feet up it is the delay before eating that is important.

    If you are working shifts and coming home late the idea you will wait hours before eating is nonsense.
    There's plenty of other meals that are faster to cook or can be cooked in advance.

    Last weekend I got a kg of beef mince for £3, large bag of onions for 40p, garlic for 30p, two tins of tomatoes for 60p and diced a carrot for around 10p and made bolognese for 3 days as I knew I was going to be working a lot the next week. Got a tin of kidney beans and some cumin and made chilli with the leftovers.

    The idea that this sort of thing is impossible and the only option is frozen pizzas every day is quite frankly bollocks.

    That's great. Now do it in a kitchen with no fridge and a single hotplate.

    And once again the point is not that it is the only option but that it is clearly easier and cheaper to get the frozen pizza than it is to cook from scratch.
    Lol talk about moving the goal posts, first it was due to the cost, then it was a lack of time and now finally they don't have a proper kitchen now all your other arguments have been shown to be nonsense.

    How can they store frozen pizza without a freezer and cook it without an oven? Your hypotheticals don't even make sense now. Time to admit defeat on this one.
    You think there are no people who lack all three of money, and time, and decent living conditions? Thank Goodness for that.

    You are offering reheated Spectator bore fare. Why oh why do the poor fritter money away on Iceland pizzas when you can get scrag end of oxtail and offcuts of pig's cheeks for next to nothing from any good butcher, stick'em in a le Creuset with some onions from the walled garden and pop it in the Aga warming oven for a fortnight?
    Well I speak from experience.

    I've lived on £650 while working and having to pay all rent and bills and also lived on under £300 a month with no job under the same circumstances. Both times I found it much cheaper to eat healthily than eat junk as I've pointed out with examples.

    But yeah I'm clearly a millionaire Tory with an aga whilst scoffing pig's cheeks daily. Jesus.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,624
    MaxPB said:

    Fast recipes for midweek cooking:

    1. Put the kettle on
    2. Chop 1 large onion
    3. Heat an extra large shallow frying pan with 5 tablespoons of good olive oil and fry the chopped onions
    4. Put the boiled water in a pan and salt it, add 300g of tagliatelle.
    5. As the onions are frying on a medium heat chop slice 3 cloves of garlic and add them in.
    6. After frying those off for a few minutes add 2 tablespoons of chilli flakes and 1 tablespoon of dried oregano.
    7. Add 350g of passata and 3 more tablespoons of olive oil.
    8. Put the tagliatelle directly from the water into the sauce and cook for a further two mins, add salt, sugar and pepper to taste. Add fresh basi as garnish if you have it.

    The whole process takes about 12 mins from beginning to end and it's an exceptionally tasty and cheap meal. There are about a thousand variations of it too, I add spicy Calabrian sausages to it.

    A different easy pasta dish I've made many, many times:

    1. Boil water etc...
    2. Slice 6 good quality plum tomatoes into 5mm thick slices.
    3. Fry them in a large shallow pan with olive oil at high heat then set to one side.
    4. Add 100g of butter into the same large shallow frying pan.
    5. Slice 6 cloves of garlic and add them to the the pan at low to medium heat.
    6. Roughly chop 50g of fresh Italian basil add it to the pan.
    7. Add 50g of canned or jarred anchovy fillets.
    8. Salt the water and add 500g of linguine.
    8. Add two tablespoons of chilli flakes.
    9. Optionally add 3 tablespoons of chopped capers.
    10. Grate 200g of parmesan cheese (extra mature cheddar works but it's not as good).
    11. Add the cheese to the pan and a full ladle of water from the pasta pan, stir the mixture and then add the linguine directly from the pan with a pair of tongs, stir in and then add the tomatoes.
    12. Toss the mixture and serve.

    That's about 20 mins from beginning to end and uses just one frying pan and one pan for boiling pasta so there's basically no washing up either.

    Fast midweek cooking lesson ends.

    One thing about such sauces - don't be afraid to freeze them. The reason that some frozen food is rubbish is due to the food being frozen being rubbish. Not the freezing itself.

    One thing I picked up when I had very small children - the recipes recommend making batches and freezing them - using silicon moulds a bit like giant ice cube trays. I found that even bigger mould, used by the home soup making people work just as well. So I often make a big batch of tomato sauce or bolognese, curry etc and freeze it down in soap bar sized chunks. Which work out as one portion per person. So make some fresh rice/pasta, defrost the sauce by gentle heating in a pan*, dinner in 15 min.....

    *Defosting by full power nuking in a microwave oven is terrible method.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,146
    Alistair said:

    Hello, I've just got in at 8pm after a 10 hour shift in the warehouse.

    I know, I will put on a meal that takes 2 hours to cook.

    That makes sense.

    Classic Scottish method - make huge pan of porridge at weekend, pour into drawer, eat slices all week ...

    Mind, I have never been sure if this really happened or if it was the Caledonian equivalent of Yorkshiremen capping each other with tales of childhood poverty.
  • ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    glw said:

    That was pretty much my reaction. And I'm not American.

    She asks whether this year can get any worse.

    Oh yes. Much, much worse...

    I suspect that 2021 isn't going to be any better than 2020.
    It could be ;-

    Trump gone, Biden President
    US rejoins Paris Agreement
    Coronavirus vaccine approved
    Electric cars become cheaper than ICE vehicles

    In fact at least some of those stand a good chance of happening.
    Until they have a comparable range and a reasonable recharge time, ‘being cheaper’ than ICE isn’t going to help much.
    An average EV can get 250 miles and it will be fully charged each morning (so you'll not need to charge for most trips and if you do it can be done in 30 minutes). Not enough? Some can already get 400 miles.
    Also see 'Battery Day' next Tuesday.
    My quite cheap diesel can do 800 miles and takes seven minutes to refuel.

    When an average EV can do 500 miles on one charge and fully recharge in 45 minutes ICE will be done.

    Edit - I would also like to know which EVs can do 400. The one with the best range I know of is the Kona at 259 miles. Even allowing for good driving I don’t think that would go 400 miles.
    And how often do you drive 800 miles? I think you may need to stop at the services for half an hour? And how much would the fuel cost?

    Driving 100 miles daily in a Tesla Model 3 vs a diesel BMW 3 Series would cost £1533 vs £4004.
    Plus your car details into https://www.zap-map.com/tools/journey-cost-calculator/
    Once the cost of a new electric car goes below that of a new ICE car there's really no contest. Cheaper maintenance, safer, cheaper to run, much better performance, better reslae values - oh and it helps the planet too.
    Of course it may still be cheaper to buy 2nd hand cars for a few more years.
  • Alistair said:

    Alistair said:

    Alistair said:

    Alistair said:

    Hello, I've just got in at 8pm after a 10 hour shift in the warehouse.

    I know, I will put on a meal that takes 2 hours to cook.

    That makes sense.

    Very very very few meals take two hours and if they do you are not involved for the majority of the two hours , just a bit of prep and stick in oven, feet up with a beer watching the box and wait the remainder of the two hours. Stop digging Alistair.
    Still talking about the hypothetical roast chicken dinner. It doesn't matter if that 2 hours is spent working on it or feet up it is the delay before eating that is important.

    If you are working shifts and coming home late the idea you will wait hours before eating is nonsense.
    There's plenty of other meals that are faster to cook or can be cooked in advance.

    Last weekend I got a kg of beef mince for £3, large bag of onions for 40p, garlic for 30p, two tins of tomatoes for 60p and diced a carrot for around 10p and made bolognese for 3 days as I knew I was going to be working a lot the next week. Got a tin of kidney beans and some cumin and made chilli with the leftovers.

    The idea that this sort of thing is impossible and the only option is frozen pizzas every day is quite frankly bollocks.

    That's great. Now do it in a kitchen with no fridge and a single hotplate.

    And once again the point is not that it is the only option but that it is clearly easier and cheaper to get the frozen pizza than it is to cook from scratch.
    Lol talk about moving the goal posts, first it was due to the cost, then it was a lack of time and now finally they don't have a proper kitchen now all your other arguments have been shown to be nonsense.

    How can they store frozen pizza without a freezer and cook it without an oven? Your hypotheticals don't even make sense now. Time to admit defeat on this one.
    You pick it up on the way home! This isn't hard.

    Your contention was that it was cheaper to make food fresh than buy prepared food.

    I showed that not only was it cheaper but that cooking fresh was harder due to poor facilities, lack of time and lack of storage.

    I like that you have constructed this as a win in your head.
    They've got time to go shopping every day for food, but not for the smaller amount of time to prepare and cook decent food in advance. Righto.

    Max has already provided you with examples of healthy meals on one hot plate that can be done in 12 minutes from start to finish, which is less than the time taken to go shopping every night.

    Why are you continuing to argue for something that clearly doesn't make any logical sense whatsoever?
  • IshmaelZ said:

    Alistair said:

    RobD said:

    Alistair said:

    Hello, I've just got in at 8pm after a 10 hour shift in the warehouse.

    I know, I will put on a meal that takes 2 hours to cook.

    That makes sense.

    When I had a really long commute I'd reheat stuff made at the weekend all week. Lots of time at the weekend, but two minutes to stick it in the microwave when I got home.
    Surprise, low end rental accommodation fails to have a fridge and or freezer.

    The number of barriers for those on the poverty line being able to do all these time/money saving cooking tips is staggeringly large.

    Even if they have all the facilities necessary to cook then it takes only a single financial emergency from them having to spend money on the financial emergency rather than feeding the prepay meter and the that's all your frozen food spoiled.
    Had not thought of that final point, though I had thought that posters seem to think the capital expenditure on a freezer is trivial for everybody. Lots of letthemeatcakery about.
    you can pick them up second hand for peanuts , just more bollox excuses for lazy barstewards.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074

    kinabalu said:

    theProle said:

    Cyclefree said:

    HYUFD said:

    alex_ said:

    HYUFD said:

    I doubt there will be any confirmed appointment to replace Bader Ginsburg until after the election. Trump and the Republicans know in particular that there will be huge evangelical turnout at the prospect of replacing the most pro abortion Justice on the court with a conservative.

    It was high evangelical support which proved pivotal in 2004 in winning George W Bush a second term, the last re elected Republican president

    You’re assuming that Republican senators want him re-elected. Maybe some of them would happily trade his defeat for securing a long term majority on the court. Some might even see it secretly as a win-win.

    There is another angle to this though. A Republican nominee would fix the court balance decisively for a generation. Even worse the next change is likely to be neutral for the Democrats at best. Doesn’t it actually suit Republicans (Pres candidates and Senators alike) for the balance of the Supreme Court to be a live issue? Remove this issue and for the foreseeable future Republicans are going to need to find other reasons to get voters to support them.
    Republican Senators up for re election this year will also want a delay to ensure high evangelical turnout for them
    I do find it baffling that so many US evangelicals are obsessed with abortion but don’t care about infidelity, lying or fraud. Do they perhaps have a different version of the 10 Commandments?
    It's logical.

    Abortion is a terrible crime committed against a completely innocent victim, and American has a lot of it.

    This is much more important than picking one president over another because he's marginally less of a sliezeball.

    Also, the abortion issue is likely to be settled for 50 years by a rebalanced SC, Trump will be gone in 4 years regardless.
    Those who would legally remove a woman's right to choose (with safeguards and within limits) whether to give birth or not are primitive zealots whose views have no place in a civilized society.

    And regardless of Trump or no Trump, or the precise composition of the SC, such a radical diminution in the status of women would IMO not be tolerated in America, or indeed in any Western society. It's a reactionaries unicorn.
    Anyone who disagrees with you on abortion has no place in a civilised society...right.

    On balance I am for abortion, but it's pretty grim. The child can smile and laugh before the arbitrary cut off point for abortion and screams when killed.

    They have even had "partial-bith abortions" in the US under planned parenthood, where babies have been terminated after the mother has given birth.

    The fact that you see anyone that can be against this practice as totally abhorrent because it inconveniences women says more about you than it does about them.
    You are misrepresenting @kinabalu: he said “with safeguards and within limits”.

    An abortion is a horrible business. No-one disputes that. It is not like having a tooth out. There is a moral dimension to it which makes even those who support a woman’s right to choose realise that this is a serious moral choice. I personally could not have one.

    But making it illegal - as some want - is not going to stop women having them. And if care for the unborn child is so important, one wonders why there is so little care left over for the alive women who feel the need for such a choice.
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