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The Jenny McGee departure from the NHS is a tricky one for BoJo – the man she nursed – politicalbett

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  • rpjsrpjs Posts: 3,787

    Fishing said:

    Fishing said:

    Fishing said:

    MaxPB said:

    DavidL said:

    Cyclefree said:

    It's almost as if clapping is not enough.

    Who could ever have guessed such a thing?

    Should the government cut funding to businesses that have been impacted, like VAT cuts, furlough, grants, loans, rates relief and much more - put VAT on hospitality back up and give that money to the NHS? 🤔
    yes
    So devastate even more the businesses like pubs and restaurants etc that are on their knees in order to give more money to those in secure jobs? 🤔

    I wonder if @Cyclefree agrees with you?
    Pubs and restaurants will start making their usual vast amounts of profits etc as everyone rushes back to them, desperate for their alcoholic meals. Meanwhile NHS workers will continue to eek out their salaries between their vast childcare costs and their full tax and NI contributions Class 1. There will always be Pubs and restaurants, but will there always be nurses and doctors now that we are jailing EU visitors at the border.
    This is just so deeply delusional. Pubs and restaurants do not make "usual vast amounts of profits". Indeed, as we discussed only yesterday significant percentages of them go bust every normal year losing their life savings and all too often their homes put up as collateral. Those who work in the sector have little to no job security and are doing better than most if they even get the minimum wage.

    Meanwhile, those working for the NHS are paid on average well above the national average, receive full pay for very extended periods if they are sick, get a full year's worth of full pay when they have kids and have pensions that are simply unobtainable to most in the private sector. I am not saying they don't deserve it but those who work with that incredible job security and confidence really need to acquire some understanding of how the majority of their fellow citizens paying their taxes to pay their wages live.
    Someone posted on here yesterday - 1 in 6 hospitality businesses fail within their first year, even without a pandemic. It's a hugely risky field and I applaud anyone willing to take it, I wouldn't!
    It's a low wage, low productivity industry which uses labour and capital inefficiently and holds the economy back. Like farming.
    It's not my fault that some pubs and restaurants go bust in the normal course of events. I can't imagine that many being owned by "large chains" go bust. The others who do go bust need to manage their businesses better I suppose. Why does it take so long to make a Flat White? I'm amazed at the likes of PT crying tears over this. What about the fishing, farming and haulage industry that are being murdered by Brexit. Oh wait, it's Brexit, they're supposed to take care of themselves, the market will sort them out!!
    Farming uses 62% of our land to make 0.6% of our GDP, land that is desperately needed for other purposes like housing, and takes £3 billion/year in subsidies into the bargain. The sooner the Australians and whoever free up the land, labour and capital the better. It's long overdue.
    We can't eat houses!!
    That is why I mentioned other countries, who are happy to supply us with food at lower prices.
    so transport all our food from foreign countries, ticking up massive mileage with its implications on transport costs and global warming?
    Food shipping has an absolutely neglible and dwindling impact on the environment.
    How are these ships supposed to get from Australia to the UK? Solar? Wind?
    No, by big f*ck-off engines powered by just about the cheapest and dirtiest fuel oil there is (Bunker "C"). But if you divide the amount of such oil used on the voyage by the huge cargoes those ships carry, the per item environmental impact is tiny compared to just about every other part of the supply chain, not least the impact of trucking the stuff to the supermarket and you bringing it home in your car, if you don't walk to the shops.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,860
    IshmaelZ said:

    IanB2 said:

    Leon said:

    IanB2 said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    Nigelb said:

    moonshine said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Yesterday, the former president of the USA reversed his earlier statements, and confirmed that American military has encountered advanced technology it cannot explain...

    Please provide cite.
    From what I saw he said it had observed phenomena it couldn't explain. Not the same thing.
    He's actually quite hesitant and inarticulate - for Obama

    I think my interpretation of his garbled words is fair. But you are free to demur

    "we can't explain how they move, their trajectory, they did not have an easily explainable pattern"

    https://twitter.com/EndUAPSecrecy/status/1394700044423634946?s=20
    Yes, that's the link you posted yesterday, which is what I was referring to.
    You are massively over interpreting.

    I observed something I couldn't account for yesterday, when my computer crashed. It could have been alien technology, but I think there are simpler explanations.
    The brief comments from Obama mean nothing in isolation. But they need to be seen in context with what’s been said by two ex CIA Directors, one ex NID, one ex Senate Majority Leader and an Intelligence Committee Chair. As well as the ramping in leaks of video followed by swift DoD confirmation of veracity, the various military figure testimonies, the Congressional process and the sudden change in media narrative from across the political spectrum.

    It is all very odd and you need to contort logic to come up with a prosaic or uninteresting explanation.
    And more so to conclude that it's aliens.
    From the various statements, we are being conclusively told we are not looking at data collection glitches (at least not in every case). The behaviour exhibits extraordinary capability. Transmedium high performance. Breaking the sound barrier without a sonic boom. Speeds and Gs beyond the capability of material science. No visual or infrared inductor of propulsion.

    So it’s American, another country or something else.

    If it’s American, then it’s a weird approach to take for a top secret programme. Buzzing your own carrier groups and then leaking the videos of it to the media and then starting a highly public congressional investigation into what it is.

    If it’s another country, then it’s the most severe failure of intelligence of all time (human, satellite, digital etc...). To the point of implausibility.

    Which leaves “something else”. Aliens. Sub oceanic intelligence. Inter dimensional or temporal visitors. Who knows.

    There is also the possibility that we are being lied to by an extraordinary coalition of intelligence, political and military figures and the whole thing is mundane bad data. Why?
    One entertaining aspect of this Flap is the way it is coaxing out some brilliant first hand accounts of UAPs. I am sure 99% of them are invented or delusional, but what if 1% are true? What are they seeing? What have people been seeing for decades?

    I"n late summer of 1982 I saw a #UFO or #UAP on I-90, around 2-3AM while driving from Seattle to Minneapolis. It looked like a giant metal eye, maybe 500-feet across, and hovered around 100-200 feet above the ground tracking 1000 feet in front of us as we drove (65mph)."


    "I had a passenger, a guy I met on a ride share board, we were driving his van. After a couple pregnant moments I asked him: "Uh, did you see that?". He said "Yeah...." And I about threw up. We were both too afraid to say anything while it was happening, to know it was real. #UFO"

    "I don't know what it was, but it looked a lot like what the Navy and Air Force are showing. If it was real, this tech/phenomena has been around for a very long time. #UFO #UAP"

    "I'm not a "conspiracy" guy, I've always thought maybe it was a weird reflection on the windshield or something else, anything else. So I've just avoided that little story. I don't tell many people. But now that the gov is admitting and showing videos, I feel more comfortable."

    https://twitter.com/okanogen2010/status/1395000495241003011?s=20
    Why are they almost always Americans, and very often Americans from parts of America where even most Americans aren’t interested to go?
    Is a very good point. Just like Elon Musk asking "why are all the photos so crap" - when everyone now has a superb camera to hand. Makes no sense

    Maybe Americans are more credulous. Or maybe it is China and/or Russia observing the enemy (but for 70 years with hypersonic tech?). Maybe the aliens are understandably most interested in the most powerful and advanced country. Maybe it is a mass delusion like dragons, but Americans see spacecraft, because Merika

    It is certainly remarkable that these aliens have the knowhow to transport themselves across light years of interstellar space and to travel at 9000 mph through our atmosphere without creating so much as a ripple, yet haven’t worked out that Americans from Colorado aren’t a random sample.

    Although to be fair, if they are so far above us in intelligence and technology, they probably are no more concerned than we would be in picking out a random sample of ants from an ant farm. But it is still odd that only Midwest Americans ever get abducted and experimented on.
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_reported_UFO_sightings

    See under By location.
    Click on the individual countries and my point stands
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,921
    edited May 2021
    AlistairM said:

    I find it very amusing that this chap is a Lib Dem with a beard and is called Bearder.

    https://order-order.com/2021/05/19/libdem-councillor-representing-three-different-wards-70-miles-apart/

    A dubious practice but legal, you cannot represent two seats in Parliament as it is the same legislature but you can represent wards on more than one council as they are separate bodies.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 41,958
    edited May 2021

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Yesterday, the former president of the USA reversed his earlier statements, and confirmed that American military has encountered advanced technology it cannot explain...

    Please provide cite.
    From what I saw he said it had observed phenomena it couldn't explain. Not the same thing.
    He's actually quite hesitant and inarticulate - for Obama

    I think my interpretation of his garbled words is fair. But you are free to demur

    "we can't explain how they move, their trajectory, they did not have an easily explainable pattern"

    https://twitter.com/EndUAPSecrecy/status/1394700044423634946?s=20
    Yes, that's the link you posted yesterday, which is what I was referring to.
    You are massively over interpreting.

    I observed something I couldn't account for yesterday, when my computer crashed. It could have been alien technology, but I think there are simpler explanations.
    Thing is though, even the MOST prosaic explanations are insane.

    1. The US is trying to deceive the entire world about its own technology, by pretending it has encountered aliens. And this plot involves several presidents. Er, OK

    Or...

    2. the Chinese have developed the ability to fly at 13,000 mph and they did this in the Noughties. or the 1950s. Really?!

    Or

    3. a weird mass hallucination is affecting hundreds of pilots across the world along with an unprecedented series of identical camera glitches and radar gremlins and infra-red frazzles and these delusional people have somehow convinced the US elite that they are sane and seeing unexplainable technology

    Which one do you go for?
    3.
    Every time.

    Given pilots have reported plastic bags blowing in the wind as drones (when drones were the 'thing'), I wouldn't rely an any so-called observational skills. And I've yet to see any clear photographs or video. They are _always_ fuzzy, just like Nessie.

    I have seen levitating boats, though, which surely must have taken alien technology. Like this one:
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-56286719


    I thought we went through all this in the 70s?



    They last came in the 70s. They have returned 50 years later to see whether we are now more civilised. They may not be back for another 50 years. If they flew over Glasgow on Saturday, however, they will have seen that we have in fact regressed, and may never come back.
    Or more likely nuke the entire site from orbit.
    Nevertheless I’d guarantee that in that scenario there would still be one wee pished ned emerging from the rubble in his stained 32Red Rangers top screeching ‘Jock knew’.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,255
    rpjs said:

    Fishing said:

    Fishing said:

    Fishing said:

    MaxPB said:

    DavidL said:

    Cyclefree said:

    It's almost as if clapping is not enough.

    Who could ever have guessed such a thing?

    Should the government cut funding to businesses that have been impacted, like VAT cuts, furlough, grants, loans, rates relief and much more - put VAT on hospitality back up and give that money to the NHS? 🤔
    yes
    So devastate even more the businesses like pubs and restaurants etc that are on their knees in order to give more money to those in secure jobs? 🤔

    I wonder if @Cyclefree agrees with you?
    Pubs and restaurants will start making their usual vast amounts of profits etc as everyone rushes back to them, desperate for their alcoholic meals. Meanwhile NHS workers will continue to eek out their salaries between their vast childcare costs and their full tax and NI contributions Class 1. There will always be Pubs and restaurants, but will there always be nurses and doctors now that we are jailing EU visitors at the border.
    This is just so deeply delusional. Pubs and restaurants do not make "usual vast amounts of profits". Indeed, as we discussed only yesterday significant percentages of them go bust every normal year losing their life savings and all too often their homes put up as collateral. Those who work in the sector have little to no job security and are doing better than most if they even get the minimum wage.

    Meanwhile, those working for the NHS are paid on average well above the national average, receive full pay for very extended periods if they are sick, get a full year's worth of full pay when they have kids and have pensions that are simply unobtainable to most in the private sector. I am not saying they don't deserve it but those who work with that incredible job security and confidence really need to acquire some understanding of how the majority of their fellow citizens paying their taxes to pay their wages live.
    Someone posted on here yesterday - 1 in 6 hospitality businesses fail within their first year, even without a pandemic. It's a hugely risky field and I applaud anyone willing to take it, I wouldn't!
    It's a low wage, low productivity industry which uses labour and capital inefficiently and holds the economy back. Like farming.
    It's not my fault that some pubs and restaurants go bust in the normal course of events. I can't imagine that many being owned by "large chains" go bust. The others who do go bust need to manage their businesses better I suppose. Why does it take so long to make a Flat White? I'm amazed at the likes of PT crying tears over this. What about the fishing, farming and haulage industry that are being murdered by Brexit. Oh wait, it's Brexit, they're supposed to take care of themselves, the market will sort them out!!
    Farming uses 62% of our land to make 0.6% of our GDP, land that is desperately needed for other purposes like housing, and takes £3 billion/year in subsidies into the bargain. The sooner the Australians and whoever free up the land, labour and capital the better. It's long overdue.
    We can't eat houses!!
    That is why I mentioned other countries, who are happy to supply us with food at lower prices.
    so transport all our food from foreign countries, ticking up massive mileage with its implications on transport costs and global warming?
    Food shipping has an absolutely neglible and dwindling impact on the environment.
    How are these ships supposed to get from Australia to the UK? Solar? Wind?
    No, by big f*ck-off engines powered by just about the cheapest and dirtiest fuel oil there is (Bunker "C"). But if you divide the amount of such oil used on the voyage by the huge cargoes those ships carry, the per item environmental impact is tiny compared to just about every other part of the supply chain, not least the impact of trucking the stuff to the supermarket and you bringing it home in your car, if you don't walk to the shops.
    The astoundingly low cost of transport by sea is one of the unknown things that makes the world work the way it does.

    And it has been so for a very long time. Mega vessels and containerisation have just removed another order of magnitude from already low costs.

    Consider - in 1880 it made sense to freeze lamb in New Zealand and ship it to London. It was cheaper, on arrival at the table, than Welsh lamb....
  • Nigelb said:

    I observed something I couldn't account for yesterday, when my computer crashed. It could have been alien technology, but I think there are simpler explanations.

    Idiotic comparison. You may not know why it crashed. but a suitably skilled person could trace through the memory dump generated when your computer crashed and figure out why it happened.

    Nobody appears to know what the heck is going on with these UAPs, and their behaviour appears to suggest our understanding of physics is much more limited than we thought.
  • Stark_DawningStark_Dawning Posts: 9,679
    Phil Thompson's vision of the future really is quite chilling - England as a high-density housing estate where everyone has to live on imported frozen kangaroo burgers.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,134
    Selebian said:

    Mr. kinabalu, public sector employees do have their wages paid by the taxes gathered from private sector workers.

    That's a mathematical fact.

    When I worked in the public sector (executive agency of BEIS, or whatever it was then) we were self-funding. In fact, the profit levels were something of an embarassment and all kinds of ways were found to spend/minimise the profits, short of paying us more!

    (We were a state-owned monopoly, to be fair)
    If the private sector in a country pays for the public sector of that country - if this is the true essence of the situation rather a reductive misrepresentation of it - how could there have been such a huge public sector in the USSR?
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,277
    edited May 2021
    IanB2 said:

    Leon said:

    IanB2 said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    Nigelb said:

    moonshine said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Yesterday, the former president of the USA reversed his earlier statements, and confirmed that American military has encountered advanced technology it cannot explain...

    Please provide cite.
    From what I saw he said it had observed phenomena it couldn't explain. Not the same thing.
    He's actually quite hesitant and inarticulate - for Obama

    I think my interpretation of his garbled words is fair. But you are free to demur

    "we can't explain how they move, their trajectory, they did not have an easily explainable pattern"

    https://twitter.com/EndUAPSecrecy/status/1394700044423634946?s=20
    Yes, that's the link you posted yesterday, which is what I was referring to.
    You are massively over interpreting.

    I observed something I couldn't account for yesterday, when my computer crashed. It could have been alien technology, but I think there are simpler explanations.
    The brief comments from Obama mean nothing in isolation. But they need to be seen in context with what’s been said by two ex CIA Directors, one ex NID, one ex Senate Majority Leader and an Intelligence Committee Chair. As well as the ramping in leaks of video followed by swift DoD confirmation of veracity, the various military figure testimonies, the Congressional process and the sudden change in media narrative from across the political spectrum.

    It is all very odd and you need to contort logic to come up with a prosaic or uninteresting explanation.
    And more so to conclude that it's aliens.
    From the various statements, we are being conclusively told we are not looking at data collection glitches (at least not in every case). The behaviour exhibits extraordinary capability. Transmedium high performance. Breaking the sound barrier without a sonic boom. Speeds and Gs beyond the capability of material science. No visual or infrared inductor of propulsion.

    So it’s American, another country or something else.

    If it’s American, then it’s a weird approach to take for a top secret programme. Buzzing your own carrier groups and then leaking the videos of it to the media and then starting a highly public congressional investigation into what it is.

    If it’s another country, then it’s the most severe failure of intelligence of all time (human, satellite, digital etc...). To the point of implausibility.

    Which leaves “something else”. Aliens. Sub oceanic intelligence. Inter dimensional or temporal visitors. Who knows.

    There is also the possibility that we are being lied to by an extraordinary coalition of intelligence, political and military figures and the whole thing is mundane bad data. Why?
    One entertaining aspect of this Flap is the way it is coaxing out some brilliant first hand accounts of UAPs. I am sure 99% of them are invented or delusional, but what if 1% are true? What are they seeing? What have people been seeing for decades?

    I"n late summer of 1982 I saw a #UFO or #UAP on I-90, around 2-3AM while driving from Seattle to Minneapolis. It looked like a giant metal eye, maybe 500-feet across, and hovered around 100-200 feet above the ground tracking 1000 feet in front of us as we drove (65mph)."


    "I had a passenger, a guy I met on a ride share board, we were driving his van. After a couple pregnant moments I asked him: "Uh, did you see that?". He said "Yeah...." And I about threw up. We were both too afraid to say anything while it was happening, to know it was real. #UFO"

    "I don't know what it was, but it looked a lot like what the Navy and Air Force are showing. If it was real, this tech/phenomena has been around for a very long time. #UFO #UAP"

    "I'm not a "conspiracy" guy, I've always thought maybe it was a weird reflection on the windshield or something else, anything else. So I've just avoided that little story. I don't tell many people. But now that the gov is admitting and showing videos, I feel more comfortable."

    https://twitter.com/okanogen2010/status/1395000495241003011?s=20
    Why are they almost always Americans, and very often Americans from parts of America where even most Americans aren’t interested to go?
    Is a very good point. Just like Elon Musk asking "why are all the photos so crap" - when everyone now has a superb camera to hand. Makes no sense

    Maybe Americans are more credulous. Or maybe it is China and/or Russia observing the enemy (but for 70 years with hypersonic tech?). Maybe the aliens are understandably most interested in the most powerful and advanced country. Maybe it is a mass delusion like dragons, but Americans see spacecraft, because Merika

    It is certainly remarkable that these aliens have the knowhow to transport themselves across light years of interstellar space and to travel at 9000 mph through our atmosphere without creating so much as a ripple, yet haven’t worked out that Americans from Colorado aren’t a random sample.

    Although to be fair, if they are so far above us in intelligence and technology, they probably are no more concerned than we would be in picking out a random sample of ants from an ant farm. But it is still odd that only Midwest Americans ever get abducted and experimented on.
    Actually there are thousands of UAP encounters across the world, it's just the ones in America that get more attention, perhaps, because of American media/English language

    In China:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SQwyX8dZ-Q

    In Canada

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfCQDyQW3To

    In Brazil

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5pg9sywQnE

    In Russell Crowe's head. In Australia

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcpCA9qgVnY

  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,860
    HYUFD said:

    AlistairM said:

    I find it very amusing that this chap is a Lib Dem with a beard and is called Bearder.

    https://order-order.com/2021/05/19/libdem-councillor-representing-three-different-wards-70-miles-apart/

    A dubious practice but legal, you cannot represent two seats in Parliament as it is the same legislature but you can represent wards on more than one council as they are separate bodies.
    Yes, it is an unusual case. Local councillors really should be local to their patch (and to stand, he’d need some sort of genuine local residency or connection, which doubtless someone is now checking), but in practice nowadays, the majority of council work arrives by email, and if you do this assiduously, and are able to visit your patch now and again to inspect any issues on the ground and do any visits, and provided you keep up your attendance record at meetings, a hard working councillor on several authorities could probably deliver a better service than a lazy one who lives full time in his ward.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,134

    .

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    As somebody who is always on the lookout for attack lines that will destroy Boris and the government, even I think the Jenny McGee story is a complete non-story.

    Indeed. The rather comical desperation to find The Thing That Will Bring Boris Down This Week is proof of the lamentable political impotence of his opponents; politcal strength means creating your own opportunities if they don't exist already, a talent of which they seem completely devoid. But no, they keep hoping against hope as if they were listening to a 1960s Adam West cliffhanger:

    'Is this the zero hour for the Dynamic Duo? Are the sands of time really running out for Batman and Robin? At long last have they met a gritty, granulated, inglorious end?'

    'Can it be? The Dynamic Duo crushed to death by an eight ton meteorite??'

    'Are our eyes deceiving us?? Has the giant clam really swallowed Robin??'

    'Tune in next week – same Bat-time, same Bat-channel!' :smile:
    Yes, very good. I used to watch that and it's exactly how it was. Viz, 'him', I'd actually settle for him just being slapped around for a while by Mr Freeze before the inevitable escape. Least that could be enjoyed on its own terms and in its own right.

    But look, in all seriousness, what you are overtly celebrating is the complete severing of the link between popularity and merit in our politics. I know it's never been a super-strong positive correlation, it can never be like that in such a messy world filled with such messy people, but it's now gone entirely and is even turning negative. This, objectively, is a really bad development.
    I would just ask you to consider this. Everything said of Boris by those on the left, and those of his party who have abandoned him, is very similar to what was said of Blair by those on the right, and those in his party that had abandoned him.

    I don’t think either side was/is right, I just seen the analogy. The belief that the PM is awful and on the make, together with his chums. The feeling of powerlessness that the public just don’t see it too. The idea that if they just wait long enough, the voters will catch on.
    Yes, I get what you mean. But I don't really see a strong Blair to Johnson mapping. They are both vote machines via having an appeal beyond the traditional base of their respective parties, but their strengths and weaknesses as politicians don't look similar to me.
    Blair was a populist who didn't have many principles other than what would win votes, dominated the media agenda, had a sofa government with personalities dominating, and preferred spin without letting such petty things as truth get in the way.

    Whereas Boris ...
    Cute, but facile and broadly wrong.

    But cute.
  • FlatlanderFlatlander Posts: 4,664
    edited May 2021
    malcolmg said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Yesterday, the former president of the USA reversed his earlier statements, and confirmed that American military has encountered advanced technology it cannot explain...

    Please provide cite.
    From what I saw he said it had observed phenomena it couldn't explain. Not the same thing.
    He's actually quite hesitant and inarticulate - for Obama

    I think my interpretation of his garbled words is fair. But you are free to demur

    "we can't explain how they move, their trajectory, they did not have an easily explainable pattern"

    https://twitter.com/EndUAPSecrecy/status/1394700044423634946?s=20
    Yes, that's the link you posted yesterday, which is what I was referring to.
    You are massively over interpreting.

    I observed something I couldn't account for yesterday, when my computer crashed. It could have been alien technology, but I think there are simpler explanations.
    Thing is though, even the MOST prosaic explanations are insane.

    1. The US is trying to deceive the entire world about its own technology, by pretending it has encountered aliens. And this plot involves several presidents. Er, OK

    Or...

    2. the Chinese have developed the ability to fly at 13,000 mph and they did this in the Noughties. or the 1950s. Really?!

    Or

    3. a weird mass hallucination is affecting hundreds of pilots across the world along with an unprecedented series of identical camera glitches and radar gremlins and infra-red frazzles and these delusional people have somehow convinced the US elite that they are sane and seeing unexplainable technology

    Which one do you go for?
    3.
    Every time.

    Given pilots have reported plastic bags blowing in the wind as drones (when drones were the 'thing'), I wouldn't rely an any so-called observational skills. And I've yet to see any clear photographs or video. They are _always_ fuzzy, just like Nessie.

    I have seen levitating boats, though, which surely must have taken alien technology. Like this one:
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-56286719


    I thought we went through all this in the 70s?



    It is is dumb and dumber , they are regressing. Will be moving into caves in near future.
    Quite likely.

    Do Scots not believe in Nessie though? At least, they seem to when the tourists come to Drumnadrochit...
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Yesterday, the former president of the USA reversed his earlier statements, and confirmed that American military has encountered advanced technology it cannot explain...

    Please provide cite.
    From what I saw he said it had observed phenomena it couldn't explain. Not the same thing.
    He's actually quite hesitant and inarticulate - for Obama

    I think my interpretation of his garbled words is fair. But you are free to demur

    "we can't explain how they move, their trajectory, they did not have an easily explainable pattern"

    https://twitter.com/EndUAPSecrecy/status/1394700044423634946?s=20
    Yes, that's the link you posted yesterday, which is what I was referring to.
    You are massively over interpreting.

    I observed something I couldn't account for yesterday, when my computer crashed. It could have been alien technology, but I think there are simpler explanations.
    Thing is though, even the MOST prosaic explanations are insane.

    1. The US is trying to deceive the entire world about its own technology, by pretending it has encountered aliens. And this plot involves several presidents. Er, OK

    Or...

    2. the Chinese have developed the ability to fly at 13,000 mph and they did this in the Noughties. or the 1950s. Really?!

    Or

    3. a weird mass hallucination is affecting hundreds of pilots across the world along with an unprecedented series of identical camera glitches and radar gremlins and infra-red frazzles and these delusional people have somehow convinced the US elite that they are sane and seeing unexplainable technology

    Which one do you go for?
    3.
    Every time.

    Given pilots have reported plastic bags blowing in the wind as drones (when drones were the 'thing'), I wouldn't rely an any so-called observational skills. And I've yet to see any clear photographs or video. They are _always_ fuzzy, just like Nessie.

    I have seen levitating boats, though, which surely must have taken alien technology. Like this one:
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-56286719


    I thought we went through all this in the 70s?



    I would normally go for 3, but you haven't explained why the entire US elite (up to and including Obama) disagrees with you, and thinks this is genuinely inexplicable, and is very carefully orchestrating leaks of videos and so forth, to back up its claim that there is Something Out There.
    Maybe it is just lack of embarrassment?

    It isn't unusual to see something you can't explain, but as a military man or a pilot you might not normally say anything for fear of being labelled unreliable.

    Once you are given 'permission' to admit to seeing weird stuff, it comes out.

    It doesn't mean that it amounts to anything real though.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    Phil Thompson's vision of the future really is quite chilling - England as a high-density housing estate where everyone has to live on imported frozen kangaroo burgers.

    England already is a high density housing estate.

    Just some people want nice spacious detached homes surrounded by countryside while the plebs are piled high in tower blocks in the city even if they can afford to buy land in elsewhere.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    kinabalu said:

    Selebian said:

    Mr. kinabalu, public sector employees do have their wages paid by the taxes gathered from private sector workers.

    That's a mathematical fact.

    When I worked in the public sector (executive agency of BEIS, or whatever it was then) we were self-funding. In fact, the profit levels were something of an embarassment and all kinds of ways were found to spend/minimise the profits, short of paying us more!

    (We were a state-owned monopoly, to be fair)
    If the private sector in a country pays for the public sector of that country - if this is the true essence of the situation rather a reductive misrepresentation of it - how could there have been such a huge public sector in the USSR?
    There couldn't.

    The USSR failed.
  • squareroot2squareroot2 Posts: 6,723

    Phil Thompson's vision of the future really is quite chilling - England as a high-density housing estate where everyone has to live on imported frozen kangaroo burgers.

    England already is a high density housing estate.

    Just some people want nice spacious detached homes surrounded by countryside while the plebs are piled high in tower blocks in the city even if they can afford to buy land in elsewhere.
    It is not an unreasonable aspiration to own a nice home.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    Phil Thompson's vision of the future really is quite chilling - England as a high-density housing estate where everyone has to live on imported frozen kangaroo burgers.

    England already is a high density housing estate.

    Just some people want nice spacious detached homes surrounded by countryside while the plebs are piled high in tower blocks in the city even if they can afford to buy land in elsewhere.
    It is not an unreasonable aspiration to own a nice home.
    Agreed.

    So why do NIMBYs wish to deny that aspiration to others?
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,277

    malcolmg said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Yesterday, the former president of the USA reversed his earlier statements, and confirmed that American military has encountered advanced technology it cannot explain...

    Please provide cite.
    From what I saw he said it had observed phenomena it couldn't explain. Not the same thing.
    He's actually quite hesitant and inarticulate - for Obama

    I think my interpretation of his garbled words is fair. But you are free to demur

    "we can't explain how they move, their trajectory, they did not have an easily explainable pattern"

    https://twitter.com/EndUAPSecrecy/status/1394700044423634946?s=20
    Yes, that's the link you posted yesterday, which is what I was referring to.
    You are massively over interpreting.

    I observed something I couldn't account for yesterday, when my computer crashed. It could have been alien technology, but I think there are simpler explanations.
    Thing is though, even the MOST prosaic explanations are insane.

    1. The US is trying to deceive the entire world about its own technology, by pretending it has encountered aliens. And this plot involves several presidents. Er, OK

    Or...

    2. the Chinese have developed the ability to fly at 13,000 mph and they did this in the Noughties. or the 1950s. Really?!

    Or

    3. a weird mass hallucination is affecting hundreds of pilots across the world along with an unprecedented series of identical camera glitches and radar gremlins and infra-red frazzles and these delusional people have somehow convinced the US elite that they are sane and seeing unexplainable technology

    Which one do you go for?
    3.
    Every time.

    Given pilots have reported plastic bags blowing in the wind as drones (when drones were the 'thing'), I wouldn't rely an any so-called observational skills. And I've yet to see any clear photographs or video. They are _always_ fuzzy, just like Nessie.

    I have seen levitating boats, though, which surely must have taken alien technology. Like this one:
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-56286719


    I thought we went through all this in the 70s?



    It is is dumb and dumber , they are regressing. Will be moving into caves in near future.
    Quite likely.

    Do Scots not believe in Nessie though? At least, they seem to when the tourists come to Drumnadrochit...
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Yesterday, the former president of the USA reversed his earlier statements, and confirmed that American military has encountered advanced technology it cannot explain...

    Please provide cite.
    From what I saw he said it had observed phenomena it couldn't explain. Not the same thing.
    He's actually quite hesitant and inarticulate - for Obama

    I think my interpretation of his garbled words is fair. But you are free to demur

    "we can't explain how they move, their trajectory, they did not have an easily explainable pattern"

    https://twitter.com/EndUAPSecrecy/status/1394700044423634946?s=20
    Yes, that's the link you posted yesterday, which is what I was referring to.
    You are massively over interpreting.

    I observed something I couldn't account for yesterday, when my computer crashed. It could have been alien technology, but I think there are simpler explanations.
    Thing is though, even the MOST prosaic explanations are insane.

    1. The US is trying to deceive the entire world about its own technology, by pretending it has encountered aliens. And this plot involves several presidents. Er, OK

    Or...

    2. the Chinese have developed the ability to fly at 13,000 mph and they did this in the Noughties. or the 1950s. Really?!

    Or

    3. a weird mass hallucination is affecting hundreds of pilots across the world along with an unprecedented series of identical camera glitches and radar gremlins and infra-red frazzles and these delusional people have somehow convinced the US elite that they are sane and seeing unexplainable technology

    Which one do you go for?
    3.
    Every time.

    Given pilots have reported plastic bags blowing in the wind as drones (when drones were the 'thing'), I wouldn't rely an any so-called observational skills. And I've yet to see any clear photographs or video. They are _always_ fuzzy, just like Nessie.

    I have seen levitating boats, though, which surely must have taken alien technology. Like this one:
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-56286719


    I thought we went through all this in the 70s?



    I would normally go for 3, but you haven't explained why the entire US elite (up to and including Obama) disagrees with you, and thinks this is genuinely inexplicable, and is very carefully orchestrating leaks of videos and so forth, to back up its claim that there is Something Out There.
    Maybe it is just lack of embarrassment?

    It isn't unusual to see something you can't explain, but as a military man or a pilot you might not normally say anything for fear of being labelled unreliable.

    Once you are given 'permission' to admit to seeing weird stuff, it comes out.

    It doesn't mean that it amounts to anything real though.
    You STILL haven't explained why the US Establishment, up to and including Obama, is now accepting a "possibly aliens" narrative, even at the risk of sounding bat-shit crazy


    Perhaps the Trumpites are right and it's a leftwing conspiracy to.. er.... uh.... push up the Defense Budget?!


    @JackPosobiec
    Seems like people are just trying to agitate for bigger defense budgets

    https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1394980840824791040?s=20
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 13,677

    Phil Thompson's vision of the future really is quite chilling - England as a high-density housing estate where everyone has to live on imported frozen kangaroo burgers.

    With their own Iron Dome system on the roof of every house in case Hamas attack this libertarian Cockaigne.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,134

    Mr. Selebian, while it's true my point generally stands, that is an interesting category of exceptions to consider.

    Your 'point' is not really a point. It's a reductive misrepresentation of economic reality. But tbf it's a very common one.

    And where would we be without reductive misrepresentations of economic reality? In a permanent living hell, Morris, that's where.
  • glwglw Posts: 9,906
    IanB2 said:

    Why are they almost always Americans, and very often Americans from parts of America where even most Americans aren’t interested to go?

    I don't think that's right. We have a bias for reading stories in our own language, but there are famous cases from other parts of the world, and the best study to date is French.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    .

    Nigelb said:

    I observed something I couldn't account for yesterday, when my computer crashed. It could have been alien technology, but I think there are simpler explanations.

    Idiotic comparison. You may not know why it crashed. but a suitably skilled person could trace through the memory dump generated when your computer crashed and figure out why it happened.

    Nobody appears to know what the heck is going on with these UAPs, and their behaviour appears to suggest our understanding of physics is much more limited than we thought.
    That the UAPs aren't doing what people think they are, and it's faked video, an optical illusion or similar, is far more plausible than that the laws of physics aren't being obeyed.
  • BluestBlueBluestBlue Posts: 4,556
    kinabalu said:

    As somebody who is always on the lookout for attack lines that will destroy Boris and the government, even I think the Jenny McGee story is a complete non-story.

    Indeed. The rather comical desperation to find The Thing That Will Bring Boris Down This Week is proof of the lamentable political impotence of his opponents; politcal strength means creating your own opportunities if they don't exist already, a talent of which they seem completely devoid. But no, they keep hoping against hope as if they were listening to a 1960s Adam West cliffhanger:

    'Is this the zero hour for the Dynamic Duo? Are the sands of time really running out for Batman and Robin? At long last have they met a gritty, granulated, inglorious end?'

    'Can it be? The Dynamic Duo crushed to death by an eight ton meteorite??'

    'Are our eyes deceiving us?? Has the giant clam really swallowed Robin??'

    'Tune in next week – same Bat-time, same Bat-channel!' :smile:
    Yes, very good. I used to watch that and it's exactly how it was. Viz, 'him', I'd actually settle for him just being slapped around for a while by Mr Freeze before the inevitable escape. Least that could be enjoyed on its own terms and in its own right.

    But look, in all seriousness, what you are overtly celebrating is the complete severing of the link between popularity and merit in our politics. I know it's never been a super-strong positive correlation, it can never be like that in such a messy world filled with such messy people, but it's now gone entirely and is even turning negative. This, objectively, is a really bad development.
    Not at all, and not just because I find Boris' merit to be extraordinary - like Adam West, he may occasionally dial the camp up to 11 and wear his underpants on the outside, but he always gets the bad guys in the end.

    What I'm celebrating is the weakening of the link between political popularity and the petty, nonsensical smears that the media pushes in order to to inflate their own sense of self-importance. The day they realize that no one's listening to them anymore will be one of the greatest in our history.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,153

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Yesterday, the former president of the USA reversed his earlier statements, and confirmed that American military has encountered advanced technology it cannot explain...

    Please provide cite.
    From what I saw he said it had observed phenomena it couldn't explain. Not the same thing.
    He's actually quite hesitant and inarticulate - for Obama

    I think my interpretation of his garbled words is fair. But you are free to demur

    "we can't explain how they move, their trajectory, they did not have an easily explainable pattern"

    https://twitter.com/EndUAPSecrecy/status/1394700044423634946?s=20
    Yes, that's the link you posted yesterday, which is what I was referring to.
    You are massively over interpreting.

    I observed something I couldn't account for yesterday, when my computer crashed. It could have been alien technology, but I think there are simpler explanations.
    Thing is though, even the MOST prosaic explanations are insane.

    1. The US is trying to deceive the entire world about its own technology, by pretending it has encountered aliens. And this plot involves several presidents. Er, OK

    Or...

    2. the Chinese have developed the ability to fly at 13,000 mph and they did this in the Noughties. or the 1950s. Really?!

    Or

    3. a weird mass hallucination is affecting hundreds of pilots across the world along with an unprecedented series of identical camera glitches and radar gremlins and infra-red frazzles and these delusional people have somehow convinced the US elite that they are sane and seeing unexplainable technology

    Which one do you go for?
    3.
    Every time.

    Given pilots have reported plastic bags blowing in the wind as drones (when drones were the 'thing'), I wouldn't rely an any so-called observational skills. And I've yet to see any clear photographs or video. They are _always_ fuzzy, just like Nessie.

    I have seen levitating boats, though, which surely must have taken alien technology. Like this one:
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-56286719


    I thought we went through all this in the 70s?



    Absolutely 100%. Inexplicable optical illusions etc are the prosaic answer.

    So expect people to lose their freaking minds screaming that the Truth Is Out There!
    So why is everyone in America, from Obama down, saying that This Cannot Be Explained?
    Because it can't be explained.

    Doesn't mean there's not a prosaic explanation, just we don't know what it is right now.

    This is the same sort of idiocy that historically says "I can't explain this natural phenomenon, therefore God did it".
    Maybe it can be explained

  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 81,991
    AlistairM said:

    https://twitter.com/HugoGye/status/1395010735034572801

    498,101 vaccinations in 🇬🇧 yesterday

    🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 154,621 1st doses / 269,283 2nd doses
    🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 6,231 / 34,919
    🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 10,106 / 11,857
    NI 3,142 / 7,942

    We still aren't seeing this mega expansion that was being touted for the second half of this month.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 12,496

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Yesterday, the former president of the USA reversed his earlier statements, and confirmed that American military has encountered advanced technology it cannot explain...

    Please provide cite.
    From what I saw he said it had observed phenomena it couldn't explain. Not the same thing.
    He's actually quite hesitant and inarticulate - for Obama

    I think my interpretation of his garbled words is fair. But you are free to demur

    "we can't explain how they move, their trajectory, they did not have an easily explainable pattern"

    https://twitter.com/EndUAPSecrecy/status/1394700044423634946?s=20
    Yes, that's the link you posted yesterday, which is what I was referring to.
    You are massively over interpreting.

    I observed something I couldn't account for yesterday, when my computer crashed. It could have been alien technology, but I think there are simpler explanations.
    Thing is though, even the MOST prosaic explanations are insane.

    1. The US is trying to deceive the entire world about its own technology, by pretending it has encountered aliens. And this plot involves several presidents. Er, OK

    Or...

    2. the Chinese have developed the ability to fly at 13,000 mph and they did this in the Noughties. or the 1950s. Really?!

    Or

    3. a weird mass hallucination is affecting hundreds of pilots across the world along with an unprecedented series of identical camera glitches and radar gremlins and infra-red frazzles and these delusional people have somehow convinced the US elite that they are sane and seeing unexplainable technology

    Which one do you go for?
    3.
    Every time.

    Given pilots have reported plastic bags blowing in the wind as drones (when drones were the 'thing'), I wouldn't rely an any so-called observational skills. And I've yet to see any clear photographs or video. They are _always_ fuzzy, just like Nessie.

    I have seen levitating boats, though, which surely must have taken alien technology. Like this one:
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-56286719


    I thought we went through all this in the 70s?



    Popular but informed science done by top academic names is a big money big seller. Publishers like making money, as do writers. With exoplanets being an agreed thing and SETI also there is no intellectual problem with top science getting to grips with the data and both making massive names for people through peer reviewed academic study of the data and making a fortune off the books.

    I conclude therefore that when and if there is something to say that we will be drowned in top quality publications, both popular and academic, involving top names of top institutions published by Oxford, Yale, Princeton etc and that until then there won't be anything to say.

    Any amateur deriving any conclusions from fuzzy videos (or any videos) need to ask whether there is better quality video evidence that someone can be cut in half, the halves separated and brought back together again than there is of extraordianary activity near American pilots. Or watch Derren Brown.

    Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.


  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,921

    Phil Thompson's vision of the future really is quite chilling - England as a high-density housing estate where everyone has to live on imported frozen kangaroo burgers.

    England already is a high density housing estate.

    Just some people want nice spacious detached homes surrounded by countryside while the plebs are piled high in tower blocks in the city even if they can afford to buy land in elsewhere.
    It is not an unreasonable aspiration to own a nice home.
    Agreed.

    So why do NIMBYs wish to deny that aspiration to others?
    They don't, they just want them to fulfil that aspiration by buying a home on a brownfield site, not in a field near their house spoiling their view, reducing green spaces and reducing their house value
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,153

    Phil Thompson's vision of the future really is quite chilling - England as a high-density housing estate where everyone has to live on imported frozen kangaroo burgers.

    England already is a high density housing estate.

    Just some people want nice spacious detached homes surrounded by countryside while the plebs are piled high in tower blocks in the city even if they can afford to buy land in elsewhere.
    Some people think a detached house in middle of nowhere sounds like hell on earth, and would much rather live in a flat within easy walking distance of nice bars and restaurants.

    The world takes all sorts.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,817
    Leon said:

    The Trumpites are coming out against ET. They're saying it's a Democrat conspiracy


    "Don’t buy the UFOs thing

    They’re trying to make us believe it too much

    Even Obama is pushing it"

    https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1394980205098373121?s=20


    THAT's a head fuck all right

    Clearly if Obama is involved its a con.

    I find it interesting the way that this is being framed. What we are seeing now doesn't seem all that different to the kind of stuff that we have been seeing episodically for the last 50 years or so. The difference is the way it is being framed. Instead of little green men and War of the Worlds warm overs we are being told that it is a "security concern" because quite a lot of this activity is beside military bases. Post 9/11 no one would ever dare just laugh at a "security concern" so we (or at least the US) end up taking this far more seriously than ever before.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 23,485

    AlistairM said:

    https://twitter.com/HugoGye/status/1395010735034572801

    498,101 vaccinations in 🇬🇧 yesterday

    🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 154,621 1st doses / 269,283 2nd doses
    🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 6,231 / 34,919
    🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 10,106 / 11,857
    NI 3,142 / 7,942

    We still aren't seeing this mega expansion that was being touted for the second half of this month.
    That's very fair comment. The numbers this week have been particularly underwhelming.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    edited May 2021
    HYUFD said:

    Phil Thompson's vision of the future really is quite chilling - England as a high-density housing estate where everyone has to live on imported frozen kangaroo burgers.

    England already is a high density housing estate.

    Just some people want nice spacious detached homes surrounded by countryside while the plebs are piled high in tower blocks in the city even if they can afford to buy land in elsewhere.
    It is not an unreasonable aspiration to own a nice home.
    Agreed.

    So why do NIMBYs wish to deny that aspiration to others?
    They don't, they just want them to fulfil that aspiration by buying a home on a brownfield site, not in a field near their house spoiling their view, reducing green spaces and reducing their house value
    And some people want an invisible punk unicorn. 🦄

    There isn't the brown space to build on, green spaces are needed, so be realistic. If you can't realistically identify which green spaces should be built on then don't complain when others decide for you.

    Besides in a free market they have a way of stopping the field from being developed: buy the field.

    PS reducing house prices is a feature not a bug of construction. Losing value so others can buy a home is a good thing. So shed your crocodile tears about living in a home rent-free that loses some value elsewhere when others are breaking their backs to pay rent.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 59,928
    Alistair said:

    Absolute lols, based on their own breakdown Tether bought 1% of all US Commercial Paper available in the last month. They allegedly own 3% of all Commercial Paper outstanding.

    What an absolute pile of scam.

    Can you elaborate on why that makes it a scam? I have no clue.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,817

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Yesterday, the former president of the USA reversed his earlier statements, and confirmed that American military has encountered advanced technology it cannot explain...

    Please provide cite.
    From what I saw he said it had observed phenomena it couldn't explain. Not the same thing.
    He's actually quite hesitant and inarticulate - for Obama

    I think my interpretation of his garbled words is fair. But you are free to demur

    "we can't explain how they move, their trajectory, they did not have an easily explainable pattern"

    https://twitter.com/EndUAPSecrecy/status/1394700044423634946?s=20
    Yes, that's the link you posted yesterday, which is what I was referring to.
    You are massively over interpreting.

    I observed something I couldn't account for yesterday, when my computer crashed. It could have been alien technology, but I think there are simpler explanations.
    Thing is though, even the MOST prosaic explanations are insane.

    1. The US is trying to deceive the entire world about its own technology, by pretending it has encountered aliens. And this plot involves several presidents. Er, OK

    Or...

    2. the Chinese have developed the ability to fly at 13,000 mph and they did this in the Noughties. or the 1950s. Really?!

    Or

    3. a weird mass hallucination is affecting hundreds of pilots across the world along with an unprecedented series of identical camera glitches and radar gremlins and infra-red frazzles and these delusional people have somehow convinced the US elite that they are sane and seeing unexplainable technology

    Which one do you go for?
    3.
    Every time.

    Given pilots have reported plastic bags blowing in the wind as drones (when drones were the 'thing'), I wouldn't rely an any so-called observational skills. And I've yet to see any clear photographs or video. They are _always_ fuzzy, just like Nessie.

    I have seen levitating boats, though, which surely must have taken alien technology. Like this one:
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-56286719


    I thought we went through all this in the 70s?



    They last came in the 70s. They have returned 50 years later to see whether we are now more civilised. They may not be back for another 50 years. If they flew over Glasgow on Saturday, however, they will have seen that we have in fact regressed, and may never come back.
    Or more likely nuke the entire site from orbit.
    Nevertheless I’d guarantee that in that scenario there would still be one wee pished ned emerging from the rubble in his stained 32Red Rangers top screeching ‘Jock knew’.
    Surely, "is that the best yo'se got?"
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,747
    Leon said:

    The Trumpites are coming out against ET. They're saying it's a Democrat conspiracy


    "Don’t buy the UFOs thing

    They’re trying to make us believe it too much

    Even Obama is pushing it"

    https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1394980205098373121?s=20


    THAT's a head fuck all right

    Especially since it was Trump’s DNI Ratclifee who has gone the furthest and said on live tv he was planning on opening the book and making full disclosure but ran out of time before the election
  • squareroot2squareroot2 Posts: 6,723

    Phil Thompson's vision of the future really is quite chilling - England as a high-density housing estate where everyone has to live on imported frozen kangaroo burgers.

    England already is a high density housing estate.

    Just some people want nice spacious detached homes surrounded by countryside while the plebs are piled high in tower blocks in the city even if they can afford to buy land in elsewhere.
    It is not an unreasonable aspiration to own a nice home.
    Agreed.

    So why do NIMBYs wish to deny that aspiration to others?
    Its when green belt is taken that problems arise. There is any amount of brownfield sites to be developed. The requisite infrastructure promised by developers surgery etc schools etc rarely happens so the existing infrastructure is overwhelmed.
  • eekeek Posts: 28,370

    Phil Thompson's vision of the future really is quite chilling - England as a high-density housing estate where everyone has to live on imported frozen kangaroo burgers.

    England already is a high density housing estate.

    Just some people want nice spacious detached homes surrounded by countryside while the plebs are piled high in tower blocks in the city even if they can afford to buy land in elsewhere.
    It is not an unreasonable aspiration to own a nice home.
    Agreed.

    So why do NIMBYs wish to deny that aspiration to others?
    Its when green belt is taken that problems arise. There is any amount of brownfield sites to be developed. The requisite infrastructure promised by developers surgery etc schools etc rarely happens so the existing infrastructure is overwhelmed.
    That's easily fixed - add a requirement to build the appropriate infrastructure when the area is built on as part of the planning person.
  • JBriskin3JBriskin3 Posts: 1,254
    rcs1000 said:

    Phil Thompson's vision of the future really is quite chilling - England as a high-density housing estate where everyone has to live on imported frozen kangaroo burgers.

    England already is a high density housing estate.

    Just some people want nice spacious detached homes surrounded by countryside while the plebs are piled high in tower blocks in the city even if they can afford to buy land in elsewhere.
    Some people think a detached house in middle of nowhere sounds like hell on earth, and would much rather live in a flat within easy walking distance of nice bars and restaurants.

    The world takes all sorts.
    I'm a flat within easy walking distance of nice bars and restaurants man. I'm in my forties and I don't see that changing anytime soon.
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,747
    IanB2 said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    Nigelb said:

    moonshine said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Yesterday, the former president of the USA reversed his earlier statements, and confirmed that American military has encountered advanced technology it cannot explain...

    Please provide cite.
    From what I saw he said it had observed phenomena it couldn't explain. Not the same thing.
    He's actually quite hesitant and inarticulate - for Obama

    I think my interpretation of his garbled words is fair. But you are free to demur

    "we can't explain how they move, their trajectory, they did not have an easily explainable pattern"

    https://twitter.com/EndUAPSecrecy/status/1394700044423634946?s=20
    Yes, that's the link you posted yesterday, which is what I was referring to.
    You are massively over interpreting.

    I observed something I couldn't account for yesterday, when my computer crashed. It could have been alien technology, but I think there are simpler explanations.
    The brief comments from Obama mean nothing in isolation. But they need to be seen in context with what’s been said by two ex CIA Directors, one ex NID, one ex Senate Majority Leader and an Intelligence Committee Chair. As well as the ramping in leaks of video followed by swift DoD confirmation of veracity, the various military figure testimonies, the Congressional process and the sudden change in media narrative from across the political spectrum.

    It is all very odd and you need to contort logic to come up with a prosaic or uninteresting explanation.
    And more so to conclude that it's aliens.
    From the various statements, we are being conclusively told we are not looking at data collection glitches (at least not in every case). The behaviour exhibits extraordinary capability. Transmedium high performance. Breaking the sound barrier without a sonic boom. Speeds and Gs beyond the capability of material science. No visual or infrared inductor of propulsion.

    So it’s American, another country or something else.

    If it’s American, then it’s a weird approach to take for a top secret programme. Buzzing your own carrier groups and then leaking the videos of it to the media and then starting a highly public congressional investigation into what it is.

    If it’s another country, then it’s the most severe failure of intelligence of all time (human, satellite, digital etc...). To the point of implausibility.

    Which leaves “something else”. Aliens. Sub oceanic intelligence. Inter dimensional or temporal visitors. Who knows.

    There is also the possibility that we are being lied to by an extraordinary coalition of intelligence, political and military figures and the whole thing is mundane bad data. Why?
    One entertaining aspect of this Flap is the way it is coaxing out some brilliant first hand accounts of UAPs. I am sure 99% of them are invented or delusional, but what if 1% are true? What are they seeing? What have people been seeing for decades?

    I"n late summer of 1982 I saw a #UFO or #UAP on I-90, around 2-3AM while driving from Seattle to Minneapolis. It looked like a giant metal eye, maybe 500-feet across, and hovered around 100-200 feet above the ground tracking 1000 feet in front of us as we drove (65mph)."


    "I had a passenger, a guy I met on a ride share board, we were driving his van. After a couple pregnant moments I asked him: "Uh, did you see that?". He said "Yeah...." And I about threw up. We were both too afraid to say anything while it was happening, to know it was real. #UFO"

    "I don't know what it was, but it looked a lot like what the Navy and Air Force are showing. If it was real, this tech/phenomena has been around for a very long time. #UFO #UAP"

    "I'm not a "conspiracy" guy, I've always thought maybe it was a weird reflection on the windshield or something else, anything else. So I've just avoided that little story. I don't tell many people. But now that the gov is admitting and showing videos, I feel more comfortable."

    https://twitter.com/okanogen2010/status/1395000495241003011?s=20
    Why are they almost always Americans, and very often Americans from parts of America where even most Americans aren’t interested to go?
    Do you really expect Xi Jinping to release videos from his airforce and allow public statements by his airmen and intelligence investigators?

    The reports by the way are not just American. People say that because they like to look down on Americans as being fools. The reports come from all over the world.
  • JBriskin3JBriskin3 Posts: 1,254

    Phil Thompson's vision of the future really is quite chilling - England as a high-density housing estate where everyone has to live on imported frozen kangaroo burgers.

    Careful, this might be misconstrued as an anti-aussie hate crime.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    Phil Thompson's vision of the future really is quite chilling - England as a high-density housing estate where everyone has to live on imported frozen kangaroo burgers.

    England already is a high density housing estate.

    Just some people want nice spacious detached homes surrounded by countryside while the plebs are piled high in tower blocks in the city even if they can afford to buy land in elsewhere.
    It is not an unreasonable aspiration to own a nice home.
    Agreed.

    So why do NIMBYs wish to deny that aspiration to others?
    Its when green belt is taken that problems arise. There is any amount of brownfield sites to be developed. The requisite infrastructure promised by developers surgery etc schools etc rarely happens so the existing infrastructure is overwhelmed.
    There aren't any number of brownfield sites. That's the problem.

    Population has increased by a sixth in recent years but housing hasn't and there aren't brownfield sites to cover the gap. Because whatever was on a brownfield site has a tendency to be replaced.

    If more infrastructure is needed then construct that too. On greenfield too.

    And if you don't want fields being developed then what is stopping you from buying the fields then refusing permission to build on them? Since you own them, you decide.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,817

    Mr. Malmesbury, well, humbug to that.

    Anyway, I must be off. Play nicely, my fellow Earthlings.

    Specist.
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 8,727
    JBriskin3 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Phil Thompson's vision of the future really is quite chilling - England as a high-density housing estate where everyone has to live on imported frozen kangaroo burgers.

    England already is a high density housing estate.

    Just some people want nice spacious detached homes surrounded by countryside while the plebs are piled high in tower blocks in the city even if they can afford to buy land in elsewhere.
    Some people think a detached house in middle of nowhere sounds like hell on earth, and would much rather live in a flat within easy walking distance of nice bars and restaurants.

    The world takes all sorts.
    I'm a flat within easy walking distance of nice bars and restaurants man. I'm in my forties and I don't see that changing anytime soon.
    Early forties then? :tongue:
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,277
    DavidL said:

    Leon said:

    The Trumpites are coming out against ET. They're saying it's a Democrat conspiracy


    "Don’t buy the UFOs thing

    They’re trying to make us believe it too much

    Even Obama is pushing it"

    https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1394980205098373121?s=20


    THAT's a head fuck all right

    Clearly if Obama is involved its a con.

    I find it interesting the way that this is being framed. What we are seeing now doesn't seem all that different to the kind of stuff that we have been seeing episodically for the last 50 years or so. The difference is the way it is being framed. Instead of little green men and War of the Worlds warm overs we are being told that it is a "security concern" because quite a lot of this activity is beside military bases. Post 9/11 no one would ever dare just laugh at a "security concern" so we (or at least the US) end up taking this far more seriously than ever before.
    This latest flap is materially different to all the others. The accumulation of fairly persuasive evidence seems to have broken the dam.

    The easiest explanation is to accept this at face value. The US Establishment sees a potential security threat from UAP exhibiting great technological prowess. It might be America spooking itself, it might be advanced Chinese or Russian stuff, it might be Something Else, even aliens, but it is so advanced it needs debate
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    eek said:

    Phil Thompson's vision of the future really is quite chilling - England as a high-density housing estate where everyone has to live on imported frozen kangaroo burgers.

    England already is a high density housing estate.

    Just some people want nice spacious detached homes surrounded by countryside while the plebs are piled high in tower blocks in the city even if they can afford to buy land in elsewhere.
    It is not an unreasonable aspiration to own a nice home.
    Agreed.

    So why do NIMBYs wish to deny that aspiration to others?
    Its when green belt is taken that problems arise. There is any amount of brownfield sites to be developed. The requisite infrastructure promised by developers surgery etc schools etc rarely happens so the existing infrastructure is overwhelmed.
    That's easily fixed - add a requirement to build the appropriate infrastructure when the area is built on as part of the planning person.
    Or just build the infrastructure in response, funded in part by the taxes paid by the new homes and their future residents. 🤷‍♂️
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    moonshine said:

    IanB2 said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    Nigelb said:

    moonshine said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Yesterday, the former president of the USA reversed his earlier statements, and confirmed that American military has encountered advanced technology it cannot explain...

    Please provide cite.
    From what I saw he said it had observed phenomena it couldn't explain. Not the same thing.
    He's actually quite hesitant and inarticulate - for Obama

    I think my interpretation of his garbled words is fair. But you are free to demur

    "we can't explain how they move, their trajectory, they did not have an easily explainable pattern"

    https://twitter.com/EndUAPSecrecy/status/1394700044423634946?s=20
    Yes, that's the link you posted yesterday, which is what I was referring to.
    You are massively over interpreting.

    I observed something I couldn't account for yesterday, when my computer crashed. It could have been alien technology, but I think there are simpler explanations.
    The brief comments from Obama mean nothing in isolation. But they need to be seen in context with what’s been said by two ex CIA Directors, one ex NID, one ex Senate Majority Leader and an Intelligence Committee Chair. As well as the ramping in leaks of video followed by swift DoD confirmation of veracity, the various military figure testimonies, the Congressional process and the sudden change in media narrative from across the political spectrum.

    It is all very odd and you need to contort logic to come up with a prosaic or uninteresting explanation.
    And more so to conclude that it's aliens.
    From the various statements, we are being conclusively told we are not looking at data collection glitches (at least not in every case). The behaviour exhibits extraordinary capability. Transmedium high performance. Breaking the sound barrier without a sonic boom. Speeds and Gs beyond the capability of material science. No visual or infrared inductor of propulsion.

    So it’s American, another country or something else.

    If it’s American, then it’s a weird approach to take for a top secret programme. Buzzing your own carrier groups and then leaking the videos of it to the media and then starting a highly public congressional investigation into what it is.

    If it’s another country, then it’s the most severe failure of intelligence of all time (human, satellite, digital etc...). To the point of implausibility.

    Which leaves “something else”. Aliens. Sub oceanic intelligence. Inter dimensional or temporal visitors. Who knows.

    There is also the possibility that we are being lied to by an extraordinary coalition of intelligence, political and military figures and the whole thing is mundane bad data. Why?
    One entertaining aspect of this Flap is the way it is coaxing out some brilliant first hand accounts of UAPs. I am sure 99% of them are invented or delusional, but what if 1% are true? What are they seeing? What have people been seeing for decades?

    I"n late summer of 1982 I saw a #UFO or #UAP on I-90, around 2-3AM while driving from Seattle to Minneapolis. It looked like a giant metal eye, maybe 500-feet across, and hovered around 100-200 feet above the ground tracking 1000 feet in front of us as we drove (65mph)."


    "I had a passenger, a guy I met on a ride share board, we were driving his van. After a couple pregnant moments I asked him: "Uh, did you see that?". He said "Yeah...." And I about threw up. We were both too afraid to say anything while it was happening, to know it was real. #UFO"

    "I don't know what it was, but it looked a lot like what the Navy and Air Force are showing. If it was real, this tech/phenomena has been around for a very long time. #UFO #UAP"

    "I'm not a "conspiracy" guy, I've always thought maybe it was a weird reflection on the windshield or something else, anything else. So I've just avoided that little story. I don't tell many people. But now that the gov is admitting and showing videos, I feel more comfortable."

    https://twitter.com/okanogen2010/status/1395000495241003011?s=20
    Why are they almost always Americans, and very often Americans from parts of America where even most Americans aren’t interested to go?
    Do you really expect Xi Jinping to release videos from his airforce and allow public statements by his airmen and intelligence investigators?

    The reports by the way are not just American. People say that because they like to look down on Americans as being fools. The reports come from all over the world.
    Because there's fools all over the world.

    Why don't commercial pilots routinely come across and provide evidence for all this bullshit?
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,368

    tlg86 said:

    ping said:

    House Prices up 10.2%

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57171683

    If the tories don’t take this seriously, the country will vote for far more radical solutions.

    It's not the rise that will do for them, it's the crash.
    We need [moderate] inflation.

    A good few years where house prices go up by 1%, general prices by 3-4% and wages by 5% would be ideal.

    Within a decade house price ratios would fall from 6x to 4x without anyone ever having faced negative equity.
    But it doesn't work like that does it?

    Your wage-price spiral creeps up to mid single figures, wages go up, prices go up, so wages go up, etc., and then before you know it we are living in Zimbabwe on Thames.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 35,990
    2,967 cases of Indian variant now known - up 28 per cent since Monday.
    https://twitter.com/Smyth_Chris/status/1395020016051961856
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,817
    Leon said:

    DavidL said:

    Leon said:

    The Trumpites are coming out against ET. They're saying it's a Democrat conspiracy


    "Don’t buy the UFOs thing

    They’re trying to make us believe it too much

    Even Obama is pushing it"

    https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1394980205098373121?s=20


    THAT's a head fuck all right

    Clearly if Obama is involved its a con.

    I find it interesting the way that this is being framed. What we are seeing now doesn't seem all that different to the kind of stuff that we have been seeing episodically for the last 50 years or so. The difference is the way it is being framed. Instead of little green men and War of the Worlds warm overs we are being told that it is a "security concern" because quite a lot of this activity is beside military bases. Post 9/11 no one would ever dare just laugh at a "security concern" so we (or at least the US) end up taking this far more seriously than ever before.
    This latest flap is materially different to all the others. The accumulation of fairly persuasive evidence seems to have broken the dam.

    The easiest explanation is to accept this at face value. The US Establishment sees a potential security threat from UAP exhibiting great technological prowess. It might be America spooking itself, it might be advanced Chinese or Russian stuff, it might be Something Else, even aliens, but it is so advanced it needs debate
    My guess is that we will have forgotten all about it again in a year's time. Until the next time of course.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    tlg86 said:

    ping said:

    House Prices up 10.2%

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57171683

    If the tories don’t take this seriously, the country will vote for far more radical solutions.

    It's not the rise that will do for them, it's the crash.
    We need [moderate] inflation.

    A good few years where house prices go up by 1%, general prices by 3-4% and wages by 5% would be ideal.

    Within a decade house price ratios would fall from 6x to 4x without anyone ever having faced negative equity.
    But it doesn't work like that does it?

    Your wage-price spiral creeps up to mid single figures, wages go up, prices go up, so wages go up, etc., and then before you know it we are living in Zimbabwe on Thames.
    We've had moderate inflation and wage growth for most of the time post war.

    The past decade of deflationary pressures is as unusual and as negative as the period of stagflation.

    3% inflation is not mammoth.
  • JBriskin3JBriskin3 Posts: 1,254
    Selebian said:

    JBriskin3 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Phil Thompson's vision of the future really is quite chilling - England as a high-density housing estate where everyone has to live on imported frozen kangaroo burgers.

    England already is a high density housing estate.

    Just some people want nice spacious detached homes surrounded by countryside while the plebs are piled high in tower blocks in the city even if they can afford to buy land in elsewhere.
    Some people think a detached house in middle of nowhere sounds like hell on earth, and would much rather live in a flat within easy walking distance of nice bars and restaurants.

    The world takes all sorts.
    I'm a flat within easy walking distance of nice bars and restaurants man. I'm in my forties and I don't see that changing anytime soon.
    Early forties then? :tongue:
    Err, yeah. (insert apropriate emoji here)
  • pingping Posts: 3,805
    In fairness to @Philip_Thompson he is actually trying to come up with solutions.

    Pretty much all the other tories on here and in the party seem to think it ain’t their problem.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,431
    edited May 2021

    rpjs said:

    Fishing said:

    Fishing said:

    Fishing said:

    MaxPB said:

    DavidL said:

    Cyclefree said:

    It's almost as if clapping is not enough.

    Who could ever have guessed such a thing?

    Should the government cut funding to businesses that have been impacted, like VAT cuts, furlough, grants, loans, rates relief and much more - put VAT on hospitality back up and give that money to the NHS? 🤔
    yes
    So devastate even more the businesses like pubs and restaurants etc that are on their knees in order to give more money to those in secure jobs? 🤔

    I wonder if @Cyclefree agrees with you?
    Pubs and restaurants will start making their usual vast amounts of profits etc as everyone rushes back to them, desperate for their alcoholic meals. Meanwhile NHS workers will continue to eek out their salaries between their vast childcare costs and their full tax and NI contributions Class 1. There will always be Pubs and restaurants, but will there always be nurses and doctors now that we are jailing EU visitors at the border.
    This is just so deeply delusional. Pubs and restaurants do not make "usual vast amounts of profits". Indeed, as we discussed only yesterday significant percentages of them go bust every normal year losing their life savings and all too often their homes put up as collateral. Those who work in the sector have little to no job security and are doing better than most if they even get the minimum wage.

    Meanwhile, those working for the NHS are paid on average well above the national average, receive full pay for very extended periods if they are sick, get a full year's worth of full pay when they have kids and have pensions that are simply unobtainable to most in the private sector. I am not saying they don't deserve it but those who work with that incredible job security and confidence really need to acquire some understanding of how the majority of their fellow citizens paying their taxes to pay their wages live.
    Someone posted on here yesterday - 1 in 6 hospitality businesses fail within their first year, even without a pandemic. It's a hugely risky field and I applaud anyone willing to take it, I wouldn't!
    It's a low wage, low productivity industry which uses labour and capital inefficiently and holds the economy back. Like farming.
    It's not my fault that some pubs and restaurants go bust in the normal course of events. I can't imagine that many being owned by "large chains" go bust. The others who do go bust need to manage their businesses better I suppose. Why does it take so long to make a Flat White? I'm amazed at the likes of PT crying tears over this. What about the fishing, farming and haulage industry that are being murdered by Brexit. Oh wait, it's Brexit, they're supposed to take care of themselves, the market will sort them out!!
    Farming uses 62% of our land to make 0.6% of our GDP, land that is desperately needed for other purposes like housing, and takes £3 billion/year in subsidies into the bargain. The sooner the Australians and whoever free up the land, labour and capital the better. It's long overdue.
    We can't eat houses!!
    That is why I mentioned other countries, who are happy to supply us with food at lower prices.
    so transport all our food from foreign countries, ticking up massive mileage with its implications on transport costs and global warming?
    Food shipping has an absolutely neglible and dwindling impact on the environment.
    How are these ships supposed to get from Australia to the UK? Solar? Wind?
    No, by big f*ck-off engines powered by just about the cheapest and dirtiest fuel oil there is (Bunker "C"). But if you divide the amount of such oil used on the voyage by the huge cargoes those ships carry, the per item environmental impact is tiny compared to just about every other part of the supply chain, not least the impact of trucking the stuff to the supermarket and you bringing it home in your car, if you don't walk to the shops.
    The astoundingly low cost of transport by sea is one of the unknown things that makes the world work the way it does.

    And it has been so for a very long time. Mega vessels and containerisation have just removed another order of magnitude from already low costs.

    Consider - in 1880 it made sense to freeze lamb in New Zealand and ship it to London. It was cheaper, on arrival at the table, than Welsh lamb....
    And Welsh agriculture was going through a depression which made it make sense for men like some of my Gt Gt Grandfathers to leave the land and go down the pit.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,921

    Phil Thompson's vision of the future really is quite chilling - England as a high-density housing estate where everyone has to live on imported frozen kangaroo burgers.

    England already is a high density housing estate.

    Just some people want nice spacious detached homes surrounded by countryside while the plebs are piled high in tower blocks in the city even if they can afford to buy land in elsewhere.
    It is not an unreasonable aspiration to own a nice home.
    Agreed.

    So why do NIMBYs wish to deny that aspiration to others?
    Its when green belt is taken that problems arise. There is any amount of brownfield sites to be developed. The requisite infrastructure promised by developers surgery etc schools etc rarely happens so the existing infrastructure is overwhelmed.
    There aren't any number of brownfield sites. That's the problem.

    Population has increased by a sixth in recent years but housing hasn't and there aren't brownfield sites to cover the gap. Because whatever was on a brownfield site has a tendency to be replaced.

    If more infrastructure is needed then construct that too. On greenfield too.

    And if you don't want fields being developed then what is stopping you from buying the fields then refusing permission to build on them? Since you own them, you decide.
    Why has population increased when the UK birthrate is only 1.68 ie below replacement level? Immigration.

    So if the government reduce immigration via the new points system then the demand for new housing should fall too anyway
  • squareroot2squareroot2 Posts: 6,723

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Yesterday, the former president of the USA reversed his earlier statements, and confirmed that American military has encountered advanced technology it cannot explain...

    Please provide cite.
    From what I saw he said it had observed phenomena it couldn't explain. Not the same thing.
    He's actually quite hesitant and inarticulate - for Obama

    I think my interpretation of his garbled words is fair. But you are free to demur

    "we can't explain how they move, their trajectory, they did not have an easily explainable pattern"

    https://twitter.com/EndUAPSecrecy/status/1394700044423634946?s=20
    Yes, that's the link you posted yesterday, which is what I was referring to.
    You are massively over interpreting.

    I observed something I couldn't account for yesterday, when my computer crashed. It could have been alien technology, but I think there are simpler explanations.
    Thing is though, even the MOST prosaic explanations are insane.

    1. The US is trying to deceive the entire world about its own technology, by pretending it has encountered aliens. And this plot involves several presidents. Er, OK

    Or...

    2. the Chinese have developed the ability to fly at 13,000 mph and they did this in the Noughties. or the 1950s. Really?!

    Or

    3. a weird mass hallucination is affecting hundreds of pilots across the world along with an unprecedented series of identical camera glitches and radar gremlins and infra-red frazzles and these delusional people have somehow convinced the US elite that they are sane and seeing unexplainable technology

    Which one do you go for?
    3.
    Every time.

    Given pilots have reported plastic bags blowing in the wind as drones (when drones were the 'thing'), I wouldn't rely an any so-called observational skills. And I've yet to see any clear photographs or video. They are _always_ fuzzy, just like Nessie.

    I have seen levitating boats, though, which surely must have taken alien technology. Like this one:
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-56286719


    I thought we went through all this in the 70s?



    Are you suggesting Nessie doesn't exist
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,277
    OTOH here's a Trumpite-ish news outlet saying the ETs are real


    "Third factor: based on the same evidence, the assessment that some of these UFOs have performance capabilities beyond the understood technical capacity of any Earth nation. This sounds extraordinary, and it is. But even if not offered formally in writing, it is also the truth recognized by those who have worked intimately on this issue. After all, these most compelling UFOs evince means of non-jet propulsion-based hypersonic travel in the air and in space and of 100 knots-plus speeds underwater. Some UFOs also show apparent anti-gravity capabilities, reflected by their instantaneous acceleration and deceleration in a manner that would otherwise cause self-destruction under the stresses of hundreds of G-forces.

    "The possibility that something extraordinary is occurring is no longer a legitimate excuse for deflection"

    https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/how-will-intelligence-community-ufo-report-deal-with-the-true-unknowns
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,921
    edited May 2021
    ping said:

    In fairness to @Philip_Thompson he is actually trying to come up with solutions.

    Pretty much all the other tories on here and in the party seem to think it a ain’t their problem.

    We have a Tory majority of 80 in the Commons and Corbyn was trounced and has been replaced by Starmer.

    In the Home counties though the Tories lost control of councils from Oxfordshire to Tunbridge Wells because of building too much in the Greenbelt in the local elections.

    I am more concerned by the latter at the moment, the biggest shortage of home ownership and the most unaffordable housing is in London which is already Labour anyway and the Tories still won a landslide majority in 2019 even without winning London
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    Scott_xP said:

    2,967 cases of Indian variant now known - up 28 per cent since Monday.
    https://twitter.com/Smyth_Chris/status/1395020016051961856

    Considering surge testing is going on it's hardly a shock or a problem that more cases are being identified.

    Meanwhile overall cases are down week on week.
  • eekeek Posts: 28,370

    eek said:

    Phil Thompson's vision of the future really is quite chilling - England as a high-density housing estate where everyone has to live on imported frozen kangaroo burgers.

    England already is a high density housing estate.

    Just some people want nice spacious detached homes surrounded by countryside while the plebs are piled high in tower blocks in the city even if they can afford to buy land in elsewhere.
    It is not an unreasonable aspiration to own a nice home.
    Agreed.

    So why do NIMBYs wish to deny that aspiration to others?
    Its when green belt is taken that problems arise. There is any amount of brownfield sites to be developed. The requisite infrastructure promised by developers surgery etc schools etc rarely happens so the existing infrastructure is overwhelmed.
    That's easily fixed - add a requirement to build the appropriate infrastructure when the area is built on as part of the planning person.
    Or just build the infrastructure in response, funded in part by the taxes paid by the new homes and their future residents. 🤷‍♂️
    Nope the builders will be asked to do it as part of any agreement. The entire story about Richard Desmonds / Robert Jenrick's planning row was over levy / S106 money see https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jun/24/robert-jenrick-planning-row-the-key-questions-answered
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    edited May 2021
    HYUFD said:

    ping said:

    In fairness to @Philip_Thompson he is actually trying to come up with solutions.

    Pretty much all the other tories on here and in the party seem to think it a ain’t their problem.

    We have a Tory majority of 80 in the Commons and Corbyn was trounced and has been replaced by Starmer.

    In the Home counties though the Tories lost control of councils from Oxfordshire to Tunbridge Wells because of building too much in the Greenbelt in the local elections.

    I am more concerned by the latter at the moment, the biggest shortage of home ownership is in London which is already Labour anyway and the Tories still won a landslide majority in 2019 even without winning London
    And I'm more concerned that people are unable to afford a home, because the market is being interfered with to halt construction. 🏘️
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,277
    DavidL said:

    Leon said:

    DavidL said:

    Leon said:

    The Trumpites are coming out against ET. They're saying it's a Democrat conspiracy


    "Don’t buy the UFOs thing

    They’re trying to make us believe it too much

    Even Obama is pushing it"

    https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1394980205098373121?s=20


    THAT's a head fuck all right

    Clearly if Obama is involved its a con.

    I find it interesting the way that this is being framed. What we are seeing now doesn't seem all that different to the kind of stuff that we have been seeing episodically for the last 50 years or so. The difference is the way it is being framed. Instead of little green men and War of the Worlds warm overs we are being told that it is a "security concern" because quite a lot of this activity is beside military bases. Post 9/11 no one would ever dare just laugh at a "security concern" so we (or at least the US) end up taking this far more seriously than ever before.
    This latest flap is materially different to all the others. The accumulation of fairly persuasive evidence seems to have broken the dam.

    The easiest explanation is to accept this at face value. The US Establishment sees a potential security threat from UAP exhibiting great technological prowess. It might be America spooking itself, it might be advanced Chinese or Russian stuff, it might be Something Else, even aliens, but it is so advanced it needs debate
    My guess is that we will have forgotten all about it again in a year's time. Until the next time of course.
    Yes very possible. It will remain beyond our understanding, so we won't really bother trying to understand it. We will just accept there is a huge mystery, and go to lunch

    Unless, of course, the evidence continues to pile up, or They start speaking to us
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 23,485

    Scott_xP said:

    2,967 cases of Indian variant now known - up 28 per cent since Monday.
    https://twitter.com/Smyth_Chris/status/1395020016051961856

    Considering surge testing is going on it's hardly a shock or a problem that more cases are being identified.

    Meanwhile overall cases are down week on week.
    Was just about to write the same! Smyth's tweet and thread is opaque – what he is actually saying is that 28% more cases have been identified, not that cases are growing at that rate. Yet the way it's being interpreted on Twitter (yes, I know...) is that cases have grown 28% since Monday.

    Whether that was Smyth's intention, dunno, but he hasn't clarified it.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 81,991
    edited May 2021

    Scott_xP said:

    2,967 cases of Indian variant now known - up 28 per cent since Monday.
    https://twitter.com/Smyth_Chris/status/1395020016051961856

    Considering surge testing is going on it's hardly a shock or a problem that more cases are being identified.

    Meanwhile overall cases are down week on week.
    Also remember, it takes about a week to sequence to find out which strain and report back, so it isn't from Monday, these are cases which were part of last weeks overall numbers.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,277
    That Washington Examiner article is astounding


    The writer is a serious dude. Knows his military onions. Tom Rogan:

    "Tom Rogan is a foreign policy/national security writer for the Washington Examiner. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in war studies from King's College London, a Master of Science in Middle East politics from SOAS, and a Graduate Diploma in Law from the University of Law, London. Among others, he has previously written for The Washington Post, The Independent, The Atlantic, National Review, the Telegraph, and the Guardian. Tom is a U.S. citizen with a British accent."

    He happily writes THIS:

    "Consider what I believe should be the second factor in the report. Namely, that the most compelling UFOs, those UFOs which lack conventional alternative explanation after exhaustive investigation, give credible indication of being highly advanced, intelligently controlled vehicles. The government's confidence that these most compelling UFOs are vehicles versus amorphous "things" takes root in data returns from multiple sensor platforms. These platforms include satellite, sonar, radar, full-spectrum electromagnetic, and trained military observer witness reports (such as Air Force and Navy ground and flight crews).

    "Third factor: based on the same evidence, the assessment that some of these UFOs have performance capabilities beyond the understood technical capacity of any Earth nation. This sounds extraordinary, and it is."

    An awful lot of highly intelligent people in America are risking their whole reputations. Truly odd
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,817
    edited May 2021
    Leon said:

    DavidL said:

    Leon said:

    DavidL said:

    Leon said:

    The Trumpites are coming out against ET. They're saying it's a Democrat conspiracy


    "Don’t buy the UFOs thing

    They’re trying to make us believe it too much

    Even Obama is pushing it"

    https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1394980205098373121?s=20


    THAT's a head fuck all right

    Clearly if Obama is involved its a con.

    I find it interesting the way that this is being framed. What we are seeing now doesn't seem all that different to the kind of stuff that we have been seeing episodically for the last 50 years or so. The difference is the way it is being framed. Instead of little green men and War of the Worlds warm overs we are being told that it is a "security concern" because quite a lot of this activity is beside military bases. Post 9/11 no one would ever dare just laugh at a "security concern" so we (or at least the US) end up taking this far more seriously than ever before.
    This latest flap is materially different to all the others. The accumulation of fairly persuasive evidence seems to have broken the dam.

    The easiest explanation is to accept this at face value. The US Establishment sees a potential security threat from UAP exhibiting great technological prowess. It might be America spooking itself, it might be advanced Chinese or Russian stuff, it might be Something Else, even aliens, but it is so advanced it needs debate
    My guess is that we will have forgotten all about it again in a year's time. Until the next time of course.
    Yes very possible. It will remain beyond our understanding, so we won't really bother trying to understand it. We will just accept there is a huge mystery, and go to lunch

    Unless, of course, the evidence continues to pile up, or They start speaking to us
    Well, the latter would certainly remove a large part of the uncertainty. Indeed it rather raises a question as to why they haven't done this already instead of mucking about on their skateboards.
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 8,377
    edited May 2021
    rcs1000 said:

    Phil Thompson's vision of the future really is quite chilling - England as a high-density housing estate where everyone has to live on imported frozen kangaroo burgers.

    England already is a high density housing estate.

    Just some people want nice spacious detached homes surrounded by countryside while the plebs are piled high in tower blocks in the city even if they can afford to buy land in elsewhere.
    Some people think a detached house in middle of nowhere sounds like hell on earth, and would much rather live in a flat within easy walking distance of nice bars and restaurants.

    The world takes all sorts.
    I'm one of those - though in a terraced house, rather than a flat.

    I am within 15 minutes' walk of at least 50 bars, 50 restaurants and hundreds of shops of every description. The sheer joy of never having to worry about drinking and driving is heaven on earth to me.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,817

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Yesterday, the former president of the USA reversed his earlier statements, and confirmed that American military has encountered advanced technology it cannot explain...

    Please provide cite.
    From what I saw he said it had observed phenomena it couldn't explain. Not the same thing.
    He's actually quite hesitant and inarticulate - for Obama

    I think my interpretation of his garbled words is fair. But you are free to demur

    "we can't explain how they move, their trajectory, they did not have an easily explainable pattern"

    https://twitter.com/EndUAPSecrecy/status/1394700044423634946?s=20
    Yes, that's the link you posted yesterday, which is what I was referring to.
    You are massively over interpreting.

    I observed something I couldn't account for yesterday, when my computer crashed. It could have been alien technology, but I think there are simpler explanations.
    Thing is though, even the MOST prosaic explanations are insane.

    1. The US is trying to deceive the entire world about its own technology, by pretending it has encountered aliens. And this plot involves several presidents. Er, OK

    Or...

    2. the Chinese have developed the ability to fly at 13,000 mph and they did this in the Noughties. or the 1950s. Really?!

    Or

    3. a weird mass hallucination is affecting hundreds of pilots across the world along with an unprecedented series of identical camera glitches and radar gremlins and infra-red frazzles and these delusional people have somehow convinced the US elite that they are sane and seeing unexplainable technology

    Which one do you go for?
    3.
    Every time.

    Given pilots have reported plastic bags blowing in the wind as drones (when drones were the 'thing'), I wouldn't rely an any so-called observational skills. And I've yet to see any clear photographs or video. They are _always_ fuzzy, just like Nessie.

    I have seen levitating boats, though, which surely must have taken alien technology. Like this one:
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-56286719


    I thought we went through all this in the 70s?



    Are you suggesting Nessie doesn't exist
    For shame. As if the Scottish economy was not in enough trouble.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    RobD said:

    Alistair said:

    Absolute lols, based on their own breakdown Tether bought 1% of all US Commercial Paper available in the last month. They allegedly own 3% of all Commercial Paper outstanding.

    What an absolute pile of scam.

    Can you elaborate on why that makes it a scam? I have no clue.
    If a single entity bought up 1% of the entire commercial paper market in a month people would know about it (and they claim they were mostly buying a-2 or above). That would be huge.

    They quite obviously haven't. They do not control 3% of the USA's short term corporate debt.

    It is transparent nonsense.

    I mean, they have a documented history of lying, rgisbos just one more blatant lie in a cavalcade of lies for them.

    Incidentally Bitcoin's price is absolutely tumbling at the moment and totally coincidentally exchanges are going off line including big players like CoinDesk.
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,747

    .

    Nigelb said:

    I observed something I couldn't account for yesterday, when my computer crashed. It could have been alien technology, but I think there are simpler explanations.

    Idiotic comparison. You may not know why it crashed. but a suitably skilled person could trace through the memory dump generated when your computer crashed and figure out why it happened.

    Nobody appears to know what the heck is going on with these UAPs, and their behaviour appears to suggest our understanding of physics is much more limited than we thought.
    That the UAPs aren't doing what people think they are, and it's faked video, an optical illusion or similar, is far more plausible than that the laws of physics aren't being obeyed.
    Not that there’s any point trying to persuade you but the ultra performance is explainable within the bounds of our physics even if requires magic from an engineering perspective.

    It would require a gravity well to be formed around the craft, bending spacetime. While moving at speeds closer to light requires ever more inordinate and unrealistic amounts of energy the closer you get to c, there’s actually nothing in our understanding of physics that says that spacetime cannot expand faster than light. In fact we think in many places it is doing so.

    This would explain several features, notably the transmedium performance, the lack of obvious propulsion means, the acceleration capabilities without causing sonic booms or combustion of atmospheric N2. And the strange visual blurring reported by military eye witnesses, that might also explain why the photos are never crystal clear. It would also presumably mean the time dilation effects from very fast speeds would not occur.

    This is without delving into our physics being utterly incomplete. The lack of compatibility between the Standard Model of QM and Relativity, even though both have excellent empirical support. Matter making up only 5% of the gravitational effects we can measure, with 27% dark matter and dark energy the rest. What is dark matter and where is it? We dunno. What is dark energy? We know less about that than dark matter.

    No doubt Philip Thompson can explain it all and hence tell us why the US defense and intelligence establishment is totally wrong with what now appears to be its leading hypothesis for these phenomena.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,368

    tlg86 said:

    ping said:

    House Prices up 10.2%

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57171683

    If the tories don’t take this seriously, the country will vote for far more radical solutions.

    It's not the rise that will do for them, it's the crash.
    We need [moderate] inflation.

    A good few years where house prices go up by 1%, general prices by 3-4% and wages by 5% would be ideal.

    Within a decade house price ratios would fall from 6x to 4x without anyone ever having faced negative equity.
    But it doesn't work like that does it?

    Your wage-price spiral creeps up to mid single figures, wages go up, prices go up, so wages go up, etc., and then before you know it we are living in Zimbabwe on Thames.
    We've had moderate inflation and wage growth for most of the time post war.

    The past decade of deflationary pressures is as unusual and as negative as the period of stagflation.

    3% inflation is not mammoth.
    Post war, we have also had periods of massive inflation (circa 15%) and with it interest rate rises to plus 15%. Now, if my memory serves me correctly that was BAD!

    I am not sure inflationary economics once one has let the cat out of the bag by way of super-massive quantitative easing will be that easy to control.

    All the ingredients seem to be in place for a bust following a post-Covid boom.

    One issue with my argument could be wages don't spiral because well paid quality jobs are being replaced by low value gig-economy jobs. So on the basis of supply and demand, more Ubers and barbershops keep service sector price inflation low.
  • EndillionEndillion Posts: 4,976
    God, I wish we had a "laugh" react button.
  • Daveyboy1961Daveyboy1961 Posts: 3,883
    rpjs said:

    Fishing said:

    Fishing said:

    Fishing said:

    MaxPB said:

    DavidL said:

    Cyclefree said:

    It's almost as if clapping is not enough.

    Who could ever have guessed such a thing?

    Should the government cut funding to businesses that have been impacted, like VAT cuts, furlough, grants, loans, rates relief and much more - put VAT on hospitality back up and give that money to the NHS? 🤔
    yes
    So devastate even more the businesses like pubs and restaurants etc that are on their knees in order to give more money to those in secure jobs? 🤔

    I wonder if @Cyclefree agrees with you?
    Pubs and restaurants will start making their usual vast amounts of profits etc as everyone rushes back to them, desperate for their alcoholic meals. Meanwhile NHS workers will continue to eek out their salaries between their vast childcare costs and their full tax and NI contributions Class 1. There will always be Pubs and restaurants, but will there always be nurses and doctors now that we are jailing EU visitors at the border.
    This is just so deeply delusional. Pubs and restaurants do not make "usual vast amounts of profits". Indeed, as we discussed only yesterday significant percentages of them go bust every normal year losing their life savings and all too often their homes put up as collateral. Those who work in the sector have little to no job security and are doing better than most if they even get the minimum wage.

    Meanwhile, those working for the NHS are paid on average well above the national average, receive full pay for very extended periods if they are sick, get a full year's worth of full pay when they have kids and have pensions that are simply unobtainable to most in the private sector. I am not saying they don't deserve it but those who work with that incredible job security and confidence really need to acquire some understanding of how the majority of their fellow citizens paying their taxes to pay their wages live.
    Someone posted on here yesterday - 1 in 6 hospitality businesses fail within their first year, even without a pandemic. It's a hugely risky field and I applaud anyone willing to take it, I wouldn't!
    It's a low wage, low productivity industry which uses labour and capital inefficiently and holds the economy back. Like farming.
    It's not my fault that some pubs and restaurants go bust in the normal course of events. I can't imagine that many being owned by "large chains" go bust. The others who do go bust need to manage their businesses better I suppose. Why does it take so long to make a Flat White? I'm amazed at the likes of PT crying tears over this. What about the fishing, farming and haulage industry that are being murdered by Brexit. Oh wait, it's Brexit, they're supposed to take care of themselves, the market will sort them out!!
    Farming uses 62% of our land to make 0.6% of our GDP, land that is desperately needed for other purposes like housing, and takes £3 billion/year in subsidies into the bargain. The sooner the Australians and whoever free up the land, labour and capital the better. It's long overdue.
    We can't eat houses!!
    That is why I mentioned other countries, who are happy to supply us with food at lower prices.
    so transport all our food from foreign countries, ticking up massive mileage with its implications on transport costs and global warming?
    Food shipping has an absolutely neglible and dwindling impact on the environment.
    How are these ships supposed to get from Australia to the UK? Solar? Wind?
    No, by big f*ck-off engines powered by just about the cheapest and dirtiest fuel oil there is (Bunker "C"). But if you divide the amount of such oil used on the voyage by the huge cargoes those ships carry, the per item environmental impact is tiny compared to just about every other part of the supply chain, not least the impact of trucking the stuff to the supermarket and you bringing it home in your car, if you don't walk to the shops.
    oic, I didn't realise the figures were that overwhelming. I would still prefer Food to be grown in our own country though. Having these in foreign hands would worry me, like Russia with gas pipelines etc. Even I prefered us to grow more food than we imported from the EU. For environmental reasons.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,277
    moonshine said:

    .

    Nigelb said:

    I observed something I couldn't account for yesterday, when my computer crashed. It could have been alien technology, but I think there are simpler explanations.

    Idiotic comparison. You may not know why it crashed. but a suitably skilled person could trace through the memory dump generated when your computer crashed and figure out why it happened.

    Nobody appears to know what the heck is going on with these UAPs, and their behaviour appears to suggest our understanding of physics is much more limited than we thought.
    That the UAPs aren't doing what people think they are, and it's faked video, an optical illusion or similar, is far more plausible than that the laws of physics aren't being obeyed.
    Not that there’s any point trying to persuade you but the ultra performance is explainable within the bounds of our physics even if requires magic from an engineering perspective.

    It would require a gravity well to be formed around the craft, bending spacetime. While moving at speeds closer to light requires ever more inordinate and unrealistic amounts of energy the closer you get to c, there’s actually nothing in our understanding of physics that says that spacetime cannot expand faster than light. In fact we think in many places it is doing so.

    This would explain several features, notably the transmedium performance, the lack of obvious propulsion means, the acceleration capabilities without causing sonic booms or combustion of atmospheric N2. And the strange visual blurring reported by military eye witnesses, that might also explain why the photos are never crystal clear. It would also presumably mean the time dilation effects from very fast speeds would not occur.

    This is without delving into our physics being utterly incomplete. The lack of compatibility between the Standard Model of QM and Relativity, even though both have excellent empirical support. Matter making up only 5% of the gravitational effects we can measure, with 27% dark matter and dark energy the rest. What is dark matter and where is it? We dunno. What is dark energy? We know less about that than dark matter.

    No doubt Philip Thompson can explain it all and hence tell us why the US defense and intelligence establishment is totally wrong with what now appears to be its leading hypothesis for these phenomena.
    I have a feeling a ninety foot tall genderfluid sex alien could approach Philip from behind, yank down his Cross of St George Boxer shorts, and rape him with an intergalactic love-bassoon, and he'd say it was "an optical illusion"
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,255
    Alistair said:

    RobD said:

    Alistair said:

    Absolute lols, based on their own breakdown Tether bought 1% of all US Commercial Paper available in the last month. They allegedly own 3% of all Commercial Paper outstanding.

    What an absolute pile of scam.

    Can you elaborate on why that makes it a scam? I have no clue.
    If a single entity bought up 1% of the entire commercial paper market in a month people would know about it (and they claim they were mostly buying a-2 or above). That would be huge.

    They quite obviously haven't. They do not control 3% of the USA's short term corporate debt.

    It is transparent nonsense.

    I mean, they have a documented history of lying, rgisbos just one more blatant lie in a cavalcade of lies for them.

    Incidentally Bitcoin's price is absolutely tumbling at the moment and totally coincidentally exchanges are going off line including big players like CoinDesk.
    Anyone want to be the big crypto exchanges have been buying into the hype themselves and setting up to maximise their return on ever rising prices? And so, now that prices are falling, they are in the shit.
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,747

    moonshine said:

    IanB2 said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    Nigelb said:

    moonshine said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Yesterday, the former president of the USA reversed his earlier statements, and confirmed that American military has encountered advanced technology it cannot explain...

    Please provide cite.
    From what I saw he said it had observed phenomena it couldn't explain. Not the same thing.
    He's actually quite hesitant and inarticulate - for Obama

    I think my interpretation of his garbled words is fair. But you are free to demur

    "we can't explain how they move, their trajectory, they did not have an easily explainable pattern"

    https://twitter.com/EndUAPSecrecy/status/1394700044423634946?s=20
    Yes, that's the link you posted yesterday, which is what I was referring to.
    You are massively over interpreting.

    I observed something I couldn't account for yesterday, when my computer crashed. It could have been alien technology, but I think there are simpler explanations.
    The brief comments from Obama mean nothing in isolation. But they need to be seen in context with what’s been said by two ex CIA Directors, one ex NID, one ex Senate Majority Leader and an Intelligence Committee Chair. As well as the ramping in leaks of video followed by swift DoD confirmation of veracity, the various military figure testimonies, the Congressional process and the sudden change in media narrative from across the political spectrum.

    It is all very odd and you need to contort logic to come up with a prosaic or uninteresting explanation.
    And more so to conclude that it's aliens.
    From the various statements, we are being conclusively told we are not looking at data collection glitches (at least not in every case). The behaviour exhibits extraordinary capability. Transmedium high performance. Breaking the sound barrier without a sonic boom. Speeds and Gs beyond the capability of material science. No visual or infrared inductor of propulsion.

    So it’s American, another country or something else.

    If it’s American, then it’s a weird approach to take for a top secret programme. Buzzing your own carrier groups and then leaking the videos of it to the media and then starting a highly public congressional investigation into what it is.

    If it’s another country, then it’s the most severe failure of intelligence of all time (human, satellite, digital etc...). To the point of implausibility.

    Which leaves “something else”. Aliens. Sub oceanic intelligence. Inter dimensional or temporal visitors. Who knows.

    There is also the possibility that we are being lied to by an extraordinary coalition of intelligence, political and military figures and the whole thing is mundane bad data. Why?
    One entertaining aspect of this Flap is the way it is coaxing out some brilliant first hand accounts of UAPs. I am sure 99% of them are invented or delusional, but what if 1% are true? What are they seeing? What have people been seeing for decades?

    I"n late summer of 1982 I saw a #UFO or #UAP on I-90, around 2-3AM while driving from Seattle to Minneapolis. It looked like a giant metal eye, maybe 500-feet across, and hovered around 100-200 feet above the ground tracking 1000 feet in front of us as we drove (65mph)."


    "I had a passenger, a guy I met on a ride share board, we were driving his van. After a couple pregnant moments I asked him: "Uh, did you see that?". He said "Yeah...." And I about threw up. We were both too afraid to say anything while it was happening, to know it was real. #UFO"

    "I don't know what it was, but it looked a lot like what the Navy and Air Force are showing. If it was real, this tech/phenomena has been around for a very long time. #UFO #UAP"

    "I'm not a "conspiracy" guy, I've always thought maybe it was a weird reflection on the windshield or something else, anything else. So I've just avoided that little story. I don't tell many people. But now that the gov is admitting and showing videos, I feel more comfortable."

    https://twitter.com/okanogen2010/status/1395000495241003011?s=20
    Why are they almost always Americans, and very often Americans from parts of America where even most Americans aren’t interested to go?
    Do you really expect Xi Jinping to release videos from his airforce and allow public statements by his airmen and intelligence investigators?

    The reports by the way are not just American. People say that because they like to look down on Americans as being fools. The reports come from all over the world.
    Because there's fools all over the world.

    Why don't commercial pilots routinely come across and provide evidence for all this bullshit?
    They have done so. But for interesting psychological reasons you prefer to ignore this and say that they haven’t.
  • pingping Posts: 3,805
    edited May 2021
    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    .

    Nigelb said:

    I observed something I couldn't account for yesterday, when my computer crashed. It could have been alien technology, but I think there are simpler explanations.

    Idiotic comparison. You may not know why it crashed. but a suitably skilled person could trace through the memory dump generated when your computer crashed and figure out why it happened.

    Nobody appears to know what the heck is going on with these UAPs, and their behaviour appears to suggest our understanding of physics is much more limited than we thought.
    That the UAPs aren't doing what people think they are, and it's faked video, an optical illusion or similar, is far more plausible than that the laws of physics aren't being obeyed.
    Not that there’s any point trying to persuade you but the ultra performance is explainable within the bounds of our physics even if requires magic from an engineering perspective.

    It would require a gravity well to be formed around the craft, bending spacetime. While moving at speeds closer to light requires ever more inordinate and unrealistic amounts of energy the closer you get to c, there’s actually nothing in our understanding of physics that says that spacetime cannot expand faster than light. In fact we think in many places it is doing so.

    This would explain several features, notably the transmedium performance, the lack of obvious propulsion means, the acceleration capabilities without causing sonic booms or combustion of atmospheric N2. And the strange visual blurring reported by military eye witnesses, that might also explain why the photos are never crystal clear. It would also presumably mean the time dilation effects from very fast speeds would not occur.

    This is without delving into our physics being utterly incomplete. The lack of compatibility between the Standard Model of QM and Relativity, even though both have excellent empirical support. Matter making up only 5% of the gravitational effects we can measure, with 27% dark matter and dark energy the rest. What is dark matter and where is it? We dunno. What is dark energy? We know less about that than dark matter.

    No doubt Philip Thompson can explain it all and hence tell us why the US defense and intelligence establishment is totally wrong with what now appears to be its leading hypothesis for these phenomena.
    I have a feeling a ninety foot tall genderfluid sex alien could approach Philip from behind, yank down his Cross of St George Boxer shorts, and rape him with an intergalactic love-bassoon, and he'd say it was "an optical illusion"
    With respect, that’s a fucking horrible post.

    Be decent, or fuck off.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 81,991
    Starmer wants government to drop the traffic light system and finally close the borders...i.e. if he had his way no summer hols....how unpopular does he want to become?
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,277
    ping said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    .

    Nigelb said:

    I observed something I couldn't account for yesterday, when my computer crashed. It could have been alien technology, but I think there are simpler explanations.

    Idiotic comparison. You may not know why it crashed. but a suitably skilled person could trace through the memory dump generated when your computer crashed and figure out why it happened.

    Nobody appears to know what the heck is going on with these UAPs, and their behaviour appears to suggest our understanding of physics is much more limited than we thought.
    That the UAPs aren't doing what people think they are, and it's faked video, an optical illusion or similar, is far more plausible than that the laws of physics aren't being obeyed.
    Not that there’s any point trying to persuade you but the ultra performance is explainable within the bounds of our physics even if requires magic from an engineering perspective.

    It would require a gravity well to be formed around the craft, bending spacetime. While moving at speeds closer to light requires ever more inordinate and unrealistic amounts of energy the closer you get to c, there’s actually nothing in our understanding of physics that says that spacetime cannot expand faster than light. In fact we think in many places it is doing so.

    This would explain several features, notably the transmedium performance, the lack of obvious propulsion means, the acceleration capabilities without causing sonic booms or combustion of atmospheric N2. And the strange visual blurring reported by military eye witnesses, that might also explain why the photos are never crystal clear. It would also presumably mean the time dilation effects from very fast speeds would not occur.

    This is without delving into our physics being utterly incomplete. The lack of compatibility between the Standard Model of QM and Relativity, even though both have excellent empirical support. Matter making up only 5% of the gravitational effects we can measure, with 27% dark matter and dark energy the rest. What is dark matter and where is it? We dunno. What is dark energy? We know less about that than dark matter.

    No doubt Philip Thompson can explain it all and hence tell us why the US defense and intelligence establishment is totally wrong with what now appears to be its leading hypothesis for these phenomena.
    I have a feeling a ninety foot tall genderfluid sex alien could approach Philip from behind, yank down his Cross of St George Boxer shorts, and rape him with an intergalactic love-bassoon, and he'd say it was "an optical illusion"
    With respect, that’s a fucking horrible post.

    Be decent, or fuck off.
    Oh give over. Philip can look after himself. Indeed, I admire his resilience
  • eekeek Posts: 28,370

    tlg86 said:

    ping said:

    House Prices up 10.2%

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57171683

    If the tories don’t take this seriously, the country will vote for far more radical solutions.

    It's not the rise that will do for them, it's the crash.
    We need [moderate] inflation.

    A good few years where house prices go up by 1%, general prices by 3-4% and wages by 5% would be ideal.

    Within a decade house price ratios would fall from 6x to 4x without anyone ever having faced negative equity.
    But it doesn't work like that does it?

    Your wage-price spiral creeps up to mid single figures, wages go up, prices go up, so wages go up, etc., and then before you know it we are living in Zimbabwe on Thames.
    We've had moderate inflation and wage growth for most of the time post war.

    The past decade of deflationary pressures is as unusual and as negative as the period of stagflation.

    3% inflation is not mammoth.
    Post war, we have also had periods of massive inflation (circa 15%) and with it interest rate rises to plus 15%. Now, if my memory serves me correctly that was BAD!

    I am not sure inflationary economics once one has let the cat out of the bag by way of super-massive quantitative easing will be that easy to control.

    All the ingredients seem to be in place for a bust following a post-Covid boom.

    One issue with my argument could be wages don't spiral because well paid quality jobs are being replaced by low value gig-economy jobs. So on the basis of supply and demand, more Ubers and barbershops keep service sector price inflation low.
    Not quite - well paid quality jobs are getting more and more automated away, an accountant 25 years ago would be checking a shoebox of receipts, now they all attached to the appropriate payment 5 seconds after the money goes out.
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,747
    Leon said:

    ping said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    .

    Nigelb said:

    I observed something I couldn't account for yesterday, when my computer crashed. It could have been alien technology, but I think there are simpler explanations.

    Idiotic comparison. You may not know why it crashed. but a suitably skilled person could trace through the memory dump generated when your computer crashed and figure out why it happened.

    Nobody appears to know what the heck is going on with these UAPs, and their behaviour appears to suggest our understanding of physics is much more limited than we thought.
    That the UAPs aren't doing what people think they are, and it's faked video, an optical illusion or similar, is far more plausible than that the laws of physics aren't being obeyed.
    Not that there’s any point trying to persuade you but the ultra performance is explainable within the bounds of our physics even if requires magic from an engineering perspective.

    It would require a gravity well to be formed around the craft, bending spacetime. While moving at speeds closer to light requires ever more inordinate and unrealistic amounts of energy the closer you get to c, there’s actually nothing in our understanding of physics that says that spacetime cannot expand faster than light. In fact we think in many places it is doing so.

    This would explain several features, notably the transmedium performance, the lack of obvious propulsion means, the acceleration capabilities without causing sonic booms or combustion of atmospheric N2. And the strange visual blurring reported by military eye witnesses, that might also explain why the photos are never crystal clear. It would also presumably mean the time dilation effects from very fast speeds would not occur.

    This is without delving into our physics being utterly incomplete. The lack of compatibility between the Standard Model of QM and Relativity, even though both have excellent empirical support. Matter making up only 5% of the gravitational effects we can measure, with 27% dark matter and dark energy the rest. What is dark matter and where is it? We dunno. What is dark energy? We know less about that than dark matter.

    No doubt Philip Thompson can explain it all and hence tell us why the US defense and intelligence establishment is totally wrong with what now appears to be its leading hypothesis for these phenomena.
    I have a feeling a ninety foot tall genderfluid sex alien could approach Philip from behind, yank down his Cross of St George Boxer shorts, and rape him with an intergalactic love-bassoon, and he'd say it was "an optical illusion"
    With respect, that’s a fucking horrible post.

    Be decent, or fuck off.
    Oh give over. Philip can look after himself. Indeed, I admire his resilience
    Leon, your post has led to the heavens opening here.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 81,991
    Moves afoot to get rid of Graham Brady....

    https://twitter.com/tomhfh/status/1395023721400832003?s=19
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 12,496
    Leon said:

    That Washington Examiner article is astounding


    The writer is a serious dude. Knows his military onions. Tom Rogan:

    "Tom Rogan is a foreign policy/national security writer for the Washington Examiner. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in war studies from King's College London, a Master of Science in Middle East politics from SOAS, and a Graduate Diploma in Law from the University of Law, London. Among others, he has previously written for The Washington Post, The Independent, The Atlantic, National Review, the Telegraph, and the Guardian. Tom is a U.S. citizen with a British accent."

    He happily writes THIS:

    "Consider what I believe should be the second factor in the report. Namely, that the most compelling UFOs, those UFOs which lack conventional alternative explanation after exhaustive investigation, give credible indication of being highly advanced, intelligently controlled vehicles. The government's confidence that these most compelling UFOs are vehicles versus amorphous "things" takes root in data returns from multiple sensor platforms. These platforms include satellite, sonar, radar, full-spectrum electromagnetic, and trained military observer witness reports (such as Air Force and Navy ground and flight crews).

    "Third factor: based on the same evidence, the assessment that some of these UFOs have performance capabilities beyond the understood technical capacity of any Earth nation. This sounds extraordinary, and it is."

    An awful lot of highly intelligent people in America are risking their whole reputations. Truly odd

    In this case nonsense. Rogan is a policy wonk, and a journalist. he does not have a physics/SETI/engineering/video analyst reputation to put on the line. If journalists put their reputation on the line every time they said something silly or contradicted themselves there would be none left.

  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670

    Alistair said:

    RobD said:

    Alistair said:

    Absolute lols, based on their own breakdown Tether bought 1% of all US Commercial Paper available in the last month. They allegedly own 3% of all Commercial Paper outstanding.

    What an absolute pile of scam.

    Can you elaborate on why that makes it a scam? I have no clue.
    If a single entity bought up 1% of the entire commercial paper market in a month people would know about it (and they claim they were mostly buying a-2 or above). That would be huge.

    They quite obviously haven't. They do not control 3% of the USA's short term corporate debt.

    It is transparent nonsense.

    I mean, they have a documented history of lying, rgisbos just one more blatant lie in a cavalcade of lies for them.

    Incidentally Bitcoin's price is absolutely tumbling at the moment and totally coincidentally exchanges are going off line including big players like CoinDesk.
    Anyone want to be the big crypto exchanges have been buying into the hype themselves and setting up to maximise their return on ever rising prices? And so, now that prices are falling, they are in the shit.
    The scam works like this

    Tether ltd creates Tethers.
    Tether gives them to exchanges and gets an IOU (so it is 'fully backed')
    The exchanges buy Bitcoin with the Tether
    Buy pressure makes graph go up.
    Some amount of actual money is extracted from the system by selling Bitcoin for real money.

    Keep that going until the flow of real money from suckers runs out.

    A major Tether related figure was recently jailed for a cool half billion in money laundering in China.
  • pingping Posts: 3,805
    Leon said:

    ping said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    .

    Nigelb said:

    I observed something I couldn't account for yesterday, when my computer crashed. It could have been alien technology, but I think there are simpler explanations.

    Idiotic comparison. You may not know why it crashed. but a suitably skilled person could trace through the memory dump generated when your computer crashed and figure out why it happened.

    Nobody appears to know what the heck is going on with these UAPs, and their behaviour appears to suggest our understanding of physics is much more limited than we thought.
    That the UAPs aren't doing what people think they are, and it's faked video, an optical illusion or similar, is far more plausible than that the laws of physics aren't being obeyed.
    Not that there’s any point trying to persuade you but the ultra performance is explainable within the bounds of our physics even if requires magic from an engineering perspective.

    It would require a gravity well to be formed around the craft, bending spacetime. While moving at speeds closer to light requires ever more inordinate and unrealistic amounts of energy the closer you get to c, there’s actually nothing in our understanding of physics that says that spacetime cannot expand faster than light. In fact we think in many places it is doing so.

    This would explain several features, notably the transmedium performance, the lack of obvious propulsion means, the acceleration capabilities without causing sonic booms or combustion of atmospheric N2. And the strange visual blurring reported by military eye witnesses, that might also explain why the photos are never crystal clear. It would also presumably mean the time dilation effects from very fast speeds would not occur.

    This is without delving into our physics being utterly incomplete. The lack of compatibility between the Standard Model of QM and Relativity, even though both have excellent empirical support. Matter making up only 5% of the gravitational effects we can measure, with 27% dark matter and dark energy the rest. What is dark matter and where is it? We dunno. What is dark energy? We know less about that than dark matter.

    No doubt Philip Thompson can explain it all and hence tell us why the US defense and intelligence establishment is totally wrong with what now appears to be its leading hypothesis for these phenomena.
    I have a feeling a ninety foot tall genderfluid sex alien could approach Philip from behind, yank down his Cross of St George Boxer shorts, and rape him with an intergalactic love-bassoon, and he'd say it was "an optical illusion"
    With respect, that’s a fucking horrible post.

    Be decent, or fuck off.
    Oh give over. Philip can look after himself. Indeed, I admire his resilience
    You’re making RAPE jokes.

    Do you realise how that comes across?
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,368

    Starmer wants government to drop the traffic light system and finally close the borders...i.e. if he had his way no summer hols....how unpopular does he want to become?

    The traffic light system will work fine, so long as amber is jettisoned.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    Or to put it another way a number of crypto exchanges are money laundering fronts.

    We can tell this because people related to these exchanges keep get jailed for money laundering.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,277
    algarkirk said:

    Leon said:

    That Washington Examiner article is astounding


    The writer is a serious dude. Knows his military onions. Tom Rogan:

    "Tom Rogan is a foreign policy/national security writer for the Washington Examiner. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in war studies from King's College London, a Master of Science in Middle East politics from SOAS, and a Graduate Diploma in Law from the University of Law, London. Among others, he has previously written for The Washington Post, The Independent, The Atlantic, National Review, the Telegraph, and the Guardian. Tom is a U.S. citizen with a British accent."

    He happily writes THIS:

    "Consider what I believe should be the second factor in the report. Namely, that the most compelling UFOs, those UFOs which lack conventional alternative explanation after exhaustive investigation, give credible indication of being highly advanced, intelligently controlled vehicles. The government's confidence that these most compelling UFOs are vehicles versus amorphous "things" takes root in data returns from multiple sensor platforms. These platforms include satellite, sonar, radar, full-spectrum electromagnetic, and trained military observer witness reports (such as Air Force and Navy ground and flight crews).

    "Third factor: based on the same evidence, the assessment that some of these UFOs have performance capabilities beyond the understood technical capacity of any Earth nation. This sounds extraordinary, and it is."

    An awful lot of highly intelligent people in America are risking their whole reputations. Truly odd

    In this case nonsense. Rogan is a policy wonk, and a journalist. he does not have a physics/SETI/engineering/video analyst reputation to put on the line. If journalists put their reputation on the line every time they said something silly or contradicted themselves there would be none left.

    Bollocks

    Saying "Biden is a dork" or even "Trump is sane" is orders of magnitude more acceptable than saying "I am a foreign policy wonk and a military expert and I believe advanced non-human technology is interacting with US Forces"

    He's risking his career by saying crazy stuff like this. They all are. That's what's so BIZARRE
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,817
    moonshine said:

    Leon said:

    ping said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    .

    Nigelb said:

    I observed something I couldn't account for yesterday, when my computer crashed. It could have been alien technology, but I think there are simpler explanations.

    Idiotic comparison. You may not know why it crashed. but a suitably skilled person could trace through the memory dump generated when your computer crashed and figure out why it happened.

    Nobody appears to know what the heck is going on with these UAPs, and their behaviour appears to suggest our understanding of physics is much more limited than we thought.
    That the UAPs aren't doing what people think they are, and it's faked video, an optical illusion or similar, is far more plausible than that the laws of physics aren't being obeyed.
    Not that there’s any point trying to persuade you but the ultra performance is explainable within the bounds of our physics even if requires magic from an engineering perspective.

    It would require a gravity well to be formed around the craft, bending spacetime. While moving at speeds closer to light requires ever more inordinate and unrealistic amounts of energy the closer you get to c, there’s actually nothing in our understanding of physics that says that spacetime cannot expand faster than light. In fact we think in many places it is doing so.

    This would explain several features, notably the transmedium performance, the lack of obvious propulsion means, the acceleration capabilities without causing sonic booms or combustion of atmospheric N2. And the strange visual blurring reported by military eye witnesses, that might also explain why the photos are never crystal clear. It would also presumably mean the time dilation effects from very fast speeds would not occur.

    This is without delving into our physics being utterly incomplete. The lack of compatibility between the Standard Model of QM and Relativity, even though both have excellent empirical support. Matter making up only 5% of the gravitational effects we can measure, with 27% dark matter and dark energy the rest. What is dark matter and where is it? We dunno. What is dark energy? We know less about that than dark matter.

    No doubt Philip Thompson can explain it all and hence tell us why the US defense and intelligence establishment is totally wrong with what now appears to be its leading hypothesis for these phenomena.
    I have a feeling a ninety foot tall genderfluid sex alien could approach Philip from behind, yank down his Cross of St George Boxer shorts, and rape him with an intergalactic love-bassoon, and he'd say it was "an optical illusion"
    With respect, that’s a fucking horrible post.

    Be decent, or fuck off.
    Oh give over. Philip can look after himself. Indeed, I admire his resilience
    Leon, your post has led to the heavens opening here.
    And who or what walked through?

    I must confess to being on the horns of a dilemma. I am supposed to be preparing for a more than averagely tedious proof on Monday and am not completely adverse to an alien invasion within that timescale. I am sure that there will be some downsides but the upsides are looking quite good right now.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 23,485

    Starmer wants government to drop the traffic light system and finally close the borders...i.e. if he had his way no summer hols....how unpopular does he want to become?

    Point of order: It is perfectly possible to have a summer holiday in the UK.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 81,991

    Starmer wants government to drop the traffic light system and finally close the borders...i.e. if he had his way no summer hols....how unpopular does he want to become?

    Point of order: It is perfectly possible to have a summer holiday in the UK.
    It will cost you £10k for the week though..... according to some journalists.
  • contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818
    Alistair said:

    Or to put it another way a number of crypto exchanges are money laundering fronts.

    We can tell this because people related to these exchanges keep get jailed for money laundering.

    Yeah because the world's drug dealers really struggled when they were forced to use US dollars right?

    Bet that Pablo Escobar is looking up from drug dealer hell thinking 'wish I'd had bitcoin'
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,277
    ping said:

    Leon said:

    ping said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    .

    Nigelb said:

    I observed something I couldn't account for yesterday, when my computer crashed. It could have been alien technology, but I think there are simpler explanations.

    Idiotic comparison. You may not know why it crashed. but a suitably skilled person could trace through the memory dump generated when your computer crashed and figure out why it happened.

    Nobody appears to know what the heck is going on with these UAPs, and their behaviour appears to suggest our understanding of physics is much more limited than we thought.
    That the UAPs aren't doing what people think they are, and it's faked video, an optical illusion or similar, is far more plausible than that the laws of physics aren't being obeyed.
    Not that there’s any point trying to persuade you but the ultra performance is explainable within the bounds of our physics even if requires magic from an engineering perspective.

    It would require a gravity well to be formed around the craft, bending spacetime. While moving at speeds closer to light requires ever more inordinate and unrealistic amounts of energy the closer you get to c, there’s actually nothing in our understanding of physics that says that spacetime cannot expand faster than light. In fact we think in many places it is doing so.

    This would explain several features, notably the transmedium performance, the lack of obvious propulsion means, the acceleration capabilities without causing sonic booms or combustion of atmospheric N2. And the strange visual blurring reported by military eye witnesses, that might also explain why the photos are never crystal clear. It would also presumably mean the time dilation effects from very fast speeds would not occur.

    This is without delving into our physics being utterly incomplete. The lack of compatibility between the Standard Model of QM and Relativity, even though both have excellent empirical support. Matter making up only 5% of the gravitational effects we can measure, with 27% dark matter and dark energy the rest. What is dark matter and where is it? We dunno. What is dark energy? We know less about that than dark matter.

    No doubt Philip Thompson can explain it all and hence tell us why the US defense and intelligence establishment is totally wrong with what now appears to be its leading hypothesis for these phenomena.
    I have a feeling a ninety foot tall genderfluid sex alien could approach Philip from behind, yank down his Cross of St George Boxer shorts, and rape him with an intergalactic love-bassoon, and he'd say it was "an optical illusion"
    With respect, that’s a fucking horrible post.

    Be decent, or fuck off.
    Oh give over. Philip can look after himself. Indeed, I admire his resilience
    You’re making RAPE jokes.

    Do you realise how that comes across?
    You do know there's a whole subculture of UFO sightings dedicated to aliens raping humans with anal probes?



  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 26,175

    Starmer wants government to drop the traffic light system and finally close the borders...i.e. if he had his way no summer hols....how unpopular does he want to become?

    Why not say that during PMQs?
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,368
    eek said:

    tlg86 said:

    ping said:

    House Prices up 10.2%

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57171683

    If the tories don’t take this seriously, the country will vote for far more radical solutions.

    It's not the rise that will do for them, it's the crash.
    We need [moderate] inflation.

    A good few years where house prices go up by 1%, general prices by 3-4% and wages by 5% would be ideal.

    Within a decade house price ratios would fall from 6x to 4x without anyone ever having faced negative equity.
    But it doesn't work like that does it?

    Your wage-price spiral creeps up to mid single figures, wages go up, prices go up, so wages go up, etc., and then before you know it we are living in Zimbabwe on Thames.
    We've had moderate inflation and wage growth for most of the time post war.

    The past decade of deflationary pressures is as unusual and as negative as the period of stagflation.

    3% inflation is not mammoth.
    Post war, we have also had periods of massive inflation (circa 15%) and with it interest rate rises to plus 15%. Now, if my memory serves me correctly that was BAD!

    I am not sure inflationary economics once one has let the cat out of the bag by way of super-massive quantitative easing will be that easy to control.

    All the ingredients seem to be in place for a bust following a post-Covid boom.

    One issue with my argument could be wages don't spiral because well paid quality jobs are being replaced by low value gig-economy jobs. So on the basis of supply and demand, more Ubers and barbershops keep service sector price inflation low.
    Not quite - well paid quality jobs are getting more and more automated away, an accountant 25 years ago would be checking a shoebox of receipts, now they all attached to the appropriate payment 5 seconds after the money goes out.
    For all the media trumpeting this week over the soaring demand for UK workers, demonstrated by UK vacancy stats, the vacancies are for Baristas not Barristers.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758

    HYUFD said:

    Phil Thompson's vision of the future really is quite chilling - England as a high-density housing estate where everyone has to live on imported frozen kangaroo burgers.

    England already is a high density housing estate.

    Just some people want nice spacious detached homes surrounded by countryside while the plebs are piled high in tower blocks in the city even if they can afford to buy land in elsewhere.
    It is not an unreasonable aspiration to own a nice home.
    Agreed.

    So why do NIMBYs wish to deny that aspiration to others?
    They don't, they just want them to fulfil that aspiration by buying a home on a brownfield site, not in a field near their house spoiling their view, reducing green spaces and reducing their house value
    And some people want an invisible punk unicorn. 🦄

    There isn't the brown space to build on, green spaces are needed, so be realistic. If you can't realistically identify which green spaces should be built on then don't complain when others decide for you.

    Besides in a free market they have a way of stopping the field from being developed: buy the field.

    PS reducing house prices is a feature not a bug of construction. Losing value so others can buy a home is a good thing. So shed your crocodile tears about living in a home rent-free that loses some value elsewhere when others are breaking their backs to pay rent.
    For most people, most of the time, the value of a house is meaningless

    It only matters when (a) you are buying a house which is larger than they house you are selling to fund it* and (b) you are selling a house to move into a smaller property/release capital

    At no other point does it matter

    * if any
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    edited May 2021
    Arsenal have signed a ten year old Kenyan called Leo Messo

    Can’t see that its a wind up... surely it is?
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,255
    Alistair said:

    Alistair said:

    RobD said:

    Alistair said:

    Absolute lols, based on their own breakdown Tether bought 1% of all US Commercial Paper available in the last month. They allegedly own 3% of all Commercial Paper outstanding.

    What an absolute pile of scam.

    Can you elaborate on why that makes it a scam? I have no clue.
    If a single entity bought up 1% of the entire commercial paper market in a month people would know about it (and they claim they were mostly buying a-2 or above). That would be huge.

    They quite obviously haven't. They do not control 3% of the USA's short term corporate debt.

    It is transparent nonsense.

    I mean, they have a documented history of lying, rgisbos just one more blatant lie in a cavalcade of lies for them.

    Incidentally Bitcoin's price is absolutely tumbling at the moment and totally coincidentally exchanges are going off line including big players like CoinDesk.
    Anyone want to be the big crypto exchanges have been buying into the hype themselves and setting up to maximise their return on ever rising prices? And so, now that prices are falling, they are in the shit.
    The scam works like this

    Tether ltd creates Tethers.
    Tether gives them to exchanges and gets an IOU (so it is 'fully backed')
    The exchanges buy Bitcoin with the Tether
    Buy pressure makes graph go up.
    Some amount of actual money is extracted from the system by selling Bitcoin for real money.

    Keep that going until the flow of real money from suckers runs out.

    A major Tether related figure was recently jailed for a cool half billion in money laundering in China.
    Add some pump and dump and a big differential in the time it takes to get your money out vs the time that it takes for the scammers get theirs out....
  • Leon said:

    IanB2 said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    Nigelb said:

    moonshine said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Yesterday, the former president of the USA reversed his earlier statements, and confirmed that American military has encountered advanced technology it cannot explain...

    Please provide cite.
    From what I saw he said it had observed phenomena it couldn't explain. Not the same thing.
    He's actually quite hesitant and inarticulate - for Obama

    I think my interpretation of his garbled words is fair. But you are free to demur

    "we can't explain how they move, their trajectory, they did not have an easily explainable pattern"

    https://twitter.com/EndUAPSecrecy/status/1394700044423634946?s=20
    Yes, that's the link you posted yesterday, which is what I was referring to.
    You are massively over interpreting.

    I observed something I couldn't account for yesterday, when my computer crashed. It could have been alien technology, but I think there are simpler explanations.
    The brief comments from Obama mean nothing in isolation. But they need to be seen in context with what’s been said by two ex CIA Directors, one ex NID, one ex Senate Majority Leader and an Intelligence Committee Chair. As well as the ramping in leaks of video followed by swift DoD confirmation of veracity, the various military figure testimonies, the Congressional process and the sudden change in media narrative from across the political spectrum.

    It is all very odd and you need to contort logic to come up with a prosaic or uninteresting explanation.
    And more so to conclude that it's aliens.
    From the various statements, we are being conclusively told we are not looking at data collection glitches (at least not in every case). The behaviour exhibits extraordinary capability. Transmedium high performance. Breaking the sound barrier without a sonic boom. Speeds and Gs beyond the capability of material science. No visual or infrared inductor of propulsion.

    So it’s American, another country or something else.

    If it’s American, then it’s a weird approach to take for a top secret programme. Buzzing your own carrier groups and then leaking the videos of it to the media and then starting a highly public congressional investigation into what it is.

    If it’s another country, then it’s the most severe failure of intelligence of all time (human, satellite, digital etc...). To the point of implausibility.

    Which leaves “something else”. Aliens. Sub oceanic intelligence. Inter dimensional or temporal visitors. Who knows.

    There is also the possibility that we are being lied to by an extraordinary coalition of intelligence, political and military figures and the whole thing is mundane bad data. Why?
    One entertaining aspect of this Flap is the way it is coaxing out some brilliant first hand accounts of UAPs. I am sure 99% of them are invented or delusional, but what if 1% are true? What are they seeing? What have people been seeing for decades?

    I"n late summer of 1982 I saw a #UFO or #UAP on I-90, around 2-3AM while driving from Seattle to Minneapolis. It looked like a giant metal eye, maybe 500-feet across, and hovered around 100-200 feet above the ground tracking 1000 feet in front of us as we drove (65mph)."


    "I had a passenger, a guy I met on a ride share board, we were driving his van. After a couple pregnant moments I asked him: "Uh, did you see that?". He said "Yeah...." And I about threw up. We were both too afraid to say anything while it was happening, to know it was real. #UFO"

    "I don't know what it was, but it looked a lot like what the Navy and Air Force are showing. If it was real, this tech/phenomena has been around for a very long time. #UFO #UAP"

    "I'm not a "conspiracy" guy, I've always thought maybe it was a weird reflection on the windshield or something else, anything else. So I've just avoided that little story. I don't tell many people. But now that the gov is admitting and showing videos, I feel more comfortable."

    https://twitter.com/okanogen2010/status/1395000495241003011?s=20
    Why are they almost always Americans, and very often Americans from parts of America where even most Americans aren’t interested to go?
    Is a very good point. Just like Elon Musk asking "why are all the photos so crap" - when everyone now has a superb camera to hand. Makes no sense

    Maybe Americans are more credulous. Or maybe it is China and/or Russia observing the enemy (but for 70 years with hypersonic tech?). Maybe the aliens are understandably most interested in the most powerful and advanced country. Maybe it is a mass delusion like dragons, but Americans see spacecraft, because Merika

    Is it the nazis from their Antarctic base?
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,368
    Endillion said:

    Moves afoot to get rid of Graham Brady....

    https://twitter.com/tomhfh/status/1395023721400832003?s=19

    To whom does one send letters for that?
    Graham Brady?
  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 14,310
    Hi everyone, for a second I thought I had not logged into Politicalbetting, but had found myself spiralling down some internet wormhole and came through the other side into a parallel universe where discussing aliens was the normal political discourse. That said, although he has been censured for it, I did find @Leon's post about Philip's unsolicited passion from an alien being very funny. I know I shouldn't have laughed. Sorry
  • CookieCookie Posts: 13,793

    rcs1000 said:

    Phil Thompson's vision of the future really is quite chilling - England as a high-density housing estate where everyone has to live on imported frozen kangaroo burgers.

    England already is a high density housing estate.

    Just some people want nice spacious detached homes surrounded by countryside while the plebs are piled high in tower blocks in the city even if they can afford to buy land in elsewhere.
    Some people think a detached house in middle of nowhere sounds like hell on earth, and would much rather live in a flat within easy walking distance of nice bars and restaurants.

    The world takes all sorts.
    I'm one of those - though in a terraced house, rather than a flat.

    I am within 15 minutes' walk of at least 50 bars, 50 restaurants and hundreds of shops of every description. The sheer joy of never having to worry about drinking and driving is heaven on earth to me.
    There is a shortage in this country of high-density but high-quality (and large!) housing. The relatively few neighbourhoods we have where this type of housing is common are wildly popular - they are the favoured neighbourhoods of every city. Yet we don't seek to replicate these neighbourhoods. We do high-den, low-qual; and we do low-den, high-qual. We even do low-den, low-qual, sometimes. But we very rarely do high-den, high-qual.
    In part this reflects that the sites rarely become available of the scale to develop high quality neighbourhoods.

    That said, there is much more of this sort of thing coming forward at the moment than there was 30 years ago.

    This project is one of my favourites - though it is deliberately and self-consciously 'mixed' rather than all high -quality. https://victorianorth.co.uk/
This discussion has been closed.