He can pay his staff more and try and train up more British staff.
That's one idea. However, after trying to fire all his staff, then using his closed premises as a billboard for Covid denial, I've other ideas for what he can do.
It's worse than that: they know that doing so will innoculate themselves from criticism because the younger generation, those most likely to be activists, will forgive almost anything if you're achingly on trend - so it's deeply cynical on one side and highly superficial and self-indulgent on the other.
That's what makes me vomit.
I don't feel very strongly about it, because it looks just like greenwashing, which is another thing a lot of companies do. I expect this sort of cynical behaviour from businesses. It's bloody rare for a large business to take a stand on an issue that costs them serious money.
Yebbut, on greenwashing they don't call you a bigot for objecting to their BS.
That's the game here. Extra cover.
Why don't you just ignore it?
There is no need to join in Pride events if you don't want to. Indeed if you weren't banging on about it, I wouldn't have noticed that it was currently a thing.
If you don't have official lockdowns, you still have lockdowns. They're just unofficial ones that happen when everyone is utterly terrified to go out.
You have a series of waves that come and go, as people get scared of the virus and stay home. So the choice is not between zero years locked down and 66 million, it's between "n" and 66 million.
Plus there's the fact that without restrctions, we would probably have had higher peaks, and we might have actually seem the health service overloaded, leading to situtations like happened in New York or Milan early last year (or Manaus). And when you have those kind of peaks, you're not killing off people with just 10 years to go, you are killing off those with 20 or 30 or 40.
If you want to see just how bad excess deaths can go, look at Ecuador: they have been running at deaths 3x the normal level. Three times. We've been at 20-30% above normal levels for the last year.
Without restrictions, we would still have lost decades of peoples' lives to lockdowns, and we would have had much higher death tolls.
Now, should we have opened up much quicker? Damn right we should. But the idea that "no restrictions" is milk and honey is for the birds.
Yes to the illusion of lockdown free paradise. I'm also aware of rather a lot of people who have had quite a decent year, and some who quietly say they've really preferred it (mostly people who have seen far more of their young kids and much less commuting) but in view of the horrors that so many have experienced are shy of saying it.
Indeed I am one of those. Lockdowns has signalled the end of the office for me and allowed me the freedom to move home and actually be close to family instead of seeing the once or twice a year which has been the case for the last 33 years. You also can't, i would argue, multiply 66 million by a year to calculate lost time. A lot of those 66 million would have spent 4 or 5 nights a week sat on the sofa watching tv in any case. I doubt many but the young have 7 day a week of "Wow what a brilliant day" and for most of us many days of the week aren't much different to lockdown
Sorry to post without introduction. But I am a lockdown winner. My property has gone up by at least £100k, and these price rises show no signs of slowing. I have a whole host of new employment opportunities as the acceptance of remote working means that I can take jobs in London without the daily supercommute. We got to spend a lot of time in the garden and save a lot money. At worst the restrictions were a bit annoying. All this would be fine but for the civilisation ending woke cultural revolution that has come with it. Everyone has their own opinion on this, but in my case I am seriously looking at emigration.
Welcome 'darkage'. Sounds like you have a great life. Just out of curiosity, how has this "civilisation ending woke cultural revolution" had such an impact on that good life that you're considering emigrating?
Some people see the 'woke' as the reinvention of western civilisation, I see it as the end of western civilisation. As I said, it is a personal opinion and I am not mad about it in the way that some people are. We will have to see who is right.
I think it could end there, yes, because we might bring the whole house down on ourselves through reductionist identity politics and year-zeroism. I even wrote a thread header on it once.
But, I don't think there's anywhere to "go". I think the battle needs to be won here and at least we have a Government in office here that sees that.
The problem is not really with the government. The problem is with the English. The government doesn't have popular support for its war on woke. It is all a bit half hearted and viewed as a fringe issue, when it is actually an existential threat to civilisation. You have to look at what happened last year with the desecration of the centopah and conclude it is basically game over, the generation that cared about these things has died out.
I don't know what the answer is; emigration in my case is an option due to family connections; I am simply trying to pursue a viable alternative when I can see everything here falling apart, despite my apparent middle class status and affluence.
So where are you moving too, given most of the Western world is going through the same Woke clashes and in the US the problem is even more pronounced than here? Eastern Europe or Singapore?
It is actually a fairly uniquely anglo american issue.
It is most pronounced in the Anglosphere but France has also seen statues toppled and Merkel's Germany is full of self flagellation about its past. Russia, Poland, Israel, the Far East and at a push Spain and Italy are your best bets to stay Woke free
If the only criteria was to find a stable and successful non woke country the best option would be China
Provided you can accept the risk of jail or firing squad if you criticise the state, Israel and Singapore are wealthier per head than China, more democratic and also largely woke free
That would be the Israel that had the first Trans winner of Eurovision?
Israel has a thriving LGBT community, and some of the most reactionary obscurantism side by side.
Singapore has such a low fertility rate that without immigration it would be quickly extinct.
Of course "anti-Woke" countries tend to be very chauvinist and emigrating there puts you automatically into a suspect character group, as immigrant.
Perhaps Ulster would be a better bet, and join the TUV or DUP?
Wokeism is not so much about being socially liberal.
It is perfectly possible to be gay and unwoke eg David Starkey or Douglas Murray.
It is not even so much about being pro immigration, there are plenty of patriotic immigrants.
Wokeism is more about hating your nation's past and culture and wishing to erase it
For the perusal of @rcs1000 and other lovers of Tether fraud - today I learnt there are a whole pile of unregulated Forex markets that use Tether as their on/off ramp
Tether may very well go down as the greatest fraud in history.
(It's a fascinating shell game: the goal of Tether management is to get other people to hold Tether at 1:1 with the USD, by buying when it falls below 99.5cents, and therefore earning a tiny profit. But, of course, these people are picking up pennies in front of a bulldozer, as Tether is being robbed blind. I suspect that at least $20bn of the $62bn has been looted from it already, and at some point it will come crashing down, when people realise there isn't $60bn sitting on the books.)
Oh, everyone already know the money isn't there. Fully half of Tether's attested to holdings are "Commercial Paper". According to their general council it is A-2 or above.
That means, if Tether and their general council is being truthful, Tether owns 3% of the entire US Commercial Paper market with two full percentage points purchased in the last 3 months. Let that sink in.
No one actually believes this but everyone knows that without Tether the Bitcoin price goes down and to the right not up and to the right.
So what happens when Tether collapses? Does it bring Bitcoin down with it? Is it damaging to the wider economy?
Given Bitcoin’s carbon footprint is something like 0.25% of the US’s (i.e. huge) the sooner it crashes the better.
The latest estimate of Bitcoin electricity usage was 129TWh/year, which is more than 85% of countries.
The crash is going to be spectacular to watch from a distance.
When would it be likely ?
I invest, a small amount, via SIPP and S&S ISA but avoid stuff like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple and the rest. I just don’t get them and when my Facebook and twitter feed was regularly full of scams concerning them it just made me incredibly wary. I like to invest in stuff I understand. I don’t understand these and I don’t understand NFTs
Most of the points raised above are refuted, or at the very least, countered, at https://endthefud.org/
The energy stuff is a complete nonsense, bitcoin actually incentivises clean energy usage because clean energy produces too much energy when demand is low and not enough when it's high. Since most of that energy can't be stored, it's wasted - raising overall unit cost. As Bitcoin is on 24/7, bitcoin creates a market for that surplus clean energy, thus incentivising more production of clean energy as there is an increased market for it.
As far as tether goes, people have been saying it's going to collapse for years - surprise surprise, it hasn't. And even if it did, it represents about 4% of the total crypto market cap, scammier coins like bitconnect have collapsed without crashing the entire crypto market.
(1) BTC is (mostly) mined in China using coal. Indeed, it is often the owners of the coal plants themselves who have a side business BTC mining. It's quite efficient for them to have a sideline in BTC because during off peak periods in China electricity, they move over to BTC mining. That being said, it's still coal being being used for mining.
(2) Tether is a scam. It's not complicated. They have printed more Tether (by far) than they have in assets. Just because it hasn't collapsed yet, doesn't mean it won't.
(3) When Tether collapses, there will be ripples. I'm not a "all crypto is doomed" kind of guy, but there will be consequences.
Bitcoin ultimately wants cheap energy - surplus energy from renewable sources that would otherwise be wasted will eventually become cheaper than coal. Imagine having a solar panel on your house. On a really bright day, or when you're not at home, much of that energy is wasted. It could be converted to bitcoin mining at no cost to you, or sold to bitcoin miners at rock bottom prices rather than being wasted. Imagine that transformation taking place on a global scale. That is likely where we are headed within the next decade, even if we aren't there now.
Bitcoin creates a market for renewable energy that would otherwise be wasted, making construction of more renewable energy sources more economically viable.
But. Even if it didn't. Not all energy use is bad - indeed, what is wasteful about using electricity to verify sound money? It has a cost, in terms of energy usage and pollution, but so do christmas lights - which serve no purpose - and people don't want to ban them. Gold mining has a huge impact on the environment, nobody complains about it. And the US dollar is backed by bombs and aircraft carriers.
In terms of tether, it represents 60 bn of a 1.62 tn crypto market - so it wouldn't be fatal if it collapsed. But I'm inclined to agree with you, it's scammy and it would cause lasting damage to the crypto ecosystem that would take a long time to recover from. Having said that, the US dollar is a fractional reserve and that's still chugging along...
Tether is being used by Asian companies to bypass the banking system as it quicker and cheaper.
The fundamental idea behind Tether is sound.
You have an entity that controls the Tether blockchain, and makes a market in the coin. And it works like an ETF - if the price goes up to $1.01, then they sell a Tether, and if it falls to $0.99 then they buy one. There is therefore a small profit that is made by the controllers of Tether that is then boosted by investing the dollars received from the sale of Tether in short dated government bonds and the money markets.
And because they would be backed 1:1 with actual dollars in the bank, they could always be the buyer of last resort.
Done right, $60bn of Tether generates $300m or so of profits for the owners of Tether.
There's only one minor problem.
The owners of Tether were not sensible. Instead of seeing this as a long-term, good return type business they saw there was more money to be made by simply printing Tether, using it to buy Bitcoin, and then selling the Bitcoin for US Dollars.
Even if you believe the controllers of Tether, they only have assets for 71 cents in the dollar. And I suspect the real number is less than half.
Not that I particularly doubt your conclusion but the same has been said for a very long time about the precious metals ETFs that reduce costs by using synthetic replication rather than being 100% backed by allocated and fully insured bullion. And it’s been tested through ups and down now. If it’s not broken by now then when?
Halfway through, a bunch of kids, age about 16-18 - of ALL races - white, Muslim, girls in hijabs, black kids, white skateboarders, everyone - had a water fight. As you would in this heat and sun
They were careful to say Sorry we don't want to upset you, they maneuvered around us, they had ecstatic fun. Then they stopped, and they politely retreated to their deckchairs, where they laughed, drank and gossiped, then cleared up their litter and went home.
It was encouraging in a wonderful way. London at its best. And, at its best, London can be brilliant and optimistic, a glimpse of a multiracial future where the kids don't see race, and just rub along, in a manner that was denied to me. And I believe they don't see race. It comes naturally to them
And zero deaths. Today is a big fat YAY
And that's both the joy and the tragedy. The joy that it's trivially obvious what the future looks like, people rubbing along and not causing offence to others because causing offence is a dickish thing to do. Post-woke without the humourless censoriousness that tends to go with woke now. We'll keep that statue, because he really was a national hero, but yeah that other guy really ought to be hidden away from the main road. And it's blatantly a better future, in the same way that hardly anyone would really want to reintroduce Section 28. We'll laugh with Julian and Sandy, not at them. Especially when they mock us.
And a tragedy that, for all sorts of reasons, that's denied to those of us above a certain age. It's at best an effort for us, at worst an unpleasant battle.
Am I the only person who hasn’t been out drinking in the sun today?
Just to ram home how much of a scam Tether is. The bank at a institution called Deltec bank (coincidentally the CEO of Deltec was fired by the owners within 24 hours of Deltec taking on Tether as a client) in the Bahamas.
The Bahamas Financial Authorities publish a breakdown of how much foreign currency deposits their banks have in aggregate.
In Feb-March this year Tether issued over 10 billion Tether, total Bahamas foreign currency deposits across all banks increased by only 1.3 billion from 5.7 to 7 billion dollars.
Tether is a scam.
All Crypto is. Just being ramped by people waiting for a bigger fool to turn up.
Bitcoin consumes energy 24/7 creating a permanent increase in baseload demand, which means it's good for the environment, has to be the biggest OMG WTAF moment I have ever seen here.
Next week: why Doctor Shipman was good for his patients.
For all Dr Shipmans faults he was always willing to do house calls...
It's worse than that: they know that doing so will innoculate themselves from criticism because the younger generation, those most likely to be activists, will forgive almost anything if you're achingly on trend - so it's deeply cynical on one side and highly superficial and self-indulgent on the other.
That's what makes me vomit.
I don't feel very strongly about it, because it looks just like greenwashing, which is another thing a lot of companies do. I expect this sort of cynical behaviour from businesses. It's bloody rare for a large business to take a stand on an issue that costs them serious money.
Yebbut, on greenwashing they don't call you a bigot for objecting to their BS.
That's the game here. Extra cover.
Why don't you just ignore it?
There is no need to join in Pride events if you don't want to. Indeed if you weren't banging on about it, I wouldn't have noticed that it was currently a thing.
The only indication that it is pride month is Casino's posts?
I did see the comment on the opriginal Twitter thread which inquired why any of our fellow Europeans would feel safe working at Spoons after the last few years.
Just to ram home how much of a scam Tether is. The bank at a institution called Deltec bank (coincidentally the CEO of Deltec was fired by the owners within 24 hours of Deltec taking on Tether as a client) in the Bahamas.
The Bahamas Financial Authorities publish a breakdown of how much foreign currency deposits their banks have in aggregate.
In Feb-March this year Tether issued over 10 billion Tether, total Bahamas foreign currency deposits across all banks increased by only 1.3 billion from 5.7 to 7 billion dollars.
Tether is a scam.
That's not actual proof, though. If the Tether had all been used to buy US money market instruments, then it would net off to zero: money for Tether in, money for money market instruments out.
For the perusal of @rcs1000 and other lovers of Tether fraud - today I learnt there are a whole pile of unregulated Forex markets that use Tether as their on/off ramp
Tether may very well go down as the greatest fraud in history.
(It's a fascinating shell game: the goal of Tether management is to get other people to hold Tether at 1:1 with the USD, by buying when it falls below 99.5cents, and therefore earning a tiny profit. But, of course, these people are picking up pennies in front of a bulldozer, as Tether is being robbed blind. I suspect that at least $20bn of the $62bn has been looted from it already, and at some point it will come crashing down, when people realise there isn't $60bn sitting on the books.)
Oh, everyone already know the money isn't there. Fully half of Tether's attested to holdings are "Commercial Paper". According to their general council it is A-2 or above.
That means, if Tether and their general council is being truthful, Tether owns 3% of the entire US Commercial Paper market with two full percentage points purchased in the last 3 months. Let that sink in.
No one actually believes this but everyone knows that without Tether the Bitcoin price goes down and to the right not up and to the right.
So what happens when Tether collapses? Does it bring Bitcoin down with it? Is it damaging to the wider economy?
Given Bitcoin’s carbon footprint is something like 0.25% of the US’s (i.e. huge) the sooner it crashes the better.
The latest estimate of Bitcoin electricity usage was 129TWh/year, which is more than 85% of countries.
The crash is going to be spectacular to watch from a distance.
When would it be likely ?
I invest, a small amount, via SIPP and S&S ISA but avoid stuff like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple and the rest. I just don’t get them and when my Facebook and twitter feed was regularly full of scams concerning them it just made me incredibly wary. I like to invest in stuff I understand. I don’t understand these and I don’t understand NFTs
Most of the points raised above are refuted, or at the very least, countered, at https://endthefud.org/
The energy stuff is a complete nonsense, bitcoin actually incentivises clean energy usage because clean energy produces too much energy when demand is low and not enough when it's high. Since most of that energy can't be stored, it's wasted - raising overall unit cost. As Bitcoin is on 24/7, bitcoin creates a market for that surplus clean energy, thus incentivising more production of clean energy as there is an increased market for it.
As far as tether goes, people have been saying it's going to collapse for years - surprise surprise, it hasn't. And even if it did, it represents about 4% of the total crypto market cap, scammier coins like bitconnect have collapsed without crashing the entire crypto market.
(1) BTC is (mostly) mined in China using coal. Indeed, it is often the owners of the coal plants themselves who have a side business BTC mining. It's quite efficient for them to have a sideline in BTC because during off peak periods in China electricity, they move over to BTC mining. That being said, it's still coal being being used for mining.
(2) Tether is a scam. It's not complicated. They have printed more Tether (by far) than they have in assets. Just because it hasn't collapsed yet, doesn't mean it won't.
(3) When Tether collapses, there will be ripples. I'm not a "all crypto is doomed" kind of guy, but there will be consequences.
Bitcoin ultimately wants cheap energy - surplus energy from renewable sources that would otherwise be wasted will eventually become cheaper than coal. Imagine having a solar panel on your house. On a really bright day, or when you're not at home, much of that energy is wasted. It could be converted to bitcoin mining at no cost to you, or sold to bitcoin miners at rock bottom prices rather than being wasted. Imagine that transformation taking place on a global scale. That is likely where we are headed within the next decade, even if we aren't there now.
Bitcoin creates a market for renewable energy that would otherwise be wasted, making construction of more renewable energy sources more economically viable.
But. Even if it didn't. Not all energy use is bad - indeed, what is wasteful about using electricity to verify sound money? It has a cost, in terms of energy usage and pollution, but so do christmas lights - which serve no purpose - and people don't want to ban them. Gold mining has a huge impact on the environment, nobody complains about it. And the US dollar is backed by bombs and aircraft carriers.
In terms of tether, it represents 60 bn of a 1.62 tn crypto market - so it wouldn't be fatal if it collapsed. But I'm inclined to agree with you, it's scammy and it would cause lasting damage to the crypto ecosystem that would take a long time to recover from. Having said that, the US dollar is a fractional reserve and that's still chugging along...
Tether is being used by Asian companies to bypass the banking system as it quicker and cheaper.
The fundamental idea behind Tether is sound.
You have an entity that controls the Tether blockchain, and makes a market in the coin. And it works like an ETF - if the price goes up to $1.01, then they sell a Tether, and if it falls to $0.99 then they buy one. There is therefore a small profit that is made by the controllers of Tether that is then boosted by investing the dollars received from the sale of Tether in short dated government bonds and the money markets.
And because they would be backed 1:1 with actual dollars in the bank, they could always be the buyer of last resort.
Done right, $60bn of Tether generates $300m or so of profits for the owners of Tether.
There's only one minor problem.
The owners of Tether were not sensible. Instead of seeing this as a long-term, good return type business they saw there was more money to be made by simply printing Tether, using it to buy Bitcoin, and then selling the Bitcoin for US Dollars.
Even if you believe the controllers of Tether, they only have assets for 71 cents in the dollar. And I suspect the real number is less than half.
Not that I particularly doubt your conclusion but the same has been said for a very long time about the precious metals ETFs that reduce costs by using synthetic replication rather than being 100% backed by allocated and fully insured bullion. And it’s been tested through ups and down now. If it’s not broken by now then when?
Tether is like a Gold ETF that says it holds physical gold but all it has is an empty warehouse and some IOUs.
The genius of Tether though is that their terms and conditions allow them to unilaterally halt redemption for any reason at any time and you have to have an account with them to Redeem Tethers And they do not let you, as a member of the public open an account.
There is no way for their to be a run on Tether as Tether don't pay out.
It's worse than that: they know that doing so will innoculate themselves from criticism because the younger generation, those most likely to be activists, will forgive almost anything if you're achingly on trend - so it's deeply cynical on one side and highly superficial and self-indulgent on the other.
That's what makes me vomit.
I don't feel very strongly about it, because it looks just like greenwashing, which is another thing a lot of companies do. I expect this sort of cynical behaviour from businesses. It's bloody rare for a large business to take a stand on an issue that costs them serious money.
Yebbut, on greenwashing they don't call you a bigot for objecting to their BS.
That's the game here. Extra cover.
Why don't you just ignore it?
There is no need to join in Pride events if you don't want to. Indeed if you weren't banging on about it, I wouldn't have noticed that it was currently a thing.
The only indication that it is pride month is Casino's posts?
Must confess it took me several posts to realise that was the reason. Hadnt been aware of it before.
For the perusal of @rcs1000 and other lovers of Tether fraud - today I learnt there are a whole pile of unregulated Forex markets that use Tether as their on/off ramp
Tether may very well go down as the greatest fraud in history.
(It's a fascinating shell game: the goal of Tether management is to get other people to hold Tether at 1:1 with the USD, by buying when it falls below 99.5cents, and therefore earning a tiny profit. But, of course, these people are picking up pennies in front of a bulldozer, as Tether is being robbed blind. I suspect that at least $20bn of the $62bn has been looted from it already, and at some point it will come crashing down, when people realise there isn't $60bn sitting on the books.)
Oh, everyone already know the money isn't there. Fully half of Tether's attested to holdings are "Commercial Paper". According to their general council it is A-2 or above.
That means, if Tether and their general council is being truthful, Tether owns 3% of the entire US Commercial Paper market with two full percentage points purchased in the last 3 months. Let that sink in.
No one actually believes this but everyone knows that without Tether the Bitcoin price goes down and to the right not up and to the right.
So what happens when Tether collapses? Does it bring Bitcoin down with it? Is it damaging to the wider economy?
Given Bitcoin’s carbon footprint is something like 0.25% of the US’s (i.e. huge) the sooner it crashes the better.
The latest estimate of Bitcoin electricity usage was 129TWh/year, which is more than 85% of countries.
The crash is going to be spectacular to watch from a distance.
When would it be likely ?
I invest, a small amount, via SIPP and S&S ISA but avoid stuff like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple and the rest. I just don’t get them and when my Facebook and twitter feed was regularly full of scams concerning them it just made me incredibly wary. I like to invest in stuff I understand. I don’t understand these and I don’t understand NFTs
Most of the points raised above are refuted, or at the very least, countered, at https://endthefud.org/
The energy stuff is a complete nonsense, bitcoin actually incentivises clean energy usage because clean energy produces too much energy when demand is low and not enough when it's high. Since most of that energy can't be stored, it's wasted - raising overall unit cost. As Bitcoin is on 24/7, bitcoin creates a market for that surplus clean energy, thus incentivising more production of clean energy as there is an increased market for it.
As far as tether goes, people have been saying it's going to collapse for years - surprise surprise, it hasn't. And even if it did, it represents about 4% of the total crypto market cap, scammier coins like bitconnect have collapsed without crashing the entire crypto market.
(1) BTC is (mostly) mined in China using coal. Indeed, it is often the owners of the coal plants themselves who have a side business BTC mining. It's quite efficient for them to have a sideline in BTC because during off peak periods in China electricity, they move over to BTC mining. That being said, it's still coal being being used for mining.
(2) Tether is a scam. It's not complicated. They have printed more Tether (by far) than they have in assets. Just because it hasn't collapsed yet, doesn't mean it won't.
(3) When Tether collapses, there will be ripples. I'm not a "all crypto is doomed" kind of guy, but there will be consequences.
Bitcoin ultimately wants cheap energy - surplus energy from renewable sources that would otherwise be wasted will eventually become cheaper than coal. Imagine having a solar panel on your house. On a really bright day, or when you're not at home, much of that energy is wasted. It could be converted to bitcoin mining at no cost to you, or sold to bitcoin miners at rock bottom prices rather than being wasted. Imagine that transformation taking place on a global scale. That is likely where we are headed within the next decade, even if we aren't there now.
Bitcoin creates a market for renewable energy that would otherwise be wasted, making construction of more renewable energy sources more economically viable.
But. Even if it didn't. Not all energy use is bad - indeed, what is wasteful about using electricity to verify sound money? It has a cost, in terms of energy usage and pollution, but so do christmas lights - which serve no purpose - and people don't want to ban them. Gold mining has a huge impact on the environment, nobody complains about it. And the US dollar is backed by bombs and aircraft carriers.
In terms of tether, it represents 60 bn of a 1.62 tn crypto market - so it wouldn't be fatal if it collapsed. But I'm inclined to agree with you, it's scammy and it would cause lasting damage to the crypto ecosystem that would take a long time to recover from. Having said that, the US dollar is a fractional reserve and that's still chugging along...
Tether is being used by Asian companies to bypass the banking system as it quicker and cheaper.
The fundamental idea behind Tether is sound.
You have an entity that controls the Tether blockchain, and makes a market in the coin. And it works like an ETF - if the price goes up to $1.01, then they sell a Tether, and if it falls to $0.99 then they buy one. There is therefore a small profit that is made by the controllers of Tether that is then boosted by investing the dollars received from the sale of Tether in short dated government bonds and the money markets.
And because they would be backed 1:1 with actual dollars in the bank, they could always be the buyer of last resort.
Done right, $60bn of Tether generates $300m or so of profits for the owners of Tether.
There's only one minor problem.
The owners of Tether were not sensible. Instead of seeing this as a long-term, good return type business they saw there was more money to be made by simply printing Tether, using it to buy Bitcoin, and then selling the Bitcoin for US Dollars.
Even if you believe the controllers of Tether, they only have assets for 71 cents in the dollar. And I suspect the real number is less than half.
Not that I particularly doubt your conclusion but the same has been said for a very long time about the precious metals ETFs that reduce costs by using synthetic replication rather than being 100% backed by allocated and fully insured bullion. And it’s been tested through ups and down now. If it’s not broken by now then when?
Synthetic replication is fine. If you own $1 plus one future over $1 of gold, then it is functionally identical to owning $1 of gold.
By contrast, Tether is rather simpler. It is alleged that the controllers of Tether print the currency for themselves, then swap it into Bitcoin, then they sell the Bitcoin. In this way, they steal billions (possibly tens of billions) of dollars.
If you don't have official lockdowns, you still have lockdowns. They're just unofficial ones that happen when everyone is utterly terrified to go out.
You have a series of waves that come and go, as people get scared of the virus and stay home. So the choice is not between zero years locked down and 66 million, it's between "n" and 66 million.
Plus there's the fact that without restrctions, we would probably have had higher peaks, and we might have actually seem the health service overloaded, leading to situtations like happened in New York or Milan early last year (or Manaus). And when you have those kind of peaks, you're not killing off people with just 10 years to go, you are killing off those with 20 or 30 or 40.
If you want to see just how bad excess deaths can go, look at Ecuador: they have been running at deaths 3x the normal level. Three times. We've been at 20-30% above normal levels for the last year.
Without restrictions, we would still have lost decades of peoples' lives to lockdowns, and we would have had much higher death tolls.
Now, should we have opened up much quicker? Damn right we should. But the idea that "no restrictions" is milk and honey is for the birds.
Yes to the illusion of lockdown free paradise. I'm also aware of rather a lot of people who have had quite a decent year, and some who quietly say they've really preferred it (mostly people who have seen far more of their young kids and much less commuting) but in view of the horrors that so many have experienced are shy of saying it.
Indeed I am one of those. Lockdowns has signalled the end of the office for me and allowed me the freedom to move home and actually be close to family instead of seeing the once or twice a year which has been the case for the last 33 years. You also can't, i would argue, multiply 66 million by a year to calculate lost time. A lot of those 66 million would have spent 4 or 5 nights a week sat on the sofa watching tv in any case. I doubt many but the young have 7 day a week of "Wow what a brilliant day" and for most of us many days of the week aren't much different to lockdown
Sorry to post without introduction. But I am a lockdown winner. My property has gone up by at least £100k, and these price rises show no signs of slowing. I have a whole host of new employment opportunities as the acceptance of remote working means that I can take jobs in London without the daily supercommute. We got to spend a lot of time in the garden and save a lot money. At worst the restrictions were a bit annoying. All this would be fine but for the civilisation ending woke cultural revolution that has come with it. Everyone has their own opinion on this, but in my case I am seriously looking at emigration.
Welcome 'darkage'. Sounds like you have a great life. Just out of curiosity, how has this "civilisation ending woke cultural revolution" had such an impact on that good life that you're considering emigrating?
Some people see the 'woke' as the reinvention of western civilisation, I see it as the end of western civilisation. As I said, it is a personal opinion and I am not mad about it in the way that some people are. We will have to see who is right.
I think it could end there, yes, because we might bring the whole house down on ourselves through reductionist identity politics and year-zeroism. I even wrote a thread header on it once.
But, I don't think there's anywhere to "go". I think the battle needs to be won here and at least we have a Government in office here that sees that.
The problem is not really with the government. The problem is with the English. The government doesn't have popular support for its war on woke. It is all a bit half hearted and viewed as a fringe issue, when it is actually an existential threat to civilisation. You have to look at what happened last year with the desecration of the centopah and conclude it is basically game over, the generation that cared about these things has died out.
I don't know what the answer is; emigration in my case is an option due to family connections; I am simply trying to pursue a viable alternative when I can see everything here falling apart, despite my apparent middle class status and affluence.
So where are you moving too, given most of the Western world is going through the same Woke clashes and in the US the problem is even more pronounced than here? Eastern Europe or Singapore?
It is actually a fairly uniquely anglo american issue.
It is most pronounced in the Anglosphere but France has also seen statues toppled and Merkel's Germany is full of self flagellation about its past. Russia, Poland, Israel, the Far East and at a push Spain and Italy are your best bets to stay Woke free
If the only criteria was to find a stable and successful non woke country the best option would be China
Provided you can accept the risk of jail or firing squad if you criticise the state, Israel and Singapore are wealthier per head than China, more democratic and also largely woke free
That would be the Israel that had the first Trans winner of Eurovision?
Israel has a thriving LGBT community, and some of the most reactionary obscurantism side by side.
Singapore has such a low fertility rate that without immigration it would be quickly extinct.
Of course "anti-Woke" countries tend to be very chauvinist and emigrating there puts you automatically into a suspect character group, as immigrant.
Perhaps Ulster would be a better bet, and join the TUV or DUP?
Wokeism is not so much about being socially liberal.
It is perfectly possible to be gay and unwoke eg David Starkey or Douglas Murray.
It is not even so much about being pro immigration, there are plenty of patriotic immigrants.
Wokeism is more about hating your nation's past and culture and wishing to erase it
No it isn't. Being Woke is becoming aware of historical injustice, particularly racial injustice.
That is not hating your countries past, it is developing a more rounded view of it. Hagiography is not history.
Bitcoin consumes energy 24/7 creating a permanent increase in baseload demand, which means it's good for the environment, has to be the biggest OMG WTAF moment I have ever seen here.
Next week: why Doctor Shipman was good for his patients.
It's also a spacetime-biased quantum computer and though it SEEMS like a ponzi....this one really WORKS...sit down and let me explain
Aberdeenshire moves to level 1 at the weekend, which doesn't seem to make that big a difference to the relative freedom we already have. And then a scan down at Level 0 - nightclubs and "adult entertainment" still can't reopen even at 0.
Question - if people want to frequent nightclubs or gentlemens clubs or saunas or whatever, at what level of restriction do we have to get to before they are allowed? -2? I know this may be a peculiar Scottish thing, but are we to see the same south of the border once you get to 21st June? FREEDOM - except for this list of banned activities...
For the perusal of @rcs1000 and other lovers of Tether fraud - today I learnt there are a whole pile of unregulated Forex markets that use Tether as their on/off ramp
Tether may very well go down as the greatest fraud in history.
(It's a fascinating shell game: the goal of Tether management is to get other people to hold Tether at 1:1 with the USD, by buying when it falls below 99.5cents, and therefore earning a tiny profit. But, of course, these people are picking up pennies in front of a bulldozer, as Tether is being robbed blind. I suspect that at least $20bn of the $62bn has been looted from it already, and at some point it will come crashing down, when people realise there isn't $60bn sitting on the books.)
Oh, everyone already know the money isn't there. Fully half of Tether's attested to holdings are "Commercial Paper". According to their general council it is A-2 or above.
That means, if Tether and their general council is being truthful, Tether owns 3% of the entire US Commercial Paper market with two full percentage points purchased in the last 3 months. Let that sink in.
No one actually believes this but everyone knows that without Tether the Bitcoin price goes down and to the right not up and to the right.
So what happens when Tether collapses? Does it bring Bitcoin down with it? Is it damaging to the wider economy?
Given Bitcoin’s carbon footprint is something like 0.25% of the US’s (i.e. huge) the sooner it crashes the better.
The latest estimate of Bitcoin electricity usage was 129TWh/year, which is more than 85% of countries.
The crash is going to be spectacular to watch from a distance.
When would it be likely ?
I invest, a small amount, via SIPP and S&S ISA but avoid stuff like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple and the rest. I just don’t get them and when my Facebook and twitter feed was regularly full of scams concerning them it just made me incredibly wary. I like to invest in stuff I understand. I don’t understand these and I don’t understand NFTs
Most of the points raised above are refuted, or at the very least, countered, at https://endthefud.org/
The energy stuff is a complete nonsense, bitcoin actually incentivises clean energy usage because clean energy produces too much energy when demand is low and not enough when it's high. Since most of that energy can't be stored, it's wasted - raising overall unit cost. As Bitcoin is on 24/7, bitcoin creates a market for that surplus clean energy, thus incentivising more production of clean energy as there is an increased market for it.
As far as tether goes, people have been saying it's going to collapse for years - surprise surprise, it hasn't. And even if it did, it represents about 4% of the total crypto market cap, scammier coins like bitconnect have collapsed without crashing the entire crypto market.
(1) BTC is (mostly) mined in China using coal. Indeed, it is often the owners of the coal plants themselves who have a side business BTC mining. It's quite efficient for them to have a sideline in BTC because during off peak periods in China electricity, they move over to BTC mining. That being said, it's still coal being being used for mining.
(2) Tether is a scam. It's not complicated. They have printed more Tether (by far) than they have in assets. Just because it hasn't collapsed yet, doesn't mean it won't.
(3) When Tether collapses, there will be ripples. I'm not a "all crypto is doomed" kind of guy, but there will be consequences.
Bitcoin ultimately wants cheap energy - surplus energy from renewable sources that would otherwise be wasted will eventually become cheaper than coal. Imagine having a solar panel on your house. On a really bright day, or when you're not at home, much of that energy is wasted. It could be converted to bitcoin mining at no cost to you, or sold to bitcoin miners at rock bottom prices rather than being wasted. Imagine that transformation taking place on a global scale. That is likely where we are headed within the next decade, even if we aren't there now.
Bitcoin creates a market for renewable energy that would otherwise be wasted, making construction of more renewable energy sources more economically viable.
But. Even if it didn't. Not all energy use is bad - indeed, what is wasteful about using electricity to verify sound money? It has a cost, in terms of energy usage and pollution, but so do christmas lights - which serve no purpose - and people don't want to ban them. Gold mining has a huge impact on the environment, nobody complains about it. And the US dollar is backed by bombs and aircraft carriers.
In terms of tether, it represents 60 bn of a 1.62 tn crypto market - so it wouldn't be fatal if it collapsed. But I'm inclined to agree with you, it's scammy and it would cause lasting damage to the crypto ecosystem that would take a long time to recover from. Having said that, the US dollar is a fractional reserve and that's still chugging along...
Tether is being used by Asian companies to bypass the banking system as it quicker and cheaper.
Money is energy. If the gold price goes up then cash is borrowed and more energy is used to expand production. The Pentagon use 4.6 billion gallons of fuel a year to protect the US petro trading empire. That is accepted and not discussed. You expend energy working for yourself, a capitalist or the state to earn money
Ah, but what about Finchley Road???
terrible, only one lane north now as they expanded the pavement and put in a bus lane by the 02.
For the perusal of @rcs1000 and other lovers of Tether fraud - today I learnt there are a whole pile of unregulated Forex markets that use Tether as their on/off ramp
Tether may very well go down as the greatest fraud in history.
(It's a fascinating shell game: the goal of Tether management is to get other people to hold Tether at 1:1 with the USD, by buying when it falls below 99.5cents, and therefore earning a tiny profit. But, of course, these people are picking up pennies in front of a bulldozer, as Tether is being robbed blind. I suspect that at least $20bn of the $62bn has been looted from it already, and at some point it will come crashing down, when people realise there isn't $60bn sitting on the books.)
Oh, everyone already know the money isn't there. Fully half of Tether's attested to holdings are "Commercial Paper". According to their general council it is A-2 or above.
That means, if Tether and their general council is being truthful, Tether owns 3% of the entire US Commercial Paper market with two full percentage points purchased in the last 3 months. Let that sink in.
No one actually believes this but everyone knows that without Tether the Bitcoin price goes down and to the right not up and to the right.
So what happens when Tether collapses? Does it bring Bitcoin down with it? Is it damaging to the wider economy?
Given Bitcoin’s carbon footprint is something like 0.25% of the US’s (i.e. huge) the sooner it crashes the better.
The latest estimate of Bitcoin electricity usage was 129TWh/year, which is more than 85% of countries.
The crash is going to be spectacular to watch from a distance.
When would it be likely ?
I invest, a small amount, via SIPP and S&S ISA but avoid stuff like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple and the rest. I just don’t get them and when my Facebook and twitter feed was regularly full of scams concerning them it just made me incredibly wary. I like to invest in stuff I understand. I don’t understand these and I don’t understand NFTs
Most of the points raised above are refuted, or at the very least, countered, at https://endthefud.org/
The energy stuff is a complete nonsense, bitcoin actually incentivises clean energy usage because clean energy produces too much energy when demand is low and not enough when it's high. Since most of that energy can't be stored, it's wasted - raising overall unit cost. As Bitcoin is on 24/7, bitcoin creates a market for that surplus clean energy, thus incentivising more production of clean energy as there is an increased market for it.
As far as tether goes, people have been saying it's going to collapse for years - surprise surprise, it hasn't. And even if it did, it represents about 4% of the total crypto market cap, scammier coins like bitconnect have collapsed without crashing the entire crypto market.
(1) BTC is (mostly) mined in China using coal. Indeed, it is often the owners of the coal plants themselves who have a side business BTC mining. It's quite efficient for them to have a sideline in BTC because during off peak periods in China electricity, they move over to BTC mining. That being said, it's still coal being being used for mining.
(2) Tether is a scam. It's not complicated. They have printed more Tether (by far) than they have in assets. Just because it hasn't collapsed yet, doesn't mean it won't.
(3) When Tether collapses, there will be ripples. I'm not a "all crypto is doomed" kind of guy, but there will be consequences.
Bitcoin ultimately wants cheap energy - surplus energy from renewable sources that would otherwise be wasted will eventually become cheaper than coal. Imagine having a solar panel on your house. On a really bright day, or when you're not at home, much of that energy is wasted. It could be converted to bitcoin mining at no cost to you, or sold to bitcoin miners at rock bottom prices rather than being wasted. Imagine that transformation taking place on a global scale. That is likely where we are headed within the next decade, even if we aren't there now.
Bitcoin creates a market for renewable energy that would otherwise be wasted, making construction of more renewable energy sources more economically viable.
But. Even if it didn't. Not all energy use is bad - indeed, what is wasteful about using electricity to verify sound money? It has a cost, in terms of energy usage and pollution, but so do christmas lights - which serve no purpose - and people don't want to ban them. Gold mining has a huge impact on the environment, nobody complains about it. And the US dollar is backed by bombs and aircraft carriers.
In terms of tether, it represents 60 bn of a 1.62 tn crypto market - so it wouldn't be fatal if it collapsed. But I'm inclined to agree with you, it's scammy and it would cause lasting damage to the crypto ecosystem that would take a long time to recover from. Having said that, the US dollar is a fractional reserve and that's still chugging along...
Tether is being used by Asian companies to bypass the banking system as it quicker and cheaper.
The fundamental idea behind Tether is sound.
You have an entity that controls the Tether blockchain, and makes a market in the coin. And it works like an ETF - if the price goes up to $1.01, then they sell a Tether, and if it falls to $0.99 then they buy one. There is therefore a small profit that is made by the controllers of Tether that is then boosted by investing the dollars received from the sale of Tether in short dated government bonds and the money markets.
And because they would be backed 1:1 with actual dollars in the bank, they could always be the buyer of last resort.
Done right, $60bn of Tether generates $300m or so of profits for the owners of Tether.
There's only one minor problem.
The owners of Tether were not sensible. Instead of seeing this as a long-term, good return type business they saw there was more money to be made by simply printing Tether, using it to buy Bitcoin, and then selling the Bitcoin for US Dollars.
Even if you believe the controllers of Tether, they only have assets for 71 cents in the dollar. And I suspect the real number is less than half.
Not that I particularly doubt your conclusion but the same has been said for a very long time about the precious metals ETFs that reduce costs by using synthetic replication rather than being 100% backed by allocated and fully insured bullion. And it’s been tested through ups and down now. If it’s not broken by now then when?
Tether is like a Gold ETF that says it holds physical gold but all it has is an empty warehouse and some IOUs.
The genius of Tether though is that their terms and conditions allow them to unilaterally halt redemption for any reason at any time and you have to have an account with them to Redeem Tethers And they do not let you, as a member of the public open an account.
There is no way for their to be a run on Tether as Tether don't pay out.
That's not really true. Lots of people own Tether, and Tether is traded. They support the price of Tether by using some of their holdings to buy if the price drops below $0.99.
Because everyone believes they will continue to do so, other people buy Tether for $0.992, and then sell out for $1.001 (or whatever).
It is perfectly possible for the price of Tether to drop to $0.85 or $0.80 or $0.60. Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised if the price of Tether were to fall below intrinsic at some point.
I did see the comment on the opriginal Twitter thread which inquired why any of our fellow Europeans would feel safe working at Spoons after the last few years.
Being controversial, but Brexit voters will look at this and think “unfortunate, but at least we control immigration etc etc”. Presumably the UK could be more liberal with some of its casual work visas.
Plus, as someone has also added - ending furlough will see more people requiring jobs
If you don't have official lockdowns, you still have lockdowns. They're just unofficial ones that happen when everyone is utterly terrified to go out.
You have a series of waves that come and go, as people get scared of the virus and stay home. So the choice is not between zero years locked down and 66 million, it's between "n" and 66 million.
Plus there's the fact that without restrctions, we would probably have had higher peaks, and we might have actually seem the health service overloaded, leading to situtations like happened in New York or Milan early last year (or Manaus). And when you have those kind of peaks, you're not killing off people with just 10 years to go, you are killing off those with 20 or 30 or 40.
If you want to see just how bad excess deaths can go, look at Ecuador: they have been running at deaths 3x the normal level. Three times. We've been at 20-30% above normal levels for the last year.
Without restrictions, we would still have lost decades of peoples' lives to lockdowns, and we would have had much higher death tolls.
Now, should we have opened up much quicker? Damn right we should. But the idea that "no restrictions" is milk and honey is for the birds.
Yes to the illusion of lockdown free paradise. I'm also aware of rather a lot of people who have had quite a decent year, and some who quietly say they've really preferred it (mostly people who have seen far more of their young kids and much less commuting) but in view of the horrors that so many have experienced are shy of saying it.
Indeed I am one of those. Lockdowns has signalled the end of the office for me and allowed me the freedom to move home and actually be close to family instead of seeing the once or twice a year which has been the case for the last 33 years. You also can't, i would argue, multiply 66 million by a year to calculate lost time. A lot of those 66 million would have spent 4 or 5 nights a week sat on the sofa watching tv in any case. I doubt many but the young have 7 day a week of "Wow what a brilliant day" and for most of us many days of the week aren't much different to lockdown
Sorry to post without introduction. But I am a lockdown winner. My property has gone up by at least £100k, and these price rises show no signs of slowing. I have a whole host of new employment opportunities as the acceptance of remote working means that I can take jobs in London without the daily supercommute. We got to spend a lot of time in the garden and save a lot money. At worst the restrictions were a bit annoying. All this would be fine but for the civilisation ending woke cultural revolution that has come with it. Everyone has their own opinion on this, but in my case I am seriously looking at emigration.
Welcome 'darkage'. Sounds like you have a great life. Just out of curiosity, how has this "civilisation ending woke cultural revolution" had such an impact on that good life that you're considering emigrating?
Some people see the 'woke' as the reinvention of western civilisation, I see it as the end of western civilisation. As I said, it is a personal opinion and I am not mad about it in the way that some people are. We will have to see who is right.
I think it could end there, yes, because we might bring the whole house down on ourselves through reductionist identity politics and year-zeroism. I even wrote a thread header on it once.
But, I don't think there's anywhere to "go". I think the battle needs to be won here and at least we have a Government in office here that sees that.
Surely there is a basic problem here. As there is no "woke" threat and therefore no battle to fight, even this government can only disappoint you by dispensing platitudes in your direction whilst taking you and your vote for granted.
No, I think on iconoclasm, gender clinics for children, CRT, free speech at universities, unconscious bias training and other forms of Wokery this Government is pushing back. And I'm delighted to see it.
The U.K. hotspots clearly tell the story . The Delta variant has taken a hold of these areas but numbers are around 4000 per day and is not taking hold more widely. Virtually all cases are aged under 50 or unvaccinated - so vaccines work. Thanks for your vital logging with ZOE
Note the Zero COVID obsessives (Deepti Gurdasani and Pagel) on the attack in the replies because it doesn't fit with their panic laden doom mongering.
Indeed Gurdasani post a picture of % that is b.1.617.2, and not how many cases. I am sure it is widespread, but it is not taking off in most places.
Yes that is a misleading chart there. If deaths are the most important number, followed by hospitalisation, illness, then cases, the last thing we ought to care about is which strain is the most common. We are not trying to eliminate a particular strain, we are trying to limit the harm.
One start way of looking at this is to look at the ranking site wouldmeater:
Not the only or even the best tracking site, I know but its able to rank nations so im using it for this.
If you listed the nations by deaths per million averaged over the last week, how many places are doing worse than the UK?
119
Yes 119 nations are doing worse than the UK, and many of the better are really small places like the Vatican on 0. or places where the numbers may not be reliable.
I'm slightly wary of worldometers (not least because it's owned by the Chinese). But it does source its data. It doesn't appear, yet, to have included the update to the Peru data which elevates them to the top of the mortality rate table.
I did not relies it was owned by the Chinese, I might start to quote it less often now,
who owns 'OurWouldInDate'? or are there other places I should look at?
The problem is that their data is not particularly user friendly. I think that they try to do too much. The Worldometer presentation is much better in that regard.
But neither site is particularly accurate. Every time I've double checked something from either site it has been way wrong. Admittedly, I only checked things that I found "surprising" so maybe most of it is OK, but you just can't trust the data on either site.
The population estimate for the UK on ourworldindata is 67,886,004. According to worldometers it is 68,211,789
ONS : In mid-2019, the population of the UK reached an estimated 66.8 million. The UK population's growth rate from mid-2018 to mid-2019, at 0.5%, was slower than any year since mid-2004.
I've heard people say that 1 million EU nationals have left the UK since the start of the pandemic as jobs disaperd. I have no idea if this is correct, but it would affect both the deaths per million and the vaccinations per million.
We may get a better idea when they finish counting the census, shory that can't be too long as it was mostly done online?
I had a follow up to the census last week: a woman came to my door and essentially went though the questions with me again. Anybody else had the same?
UK ministers are preparing to add a handful of countries to the government’s “green list” of travel destinations this week, but will stop short of the major expansion the leisure industry has called for.
Territories under consideration include Spain’s Balearic and Canary Islands, plus Malta, although UK government officials said no final decisions have been taken.
Grant Shapps, transport secretary, on Thursday will unveil the revised green list of countries from which people originally travelling from England do not need to quarantine on their return, with changes to the arrangements due to take effect next week. https://www.ft.com/content/b655c705-6172-4fad-8fc1-4f07b6c3045d
For the perusal of @rcs1000 and other lovers of Tether fraud - today I learnt there are a whole pile of unregulated Forex markets that use Tether as their on/off ramp
Tether may very well go down as the greatest fraud in history.
(It's a fascinating shell game: the goal of Tether management is to get other people to hold Tether at 1:1 with the USD, by buying when it falls below 99.5cents, and therefore earning a tiny profit. But, of course, these people are picking up pennies in front of a bulldozer, as Tether is being robbed blind. I suspect that at least $20bn of the $62bn has been looted from it already, and at some point it will come crashing down, when people realise there isn't $60bn sitting on the books.)
Oh, everyone already know the money isn't there. Fully half of Tether's attested to holdings are "Commercial Paper". According to their general council it is A-2 or above.
That means, if Tether and their general council is being truthful, Tether owns 3% of the entire US Commercial Paper market with two full percentage points purchased in the last 3 months. Let that sink in.
No one actually believes this but everyone knows that without Tether the Bitcoin price goes down and to the right not up and to the right.
So what happens when Tether collapses? Does it bring Bitcoin down with it? Is it damaging to the wider economy?
Given Bitcoin’s carbon footprint is something like 0.25% of the US’s (i.e. huge) the sooner it crashes the better.
The latest estimate of Bitcoin electricity usage was 129TWh/year, which is more than 85% of countries.
The crash is going to be spectacular to watch from a distance.
When would it be likely ?
I invest, a small amount, via SIPP and S&S ISA but avoid stuff like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple and the rest. I just don’t get them and when my Facebook and twitter feed was regularly full of scams concerning them it just made me incredibly wary. I like to invest in stuff I understand. I don’t understand these and I don’t understand NFTs
Most of the points raised above are refuted, or at the very least, countered, at https://endthefud.org/
The energy stuff is a complete nonsense, bitcoin actually incentivises clean energy usage because clean energy produces too much energy when demand is low and not enough when it's high. Since most of that energy can't be stored, it's wasted - raising overall unit cost. As Bitcoin is on 24/7, bitcoin creates a market for that surplus clean energy, thus incentivising more production of clean energy as there is an increased market for it.
As far as tether goes, people have been saying it's going to collapse for years - surprise surprise, it hasn't. And even if it did, it represents about 4% of the total crypto market cap, scammier coins like bitconnect have collapsed without crashing the entire crypto market.
(1) BTC is (mostly) mined in China using coal. Indeed, it is often the owners of the coal plants themselves who have a side business BTC mining. It's quite efficient for them to have a sideline in BTC because during off peak periods in China electricity, they move over to BTC mining. That being said, it's still coal being being used for mining.
(2) Tether is a scam. It's not complicated. They have printed more Tether (by far) than they have in assets. Just because it hasn't collapsed yet, doesn't mean it won't.
(3) When Tether collapses, there will be ripples. I'm not a "all crypto is doomed" kind of guy, but there will be consequences.
Bitcoin ultimately wants cheap energy - surplus energy from renewable sources that would otherwise be wasted will eventually become cheaper than coal. Imagine having a solar panel on your house. On a really bright day, or when you're not at home, much of that energy is wasted. It could be converted to bitcoin mining at no cost to you, or sold to bitcoin miners at rock bottom prices rather than being wasted. Imagine that transformation taking place on a global scale. That is likely where we are headed within the next decade, even if we aren't there now.
Bitcoin creates a market for renewable energy that would otherwise be wasted, making construction of more renewable energy sources more economically viable.
But. Even if it didn't. Not all energy use is bad - indeed, what is wasteful about using electricity to verify sound money? It has a cost, in terms of energy usage and pollution, but so do christmas lights - which serve no purpose - and people don't want to ban them. Gold mining has a huge impact on the environment, nobody complains about it. And the US dollar is backed by bombs and aircraft carriers.
In terms of tether, it represents 60 bn of a 1.62 tn crypto market - so it wouldn't be fatal if it collapsed. But I'm inclined to agree with you, it's scammy and it would cause lasting damage to the crypto ecosystem that would take a long time to recover from. Having said that, the US dollar is a fractional reserve and that's still chugging along...
Tether is being used by Asian companies to bypass the banking system as it quicker and cheaper.
The fundamental idea behind Tether is sound.
You have an entity that controls the Tether blockchain, and makes a market in the coin. And it works like an ETF - if the price goes up to $1.01, then they sell a Tether, and if it falls to $0.99 then they buy one. There is therefore a small profit that is made by the controllers of Tether that is then boosted by investing the dollars received from the sale of Tether in short dated government bonds and the money markets.
And because they would be backed 1:1 with actual dollars in the bank, they could always be the buyer of last resort.
Done right, $60bn of Tether generates $300m or so of profits for the owners of Tether.
There's only one minor problem.
The owners of Tether were not sensible. Instead of seeing this as a long-term, good return type business they saw there was more money to be made by simply printing Tether, using it to buy Bitcoin, and then selling the Bitcoin for US Dollars.
Even if you believe the controllers of Tether, they only have assets for 71 cents in the dollar. And I suspect the real number is less than half.
Not that I particularly doubt your conclusion but the same has been said for a very long time about the precious metals ETFs that reduce costs by using synthetic replication rather than being 100% backed by allocated and fully insured bullion. And it’s been tested through ups and down now. If it’s not broken by now then when?
Synthetic replication is fine. If you own $1 plus one future over $1 of gold, then it is functionally identical to owning $1 of gold.
By contrast, Tether is rather simpler. It is alleged that the controllers of Tether print the currency for themselves, then swap it into Bitcoin, then they sell the Bitcoin. In this way, they steal billions (possibly tens of billions) of dollars.
I did see the comment on the opriginal Twitter thread which inquired why any of our fellow Europeans would feel safe working at Spoons after the last few years.
Being controversial, but Brexit voters will look at this and think “unfortunate, but at least we control immigration etc etc”. Presumably the UK could be more liberal with some of its casual work visas.
Plus, as someone has also added - ending furlough will see more people requiring jobs
As a brexit voter, I would say to Mr Spoon that this is a market signal that he should pay his workers more. Upward pressure on low skilled wages was after all one of the key motivating factors for Brexit.
David Wong @LiverToronto · 1h Replying to @AdamJKucharski Perhaps public service announcements to educate those who do not want vaccinations on what to do when infected: -Which contacts (from when) to notify -How to isolate safely -When they need to get to the hospital -Clarify their wishes if things go bad
Last one is interesting/bonkers. Public info campaign advising you sorting out your affairs and last wishes if you are turning down the vaccine.
Halfway through, a bunch of kids, age about 16-18 - of ALL races - white, Muslim, girls in hijabs, black kids, white skateboarders, everyone - had a water fight. As you would in this heat and sun
They were careful to say Sorry we don't want to upset you, they maneuvered around us, they had ecstatic fun. Then they stopped, and they politely retreated to their deckchairs, where they laughed, drank and gossiped, then cleared up their litter and went home.
It was encouraging in a wonderful way. London at its best. And, at its best, London can be brilliant and optimistic, a glimpse of a multiracial future where the kids don't see race, and just rub along, in a manner that was denied to me. And I believe they don't see race. It comes naturally to them
And zero deaths. Today is a big fat YAY
And that's both the joy and the tragedy. The joy that it's trivially obvious what the future looks like, people rubbing along and not causing offence to others because causing offence is a dickish thing to do. Post-woke without the humourless censoriousness that tends to go with woke now. We'll keep that statue, because he really was a national hero, but yeah that other guy really ought to be hidden away from the main road. And it's blatantly a better future, in the same way that hardly anyone would really want to reintroduce Section 28. We'll laugh with Julian and Sandy, not at them. Especially when they mock us.
And a tragedy that, for all sorts of reasons, that's denied to those of us above a certain age. It's at best an effort for us, at worst an unpleasant battle.
The most utterly depressing thing about Woke is that it says:
LOOK AT THE COLOUR OF THEIR SKIN
Whereas, certainly in the UK, kids are naturally overcoming this. They are growing up colourblind, I really believe that (at least in parts of the UK that I have witnessed)
My daughters would be perplexed by the demand to focus on skin colour. It makes them awkward. They don't consider it an issue at all. I'm sure it is an issue with older generations, but given time we will all overcome it, or die off
And yet Modern Wokeness says we have to go back 50 years and obsess about pigmentation. I see where the obsession comes from - AMERICA! WHITE GUILT!- but it does not feel like a step forward, in the UK
So was the big Starmer interview interesting? Big bump in the polls incoming?
Still going on, it only started at 9 30pm after Corrie
Mrs U had it on as I wandered past, I heard some story about a Mr K Starmer living this crazy life of fast cars and loose women, but apparently it was some bloke impersonating him...how disappointing.
If you don't have official lockdowns, you still have lockdowns. They're just unofficial ones that happen when everyone is utterly terrified to go out.
You have a series of waves that come and go, as people get scared of the virus and stay home. So the choice is not between zero years locked down and 66 million, it's between "n" and 66 million.
Plus there's the fact that without restrctions, we would probably have had higher peaks, and we might have actually seem the health service overloaded, leading to situtations like happened in New York or Milan early last year (or Manaus). And when you have those kind of peaks, you're not killing off people with just 10 years to go, you are killing off those with 20 or 30 or 40.
If you want to see just how bad excess deaths can go, look at Ecuador: they have been running at deaths 3x the normal level. Three times. We've been at 20-30% above normal levels for the last year.
Without restrictions, we would still have lost decades of peoples' lives to lockdowns, and we would have had much higher death tolls.
Now, should we have opened up much quicker? Damn right we should. But the idea that "no restrictions" is milk and honey is for the birds.
Yes to the illusion of lockdown free paradise. I'm also aware of rather a lot of people who have had quite a decent year, and some who quietly say they've really preferred it (mostly people who have seen far more of their young kids and much less commuting) but in view of the horrors that so many have experienced are shy of saying it.
Indeed I am one of those. Lockdowns has signalled the end of the office for me and allowed me the freedom to move home and actually be close to family instead of seeing the once or twice a year which has been the case for the last 33 years. You also can't, i would argue, multiply 66 million by a year to calculate lost time. A lot of those 66 million would have spent 4 or 5 nights a week sat on the sofa watching tv in any case. I doubt many but the young have 7 day a week of "Wow what a brilliant day" and for most of us many days of the week aren't much different to lockdown
Sorry to post without introduction. But I am a lockdown winner. My property has gone up by at least £100k, and these price rises show no signs of slowing. I have a whole host of new employment opportunities as the acceptance of remote working means that I can take jobs in London without the daily supercommute. We got to spend a lot of time in the garden and save a lot money. At worst the restrictions were a bit annoying. All this would be fine but for the civilisation ending woke cultural revolution that has come with it. Everyone has their own opinion on this, but in my case I am seriously looking at emigration.
Welcome 'darkage'. Sounds like you have a great life. Just out of curiosity, how has this "civilisation ending woke cultural revolution" had such an impact on that good life that you're considering emigrating?
Some people see the 'woke' as the reinvention of western civilisation, I see it as the end of western civilisation. As I said, it is a personal opinion and I am not mad about it in the way that some people are. We will have to see who is right.
I think it could end there, yes, because we might bring the whole house down on ourselves through reductionist identity politics and year-zeroism. I even wrote a thread header on it once.
But, I don't think there's anywhere to "go". I think the battle needs to be won here and at least we have a Government in office here that sees that.
The problem is not really with the government. The problem is with the English. The government doesn't have popular support for its war on woke. It is all a bit half hearted and viewed as a fringe issue, when it is actually an existential threat to civilisation. You have to look at what happened last year with the desecration of the centopah and conclude it is basically game over, the generation that cared about these things has died out.
I don't know what the answer is; emigration in my case is an option due to family connections; I am simply trying to pursue a viable alternative when I can see everything here falling apart, despite my apparent middle class status and affluence.
So where are you moving too, given most of the Western world is going through the same Woke clashes and in the US the problem is even more pronounced than here? Eastern Europe or Singapore?
It is actually a fairly uniquely anglo american issue.
It is most pronounced in the Anglosphere but France has also seen statues toppled and Merkel's Germany is full of self flagellation about its past. Russia, Poland, Israel, the Far East and at a push Spain and Italy are your best bets to stay Woke free
If the only criteria was to find a stable and successful non woke country the best option would be China
Provided you can accept the risk of jail or firing squad if you criticise the state, Israel and Singapore are wealthier per head than China, more democratic and also largely woke free
That would be the Israel that had the first Trans winner of Eurovision?
Israel has a thriving LGBT community, and some of the most reactionary obscurantism side by side.
Singapore has such a low fertility rate that without immigration it would be quickly extinct.
Of course "anti-Woke" countries tend to be very chauvinist and emigrating there puts you automatically into a suspect character group, as immigrant.
Perhaps Ulster would be a better bet, and join the TUV or DUP?
Wokeism is not so much about being socially liberal.
It is perfectly possible to be gay and unwoke eg David Starkey or Douglas Murray.
It is not even so much about being pro immigration, there are plenty of patriotic immigrants.
Wokeism is more about hating your nation's past and culture and wishing to erase it
No it isn't. Being Woke is becoming aware of historical injustice, particularly racial injustice.
That is not hating your countries past, it is developing a more rounded view of it. Hagiography is not history.
These arguments are pointless, since people define being woke in different ways (both in praise and insult), and certainly practice it in different ways (from those who are woke without using the term, to those who are unwoke but think they are and lecture people, to those who do practice what they preach in the intended meaning of the word). Either side can find someone classified as woke, by themselves or others, and find evidence for it meaning what they want.
Halfway through, a bunch of kids, age about 16-18 - of ALL races - white, Muslim, girls in hijabs, black kids, white skateboarders, everyone - had a water fight. As you would in this heat and sun
They were careful to say Sorry we don't want to upset you, they maneuvered around us, they had ecstatic fun. Then they stopped, and they politely retreated to their deckchairs, where they laughed, drank and gossiped, then cleared up their litter and went home.
It was encouraging in a wonderful way. London at its best. And, at its best, London can be brilliant and optimistic, a glimpse of a multiracial future where the kids don't see race, and just rub along, in a manner that was denied to me. And I believe they don't see race. It comes naturally to them
And zero deaths. Today is a big fat YAY
And that's both the joy and the tragedy. The joy that it's trivially obvious what the future looks like, people rubbing along and not causing offence to others because causing offence is a dickish thing to do. Post-woke without the humourless censoriousness that tends to go with woke now. We'll keep that statue, because he really was a national hero, but yeah that other guy really ought to be hidden away from the main road. And it's blatantly a better future, in the same way that hardly anyone would really want to reintroduce Section 28. We'll laugh with Julian and Sandy, not at them. Especially when they mock us.
And a tragedy that, for all sorts of reasons, that's denied to those of us above a certain age. It's at best an effort for us, at worst an unpleasant battle.
I liked, but "it's trivially obvious what v the future looks like" just gives a little knot in the stomach. It's not guaranteed, and I just hope we don't get a generation down the line and think, wistfully, "that was the future, once".
I did see the comment on the opriginal Twitter thread which inquired why any of our fellow Europeans would feel safe working at Spoons after the last few years.
Being controversial, but Brexit voters will look at this and think “unfortunate, but at least we control immigration etc etc”. Presumably the UK could be more liberal with some of its casual work visas.
Plus, as someone has also added - ending furlough will see more people requiring jobs
As a brexit voter, I would say to Mr Spoon that this is a market signal that he should pay his workers more. Upward pressure on low skilled wages was after all one of the key motivating factors for Brexit.
If you don't have official lockdowns, you still have lockdowns. They're just unofficial ones that happen when everyone is utterly terrified to go out.
You have a series of waves that come and go, as people get scared of the virus and stay home. So the choice is not between zero years locked down and 66 million, it's between "n" and 66 million.
Plus there's the fact that without restrctions, we would probably have had higher peaks, and we might have actually seem the health service overloaded, leading to situtations like happened in New York or Milan early last year (or Manaus). And when you have those kind of peaks, you're not killing off people with just 10 years to go, you are killing off those with 20 or 30 or 40.
If you want to see just how bad excess deaths can go, look at Ecuador: they have been running at deaths 3x the normal level. Three times. We've been at 20-30% above normal levels for the last year.
Without restrictions, we would still have lost decades of peoples' lives to lockdowns, and we would have had much higher death tolls.
Now, should we have opened up much quicker? Damn right we should. But the idea that "no restrictions" is milk and honey is for the birds.
Yes to the illusion of lockdown free paradise. I'm also aware of rather a lot of people who have had quite a decent year, and some who quietly say they've really preferred it (mostly people who have seen far more of their young kids and much less commuting) but in view of the horrors that so many have experienced are shy of saying it.
Indeed I am one of those. Lockdowns has signalled the end of the office for me and allowed me the freedom to move home and actually be close to family instead of seeing the once or twice a year which has been the case for the last 33 years. You also can't, i would argue, multiply 66 million by a year to calculate lost time. A lot of those 66 million would have spent 4 or 5 nights a week sat on the sofa watching tv in any case. I doubt many but the young have 7 day a week of "Wow what a brilliant day" and for most of us many days of the week aren't much different to lockdown
Sorry to post without introduction. But I am a lockdown winner. My property has gone up by at least £100k, and these price rises show no signs of slowing. I have a whole host of new employment opportunities as the acceptance of remote working means that I can take jobs in London without the daily supercommute. We got to spend a lot of time in the garden and save a lot money. At worst the restrictions were a bit annoying. All this would be fine but for the civilisation ending woke cultural revolution that has come with it. Everyone has their own opinion on this, but in my case I am seriously looking at emigration.
Welcome 'darkage'. Sounds like you have a great life. Just out of curiosity, how has this "civilisation ending woke cultural revolution" had such an impact on that good life that you're considering emigrating?
Some people see the 'woke' as the reinvention of western civilisation, I see it as the end of western civilisation. As I said, it is a personal opinion and I am not mad about it in the way that some people are. We will have to see who is right.
I think it could end there, yes, because we might bring the whole house down on ourselves through reductionist identity politics and year-zeroism. I even wrote a thread header on it once.
But, I don't think there's anywhere to "go". I think the battle needs to be won here and at least we have a Government in office here that sees that.
The problem is not really with the government. The problem is with the English. The government doesn't have popular support for its war on woke. It is all a bit half hearted and viewed as a fringe issue, when it is actually an existential threat to civilisation. You have to look at what happened last year with the desecration of the centopah and conclude it is basically game over, the generation that cared about these things has died out.
I don't know what the answer is; emigration in my case is an option due to family connections; I am simply trying to pursue a viable alternative when I can see everything here falling apart, despite my apparent middle class status and affluence.
So where are you moving too, given most of the Western world is going through the same Woke clashes and in the US the problem is even more pronounced than here? Eastern Europe or Singapore?
It is actually a fairly uniquely anglo american issue.
It is most pronounced in the Anglosphere but France has also seen statues toppled and Merkel's Germany is full of self flagellation about its past. Russia, Poland, Israel, the Far East and at a push Spain and Italy are your best bets to stay Woke free
If the only criteria was to find a stable and successful non woke country the best option would be China
Provided you can accept the risk of jail or firing squad if you criticise the state, Israel and Singapore are wealthier per head than China, more democratic and also largely woke free
That would be the Israel that had the first Trans winner of Eurovision?
Israel has a thriving LGBT community, and some of the most reactionary obscurantism side by side.
Singapore has such a low fertility rate that without immigration it would be quickly extinct.
Of course "anti-Woke" countries tend to be very chauvinist and emigrating there puts you automatically into a suspect character group, as immigrant.
Perhaps Ulster would be a better bet, and join the TUV or DUP?
Wokeism is not so much about being socially liberal.
It is perfectly possible to be gay and unwoke eg David Starkey or Douglas Murray.
It is not even so much about being pro immigration, there are plenty of patriotic immigrants.
Wokeism is more about hating your nation's past and culture and wishing to erase it
No it isn't. Being Woke is becoming aware of historical injustice, particularly racial injustice.
That is not hating your countries past, it is developing a more rounded view of it. Hagiography is not history.
No it is far more than that, it is actively wishing to erase all reference to the nation's history and its key figures and the pivotal characters in its culture.
That is what its followers wish to do, deliver a Marxist culturally leftist state and apologists for them like you will allow them to do it
David Wong @LiverToronto · 1h Replying to @AdamJKucharski Perhaps public service announcements to educate those who do not want vaccinations on what to do when infected: -Which contacts (from when) to notify -How to isolate safely -When they need to get to the hospital -Clarify their wishes if things go bad
Last one is interesting/bonkers. Public info campaign advising you sorting out your affairs and last wishes if you are turning down the vaccine.
Seems like good advice if you are in an at risk group. And good advice in general.
For the perusal of @rcs1000 and other lovers of Tether fraud - today I learnt there are a whole pile of unregulated Forex markets that use Tether as their on/off ramp
Tether may very well go down as the greatest fraud in history.
(It's a fascinating shell game: the goal of Tether management is to get other people to hold Tether at 1:1 with the USD, by buying when it falls below 99.5cents, and therefore earning a tiny profit. But, of course, these people are picking up pennies in front of a bulldozer, as Tether is being robbed blind. I suspect that at least $20bn of the $62bn has been looted from it already, and at some point it will come crashing down, when people realise there isn't $60bn sitting on the books.)
Oh, everyone already know the money isn't there. Fully half of Tether's attested to holdings are "Commercial Paper". According to their general council it is A-2 or above.
That means, if Tether and their general council is being truthful, Tether owns 3% of the entire US Commercial Paper market with two full percentage points purchased in the last 3 months. Let that sink in.
No one actually believes this but everyone knows that without Tether the Bitcoin price goes down and to the right not up and to the right.
So what happens when Tether collapses? Does it bring Bitcoin down with it? Is it damaging to the wider economy?
Given Bitcoin’s carbon footprint is something like 0.25% of the US’s (i.e. huge) the sooner it crashes the better.
The latest estimate of Bitcoin electricity usage was 129TWh/year, which is more than 85% of countries.
The crash is going to be spectacular to watch from a distance.
When would it be likely ?
I invest, a small amount, via SIPP and S&S ISA but avoid stuff like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple and the rest. I just don’t get them and when my Facebook and twitter feed was regularly full of scams concerning them it just made me incredibly wary. I like to invest in stuff I understand. I don’t understand these and I don’t understand NFTs
Most of the points raised above are refuted, or at the very least, countered, at https://endthefud.org/
The energy stuff is a complete nonsense, bitcoin actually incentivises clean energy usage because clean energy produces too much energy when demand is low and not enough when it's high. Since most of that energy can't be stored, it's wasted - raising overall unit cost. As Bitcoin is on 24/7, bitcoin creates a market for that surplus clean energy, thus incentivising more production of clean energy as there is an increased market for it.
As far as tether goes, people have been saying it's going to collapse for years - surprise surprise, it hasn't. And even if it did, it represents about 4% of the total crypto market cap, scammier coins like bitconnect have collapsed without crashing the entire crypto market.
(1) BTC is (mostly) mined in China using coal. Indeed, it is often the owners of the coal plants themselves who have a side business BTC mining. It's quite efficient for them to have a sideline in BTC because during off peak periods in China electricity, they move over to BTC mining. That being said, it's still coal being being used for mining.
(2) Tether is a scam. It's not complicated. They have printed more Tether (by far) than they have in assets. Just because it hasn't collapsed yet, doesn't mean it won't.
(3) When Tether collapses, there will be ripples. I'm not a "all crypto is doomed" kind of guy, but there will be consequences.
Bitcoin ultimately wants cheap energy - surplus energy from renewable sources that would otherwise be wasted will eventually become cheaper than coal. Imagine having a solar panel on your house. On a really bright day, or when you're not at home, much of that energy is wasted. It could be converted to bitcoin mining at no cost to you, or sold to bitcoin miners at rock bottom prices rather than being wasted. Imagine that transformation taking place on a global scale. That is likely where we are headed within the next decade, even if we aren't there now.
Bitcoin creates a market for renewable energy that would otherwise be wasted, making construction of more renewable energy sources more economically viable.
But. Even if it didn't. Not all energy use is bad - indeed, what is wasteful about using electricity to verify sound money? It has a cost, in terms of energy usage and pollution, but so do christmas lights - which serve no purpose - and people don't want to ban them. Gold mining has a huge impact on the environment, nobody complains about it. And the US dollar is backed by bombs and aircraft carriers.
In terms of tether, it represents 60 bn of a 1.62 tn crypto market - so it wouldn't be fatal if it collapsed. But I'm inclined to agree with you, it's scammy and it would cause lasting damage to the crypto ecosystem that would take a long time to recover from. Having said that, the US dollar is a fractional reserve and that's still chugging along...
Tether is being used by Asian companies to bypass the banking system as it quicker and cheaper.
The fundamental idea behind Tether is sound.
You have an entity that controls the Tether blockchain, and makes a market in the coin. And it works like an ETF - if the price goes up to $1.01, then they sell a Tether, and if it falls to $0.99 then they buy one. There is therefore a small profit that is made by the controllers of Tether that is then boosted by investing the dollars received from the sale of Tether in short dated government bonds and the money markets.
And because they would be backed 1:1 with actual dollars in the bank, they could always be the buyer of last resort.
Done right, $60bn of Tether generates $300m or so of profits for the owners of Tether.
There's only one minor problem.
The owners of Tether were not sensible. Instead of seeing this as a long-term, good return type business they saw there was more money to be made by simply printing Tether, using it to buy Bitcoin, and then selling the Bitcoin for US Dollars.
Even if you believe the controllers of Tether, they only have assets for 71 cents in the dollar. And I suspect the real number is less than half.
Not that I particularly doubt your conclusion but the same has been said for a very long time about the precious metals ETFs that reduce costs by using synthetic replication rather than being 100% backed by allocated and fully insured bullion. And it’s been tested through ups and down now. If it’s not broken by now then when?
Synthetic replication is fine. If you own $1 plus one future over $1 of gold, then it is functionally identical to owning $1 of gold.
By contrast, Tether is rather simpler. It is alleged that the controllers of Tether print the currency for themselves, then swap it into Bitcoin, then they sell the Bitcoin. In this way, they steal billions (possibly tens of billions) of dollars.
It's quite an amusing parallel to pound sterling. It's becoming the dreaded fiat currency they claim they hate.
Originally the pound was worth a pound of silver, then eventually "a promise to pay" was adopted with a gold standard (and the promise to pay is still on our bank notes) but the tether to the gold standard was broken. Nowaday a pound of silver is working hundreds of pounds I believe, so really a pound sterling is worth less than what a penny ought to be without devaluations.
Tether will be the same. At some point good luck getting even a penny per tethered dollar.
Laurence Fox ✌🏼🇬🇧✌🏼 @LozzaFox · 16m Anne Boleyn was a straight white female.
Stick that in your diversity pipe.
The Diversity agenda is racism. Pure and simple.
I get the criticism and concern about wokeism and share some of it but stuff like this is irrelevant, it’s a drama not a documentary. I think it’s also great marketing from C5 who will probably get decent ratings. I don’t see why a black woman shouldn’t play Anne Boleyn. TV drama can often require willing suspension of disbelief.
If you don't have official lockdowns, you still have lockdowns. They're just unofficial ones that happen when everyone is utterly terrified to go out.
You have a series of waves that come and go, as people get scared of the virus and stay home. So the choice is not between zero years locked down and 66 million, it's between "n" and 66 million.
Plus there's the fact that without restrctions, we would probably have had higher peaks, and we might have actually seem the health service overloaded, leading to situtations like happened in New York or Milan early last year (or Manaus). And when you have those kind of peaks, you're not killing off people with just 10 years to go, you are killing off those with 20 or 30 or 40.
If you want to see just how bad excess deaths can go, look at Ecuador: they have been running at deaths 3x the normal level. Three times. We've been at 20-30% above normal levels for the last year.
Without restrictions, we would still have lost decades of peoples' lives to lockdowns, and we would have had much higher death tolls.
Now, should we have opened up much quicker? Damn right we should. But the idea that "no restrictions" is milk and honey is for the birds.
Yes to the illusion of lockdown free paradise. I'm also aware of rather a lot of people who have had quite a decent year, and some who quietly say they've really preferred it (mostly people who have seen far more of their young kids and much less commuting) but in view of the horrors that so many have experienced are shy of saying it.
Indeed I am one of those. Lockdowns has signalled the end of the office for me and allowed me the freedom to move home and actually be close to family instead of seeing the once or twice a year which has been the case for the last 33 years. You also can't, i would argue, multiply 66 million by a year to calculate lost time. A lot of those 66 million would have spent 4 or 5 nights a week sat on the sofa watching tv in any case. I doubt many but the young have 7 day a week of "Wow what a brilliant day" and for most of us many days of the week aren't much different to lockdown
Sorry to post without introduction. But I am a lockdown winner. My property has gone up by at least £100k, and these price rises show no signs of slowing. I have a whole host of new employment opportunities as the acceptance of remote working means that I can take jobs in London without the daily supercommute. We got to spend a lot of time in the garden and save a lot money. At worst the restrictions were a bit annoying. All this would be fine but for the civilisation ending woke cultural revolution that has come with it. Everyone has their own opinion on this, but in my case I am seriously looking at emigration.
Welcome 'darkage'. Sounds like you have a great life. Just out of curiosity, how has this "civilisation ending woke cultural revolution" had such an impact on that good life that you're considering emigrating?
Some people see the 'woke' as the reinvention of western civilisation, I see it as the end of western civilisation. As I said, it is a personal opinion and I am not mad about it in the way that some people are. We will have to see who is right.
I think it could end there, yes, because we might bring the whole house down on ourselves through reductionist identity politics and year-zeroism. I even wrote a thread header on it once.
But, I don't think there's anywhere to "go". I think the battle needs to be won here and at least we have a Government in office here that sees that.
The problem is not really with the government. The problem is with the English. The government doesn't have popular support for its war on woke. It is all a bit half hearted and viewed as a fringe issue, when it is actually an existential threat to civilisation. You have to look at what happened last year with the desecration of the centopah and conclude it is basically game over, the generation that cared about these things has died out.
I don't know what the answer is; emigration in my case is an option due to family connections; I am simply trying to pursue a viable alternative when I can see everything here falling apart, despite my apparent middle class status and affluence.
So where are you moving too, given most of the Western world is going through the same Woke clashes and in the US the problem is even more pronounced than here? Eastern Europe or Singapore?
It is actually a fairly uniquely anglo american issue.
It is most pronounced in the Anglosphere but France has also seen statues toppled and Merkel's Germany is full of self flagellation about its past. Russia, Poland, Israel, the Far East and at a push Spain and Italy are your best bets to stay Woke free
If the only criteria was to find a stable and successful non woke country the best option would be China
Provided you can accept the risk of jail or firing squad if you criticise the state, Israel and Singapore are wealthier per head than China, more democratic and also largely woke free
That would be the Israel that had the first Trans winner of Eurovision?
Israel has a thriving LGBT community, and some of the most reactionary obscurantism side by side.
Singapore has such a low fertility rate that without immigration it would be quickly extinct.
Of course "anti-Woke" countries tend to be very chauvinist and emigrating there puts you automatically into a suspect character group, as immigrant.
Perhaps Ulster would be a better bet, and join the TUV or DUP?
Wokeism is not so much about being socially liberal.
It is perfectly possible to be gay and unwoke eg David Starkey or Douglas Murray.
It is not even so much about being pro immigration, there are plenty of patriotic immigrants.
Wokeism is more about hating your nation's past and culture and wishing to erase it
No it isn't. Being Woke is becoming aware of historical injustice, particularly racial injustice.
That is not hating your countries past, it is developing a more rounded view of it. Hagiography is not history.
That is essentially the origin of the term Woke. However it has now morphed into a catch-all for any kind of lefty hand-wringing wankery you can think of.
I did see the comment on the opriginal Twitter thread which inquired why any of our fellow Europeans would feel safe working at Spoons after the last few years.
Being controversial, but Brexit voters will look at this and think “unfortunate, but at least we control immigration etc etc”. Presumably the UK could be more liberal with some of its casual work visas.
Plus, as someone has also added - ending furlough will see more people requiring jobs
As a brexit voter, I would say to Mr Spoon that this is a market signal that he should pay his workers more. Upward pressure on low skilled wages was after all one of the key motivating factors for Brexit.
Laurence Fox ✌🏼🇬🇧✌🏼 @LozzaFox · 16m Anne Boleyn was a straight white female.
Stick that in your diversity pipe.
The Diversity agenda is racism. Pure and simple.
I get the criticism and concern about wokeism and share some of it but stuff like this is irrelevant, it’s a drama not a documentary. I think it’s also great marketing from C5 who will probably get decent ratings. I don’t see why a black woman shouldn’t play Anne Boleyn. TV drama can often require willing suspension of disbelief.
I have no problem with it as long as we can also have a white man playing Nelson Mandela
Evening Standard reporting Carrie hired her wedding dress for £45
It showed.
That's just nasty. Give the girl a break. It was her wedding day..
My gf, like almost all my mates not on twitter, saw the abuse under the photo of their wedding pics and just said “Why do people have to be so nasty? Haven’t they got anything better to do?”
Twitter, and politics related social media, is so detached from the real world
The demented level abuse is how they prove they are good people - to themselves.
Except when it’s Diane Abbott because it barely exists and is all about her counting abilities anyway.
Yep. The jokes and memes about "stupid" Diane from white, middle aged blokes who haven't got a racist or sexist bone in their body are because of all the stupid things she says. 🆗
The Burgon Test should apply to this.
If they make the same jokes and memes about both Diane and Burgon then that's neither racist nor sexist. If they make the jokes and memes about Diane but give Burgon a pass then its probably racist and/or sexist.
I don't think Burgon's ever been called a fat black c**t, has he? Whereas Diane frequently has. And it's not really jokes or memes that are the problem, it's abuse.
It’s an interesting question of language.
I’m not convinced that calling someone a “fat black c**t” is racism. It’s just vulgar abuse - the “black” is purely descriptive rather than an active part of the sentence. It’s entirely equivalent to calling someone a “fat ginger c**t”
Oh dear. It really isn't. The equivalent would be a "fat white c**t"' but you don't hear that, do you?
UK ministers are preparing to add a handful of countries to the government’s “green list” of travel destinations this week, but will stop short of the major expansion the leisure industry has called for.
Territories under consideration include Spain’s Balearic and Canary Islands, plus Malta, although UK government officials said no final decisions have been taken.
Grant Shapps, transport secretary, on Thursday will unveil the revised green list of countries from which people originally travelling from England do not need to quarantine on their return, with changes to the arrangements due to take effect next week. https://www.ft.com/content/b655c705-6172-4fad-8fc1-4f07b6c3045d
I'd previously read that the Canaries might get the nod, but not the Balearics - because they're simply too popular. The theory being that the Government can't expand its green list beyond a certain point, regardless of how well the potential destinations are doing, because border control can't cope with all the extra Covid checks. You'd end up with fourteen hour long queues for returning travellers. The Balearics can also be written off under the pretence of their being too interconnected with the mainland. But we shall see what transpires later in the week.
Laurence Fox ✌🏼🇬🇧✌🏼 @LozzaFox · 16m Anne Boleyn was a straight white female.
Stick that in your diversity pipe.
The Diversity agenda is racism. Pure and simple.
I get the criticism and concern about wokeism and share some of it but stuff like this is irrelevant, it’s a drama not a documentary. I think it’s also great marketing from C5 who will probably get decent ratings. I don’t see why a black woman shouldn’t play Anne Boleyn. TV drama can often require willing suspension of disbelief.
One of the best plays I have seen recently, both streamed in a cinema/online and live was the National Theatre's production of Amadeus with Lucian Msamati as Salieri.
Oh, and I'd like to add "The Personal History of David Copperfield" as additional evidence that these people are actors: they are not supposed to be playing themselves!
For the perusal of @rcs1000 and other lovers of Tether fraud - today I learnt there are a whole pile of unregulated Forex markets that use Tether as their on/off ramp
Tether may very well go down as the greatest fraud in history.
(It's a fascinating shell game: the goal of Tether management is to get other people to hold Tether at 1:1 with the USD, by buying when it falls below 99.5cents, and therefore earning a tiny profit. But, of course, these people are picking up pennies in front of a bulldozer, as Tether is being robbed blind. I suspect that at least $20bn of the $62bn has been looted from it already, and at some point it will come crashing down, when people realise there isn't $60bn sitting on the books.)
Oh, everyone already know the money isn't there. Fully half of Tether's attested to holdings are "Commercial Paper". According to their general council it is A-2 or above.
That means, if Tether and their general council is being truthful, Tether owns 3% of the entire US Commercial Paper market with two full percentage points purchased in the last 3 months. Let that sink in.
No one actually believes this but everyone knows that without Tether the Bitcoin price goes down and to the right not up and to the right.
So what happens when Tether collapses? Does it bring Bitcoin down with it? Is it damaging to the wider economy?
Given Bitcoin’s carbon footprint is something like 0.25% of the US’s (i.e. huge) the sooner it crashes the better.
The latest estimate of Bitcoin electricity usage was 129TWh/year, which is more than 85% of countries.
The crash is going to be spectacular to watch from a distance.
When would it be likely ?
I invest, a small amount, via SIPP and S&S ISA but avoid stuff like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple and the rest. I just don’t get them and when my Facebook and twitter feed was regularly full of scams concerning them it just made me incredibly wary. I like to invest in stuff I understand. I don’t understand these and I don’t understand NFTs
Most of the points raised above are refuted, or at the very least, countered, at https://endthefud.org/
The energy stuff is a complete nonsense, bitcoin actually incentivises clean energy usage because clean energy produces too much energy when demand is low and not enough when it's high. Since most of that energy can't be stored, it's wasted - raising overall unit cost. As Bitcoin is on 24/7, bitcoin creates a market for that surplus clean energy, thus incentivising more production of clean energy as there is an increased market for it.
As far as tether goes, people have been saying it's going to collapse for years - surprise surprise, it hasn't. And even if it did, it represents about 4% of the total crypto market cap, scammier coins like bitconnect have collapsed without crashing the entire crypto market.
(1) BTC is (mostly) mined in China using coal. Indeed, it is often the owners of the coal plants themselves who have a side business BTC mining. It's quite efficient for them to have a sideline in BTC because during off peak periods in China electricity, they move over to BTC mining. That being said, it's still coal being being used for mining.
(2) Tether is a scam. It's not complicated. They have printed more Tether (by far) than they have in assets. Just because it hasn't collapsed yet, doesn't mean it won't.
(3) When Tether collapses, there will be ripples. I'm not a "all crypto is doomed" kind of guy, but there will be consequences.
Bitcoin ultimately wants cheap energy - surplus energy from renewable sources that would otherwise be wasted will eventually become cheaper than coal. Imagine having a solar panel on your house. On a really bright day, or when you're not at home, much of that energy is wasted. It could be converted to bitcoin mining at no cost to you, or sold to bitcoin miners at rock bottom prices rather than being wasted. Imagine that transformation taking place on a global scale. That is likely where we are headed within the next decade, even if we aren't there now.
Bitcoin creates a market for renewable energy that would otherwise be wasted, making construction of more renewable energy sources more economically viable.
But. Even if it didn't. Not all energy use is bad - indeed, what is wasteful about using electricity to verify sound money? It has a cost, in terms of energy usage and pollution, but so do christmas lights - which serve no purpose - and people don't want to ban them. Gold mining has a huge impact on the environment, nobody complains about it. And the US dollar is backed by bombs and aircraft carriers.
In terms of tether, it represents 60 bn of a 1.62 tn crypto market - so it wouldn't be fatal if it collapsed. But I'm inclined to agree with you, it's scammy and it would cause lasting damage to the crypto ecosystem that would take a long time to recover from. Having said that, the US dollar is a fractional reserve and that's still chugging along...
Tether is being used by Asian companies to bypass the banking system as it quicker and cheaper.
Money is energy. If the gold price goes up then cash is borrowed and more energy is used to expand production. The Pentagon use 4.6 billion gallons of fuel a year to protect the US petro trading empire. That is accepted and not discussed. You expend energy working for yourself, a capitalist or the state to earn money
Ah, but what about Finchley Road???
terrible, only one lane north now as they expanded the pavement and put in a bus lane by the 02.
That is horrific. It’s almost as bad as what they have done to Euston road
If you don't have official lockdowns, you still have lockdowns. They're just unofficial ones that happen when everyone is utterly terrified to go out.
You have a series of waves that come and go, as people get scared of the virus and stay home. So the choice is not between zero years locked down and 66 million, it's between "n" and 66 million.
Plus there's the fact that without restrctions, we would probably have had higher peaks, and we might have actually seem the health service overloaded, leading to situtations like happened in New York or Milan early last year (or Manaus). And when you have those kind of peaks, you're not killing off people with just 10 years to go, you are killing off those with 20 or 30 or 40.
If you want to see just how bad excess deaths can go, look at Ecuador: they have been running at deaths 3x the normal level. Three times. We've been at 20-30% above normal levels for the last year.
Without restrictions, we would still have lost decades of peoples' lives to lockdowns, and we would have had much higher death tolls.
Now, should we have opened up much quicker? Damn right we should. But the idea that "no restrictions" is milk and honey is for the birds.
Yes to the illusion of lockdown free paradise. I'm also aware of rather a lot of people who have had quite a decent year, and some who quietly say they've really preferred it (mostly people who have seen far more of their young kids and much less commuting) but in view of the horrors that so many have experienced are shy of saying it.
Indeed I am one of those. Lockdowns has signalled the end of the office for me and allowed me the freedom to move home and actually be close to family instead of seeing the once or twice a year which has been the case for the last 33 years. You also can't, i would argue, multiply 66 million by a year to calculate lost time. A lot of those 66 million would have spent 4 or 5 nights a week sat on the sofa watching tv in any case. I doubt many but the young have 7 day a week of "Wow what a brilliant day" and for most of us many days of the week aren't much different to lockdown
Sorry to post without introduction. But I am a lockdown winner. My property has gone up by at least £100k, and these price rises show no signs of slowing. I have a whole host of new employment opportunities as the acceptance of remote working means that I can take jobs in London without the daily supercommute. We got to spend a lot of time in the garden and save a lot money. At worst the restrictions were a bit annoying. All this would be fine but for the civilisation ending woke cultural revolution that has come with it. Everyone has their own opinion on this, but in my case I am seriously looking at emigration.
Welcome 'darkage'. Sounds like you have a great life. Just out of curiosity, how has this "civilisation ending woke cultural revolution" had such an impact on that good life that you're considering emigrating?
Some people see the 'woke' as the reinvention of western civilisation, I see it as the end of western civilisation. As I said, it is a personal opinion and I am not mad about it in the way that some people are. We will have to see who is right.
I think it could end there, yes, because we might bring the whole house down on ourselves through reductionist identity politics and year-zeroism. I even wrote a thread header on it once.
But, I don't think there's anywhere to "go". I think the battle needs to be won here and at least we have a Government in office here that sees that.
The problem is not really with the government. The problem is with the English. The government doesn't have popular support for its war on woke. It is all a bit half hearted and viewed as a fringe issue, when it is actually an existential threat to civilisation. You have to look at what happened last year with the desecration of the centopah and conclude it is basically game over, the generation that cared about these things has died out.
I don't know what the answer is; emigration in my case is an option due to family connections; I am simply trying to pursue a viable alternative when I can see everything here falling apart, despite my apparent middle class status and affluence.
So where are you moving too, given most of the Western world is going through the same Woke clashes and in the US the problem is even more pronounced than here? Eastern Europe or Singapore?
It is actually a fairly uniquely anglo american issue.
It is most pronounced in the Anglosphere but France has also seen statues toppled and Merkel's Germany is full of self flagellation about its past. Russia, Poland, Israel, the Far East and at a push Spain and Italy are your best bets to stay Woke free
If the only criteria was to find a stable and successful non woke country the best option would be China
Provided you can accept the risk of jail or firing squad if you criticise the state, Israel and Singapore are wealthier per head than China, more democratic and also largely woke free
That would be the Israel that had the first Trans winner of Eurovision?
Israel has a thriving LGBT community, and some of the most reactionary obscurantism side by side.
Singapore has such a low fertility rate that without immigration it would be quickly extinct.
Of course "anti-Woke" countries tend to be very chauvinist and emigrating there puts you automatically into a suspect character group, as immigrant.
Perhaps Ulster would be a better bet, and join the TUV or DUP?
Wokeism is not so much about being socially liberal.
It is perfectly possible to be gay and unwoke eg David Starkey or Douglas Murray.
It is not even so much about being pro immigration, there are plenty of patriotic immigrants.
Wokeism is more about hating your nation's past and culture and wishing to erase it
No it isn't. Being Woke is becoming aware of historical injustice, particularly racial injustice.
That is not hating your countries past, it is developing a more rounded view of it. Hagiography is not history.
No it is far more than that, it is actively wishing to erase all reference to the nation's history and its key figures and the pivotal characters in its culture.
That is what its followers wish to do, deliver a Marxist culturally leftist state and apologists for them like you will allow them to do it
He can pay his staff more and try and train up more British staff.
That's one idea. However, after trying to fire all his staff, then using his closed premises as a billboard for Covid denial, I've other ideas for what he can do.
I have no intention of ever stepping into a Spoons again.
He's Ratnered the brand in the past year and a bit as far as I'm concerned.
Laurence Fox ✌🏼🇬🇧✌🏼 @LozzaFox · 16m Anne Boleyn was a straight white female.
Stick that in your diversity pipe.
The Diversity agenda is racism. Pure and simple.
I get the criticism and concern about wokeism and share some of it but stuff like this is irrelevant, it’s a drama not a documentary. I think it’s also great marketing from C5 who will probably get decent ratings. I don’t see why a black woman shouldn’t play Anne Boleyn. TV drama can often require willing suspension of disbelief.
I have no problem with it as long as we can also have a white man playing Nelson Mandela
The problem is you then get people like Russell T Davies saying only gay actors should be cast as gay Characters. Now part of this was just to drum up attention for the excellent ‘It’s a Sin’ but it does tap into a direction the film and tv industry seems to be heading in.
If you don't have official lockdowns, you still have lockdowns. They're just unofficial ones that happen when everyone is utterly terrified to go out.
You have a series of waves that come and go, as people get scared of the virus and stay home. So the choice is not between zero years locked down and 66 million, it's between "n" and 66 million.
Plus there's the fact that without restrctions, we would probably have had higher peaks, and we might have actually seem the health service overloaded, leading to situtations like happened in New York or Milan early last year (or Manaus). And when you have those kind of peaks, you're not killing off people with just 10 years to go, you are killing off those with 20 or 30 or 40.
If you want to see just how bad excess deaths can go, look at Ecuador: they have been running at deaths 3x the normal level. Three times. We've been at 20-30% above normal levels for the last year.
Without restrictions, we would still have lost decades of peoples' lives to lockdowns, and we would have had much higher death tolls.
Now, should we have opened up much quicker? Damn right we should. But the idea that "no restrictions" is milk and honey is for the birds.
Yes to the illusion of lockdown free paradise. I'm also aware of rather a lot of people who have had quite a decent year, and some who quietly say they've really preferred it (mostly people who have seen far more of their young kids and much less commuting) but in view of the horrors that so many have experienced are shy of saying it.
Indeed I am one of those. Lockdowns has signalled the end of the office for me and allowed me the freedom to move home and actually be close to family instead of seeing the once or twice a year which has been the case for the last 33 years. You also can't, i would argue, multiply 66 million by a year to calculate lost time. A lot of those 66 million would have spent 4 or 5 nights a week sat on the sofa watching tv in any case. I doubt many but the young have 7 day a week of "Wow what a brilliant day" and for most of us many days of the week aren't much different to lockdown
Sorry to post without introduction. But I am a lockdown winner. My property has gone up by at least £100k, and these price rises show no signs of slowing. I have a whole host of new employment opportunities as the acceptance of remote working means that I can take jobs in London without the daily supercommute. We got to spend a lot of time in the garden and save a lot money. At worst the restrictions were a bit annoying. All this would be fine but for the civilisation ending woke cultural revolution that has come with it. Everyone has their own opinion on this, but in my case I am seriously looking at emigration.
Welcome 'darkage'. Sounds like you have a great life. Just out of curiosity, how has this "civilisation ending woke cultural revolution" had such an impact on that good life that you're considering emigrating?
Some people see the 'woke' as the reinvention of western civilisation, I see it as the end of western civilisation. As I said, it is a personal opinion and I am not mad about it in the way that some people are. We will have to see who is right.
I think it could end there, yes, because we might bring the whole house down on ourselves through reductionist identity politics and year-zeroism. I even wrote a thread header on it once.
But, I don't think there's anywhere to "go". I think the battle needs to be won here and at least we have a Government in office here that sees that.
The problem is not really with the government. The problem is with the English. The government doesn't have popular support for its war on woke. It is all a bit half hearted and viewed as a fringe issue, when it is actually an existential threat to civilisation. You have to look at what happened last year with the desecration of the centopah and conclude it is basically game over, the generation that cared about these things has died out.
I don't know what the answer is; emigration in my case is an option due to family connections; I am simply trying to pursue a viable alternative when I can see everything here falling apart, despite my apparent middle class status and affluence.
So where are you moving too, given most of the Western world is going through the same Woke clashes and in the US the problem is even more pronounced than here? Eastern Europe or Singapore?
It is actually a fairly uniquely anglo american issue.
It is most pronounced in the Anglosphere but France has also seen statues toppled and Merkel's Germany is full of self flagellation about its past. Russia, Poland, Israel, the Far East and at a push Spain and Italy are your best bets to stay Woke free
If the only criteria was to find a stable and successful non woke country the best option would be China
Provided you can accept the risk of jail or firing squad if you criticise the state, Israel and Singapore are wealthier per head than China, more democratic and also largely woke free
That would be the Israel that had the first Trans winner of Eurovision?
Israel has a thriving LGBT community, and some of the most reactionary obscurantism side by side.
Singapore has such a low fertility rate that without immigration it would be quickly extinct.
Of course "anti-Woke" countries tend to be very chauvinist and emigrating there puts you automatically into a suspect character group, as immigrant.
Perhaps Ulster would be a better bet, and join the TUV or DUP?
Wokeism is not so much about being socially liberal.
It is perfectly possible to be gay and unwoke eg David Starkey or Douglas Murray.
It is not even so much about being pro immigration, there are plenty of patriotic immigrants.
Wokeism is more about hating your nation's past and culture and wishing to erase it
No it isn't. Being Woke is becoming aware of historical injustice, particularly racial injustice.
That is not hating your countries past, it is developing a more rounded view of it. Hagiography is not history.
No it is far more than that, it is actively wishing to erase all reference to the nation's history and its key figures and the pivotal characters in its culture.
That is what its followers wish to do, deliver a Marxist culturally leftist state and apologists for them like you will allow them to do it
That is total bollocks from beginning to end.
HYUFD is entirely right. That is the avowed intent of the Woke
You can see why Starmer wants the gates up on Primose Rose Hill...
Well that's popped my happy multiculti rose-wine London balloon
lol
When are the authorities really going to come down hard on this stuff? We had a 14 year old killed today in a similar attack. The other day the old flower seller bloke etc etc etc
None of which hardly gets a mention on the news. The 14 year old story is 10th on the BBC news site, below all sort of crap.
UK ministers are preparing to add a handful of countries to the government’s “green list” of travel destinations this week, but will stop short of the major expansion the leisure industry has called for.
Territories under consideration include Spain’s Balearic and Canary Islands, plus Malta, although UK government officials said no final decisions have been taken.
Grant Shapps, transport secretary, on Thursday will unveil the revised green list of countries from which people originally travelling from England do not need to quarantine on their return, with changes to the arrangements due to take effect next week. https://www.ft.com/content/b655c705-6172-4fad-8fc1-4f07b6c3045d
I'd previously read that the Canaries might get the nod, but not the Balearics - because they're simply too popular. The theory being that the Government can't expand its green list beyond a certain point, regardless of how well the potential destinations are doing, because border control can't cope with all the extra Covid checks. You'd end up with fourteen hour long queues for returning travellers. The Balearics can also be written off under the pretence of their being too interconnected with the mainland. But we shall see what transpires later in the week.
South Sandwich Islands still an option?
Perhaps PB should dispatch Leon to investigate? And maybe chip in a tarp (more useful than a beach umbrella)?
Halfway through, a bunch of kids, age about 16-18 - of ALL races - white, Muslim, girls in hijabs, black kids, white skateboarders, everyone - had a water fight. As you would in this heat and sun
They were careful to say Sorry we don't want to upset you, they maneuvered around us, they had ecstatic fun. Then they stopped, and they politely retreated to their deckchairs, where they laughed, drank and gossiped, then cleared up their litter and went home.
It was encouraging in a wonderful way. London at its best. And, at its best, London can be brilliant and optimistic, a glimpse of a multiracial future where the kids don't see race, and just rub along, in a manner that was denied to me. And I believe they don't see race. It comes naturally to them
And zero deaths. Today is a big fat YAY
And that's both the joy and the tragedy. The joy that it's trivially obvious what the future looks like, people rubbing along and not causing offence to others because causing offence is a dickish thing to do. Post-woke without the humourless censoriousness that tends to go with woke now. We'll keep that statue, because he really was a national hero, but yeah that other guy really ought to be hidden away from the main road. And it's blatantly a better future, in the same way that hardly anyone would really want to reintroduce Section 28. We'll laugh with Julian and Sandy, not at them. Especially when they mock us.
And a tragedy that, for all sorts of reasons, that's denied to those of us above a certain age. It's at best an effort for us, at worst an unpleasant battle.
The most utterly depressing thing about Woke is that it says:
LOOK AT THE COLOUR OF THEIR SKIN
Whereas, certainly in the UK, kids are naturally overcoming this. They are growing up colourblind, I really believe that (at least in parts of the UK that I have witnessed)
My daughters would be perplexed by the demand to focus on skin colour. It makes them awkward. They don't consider it an issue at all. I'm sure it is an issue with older generations, but given time we will all overcome it, or die off
And yet Modern Wokeness says we have to go back 50 years and obsess about pigmentation. I see where the obsession comes from - AMERICA! WHITE GUILT!- but it does not feel like a step forward, in the UK
Your bit of London is the sort of place where I've done a lot of my teaching, and that's why I'm confident that the generation below you and I have worked this out. It's not about the American Obsession- it's just manners and recognising that the UK's history has good people doing bad things, bad people doing good things and everything in between.
And the future view of the past is neither Our Heroic Island Nation, nor is it Britain's List Of Shame. And I envy the generation that is going to be able to go beyond those two sterile and inaccurate stereotypes.
Because I'm not sure that the current generation in power is capable of it.
I did see the comment on the opriginal Twitter thread which inquired why any of our fellow Europeans would feel safe working at Spoons after the last few years.
Being controversial, but Brexit voters will look at this and think “unfortunate, but at least we control immigration etc etc”. Presumably the UK could be more liberal with some of its casual work visas.
Plus, as someone has also added - ending furlough will see more people requiring jobs
As a brexit voter, I would say to Mr Spoon that this is a market signal that he should pay his workers more. Upward pressure on low skilled wages was after all one of the key motivating factors for Brexit.
You can see why Starmer wants the gates up on Primose Rose Hill...
I'm old enough to remember when Hyde Park was a civilized place. But evidently that's no longer the case.
It a serious problem across London (and elsewhere, but particularly London). There are the gang feuds, but also the slightest disagreement currently too often quickly escalates from some shouting / pushing and shoving to that sort of incredible violence and people getting stabved.
If you don't have official lockdowns, you still have lockdowns. They're just unofficial ones that happen when everyone is utterly terrified to go out.
You have a series of waves that come and go, as people get scared of the virus and stay home. So the choice is not between zero years locked down and 66 million, it's between "n" and 66 million.
Plus there's the fact that without restrctions, we would probably have had higher peaks, and we might have actually seem the health service overloaded, leading to situtations like happened in New York or Milan early last year (or Manaus). And when you have those kind of peaks, you're not killing off people with just 10 years to go, you are killing off those with 20 or 30 or 40.
If you want to see just how bad excess deaths can go, look at Ecuador: they have been running at deaths 3x the normal level. Three times. We've been at 20-30% above normal levels for the last year.
Without restrictions, we would still have lost decades of peoples' lives to lockdowns, and we would have had much higher death tolls.
Now, should we have opened up much quicker? Damn right we should. But the idea that "no restrictions" is milk and honey is for the birds.
Yes to the illusion of lockdown free paradise. I'm also aware of rather a lot of people who have had quite a decent year, and some who quietly say they've really preferred it (mostly people who have seen far more of their young kids and much less commuting) but in view of the horrors that so many have experienced are shy of saying it.
Indeed I am one of those. Lockdowns has signalled the end of the office for me and allowed me the freedom to move home and actually be close to family instead of seeing the once or twice a year which has been the case for the last 33 years. You also can't, i would argue, multiply 66 million by a year to calculate lost time. A lot of those 66 million would have spent 4 or 5 nights a week sat on the sofa watching tv in any case. I doubt many but the young have 7 day a week of "Wow what a brilliant day" and for most of us many days of the week aren't much different to lockdown
Sorry to post without introduction. But I am a lockdown winner. My property has gone up by at least £100k, and these price rises show no signs of slowing. I have a whole host of new employment opportunities as the acceptance of remote working means that I can take jobs in London without the daily supercommute. We got to spend a lot of time in the garden and save a lot money. At worst the restrictions were a bit annoying. All this would be fine but for the civilisation ending woke cultural revolution that has come with it. Everyone has their own opinion on this, but in my case I am seriously looking at emigration.
Welcome 'darkage'. Sounds like you have a great life. Just out of curiosity, how has this "civilisation ending woke cultural revolution" had such an impact on that good life that you're considering emigrating?
Some people see the 'woke' as the reinvention of western civilisation, I see it as the end of western civilisation. As I said, it is a personal opinion and I am not mad about it in the way that some people are. We will have to see who is right.
I think it could end there, yes, because we might bring the whole house down on ourselves through reductionist identity politics and year-zeroism. I even wrote a thread header on it once.
But, I don't think there's anywhere to "go". I think the battle needs to be won here and at least we have a Government in office here that sees that.
The problem is not really with the government. The problem is with the English. The government doesn't have popular support for its war on woke. It is all a bit half hearted and viewed as a fringe issue, when it is actually an existential threat to civilisation. You have to look at what happened last year with the desecration of the centopah and conclude it is basically game over, the generation that cared about these things has died out.
I don't know what the answer is; emigration in my case is an option due to family connections; I am simply trying to pursue a viable alternative when I can see everything here falling apart, despite my apparent middle class status and affluence.
So where are you moving too, given most of the Western world is going through the same Woke clashes and in the US the problem is even more pronounced than here? Eastern Europe or Singapore?
It is actually a fairly uniquely anglo american issue.
It is most pronounced in the Anglosphere but France has also seen statues toppled and Merkel's Germany is full of self flagellation about its past. Russia, Poland, Israel, the Far East and at a push Spain and Italy are your best bets to stay Woke free
If the only criteria was to find a stable and successful non woke country the best option would be China
Provided you can accept the risk of jail or firing squad if you criticise the state, Israel and Singapore are wealthier per head than China, more democratic and also largely woke free
That would be the Israel that had the first Trans winner of Eurovision?
Israel has a thriving LGBT community, and some of the most reactionary obscurantism side by side.
Singapore has such a low fertility rate that without immigration it would be quickly extinct.
Of course "anti-Woke" countries tend to be very chauvinist and emigrating there puts you automatically into a suspect character group, as immigrant.
Perhaps Ulster would be a better bet, and join the TUV or DUP?
Wokeism is not so much about being socially liberal.
It is perfectly possible to be gay and unwoke eg David Starkey or Douglas Murray.
It is not even so much about being pro immigration, there are plenty of patriotic immigrants.
Wokeism is more about hating your nation's past and culture and wishing to erase it
No it isn't. Being Woke is becoming aware of historical injustice, particularly racial injustice.
That is not hating your countries past, it is developing a more rounded view of it. Hagiography is not history.
No it is far more than that, it is actively wishing to erase all reference to the nation's history and its key figures and the pivotal characters in its culture.
That is what its followers wish to do, deliver a Marxist culturally leftist state and apologists for them like you will allow them to do it
No, us wokeists do not want to "erase all reference to the nation's history".
We shall always celebrate the great 1966 World Cup victory.
Just rebooked my second jab Online after getting an e-mail. Super easy, and loads more choice of time and locations than the first time round. Only brought it forward by 5 days, but I don't have to traipse to Durham on a Sunday. Had every day from a week from now available and a choice of many time slots. Was a little worried about having to cancel, in case it was pushed back. My advice. Get it done.
Yes, got the mail. Misquoted my booking time, so suspected a scam mail, but umming and arring about whether the take the chance to cancel then rebook on the genuine site.
Got my daughter this week. Last holiday club ended in 10 days isolation which made it a right bleeding waste of cash. Own stupid fault. Also mislaid my car keys before first vaccinated, so found and yomped the direct wooded walk to the vaccine site that I suspected existed, thus setting in stone a vaccination tradition.
If you don't have official lockdowns, you still have lockdowns. They're just unofficial ones that happen when everyone is utterly terrified to go out.
You have a series of waves that come and go, as people get scared of the virus and stay home. So the choice is not between zero years locked down and 66 million, it's between "n" and 66 million.
Plus there's the fact that without restrctions, we would probably have had higher peaks, and we might have actually seem the health service overloaded, leading to situtations like happened in New York or Milan early last year (or Manaus). And when you have those kind of peaks, you're not killing off people with just 10 years to go, you are killing off those with 20 or 30 or 40.
If you want to see just how bad excess deaths can go, look at Ecuador: they have been running at deaths 3x the normal level. Three times. We've been at 20-30% above normal levels for the last year.
Without restrictions, we would still have lost decades of peoples' lives to lockdowns, and we would have had much higher death tolls.
Now, should we have opened up much quicker? Damn right we should. But the idea that "no restrictions" is milk and honey is for the birds.
Yes to the illusion of lockdown free paradise. I'm also aware of rather a lot of people who have had quite a decent year, and some who quietly say they've really preferred it (mostly people who have seen far more of their young kids and much less commuting) but in view of the horrors that so many have experienced are shy of saying it.
Indeed I am one of those. Lockdowns has signalled the end of the office for me and allowed me the freedom to move home and actually be close to family instead of seeing the once or twice a year which has been the case for the last 33 years. You also can't, i would argue, multiply 66 million by a year to calculate lost time. A lot of those 66 million would have spent 4 or 5 nights a week sat on the sofa watching tv in any case. I doubt many but the young have 7 day a week of "Wow what a brilliant day" and for most of us many days of the week aren't much different to lockdown
Sorry to post without introduction. But I am a lockdown winner. My property has gone up by at least £100k, and these price rises show no signs of slowing. I have a whole host of new employment opportunities as the acceptance of remote working means that I can take jobs in London without the daily supercommute. We got to spend a lot of time in the garden and save a lot money. At worst the restrictions were a bit annoying. All this would be fine but for the civilisation ending woke cultural revolution that has come with it. Everyone has their own opinion on this, but in my case I am seriously looking at emigration.
Welcome 'darkage'. Sounds like you have a great life. Just out of curiosity, how has this "civilisation ending woke cultural revolution" had such an impact on that good life that you're considering emigrating?
Some people see the 'woke' as the reinvention of western civilisation, I see it as the end of western civilisation. As I said, it is a personal opinion and I am not mad about it in the way that some people are. We will have to see who is right.
I think it could end there, yes, because we might bring the whole house down on ourselves through reductionist identity politics and year-zeroism. I even wrote a thread header on it once.
But, I don't think there's anywhere to "go". I think the battle needs to be won here and at least we have a Government in office here that sees that.
The problem is not really with the government. The problem is with the English. The government doesn't have popular support for its war on woke. It is all a bit half hearted and viewed as a fringe issue, when it is actually an existential threat to civilisation. You have to look at what happened last year with the desecration of the centopah and conclude it is basically game over, the generation that cared about these things has died out.
I don't know what the answer is; emigration in my case is an option due to family connections; I am simply trying to pursue a viable alternative when I can see everything here falling apart, despite my apparent middle class status and affluence.
So where are you moving too, given most of the Western world is going through the same Woke clashes and in the US the problem is even more pronounced than here? Eastern Europe or Singapore?
It is actually a fairly uniquely anglo american issue.
It is most pronounced in the Anglosphere but France has also seen statues toppled and Merkel's Germany is full of self flagellation about its past. Russia, Poland, Israel, the Far East and at a push Spain and Italy are your best bets to stay Woke free
If the only criteria was to find a stable and successful non woke country the best option would be China
Provided you can accept the risk of jail or firing squad if you criticise the state, Israel and Singapore are wealthier per head than China, more democratic and also largely woke free
That would be the Israel that had the first Trans winner of Eurovision?
Israel has a thriving LGBT community, and some of the most reactionary obscurantism side by side.
Singapore has such a low fertility rate that without immigration it would be quickly extinct.
Of course "anti-Woke" countries tend to be very chauvinist and emigrating there puts you automatically into a suspect character group, as immigrant.
Perhaps Ulster would be a better bet, and join the TUV or DUP?
Wokeism is not so much about being socially liberal.
It is perfectly possible to be gay and unwoke eg David Starkey or Douglas Murray.
It is not even so much about being pro immigration, there are plenty of patriotic immigrants.
Wokeism is more about hating your nation's past and culture and wishing to erase it
No it isn't. Being Woke is becoming aware of historical injustice, particularly racial injustice.
That is not hating your countries past, it is developing a more rounded view of it. Hagiography is not history.
No it is far more than that, it is actively wishing to erase all reference to the nation's history and its key figures and the pivotal characters in its culture.
That is what its followers wish to do, deliver a Marxist culturally leftist state and apologists for them like you will allow them to do it
No, us wokeists do not want to "erase all reference to the nation's history".
We shall always celebrate the great 1966 World Cup victory.
No you won't. There were no black players in the England side for starters so it was an inherently racist team and it just reinforced post Imperial nostalgia.
We should have let Germany win to get over our post WW2 superiority complex
Evening Standard reporting Carrie hired her wedding dress for £45
It showed.
That's just nasty. Give the girl a break. It was her wedding day..
My gf, like almost all my mates not on twitter, saw the abuse under the photo of their wedding pics and just said “Why do people have to be so nasty? Haven’t they got anything better to do?”
Twitter, and politics related social media, is so detached from the real world
The demented level abuse is how they prove they are good people - to themselves.
Except when it’s Diane Abbott because it barely exists and is all about her counting abilities anyway.
Yep. The jokes and memes about "stupid" Diane from white, middle aged blokes who haven't got a racist or sexist bone in their body are because of all the stupid things she says. 🆗
You never told us whether you stand by your earlier contention that she gets "by far the most (and the most visceral and personal) abuse of any MP in the country".
Why should I say things twice?
You shouldn't even have said it once, given that the only evidence you were able to provide said "This article was amended on 20 November 2018. The headline and some text references in an earlier version said that Diane Abbott received more abuse than any other MP. The data involved were from a study of female MPs only". Sensible move to shut up about it for five hours; foolish one to reopen it again.
Ok you spock away trying to argue that Diane does not get a shitload of racist sexist abuse. That the grief she gets is mainly cos she's stupid.
And I'll draw the obvious and correct conclusion.
If you can't even accurately conclude who owns Chatsworth House, perhaps you should hold off on impugning the motives of fellow posters whose only crime is to have a secondary school ability to decipher statistics - or read to the bottom of an article before posting it.
Look, you don't truly believe the racist sexist abuse Diane Abbott gets is driven mainly by her being an idiot rather than being a prominent left wing black woman, do you?
Because in order to communicate there has to be a shared common reality. The basics have to be agreed.
Abbott isn't really a good totem for either side in this argument. I have read a lot of abuse thrown at her for specific things she has said - abuse because she is a Shit Politician. There is also a whole load of other abuse thrown at her because she is a prominent woman who knows her own mind and black to boot which properly winds up the pig ignorant racist misogynist types.
Yes I'm talking about the 2nd category. I'm not suggesting she should get a pass or that all criticism of her is driven by prejudice.
But I also think some of the 'laughing stock' stuff is very questionable. It might not look that way on the surface but I don't see how her actual gaffes merit the level of hilarity.
Eg I recall Philip Hammond when he was the actual Chancellor mixing up his millions and billions in a high profile interview. Didn't lead to anything much, let alone a funfest still running years later.
So, you know, people might think they're just being all urbane and educated and totally impeccable when they come out with this stuff but I reckon there's more to it. Not in every case of course but just as a macro comment.
And btw ditto with similar re Patel. I've seen things said about her - content and tone - which make me wince despite me personally considering her a very bad news politician who is not the brightest.
If you don't have official lockdowns, you still have lockdowns. They're just unofficial ones that happen when everyone is utterly terrified to go out.
You have a series of waves that come and go, as people get scared of the virus and stay home. So the choice is not between zero years locked down and 66 million, it's between "n" and 66 million.
Plus there's the fact that without restrctions, we would probably have had higher peaks, and we might have actually seem the health service overloaded, leading to situtations like happened in New York or Milan early last year (or Manaus). And when you have those kind of peaks, you're not killing off people with just 10 years to go, you are killing off those with 20 or 30 or 40.
If you want to see just how bad excess deaths can go, look at Ecuador: they have been running at deaths 3x the normal level. Three times. We've been at 20-30% above normal levels for the last year.
Without restrictions, we would still have lost decades of peoples' lives to lockdowns, and we would have had much higher death tolls.
Now, should we have opened up much quicker? Damn right we should. But the idea that "no restrictions" is milk and honey is for the birds.
Yes to the illusion of lockdown free paradise. I'm also aware of rather a lot of people who have had quite a decent year, and some who quietly say they've really preferred it (mostly people who have seen far more of their young kids and much less commuting) but in view of the horrors that so many have experienced are shy of saying it.
Indeed I am one of those. Lockdowns has signalled the end of the office for me and allowed me the freedom to move home and actually be close to family instead of seeing the once or twice a year which has been the case for the last 33 years. You also can't, i would argue, multiply 66 million by a year to calculate lost time. A lot of those 66 million would have spent 4 or 5 nights a week sat on the sofa watching tv in any case. I doubt many but the young have 7 day a week of "Wow what a brilliant day" and for most of us many days of the week aren't much different to lockdown
Sorry to post without introduction. But I am a lockdown winner. My property has gone up by at least £100k, and these price rises show no signs of slowing. I have a whole host of new employment opportunities as the acceptance of remote working means that I can take jobs in London without the daily supercommute. We got to spend a lot of time in the garden and save a lot money. At worst the restrictions were a bit annoying. All this would be fine but for the civilisation ending woke cultural revolution that has come with it. Everyone has their own opinion on this, but in my case I am seriously looking at emigration.
Welcome 'darkage'. Sounds like you have a great life. Just out of curiosity, how has this "civilisation ending woke cultural revolution" had such an impact on that good life that you're considering emigrating?
Some people see the 'woke' as the reinvention of western civilisation, I see it as the end of western civilisation. As I said, it is a personal opinion and I am not mad about it in the way that some people are. We will have to see who is right.
I think it could end there, yes, because we might bring the whole house down on ourselves through reductionist identity politics and year-zeroism. I even wrote a thread header on it once.
But, I don't think there's anywhere to "go". I think the battle needs to be won here and at least we have a Government in office here that sees that.
The problem is not really with the government. The problem is with the English. The government doesn't have popular support for its war on woke. It is all a bit half hearted and viewed as a fringe issue, when it is actually an existential threat to civilisation. You have to look at what happened last year with the desecration of the centopah and conclude it is basically game over, the generation that cared about these things has died out.
I don't know what the answer is; emigration in my case is an option due to family connections; I am simply trying to pursue a viable alternative when I can see everything here falling apart, despite my apparent middle class status and affluence.
So where are you moving too, given most of the Western world is going through the same Woke clashes and in the US the problem is even more pronounced than here? Eastern Europe or Singapore?
It is actually a fairly uniquely anglo american issue.
It is most pronounced in the Anglosphere but France has also seen statues toppled and Merkel's Germany is full of self flagellation about its past. Russia, Poland, Israel, the Far East and at a push Spain and Italy are your best bets to stay Woke free
If the only criteria was to find a stable and successful non woke country the best option would be China
Provided you can accept the risk of jail or firing squad if you criticise the state, Israel and Singapore are wealthier per head than China, more democratic and also largely woke free
That would be the Israel that had the first Trans winner of Eurovision?
Israel has a thriving LGBT community, and some of the most reactionary obscurantism side by side.
Singapore has such a low fertility rate that without immigration it would be quickly extinct.
Of course "anti-Woke" countries tend to be very chauvinist and emigrating there puts you automatically into a suspect character group, as immigrant.
Perhaps Ulster would be a better bet, and join the TUV or DUP?
Wokeism is not so much about being socially liberal.
It is perfectly possible to be gay and unwoke eg David Starkey or Douglas Murray.
It is not even so much about being pro immigration, there are plenty of patriotic immigrants.
Wokeism is more about hating your nation's past and culture and wishing to erase it
No it isn't. Being Woke is becoming aware of historical injustice, particularly racial injustice.
That is not hating your countries past, it is developing a more rounded view of it. Hagiography is not history.
No it is far more than that, it is actively wishing to erase all reference to the nation's history and its key figures and the pivotal characters in its culture.
That is what its followers wish to do, deliver a Marxist culturally leftist state and apologists for them like you will allow them to do it
That is total bollocks from beginning to end.
HYUFD is entirely right. That is the avowed intent of the Woke
Who is Woke then? I don't qualify on that criteria, does anyone on here?
If you don't have official lockdowns, you still have lockdowns. They're just unofficial ones that happen when everyone is utterly terrified to go out.
You have a series of waves that come and go, as people get scared of the virus and stay home. So the choice is not between zero years locked down and 66 million, it's between "n" and 66 million.
Plus there's the fact that without restrctions, we would probably have had higher peaks, and we might have actually seem the health service overloaded, leading to situtations like happened in New York or Milan early last year (or Manaus). And when you have those kind of peaks, you're not killing off people with just 10 years to go, you are killing off those with 20 or 30 or 40.
If you want to see just how bad excess deaths can go, look at Ecuador: they have been running at deaths 3x the normal level. Three times. We've been at 20-30% above normal levels for the last year.
Without restrictions, we would still have lost decades of peoples' lives to lockdowns, and we would have had much higher death tolls.
Now, should we have opened up much quicker? Damn right we should. But the idea that "no restrictions" is milk and honey is for the birds.
Yes to the illusion of lockdown free paradise. I'm also aware of rather a lot of people who have had quite a decent year, and some who quietly say they've really preferred it (mostly people who have seen far more of their young kids and much less commuting) but in view of the horrors that so many have experienced are shy of saying it.
Indeed I am one of those. Lockdowns has signalled the end of the office for me and allowed me the freedom to move home and actually be close to family instead of seeing the once or twice a year which has been the case for the last 33 years. You also can't, i would argue, multiply 66 million by a year to calculate lost time. A lot of those 66 million would have spent 4 or 5 nights a week sat on the sofa watching tv in any case. I doubt many but the young have 7 day a week of "Wow what a brilliant day" and for most of us many days of the week aren't much different to lockdown
Sorry to post without introduction. But I am a lockdown winner. My property has gone up by at least £100k, and these price rises show no signs of slowing. I have a whole host of new employment opportunities as the acceptance of remote working means that I can take jobs in London without the daily supercommute. We got to spend a lot of time in the garden and save a lot money. At worst the restrictions were a bit annoying. All this would be fine but for the civilisation ending woke cultural revolution that has come with it. Everyone has their own opinion on this, but in my case I am seriously looking at emigration.
Welcome 'darkage'. Sounds like you have a great life. Just out of curiosity, how has this "civilisation ending woke cultural revolution" had such an impact on that good life that you're considering emigrating?
Some people see the 'woke' as the reinvention of western civilisation, I see it as the end of western civilisation. As I said, it is a personal opinion and I am not mad about it in the way that some people are. We will have to see who is right.
I think it could end there, yes, because we might bring the whole house down on ourselves through reductionist identity politics and year-zeroism. I even wrote a thread header on it once.
But, I don't think there's anywhere to "go". I think the battle needs to be won here and at least we have a Government in office here that sees that.
The problem is not really with the government. The problem is with the English. The government doesn't have popular support for its war on woke. It is all a bit half hearted and viewed as a fringe issue, when it is actually an existential threat to civilisation. You have to look at what happened last year with the desecration of the centopah and conclude it is basically game over, the generation that cared about these things has died out.
I don't know what the answer is; emigration in my case is an option due to family connections; I am simply trying to pursue a viable alternative when I can see everything here falling apart, despite my apparent middle class status and affluence.
So where are you moving too, given most of the Western world is going through the same Woke clashes and in the US the problem is even more pronounced than here? Eastern Europe or Singapore?
It is actually a fairly uniquely anglo american issue.
It is most pronounced in the Anglosphere but France has also seen statues toppled and Merkel's Germany is full of self flagellation about its past. Russia, Poland, Israel, the Far East and at a push Spain and Italy are your best bets to stay Woke free
If the only criteria was to find a stable and successful non woke country the best option would be China
Provided you can accept the risk of jail or firing squad if you criticise the state, Israel and Singapore are wealthier per head than China, more democratic and also largely woke free
That would be the Israel that had the first Trans winner of Eurovision?
Israel has a thriving LGBT community, and some of the most reactionary obscurantism side by side.
Singapore has such a low fertility rate that without immigration it would be quickly extinct.
Of course "anti-Woke" countries tend to be very chauvinist and emigrating there puts you automatically into a suspect character group, as immigrant.
Perhaps Ulster would be a better bet, and join the TUV or DUP?
Wokeism is not so much about being socially liberal.
It is perfectly possible to be gay and unwoke eg David Starkey or Douglas Murray.
It is not even so much about being pro immigration, there are plenty of patriotic immigrants.
Wokeism is more about hating your nation's past and culture and wishing to erase it
No it isn't. Being Woke is becoming aware of historical injustice, particularly racial injustice.
That is not hating your countries past, it is developing a more rounded view of it. Hagiography is not history.
No it is far more than that, it is actively wishing to erase all reference to the nation's history and its key figures and the pivotal characters in its culture.
That is what its followers wish to do, deliver a Marxist culturally leftist state and apologists for them like you will allow them to do it
No, us wokeists do not want to "erase all reference to the nation's history".
We shall always celebrate the great 1966 World Cup victory.
No you won't. There were no black players in the England side for starters and it just reinforced post Imperial nostalgia.
We should have let Germany win to get over our post WW2 superiority complex
You can see why Starmer wants the gates up on Primose Rose Hill...
Open the Bloody Night clubs, let young people that have got to much energy go there and 'bust some moves' on the dance flour' to impress the opposite sex, while drinking and watched by the bouncers.
You can see why Starmer wants the gates up on Primose Rose Hill...
I'm old enough to remember when Hyde Park was a civilized place. But evidently that's no longer the case.
It a serious problem across London (and elsewhere, but particularly London). There are the gang feuds, but also the slightest disagreement currently too often quickly escalates from some shouting / pushing and shoving to that sort of incredible violence and people getting stabved.
Not like the good old days of Teddy boys and razor gangs, or the Krays etc.
Halfway through, a bunch of kids, age about 16-18 - of ALL races - white, Muslim, girls in hijabs, black kids, white skateboarders, everyone - had a water fight. As you would in this heat and sun
They were careful to say Sorry we don't want to upset you, they maneuvered around us, they had ecstatic fun. Then they stopped, and they politely retreated to their deckchairs, where they laughed, drank and gossiped, then cleared up their litter and went home.
It was encouraging in a wonderful way. London at its best. And, at its best, London can be brilliant and optimistic, a glimpse of a multiracial future where the kids don't see race, and just rub along, in a manner that was denied to me. And I believe they don't see race. It comes naturally to them
And zero deaths. Today is a big fat YAY
And that's both the joy and the tragedy. The joy that it's trivially obvious what the future looks like, people rubbing along and not causing offence to others because causing offence is a dickish thing to do. Post-woke without the humourless censoriousness that tends to go with woke now. We'll keep that statue, because he really was a national hero, but yeah that other guy really ought to be hidden away from the main road. And it's blatantly a better future, in the same way that hardly anyone would really want to reintroduce Section 28. We'll laugh with Julian and Sandy, not at them. Especially when they mock us.
And a tragedy that, for all sorts of reasons, that's denied to those of us above a certain age. It's at best an effort for us, at worst an unpleasant battle.
We already had that type of society in the UK by the 1990s. No need for Wokeness.
Just rebooked my second jab Online after getting an e-mail. Super easy, and loads more choice of time and locations than the first time round. Only brought it forward by 5 days, but I don't have to traipse to Durham on a Sunday. Had every day from a week from now available and a choice of many time slots. Was a little worried about having to cancel, in case it was pushed back. My advice. Get it done.
Yes, got the mail. Misquoted my booking time, so suspected a scam mail, but umming and arring about whether the take the chance to cancel then rebook on the genuine site.
Got my daughter this week. Last holiday club ended in 10 days isolation which made it a right bleeding waste of cash. Own stupid fault. Also mislaid my car keys before first vaccinated, so found and yomped the direct wooded walk to the vaccine site that I suspected existed, thus setting in stone a vaccination tradition.
Maybe I will, maybe I won't.
My booking time and date were wrong too on the email if that is any consolation. I, too, suspected a scam. 28 hours thinking about it. Was the correct one via the link. Also got back a genuine email confirmation. Hope your next one goes more smoothly!
UK ministers are preparing to add a handful of countries to the government’s “green list” of travel destinations this week, but will stop short of the major expansion the leisure industry has called for.
Territories under consideration include Spain’s Balearic and Canary Islands, plus Malta, although UK government officials said no final decisions have been taken.
Grant Shapps, transport secretary, on Thursday will unveil the revised green list of countries from which people originally travelling from England do not need to quarantine on their return, with changes to the arrangements due to take effect next week. https://www.ft.com/content/b655c705-6172-4fad-8fc1-4f07b6c3045d
Given that the infection rate in Portugal has doubled during May will it be placed on the amber list ?
If you don't have official lockdowns, you still have lockdowns. They're just unofficial ones that happen when everyone is utterly terrified to go out.
You have a series of waves that come and go, as people get scared of the virus and stay home. So the choice is not between zero years locked down and 66 million, it's between "n" and 66 million.
Plus there's the fact that without restrctions, we would probably have had higher peaks, and we might have actually seem the health service overloaded, leading to situtations like happened in New York or Milan early last year (or Manaus). And when you have those kind of peaks, you're not killing off people with just 10 years to go, you are killing off those with 20 or 30 or 40.
If you want to see just how bad excess deaths can go, look at Ecuador: they have been running at deaths 3x the normal level. Three times. We've been at 20-30% above normal levels for the last year.
Without restrictions, we would still have lost decades of peoples' lives to lockdowns, and we would have had much higher death tolls.
Now, should we have opened up much quicker? Damn right we should. But the idea that "no restrictions" is milk and honey is for the birds.
Yes to the illusion of lockdown free paradise. I'm also aware of rather a lot of people who have had quite a decent year, and some who quietly say they've really preferred it (mostly people who have seen far more of their young kids and much less commuting) but in view of the horrors that so many have experienced are shy of saying it.
Indeed I am one of those. Lockdowns has signalled the end of the office for me and allowed me the freedom to move home and actually be close to family instead of seeing the once or twice a year which has been the case for the last 33 years. You also can't, i would argue, multiply 66 million by a year to calculate lost time. A lot of those 66 million would have spent 4 or 5 nights a week sat on the sofa watching tv in any case. I doubt many but the young have 7 day a week of "Wow what a brilliant day" and for most of us many days of the week aren't much different to lockdown
Sorry to post without introduction. But I am a lockdown winner. My property has gone up by at least £100k, and these price rises show no signs of slowing. I have a whole host of new employment opportunities as the acceptance of remote working means that I can take jobs in London without the daily supercommute. We got to spend a lot of time in the garden and save a lot money. At worst the restrictions were a bit annoying. All this would be fine but for the civilisation ending woke cultural revolution that has come with it. Everyone has their own opinion on this, but in my case I am seriously looking at emigration.
Welcome 'darkage'. Sounds like you have a great life. Just out of curiosity, how has this "civilisation ending woke cultural revolution" had such an impact on that good life that you're considering emigrating?
Some people see the 'woke' as the reinvention of western civilisation, I see it as the end of western civilisation. As I said, it is a personal opinion and I am not mad about it in the way that some people are. We will have to see who is right.
I think it could end there, yes, because we might bring the whole house down on ourselves through reductionist identity politics and year-zeroism. I even wrote a thread header on it once.
But, I don't think there's anywhere to "go". I think the battle needs to be won here and at least we have a Government in office here that sees that.
The problem is not really with the government. The problem is with the English. The government doesn't have popular support for its war on woke. It is all a bit half hearted and viewed as a fringe issue, when it is actually an existential threat to civilisation. You have to look at what happened last year with the desecration of the centopah and conclude it is basically game over, the generation that cared about these things has died out.
I don't know what the answer is; emigration in my case is an option due to family connections; I am simply trying to pursue a viable alternative when I can see everything here falling apart, despite my apparent middle class status and affluence.
So where are you moving too, given most of the Western world is going through the same Woke clashes and in the US the problem is even more pronounced than here? Eastern Europe or Singapore?
It is actually a fairly uniquely anglo american issue.
It is most pronounced in the Anglosphere but France has also seen statues toppled and Merkel's Germany is full of self flagellation about its past. Russia, Poland, Israel, the Far East and at a push Spain and Italy are your best bets to stay Woke free
If the only criteria was to find a stable and successful non woke country the best option would be China
Provided you can accept the risk of jail or firing squad if you criticise the state, Israel and Singapore are wealthier per head than China, more democratic and also largely woke free
That would be the Israel that had the first Trans winner of Eurovision?
Israel has a thriving LGBT community, and some of the most reactionary obscurantism side by side.
Singapore has such a low fertility rate that without immigration it would be quickly extinct.
Of course "anti-Woke" countries tend to be very chauvinist and emigrating there puts you automatically into a suspect character group, as immigrant.
Perhaps Ulster would be a better bet, and join the TUV or DUP?
Wokeism is not so much about being socially liberal.
It is perfectly possible to be gay and unwoke eg David Starkey or Douglas Murray.
It is not even so much about being pro immigration, there are plenty of patriotic immigrants.
Wokeism is more about hating your nation's past and culture and wishing to erase it
No it isn't. Being Woke is becoming aware of historical injustice, particularly racial injustice.
That is not hating your countries past, it is developing a more rounded view of it. Hagiography is not history.
No it is far more than that, it is actively wishing to erase all reference to the nation's history and its key figures and the pivotal characters in its culture.
That is what its followers wish to do, deliver a Marxist culturally leftist state and apologists for them like you will allow them to do it
That is total bollocks from beginning to end.
HYUFD is entirely right. That is the avowed intent of the Woke
Who is Woke then? I don't qualify on that criteria, does anyone on here?
No one at all. The anti-Woke brigade are obsessed with an invisible enemy.
If you don't have official lockdowns, you still have lockdowns. They're just unofficial ones that happen when everyone is utterly terrified to go out.
You have a series of waves that come and go, as people get scared of the virus and stay home. So the choice is not between zero years locked down and 66 million, it's between "n" and 66 million.
Plus there's the fact that without restrctions, we would probably have had higher peaks, and we might have actually seem the health service overloaded, leading to situtations like happened in New York or Milan early last year (or Manaus). And when you have those kind of peaks, you're not killing off people with just 10 years to go, you are killing off those with 20 or 30 or 40.
If you want to see just how bad excess deaths can go, look at Ecuador: they have been running at deaths 3x the normal level. Three times. We've been at 20-30% above normal levels for the last year.
Without restrictions, we would still have lost decades of peoples' lives to lockdowns, and we would have had much higher death tolls.
Now, should we have opened up much quicker? Damn right we should. But the idea that "no restrictions" is milk and honey is for the birds.
Yes to the illusion of lockdown free paradise. I'm also aware of rather a lot of people who have had quite a decent year, and some who quietly say they've really preferred it (mostly people who have seen far more of their young kids and much less commuting) but in view of the horrors that so many have experienced are shy of saying it.
Indeed I am one of those. Lockdowns has signalled the end of the office for me and allowed me the freedom to move home and actually be close to family instead of seeing the once or twice a year which has been the case for the last 33 years. You also can't, i would argue, multiply 66 million by a year to calculate lost time. A lot of those 66 million would have spent 4 or 5 nights a week sat on the sofa watching tv in any case. I doubt many but the young have 7 day a week of "Wow what a brilliant day" and for most of us many days of the week aren't much different to lockdown
Sorry to post without introduction. But I am a lockdown winner. My property has gone up by at least £100k, and these price rises show no signs of slowing. I have a whole host of new employment opportunities as the acceptance of remote working means that I can take jobs in London without the daily supercommute. We got to spend a lot of time in the garden and save a lot money. At worst the restrictions were a bit annoying. All this would be fine but for the civilisation ending woke cultural revolution that has come with it. Everyone has their own opinion on this, but in my case I am seriously looking at emigration.
Welcome 'darkage'. Sounds like you have a great life. Just out of curiosity, how has this "civilisation ending woke cultural revolution" had such an impact on that good life that you're considering emigrating?
Some people see the 'woke' as the reinvention of western civilisation, I see it as the end of western civilisation. As I said, it is a personal opinion and I am not mad about it in the way that some people are. We will have to see who is right.
I think it could end there, yes, because we might bring the whole house down on ourselves through reductionist identity politics and year-zeroism. I even wrote a thread header on it once.
But, I don't think there's anywhere to "go". I think the battle needs to be won here and at least we have a Government in office here that sees that.
The problem is not really with the government. The problem is with the English. The government doesn't have popular support for its war on woke. It is all a bit half hearted and viewed as a fringe issue, when it is actually an existential threat to civilisation. You have to look at what happened last year with the desecration of the centopah and conclude it is basically game over, the generation that cared about these things has died out.
I don't know what the answer is; emigration in my case is an option due to family connections; I am simply trying to pursue a viable alternative when I can see everything here falling apart, despite my apparent middle class status and affluence.
So where are you moving too, given most of the Western world is going through the same Woke clashes and in the US the problem is even more pronounced than here? Eastern Europe or Singapore?
It is actually a fairly uniquely anglo american issue.
It is most pronounced in the Anglosphere but France has also seen statues toppled and Merkel's Germany is full of self flagellation about its past. Russia, Poland, Israel, the Far East and at a push Spain and Italy are your best bets to stay Woke free
If the only criteria was to find a stable and successful non woke country the best option would be China
Provided you can accept the risk of jail or firing squad if you criticise the state, Israel and Singapore are wealthier per head than China, more democratic and also largely woke free
That would be the Israel that had the first Trans winner of Eurovision?
Israel has a thriving LGBT community, and some of the most reactionary obscurantism side by side.
Singapore has such a low fertility rate that without immigration it would be quickly extinct.
Of course "anti-Woke" countries tend to be very chauvinist and emigrating there puts you automatically into a suspect character group, as immigrant.
Perhaps Ulster would be a better bet, and join the TUV or DUP?
Wokeism is not so much about being socially liberal.
It is perfectly possible to be gay and unwoke eg David Starkey or Douglas Murray.
It is not even so much about being pro immigration, there are plenty of patriotic immigrants.
Wokeism is more about hating your nation's past and culture and wishing to erase it
No it isn't. Being Woke is becoming aware of historical injustice, particularly racial injustice.
That is not hating your countries past, it is developing a more rounded view of it. Hagiography is not history.
No it is far more than that, it is actively wishing to erase all reference to the nation's history and its key figures and the pivotal characters in its culture.
That is what its followers wish to do, deliver a Marxist culturally leftist state and apologists for them like you will allow them to do it
No, us wokeists do not want to "erase all reference to the nation's history".
We shall always celebrate the great 1966 World Cup victory.
No you won't. There were no black players in the England side for starters so it was an inherently racist team and it just reinforced post Imperial nostalgia.
We should have let Germany win to get over our post WW2 superiority complex
The people you believe to be Woke don't actually hold the views you believe Woke people hold.
If you don't have official lockdowns, you still have lockdowns. They're just unofficial ones that happen when everyone is utterly terrified to go out.
You have a series of waves that come and go, as people get scared of the virus and stay home. So the choice is not between zero years locked down and 66 million, it's between "n" and 66 million.
Plus there's the fact that without restrctions, we would probably have had higher peaks, and we might have actually seem the health service overloaded, leading to situtations like happened in New York or Milan early last year (or Manaus). And when you have those kind of peaks, you're not killing off people with just 10 years to go, you are killing off those with 20 or 30 or 40.
If you want to see just how bad excess deaths can go, look at Ecuador: they have been running at deaths 3x the normal level. Three times. We've been at 20-30% above normal levels for the last year.
Without restrictions, we would still have lost decades of peoples' lives to lockdowns, and we would have had much higher death tolls.
Now, should we have opened up much quicker? Damn right we should. But the idea that "no restrictions" is milk and honey is for the birds.
Yes to the illusion of lockdown free paradise. I'm also aware of rather a lot of people who have had quite a decent year, and some who quietly say they've really preferred it (mostly people who have seen far more of their young kids and much less commuting) but in view of the horrors that so many have experienced are shy of saying it.
Indeed I am one of those. Lockdowns has signalled the end of the office for me and allowed me the freedom to move home and actually be close to family instead of seeing the once or twice a year which has been the case for the last 33 years. You also can't, i would argue, multiply 66 million by a year to calculate lost time. A lot of those 66 million would have spent 4 or 5 nights a week sat on the sofa watching tv in any case. I doubt many but the young have 7 day a week of "Wow what a brilliant day" and for most of us many days of the week aren't much different to lockdown
Sorry to post without introduction. But I am a lockdown winner. My property has gone up by at least £100k, and these price rises show no signs of slowing. I have a whole host of new employment opportunities as the acceptance of remote working means that I can take jobs in London without the daily supercommute. We got to spend a lot of time in the garden and save a lot money. At worst the restrictions were a bit annoying. All this would be fine but for the civilisation ending woke cultural revolution that has come with it. Everyone has their own opinion on this, but in my case I am seriously looking at emigration.
Welcome 'darkage'. Sounds like you have a great life. Just out of curiosity, how has this "civilisation ending woke cultural revolution" had such an impact on that good life that you're considering emigrating?
Some people see the 'woke' as the reinvention of western civilisation, I see it as the end of western civilisation. As I said, it is a personal opinion and I am not mad about it in the way that some people are. We will have to see who is right.
I think it could end there, yes, because we might bring the whole house down on ourselves through reductionist identity politics and year-zeroism. I even wrote a thread header on it once.
But, I don't think there's anywhere to "go". I think the battle needs to be won here and at least we have a Government in office here that sees that.
The problem is not really with the government. The problem is with the English. The government doesn't have popular support for its war on woke. It is all a bit half hearted and viewed as a fringe issue, when it is actually an existential threat to civilisation. You have to look at what happened last year with the desecration of the centopah and conclude it is basically game over, the generation that cared about these things has died out.
I don't know what the answer is; emigration in my case is an option due to family connections; I am simply trying to pursue a viable alternative when I can see everything here falling apart, despite my apparent middle class status and affluence.
So where are you moving too, given most of the Western world is going through the same Woke clashes and in the US the problem is even more pronounced than here? Eastern Europe or Singapore?
It is actually a fairly uniquely anglo american issue.
It is most pronounced in the Anglosphere but France has also seen statues toppled and Merkel's Germany is full of self flagellation about its past. Russia, Poland, Israel, the Far East and at a push Spain and Italy are your best bets to stay Woke free
If the only criteria was to find a stable and successful non woke country the best option would be China
Provided you can accept the risk of jail or firing squad if you criticise the state, Israel and Singapore are wealthier per head than China, more democratic and also largely woke free
That would be the Israel that had the first Trans winner of Eurovision?
Israel has a thriving LGBT community, and some of the most reactionary obscurantism side by side.
Singapore has such a low fertility rate that without immigration it would be quickly extinct.
Of course "anti-Woke" countries tend to be very chauvinist and emigrating there puts you automatically into a suspect character group, as immigrant.
Perhaps Ulster would be a better bet, and join the TUV or DUP?
Wokeism is not so much about being socially liberal.
It is perfectly possible to be gay and unwoke eg David Starkey or Douglas Murray.
It is not even so much about being pro immigration, there are plenty of patriotic immigrants.
Wokeism is more about hating your nation's past and culture and wishing to erase it
No it isn't. Being Woke is becoming aware of historical injustice, particularly racial injustice.
That is not hating your countries past, it is developing a more rounded view of it. Hagiography is not history.
You can see why Starmer wants the gates up on Primose Rose Hill...
I'm old enough to remember when Hyde Park was a civilized place. But evidently that's no longer the case.
It a serious problem across London (and elsewhere, but particularly London). There are the gang feuds, but also the slightest disagreement currently too often quickly escalates from some shouting / pushing and shoving to that sort of incredible violence and people getting stabved.
Not like the good old days of Teddy boys and razor gangs, or the Krays etc.
If you don't have official lockdowns, you still have lockdowns. They're just unofficial ones that happen when everyone is utterly terrified to go out.
You have a series of waves that come and go, as people get scared of the virus and stay home. So the choice is not between zero years locked down and 66 million, it's between "n" and 66 million.
Plus there's the fact that without restrctions, we would probably have had higher peaks, and we might have actually seem the health service overloaded, leading to situtations like happened in New York or Milan early last year (or Manaus). And when you have those kind of peaks, you're not killing off people with just 10 years to go, you are killing off those with 20 or 30 or 40.
If you want to see just how bad excess deaths can go, look at Ecuador: they have been running at deaths 3x the normal level. Three times. We've been at 20-30% above normal levels for the last year.
Without restrictions, we would still have lost decades of peoples' lives to lockdowns, and we would have had much higher death tolls.
Now, should we have opened up much quicker? Damn right we should. But the idea that "no restrictions" is milk and honey is for the birds.
Yes to the illusion of lockdown free paradise. I'm also aware of rather a lot of people who have had quite a decent year, and some who quietly say they've really preferred it (mostly people who have seen far more of their young kids and much less commuting) but in view of the horrors that so many have experienced are shy of saying it.
Indeed I am one of those. Lockdowns has signalled the end of the office for me and allowed me the freedom to move home and actually be close to family instead of seeing the once or twice a year which has been the case for the last 33 years. You also can't, i would argue, multiply 66 million by a year to calculate lost time. A lot of those 66 million would have spent 4 or 5 nights a week sat on the sofa watching tv in any case. I doubt many but the young have 7 day a week of "Wow what a brilliant day" and for most of us many days of the week aren't much different to lockdown
Sorry to post without introduction. But I am a lockdown winner. My property has gone up by at least £100k, and these price rises show no signs of slowing. I have a whole host of new employment opportunities as the acceptance of remote working means that I can take jobs in London without the daily supercommute. We got to spend a lot of time in the garden and save a lot money. At worst the restrictions were a bit annoying. All this would be fine but for the civilisation ending woke cultural revolution that has come with it. Everyone has their own opinion on this, but in my case I am seriously looking at emigration.
Welcome 'darkage'. Sounds like you have a great life. Just out of curiosity, how has this "civilisation ending woke cultural revolution" had such an impact on that good life that you're considering emigrating?
Some people see the 'woke' as the reinvention of western civilisation, I see it as the end of western civilisation. As I said, it is a personal opinion and I am not mad about it in the way that some people are. We will have to see who is right.
I think it could end there, yes, because we might bring the whole house down on ourselves through reductionist identity politics and year-zeroism. I even wrote a thread header on it once.
But, I don't think there's anywhere to "go". I think the battle needs to be won here and at least we have a Government in office here that sees that.
The problem is not really with the government. The problem is with the English. The government doesn't have popular support for its war on woke. It is all a bit half hearted and viewed as a fringe issue, when it is actually an existential threat to civilisation. You have to look at what happened last year with the desecration of the centopah and conclude it is basically game over, the generation that cared about these things has died out.
I don't know what the answer is; emigration in my case is an option due to family connections; I am simply trying to pursue a viable alternative when I can see everything here falling apart, despite my apparent middle class status and affluence.
So where are you moving too, given most of the Western world is going through the same Woke clashes and in the US the problem is even more pronounced than here? Eastern Europe or Singapore?
It is actually a fairly uniquely anglo american issue.
It is most pronounced in the Anglosphere but France has also seen statues toppled and Merkel's Germany is full of self flagellation about its past. Russia, Poland, Israel, the Far East and at a push Spain and Italy are your best bets to stay Woke free
If the only criteria was to find a stable and successful non woke country the best option would be China
Provided you can accept the risk of jail or firing squad if you criticise the state, Israel and Singapore are wealthier per head than China, more democratic and also largely woke free
That would be the Israel that had the first Trans winner of Eurovision?
Israel has a thriving LGBT community, and some of the most reactionary obscurantism side by side.
Singapore has such a low fertility rate that without immigration it would be quickly extinct.
Of course "anti-Woke" countries tend to be very chauvinist and emigrating there puts you automatically into a suspect character group, as immigrant.
Perhaps Ulster would be a better bet, and join the TUV or DUP?
Wokeism is not so much about being socially liberal.
It is perfectly possible to be gay and unwoke eg David Starkey or Douglas Murray.
It is not even so much about being pro immigration, there are plenty of patriotic immigrants.
Wokeism is more about hating your nation's past and culture and wishing to erase it
No it isn't. Being Woke is becoming aware of historical injustice, particularly racial injustice.
That is not hating your countries past, it is developing a more rounded view of it. Hagiography is not history.
No it is far more than that, it is actively wishing to erase all reference to the nation's history and its key figures and the pivotal characters in its culture.
That is what its followers wish to do, deliver a Marxist culturally leftist state and apologists for them like you will allow them to do it
That is total bollocks from beginning to end.
HYUFD is entirely right. That is the avowed intent of the Woke
Who is Woke then? I don't qualify on that criteria, does anyone on here?
No one at all. The anti-Woke brigade are obsessed with an invisible enemy.
'Invisible' enemies who, say, deliver regular paeans to iconoclasm?
You can see why Starmer wants the gates up on Primose Rose Hill...
I'm old enough to remember when Hyde Park was a civilized place. But evidently that's no longer the case.
It a serious problem across London (and elsewhere, but particularly London). There are the gang feuds, but also the slightest disagreement currently too often quickly escalates from some shouting / pushing and shoving to that sort of incredible violence and people getting stabved.
Not like the good old days of Teddy boys and razor gangs, or the Krays etc.
I didn't say it was totally brand new phenomenon. The point is there is a problem, it is growing, the stats show it is. Talking about stuff that went on 50 years ago is irrelevant.
You can see why Starmer wants the gates up on Primose Rose Hill...
I'm old enough to remember when Hyde Park was a civilized place. But evidently that's no longer the case.
It a serious problem across London (and elsewhere, but particularly London). There are the gang feuds, but also the slightest disagreement currently too often quickly escalates from some shouting / pushing and shoving to that sort of incredible violence and people getting stabved.
Not like the good old days of Teddy boys and razor gangs, or the Krays etc.
Nor indeed the generation of football violence making Saturday no go areas whenever there was a home game. Or widespread mindless vandalism of play parks, phone boxes, bus shelters and the like.
If you don't have official lockdowns, you still have lockdowns. They're just unofficial ones that happen when everyone is utterly terrified to go out.
You have a series of waves that come and go, as people get scared of the virus and stay home. So the choice is not between zero years locked down and 66 million, it's between "n" and 66 million.
Plus there's the fact that without restrctions, we would probably have had higher peaks, and we might have actually seem the health service overloaded, leading to situtations like happened in New York or Milan early last year (or Manaus). And when you have those kind of peaks, you're not killing off people with just 10 years to go, you are killing off those with 20 or 30 or 40.
If you want to see just how bad excess deaths can go, look at Ecuador: they have been running at deaths 3x the normal level. Three times. We've been at 20-30% above normal levels for the last year.
Without restrictions, we would still have lost decades of peoples' lives to lockdowns, and we would have had much higher death tolls.
Now, should we have opened up much quicker? Damn right we should. But the idea that "no restrictions" is milk and honey is for the birds.
Yes to the illusion of lockdown free paradise. I'm also aware of rather a lot of people who have had quite a decent year, and some who quietly say they've really preferred it (mostly people who have seen far more of their young kids and much less commuting) but in view of the horrors that so many have experienced are shy of saying it.
Indeed I am one of those. Lockdowns has signalled the end of the office for me and allowed me the freedom to move home and actually be close to family instead of seeing the once or twice a year which has been the case for the last 33 years. You also can't, i would argue, multiply 66 million by a year to calculate lost time. A lot of those 66 million would have spent 4 or 5 nights a week sat on the sofa watching tv in any case. I doubt many but the young have 7 day a week of "Wow what a brilliant day" and for most of us many days of the week aren't much different to lockdown
Sorry to post without introduction. But I am a lockdown winner. My property has gone up by at least £100k, and these price rises show no signs of slowing. I have a whole host of new employment opportunities as the acceptance of remote working means that I can take jobs in London without the daily supercommute. We got to spend a lot of time in the garden and save a lot money. At worst the restrictions were a bit annoying. All this would be fine but for the civilisation ending woke cultural revolution that has come with it. Everyone has their own opinion on this, but in my case I am seriously looking at emigration.
Welcome 'darkage'. Sounds like you have a great life. Just out of curiosity, how has this "civilisation ending woke cultural revolution" had such an impact on that good life that you're considering emigrating?
Some people see the 'woke' as the reinvention of western civilisation, I see it as the end of western civilisation. As I said, it is a personal opinion and I am not mad about it in the way that some people are. We will have to see who is right.
I think it could end there, yes, because we might bring the whole house down on ourselves through reductionist identity politics and year-zeroism. I even wrote a thread header on it once.
But, I don't think there's anywhere to "go". I think the battle needs to be won here and at least we have a Government in office here that sees that.
The problem is not really with the government. The problem is with the English. The government doesn't have popular support for its war on woke. It is all a bit half hearted and viewed as a fringe issue, when it is actually an existential threat to civilisation. You have to look at what happened last year with the desecration of the centopah and conclude it is basically game over, the generation that cared about these things has died out.
I don't know what the answer is; emigration in my case is an option due to family connections; I am simply trying to pursue a viable alternative when I can see everything here falling apart, despite my apparent middle class status and affluence.
So where are you moving too, given most of the Western world is going through the same Woke clashes and in the US the problem is even more pronounced than here? Eastern Europe or Singapore?
It is actually a fairly uniquely anglo american issue.
It is most pronounced in the Anglosphere but France has also seen statues toppled and Merkel's Germany is full of self flagellation about its past. Russia, Poland, Israel, the Far East and at a push Spain and Italy are your best bets to stay Woke free
If the only criteria was to find a stable and successful non woke country the best option would be China
Provided you can accept the risk of jail or firing squad if you criticise the state, Israel and Singapore are wealthier per head than China, more democratic and also largely woke free
That would be the Israel that had the first Trans winner of Eurovision?
Israel has a thriving LGBT community, and some of the most reactionary obscurantism side by side.
Singapore has such a low fertility rate that without immigration it would be quickly extinct.
Of course "anti-Woke" countries tend to be very chauvinist and emigrating there puts you automatically into a suspect character group, as immigrant.
Perhaps Ulster would be a better bet, and join the TUV or DUP?
Wokeism is not so much about being socially liberal.
It is perfectly possible to be gay and unwoke eg David Starkey or Douglas Murray.
It is not even so much about being pro immigration, there are plenty of patriotic immigrants.
Wokeism is more about hating your nation's past and culture and wishing to erase it
No it isn't. Being Woke is becoming aware of historical injustice, particularly racial injustice.
That is not hating your countries past, it is developing a more rounded view of it. Hagiography is not history.
No it is far more than that, it is actively wishing to erase all reference to the nation's history and its key figures and the pivotal characters in its culture.
That is what its followers wish to do, deliver a Marxist culturally leftist state and apologists for them like you will allow them to do it
That is total bollocks from beginning to end.
HYUFD is entirely right. That is the avowed intent of the Woke
Who is Woke then? I don't qualify on that criteria, does anyone on here?
No one at all. The anti-Woke brigade are obsessed with an invisible enemy.
I think deep down they recognise that the long sweep of history is against them. Inventing 'Wokism' gives them something to rail against.
You can see why Starmer wants the gates up on Primose Rose Hill...
I'm old enough to remember when Hyde Park was a civilized place. But evidently that's no longer the case.
It a serious problem across London (and elsewhere, but particularly London). There are the gang feuds, but also the slightest disagreement currently too often quickly escalates from some shouting / pushing and shoving to that sort of incredible violence and people getting stabved.
Not like the good old days of Teddy boys and razor gangs, or the Krays etc.
I didn't say it was totally brand new phenomenon. The point is there is a problem, it is growing, the stats show it is. Talking about stuff that went on 50 years ago is irrelevant.
You can see why Starmer wants the gates up on Primose Rose Hill...
I'm old enough to remember when Hyde Park was a civilized place. But evidently that's no longer the case.
It a serious problem across London (and elsewhere, but particularly London). There are the gang feuds, but also the slightest disagreement currently too often quickly escalates from some shouting / pushing and shoving to that sort of incredible violence and people getting stabved.
Not like the good old days of Teddy boys and razor gangs, or the Krays etc.
They may have been a bit naughty but at least they loved their old mums and only targeted other criminals. You could leave your doors unlocked too, no bother.
If you don't have official lockdowns, you still have lockdowns. They're just unofficial ones that happen when everyone is utterly terrified to go out.
You have a series of waves that come and go, as people get scared of the virus and stay home. So the choice is not between zero years locked down and 66 million, it's between "n" and 66 million.
Plus there's the fact that without restrctions, we would probably have had higher peaks, and we might have actually seem the health service overloaded, leading to situtations like happened in New York or Milan early last year (or Manaus). And when you have those kind of peaks, you're not killing off people with just 10 years to go, you are killing off those with 20 or 30 or 40.
If you want to see just how bad excess deaths can go, look at Ecuador: they have been running at deaths 3x the normal level. Three times. We've been at 20-30% above normal levels for the last year.
Without restrictions, we would still have lost decades of peoples' lives to lockdowns, and we would have had much higher death tolls.
Now, should we have opened up much quicker? Damn right we should. But the idea that "no restrictions" is milk and honey is for the birds.
Yes to the illusion of lockdown free paradise. I'm also aware of rather a lot of people who have had quite a decent year, and some who quietly say they've really preferred it (mostly people who have seen far more of their young kids and much less commuting) but in view of the horrors that so many have experienced are shy of saying it.
Indeed I am one of those. Lockdowns has signalled the end of the office for me and allowed me the freedom to move home and actually be close to family instead of seeing the once or twice a year which has been the case for the last 33 years. You also can't, i would argue, multiply 66 million by a year to calculate lost time. A lot of those 66 million would have spent 4 or 5 nights a week sat on the sofa watching tv in any case. I doubt many but the young have 7 day a week of "Wow what a brilliant day" and for most of us many days of the week aren't much different to lockdown
Sorry to post without introduction. But I am a lockdown winner. My property has gone up by at least £100k, and these price rises show no signs of slowing. I have a whole host of new employment opportunities as the acceptance of remote working means that I can take jobs in London without the daily supercommute. We got to spend a lot of time in the garden and save a lot money. At worst the restrictions were a bit annoying. All this would be fine but for the civilisation ending woke cultural revolution that has come with it. Everyone has their own opinion on this, but in my case I am seriously looking at emigration.
Welcome 'darkage'. Sounds like you have a great life. Just out of curiosity, how has this "civilisation ending woke cultural revolution" had such an impact on that good life that you're considering emigrating?
Some people see the 'woke' as the reinvention of western civilisation, I see it as the end of western civilisation. As I said, it is a personal opinion and I am not mad about it in the way that some people are. We will have to see who is right.
I think it could end there, yes, because we might bring the whole house down on ourselves through reductionist identity politics and year-zeroism. I even wrote a thread header on it once.
But, I don't think there's anywhere to "go". I think the battle needs to be won here and at least we have a Government in office here that sees that.
The problem is not really with the government. The problem is with the English. The government doesn't have popular support for its war on woke. It is all a bit half hearted and viewed as a fringe issue, when it is actually an existential threat to civilisation. You have to look at what happened last year with the desecration of the centopah and conclude it is basically game over, the generation that cared about these things has died out.
I don't know what the answer is; emigration in my case is an option due to family connections; I am simply trying to pursue a viable alternative when I can see everything here falling apart, despite my apparent middle class status and affluence.
So where are you moving too, given most of the Western world is going through the same Woke clashes and in the US the problem is even more pronounced than here? Eastern Europe or Singapore?
It is actually a fairly uniquely anglo american issue.
It is most pronounced in the Anglosphere but France has also seen statues toppled and Merkel's Germany is full of self flagellation about its past. Russia, Poland, Israel, the Far East and at a push Spain and Italy are your best bets to stay Woke free
If the only criteria was to find a stable and successful non woke country the best option would be China
Provided you can accept the risk of jail or firing squad if you criticise the state, Israel and Singapore are wealthier per head than China, more democratic and also largely woke free
That would be the Israel that had the first Trans winner of Eurovision?
Israel has a thriving LGBT community, and some of the most reactionary obscurantism side by side.
Singapore has such a low fertility rate that without immigration it would be quickly extinct.
Of course "anti-Woke" countries tend to be very chauvinist and emigrating there puts you automatically into a suspect character group, as immigrant.
Perhaps Ulster would be a better bet, and join the TUV or DUP?
Wokeism is not so much about being socially liberal.
It is perfectly possible to be gay and unwoke eg David Starkey or Douglas Murray.
It is not even so much about being pro immigration, there are plenty of patriotic immigrants.
Wokeism is more about hating your nation's past and culture and wishing to erase it
No it isn't. Being Woke is becoming aware of historical injustice, particularly racial injustice.
That is not hating your countries past, it is developing a more rounded view of it. Hagiography is not history.
No it is far more than that, it is actively wishing to erase all reference to the nation's history and its key figures and the pivotal characters in its culture.
That is what its followers wish to do, deliver a Marxist culturally leftist state and apologists for them like you will allow them to do it
That is total bollocks from beginning to end.
HYUFD is entirely right. That is the avowed intent of the Woke
Who is Woke then? I don't qualify on that criteria, does anyone on here?
Criterion. Anyone on here is not the same as anyone in the country. I listened to a professor of something from a Midlands University on radio 4 the other day solemnly proclaiming that all white people are at heart white supremacists even if they have no idea that they are, and having his pronouncements taken seriously by the interviewer.
Woke-ism in the UK is an attempt to export an American phenomenon to this country in an entirely inappropriate way by people who spend their entire lives on social media and therefore have no real sense of place. They think that what is appropriate in the United States is automatically appropriate everywhere else.
In the United States large numbers of people are shot by the police every day. In the UK it's practically a once or twice in a decade occurrence. That's how much of a difference there is between the two countries.
UK ministers are preparing to add a handful of countries to the government’s “green list” of travel destinations this week, but will stop short of the major expansion the leisure industry has called for.
Territories under consideration include Spain’s Balearic and Canary Islands, plus Malta, although UK government officials said no final decisions have been taken.
Grant Shapps, transport secretary, on Thursday will unveil the revised green list of countries from which people originally travelling from England do not need to quarantine on their return, with changes to the arrangements due to take effect next week. https://www.ft.com/content/b655c705-6172-4fad-8fc1-4f07b6c3045d
I'd previously read that the Canaries might get the nod, but not the Balearics - because they're simply too popular. The theory being that the Government can't expand its green list beyond a certain point, regardless of how well the potential destinations are doing, because border control can't cope with all the extra Covid checks. You'd end up with fourteen hour long queues for returning travellers. The Balearics can also be written off under the pretence of their being too interconnected with the mainland. But we shall see what transpires later in the week.
The Covid checks are increasingly irrelevant. So what if people bring Covid back from their hols in August: who are they going to infect?
You can see why Starmer wants the gates up on Primose Rose Hill...
I'm old enough to remember when Hyde Park was a civilized place. But evidently that's no longer the case.
It a serious problem across London (and elsewhere, but particularly London). There are the gang feuds, but also the slightest disagreement currently too often quickly escalates from some shouting / pushing and shoving to that sort of incredible violence and people getting stabved.
Not like the good old days of Teddy boys and razor gangs, or the Krays etc.
Nor indeed the generation of football violence making Saturday no go areas whenever there was a home game. Or widespread mindless vandalism of play parks, phone boxes, bus shelters and the like.
There are some rather depressing videos on twitter of our finest soccer supporters causing damage to bars in Portugal, what a way to repay a nations hospitality.
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However, after trying to fire all his staff, then using his closed premises as a billboard for Covid denial, I've other ideas for what he can do.
There is no need to join in Pride events if you don't want to. Indeed if you weren't banging on about it, I wouldn't have noticed that it was currently a thing.
It is perfectly possible to be gay and unwoke eg David Starkey or Douglas Murray.
It is not even so much about being pro immigration, there are plenty of patriotic immigrants.
Wokeism is more about hating your nation's past and culture and wishing to erase it
The genius of Tether though is that their terms and conditions allow them to unilaterally halt redemption for any reason at any time and you have to have an account with them to Redeem Tethers And they do not let you, as a member of the public open an account.
There is no way for their to be a run on Tether as Tether don't pay out.
Scotland is entering a third wave of the Covid pandemic, Jason Leitch warns as FM announces lockdown changes
https://twitter.com/ScotNational/status/1399829857316610048?s=20
By contrast, Tether is rather simpler. It is alleged that the controllers of Tether print the currency for themselves, then swap it into Bitcoin, then they sell the Bitcoin. In this way, they steal billions (possibly tens of billions) of dollars.
That is not hating your countries past, it is developing a more rounded view of it. Hagiography is not history.
Laurence Fox ✌🏼🇬🇧✌🏼
@LozzaFox
·
16m
Anne Boleyn was a straight white female.
Stick that in your diversity pipe.
The Diversity agenda is racism. Pure and simple.
Because everyone believes they will continue to do so, other people buy Tether for $0.992, and then sell out for $1.001 (or whatever).
It is perfectly possible for the price of Tether to drop to $0.85 or $0.80 or $0.60. Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised if the price of Tether were to fall below intrinsic at some point.
Plus, as someone has also added - ending furlough will see more people requiring jobs
Territories under consideration include Spain’s Balearic and Canary Islands, plus Malta, although UK government officials said no final decisions have been taken.
Grant Shapps, transport secretary, on Thursday will unveil the revised green list of countries from which people originally travelling from England do not need to quarantine on their return, with changes to the arrangements due to take effect next week.
https://www.ft.com/content/b655c705-6172-4fad-8fc1-4f07b6c3045d
Still properly LOL stuff.
Goodnight all.
@LiverToronto
·
1h
Replying to
@AdamJKucharski
Perhaps public service announcements to educate those who do not want vaccinations on what to do when infected:
-Which contacts (from when) to notify
-How to isolate safely
-When they need to get to the hospital
-Clarify their wishes if things go bad
Last one is interesting/bonkers. Public info campaign advising you sorting out your affairs and last wishes if you are turning down the vaccine.
LOOK AT THE COLOUR OF THEIR SKIN
Whereas, certainly in the UK, kids are naturally overcoming this. They are growing up colourblind, I really believe that (at least in parts of the UK that I have witnessed)
My daughters would be perplexed by the demand to focus on skin colour. It makes them awkward. They don't consider it an issue at all. I'm sure it is an issue with older generations, but given time we will all overcome it, or die off
And yet Modern Wokeness says we have to go back 50 years and obsess about pigmentation. I see where the obsession comes from - AMERICA! WHITE GUILT!- but it does not feel like a step forward, in the UK
That is what its followers wish to do, deliver a Marxist culturally leftist state and apologists for them like you will allow them to do it
Originally the pound was worth a pound of silver, then eventually "a promise to pay" was adopted with a gold standard (and the promise to pay is still on our bank notes) but the tether to the gold standard was broken. Nowaday a pound of silver is working hundreds of pounds I believe, so really a pound sterling is worth less than what a penny ought to be without devaluations.
Tether will be the same. At some point good luck getting even a penny per tethered dollar.
https://twitter.com/CrimeLdn/status/1399830040855068673?s=19
You can see why Starmer wants the gates up on Primose Rose Hill...
https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/amadeus
Oh, and I'd like to add "The Personal History of David Copperfield" as additional evidence that these people are actors: they are not supposed to be playing themselves!
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6439020/
lol
He's Ratnered the brand in the past year and a bit as far as I'm concerned.
None of which hardly gets a mention on the news. The 14 year old story is 10th on the BBC news site, below all sort of crap.
Perhaps PB should dispatch Leon to investigate? And maybe chip in a tarp (more useful than a beach umbrella)?
And the future view of the past is neither Our Heroic Island Nation, nor is it Britain's List Of Shame. And I envy the generation that is going to be able to go beyond those two sterile and inaccurate stereotypes.
Because I'm not sure that the current generation in power is capable of it.
Also be interesting to see how many people do watch it,
Heck, no. Let's defund the entire State government.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/01/texas-governor-greg-abbott-restrictive-voting-bill
We shall always celebrate the great 1966 World Cup victory.
Got my daughter this week. Last holiday club ended in 10 days isolation which made it a right bleeding waste of cash. Own stupid fault. Also mislaid my car keys before first vaccinated, so found and yomped the direct wooded walk to the vaccine site that I suspected existed, thus setting in stone a vaccination tradition.
Maybe I will, maybe I won't.
We should have let Germany win to get over our post WW2 superiority complex
But I also think some of the 'laughing stock' stuff is very questionable. It might not look that way on the surface but I don't see how her actual gaffes merit the level of hilarity.
Eg I recall Philip Hammond when he was the actual Chancellor mixing up his millions and billions in a high profile interview. Didn't lead to anything much, let alone a funfest still running years later.
So, you know, people might think they're just being all urbane and educated and totally impeccable when they come out with this stuff but I reckon there's more to it. Not in every case of course but just as a macro comment.
And btw ditto with similar re Patel. I've seen things said about her - content and tone - which make me wince despite me personally considering her a very bad news politician who is not the brightest.
Open the Bloody Night clubs, let young people that have got to much energy go there and 'bust some moves' on the dance flour' to impress the opposite sex, while drinking and watched by the bouncers.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9641897/Every-UK-adult-able-vaccinated-weeks-country-records-ZERO-Covid-deaths.html
28 hours thinking about it. Was the correct one via the link. Also got back a genuine email confirmation.
Hope your next one goes more smoothly!
No, I didn't think so either.
Can you spot the slight issue with that?
I have literally no idea of the history of the word but all the things I don't like and make me uncomfortable are definitely it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_garrotting_panics
Or widespread mindless vandalism of play parks, phone boxes, bus shelters and the like.
In the United States large numbers of people are shot by the police every day. In the UK it's practically a once or twice in a decade occurrence. That's how much of a difference there is between the two countries.