'SUPPORT for the royal family is at an “all time low”, Professor John Curtice has said.
The polling expert’s assessment comes just one week ahead of King Charles’s coronation, which hit the headlines on Sunday after a call was put out for millions to give a “great cry” of allegiance during the ceremony.
Speaking to GB News, Curtice said that the data was increasingly suggesting that younger generations were moving away from supporting the royals.
“Support for them is now at an all time low and frankly it declined during the Queen Elizabeth era,” Curtice said.'
Hmm. I don't think demands for a loyalty oath will help.
Wokery.
It's deeply fashionable now to be against Britain and any symbols of Britain on the basis that they represent "colonialism", "racism" and "slavery".
Of course, this sentiment will be funded, advocated and encouraged by our enemies in China and Russia; they are hoping that if we lose enough self-confidence we might bring it all down on top of us ourselves.
They might be right.
Russia, and Russian propaganda being well known for ‘wokery’. Strange universe you sometimes inhabit.
Just met some American friends who have returned from a trip to Britain, the first in a long while.
Apparently the country is now “notably shabby”, and “falling to bits”, and “beer prices now rival New York”.
I disagree with their assessment. Britain is less shabby than it's been for a long time, especially in London, with the Elizabeth Line, etc.
Grant you the Lizzie Line, but sometimes that just throws the creeping mediocrity of everything else into relief. How could it not be, when we've spent a decade or so not spending enough on maintenance?
And an awful lot of town centres have an awful lot of empty or last resort shops in them.
Yes. London and most of our other large cities are in pretty good shape. And the villages are okay. It's the towns in between, small and large, that are often shabby, with decaying centres, miserable cloned high streets, and desolate estates where there's nothing to do, especially for the young.
What we need is some levelling-up.
I live in Hampshire, much of which is simply stunning. But, it is largely affluent. It's not the case for places like Aldershot, or some wards of Portsmouth and Southampton.
But, I've travelled a lot and - outside some unfortunate inner cities - the UK does scrub up well compared to most other countries. We have good planning standards and protection of rural and green areas, and fairly good civic attitudes to tidiness.
Greece and Thailand have appalling littering and development control, the US seemingly has none, and Ireland lets itself down by some random unsightly development in rural areas along its main roads. And I've seen some proper shitholes in France.
Switzerland is probably the tidiest I've seen.
Weirdly, I find the US countryside (upstate NY and New England) very tidy.
I can’t quite figure out why, since in the towns it’s wall to wall strip malls and Dunkin’ Donuts, and Americans don’t recycle like Europe does.
But it’s definitely a thing.
My recollection is unrestrained garish and bold adverts for McDonalds, Motols and Diners all along the highway, even in areas of outstanding natural beauty, together utilitarian business units and transmission wires, in a way that would simply never be permitted in the UK.
I probably discount it all because the US is the US. It has it's own culture.
USA has a LOT of highway. Where did your travels take you?
Washington State. Upstate New York. Texas.
You can see some ugliness on highways in these parts, all right. (Lady Bird Johnson did some good, however.)
Getting off interstates and other freeways is bad for making time, but good for cutting down on the roadside crap.
Which is also true in UK? Leastways that was my impression.
Disney just dug its heels. I mean, they basically said to the Southern Baptist Convention, “Fuck you, we don’t need you.” I don’t know whether the Disney guys were just arrogant or confident, but from the very beginning, they gave not an inch. Maybe it’s a profile in courage. Maybe it’s just pragmatism. I don’t know what was in their minds. I never got to talk to Katzenberg. I did speak briefly to Eisner at a book event, but he wouldn’t tell me anything anyway.
The Baptists quickly learned that there was no real alternative in terms of popular culture for young children other than Disney. So, they were talking about sacrifice. And I think sacrifice is one thing if they’re asking adults to make it. Disney parks had by that time become a cultural imperative. Which is to say, if you wanted to be a good parent or a good grandparent, taking your children or grandchildren to one of the Disney parks became a cultural imperative. That’s one of the things—one of the boxes you had to tick. And they were a little bit queasy with trying to tell a 7-year-old that we’re not going to Disneyland or Disney World because we think they’re not as friendly to evangelicals as Walt was 30 years ago…
… I don’t think he realized that Disney punches back, and they may punch back better than he punches. He shouldn’t set himself up to stand or fall on whether he can get Disney to capitulate, because he will never get Disney to capitulate. It will not happen. It didn’t happen in the ’90s, and for sure it’s not going to happen now. And if you had to bet, would you bet on an ambitious Florida governor, or would you bet on a multibillion-dollar corporation that knows what its audience wants?
Hes taken it too far. Yes he can bash woke Disney but they have every incentive to drag it through the coursts and is he really looking tough even if he wins?
Disney know what makes them more money, they dont seen randomly activist like smaller companies.
Wouldn't it be better if both sides calmed down and moderated their positions, recognising that at some level the other might perhaps have a point?
AIUI Disney criticised a state law banning discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in primary schools.
Do you agree with that state law? If not, then what point does RDS have?
Disney just dug its heels. I mean, they basically said to the Southern Baptist Convention, “Fuck you, we don’t need you.” I don’t know whether the Disney guys were just arrogant or confident, but from the very beginning, they gave not an inch. Maybe it’s a profile in courage. Maybe it’s just pragmatism. I don’t know what was in their minds. I never got to talk to Katzenberg. I did speak briefly to Eisner at a book event, but he wouldn’t tell me anything anyway.
The Baptists quickly learned that there was no real alternative in terms of popular culture for young children other than Disney. So, they were talking about sacrifice. And I think sacrifice is one thing if they’re asking adults to make it. Disney parks had by that time become a cultural imperative. Which is to say, if you wanted to be a good parent or a good grandparent, taking your children or grandchildren to one of the Disney parks became a cultural imperative. That’s one of the things—one of the boxes you had to tick. And they were a little bit queasy with trying to tell a 7-year-old that we’re not going to Disneyland or Disney World because we think they’re not as friendly to evangelicals as Walt was 30 years ago…
… I don’t think he realized that Disney punches back, and they may punch back better than he punches. He shouldn’t set himself up to stand or fall on whether he can get Disney to capitulate, because he will never get Disney to capitulate. It will not happen. It didn’t happen in the ’90s, and for sure it’s not going to happen now. And if you had to bet, would you bet on an ambitious Florida governor, or would you bet on a multibillion-dollar corporation that knows what its audience wants?
Hes taken it too far. Yes he can bash woke Disney but they have every incentive to drag it through the coursts and is he really looking tough even if he wins?
Disney know what makes them more money, they dont seen randomly activist like smaller companies.
Wouldn't it be better if both sides calmed down and moderated their positions, recognising that at some level the other might perhaps have a point?
I think the issue is Desantis thinks Disney pushes lgbt propoganda, a common position on the american right.
People were moaning that Disney films had no openly gay characters only a few years ago, and when they did have one people moaned the word gay wasnt used in the film and the actor wasnt gay.
Village chipper has some sad looking union flag pennants hanging from the ceiling. I do wonder if half-arsed will be *the* look this coronation.
Seriously though, the notion that we all sit patriotically around the telly and chant a pledge of fealty at the correct time is the most absurd thing I have heard in ages.
North Hertfordshire, OTOH, does look as though it will be celebrating. There's loads of bunting in the villages.
Same in Hampshire.
To the broader point on public attitudes to the coronation I expect a very decent level of participation.
It's very British to whinge about class and privilege when actually all people want is a little piece of it themselves.
No most people want money. They dont want to be the aristocracy.
I sort of disagree. The National Trust is very popular, as our costume dramas, because people like to fantasise what it would be like, and people love getting ceremonial titles, uniforms, dressing up and reenacting.
We like to cos-play our history and its roles for real, not just read about them.
We've got nothing on South Korea when it comes to cos playing history. Half the Korean shows on Netflix appear to be set in the Joseon era about 500 years ago, also known as the stupid hats era.
The Joseon era ended in 1897; it lasted about 500 years. As did, largely, the silly hats.
Thats better then. Its like star wars, every era in those shows looks the same.
It’s an interesting era. Started out with great innovations, both cultural and technical, but fairly quickly fell into a centuries long relative stasis, isolated from the wider world and dominated by internecine aristocratic conflict.
Just met some American friends who have returned from a trip to Britain, the first in a long while.
Apparently the country is now “notably shabby”, and “falling to bits”, and “beer prices now rival New York”.
I disagree with their assessment. Britain is less shabby than it's been for a long time, especially in London, with the Elizabeth Line, etc.
Round here, the roads are in shite order (pot holes like bomb craters!) footpaths and verges are overgrown and fly tipping is out of control. I drove down the A46 last week from my village to the M1 and was appalled at how the embankments were festooned with litter, packaging, takeaway cartons and bits of car. Chaz should just have a quiet knees up with his family and bung my local council some cash to pay for a clean up!
TFS, they need to start making litter louts and criminals wear orange suits and prowl the highways of the UK picking up litter as a punishment
I'd vote for any party that advocated the death penalty for fly tippers. I genuinely hate people who do that, and I don't like to hate anyone.
They are positively encouraged in Gloucestershire.
If you want to take rubbish to your local Council dump you have to make an appointment.
Was genuinely amazed when I found out this was required at the municipal tip in Edinburgh, when we were chucking stuff out before leaving the country.
Britain, a country where the local council employs a man to check that cars entering the tip have an appointment for doing so. Because that needs doing.
We started having to make appointments at the tip during the pandemic, to keep people apart, and the council clearly liked it so much they’ve kept it going, along with the man sitting there ticking off the registration numbers. To be fair, booking is quite easy and you then sail in and out of a fairly empty tip, compared to the scrum and sometimes queues of cars to get in that were a regular feature before.
But there must be a lot of stuff that used to come to the tip that is now going somewhere else….
Why is it appointment needed? Seems like a pointless and petty form of regulation.
The apparent 'decline' of Britain - ie in terms of how it looks - I would say, is to do with local authority budgets. There isn't enough money due to budget cuts so that discretionary services, ie landscaping, public toilets, fixing potholes, parks and gardens just get cut. Even things like enforcement of planning regulations gets cut right back to the point where, in one town of 100,000 people I am familiar with, has 2000 unresolved breaches of planning control that it knows about, and only two inexperienced officers (ie with less than one years experience) dealing with it. Much of this is all just trivial amounts of money that are not being spent with disproportionate consequences that are not immediately obvious. By contrast municipalities in other countries don't let things get so bad even when economic times are objectively far, far worse; because they aren't dealing with the legacy of thatcherism and the harm it did to central/local government relations.
The money is going on social care. In other words, very elderly people.
I don't want to seem callous but we really do need to have a conversation about how much of our national wealth we want to, publicly, spend very expensively on keeping people alive for as long as possible who aren't particularly well and aren't particularly enjoying it.
In other countries, families take them in and look after them - with some visitors/outside help occasionally. I'd argue that's more humane. The trouble is it's also more hassle.
Multi-generational households are fine for very rich people, where granny or grandad can have a self-contained annexe or a barn conversion next to the main house, and where said elder is in reasonable health. Expecting the average family, with Mum and Dad both working full time to make ends meet, noisy kids bouncing off the walls, and already living on top of one another in a rabbit hutch house, to accommodate any older relative - still less one with disabilities and/or dementia - is a complete non-starter. Retirement villages, sheltered housing and residential care homes all exist for good reasons.
The real issue isn't the expenditure of all that cash - not least because, if we make serious efforts to cut and ration it, then how are we going to decide which older people are worth cherishing, and who gets left to starve to death sitting in their own shit or humanely destroyed when they're past it like the family cat? It's who keeps getting taken to the cleaners over and over again for all the extra funding that's the real problem here.
The thing about this is that the numbers are truly eye watering. Someone earning £50k per year pays about £7.5k in tax per year. A year in a basic care home is £40k, so over 5 years worth of tax payments from your working life (if you were earning £50k). This is before you factor in at the cost of healthcare and operations on the NHS in later life, etc.
The apparent 'decline' of Britain - ie in terms of how it looks - I would say, is to do with local authority budgets. There isn't enough money due to budget cuts so that discretionary services, ie landscaping, public toilets, fixing potholes, parks and gardens just get cut. Even things like enforcement of planning regulations gets cut right back to the point where, in one town of 100,000 people I am familiar with, has 2000 unresolved breaches of planning control that it knows about, and only two inexperienced officers (ie with less than one years experience) dealing with it. Much of this is all just trivial amounts of money that are not being spent with disproportionate consequences that are not immediately obvious. By contrast municipalities in other countries don't let things get so bad even when economic times are objectively far, far worse; because they aren't dealing with the legacy of thatcherism and the harm it did to central/local government relations.
The money is going on social care. In other words, very elderly people.
I don't want to seem callous but we really do need to have a conversation about how much of our national wealth we want to, publicly, spend very expensively on keeping people alive for as long as possible who aren't particularly well and aren't particularly enjoying it.
In other countries, families take them in and look after them - with some visitors/outside help occasionally. I'd argue that's more humane. The trouble is it's also more hassle.
Multi-generational households are fine for very rich people, where granny or grandad can have a self-contained annexe or a barn conversion next to the main house, and where said elder is in reasonable health. Expecting the average family, with Mum and Dad both working full time to make ends meet, noisy kids bouncing off the walls, and already living on top of one another in a rabbit hutch house, to accommodate any older relative - still less one with disabilities and/or dementia - is a complete non-starter. Retirement villages, sheltered housing and residential care homes all exist for good reasons.
The real issue isn't the expenditure of all that cash - not least because, if we make serious efforts to cut and ration it, then how are we going to decide which older people are worth cherishing, and who gets left to starve to death sitting in their own shit or humanely destroyed when they're past it like the family cat? It's who keeps getting taken to the cleaners over and over again for all the extra funding that's the real problem here.
Not really. My wife's family is from Bulgaria, which is a poor country, and everyone does it there, regardless of how little they have.
They consider what we do to be cruel. Like shunting off a 3-year to boarding school, just the other way round.
Granny has dementia and can't be left alone for her own safety. She comes to live with daughter and son-in-law and their two kiddies.
Which half of the couple sacrifices their career and becomes a full-time unpaid carer for Granny for the remainder of her lifespan, and how does the other half earn enough money to cover the mortgage and all the bills for the entire household?
Village chipper has some sad looking union flag pennants hanging from the ceiling. I do wonder if half-arsed will be *the* look this coronation.
Seriously though, the notion that we all sit patriotically around the telly and chant a pledge of fealty at the correct time is the most absurd thing I have heard in ages.
North Hertfordshire, OTOH, does look as though it will be celebrating. There's loads of bunting in the villages.
Same in Hampshire.
To the broader point on public attitudes to the coronation I expect a very decent level of participation.
It's very British to whinge about class and privilege when actually all people want is a little piece of it themselves.
No most people want money. They dont want to be the aristocracy.
I sort of disagree. The National Trust is very popular, as our costume dramas, because people like to fantasise what it would be like, and people love getting ceremonial titles, uniforms, dressing up and reenacting.
We like to cos-play our history and its roles for real, not just read about them.
We've got nothing on South Korea when it comes to cos playing history. Half the Korean shows on Netflix appear to be set in the Joseon era about 500 years ago, also known as the stupid hats era.
The Joseon era ended in 1897; it lasted about 500 years. As did, largely, the silly hats.
Thats better then. Its like star wars, every era in those shows looks the same.
It’s an interesting era. Started out with great innovations, both cultural and technical, but fairly quickly fell into a centuries long relative stasis, isolated from the wider world and dominated by internecine aristocratic conflict.
Seems to have been a common pattern - for whatever reason the Industrial era bucked the trend and led to change feeding on change which was not stymied.
Disney just dug its heels. I mean, they basically said to the Southern Baptist Convention, “Fuck you, we don’t need you.” I don’t know whether the Disney guys were just arrogant or confident, but from the very beginning, they gave not an inch. Maybe it’s a profile in courage. Maybe it’s just pragmatism. I don’t know what was in their minds. I never got to talk to Katzenberg. I did speak briefly to Eisner at a book event, but he wouldn’t tell me anything anyway.
The Baptists quickly learned that there was no real alternative in terms of popular culture for young children other than Disney. So, they were talking about sacrifice. And I think sacrifice is one thing if they’re asking adults to make it. Disney parks had by that time become a cultural imperative. Which is to say, if you wanted to be a good parent or a good grandparent, taking your children or grandchildren to one of the Disney parks became a cultural imperative. That’s one of the things—one of the boxes you had to tick. And they were a little bit queasy with trying to tell a 7-year-old that we’re not going to Disneyland or Disney World because we think they’re not as friendly to evangelicals as Walt was 30 years ago…
… I don’t think he realized that Disney punches back, and they may punch back better than he punches. He shouldn’t set himself up to stand or fall on whether he can get Disney to capitulate, because he will never get Disney to capitulate. It will not happen. It didn’t happen in the ’90s, and for sure it’s not going to happen now. And if you had to bet, would you bet on an ambitious Florida governor, or would you bet on a multibillion-dollar corporation that knows what its audience wants?
Hes taken it too far. Yes he can bash woke Disney but they have every incentive to drag it through the coursts and is he really looking tough even if he wins?
Disney know what makes them more money, they dont seen randomly activist like smaller companies.
Wouldn't it be better if both sides calmed down and moderated their positions, recognising that at some level the other might perhaps have a point?
Free speech innit?
And Disney had such a sweet deal on their district its probably worth a protracted legal fight about it.
Yes.
HOWEVER, am guessing the REAL motivation for Disney to NOT allow jack-leg preachers OR cheap-jack politicos to bully them over creative content, is realization that IF they give in to such tactics, it would be open season against them.
So if Ron DiRatis wants to fuck around with Mickey Mouse, then Disney will show him - and anyone else whose paying attention - the error of his ways.
Just met some American friends who have returned from a trip to Britain, the first in a long while.
Apparently the country is now “notably shabby”, and “falling to bits”, and “beer prices now rival New York”.
The clowns never went to a Wetherspoons then. Assume the dumb clucks were in London getting ripped off.
London and Herefordshire apparently. It’s true that I doubt they went to Wetherspoons.
Personally, I used to be a big fan of the Spoon, but I boycotted them since 2016 and won’t go back.
They are hard to beat for a good pint , lots of choice , great prices but tend to be big barns most of time. Whole UK is in doldrums but I suspect most of USA is the same apart from the elite
I've had guests from Scandinavian countries over the years and always take them to wetherspoons. Every time they are absolutely shocked at how it is possible to buy a meal and a beer for less than £5 in (what seems like) a perfectly well to do pub/restaurant; and that you could sit there all day without being bothered. It is hard to convey just how impossible this situation would be in many other countries. Although I too got irritated with the Brexit stuff they are an incredible operation, and based on everything I have seen, they have a positive impact when they open up in new locations. Notably it is one of the few pubs where you see young people.
I remember hosting a Scandinavian guest and taking them to a Wetherspoons. Soon enough (being a Glasgow Friday night) a rather brutal fist fight broke out. Our guest was asked 'Bet you don't have this kind of thing at home, eh?'. 'Oh, yes! We do! .... Although back home it is usually the men who are doing the fighting...'
When did absolutely everybody first start disliking Jews and giving them such a bad press? Does it start with the Jews having Jesus killed?
Careful, that is another antisemitic trope. Two of them in fact. That Jews killed Jesus and more fundamentally that Jews did anything to deserve universal antisemitism.
Indeed, it was the Romans. We are supposed to skip over that because Constantine turned the Romans into goodies.
“Careful, that is another antisemitic trope. That Jews killed Jesus” “Indeed, it was the Romans. We are supposed to skip over that because Constantine turned the Romans into goodies”
Obviously I don’t expect much understanding from DecrepitJohn, who like 98% of PB likely not a Christian. But I am very surprised you say this Foxy. I am surprised we are so far apart on the passion 🥺
The Passion According To MoonRabbit
Jesus was a Jew from a time of sectarian turbulence. Jesus and his followers launched what can be called a terror attack on the Temple and the authority of high priests running the Jewish council, the headline was attacking money lenders and saying they were defiling a holy place. I see this attack like the reformation - Jesus argument is money lenders charged rip off rates, the sacrificial dove sellers were a rip off, and the need to pay for ritual bathing to get clean to pray a rip off too. leading priests and scribes (law writers) lived lavish lifestyles, they liked having this income. The ruling council were pissed off and feeling humiliated by Jesus attack on their authority. Joseph (Of Aramathea) was at hastily called elite council meeting, representing his sect, but out voted on decision to arrest Jesus and have him killed. Some on ruling council happy Jesus appeared to over step the mark; Pharisee, a strict religious sect of Jews, didn’t like Jesus message, it wasn’t orthodox preaching as he was mingling Greek philosophy particularly from Plato, for example The Sermon On The Mount, with the Torah forming not so strict Jewish code, a more hellenised message for Jews. Jesus arrest by the Temple Guards (Jews) was a sword fight, indeed lead Jew arresting Jesus lost an ear (AN Wilson reckons this player went on to become Paul). Jesus was tried by the Jewish court, the charge was Blasphemy for claiming to be King of the Jews. to the Jewish ruling council, Jesus deliberately rode into town on a donkey, fulfilling a prophecy in the Hebrew Bible about the coming of the Messiah, and was mobbed by an adoring crowd. The court found Jesus guilty. But the court didn’t have the power to execute people. Jesus was handed over to the Romans with strong recommendation from the Jewish Council to execute him for sedition. The Roman occupiers had their own considerations. Passover always difficult time for running the province, crowds piling in. Pilate, however you characterise him, had career in Roman Empire depending on running the province smooth and efficiently, had 6,000 soldiers on hand to keep the peace in a city now bulging with 2.5 million Jews, and religious authorities, whose cooperation he needed for a quiet life, wanted him to execute Jesus, supported by angry mob possibly organised by Temple authorities, if strict in their faith, like Pharisee, happy to come baying for Jesus' blood. Jesus had public support but Pharisee could get a lot of supporters out demonstrating too. It all leads to an obvious conclusion except the question, did Jesus come here knowing it would lead to this or not.
It wasn’t a terror attack. He simply overturned some tables.
Was he and supporters armed? How did the guards react? No speech denouncing rip off bathing and dove prices?
No - they were devout Jews at worship - they would not have been armed. He cast out those who bought and sold, overturned the tables of the moneylenders and those that sold doves. He said unto them “my house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have turned it into a den of thieves”
Basically a Rabbi had a bit of a rant and chased some people out of the Temple. More speakers corner than Manchester arena.
We have completely different takes on this, and different understandings of Jesus too no doubt. Where you are wrong I am sure is how Jesus could have got away with what you are claiming, he needed hundreds around him to deter arrest. You are not reading it correctly as the larger scale demo it could only have been to have avoided intervention.
“expels the merchants and consumers from the temple” How many followers did Jesus take to achieve this? so Guards feared a riot if they intervened? One account says 340. If Jesus followers had breast plates as reported they likely had arms too. Knocked over tables probably undersells the size and intent of the actual flash mob protest.
There’s a strong underlying point to the demo, Rich ripping off the poor, but it was also to show growing strength - popularity and public support for protest and change and its charismatic leader.
Is this the only part of the Gospel According to MoonRabbit you have a problem with?
A devout Jew would not have brought a mob into the Temple.
Not a mob, A protesting group who passionately don’t agree the purpose of the New Temple as the place and means for the rich to rip off the poor and keep the rich in luxury. Not a mob, a large scale demonstration for reform and change.
Would it not be just as possible - if speculating on basis of rather limited evidence (to put it mildly) -that Jesus was actually the front man for a criminal syndicate engaged in a classic "protection" racket, who was assaulting the ancient Hebrew equivalent of Barclays (or American Express) for failure to pay up?
That’s silly. You have so much more to contribute on this than that Shants.
I’m painting a picture of the depth of differences, religious practice as Foxy recently posted, but also of wealthy exploiting the poor rather like what led to the reformation and protest as I just posted, senior religious leaders close to the occupying administrators in agreement of what’s necessary is for quiet life maintaining status quo, meanwhile street protests by rival supporters. This is the backdrop to The Passion we need to view the events described set against.
A key point of Jesus protest at the Temple I think was the bathing. I don’t want to come over all King of Tulsa, but supplying the bathing around the temple for a charge would have been a nice little earner with 2.5 million coming to do that.
You would have joined me and Jesus at the Temple demo wouldn’t you, getting our fair share of abuse from StillWaters shouting “bugger off you Hellenic rabble” at us?
Just met some American friends who have returned from a trip to Britain, the first in a long while.
Apparently the country is now “notably shabby”, and “falling to bits”, and “beer prices now rival New York”.
I disagree with their assessment. Britain is less shabby than it's been for a long time, especially in London, with the Elizabeth Line, etc.
Round here, the roads are in shite order (pot holes like bomb craters!) footpaths and verges are overgrown and fly tipping is out of control. I drove down the A46 last week from my village to the M1 and was appalled at how the embankments were festooned with litter, packaging, takeaway cartons and bits of car. Chaz should just have a quiet knees up with his family and bung my local council some cash to pay for a clean up!
TFS, they need to start making litter louts and criminals wear orange suits and prowl the highways of the UK picking up litter as a punishment
I'd vote for any party that advocated the death penalty for fly tippers. I genuinely hate people who do that, and I don't like to hate anyone.
They are positively encouraged in Gloucestershire.
If you want to take rubbish to your local Council dump you have to make an appointment.
There are no appointments in Pershore, WR10 2LW, and no ANPR to see if you are an out of town interloper from what I remember.
The apparent 'decline' of Britain - ie in terms of how it looks - I would say, is to do with local authority budgets. There isn't enough money due to budget cuts so that discretionary services, ie landscaping, public toilets, fixing potholes, parks and gardens just get cut. Even things like enforcement of planning regulations gets cut right back to the point where, in one town of 100,000 people I am familiar with, has 2000 unresolved breaches of planning control that it knows about, and only two inexperienced officers (ie with less than one years experience) dealing with it. Much of this is all just trivial amounts of money that are not being spent with disproportionate consequences that are not immediately obvious. By contrast municipalities in other countries don't let things get so bad even when economic times are objectively far, far worse; because they aren't dealing with the legacy of thatcherism and the harm it did to central/local government relations.
The money is going on social care. In other words, very elderly people.
I don't want to seem callous but we really do need to have a conversation about how much of our national wealth we want to, publicly, spend very expensively on keeping people alive for as long as possible who aren't particularly well and aren't particularly enjoying it.
In other countries, families take them in and look after them - with some visitors/outside help occasionally. I'd argue that's more humane. The trouble is it's also more hassle.
Multi-generational households are fine for very rich people, where granny or grandad can have a self-contained annexe or a barn conversion next to the main house, and where said elder is in reasonable health. Expecting the average family, with Mum and Dad both working full time to make ends meet, noisy kids bouncing off the walls, and already living on top of one another in a rabbit hutch house, to accommodate any older relative - still less one with disabilities and/or dementia - is a complete non-starter. Retirement villages, sheltered housing and residential care homes all exist for good reasons.
The real issue isn't the expenditure of all that cash - not least because, if we make serious efforts to cut and ration it, then how are we going to decide which older people are worth cherishing, and who gets left to starve to death sitting in their own shit or humanely destroyed when they're past it like the family cat? It's who keeps getting taken to the cleaners over and over again for all the extra funding that's the real problem here.
Not really. My wife's family is from Bulgaria, which is a poor country, and everyone does it there, regardless of how little they have.
They consider what we do to be cruel. Like shunting off a 3-year to boarding school, just the other way round.
Granny has dementia and can't be left alone for her own safety. She comes to live with daughter and son-in-law and their two kiddies.
Which half of the couple sacrifices their career and becomes a full-time unpaid career for Granny for the remainder of her lifespan, and how does the other half earn enough money to cover the mortgage and all the bills for the entire household?
It is all pretty feasible: you can bring in carers, work from home etc.
The reason taxes are so high in the UK is because huge sums of money go toward elderly care, the NHS (primarily used by the elderly), and triple locked pensions.
Another story I heard today: A serving police officer is “looking forward” to a 2% pay rise this year. His father, who retired on 3/4 of final pay, gets 10%. The police officer calculates that in four years, his retired father will out-earn him.
How on earth is that sustainable?
The thing I confess I don’t understand is that Britain is hardly alone in its demographic burden. In fact, thanks to immigration, it does a little better than most of its advanced country peers. So how the fuck do they manage without the country “falling to bits”?
Now, just imagine the reaction if you'd expressed concern about bringing people into the country wearing yarmulkas ...
It's baseball caps that I'd like to see outlawed.
A baseball cap is an amazing thing. When someone wears one it sucks the intelligence out of their brain.
I don't think I have ever worn one. Probably just as well, all things considered.
They are quite useful for actual sports. For example, I use one to keep rain off my glasses when rowing.
If you can find one which fits your headshape (far from a given with my massive head) they do a decent job of keeping summer sun off a scalp not as shielded by hair as it once was, and in my case look less preposterous in doing so than most other hats.
Tilley hats do the trick. Not as Croc Dundee as some.
Very popular in Seattle AND also ugliest hats ever.
Personally would rather wear an old bucket on my fool head.
Some of us don't have any choice. Too fair and too sensitive to the sun.
The apparent 'decline' of Britain - ie in terms of how it looks - I would say, is to do with local authority budgets. There isn't enough money due to budget cuts so that discretionary services, ie landscaping, public toilets, fixing potholes, parks and gardens just get cut. Even things like enforcement of planning regulations gets cut right back to the point where, in one town of 100,000 people I am familiar with, has 2000 unresolved breaches of planning control that it knows about, and only two inexperienced officers (ie with less than one years experience) dealing with it. Much of this is all just trivial amounts of money that are not being spent with disproportionate consequences that are not immediately obvious. By contrast municipalities in other countries don't let things get so bad even when economic times are objectively far, far worse; because they aren't dealing with the legacy of thatcherism and the harm it did to central/local government relations.
The money is going on social care. In other words, very elderly people.
I don't want to seem callous but we really do need to have a conversation about how much of our national wealth we want to, publicly, spend very expensively on keeping people alive for as long as possible who aren't particularly well and aren't particularly enjoying it.
In other countries, families take them in and look after them - with some visitors/outside help occasionally. I'd argue that's more humane. The trouble is it's also more hassle.
Multi-generational households are fine for very rich people, where granny or grandad can have a self-contained annexe or a barn conversion next to the main house, and where said elder is in reasonable health. Expecting the average family, with Mum and Dad both working full time to make ends meet, noisy kids bouncing off the walls, and already living on top of one another in a rabbit hutch house, to accommodate any older relative - still less one with disabilities and/or dementia - is a complete non-starter. Retirement villages, sheltered housing and residential care homes all exist for good reasons.
The real issue isn't the expenditure of all that cash - not least because, if we make serious efforts to cut and ration it, then how are we going to decide which older people are worth cherishing, and who gets left to starve to death sitting in their own shit or humanely destroyed when they're past it like the family cat? It's who keeps getting taken to the cleaners over and over again for all the extra funding that's the real problem here.
Not really. My wife's family is from Bulgaria, which is a poor country, and everyone does it there, regardless of how little they have.
They consider what we do to be cruel. Like shunting off a 3-year to boarding school, just the other way round.
Granny has dementia and can't be left alone for her own safety. She comes to live with daughter and son-in-law and their two kiddies.
Which half of the couple sacrifices their career and becomes a full-time unpaid career for Granny for the remainder of her lifespan, and how does the other half earn enough money to cover the mortgage and all the bills for the entire household?
It is all pretty feasible: you can bring in carers, work from home etc.
Who pays for the carers? What if you can't work from home? What, for that matter, are you meant to do when you don't have a spare room to accommodate a sick elderly person in the first place? And then there's the cost of installing and powering specialist medical and mobility equipment.
The notion that the average family can cope with an elderly person with complex and extremely expensive needs at home, especially if the commitment turns out to last for years on end, is risible.
"In Stoke-on-Trent, the potters are working seven days a week, while in Knaresborough strings of bunting are whizzing through machines. In London, icing “artists” are painstakingly decorating Westminster Abbey-shaped biscuits."
Just met some American friends who have returned from a trip to Britain, the first in a long while.
Apparently the country is now “notably shabby”, and “falling to bits”, and “beer prices now rival New York”.
I disagree with their assessment. Britain is less shabby than it's been for a long time, especially in London, with the Elizabeth Line, etc.
Round here, the roads are in shite order (pot holes like bomb craters!) footpaths and verges are overgrown and fly tipping is out of control. I drove down the A46 last week from my village to the M1 and was appalled at how the embankments were festooned with litter, packaging, takeaway cartons and bits of car. Chaz should just have a quiet knees up with his family and bung my local council some cash to pay for a clean up!
TFS, they need to start making litter louts and criminals wear orange suits and prowl the highways of the UK picking up litter as a punishment
I'd vote for any party that advocated the death penalty for fly tippers. I genuinely hate people who do that, and I don't like to hate anyone.
They are positively encouraged in Gloucestershire.
If you want to take rubbish to your local Council dump you have to make an appointment.
There are no appointments in Pershore, WR10 2LW, and no ANPR to see if you are an out of town interloper from what I remember.
The apparent 'decline' of Britain - ie in terms of how it looks - I would say, is to do with local authority budgets. There isn't enough money due to budget cuts so that discretionary services, ie landscaping, public toilets, fixing potholes, parks and gardens just get cut. Even things like enforcement of planning regulations gets cut right back to the point where, in one town of 100,000 people I am familiar with, has 2000 unresolved breaches of planning control that it knows about, and only two inexperienced officers (ie with less than one years experience) dealing with it. Much of this is all just trivial amounts of money that are not being spent with disproportionate consequences that are not immediately obvious. By contrast municipalities in other countries don't let things get so bad even when economic times are objectively far, far worse; because they aren't dealing with the legacy of thatcherism and the harm it did to central/local government relations.
The money is going on social care. In other words, very elderly people.
I don't want to seem callous but we really do need to have a conversation about how much of our national wealth we want to, publicly, spend very expensively on keeping people alive for as long as possible who aren't particularly well and aren't particularly enjoying it.
In other countries, families take them in and look after them - with some visitors/outside help occasionally. I'd argue that's more humane. The trouble is it's also more hassle.
Multi-generational households are fine for very rich people, where granny or grandad can have a self-contained annexe or a barn conversion next to the main house, and where said elder is in reasonable health. Expecting the average family, with Mum and Dad both working full time to make ends meet, noisy kids bouncing off the walls, and already living on top of one another in a rabbit hutch house, to accommodate any older relative - still less one with disabilities and/or dementia - is a complete non-starter. Retirement villages, sheltered housing and residential care homes all exist for good reasons.
The real issue isn't the expenditure of all that cash - not least because, if we make serious efforts to cut and ration it, then how are we going to decide which older people are worth cherishing, and who gets left to starve to death sitting in their own shit or humanely destroyed when they're past it like the family cat? It's who keeps getting taken to the cleaners over and over again for all the extra funding that's the real problem here.
Not really. My wife's family is from Bulgaria, which is a poor country, and everyone does it there, regardless of how little they have.
They consider what we do to be cruel. Like shunting off a 3-year to boarding school, just the other way round.
Granny has dementia and can't be left alone for her own safety. She comes to live with daughter and son-in-law and their two kiddies.
Which half of the couple sacrifices their career and becomes a full-time unpaid career for Granny for the remainder of her lifespan, and how does the other half earn enough money to cover the mortgage and all the bills for the entire household?
It is all pretty feasible: you can bring in carers, work from home etc.
Who pays for the carers? What if you can't work from home? What, for that matter, are you meant to do when you don't have a spare room to accommodate a sick elderly person in the first place? And then there's the cost of installing and powering specialist medical and mobility equipment.
The notion that the average family can cope with an elderly person with complex and extremely expensive needs at home, especially if the commitment turns out to last for years on end, is risible.
Yeah? But what if you're wealthy and don't have to consider that? Eh? Sheesh.
The reason taxes are so high in the UK is because huge sums of money go toward elderly care, the NHS (primarily used by the elderly), and triple locked pensions.
Another story I heard today: A serving police officer is “looking forward” to a 2% pay rise this year. His father, who retired on 3/4 of final pay, gets 10%. The police officer calculates that in four years, his retired father will out-earn him.
How on earth is that sustainable?
The thing I confess I don’t understand is that Britain is hardly alone in its demographic burden. In fact, thanks to immigration, it does a little better than most of its advanced country peers. So how the fuck do they manage without the country “falling to bits”?
The elderly are the tories core vote. They have to be looked after simple as that.
They could have sought to develop their support so they were not wholly in hock to one group, even if turnout would always make the elderly important.
The reason taxes are so high in the UK is because huge sums of money go toward elderly care, the NHS (primarily used by the elderly), and triple locked pensions.
Another story I heard today: A serving police officer is “looking forward” to a 2% pay rise this year. His father, who retired on 3/4 of final pay, gets 10%. The police officer calculates that in four years, his retired father will out-earn him.
How on earth is that sustainable?
The thing I confess I don’t understand is that Britain is hardly alone in its demographic burden. In fact, thanks to immigration, it does a little better than most of its advanced country peers. So how the fuck do they manage without the country “falling to bits”?
The elderly are the tories core vote. They have to be looked after simple as that.
They could have sought to develop their support so they were not wholly in hock to one group, even if turnout would always make the elderly important.
What's the point when that group - the majority of the retired who own their own homes, plus their middle-aged heirs - are so numerous and electorally powerful?
Of course, the rest of the political establishment is therefore so scared of the grey vote that it won't dare switch from taxing incomes to assets, either.
Labour, if and when it gets back in, will keep on hiking taxes on earned incomes, both directly and via fiscal drag, in exactly the same fashion as the Conservatives, whilst leaving property and inheritances well alone. Watch.
Just met some American friends who have returned from a trip to Britain, the first in a long while.
Apparently the country is now “notably shabby”, and “falling to bits”, and “beer prices now rival New York”.
I disagree with their assessment. Britain is less shabby than it's been for a long time, especially in London, with the Elizabeth Line, etc.
Round here, the roads are in shite order (pot holes like bomb craters!) footpaths and verges are overgrown and fly tipping is out of control. I drove down the A46 last week from my village to the M1 and was appalled at how the embankments were festooned with litter, packaging, takeaway cartons and bits of car. Chaz should just have a quiet knees up with his family and bung my local council some cash to pay for a clean up!
TFS, they need to start making litter louts and criminals wear orange suits and prowl the highways of the UK picking up litter as a punishment
I'd vote for any party that advocated the death penalty for fly tippers. I genuinely hate people who do that, and I don't like to hate anyone.
They are positively encouraged in Gloucestershire.
If you want to take rubbish to your local Council dump you have to make an appointment.
There are no appointments in Pershore, WR10 2LW, and no ANPR to see if you are an out of town interloper from what I remember.
Isn't that Worcestershire?
Yes, but I'm close to Pershore so that's a handy tip. (No pun intended.)
The reason taxes are so high in the UK is because huge sums of money go toward elderly care, the NHS (primarily used by the elderly), and triple locked pensions.
Another story I heard today: A serving police officer is “looking forward” to a 2% pay rise this year. His father, who retired on 3/4 of final pay, gets 10%. The police officer calculates that in four years, his retired father will out-earn him.
How on earth is that sustainable?
The thing I confess I don’t understand is that Britain is hardly alone in its demographic burden. In fact, thanks to immigration, it does a little better than most of its advanced country peers. So how the fuck do they manage without the country “falling to bits”?
The elderly are the tories core vote. They have to be looked after simple as that.
They could have sought to develop their support so they were not wholly in hock to one group, even if turnout would always make the elderly important.
What's the point when that group - the majority of the retired who own their own homes, plus their middle-aged heirs - are so numerous and electorally powerful?
Of course, the rest of the political establishment is therefore so scared of the grey vote that it won't dare switch from taxing incomes to assets, either.
Labour, if and when it gets back in, will keep on hiking taxes on earned incomes, both directly and via fiscal drag, in exactly the same fashion as the Conservatives, whilst leaving property and inheritances well alone. Watch.
The point would be itd give them some protection in the event they had no choice but to upset the grey vote.
Now, just imagine the reaction if you'd expressed concern about bringing people into the country wearing yarmulkas ...
It's baseball caps that I'd like to see outlawed.
A baseball cap is an amazing thing. When someone wears one it sucks the intelligence out of their brain.
I don't think I have ever worn one. Probably just as well, all things considered.
They are quite useful for actual sports. For example, I use one to keep rain off my glasses when rowing.
If you can find one which fits your headshape (far from a given with my massive head) they do a decent job of keeping summer sun off a scalp not as shielded by hair as it once was, and in my case look less preposterous in doing so than most other hats.
Tilley hats do the trick. Not as Croc Dundee as some.
Very popular in Seattle AND also ugliest hats ever.
Personally would rather wear an old bucket on my fool head.
Some of us don't have any choice. Too fair and too sensitive to the sun.
What’s wrong with a panama ?
Not broad enough.
I habitually wear a hat - winter, spring, summer and fall.
No need to wear a Tilley UNLESS you want to, as there are PLENTY of (broad-brimmed) alternatives.
Personally find Panama and similar hat with solid crowns TOO HOT to wear in warm to hot weather.
Instead, my preference is for hats with mesh and/or air holes, such as are popular in Australia, for example Barmah and B.C. Hats both Oz brands.
Right now am wearing my new favorite, made by (ironically?) Panama Jack; mesh crown (on sides), broad brim (3''), VERY lightweight.
AND stylish. Especially as I've decorated/personalized it with some of great lapel pins attached to the mesh.
Disney just dug its heels. I mean, they basically said to the Southern Baptist Convention, “Fuck you, we don’t need you.” I don’t know whether the Disney guys were just arrogant or confident, but from the very beginning, they gave not an inch. Maybe it’s a profile in courage. Maybe it’s just pragmatism. I don’t know what was in their minds. I never got to talk to Katzenberg. I did speak briefly to Eisner at a book event, but he wouldn’t tell me anything anyway.
The Baptists quickly learned that there was no real alternative in terms of popular culture for young children other than Disney. So, they were talking about sacrifice. And I think sacrifice is one thing if they’re asking adults to make it. Disney parks had by that time become a cultural imperative. Which is to say, if you wanted to be a good parent or a good grandparent, taking your children or grandchildren to one of the Disney parks became a cultural imperative. That’s one of the things—one of the boxes you had to tick. And they were a little bit queasy with trying to tell a 7-year-old that we’re not going to Disneyland or Disney World because we think they’re not as friendly to evangelicals as Walt was 30 years ago…
… I don’t think he realized that Disney punches back, and they may punch back better than he punches. He shouldn’t set himself up to stand or fall on whether he can get Disney to capitulate, because he will never get Disney to capitulate. It will not happen. It didn’t happen in the ’90s, and for sure it’s not going to happen now. And if you had to bet, would you bet on an ambitious Florida governor, or would you bet on a multibillion-dollar corporation that knows what its audience wants?
Hes taken it too far. Yes he can bash woke Disney but they have every incentive to drag it through the coursts and is he really looking tough even if he wins?
Disney know what makes them more money, they dont seen randomly activist like smaller companies.
Wouldn't it be better if both sides calmed down and moderated their positions, recognising that at some level the other might perhaps have a point?
Free speech innit?
And Disney had such a sweet deal on their district its probably worth a protracted legal fight about it.
Yes.
HOWEVER, am guessing the REAL motivation for Disney to NOT allow jack-leg preachers OR cheap-jack politicos to bully them over creative content, is realization that IF they give in to such tactics, it would be open season against them.
So if Ron DiRatis wants to fuck around with Mickey Mouse, then Disney will show him - and anyone else whose paying attention - the error of his ways.
One thing I think people are missing about this is that Disney is not in the greatest of position share price wise due to other factors (namely the losses they have made on the Disney+ streaming service) and so, having to fight on a second major front, namely with DeSantis, may make shareholders even more worried about what Disney is doing.
There is also the fact that Anheuser Busch is reporting its numbers this week and every analyst and investor is going to be asking about their Bud Light sales. The WSJ said Bud Light was down 15% YoY in sales for the week of April 15th and it is possible that has got worse. If that is the case, and AB starts rowing back on its comments, then the investor community is - very quickly - going to get tired of corporates pursuing political goals that potentially impact the share price.
The reason taxes are so high in the UK is because huge sums of money go toward elderly care, the NHS (primarily used by the elderly), and triple locked pensions.
Another story I heard today: A serving police officer is “looking forward” to a 2% pay rise this year. His father, who retired on 3/4 of final pay, gets 10%. The police officer calculates that in four years, his retired father will out-earn him.
How on earth is that sustainable?
The thing I confess I don’t understand is that Britain is hardly alone in its demographic burden. In fact, thanks to immigration, it does a little better than most of its advanced country peers. So how the fuck do they manage without the country “falling to bits”?
Time to wheel out one of my favourite stats again: in the UK, the average pensioner household after adjusting for housing costs has a higher level of disposable income than the average working household. There are still a lot of poor pensioners around, but the implication is that the average mortgage-free pensioner now enjoys a substantially higher standard of living than the average working-age taxpayer.
The triple lock and the ever-tightening squeeze on housing supply are purpose built to transfer both asset and liquid wealth upwards, from younger, poorer people to older, richer ones - by ensuring that, over time, the gap between earned incomes on the one hand, and pension incomes and house prices on the other, will grow wider and wider and wider.
The apparent 'decline' of Britain - ie in terms of how it looks - I would say, is to do with local authority budgets. There isn't enough money due to budget cuts so that discretionary services, ie landscaping, public toilets, fixing potholes, parks and gardens just get cut. Even things like enforcement of planning regulations gets cut right back to the point where, in one town of 100,000 people I am familiar with, has 2000 unresolved breaches of planning control that it knows about, and only two inexperienced officers (ie with less than one years experience) dealing with it. Much of this is all just trivial amounts of money that are not being spent with disproportionate consequences that are not immediately obvious. By contrast municipalities in other countries don't let things get so bad even when economic times are objectively far, far worse; because they aren't dealing with the legacy of thatcherism and the harm it did to central/local government relations.
The money is going on social care. In other words, very elderly people.
I don't want to seem callous but we really do need to have a conversation about how much of our national wealth we want to, publicly, spend very expensively on keeping people alive for as long as possible who aren't particularly well and aren't particularly enjoying it.
In other countries, families take them in and look after them - with some visitors/outside help occasionally. I'd argue that's more humane. The trouble is it's also more hassle.
Multi-generational households are fine for very rich people, where granny or grandad can have a self-contained annexe or a barn conversion next to the main house, and where said elder is in reasonable health. Expecting the average family, with Mum and Dad both working full time to make ends meet, noisy kids bouncing off the walls, and already living on top of one another in a rabbit hutch house, to accommodate any older relative - still less one with disabilities and/or dementia - is a complete non-starter. Retirement villages, sheltered housing and residential care homes all exist for good reasons.
The real issue isn't the expenditure of all that cash - not least because, if we make serious efforts to cut and ration it, then how are we going to decide which older people are worth cherishing, and who gets left to starve to death sitting in their own shit or humanely destroyed when they're past it like the family cat? It's who keeps getting taken to the cleaners over and over again for all the extra funding that's the real problem here.
Not really. My wife's family is from Bulgaria, which is a poor country, and everyone does it there, regardless of how little they have.
They consider what we do to be cruel. Like shunting off a 3-year to boarding school, just the other way round.
Yes, that was my mother's (Russian) family's view. I looked after her (from food to bedpans to endless games of Scrabble) even when she was bedridden and I'd recently been elected - I'd been brought up to think that normal, and the idea of bringing in carers was horrific if it could be avoided. It's pretty widespread in Eastern and Southern Europe, but it does require a fundamental view that looking after family comes before almost anything else, and a lot of planning for it - more typically, it involves a lot of relatives, so the burden isn't on a single individual or couple.
Chatted to an old friend who is pretty interested in politics, and he wasn't aware that there was an election on - living in London, he sees no reference to it whatever! Sobering.
Disney just dug its heels. I mean, they basically said to the Southern Baptist Convention, “Fuck you, we don’t need you.” I don’t know whether the Disney guys were just arrogant or confident, but from the very beginning, they gave not an inch. Maybe it’s a profile in courage. Maybe it’s just pragmatism. I don’t know what was in their minds. I never got to talk to Katzenberg. I did speak briefly to Eisner at a book event, but he wouldn’t tell me anything anyway.
The Baptists quickly learned that there was no real alternative in terms of popular culture for young children other than Disney. So, they were talking about sacrifice. And I think sacrifice is one thing if they’re asking adults to make it. Disney parks had by that time become a cultural imperative. Which is to say, if you wanted to be a good parent or a good grandparent, taking your children or grandchildren to one of the Disney parks became a cultural imperative. That’s one of the things—one of the boxes you had to tick. And they were a little bit queasy with trying to tell a 7-year-old that we’re not going to Disneyland or Disney World because we think they’re not as friendly to evangelicals as Walt was 30 years ago…
… I don’t think he realized that Disney punches back, and they may punch back better than he punches. He shouldn’t set himself up to stand or fall on whether he can get Disney to capitulate, because he will never get Disney to capitulate. It will not happen. It didn’t happen in the ’90s, and for sure it’s not going to happen now. And if you had to bet, would you bet on an ambitious Florida governor, or would you bet on a multibillion-dollar corporation that knows what its audience wants?
Hes taken it too far. Yes he can bash woke Disney but they have every incentive to drag it through the coursts and is he really looking tough even if he wins?
Disney know what makes them more money, they dont seen randomly activist like smaller companies.
Wouldn't it be better if both sides calmed down and moderated their positions, recognising that at some level the other might perhaps have a point?
Free speech innit?
And Disney had such a sweet deal on their district its probably worth a protracted legal fight about it.
Yes.
HOWEVER, am guessing the REAL motivation for Disney to NOT allow jack-leg preachers OR cheap-jack politicos to bully them over creative content, is realization that IF they give in to such tactics, it would be open season against them.
So if Ron DiRatis wants to fuck around with Mickey Mouse, then Disney will show him - and anyone else whose paying attention - the error of his ways.
One thing I think people are missing about this is that Disney is not in the greatest of position share price wise due to other factors (namely the losses they have made on the Disney+ streaming service) and so, having to fight on a second major front, namely with DeSantis, may make shareholders even more worried about what Disney is doing.
There is also the fact that Anheuser Busch is reporting its numbers this week and every analyst and investor is going to be asking about their Bud Light sales. The WSJ said Bud Light was down 15% YoY in sales for the week of April 15th and it is possible that has got worse. If that is the case, and AB starts rowing back on its comments, then the investor community is - very quickly - going to get tired of corporates pursuing political goals that potentially impact the share price.
Maybe. BUT personally would NOT bet on it.
For one thing, decline in Bud Light sales may have something to do with fact that it's diluted horse piss?
For another, will need to see what the figures show in a month, and in six months?
Note also that most consumer boycotts of this kind fizzle (apt word?) out.
ADDENDUM - BTW, issue re: Mickey versus DeRatis, is no longer Disney's opposition to "don't say gay" law. It is now political & governmental retaliation for daring to oppose the Governor and his rubber-stamp legislature.
The reason taxes are so high in the UK is because huge sums of money go toward elderly care, the NHS (primarily used by the elderly), and triple locked pensions.
Another story I heard today: A serving police officer is “looking forward” to a 2% pay rise this year. His father, who retired on 3/4 of final pay, gets 10%. The police officer calculates that in four years, his retired father will out-earn him.
How on earth is that sustainable?
The thing I confess I don’t understand is that Britain is hardly alone in its demographic burden. In fact, thanks to immigration, it does a little better than most of its advanced country peers. So how the fuck do they manage without the country “falling to bits”?
Time to wheel out one of my favourite stats again: in the UK, the average pensioner household after adjusting for housing costs has a higher level of disposable income than the average working household. There are still a lot of poor pensioners around, but the implication is that the average mortgage-free pensioner now enjoys a substantially higher standard of living than the average working-age taxpayer.
The triple lock and the ever-tightening squeeze on housing supply are purpose built to transfer both asset and liquid wealth upwards, from younger, poorer people to older, richer ones - by ensuring that, over time, the gap between earned incomes on the one hand, and pension incomes and house prices on the other, will grow wider and wider and wider.
Not to mention oldies often get charged less at various sporting and entertainment events.
I know its a legacy of when there were far fewer, and far less affluent, pensioners but why does it still continue.
Doubtless it will have stopped before I'm old enough to benefit.
Chatted to an old friend who is pretty interested in politics, and he wasn't aware that there was an election on - living in London, he sees no reference to it whatever! Sobering.
Chatted to an old friend who is pretty interested in politics, and he wasn't aware that there was an election on - living in London, he sees no reference to it whatever! Sobering.
Disney just dug its heels. I mean, they basically said to the Southern Baptist Convention, “Fuck you, we don’t need you.” I don’t know whether the Disney guys were just arrogant or confident, but from the very beginning, they gave not an inch. Maybe it’s a profile in courage. Maybe it’s just pragmatism. I don’t know what was in their minds. I never got to talk to Katzenberg. I did speak briefly to Eisner at a book event, but he wouldn’t tell me anything anyway.
The Baptists quickly learned that there was no real alternative in terms of popular culture for young children other than Disney. So, they were talking about sacrifice. And I think sacrifice is one thing if they’re asking adults to make it. Disney parks had by that time become a cultural imperative. Which is to say, if you wanted to be a good parent or a good grandparent, taking your children or grandchildren to one of the Disney parks became a cultural imperative. That’s one of the things—one of the boxes you had to tick. And they were a little bit queasy with trying to tell a 7-year-old that we’re not going to Disneyland or Disney World because we think they’re not as friendly to evangelicals as Walt was 30 years ago…
… I don’t think he realized that Disney punches back, and they may punch back better than he punches. He shouldn’t set himself up to stand or fall on whether he can get Disney to capitulate, because he will never get Disney to capitulate. It will not happen. It didn’t happen in the ’90s, and for sure it’s not going to happen now. And if you had to bet, would you bet on an ambitious Florida governor, or would you bet on a multibillion-dollar corporation that knows what its audience wants?
Hes taken it too far. Yes he can bash woke Disney but they have every incentive to drag it through the coursts and is he really looking tough even if he wins?
Disney know what makes them more money, they dont seen randomly activist like smaller companies.
Wouldn't it be better if both sides calmed down and moderated their positions, recognising that at some level the other might perhaps have a point?
Free speech innit?
And Disney had such a sweet deal on their district its probably worth a protracted legal fight about it.
Yes.
HOWEVER, am guessing the REAL motivation for Disney to NOT allow jack-leg preachers OR cheap-jack politicos to bully them over creative content, is realization that IF they give in to such tactics, it would be open season against them.
So if Ron DiRatis wants to fuck around with Mickey Mouse, then Disney will show him - and anyone else whose paying attention - the error of his ways.
One thing I think people are missing about this is that Disney is not in the greatest of position share price wise due to other factors (namely the losses they have made on the Disney+ streaming service) and so, having to fight on a second major front, namely with DeSantis, may make shareholders even more worried about what Disney is doing.
There is also the fact that Anheuser Busch is reporting its numbers this week and every analyst and investor is going to be asking about their Bud Light sales. The WSJ said Bud Light was down 15% YoY in sales for the week of April 15th and it is possible that has got worse. If that is the case, and AB starts rowing back on its comments, then the investor community is - very quickly - going to get tired of corporates pursuing political goals that potentially impact the share price.
Maybe. BUT personally would NOT bet on it.
For one thing, decline in Bud Light sales may have something to do with fact that it's diluted horse piss?
For another, will need to see what the figures show in a month, and in six months?
Note also that most consumer boycotts of this kind fizzle (apt word?) out.
But previously (one assumes) it was popular diluted horse piss.
Chatted to an old friend who is pretty interested in politics, and he wasn't aware that there was an election on - living in London, he sees no reference to it whatever! Sobering.
I don't think there are any elections on in London, are there? Not that who's in charge of the local council makes very much difference to anyone or anything in most cases, unless perhaps the competing parties are on opposite sides of a particularly vicious Nimby spat.
Chatted to an old friend who is pretty interested in politics, and he wasn't aware that there was an election on - living in London, he sees no reference to it whatever! Sobering.
Because in London the Locals were last year.
Yes, but they could at least let the residents of our illustrative capital know they are happening elsewhere. Some media acknowledgement of elections nearby to the border.
Disney just dug its heels. I mean, they basically said to the Southern Baptist Convention, “Fuck you, we don’t need you.” I don’t know whether the Disney guys were just arrogant or confident, but from the very beginning, they gave not an inch. Maybe it’s a profile in courage. Maybe it’s just pragmatism. I don’t know what was in their minds. I never got to talk to Katzenberg. I did speak briefly to Eisner at a book event, but he wouldn’t tell me anything anyway.
The Baptists quickly learned that there was no real alternative in terms of popular culture for young children other than Disney. So, they were talking about sacrifice. And I think sacrifice is one thing if they’re asking adults to make it. Disney parks had by that time become a cultural imperative. Which is to say, if you wanted to be a good parent or a good grandparent, taking your children or grandchildren to one of the Disney parks became a cultural imperative. That’s one of the things—one of the boxes you had to tick. And they were a little bit queasy with trying to tell a 7-year-old that we’re not going to Disneyland or Disney World because we think they’re not as friendly to evangelicals as Walt was 30 years ago…
… I don’t think he realized that Disney punches back, and they may punch back better than he punches. He shouldn’t set himself up to stand or fall on whether he can get Disney to capitulate, because he will never get Disney to capitulate. It will not happen. It didn’t happen in the ’90s, and for sure it’s not going to happen now. And if you had to bet, would you bet on an ambitious Florida governor, or would you bet on a multibillion-dollar corporation that knows what its audience wants?
Hes taken it too far. Yes he can bash woke Disney but they have every incentive to drag it through the coursts and is he really looking tough even if he wins?
Disney know what makes them more money, they dont seen randomly activist like smaller companies.
Wouldn't it be better if both sides calmed down and moderated their positions, recognising that at some level the other might perhaps have a point?
Free speech innit?
And Disney had such a sweet deal on their district its probably worth a protracted legal fight about it.
Yes.
HOWEVER, am guessing the REAL motivation for Disney to NOT allow jack-leg preachers OR cheap-jack politicos to bully them over creative content, is realization that IF they give in to such tactics, it would be open season against them.
So if Ron DiRatis wants to fuck around with Mickey Mouse, then Disney will show him - and anyone else whose paying attention - the error of his ways.
One thing I think people are missing about this is that Disney is not in the greatest of position share price wise due to other factors (namely the losses they have made on the Disney+ streaming service) and so, having to fight on a second major front, namely with DeSantis, may make shareholders even more worried about what Disney is doing.
There is also the fact that Anheuser Busch is reporting its numbers this week and every analyst and investor is going to be asking about their Bud Light sales. The WSJ said Bud Light was down 15% YoY in sales for the week of April 15th and it is possible that has got worse. If that is the case, and AB starts rowing back on its comments, then the investor community is - very quickly - going to get tired of corporates pursuing political goals that potentially impact the share price.
Maybe. BUT personally would NOT bet on it.
For one thing, decline in Bud Light sales may have something to do with fact that it's diluted horse piss?
For another, will need to see what the figures show in a month, and in six months?
Note also that most consumer boycotts of this kind fizzle (apt word?) out.
But previously (one assumes) it was popular diluted horse piss.
Yes. But beer sales in general are declining, certainly as % of alcohol consumption. With those still slurping the suds increasingly favoring actual beer over swill like Bud Light.
Just met some American friends who have returned from a trip to Britain, the first in a long while.
Apparently the country is now “notably shabby”, and “falling to bits”, and “beer prices now rival New York”.
I disagree with their assessment. Britain is less shabby than it's been for a long time, especially in London, with the Elizabeth Line, etc.
Round here, the roads are in shite order (pot holes like bomb craters!) footpaths and verges are overgrown and fly tipping is out of control. I drove down the A46 last week from my village to the M1 and was appalled at how the embankments were festooned with litter, packaging, takeaway cartons and bits of car. Chaz should just have a quiet knees up with his family and bung my local council some cash to pay for a clean up!
TFS, they need to start making litter louts and criminals wear orange suits and prowl the highways of the UK picking up litter as a punishment
I'd vote for any party that advocated the death penalty for fly tippers. I genuinely hate people who do that, and I don't like to hate anyone.
They are positively encouraged in Gloucestershire.
If you want to take rubbish to your local Council dump you have to make an appointment.
Was genuinely amazed when I found out this was required at the municipal tip in Edinburgh, when we were chucking stuff out before leaving the country.
Britain, a country where the local council employs a man to check that cars entering the tip have an appointment for doing so. Because that needs doing.
We started having to make appointments at the tip during the pandemic, to keep people apart, and the council clearly liked it so much they’ve kept it going, along with the man sitting there ticking off the registration numbers. To be fair, booking is quite easy and you then sail in and out of a fairly empty tip, compared to the scrum and sometimes queues of cars to get in that were a regular feature before.
But there must be a lot of stuff that used to come to the tip that is now going somewhere else….
Our local council has the second highest recycling rate in Scotland. Our local council has never required appointments to visit a recycling centre? Coincidence? Probably not.
The apparent 'decline' of Britain - ie in terms of how it looks - I would say, is to do with local authority budgets. There isn't enough money due to budget cuts so that discretionary services, ie landscaping, public toilets, fixing potholes, parks and gardens just get cut. Even things like enforcement of planning regulations gets cut right back to the point where, in one town of 100,000 people I am familiar with, has 2000 unresolved breaches of planning control that it knows about, and only two inexperienced officers (ie with less than one years experience) dealing with it. Much of this is all just trivial amounts of money that are not being spent with disproportionate consequences that are not immediately obvious. By contrast municipalities in other countries don't let things get so bad even when economic times are objectively far, far worse; because they aren't dealing with the legacy of thatcherism and the harm it did to central/local government relations.
The money is going on social care. In other words, very elderly people.
I don't want to seem callous but we really do need to have a conversation about how much of our national wealth we want to, publicly, spend very expensively on keeping people alive for as long as possible who aren't particularly well and aren't particularly enjoying it.
In other countries, families take them in and look after them - with some visitors/outside help occasionally. I'd argue that's more humane. The trouble is it's also more hassle.
Multi-generational households are fine for very rich people, where granny or grandad can have a self-contained annexe or a barn conversion next to the main house, and where said elder is in reasonable health. Expecting the average family, with Mum and Dad both working full time to make ends meet, noisy kids bouncing off the walls, and already living on top of one another in a rabbit hutch house, to accommodate any older relative - still less one with disabilities and/or dementia - is a complete non-starter. Retirement villages, sheltered housing and residential care homes all exist for good reasons.
The real issue isn't the expenditure of all that cash - not least because, if we make serious efforts to cut and ration it, then how are we going to decide which older people are worth cherishing, and who gets left to starve to death sitting in their own shit or humanely destroyed when they're past it like the family cat? It's who keeps getting taken to the cleaners over and over again for all the extra funding that's the real problem here.
The Tories will never agree to any form of euthanasia of the elderly. If they did, they would have killed off half their voters.
Chatted to an old friend who is pretty interested in politics, and he wasn't aware that there was an election on - living in London, he sees no reference to it whatever! Sobering.
Because in London the Locals were last year.
Yes, but on here we're aware of elections anywhere, from Little Snoddington to Outer Mongolia, so a well-educated friend unaware that there was a major electoral test coming from Sunak did startle me. Those of us who do care are in a bubble.
"The affected companies are those in England contracted by the Department for Transport: Avanti West Coast; Chiltern Railways; CrossCountry; East Midlands Railway; Great Western Railway; Greater Anglia; GTR – Great Northern and Thameslink; LNER; Northern; Southeastern; Southern/Gatwick Express; South Western Railway; SWR depot drivers; SWR Island Line; TransPennine Express; and West Midlands Trains."
The apparent 'decline' of Britain - ie in terms of how it looks - I would say, is to do with local authority budgets. There isn't enough money due to budget cuts so that discretionary services, ie landscaping, public toilets, fixing potholes, parks and gardens just get cut. Even things like enforcement of planning regulations gets cut right back to the point where, in one town of 100,000 people I am familiar with, has 2000 unresolved breaches of planning control that it knows about, and only two inexperienced officers (ie with less than one years experience) dealing with it. Much of this is all just trivial amounts of money that are not being spent with disproportionate consequences that are not immediately obvious. By contrast municipalities in other countries don't let things get so bad even when economic times are objectively far, far worse; because they aren't dealing with the legacy of thatcherism and the harm it did to central/local government relations.
The money is going on social care. In other words, very elderly people.
I don't want to seem callous but we really do need to have a conversation about how much of our national wealth we want to, publicly, spend very expensively on keeping people alive for as long as possible who aren't particularly well and aren't particularly enjoying it.
In other countries, families take them in and look after them - with some visitors/outside help occasionally. I'd argue that's more humane. The trouble is it's also more hassle.
Multi-generational households are fine for very rich people, where granny or grandad can have a self-contained annexe or a barn conversion next to the main house, and where said elder is in reasonable health. Expecting the average family, with Mum and Dad both working full time to make ends meet, noisy kids bouncing off the walls, and already living on top of one another in a rabbit hutch house, to accommodate any older relative - still less one with disabilities and/or dementia - is a complete non-starter. Retirement villages, sheltered housing and residential care homes all exist for good reasons.
The real issue isn't the expenditure of all that cash - not least because, if we make serious efforts to cut and ration it, then how are we going to decide which older people are worth cherishing, and who gets left to starve to death sitting in their own shit or humanely destroyed when they're past it like the family cat? It's who keeps getting taken to the cleaners over and over again for all the extra funding that's the real problem here.
The Tories will never agree to any form of euthanasia of the elderly. If they did, they would have killed off half their voters.
And half the party's own members. Conservatism as a movement, an ideology and a body is dominated by the elderly and their wishes.
Disney just dug its heels. I mean, they basically said to the Southern Baptist Convention, “Fuck you, we don’t need you.” I don’t know whether the Disney guys were just arrogant or confident, but from the very beginning, they gave not an inch. Maybe it’s a profile in courage. Maybe it’s just pragmatism. I don’t know what was in their minds. I never got to talk to Katzenberg. I did speak briefly to Eisner at a book event, but he wouldn’t tell me anything anyway.
The Baptists quickly learned that there was no real alternative in terms of popular culture for young children other than Disney. So, they were talking about sacrifice. And I think sacrifice is one thing if they’re asking adults to make it. Disney parks had by that time become a cultural imperative. Which is to say, if you wanted to be a good parent or a good grandparent, taking your children or grandchildren to one of the Disney parks became a cultural imperative. That’s one of the things—one of the boxes you had to tick. And they were a little bit queasy with trying to tell a 7-year-old that we’re not going to Disneyland or Disney World because we think they’re not as friendly to evangelicals as Walt was 30 years ago…
… I don’t think he realized that Disney punches back, and they may punch back better than he punches. He shouldn’t set himself up to stand or fall on whether he can get Disney to capitulate, because he will never get Disney to capitulate. It will not happen. It didn’t happen in the ’90s, and for sure it’s not going to happen now. And if you had to bet, would you bet on an ambitious Florida governor, or would you bet on a multibillion-dollar corporation that knows what its audience wants?
Hes taken it too far. Yes he can bash woke Disney but they have every incentive to drag it through the coursts and is he really looking tough even if he wins?
Disney know what makes them more money, they dont seen randomly activist like smaller companies.
Wouldn't it be better if both sides calmed down and moderated their positions, recognising that at some level the other might perhaps have a point?
Free speech innit?
And Disney had such a sweet deal on their district its probably worth a protracted legal fight about it.
Yes.
HOWEVER, am guessing the REAL motivation for Disney to NOT allow jack-leg preachers OR cheap-jack politicos to bully them over creative content, is realization that IF they give in to such tactics, it would be open season against them.
So if Ron DiRatis wants to fuck around with Mickey Mouse, then Disney will show him - and anyone else whose paying attention - the error of his ways.
One thing I think people are missing about this is that Disney is not in the greatest of position share price wise due to other factors (namely the losses they have made on the Disney+ streaming service) and so, having to fight on a second major front, namely with DeSantis, may make shareholders even more worried about what Disney is doing.
There is also the fact that Anheuser Busch is reporting its numbers this week and every analyst and investor is going to be asking about their Bud Light sales. The WSJ said Bud Light was down 15% YoY in sales for the week of April 15th and it is possible that has got worse. If that is the case, and AB starts rowing back on its comments, then the investor community is - very quickly - going to get tired of corporates pursuing political goals that potentially impact the share price.
Maybe. BUT personally would NOT bet on it.
For one thing, decline in Bud Light sales may have something to do with fact that it's diluted horse piss?
For another, will need to see what the figures show in a month, and in six months?
Note also that most consumer boycotts of this kind fizzle (apt word?) out.
ADDENDUM - BTW, issue re: Mickey versus DeRatis, is no longer Disney's opposition to "don't say gay" law. It is now political & governmental retaliation for daring to oppose the Governor and his rubber-stamp legislature.
Sales of beers like Miller Light have been increasing in the same period so it looks like it is a Bud Light specific thing. Certainly AB are worried enough where they have effectively fired both the Bud Light marketing director and her boss, and done a full 180 degree turn on their marketing claiming they are an All-American brand.
Will the sales come back? Who knows. I was at dinner last week with someone who had been travelling to the States on work and, while in a bar in Dallas, had heard a woman ask a guy "are you gay?" for ordering Bud Light. It seems to have seeped into the consciousness. It may change but sometimes these thing don't.
As for Disney, it has multiple issues at the moment. There is growing unease from investors that companies are stepping into minefields here and it is not going away.
'SUPPORT for the royal family is at an “all time low”, Professor John Curtice has said.
The polling expert’s assessment comes just one week ahead of King Charles’s coronation, which hit the headlines on Sunday after a call was put out for millions to give a “great cry” of allegiance during the ceremony.
Speaking to GB News, Curtice said that the data was increasingly suggesting that younger generations were moving away from supporting the royals.
“Support for them is now at an all time low and frankly it declined during the Queen Elizabeth era,” Curtice said.'
Hmm. I don't think demands for a loyalty oath will help.
Wokery.
It's deeply fashionable now to be against Britain and any symbols of Britain on the basis that they represent "colonialism", "racism" and "slavery".
Of course, this sentiment will be funded, advocated and encouraged by our enemies in China and Russia; they are hoping that if we lose enough self-confidence we might bring it all down on top of us ourselves.
They might be right.
Russia, and Russian propaganda being well known for ‘wokery’. Strange universe you sometimes inhabit.
Actually he has a point. Russia is willing to fund any movement that looks like it can disrupt UK stability. That has certainly included Scottish independence in recent times, but also Brexit.
They are equal opportunity disrupters.
Indeed - but that was hardly the thrust of his post.
The point of my post was that Russia will fund and encourage any useful idiot who is looking to undermine unity and confidence in the British state.
They are agnostic as to who or why. And it has no bearing on the consistency of what they do back home themselves.
To be fair the british state is doing a great job in undermining confidence in itself. It doesnt need the russians help.
What we're seeing is how confused and unstable a polity becomes when it ceases to be the undisputed top dog. There are various reactions to that, both on the Left and the Right.
Russia, and China, sense that - and are egging it on.
Who exactly is top dog here? Britain? Surely you mean the US or perhaps the west in general?
Blaming Russia for the declining support for the Monarchy is no more plausible than blaming them for Brexit.
All we have to do in Newham to use the civic amenity site is show some ID to demonstrate we are residents. It's a bit like voting - flash the old driving licence and Bob's your Auntie's Live-in Lover (as someone once said).
Casino - if wokery is really so powerful how do you explain the continuing stratospheric levels of support for Churchill? Even among Millenials if you believe YouGov, 2/3 familiar with him have a positive view. For the oldest it is 77%.
All we have to do in Newham to use the civic amenity site is show some ID to demonstrate we are residents. It's a bit like voting - flash the old driving licence and Bob's your Auntie's Live-in Lover (as someone once said).
Despicable recycler suppression - no doubt a Tory idea.
The reason taxes are so high in the UK is because huge sums of money go toward elderly care, the NHS (primarily used by the elderly), and triple locked pensions.
Another story I heard today: A serving police officer is “looking forward” to a 2% pay rise this year. His father, who retired on 3/4 of final pay, gets 10%. The police officer calculates that in four years, his retired father will out-earn him.
How on earth is that sustainable?
The thing I confess I don’t understand is that Britain is hardly alone in its demographic burden. In fact, thanks to immigration, it does a little better than most of its advanced country peers. So how the fuck do they manage without the country “falling to bits”?
Time to wheel out one of my favourite stats again: in the UK, the average pensioner household after adjusting for housing costs has a higher level of disposable income than the average working household. There are still a lot of poor pensioners around, but the implication is that the average mortgage-free pensioner now enjoys a substantially higher standard of living than the average working-age taxpayer.
The triple lock and the ever-tightening squeeze on housing supply are purpose built to transfer both asset and liquid wealth upwards, from younger, poorer people to older, richer ones - by ensuring that, over time, the gap between earned incomes on the one hand, and pension incomes and house prices on the other, will grow wider and wider and wider.
Whats amazing is the lack of gratitude amongst many of the elderly. We locked down too to protect them but in return get more moaning.
This 79 year old and his 83 year old wife are extremely grateful for our blessings and I have consistently stated my opposition to the triple lock
Indeed when Sunak suggested he was reviewing the triple lock it was Starmer who led the opposition to its demise
As someone who is nearing his diamond wedding anniversary, and vividly remembers the Queens coronation in 1953, I accept times have changed but there is a rather ugly narrative coming from some regarding the elderly, who in most cases are loved and adored by their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, and it is good that these unpleasant views are not shared by most of the populace
Just met some American friends who have returned from a trip to Britain, the first in a long while.
Apparently the country is now “notably shabby”, and “falling to bits”, and “beer prices now rival New York”.
I disagree with their assessment. Britain is less shabby than it's been for a long time, especially in London, with the Elizabeth Line, etc.
Round here, the roads are in shite order (pot holes like bomb craters!) footpaths and verges are overgrown and fly tipping is out of control. I drove down the A46 last week from my village to the M1 and was appalled at how the embankments were festooned with litter, packaging, takeaway cartons and bits of car. Chaz should just have a quiet knees up with his family and bung my local council some cash to pay for a clean up!
TFS, they need to start making litter louts and criminals wear orange suits and prowl the highways of the UK picking up litter as a punishment
I'd vote for any party that advocated the death penalty for fly tippers. I genuinely hate people who do that, and I don't like to hate anyone.
They are positively encouraged in Gloucestershire.
If you want to take rubbish to your local Council dump you have to make an appointment.
There are no appointments in Pershore, WR10 2LW, and no ANPR to see if you are an out of town interloper from what I remember.
The reason taxes are so high in the UK is because huge sums of money go toward elderly care, the NHS (primarily used by the elderly), and triple locked pensions.
Another story I heard today: A serving police officer is “looking forward” to a 2% pay rise this year. His father, who retired on 3/4 of final pay, gets 10%. The police officer calculates that in four years, his retired father will out-earn him.
How on earth is that sustainable?
The thing I confess I don’t understand is that Britain is hardly alone in its demographic burden. In fact, thanks to immigration, it does a little better than most of its advanced country peers. So how the fuck do they manage without the country “falling to bits”?
Time to wheel out one of my favourite stats again: in the UK, the average pensioner household after adjusting for housing costs has a higher level of disposable income than the average working household. There are still a lot of poor pensioners around, but the implication is that the average mortgage-free pensioner now enjoys a substantially higher standard of living than the average working-age taxpayer.
The triple lock and the ever-tightening squeeze on housing supply are purpose built to transfer both asset and liquid wealth upwards, from younger, poorer people to older, richer ones - by ensuring that, over time, the gap between earned incomes on the one hand, and pension incomes and house prices on the other, will grow wider and wider and wider.
Whats amazing is the lack of gratitude amongst many of the elderly. We locked down too to protect them but in return get more moaning.
This 79 year old and his 83 year old wife are extremely grateful for our blessings and I have consistently stated my opposition to the triple lock
Indeed when Sunak suggested he was reviewing the triple lock it was Starmer who led the opposition to its demise
As someone who is nearing his diamond wedding anniversary, and vividly remembers the Queens coronation in 1953, I accept times have changed but there is a rather ugly narrative coming from some regarding the elderly, who in most cases are loved and adored by their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, and it is good that these unpleasant views are not shared by most of the populace
I think it's divide and rule. The State is gorging itself on taxpayers' money - that is where the dissatisfaction should be directed, not at one group who seems to be doing a bit less poorly out of it than the rest.
The apparent 'decline' of Britain - ie in terms of how it looks - I would say, is to do with local authority budgets. There isn't enough money due to budget cuts so that discretionary services, ie landscaping, public toilets, fixing potholes, parks and gardens just get cut. Even things like enforcement of planning regulations gets cut right back to the point where, in one town of 100,000 people I am familiar with, has 2000 unresolved breaches of planning control that it knows about, and only two inexperienced officers (ie with less than one years experience) dealing with it. Much of this is all just trivial amounts of money that are not being spent with disproportionate consequences that are not immediately obvious. By contrast municipalities in other countries don't let things get so bad even when economic times are objectively far, far worse; because they aren't dealing with the legacy of thatcherism and the harm it did to central/local government relations.
The money is going on social care. In other words, very elderly people.
I don't want to seem callous but we really do need to have a conversation about how much of our national wealth we want to, publicly, spend very expensively on keeping people alive for as long as possible who aren't particularly well and aren't particularly enjoying it.
In other countries, families take them in and look after them - with some visitors/outside help occasionally. I'd argue that's more humane. The trouble is it's also more hassle.
Multi-generational households are fine for very rich people, where granny or grandad can have a self-contained annexe or a barn conversion next to the main house, and where said elder is in reasonable health. Expecting the average family, with Mum and Dad both working full time to make ends meet, noisy kids bouncing off the walls, and already living on top of one another in a rabbit hutch house, to accommodate any older relative - still less one with disabilities and/or dementia - is a complete non-starter. Retirement villages, sheltered housing and residential care homes all exist for good reasons.
The real issue isn't the expenditure of all that cash - not least because, if we make serious efforts to cut and ration it, then how are we going to decide which older people are worth cherishing, and who gets left to starve to death sitting in their own shit or humanely destroyed when they're past it like the family cat? It's who keeps getting taken to the cleaners over and over again for all the extra funding that's the real problem here.
Not really. My wife's family is from Bulgaria, which is a poor country, and everyone does it there, regardless of how little they have.
They consider what we do to be cruel. Like shunting off a 3-year to boarding school, just the other way round.
Granny has dementia and can't be left alone for her own safety. She comes to live with daughter and son-in-law and their two kiddies.
Which half of the couple sacrifices their career and becomes a full-time unpaid career for Granny for the remainder of her lifespan, and how does the other half earn enough money to cover the mortgage and all the bills for the entire household?
It is all pretty feasible: you can bring in carers, work from home etc.
Bollocks is it, my father has dementia, no way I can have him live with me and still work. Simple fact.....he has not filter and even though I work from home he would be constantly peering over my shoulder in every meeting going things like shes a fat cow, walking round in the background in his underpants etc. My choice would be give up work to look after him then how do I pay for food, rent , power etc or put him in a home if he gets much worse.
You make it sound an easy thing which makes me think you have never dealt with someone with dementia
Disney just dug its heels. I mean, they basically said to the Southern Baptist Convention, “Fuck you, we don’t need you.” I don’t know whether the Disney guys were just arrogant or confident, but from the very beginning, they gave not an inch. Maybe it’s a profile in courage. Maybe it’s just pragmatism. I don’t know what was in their minds. I never got to talk to Katzenberg. I did speak briefly to Eisner at a book event, but he wouldn’t tell me anything anyway.
The Baptists quickly learned that there was no real alternative in terms of popular culture for young children other than Disney. So, they were talking about sacrifice. And I think sacrifice is one thing if they’re asking adults to make it. Disney parks had by that time become a cultural imperative. Which is to say, if you wanted to be a good parent or a good grandparent, taking your children or grandchildren to one of the Disney parks became a cultural imperative. That’s one of the things—one of the boxes you had to tick. And they were a little bit queasy with trying to tell a 7-year-old that we’re not going to Disneyland or Disney World because we think they’re not as friendly to evangelicals as Walt was 30 years ago…
… I don’t think he realized that Disney punches back, and they may punch back better than he punches. He shouldn’t set himself up to stand or fall on whether he can get Disney to capitulate, because he will never get Disney to capitulate. It will not happen. It didn’t happen in the ’90s, and for sure it’s not going to happen now. And if you had to bet, would you bet on an ambitious Florida governor, or would you bet on a multibillion-dollar corporation that knows what its audience wants?
Hes taken it too far. Yes he can bash woke Disney but they have every incentive to drag it through the coursts and is he really looking tough even if he wins?
Disney know what makes them more money, they dont seen randomly activist like smaller companies.
Wouldn't it be better if both sides calmed down and moderated their positions, recognising that at some level the other might perhaps have a point?
Free speech innit?
And Disney had such a sweet deal on their district its probably worth a protracted legal fight about it.
Yes.
HOWEVER, am guessing the REAL motivation for Disney to NOT allow jack-leg preachers OR cheap-jack politicos to bully them over creative content, is realization that IF they give in to such tactics, it would be open season against them.
So if Ron DiRatis wants to fuck around with Mickey Mouse, then Disney will show him - and anyone else whose paying attention - the error of his ways.
One thing I think people are missing about this is that Disney is not in the greatest of position share price wise due to other factors (namely the losses they have made on the Disney+ streaming service) and so, having to fight on a second major front, namely with DeSantis, may make shareholders even more worried about what Disney is doing.
There is also the fact that Anheuser Busch is reporting its numbers this week and every analyst and investor is going to be asking about their Bud Light sales. The WSJ said Bud Light was down 15% YoY in sales for the week of April 15th and it is possible that has got worse. If that is the case, and AB starts rowing back on its comments, then the investor community is - very quickly - going to get tired of corporates pursuing political goals that potentially impact the share price.
Maybe. BUT personally would NOT bet on it.
For one thing, decline in Bud Light sales may have something to do with fact that it's diluted horse piss?
For another, will need to see what the figures show in a month, and in six months?
Note also that most consumer boycotts of this kind fizzle (apt word?) out.
ADDENDUM - BTW, issue re: Mickey versus DeRatis, is no longer Disney's opposition to "don't say gay" law. It is now political & governmental retaliation for daring to oppose the Governor and his rubber-stamp legislature.
Sales of beers like Miller Light have been increasing in the same period so it looks like it is a Bud Light specific thing. Certainly AB are worried enough where they have effectively fired both the Bud Light marketing director and her boss, and done a full 180 degree turn on their marketing claiming they are an All-American brand.
Will the sales come back? Who knows. I was at dinner last week with someone who had been travelling to the States on work and, while in a bar in Dallas, had heard a woman ask a guy "are you gay?" for ordering Bud Light. It seems to have seeped into the consciousness. It may change but sometimes these thing don't.
As for Disney, it has multiple issues at the moment. There is growing unease from investors that companies are stepping into minefields here and it is not going away.
Re: beer we'll have to see.
Re: Disney, allow me to point out yet again, thanks to RDS the issue has morphed from pushing back versus alleged Woke, to use of governmental authority and power to punish dissent from government policy and actions.
Plenty of Americans who actually agree with the Gov (and you?) on the first point, are opposed to him on the second.
Start-up backed by Rishi Sunak’s wife Akshata Murty given government grant
The prime minister’s wife is a shareholder in a company that was awarded almost £350,000 of taxpayers’ money as part of a scheme to support entrepreneurs.
Records at Companies House show that Catamaran Ventures UK Ltd, the investment company controlled by Akshata Murty, has a stake in Study Hall, an education technology start-up.
Last year the business received a government grant of £349,976 through Innovate UK, the arm’s-length body that provides money and support to companies developing new products or services.
Murty’s shareholding in a firm that has been the direct beneficiary of government funding raises fresh questions about her business dealings and the potential for a perceived conflict of interest.
Study Hall, which aims to harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) in schools, was founded by Sofia Fenichell, a tech entrepreneur. Her previous venture Mrs Wordsmith, another education start-up dedicated to promoting children’s literacy, collapsed in 2021 just six months after receiving state support.
Mrs Wordsmith was given £650,000 of taxpayers’ money as a loan through the government’s Future Fund,
The reason taxes are so high in the UK is because huge sums of money go toward elderly care, the NHS (primarily used by the elderly), and triple locked pensions.
Another story I heard today: A serving police officer is “looking forward” to a 2% pay rise this year. His father, who retired on 3/4 of final pay, gets 10%. The police officer calculates that in four years, his retired father will out-earn him.
How on earth is that sustainable?
The thing I confess I don’t understand is that Britain is hardly alone in its demographic burden. In fact, thanks to immigration, it does a little better than most of its advanced country peers. So how the fuck do they manage without the country “falling to bits”?
Time to wheel out one of my favourite stats again: in the UK, the average pensioner household after adjusting for housing costs has a higher level of disposable income than the average working household. There are still a lot of poor pensioners around, but the implication is that the average mortgage-free pensioner now enjoys a substantially higher standard of living than the average working-age taxpayer.
The triple lock and the ever-tightening squeeze on housing supply are purpose built to transfer both asset and liquid wealth upwards, from younger, poorer people to older, richer ones - by ensuring that, over time, the gap between earned incomes on the one hand, and pension incomes and house prices on the other, will grow wider and wider and wider.
Whats amazing is the lack of gratitude amongst many of the elderly. We locked down too to protect them but in return get more moaning.
This 79 year old and his 83 year old wife are extremely grateful for our blessings and I have consistently stated my opposition to the triple lock
Indeed when Sunak suggested he was reviewing the triple lock it was Starmer who led the opposition to its demise
As someone who is nearing his diamond wedding anniversary, and vividly remembers the Queens coronation in 1953, I accept times have changed but there is a rather ugly narrative coming from some regarding the elderly, who in most cases are loved and adored by their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, and it is good that these unpleasant views are not shared by most of the populace
I think it's divide and rule. The State is gorging itself on taxpayers' money - that is where the dissatisfaction should be directed, not at one group who seems to be doing a bit less poorly out of it than the rest.
I would just say that those attacking the triple lock need to realise it was Starmer who mounted a campaign to retain it, and both Starmer and Reeves have affirmed they will do so if they win office
I would also comment I have never approved of NI contributions stopping at 60, and everyone in employment no matter their age should pay NI
Casino - if wokery is really so powerful how do you explain the continuing stratospheric levels of support for Churchill? Even among Millenials if you believe YouGov, 2/3 familiar with him have a positive view. For the oldest it is 77%.
The reason taxes are so high in the UK is because huge sums of money go toward elderly care, the NHS (primarily used by the elderly), and triple locked pensions.
Another story I heard today: A serving police officer is “looking forward” to a 2% pay rise this year. His father, who retired on 3/4 of final pay, gets 10%. The police officer calculates that in four years, his retired father will out-earn him.
How on earth is that sustainable?
The thing I confess I don’t understand is that Britain is hardly alone in its demographic burden. In fact, thanks to immigration, it does a little better than most of its advanced country peers. So how the fuck do they manage without the country “falling to bits”?
Time to wheel out one of my favourite stats again: in the UK, the average pensioner household after adjusting for housing costs has a higher level of disposable income than the average working household. There are still a lot of poor pensioners around, but the implication is that the average mortgage-free pensioner now enjoys a substantially higher standard of living than the average working-age taxpayer.
The triple lock and the ever-tightening squeeze on housing supply are purpose built to transfer both asset and liquid wealth upwards, from younger, poorer people to older, richer ones - by ensuring that, over time, the gap between earned incomes on the one hand, and pension incomes and house prices on the other, will grow wider and wider and wider.
Whats amazing is the lack of gratitude amongst many of the elderly. We locked down too to protect them but in return get more moaning.
This 79 year old and his 83 year old wife are extremely grateful for our blessings and I have consistently stated my opposition to the triple lock
Indeed when Sunak suggested he was reviewing the triple lock it was Starmer who led the opposition to its demise
As someone who is nearing his diamond wedding anniversary, and vividly remembers the Queens coronation in 1953, I accept times have changed but there is a rather ugly narrative coming from some regarding the elderly, who in most cases are loved and adored by their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, and it is good that these unpleasant views are not shared by most of the populace
I think it's divide and rule. The State is gorging itself on taxpayers' money - that is where the dissatisfaction should be directed, not at one group who seems to be doing a bit less poorly out of it than the rest.
I would just say that those attacking the triple lock need to realise it was Starmer who mounted a campaign to retain it, and both Starmer and Reeves have affirmed they will do so if they win office
I would also comment I have never approved of NI contributions stopping at 60, and everyone in employment no matter their age should pay NI
The government has a majority of 70 or so, they could have abolished/modified the triple lock.
Start-up backed by Rishi Sunak’s wife Akshata Murty given government grant
The prime minister’s wife is a shareholder in a company that was awarded almost £350,000 of taxpayers’ money as part of a scheme to support entrepreneurs.
Records at Companies House show that Catamaran Ventures UK Ltd, the investment company controlled by Akshata Murty, has a stake in Study Hall, an education technology start-up.
Last year the business received a government grant of £349,976 through Innovate UK, the arm’s-length body that provides money and support to companies developing new products or services.
Murty’s shareholding in a firm that has been the direct beneficiary of government funding raises fresh questions about her business dealings and the potential for a perceived conflict of interest.
Study Hall, which aims to harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) in schools, was founded by Sofia Fenichell, a tech entrepreneur. Her previous venture Mrs Wordsmith, another education start-up dedicated to promoting children’s literacy, collapsed in 2021 just six months after receiving state support.
Mrs Wordsmith was given £650,000 of taxpayers’ money as a loan through the government’s Future Fund,
Start-up backed by Rishi Sunak’s wife Akshata Murty given government grant
The prime minister’s wife is a shareholder in a company that was awarded almost £350,000 of taxpayers’ money as part of a scheme to support entrepreneurs.
Records at Companies House show that Catamaran Ventures UK Ltd, the investment company controlled by Akshata Murty, has a stake in Study Hall, an education technology start-up.
Last year the business received a government grant of £349,976 through Innovate UK, the arm’s-length body that provides money and support to companies developing new products or services.
Murty’s shareholding in a firm that has been the direct beneficiary of government funding raises fresh questions about her business dealings and the potential for a perceived conflict of interest.
Study Hall, which aims to harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) in schools, was founded by Sofia Fenichell, a tech entrepreneur. Her previous venture Mrs Wordsmith, another education start-up dedicated to promoting children’s literacy, collapsed in 2021 just six months after receiving state support.
Mrs Wordsmith was given £650,000 of taxpayers’ money as a loan through the government’s Future Fund,
The reason taxes are so high in the UK is because huge sums of money go toward elderly care, the NHS (primarily used by the elderly), and triple locked pensions.
Another story I heard today: A serving police officer is “looking forward” to a 2% pay rise this year. His father, who retired on 3/4 of final pay, gets 10%. The police officer calculates that in four years, his retired father will out-earn him.
How on earth is that sustainable?
The thing I confess I don’t understand is that Britain is hardly alone in its demographic burden. In fact, thanks to immigration, it does a little better than most of its advanced country peers. So how the fuck do they manage without the country “falling to bits”?
Time to wheel out one of my favourite stats again: in the UK, the average pensioner household after adjusting for housing costs has a higher level of disposable income than the average working household. There are still a lot of poor pensioners around, but the implication is that the average mortgage-free pensioner now enjoys a substantially higher standard of living than the average working-age taxpayer.
The triple lock and the ever-tightening squeeze on housing supply are purpose built to transfer both asset and liquid wealth upwards, from younger, poorer people to older, richer ones - by ensuring that, over time, the gap between earned incomes on the one hand, and pension incomes and house prices on the other, will grow wider and wider and wider.
Whats amazing is the lack of gratitude amongst many of the elderly. We locked down too to protect them but in return get more moaning.
This 79 year old and his 83 year old wife are extremely grateful for our blessings and I have consistently stated my opposition to the triple lock
Indeed when Sunak suggested he was reviewing the triple lock it was Starmer who led the opposition to its demise
As someone who is nearing his diamond wedding anniversary, and vividly remembers the Queens coronation in 1953, I accept times have changed but there is a rather ugly narrative coming from some regarding the elderly, who in most cases are loved and adored by their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, and it is good that these unpleasant views are not shared by most of the populace
I think it's divide and rule. The State is gorging itself on taxpayers' money - that is where the dissatisfaction should be directed, not at one group who seems to be doing a bit less poorly out of it than the rest.
I would just say that those attacking the triple lock need to realise it was Starmer who mounted a campaign to retain it, and both Starmer and Reeves have affirmed they will do so if they win office
I would also comment I have never approved of NI contributions stopping at 60, and everyone in employment no matter their age should pay NI
The government has a majority of 70 or so, they could have abolished/modified the triple lock.
The reason taxes are so high in the UK is because huge sums of money go toward elderly care, the NHS (primarily used by the elderly), and triple locked pensions.
Another story I heard today: A serving police officer is “looking forward” to a 2% pay rise this year. His father, who retired on 3/4 of final pay, gets 10%. The police officer calculates that in four years, his retired father will out-earn him.
How on earth is that sustainable?
The thing I confess I don’t understand is that Britain is hardly alone in its demographic burden. In fact, thanks to immigration, it does a little better than most of its advanced country peers. So how the fuck do they manage without the country “falling to bits”?
Time to wheel out one of my favourite stats again: in the UK, the average pensioner household after adjusting for housing costs has a higher level of disposable income than the average working household. There are still a lot of poor pensioners around, but the implication is that the average mortgage-free pensioner now enjoys a substantially higher standard of living than the average working-age taxpayer.
The triple lock and the ever-tightening squeeze on housing supply are purpose built to transfer both asset and liquid wealth upwards, from younger, poorer people to older, richer ones - by ensuring that, over time, the gap between earned incomes on the one hand, and pension incomes and house prices on the other, will grow wider and wider and wider.
Whats amazing is the lack of gratitude amongst many of the elderly. We locked down too to protect them but in return get more moaning.
This 79 year old and his 83 year old wife are extremely grateful for our blessings and I have consistently stated my opposition to the triple lock
Indeed when Sunak suggested he was reviewing the triple lock it was Starmer who led the opposition to its demise
As someone who is nearing his diamond wedding anniversary, and vividly remembers the Queens coronation in 1953, I accept times have changed but there is a rather ugly narrative coming from some regarding the elderly, who in most cases are loved and adored by their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, and it is good that these unpleasant views are not shared by most of the populace
I think it's divide and rule. The State is gorging itself on taxpayers' money - that is where the dissatisfaction should be directed, not at one group who seems to be doing a bit less poorly out of it than the rest.
I would just say that those attacking the triple lock need to realise it was Starmer who mounted a campaign to retain it, and both Starmer and Reeves have affirmed they will do so if they win office
I would also comment I have never approved of NI contributions stopping at 60, and everyone in employment no matter their age should pay NI
The government has a majority of 70 or so, they could have abolished/modified the triple lock.
You cannot pin this on Starmer.
Indeed I can as he and Reeves have stated it is not up for discussion and they are likely to be in power in 18 months time
Disney just dug its heels. I mean, they basically said to the Southern Baptist Convention, “Fuck you, we don’t need you.” I don’t know whether the Disney guys were just arrogant or confident, but from the very beginning, they gave not an inch. Maybe it’s a profile in courage. Maybe it’s just pragmatism. I don’t know what was in their minds. I never got to talk to Katzenberg. I did speak briefly to Eisner at a book event, but he wouldn’t tell me anything anyway.
The Baptists quickly learned that there was no real alternative in terms of popular culture for young children other than Disney. So, they were talking about sacrifice. And I think sacrifice is one thing if they’re asking adults to make it. Disney parks had by that time become a cultural imperative. Which is to say, if you wanted to be a good parent or a good grandparent, taking your children or grandchildren to one of the Disney parks became a cultural imperative. That’s one of the things—one of the boxes you had to tick. And they were a little bit queasy with trying to tell a 7-year-old that we’re not going to Disneyland or Disney World because we think they’re not as friendly to evangelicals as Walt was 30 years ago…
… I don’t think he realized that Disney punches back, and they may punch back better than he punches. He shouldn’t set himself up to stand or fall on whether he can get Disney to capitulate, because he will never get Disney to capitulate. It will not happen. It didn’t happen in the ’90s, and for sure it’s not going to happen now. And if you had to bet, would you bet on an ambitious Florida governor, or would you bet on a multibillion-dollar corporation that knows what its audience wants?
Hes taken it too far. Yes he can bash woke Disney but they have every incentive to drag it through the coursts and is he really looking tough even if he wins?
Disney know what makes them more money, they dont seen randomly activist like smaller companies.
You could say capitalism works… and the Republicans are deep into their f*** business phase.
The apparent 'decline' of Britain - ie in terms of how it looks - I would say, is to do with local authority budgets. There isn't enough money due to budget cuts so that discretionary services, ie landscaping, public toilets, fixing potholes, parks and gardens just get cut. Even things like enforcement of planning regulations gets cut right back to the point where, in one town of 100,000 people I am familiar with, has 2000 unresolved breaches of planning control that it knows about, and only two inexperienced officers (ie with less than one years experience) dealing with it. Much of this is all just trivial amounts of money that are not being spent with disproportionate consequences that are not immediately obvious. By contrast municipalities in other countries don't let things get so bad even when economic times are objectively far, far worse; because they aren't dealing with the legacy of thatcherism and the harm it did to central/local government relations.
The money is going on social care. In other words, very elderly people.
I don't want to seem callous but we really do need to have a conversation about how much of our national wealth we want to, publicly, spend very expensively on keeping people alive for as long as possible who aren't particularly well and aren't particularly enjoying it.
In other countries, families take them in and look after them - with some visitors/outside help occasionally. I'd argue that's more humane. The trouble is it's also more hassle.
Multi-generational households are fine for very rich people, where granny or grandad can have a self-contained annexe or a barn conversion next to the main house, and where said elder is in reasonable health. Expecting the average family, with Mum and Dad both working full time to make ends meet, noisy kids bouncing off the walls, and already living on top of one another in a rabbit hutch house, to accommodate any older relative - still less one with disabilities and/or dementia - is a complete non-starter. Retirement villages, sheltered housing and residential care homes all exist for good reasons.
The real issue isn't the expenditure of all that cash - not least because, if we make serious efforts to cut and ration it, then how are we going to decide which older people are worth cherishing, and who gets left to starve to death sitting in their own shit or humanely destroyed when they're past it like the family cat? It's who keeps getting taken to the cleaners over and over again for all the extra funding that's the real problem here.
Not really. My wife's family is from Bulgaria, which is a poor country, and everyone does it there, regardless of how little they have.
They consider what we do to be cruel. Like shunting off a 3-year to boarding school, just the other way round.
Granny has dementia and can't be left alone for her own safety. She comes to live with daughter and son-in-law and their two kiddies.
Which half of the couple sacrifices their career and becomes a full-time unpaid career for Granny for the remainder of her lifespan, and how does the other half earn enough money to cover the mortgage and all the bills for the entire household?
It is all pretty feasible: you can bring in carers, work from home etc.
Bollocks is it, my father has dementia, no way I can have him live with me and still work. Simple fact.....he has not filter and even though I work from home he would be constantly peering over my shoulder in every meeting going things like shes a fat cow, walking round in the background in his underpants etc. My choice would be give up work to look after him then how do I pay for food, rent , power etc or put him in a home if he gets much worse.
You make it sound an easy thing which makes me think you have never dealt with someone with dementia
I am very very sorry to hear about your Dad. By complete coincidence, I went down a deep rabbit hole today watching some very interesting Youtube videos about the ability of medium chain triglycerides (mtc) found in coconut oil to give significantly improved function to Alzeimers sufferers. The idea is that cells in the brain of the sufferer cannot make energy from glucose (via insulin), so they are effectively starved. However, the cells can successfully utilise ketones (energy from fat), which uses a different pathway. The results of sufferers following fairly simple protocols seem very remarkable and hopeful. I am sorry if this is intrusive or not appropriate to your Dad's case. Video is here:
The apparent 'decline' of Britain - ie in terms of how it looks - I would say, is to do with local authority budgets. There isn't enough money due to budget cuts so that discretionary services, ie landscaping, public toilets, fixing potholes, parks and gardens just get cut. Even things like enforcement of planning regulations gets cut right back to the point where, in one town of 100,000 people I am familiar with, has 2000 unresolved breaches of planning control that it knows about, and only two inexperienced officers (ie with less than one years experience) dealing with it. Much of this is all just trivial amounts of money that are not being spent with disproportionate consequences that are not immediately obvious. By contrast municipalities in other countries don't let things get so bad even when economic times are objectively far, far worse; because they aren't dealing with the legacy of thatcherism and the harm it did to central/local government relations.
The money is going on social care. In other words, very elderly people.
I don't want to seem callous but we really do need to have a conversation about how much of our national wealth we want to, publicly, spend very expensively on keeping people alive for as long as possible who aren't particularly well and aren't particularly enjoying it.
In other countries, families take them in and look after them - with some visitors/outside help occasionally. I'd argue that's more humane. The trouble is it's also more hassle.
Multi-generational households are fine for very rich people, where granny or grandad can have a self-contained annexe or a barn conversion next to the main house, and where said elder is in reasonable health. Expecting the average family, with Mum and Dad both working full time to make ends meet, noisy kids bouncing off the walls, and already living on top of one another in a rabbit hutch house, to accommodate any older relative - still less one with disabilities and/or dementia - is a complete non-starter. Retirement villages, sheltered housing and residential care homes all exist for good reasons.
The real issue isn't the expenditure of all that cash - not least because, if we make serious efforts to cut and ration it, then how are we going to decide which older people are worth cherishing, and who gets left to starve to death sitting in their own shit or humanely destroyed when they're past it like the family cat? It's who keeps getting taken to the cleaners over and over again for all the extra funding that's the real problem here.
Not really. My wife's family is from Bulgaria, which is a poor country, and everyone does it there, regardless of how little they have.
They consider what we do to be cruel. Like shunting off a 3-year to boarding school, just the other way round.
Granny has dementia and can't be left alone for her own safety. She comes to live with daughter and son-in-law and their two kiddies.
Which half of the couple sacrifices their career and becomes a full-time unpaid career for Granny for the remainder of her lifespan, and how does the other half earn enough money to cover the mortgage and all the bills for the entire household?
It is all pretty feasible: you can bring in carers, work from home etc.
Bollocks is it, my father has dementia, no way I can have him live with me and still work. Simple fact.....he has not filter and even though I work from home he would be constantly peering over my shoulder in every meeting going things like shes a fat cow, walking round in the background in his underpants etc. My choice would be give up work to look after him then how do I pay for food, rent , power etc or put him in a home if he gets much worse.
You make it sound an easy thing which makes me think you have never dealt with someone with dementia
There's this idea that Dementia / Alzheimer's is just forgetting stuff. If only...
The reason taxes are so high in the UK is because huge sums of money go toward elderly care, the NHS (primarily used by the elderly), and triple locked pensions.
Another story I heard today: A serving police officer is “looking forward” to a 2% pay rise this year. His father, who retired on 3/4 of final pay, gets 10%. The police officer calculates that in four years, his retired father will out-earn him.
How on earth is that sustainable?
The thing I confess I don’t understand is that Britain is hardly alone in its demographic burden. In fact, thanks to immigration, it does a little better than most of its advanced country peers. So how the fuck do they manage without the country “falling to bits”?
Time to wheel out one of my favourite stats again: in the UK, the average pensioner household after adjusting for housing costs has a higher level of disposable income than the average working household. There are still a lot of poor pensioners around, but the implication is that the average mortgage-free pensioner now enjoys a substantially higher standard of living than the average working-age taxpayer.
The triple lock and the ever-tightening squeeze on housing supply are purpose built to transfer both asset and liquid wealth upwards, from younger, poorer people to older, richer ones - by ensuring that, over time, the gap between earned incomes on the one hand, and pension incomes and house prices on the other, will grow wider and wider and wider.
Whats amazing is the lack of gratitude amongst many of the elderly. We locked down too to protect them but in return get more moaning.
This 79 year old and his 83 year old wife are extremely grateful for our blessings and I have consistently stated my opposition to the triple lock
Indeed when Sunak suggested he was reviewing the triple lock it was Starmer who led the opposition to its demise
As someone who is nearing his diamond wedding anniversary, and vividly remembers the Queens coronation in 1953, I accept times have changed but there is a rather ugly narrative coming from some regarding the elderly, who in most cases are loved and adored by their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, and it is good that these unpleasant views are not shared by most of the populace
I think it's divide and rule. The State is gorging itself on taxpayers' money - that is where the dissatisfaction should be directed, not at one group who seems to be doing a bit less poorly out of it than the rest.
I would just say that those attacking the triple lock need to realise it was Starmer who mounted a campaign to retain it, and both Starmer and Reeves have affirmed they will do so if they win office
I would also comment I have never approved of NI contributions stopping at 60, and everyone in employment no matter their age should pay NI
The government has a majority of 70 or so, they could have abolished/modified the triple lock.
You cannot pin this on Starmer.
Indeed I can as he and Reeves have stated it is not up for discussion and they are likely to be in power in 18 months time
Unspoofable.
Repeat after me, the government have a notional majority of 70 or so and can abolish and/or amend the triple lock tomorrow.
They choose not to.
Wait until you hear the other stuff the government does that Starmer opposes.
Disney just dug its heels. I mean, they basically said to the Southern Baptist Convention, “Fuck you, we don’t need you.” I don’t know whether the Disney guys were just arrogant or confident, but from the very beginning, they gave not an inch. Maybe it’s a profile in courage. Maybe it’s just pragmatism. I don’t know what was in their minds. I never got to talk to Katzenberg. I did speak briefly to Eisner at a book event, but he wouldn’t tell me anything anyway.
The Baptists quickly learned that there was no real alternative in terms of popular culture for young children other than Disney. So, they were talking about sacrifice. And I think sacrifice is one thing if they’re asking adults to make it. Disney parks had by that time become a cultural imperative. Which is to say, if you wanted to be a good parent or a good grandparent, taking your children or grandchildren to one of the Disney parks became a cultural imperative. That’s one of the things—one of the boxes you had to tick. And they were a little bit queasy with trying to tell a 7-year-old that we’re not going to Disneyland or Disney World because we think they’re not as friendly to evangelicals as Walt was 30 years ago…
… I don’t think he realized that Disney punches back, and they may punch back better than he punches. He shouldn’t set himself up to stand or fall on whether he can get Disney to capitulate, because he will never get Disney to capitulate. It will not happen. It didn’t happen in the ’90s, and for sure it’s not going to happen now. And if you had to bet, would you bet on an ambitious Florida governor, or would you bet on a multibillion-dollar corporation that knows what its audience wants?
Hes taken it too far. Yes he can bash woke Disney but they have every incentive to drag it through the coursts and is he really looking tough even if he wins?
Disney know what makes them more money, they dont seen randomly activist like smaller companies.
Wouldn't it be better if both sides calmed down and moderated their positions, recognising that at some level the other might perhaps have a point?
Free speech innit?
And Disney had such a sweet deal on their district its probably worth a protracted legal fight about it.
Yes.
HOWEVER, am guessing the REAL motivation for Disney to NOT allow jack-leg preachers OR cheap-jack politicos to bully them over creative content, is realization that IF they give in to such tactics, it would be open season against them.
So if Ron DiRatis wants to fuck around with Mickey Mouse, then Disney will show him - and anyone else whose paying attention - the error of his ways.
One thing I think people are missing about this is that Disney is not in the greatest of position share price wise due to other factors (namely the losses they have made on the Disney+ streaming service) and so, having to fight on a second major front, namely with DeSantis, may make shareholders even more worried about what Disney is doing.
There is also the fact that Anheuser Busch is reporting its numbers this week and every analyst and investor is going to be asking about their Bud Light sales. The WSJ said Bud Light was down 15% YoY in sales for the week of April 15th and it is possible that has got worse. If that is the case, and AB starts rowing back on its comments, then the investor community is - very quickly - going to get tired of corporates pursuing political goals that potentially impact the share price.
Maybe. BUT personally would NOT bet on it.
For one thing, decline in Bud Light sales may have something to do with fact that it's diluted horse piss?
For another, will need to see what the figures show in a month, and in six months?
Note also that most consumer boycotts of this kind fizzle (apt word?) out.
ADDENDUM - BTW, issue re: Mickey versus DeRatis, is no longer Disney's opposition to "don't say gay" law. It is now political & governmental retaliation for daring to oppose the Governor and his rubber-stamp legislature.
Sales of beers like Miller Light have been increasing in the same period so it looks like it is a Bud Light specific thing. Certainly AB are worried enough where they have effectively fired both the Bud Light marketing director and her boss, and done a full 180 degree turn on their marketing claiming they are an All-American brand.
Will the sales come back? Who knows. I was at dinner last week with someone who had been travelling to the States on work and, while in a bar in Dallas, had heard a woman ask a guy "are you gay?" for ordering Bud Light. It seems to have seeped into the consciousness. It may change but sometimes these thing don't.
As for Disney, it has multiple issues at the moment. There is growing unease from investors that companies are stepping into minefields here and it is not going away.
Re: beer we'll have to see.
Re: Disney, allow me to point out yet again, thanks to RDS the issue has morphed from pushing back versus alleged Woke, to use of governmental authority and power to punish dissent from government policy and actions.
Plenty of Americans who actually agree with the Gov (and you?) on the first point, are opposed to him on the second.
It maybe that the issue has morphed back but that is not necessarily the point. Shareholders don't want corporates getting involved in political conflicts that can damage their businesses. They were willing to tolerate it to a point but not when it can cause complications.
It may be true that it has gone back to an issue about Govt authority over businesses but the original root cause was Disney deciding to weigh in on a Bill that was passed in the Florida legislature, which had nothing to do with its core business and where it weighed in because a vocal group of its employees pushed the company into taking a stance. Just as you argue RDS is using his power to punish dissent, it could be argued Disney was using its outsized influence in Florida to interfere in the state's politics.
Start-up backed by Rishi Sunak’s wife Akshata Murty given government grant
The prime minister’s wife is a shareholder in a company that was awarded almost £350,000 of taxpayers’ money as part of a scheme to support entrepreneurs.
Records at Companies House show that Catamaran Ventures UK Ltd, the investment company controlled by Akshata Murty, has a stake in Study Hall, an education technology start-up.
Last year the business received a government grant of £349,976 through Innovate UK, the arm’s-length body that provides money and support to companies developing new products or services.
Murty’s shareholding in a firm that has been the direct beneficiary of government funding raises fresh questions about her business dealings and the potential for a perceived conflict of interest.
Study Hall, which aims to harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) in schools, was founded by Sofia Fenichell, a tech entrepreneur. Her previous venture Mrs Wordsmith, another education start-up dedicated to promoting children’s literacy, collapsed in 2021 just six months after receiving state support.
Mrs Wordsmith was given £650,000 of taxpayers’ money as a loan through the government’s Future Fund,
Start-up backed by Rishi Sunak’s wife Akshata Murty given government grant
The prime minister’s wife is a shareholder in a company that was awarded almost £350,000 of taxpayers’ money as part of a scheme to support entrepreneurs.
Records at Companies House show that Catamaran Ventures UK Ltd, the investment company controlled by Akshata Murty, has a stake in Study Hall, an education technology start-up.
Last year the business received a government grant of £349,976 through Innovate UK, the arm’s-length body that provides money and support to companies developing new products or services.
Murty’s shareholding in a firm that has been the direct beneficiary of government funding raises fresh questions about her business dealings and the potential for a perceived conflict of interest.
Study Hall, which aims to harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) in schools, was founded by Sofia Fenichell, a tech entrepreneur. Her previous venture Mrs Wordsmith, another education start-up dedicated to promoting children’s literacy, collapsed in 2021 just six months after receiving state support.
Mrs Wordsmith was given £650,000 of taxpayers’ money as a loan through the government’s Future Fund,
I know, Sunak is even more sleazier than Boris Johnson.
It's strange, isn't it. After all, Boris had need of the money, a louche lifestyle will do that to a chap. But Rishi is already insanely wealthy.
If I (the mere son of a long-standing local councillor) know the importance of the "what would your behaviour look like on the front page of the paper" test, how come so many Conservative MPs don't?
The reason taxes are so high in the UK is because huge sums of money go toward elderly care, the NHS (primarily used by the elderly), and triple locked pensions.
Another story I heard today: A serving police officer is “looking forward” to a 2% pay rise this year. His father, who retired on 3/4 of final pay, gets 10%. The police officer calculates that in four years, his retired father will out-earn him.
How on earth is that sustainable?
The thing I confess I don’t understand is that Britain is hardly alone in its demographic burden. In fact, thanks to immigration, it does a little better than most of its advanced country peers. So how the fuck do they manage without the country “falling to bits”?
Time to wheel out one of my favourite stats again: in the UK, the average pensioner household after adjusting for housing costs has a higher level of disposable income than the average working household. There are still a lot of poor pensioners around, but the implication is that the average mortgage-free pensioner now enjoys a substantially higher standard of living than the average working-age taxpayer.
The triple lock and the ever-tightening squeeze on housing supply are purpose built to transfer both asset and liquid wealth upwards, from younger, poorer people to older, richer ones - by ensuring that, over time, the gap between earned incomes on the one hand, and pension incomes and house prices on the other, will grow wider and wider and wider.
Whats amazing is the lack of gratitude amongst many of the elderly. We locked down too to protect them but in return get more moaning.
This 79 year old and his 83 year old wife are extremely grateful for our blessings and I have consistently stated my opposition to the triple lock
Indeed when Sunak suggested he was reviewing the triple lock it was Starmer who led the opposition to its demise
As someone who is nearing his diamond wedding anniversary, and vividly remembers the Queens coronation in 1953, I accept times have changed but there is a rather ugly narrative coming from some regarding the elderly, who in most cases are loved and adored by their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, and it is good that these unpleasant views are not shared by most of the populace
Yes - we do need to re-define the generational contract (so to speak) but that's platitudes.
@Casino_Royale has a point - in many societies, the family is the primary carer for elderly relatives and there are, I believe, around a million people (mainly women) who are economically inactive because they are the primary carer for an older relative.
How do we redefine the relationship between the generations to the mutual benefit of both and society?
Start-up backed by Rishi Sunak’s wife Akshata Murty given government grant
The prime minister’s wife is a shareholder in a company that was awarded almost £350,000 of taxpayers’ money as part of a scheme to support entrepreneurs.
Records at Companies House show that Catamaran Ventures UK Ltd, the investment company controlled by Akshata Murty, has a stake in Study Hall, an education technology start-up.
Last year the business received a government grant of £349,976 through Innovate UK, the arm’s-length body that provides money and support to companies developing new products or services.
Murty’s shareholding in a firm that has been the direct beneficiary of government funding raises fresh questions about her business dealings and the potential for a perceived conflict of interest.
Study Hall, which aims to harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) in schools, was founded by Sofia Fenichell, a tech entrepreneur. Her previous venture Mrs Wordsmith, another education start-up dedicated to promoting children’s literacy, collapsed in 2021 just six months after receiving state support.
Mrs Wordsmith was given £650,000 of taxpayers’ money as a loan through the government’s Future Fund,
The apparent 'decline' of Britain - ie in terms of how it looks - I would say, is to do with local authority budgets. There isn't enough money due to budget cuts so that discretionary services, ie landscaping, public toilets, fixing potholes, parks and gardens just get cut. Even things like enforcement of planning regulations gets cut right back to the point where, in one town of 100,000 people I am familiar with, has 2000 unresolved breaches of planning control that it knows about, and only two inexperienced officers (ie with less than one years experience) dealing with it. Much of this is all just trivial amounts of money that are not being spent with disproportionate consequences that are not immediately obvious. By contrast municipalities in other countries don't let things get so bad even when economic times are objectively far, far worse; because they aren't dealing with the legacy of thatcherism and the harm it did to central/local government relations.
The money is going on social care. In other words, very elderly people.
I don't want to seem callous but we really do need to have a conversation about how much of our national wealth we want to, publicly, spend very expensively on keeping people alive for as long as possible who aren't particularly well and aren't particularly enjoying it.
In other countries, families take them in and look after them - with some visitors/outside help occasionally. I'd argue that's more humane. The trouble is it's also more hassle.
Multi-generational households are fine for very rich people, where granny or grandad can have a self-contained annexe or a barn conversion next to the main house, and where said elder is in reasonable health. Expecting the average family, with Mum and Dad both working full time to make ends meet, noisy kids bouncing off the walls, and already living on top of one another in a rabbit hutch house, to accommodate any older relative - still less one with disabilities and/or dementia - is a complete non-starter. Retirement villages, sheltered housing and residential care homes all exist for good reasons.
The real issue isn't the expenditure of all that cash - not least because, if we make serious efforts to cut and ration it, then how are we going to decide which older people are worth cherishing, and who gets left to starve to death sitting in their own shit or humanely destroyed when they're past it like the family cat? It's who keeps getting taken to the cleaners over and over again for all the extra funding that's the real problem here.
Not really. My wife's family is from Bulgaria, which is a poor country, and everyone does it there, regardless of how little they have.
They consider what we do to be cruel. Like shunting off a 3-year to boarding school, just the other way round.
Granny has dementia and can't be left alone for her own safety. She comes to live with daughter and son-in-law and their two kiddies.
Which half of the couple sacrifices their career and becomes a full-time unpaid career for Granny for the remainder of her lifespan, and how does the other half earn enough money to cover the mortgage and all the bills for the entire household?
It is all pretty feasible: you can bring in carers, work from home etc.
Bollocks is it, my father has dementia, no way I can have him live with me and still work. Simple fact.....he has not filter and even though I work from home he would be constantly peering over my shoulder in every meeting going things like shes a fat cow, walking round in the background in his underpants etc. My choice would be give up work to look after him then how do I pay for food, rent , power etc or put him in a home if he gets much worse.
You make it sound an easy thing which makes me think you have never dealt with someone with dementia
There's this idea that Dementia / Alzheimer's is just forgetting stuff. If only...
Precisely, the idea that you can work from home and thats enough is for the birds. Dementia sufferers need constant attention all the time they are awake
Start-up backed by Rishi Sunak’s wife Akshata Murty given government grant
The prime minister’s wife is a shareholder in a company that was awarded almost £350,000 of taxpayers’ money as part of a scheme to support entrepreneurs.
Records at Companies House show that Catamaran Ventures UK Ltd, the investment company controlled by Akshata Murty, has a stake in Study Hall, an education technology start-up.
Last year the business received a government grant of £349,976 through Innovate UK, the arm’s-length body that provides money and support to companies developing new products or services.
Murty’s shareholding in a firm that has been the direct beneficiary of government funding raises fresh questions about her business dealings and the potential for a perceived conflict of interest.
Study Hall, which aims to harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) in schools, was founded by Sofia Fenichell, a tech entrepreneur. Her previous venture Mrs Wordsmith, another education start-up dedicated to promoting children’s literacy, collapsed in 2021 just six months after receiving state support.
Mrs Wordsmith was given £650,000 of taxpayers’ money as a loan through the government’s Future Fund,
The apparent 'decline' of Britain - ie in terms of how it looks - I would say, is to do with local authority budgets. There isn't enough money due to budget cuts so that discretionary services, ie landscaping, public toilets, fixing potholes, parks and gardens just get cut. Even things like enforcement of planning regulations gets cut right back to the point where, in one town of 100,000 people I am familiar with, has 2000 unresolved breaches of planning control that it knows about, and only two inexperienced officers (ie with less than one years experience) dealing with it. Much of this is all just trivial amounts of money that are not being spent with disproportionate consequences that are not immediately obvious. By contrast municipalities in other countries don't let things get so bad even when economic times are objectively far, far worse; because they aren't dealing with the legacy of thatcherism and the harm it did to central/local government relations.
The money is going on social care. In other words, very elderly people.
I don't want to seem callous but we really do need to have a conversation about how much of our national wealth we want to, publicly, spend very expensively on keeping people alive for as long as possible who aren't particularly well and aren't particularly enjoying it.
In other countries, families take them in and look after them - with some visitors/outside help occasionally. I'd argue that's more humane. The trouble is it's also more hassle.
Multi-generational households are fine for very rich people, where granny or grandad can have a self-contained annexe or a barn conversion next to the main house, and where said elder is in reasonable health. Expecting the average family, with Mum and Dad both working full time to make ends meet, noisy kids bouncing off the walls, and already living on top of one another in a rabbit hutch house, to accommodate any older relative - still less one with disabilities and/or dementia - is a complete non-starter. Retirement villages, sheltered housing and residential care homes all exist for good reasons.
The real issue isn't the expenditure of all that cash - not least because, if we make serious efforts to cut and ration it, then how are we going to decide which older people are worth cherishing, and who gets left to starve to death sitting in their own shit or humanely destroyed when they're past it like the family cat? It's who keeps getting taken to the cleaners over and over again for all the extra funding that's the real problem here.
Not really. My wife's family is from Bulgaria, which is a poor country, and everyone does it there, regardless of how little they have.
They consider what we do to be cruel. Like shunting off a 3-year to boarding school, just the other way round.
Granny has dementia and can't be left alone for her own safety. She comes to live with daughter and son-in-law and their two kiddies.
Which half of the couple sacrifices their career and becomes a full-time unpaid career for Granny for the remainder of her lifespan, and how does the other half earn enough money to cover the mortgage and all the bills for the entire household?
It is all pretty feasible: you can bring in carers, work from home etc.
Who pays for the carers? What if you can't work from home? What, for that matter, are you meant to do when you don't have a spare room to accommodate a sick elderly person in the first place? And then there's the cost of installing and powering specialist medical and mobility equipment.
The notion that the average family can cope with an elderly person with complex and extremely expensive needs at home, especially if the commitment turns out to last for years on end, is risible.
Comparatively few elderly have “complex and extremely expensive needs at home”. People prefer to stay at home - you can support with health visitors and carers.
Average stays in care homes themselves are c 18 months
And as for cost, if the elderly person owns their own home they can stay on it or sell it and use the capital to improve their carer family house. Or if they are renting from the council they can put that income contribution towards the costs
Start-up backed by Rishi Sunak’s wife Akshata Murty given government grant
The prime minister’s wife is a shareholder in a company that was awarded almost £350,000 of taxpayers’ money as part of a scheme to support entrepreneurs.
Records at Companies House show that Catamaran Ventures UK Ltd, the investment company controlled by Akshata Murty, has a stake in Study Hall, an education technology start-up.
Last year the business received a government grant of £349,976 through Innovate UK, the arm’s-length body that provides money and support to companies developing new products or services.
Murty’s shareholding in a firm that has been the direct beneficiary of government funding raises fresh questions about her business dealings and the potential for a perceived conflict of interest.
Study Hall, which aims to harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) in schools, was founded by Sofia Fenichell, a tech entrepreneur. Her previous venture Mrs Wordsmith, another education start-up dedicated to promoting children’s literacy, collapsed in 2021 just six months after receiving state support.
Mrs Wordsmith was given £650,000 of taxpayers’ money as a loan through the government’s Future Fund,
Start-up backed by Rishi Sunak’s wife Akshata Murty given government grant
The prime minister’s wife is a shareholder in a company that was awarded almost £350,000 of taxpayers’ money as part of a scheme to support entrepreneurs.
Records at Companies House show that Catamaran Ventures UK Ltd, the investment company controlled by Akshata Murty, has a stake in Study Hall, an education technology start-up.
Last year the business received a government grant of £349,976 through Innovate UK, the arm’s-length body that provides money and support to companies developing new products or services.
Murty’s shareholding in a firm that has been the direct beneficiary of government funding raises fresh questions about her business dealings and the potential for a perceived conflict of interest.
Study Hall, which aims to harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) in schools, was founded by Sofia Fenichell, a tech entrepreneur. Her previous venture Mrs Wordsmith, another education start-up dedicated to promoting children’s literacy, collapsed in 2021 just six months after receiving state support.
Mrs Wordsmith was given £650,000 of taxpayers’ money as a loan through the government’s Future Fund,
I know, Sunak is even more sleazier than Boris Johnson.
It's strange, isn't it. After all, Boris had need of the money, a louche lifestyle will do that to a chap. But Rishi is already insanely wealthy.
If I (the mere son of a long-standing local councillor) know the importance of the "what would your behaviour look like on the front page of the paper" test, how come so many Conservative MPs don't?
They don't care sadly.
In my job, I impress on my colleagues and bankers that Caesar's wife has to be above suspicion.
If in doubt, refer it up the chain.
A while back I had to review a business deal, one of the team on the other side is a close friend, they let slip if the deal was approved they'd be up for a tidy bonus.
I informed the board that I was conflicted out of the deal, and that they should bring in an external party to review the deal.
Chatted to an old friend who is pretty interested in politics, and he wasn't aware that there was an election on - living in London, he sees no reference to it whatever! Sobering.
Because in London the Locals were last year.
Yes, but on here we're aware of elections anywhere, from Little Snoddington to Outer Mongolia, so a well-educated friend unaware that there was a major electoral test coming from Sunak did startle me. Those of us who do care are in a bubble.
Now, just imagine the reaction if you'd expressed concern about bringing people into the country wearing yarmulkas ...
It's baseball caps that I'd like to see outlawed.
A baseball cap is an amazing thing. When someone wears one it sucks the intelligence out of their brain.
I don't think I have ever worn one. Probably just as well, all things considered.
They are quite useful for actual sports. For example, I use one to keep rain off my glasses when rowing.
If you can find one which fits your headshape (far from a given with my massive head) they do a decent job of keeping summer sun off a scalp not as shielded by hair as it once was, and in my case look less preposterous in doing so than most other hats.
Tilley hats do the trick. Not as Croc Dundee as some.
Very popular in Seattle AND also ugliest hats ever.
Personally would rather wear an old bucket on my fool head.
Some of us don't have any choice. Too fair and too sensitive to the sun.
What’s wrong with a panama ?
Not broad enough.
I habitually wear a hat - winter, spring, summer and fall.
No need to wear a Tilley UNLESS you want to, as there are PLENTY of (broad-brimmed) alternatives.
Personally find Panama and similar hat with solid crowns TOO HOT to wear in warm to hot weather.
Instead, my preference is for hats with mesh and/or air holes, such as are popular in Australia, for example Barmah and B.C. Hats both Oz brands.
Right now am wearing my new favorite, made by (ironically?) Panama Jack; mesh crown (on sides), broad brim (3''), VERY lightweight.
AND stylish. Especially as I've decorated/personalized it with some of great lapel pins attached to the mesh.
Rogue hats from South Africa also do a range of ventilated crown hats.
I have their Kalahari hat, which packs really well, there probably is a USA importer.
The reason taxes are so high in the UK is because huge sums of money go toward elderly care, the NHS (primarily used by the elderly), and triple locked pensions.
Another story I heard today: A serving police officer is “looking forward” to a 2% pay rise this year. His father, who retired on 3/4 of final pay, gets 10%. The police officer calculates that in four years, his retired father will out-earn him.
How on earth is that sustainable?
The thing I confess I don’t understand is that Britain is hardly alone in its demographic burden. In fact, thanks to immigration, it does a little better than most of its advanced country peers. So how the fuck do they manage without the country “falling to bits”?
Time to wheel out one of my favourite stats again: in the UK, the average pensioner household after adjusting for housing costs has a higher level of disposable income than the average working household. There are still a lot of poor pensioners around, but the implication is that the average mortgage-free pensioner now enjoys a substantially higher standard of living than the average working-age taxpayer.
The triple lock and the ever-tightening squeeze on housing supply are purpose built to transfer both asset and liquid wealth upwards, from younger, poorer people to older, richer ones - by ensuring that, over time, the gap between earned incomes on the one hand, and pension incomes and house prices on the other, will grow wider and wider and wider.
Whats amazing is the lack of gratitude amongst many of the elderly. We locked down too to protect them but in return get more moaning.
This 79 year old and his 83 year old wife are extremely grateful for our blessings and I have consistently stated my opposition to the triple lock
Indeed when Sunak suggested he was reviewing the triple lock it was Starmer who led the opposition to its demise
As someone who is nearing his diamond wedding anniversary, and vividly remembers the Queens coronation in 1953, I accept times have changed but there is a rather ugly narrative coming from some regarding the elderly, who in most cases are loved and adored by their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, and it is good that these unpleasant views are not shared by most of the populace
Yes - we do need to re-define the generational contract (so to speak) but that's platitudes.
@Casino_Royale has a point - in many societies, the family is the primary carer for elderly relatives and there are, I believe, around a million people (mainly women) who are economically inactive because they are the primary carer for an older relative.
How do we redefine the relationship between the generations to the mutual benefit of both and society?
Sometimes I wonder if the move to having two income families is benefiting society.
Mostly the extra income seems to be just to pay insane house prices rather than actually making anyone richer.
This isn't a 'women should be at home' thing - at least two of my friends are the other way round and that suits them fine - but it seems mad to pay other people to do all the things that used to be done within a family.
Sometimes there is no choice, but should it always be the first choice?
Start-up backed by Rishi Sunak’s wife Akshata Murty given government grant
The prime minister’s wife is a shareholder in a company that was awarded almost £350,000 of taxpayers’ money as part of a scheme to support entrepreneurs.
Records at Companies House show that Catamaran Ventures UK Ltd, the investment company controlled by Akshata Murty, has a stake in Study Hall, an education technology start-up.
Last year the business received a government grant of £349,976 through Innovate UK, the arm’s-length body that provides money and support to companies developing new products or services.
Murty’s shareholding in a firm that has been the direct beneficiary of government funding raises fresh questions about her business dealings and the potential for a perceived conflict of interest.
Study Hall, which aims to harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) in schools, was founded by Sofia Fenichell, a tech entrepreneur. Her previous venture Mrs Wordsmith, another education start-up dedicated to promoting children’s literacy, collapsed in 2021 just six months after receiving state support.
Mrs Wordsmith was given £650,000 of taxpayers’ money as a loan through the government’s Future Fund,
Start-up backed by Rishi Sunak’s wife Akshata Murty given government grant
The prime minister’s wife is a shareholder in a company that was awarded almost £350,000 of taxpayers’ money as part of a scheme to support entrepreneurs.
Records at Companies House show that Catamaran Ventures UK Ltd, the investment company controlled by Akshata Murty, has a stake in Study Hall, an education technology start-up.
Last year the business received a government grant of £349,976 through Innovate UK, the arm’s-length body that provides money and support to companies developing new products or services.
Murty’s shareholding in a firm that has been the direct beneficiary of government funding raises fresh questions about her business dealings and the potential for a perceived conflict of interest.
Study Hall, which aims to harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) in schools, was founded by Sofia Fenichell, a tech entrepreneur. Her previous venture Mrs Wordsmith, another education start-up dedicated to promoting children’s literacy, collapsed in 2021 just six months after receiving state support.
Mrs Wordsmith was given £650,000 of taxpayers’ money as a loan through the government’s Future Fund,
I know, Sunak is even more sleazier than Boris Johnson.
Serious question. Are you a Hindiphobe? Do you REALLY believe he is sleazier than Boris Johnson?
No, I am not a Hindiphobe (sic).
Fair enough but I argued with you relentlessly about David (Black Rock) Cameron, George (Deripaska) Osborne, Nick (Facebook) Clegg and Danny (Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank) Alexander. Perhaps you will correct me but I don't remember you deigning to criticise any of them.
Start-up backed by Rishi Sunak’s wife Akshata Murty given government grant
The prime minister’s wife is a shareholder in a company that was awarded almost £350,000 of taxpayers’ money as part of a scheme to support entrepreneurs.
Records at Companies House show that Catamaran Ventures UK Ltd, the investment company controlled by Akshata Murty, has a stake in Study Hall, an education technology start-up.
Last year the business received a government grant of £349,976 through Innovate UK, the arm’s-length body that provides money and support to companies developing new products or services.
Murty’s shareholding in a firm that has been the direct beneficiary of government funding raises fresh questions about her business dealings and the potential for a perceived conflict of interest.
Study Hall, which aims to harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) in schools, was founded by Sofia Fenichell, a tech entrepreneur. Her previous venture Mrs Wordsmith, another education start-up dedicated to promoting children’s literacy, collapsed in 2021 just six months after receiving state support.
Mrs Wordsmith was given £650,000 of taxpayers’ money as a loan through the government’s Future Fund,
Start-up backed by Rishi Sunak’s wife Akshata Murty given government grant
The prime minister’s wife is a shareholder in a company that was awarded almost £350,000 of taxpayers’ money as part of a scheme to support entrepreneurs.
Records at Companies House show that Catamaran Ventures UK Ltd, the investment company controlled by Akshata Murty, has a stake in Study Hall, an education technology start-up.
Last year the business received a government grant of £349,976 through Innovate UK, the arm’s-length body that provides money and support to companies developing new products or services.
Murty’s shareholding in a firm that has been the direct beneficiary of government funding raises fresh questions about her business dealings and the potential for a perceived conflict of interest.
Study Hall, which aims to harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) in schools, was founded by Sofia Fenichell, a tech entrepreneur. Her previous venture Mrs Wordsmith, another education start-up dedicated to promoting children’s literacy, collapsed in 2021 just six months after receiving state support.
Mrs Wordsmith was given £650,000 of taxpayers’ money as a loan through the government’s Future Fund,
I know, Sunak is even more sleazier than Boris Johnson.
Serious question. Are you a Hindiphobe? Do you REALLY believe he is sleazier than Boris Johnson?
No, I am not a Hindiphobe (sic).
Fair enough but I argued with you relentlessly about David (Black Rock) Cameron, George (Deripaska) Osborne, Nick (Facebook) Clegg and Danny (Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank) Alexander. Perhaps you will correct me but I don't remember you deigning to criticise any of them.
I have. But show me when they were in power their wives got money from the government for their business interests?
Start-up backed by Rishi Sunak’s wife Akshata Murty given government grant
The prime minister’s wife is a shareholder in a company that was awarded almost £350,000 of taxpayers’ money as part of a scheme to support entrepreneurs.
Records at Companies House show that Catamaran Ventures UK Ltd, the investment company controlled by Akshata Murty, has a stake in Study Hall, an education technology start-up.
Last year the business received a government grant of £349,976 through Innovate UK, the arm’s-length body that provides money and support to companies developing new products or services.
Murty’s shareholding in a firm that has been the direct beneficiary of government funding raises fresh questions about her business dealings and the potential for a perceived conflict of interest.
Study Hall, which aims to harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) in schools, was founded by Sofia Fenichell, a tech entrepreneur. Her previous venture Mrs Wordsmith, another education start-up dedicated to promoting children’s literacy, collapsed in 2021 just six months after receiving state support.
Mrs Wordsmith was given £650,000 of taxpayers’ money as a loan through the government’s Future Fund,
I suspect she has lots of small investments but doesn’t manage the companies or get involved. If they applied through the normal route (and Innovate UK is pretty easy) then why shouldn’t they just because she has some shares
The reason taxes are so high in the UK is because huge sums of money go toward elderly care, the NHS (primarily used by the elderly), and triple locked pensions.
Another story I heard today: A serving police officer is “looking forward” to a 2% pay rise this year. His father, who retired on 3/4 of final pay, gets 10%. The police officer calculates that in four years, his retired father will out-earn him.
How on earth is that sustainable?
The thing I confess I don’t understand is that Britain is hardly alone in its demographic burden. In fact, thanks to immigration, it does a little better than most of its advanced country peers. So how the fuck do they manage without the country “falling to bits”?
Time to wheel out one of my favourite stats again: in the UK, the average pensioner household after adjusting for housing costs has a higher level of disposable income than the average working household. There are still a lot of poor pensioners around, but the implication is that the average mortgage-free pensioner now enjoys a substantially higher standard of living than the average working-age taxpayer.
The triple lock and the ever-tightening squeeze on housing supply are purpose built to transfer both asset and liquid wealth upwards, from younger, poorer people to older, richer ones - by ensuring that, over time, the gap between earned incomes on the one hand, and pension incomes and house prices on the other, will grow wider and wider and wider.
Whats amazing is the lack of gratitude amongst many of the elderly. We locked down too to protect them but in return get more moaning.
This 79 year old and his 83 year old wife are extremely grateful for our blessings and I have consistently stated my opposition to the triple lock
Indeed when Sunak suggested he was reviewing the triple lock it was Starmer who led the opposition to its demise
As someone who is nearing his diamond wedding anniversary, and vividly remembers the Queens coronation in 1953, I accept times have changed but there is a rather ugly narrative coming from some regarding the elderly, who in most cases are loved and adored by their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, and it is good that these unpleasant views are not shared by most of the populace
Yes - we do need to re-define the generational contract (so to speak) but that's platitudes.
@Casino_Royale has a point - in many societies, the family is the primary carer for elderly relatives and there are, I believe, around a million people (mainly women) who are economically inactive because they are the primary carer for an older relative.
How do we redefine the relationship between the generations to the mutual benefit of both and society?
Sorry to be a bore... but it's housing, innit?
As things stand, it's very difficult to support a family on one typical salary, if one of your costs is paying for somewhere to live, whether that's rent or a recently taken out mortgage. There isn't an intrinsic reason why this has to be so- we have just chosen to order things that way.
But for all we all know that the solution likes in the direction "Build more homes of a sort that people want to live in rather than inflating their price through artificial scarcity", nobody knows how to get re-elected after doing that. (I fear that the answer involves regional government and PR, so that individual representatives don't have to oppose builiding in their area for fear of their re-election.)
Start-up backed by Rishi Sunak’s wife Akshata Murty given government grant
The prime minister’s wife is a shareholder in a company that was awarded almost £350,000 of taxpayers’ money as part of a scheme to support entrepreneurs.
Records at Companies House show that Catamaran Ventures UK Ltd, the investment company controlled by Akshata Murty, has a stake in Study Hall, an education technology start-up.
Last year the business received a government grant of £349,976 through Innovate UK, the arm’s-length body that provides money and support to companies developing new products or services.
Murty’s shareholding in a firm that has been the direct beneficiary of government funding raises fresh questions about her business dealings and the potential for a perceived conflict of interest.
Study Hall, which aims to harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) in schools, was founded by Sofia Fenichell, a tech entrepreneur. Her previous venture Mrs Wordsmith, another education start-up dedicated to promoting children’s literacy, collapsed in 2021 just six months after receiving state support.
Mrs Wordsmith was given £650,000 of taxpayers’ money as a loan through the government’s Future Fund,
The apparent 'decline' of Britain - ie in terms of how it looks - I would say, is to do with local authority budgets. There isn't enough money due to budget cuts so that discretionary services, ie landscaping, public toilets, fixing potholes, parks and gardens just get cut. Even things like enforcement of planning regulations gets cut right back to the point where, in one town of 100,000 people I am familiar with, has 2000 unresolved breaches of planning control that it knows about, and only two inexperienced officers (ie with less than one years experience) dealing with it. Much of this is all just trivial amounts of money that are not being spent with disproportionate consequences that are not immediately obvious. By contrast municipalities in other countries don't let things get so bad even when economic times are objectively far, far worse; because they aren't dealing with the legacy of thatcherism and the harm it did to central/local government relations.
The money is going on social care. In other words, very elderly people.
I don't want to seem callous but we really do need to have a conversation about how much of our national wealth we want to, publicly, spend very expensively on keeping people alive for as long as possible who aren't particularly well and aren't particularly enjoying it.
In other countries, families take them in and look after them - with some visitors/outside help occasionally. I'd argue that's more humane. The trouble is it's also more hassle.
Multi-generational households are fine for very rich people, where granny or grandad can have a self-contained annexe or a barn conversion next to the main house, and where said elder is in reasonable health. Expecting the average family, with Mum and Dad both working full time to make ends meet, noisy kids bouncing off the walls, and already living on top of one another in a rabbit hutch house, to accommodate any older relative - still less one with disabilities and/or dementia - is a complete non-starter. Retirement villages, sheltered housing and residential care homes all exist for good reasons.
The real issue isn't the expenditure of all that cash - not least because, if we make serious efforts to cut and ration it, then how are we going to decide which older people are worth cherishing, and who gets left to starve to death sitting in their own shit or humanely destroyed when they're past it like the family cat? It's who keeps getting taken to the cleaners over and over again for all the extra funding that's the real problem here.
Not really. My wife's family is from Bulgaria, which is a poor country, and everyone does it there, regardless of how little they have.
They consider what we do to be cruel. Like shunting off a 3-year to boarding school, just the other way round.
Granny has dementia and can't be left alone for her own safety. She comes to live with daughter and son-in-law and their two kiddies.
Which half of the couple sacrifices their career and becomes a full-time unpaid career for Granny for the remainder of her lifespan, and how does the other half earn enough money to cover the mortgage and all the bills for the entire household?
It is all pretty feasible: you can bring in carers, work from home etc.
Who pays for the carers? What if you can't work from home? What, for that matter, are you meant to do when you don't have a spare room to accommodate a sick elderly person in the first place? And then there's the cost of installing and powering specialist medical and mobility equipment.
The notion that the average family can cope with an elderly person with complex and extremely expensive needs at home, especially if the commitment turns out to last for years on end, is risible.
Comparatively few elderly have “complex and extremely expensive needs at home”. People prefer to stay at home - you can support with health visitors and carers.
Average stays in care homes themselves are c 18 months
And as for cost, if the elderly person owns their own home they can stay on it or sell it and use the capital to improve their carer family house. Or if they are renting from the council they can put that income contribution towards the costs
No you really can't support them at home, my father doesn't have complex medical needs in anyway. He does however need someone on hand pretty much all the time to stop him wandering off or doing stupid shit and you can't do that and continue a 5 day a week 9 to 5 job even wfh, its not complex care its not cost its just he can't be trusted alone and he can't be in a space you are working with others. There are also many that don't own their own home or rent off the council
Start-up backed by Rishi Sunak’s wife Akshata Murty given government grant
The prime minister’s wife is a shareholder in a company that was awarded almost £350,000 of taxpayers’ money as part of a scheme to support entrepreneurs.
Records at Companies House show that Catamaran Ventures UK Ltd, the investment company controlled by Akshata Murty, has a stake in Study Hall, an education technology start-up.
Last year the business received a government grant of £349,976 through Innovate UK, the arm’s-length body that provides money and support to companies developing new products or services.
Murty’s shareholding in a firm that has been the direct beneficiary of government funding raises fresh questions about her business dealings and the potential for a perceived conflict of interest.
Study Hall, which aims to harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) in schools, was founded by Sofia Fenichell, a tech entrepreneur. Her previous venture Mrs Wordsmith, another education start-up dedicated to promoting children’s literacy, collapsed in 2021 just six months after receiving state support.
Mrs Wordsmith was given £650,000 of taxpayers’ money as a loan through the government’s Future Fund,
Start-up backed by Rishi Sunak’s wife Akshata Murty given government grant
The prime minister’s wife is a shareholder in a company that was awarded almost £350,000 of taxpayers’ money as part of a scheme to support entrepreneurs.
Records at Companies House show that Catamaran Ventures UK Ltd, the investment company controlled by Akshata Murty, has a stake in Study Hall, an education technology start-up.
Last year the business received a government grant of £349,976 through Innovate UK, the arm’s-length body that provides money and support to companies developing new products or services.
Murty’s shareholding in a firm that has been the direct beneficiary of government funding raises fresh questions about her business dealings and the potential for a perceived conflict of interest.
Study Hall, which aims to harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) in schools, was founded by Sofia Fenichell, a tech entrepreneur. Her previous venture Mrs Wordsmith, another education start-up dedicated to promoting children’s literacy, collapsed in 2021 just six months after receiving state support.
Mrs Wordsmith was given £650,000 of taxpayers’ money as a loan through the government’s Future Fund,
I suspect she has lots of small investments but doesn’t manage the companies or get involved. If they applied through the normal route (and Innovate UK is pretty easy) then why shouldn’t they just because she has some shares
His own screw up with his own register of interests is a pretty big tell for me.
The prime minister was criticised in March for failing to declare his wife’s shares in a childcare agency called Koru Kids that could benefit from policy announced in the budget. Parliament’s standards watchdog is investigating to see if Sunak failed to be “open and frank” when declaring an interest. The prime minister later amended the register of ministerial interests to declare the shares.
His entry states that his wife “owns a venture capital investment company, Catamaran Ventures UK Ltd” but there is no mention of Study Hall.
The reason taxes are so high in the UK is because huge sums of money go toward elderly care, the NHS (primarily used by the elderly), and triple locked pensions.
Another story I heard today: A serving police officer is “looking forward” to a 2% pay rise this year. His father, who retired on 3/4 of final pay, gets 10%. The police officer calculates that in four years, his retired father will out-earn him.
How on earth is that sustainable?
The thing I confess I don’t understand is that Britain is hardly alone in its demographic burden. In fact, thanks to immigration, it does a little better than most of its advanced country peers. So how the fuck do they manage without the country “falling to bits”?
Time to wheel out one of my favourite stats again: in the UK, the average pensioner household after adjusting for housing costs has a higher level of disposable income than the average working household. There are still a lot of poor pensioners around, but the implication is that the average mortgage-free pensioner now enjoys a substantially higher standard of living than the average working-age taxpayer.
The triple lock and the ever-tightening squeeze on housing supply are purpose built to transfer both asset and liquid wealth upwards, from younger, poorer people to older, richer ones - by ensuring that, over time, the gap between earned incomes on the one hand, and pension incomes and house prices on the other, will grow wider and wider and wider.
Whats amazing is the lack of gratitude amongst many of the elderly. We locked down too to protect them but in return get more moaning.
This 79 year old and his 83 year old wife are extremely grateful for our blessings and I have consistently stated my opposition to the triple lock
Indeed when Sunak suggested he was reviewing the triple lock it was Starmer who led the opposition to its demise
As someone who is nearing his diamond wedding anniversary, and vividly remembers the Queens coronation in 1953, I accept times have changed but there is a rather ugly narrative coming from some regarding the elderly, who in most cases are loved and adored by their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, and it is good that these unpleasant views are not shared by most of the populace
Yes - we do need to re-define the generational contract (so to speak) but that's platitudes.
@Casino_Royale has a point - in many societies, the family is the primary carer for elderly relatives and there are, I believe, around a million people (mainly women) who are economically inactive because they are the primary carer for an older relative.
How do we redefine the relationship between the generations to the mutual benefit of both and society?
As a family we have experienced the pain of our parents suffering with dementia, especially my father in law who we took home from the North of Scotland on the sudden death of his wife, only to discover he was in a serious stare of dementia which had been concealed from us by his wife
We had a terrible time and it broke my wife's heart but after a couple of months he died in our home with his family beside him
For 2 years we could not talk about it as it was too painful
My son in laws mother died 12 months ago after 4 years in dementia care and his father is also in long term dementia care
It most cases dementia as has been said it not just forgetfulness but so much more as the mind and body deteriorates and the personality of the loved one is lost
Dementia care needs professional care, and not home care in most cases, and it is a huge issue that at present seems almost impossible to resolve
The apparent 'decline' of Britain - ie in terms of how it looks - I would say, is to do with local authority budgets. There isn't enough money due to budget cuts so that discretionary services, ie landscaping, public toilets, fixing potholes, parks and gardens just get cut. Even things like enforcement of planning regulations gets cut right back to the point where, in one town of 100,000 people I am familiar with, has 2000 unresolved breaches of planning control that it knows about, and only two inexperienced officers (ie with less than one years experience) dealing with it. Much of this is all just trivial amounts of money that are not being spent with disproportionate consequences that are not immediately obvious. By contrast municipalities in other countries don't let things get so bad even when economic times are objectively far, far worse; because they aren't dealing with the legacy of thatcherism and the harm it did to central/local government relations.
The money is going on social care. In other words, very elderly people.
I don't want to seem callous but we really do need to have a conversation about how much of our national wealth we want to, publicly, spend very expensively on keeping people alive for as long as possible who aren't particularly well and aren't particularly enjoying it.
In other countries, families take them in and look after them - with some visitors/outside help occasionally. I'd argue that's more humane. The trouble is it's also more hassle.
Multi-generational households are fine for very rich people, where granny or grandad can have a self-contained annexe or a barn conversion next to the main house, and where said elder is in reasonable health. Expecting the average family, with Mum and Dad both working full time to make ends meet, noisy kids bouncing off the walls, and already living on top of one another in a rabbit hutch house, to accommodate any older relative - still less one with disabilities and/or dementia - is a complete non-starter. Retirement villages, sheltered housing and residential care homes all exist for good reasons.
The real issue isn't the expenditure of all that cash - not least because, if we make serious efforts to cut and ration it, then how are we going to decide which older people are worth cherishing, and who gets left to starve to death sitting in their own shit or humanely destroyed when they're past it like the family cat? It's who keeps getting taken to the cleaners over and over again for all the extra funding that's the real problem here.
Not really. My wife's family is from Bulgaria, which is a poor country, and everyone does it there, regardless of how little they have.
They consider what we do to be cruel. Like shunting off a 3-year to boarding school, just the other way round.
Granny has dementia and can't be left alone for her own safety. She comes to live with daughter and son-in-law and their two kiddies.
Which half of the couple sacrifices their career and becomes a full-time unpaid career for Granny for the remainder of her lifespan, and how does the other half earn enough money to cover the mortgage and all the bills for the entire household?
It is all pretty feasible: you can bring in carers, work from home etc.
Bollocks is it, my father has dementia, no way I can have him live with me and still work. Simple fact.....he has not filter and even though I work from home he would be constantly peering over my shoulder in every meeting going things like shes a fat cow, walking round in the background in his underpants etc. My choice would be give up work to look after him then how do I pay for food, rent , power etc or put him in a home if he gets much worse.
You make it sound an easy thing which makes me think you have never dealt with someone with dementia
Start-up backed by Rishi Sunak’s wife Akshata Murty given government grant
The prime minister’s wife is a shareholder in a company that was awarded almost £350,000 of taxpayers’ money as part of a scheme to support entrepreneurs.
Records at Companies House show that Catamaran Ventures UK Ltd, the investment company controlled by Akshata Murty, has a stake in Study Hall, an education technology start-up.
Last year the business received a government grant of £349,976 through Innovate UK, the arm’s-length body that provides money and support to companies developing new products or services.
Murty’s shareholding in a firm that has been the direct beneficiary of government funding raises fresh questions about her business dealings and the potential for a perceived conflict of interest.
Study Hall, which aims to harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) in schools, was founded by Sofia Fenichell, a tech entrepreneur. Her previous venture Mrs Wordsmith, another education start-up dedicated to promoting children’s literacy, collapsed in 2021 just six months after receiving state support.
Mrs Wordsmith was given £650,000 of taxpayers’ money as a loan through the government’s Future Fund,
Start-up backed by Rishi Sunak’s wife Akshata Murty given government grant
The prime minister’s wife is a shareholder in a company that was awarded almost £350,000 of taxpayers’ money as part of a scheme to support entrepreneurs.
Records at Companies House show that Catamaran Ventures UK Ltd, the investment company controlled by Akshata Murty, has a stake in Study Hall, an education technology start-up.
Last year the business received a government grant of £349,976 through Innovate UK, the arm’s-length body that provides money and support to companies developing new products or services.
Murty’s shareholding in a firm that has been the direct beneficiary of government funding raises fresh questions about her business dealings and the potential for a perceived conflict of interest.
Study Hall, which aims to harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) in schools, was founded by Sofia Fenichell, a tech entrepreneur. Her previous venture Mrs Wordsmith, another education start-up dedicated to promoting children’s literacy, collapsed in 2021 just six months after receiving state support.
Mrs Wordsmith was given £650,000 of taxpayers’ money as a loan through the government’s Future Fund,
The reason taxes are so high in the UK is because huge sums of money go toward elderly care, the NHS (primarily used by the elderly), and triple locked pensions.
Another story I heard today: A serving police officer is “looking forward” to a 2% pay rise this year. His father, who retired on 3/4 of final pay, gets 10%. The police officer calculates that in four years, his retired father will out-earn him.
How on earth is that sustainable?
The thing I confess I don’t understand is that Britain is hardly alone in its demographic burden. In fact, thanks to immigration, it does a little better than most of its advanced country peers. So how the fuck do they manage without the country “falling to bits”?
Time to wheel out one of my favourite stats again: in the UK, the average pensioner household after adjusting for housing costs has a higher level of disposable income than the average working household. There are still a lot of poor pensioners around, but the implication is that the average mortgage-free pensioner now enjoys a substantially higher standard of living than the average working-age taxpayer.
The triple lock and the ever-tightening squeeze on housing supply are purpose built to transfer both asset and liquid wealth upwards, from younger, poorer people to older, richer ones - by ensuring that, over time, the gap between earned incomes on the one hand, and pension incomes and house prices on the other, will grow wider and wider and wider.
Whats amazing is the lack of gratitude amongst many of the elderly. We locked down too to protect them but in return get more moaning.
This 79 year old and his 83 year old wife are extremely grateful for our blessings and I have consistently stated my opposition to the triple lock
Indeed when Sunak suggested he was reviewing the triple lock it was Starmer who led the opposition to its demise
As someone who is nearing his diamond wedding anniversary, and vividly remembers the Queens coronation in 1953, I accept times have changed but there is a rather ugly narrative coming from some regarding the elderly, who in most cases are loved and adored by their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, and it is good that these unpleasant views are not shared by most of the populace
I think it's divide and rule. The State is gorging itself on taxpayers' money - that is where the dissatisfaction should be directed, not at one group who seems to be doing a bit less poorly out of it than the rest.
I would just say that those attacking the triple lock need to realise it was Starmer who mounted a campaign to retain it, and both Starmer and Reeves have affirmed they will do so if they win office
I would also comment I have never approved of NI contributions stopping at 60, and everyone in employment no matter their age should pay NI
The government has a majority of 70 or so, they could have abolished/modified the triple lock.
You cannot pin this on Starmer.
Indeed I can as he and Reeves have stated it is not up for discussion and they are likely to be in power in 18 months time
Unspoofable.
Repeat after me, the government have a notional majority of 70 or so and can abolish and/or amend the triple lock tomorrow.
They choose not to.
Wait until you hear the other stuff the government does that Starmer opposes.
I was with my 76 year old Conservative supporting neighbour yesterday and he has a compelling case that the small boats problem is Labour's fault as they want the boat people over here because when they achieve their citizenship they vote Labour.
The apparent 'decline' of Britain - ie in terms of how it looks - I would say, is to do with local authority budgets. There isn't enough money due to budget cuts so that discretionary services, ie landscaping, public toilets, fixing potholes, parks and gardens just get cut. Even things like enforcement of planning regulations gets cut right back to the point where, in one town of 100,000 people I am familiar with, has 2000 unresolved breaches of planning control that it knows about, and only two inexperienced officers (ie with less than one years experience) dealing with it. Much of this is all just trivial amounts of money that are not being spent with disproportionate consequences that are not immediately obvious. By contrast municipalities in other countries don't let things get so bad even when economic times are objectively far, far worse; because they aren't dealing with the legacy of thatcherism and the harm it did to central/local government relations.
The money is going on social care. In other words, very elderly people.
I don't want to seem callous but we really do need to have a conversation about how much of our national wealth we want to, publicly, spend very expensively on keeping people alive for as long as possible who aren't particularly well and aren't particularly enjoying it.
In other countries, families take them in and look after them - with some visitors/outside help occasionally. I'd argue that's more humane. The trouble is it's also more hassle.
Multi-generational households are fine for very rich people, where granny or grandad can have a self-contained annexe or a barn conversion next to the main house, and where said elder is in reasonable health. Expecting the average family, with Mum and Dad both working full time to make ends meet, noisy kids bouncing off the walls, and already living on top of one another in a rabbit hutch house, to accommodate any older relative - still less one with disabilities and/or dementia - is a complete non-starter. Retirement villages, sheltered housing and residential care homes all exist for good reasons.
The real issue isn't the expenditure of all that cash - not least because, if we make serious efforts to cut and ration it, then how are we going to decide which older people are worth cherishing, and who gets left to starve to death sitting in their own shit or humanely destroyed when they're past it like the family cat? It's who keeps getting taken to the cleaners over and over again for all the extra funding that's the real problem here.
Not really. My wife's family is from Bulgaria, which is a poor country, and everyone does it there, regardless of how little they have.
They consider what we do to be cruel. Like shunting off a 3-year to boarding school, just the other way round.
Granny has dementia and can't be left alone for her own safety. She comes to live with daughter and son-in-law and their two kiddies.
Which half of the couple sacrifices their career and becomes a full-time unpaid career for Granny for the remainder of her lifespan, and how does the other half earn enough money to cover the mortgage and all the bills for the entire household?
It is all pretty feasible: you can bring in carers, work from home etc.
Bollocks is it, my father has dementia, no way I can have him live with me and still work. Simple fact.....he has not filter and even though I work from home he would be constantly peering over my shoulder in every meeting going things like shes a fat cow, walking round in the background in his underpants etc. My choice would be give up work to look after him then how do I pay for food, rent , power etc or put him in a home if he gets much worse.
You make it sound an easy thing which makes me think you have never dealt with someone with dementia
Casino - if wokery is really so powerful how do you explain the continuing stratospheric levels of support for Churchill? Even among Millenials if you believe YouGov, 2/3 familiar with him have a positive view. For the oldest it is 77%.
There is a big "..was a racist" move against Churchill today. And the polling gets more complex in the detail.
To be fair, he did express views at the time that today would be considered racially prejudiced, but that does not stop him from being a hero for us and, I'd argue, ultimately humanity more broadly.
Great men are flawed. Intelligent people can see that. Ideologues can not.
Start-up backed by Rishi Sunak’s wife Akshata Murty given government grant
The prime minister’s wife is a shareholder in a company that was awarded almost £350,000 of taxpayers’ money as part of a scheme to support entrepreneurs.
Records at Companies House show that Catamaran Ventures UK Ltd, the investment company controlled by Akshata Murty, has a stake in Study Hall, an education technology start-up.
Last year the business received a government grant of £349,976 through Innovate UK, the arm’s-length body that provides money and support to companies developing new products or services.
Murty’s shareholding in a firm that has been the direct beneficiary of government funding raises fresh questions about her business dealings and the potential for a perceived conflict of interest.
Study Hall, which aims to harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) in schools, was founded by Sofia Fenichell, a tech entrepreneur. Her previous venture Mrs Wordsmith, another education start-up dedicated to promoting children’s literacy, collapsed in 2021 just six months after receiving state support.
Mrs Wordsmith was given £650,000 of taxpayers’ money as a loan through the government’s Future Fund,
Comments
Getting off interstates and other freeways is bad for making time, but good for cutting down on the roadside crap.
Which is also true in UK? Leastways that was my impression.
Do you agree with that state law? If not, then what point does RDS have?
Started out with great innovations, both cultural and technical, but fairly quickly fell into a centuries long relative stasis, isolated from the wider world and dominated by internecine aristocratic conflict.
Someone earning £50k per year pays about £7.5k in tax per year.
A year in a basic care home is £40k, so over 5 years worth of tax payments from your working life (if you were earning £50k).
This is before you factor in at the cost of healthcare and operations on the NHS in later life, etc.
Which half of the couple sacrifices their career and becomes a full-time unpaid carer for Granny for the remainder of her lifespan, and how does the other half earn enough money to cover the mortgage and all the bills for the entire household?
HOWEVER, am guessing the REAL motivation for Disney to NOT allow jack-leg preachers OR cheap-jack politicos to bully them over creative content, is realization that IF they give in to such tactics, it would be open season against them.
So if Ron DiRatis wants to fuck around with Mickey Mouse, then Disney will show him - and anyone else whose paying attention - the error of his ways.
I’m painting a picture of the depth of differences, religious practice as Foxy recently posted, but also of wealthy exploiting the poor rather like what led to the reformation and protest as I just posted, senior religious leaders close to the occupying administrators in agreement of what’s necessary is for quiet life maintaining status quo, meanwhile street protests by rival supporters. This is the backdrop to The Passion we need to view the events described set against.
A key point of Jesus protest at the Temple I think was the bathing. I don’t want to come over all King of Tulsa, but supplying the bathing around the temple for a charge would have been a nice little earner with 2.5 million coming to do that.
You would have joined me and Jesus at the Temple demo wouldn’t you, getting our fair share of abuse from StillWaters shouting “bugger off you Hellenic rabble” at us?
Another story I heard today:
A serving police officer is “looking forward” to a 2% pay rise this year. His father, who retired on 3/4 of final pay, gets 10%.
The police officer calculates that in four years, his retired father will out-earn him.
How on earth is that sustainable?
The thing I confess I don’t understand is that Britain is hardly alone in its demographic burden. In fact, thanks to immigration, it does a little better than most of its advanced country peers. So how the fuck do they manage without the country “falling to bits”?
The notion that the average family can cope with an elderly person with complex and extremely expensive needs at home, especially if the commitment turns out to last for years on end, is risible.
"In Stoke-on-Trent, the potters are working seven days a week, while in Knaresborough strings of bunting are whizzing through machines. In London, icing “artists” are painstakingly decorating Westminster Abbey-shaped biscuits."
Of course, the rest of the political establishment is therefore so scared of the grey vote that it won't dare switch from taxing incomes to assets, either.
Labour, if and when it gets back in, will keep on hiking taxes on earned incomes, both directly and via fiscal drag, in exactly the same fashion as the Conservatives, whilst leaving property and inheritances well alone. Watch.
Thank you.
And agreed it wont get much better.
No need to wear a Tilley UNLESS you want to, as there are PLENTY of (broad-brimmed) alternatives.
Personally find Panama and similar hat with solid crowns TOO HOT to wear in warm to hot weather.
Instead, my preference is for hats with mesh and/or air holes, such as are popular in Australia, for example Barmah and B.C. Hats both Oz brands.
Right now am wearing my new favorite, made by (ironically?) Panama Jack; mesh crown (on sides), broad brim (3''), VERY lightweight.
AND stylish. Especially as I've decorated/personalized it with some of great lapel pins attached to the mesh.
There is also the fact that Anheuser Busch is reporting its numbers this week and every analyst and investor is going to be asking about their Bud Light sales. The WSJ said Bud Light was down 15% YoY in sales for the week of April 15th and it is possible that has got worse. If that is the case, and AB starts rowing back on its comments, then the investor community is - very quickly - going to get tired of corporates pursuing political goals that potentially impact the share price.
The triple lock and the ever-tightening squeeze on housing supply are purpose built to transfer both asset and liquid wealth upwards, from younger, poorer people to older, richer ones - by ensuring that, over time, the gap between earned incomes on the one hand, and pension incomes and house prices on the other, will grow wider and wider and wider.
For one thing, decline in Bud Light sales may have something to do with fact that it's diluted horse piss?
For another, will need to see what the figures show in a month, and in six months?
Note also that most consumer boycotts of this kind fizzle (apt word?) out.
ADDENDUM - BTW, issue re: Mickey versus DeRatis, is no longer Disney's opposition to "don't say gay" law. It is now political & governmental retaliation for daring to oppose the Governor and his rubber-stamp legislature.
I know its a legacy of when there were far fewer, and far less affluent, pensioners but why does it still continue.
Doubtless it will have stopped before I'm old enough to benefit.
https://tfl.gov.uk/tube-dlr-overground/status/?Input=&lineIds=&dateTypeSelect=Future date&direction=&startDate=2023-05-13T00:00:00&endDate=2023-05-13T23:59:59#line-lul-central
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/apr/27/rail-strikes-train-drivers-union-names-three-more-dates-may-june
"The affected companies are those in England contracted by the Department for Transport: Avanti West Coast; Chiltern Railways; CrossCountry; East Midlands Railway; Great Western Railway; Greater Anglia; GTR – Great Northern and Thameslink; LNER; Northern; Southeastern; Southern/Gatwick Express; South Western Railway; SWR depot drivers; SWR Island Line; TransPennine Express; and West Midlands Trains."
Will the sales come back? Who knows. I was at dinner last week with someone who had been travelling to the States on work and, while in a bar in Dallas, had heard a woman ask a guy "are you gay?" for ordering Bud Light. It seems to have seeped into the consciousness. It may change but sometimes these thing don't.
As for Disney, it has multiple issues at the moment. There is growing unease from investors that companies are stepping into minefields here and it is not going away.
Blaming Russia for the declining support for the Monarchy is no more plausible than blaming them for Brexit.
All we have to do in Newham to use the civic amenity site is show some ID to demonstrate we are residents. It's a bit like voting - flash the old driving licence and Bob's your Auntie's Live-in Lover (as someone once said).
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/international/explore/historical_figure/Winston_Churchill?content=all
Indeed when Sunak suggested he was reviewing the triple lock it was Starmer who led the opposition to its demise
As someone who is nearing his diamond wedding anniversary, and vividly remembers the Queens coronation in 1953, I accept times have changed but there is a rather ugly narrative coming from some regarding the elderly, who in most cases are loved and adored by their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, and it is good that these unpleasant views are not shared by most of the populace
You make it sound an easy thing which makes me think you have never dealt with someone with dementia
Re: Disney, allow me to point out yet again, thanks to RDS the issue has morphed from pushing back versus alleged Woke, to use of governmental authority and power to punish dissent from government policy and actions.
Plenty of Americans who actually agree with the Gov (and you?) on the first point, are opposed to him on the second.
Start-up backed by Rishi Sunak’s wife Akshata Murty given government grant
The prime minister’s wife is a shareholder in a company that was awarded almost £350,000 of taxpayers’ money as part of a scheme to support entrepreneurs.
Records at Companies House show that Catamaran Ventures UK Ltd, the investment company controlled by Akshata Murty, has a stake in Study Hall, an education technology start-up.
Last year the business received a government grant of £349,976 through Innovate UK, the arm’s-length body that provides money and support to companies developing new products or services.
Murty’s shareholding in a firm that has been the direct beneficiary of government funding raises fresh questions about her business dealings and the potential for a perceived conflict of interest.
Study Hall, which aims to harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) in schools, was founded by Sofia Fenichell, a tech entrepreneur. Her previous venture Mrs Wordsmith, another education start-up dedicated to promoting children’s literacy, collapsed in 2021 just six months after receiving state support.
Mrs Wordsmith was given £650,000 of taxpayers’ money as a loan through the government’s Future Fund,
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/start-up-backed-by-rishi-sunak-s-wife-akshata-murty-given-government-grant-zpmk3k9w8
I would also comment I have never approved of NI contributions stopping at 60, and everyone in employment no matter their age should pay NI
You cannot pin this on Starmer.
https://youtu.be/A3uQ85noslk
Repeat after me, the government have a notional majority of 70 or so and can abolish and/or amend the triple lock tomorrow.
They choose not to.
Wait until you hear the other stuff the government does that Starmer opposes.
It may be true that it has gone back to an issue about Govt authority over businesses but the original root cause was Disney deciding to weigh in on a Bill that was passed in the Florida legislature, which had nothing to do with its core business and where it weighed in because a vocal group of its employees pushed the company into taking a stance. Just as you argue RDS is using his power to punish dissent, it could be argued Disney was using its outsized influence in Florida to interfere in the state's politics.
If I (the mere son of a long-standing local councillor) know the importance of the "what would your behaviour look like on the front page of the paper" test, how come so many Conservative MPs don't?
@Casino_Royale has a point - in many societies, the family is the primary carer for elderly relatives and there are, I believe, around a million people (mainly women) who are economically inactive because they are the primary carer for an older relative.
How do we redefine the relationship between the generations to the mutual benefit of both and society?
Average stays in care homes themselves are c 18 months
And as for cost, if the elderly person owns their own home they can stay on it or sell it and use the capital to improve their carer family house. Or if they are renting from the council they can put that income contribution towards the costs
Hindi is a language, closely related to Urdu. In fact, sensu stricto, Hindi and Urdu are two versions of the same language, Hindustani.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindustani_language
In my job, I impress on my colleagues and bankers that Caesar's wife has to be above suspicion.
If in doubt, refer it up the chain.
A while back I had to review a business deal, one of the team on the other side is a close friend, they let slip if the deal was approved they'd be up for a tidy bonus.
I informed the board that I was conflicted out of the deal, and that they should bring in an external party to review the deal.
I'm far more interested in the Coronation.
I have their Kalahari hat, which packs really well, there probably is a USA importer.
https://kendrickimports.com/collections/hats-rogue-hats
Mostly the extra income seems to be just to pay insane house prices rather than actually making anyone richer.
This isn't a 'women should be at home' thing - at least two of my friends are the other way round and that suits them fine - but it seems mad to pay other people to do all the things that used to be done within a family.
Sometimes there is no choice, but should it always be the first choice?
English, Urdu, Punjabi, French, German, and Latin are all languages I can speak.
Kinda know ancient Greek as well.
I suspect she has lots of small investments but doesn’t manage the companies or get involved. If they applied through the normal route (and Innovate UK is pretty easy) then why shouldn’t they just because she has some shares
As things stand, it's very difficult to support a family on one typical salary, if one of your costs is paying for somewhere to live, whether that's rent or a recently taken out mortgage. There isn't an intrinsic reason why this has to be so- we have just chosen to order things that way.
But for all we all know that the solution likes in the direction "Build more homes of a sort that people want to live in rather than inflating their price through artificial scarcity", nobody knows how to get re-elected after doing that. (I fear that the answer involves regional government and PR, so that individual representatives don't have to oppose builiding in their area for fear of their re-election.)
The prime minister was criticised in March for failing to declare his wife’s shares in a childcare agency called Koru Kids that could benefit from policy announced in the budget. Parliament’s standards watchdog is investigating to see if Sunak failed to be “open and frank” when declaring an interest. The prime minister later amended the register of ministerial interests to declare the shares.
His entry states that his wife “owns a venture capital investment company, Catamaran Ventures UK Ltd” but there is no mention of Study Hall.
We had a terrible time and it broke my wife's heart but after a couple of months he died in our home with his family beside him
For 2 years we could not talk about it as it was too painful
My son in laws mother died 12 months ago after 4 years in dementia care and his father is also in long term dementia care
It most cases dementia as has been said it not just forgetfulness but so much more as the mind and body deteriorates and the personality of the loved one is lost
Dementia care needs professional care, and not home care in most cases, and it is a huge issue that at present seems almost impossible to resolve
Well, the odd Gamma bull.
With experience comes wisdom.
To be fair, he did express views at the time that today would be considered racially prejudiced, but that does not stop him from being a hero for us and, I'd argue, ultimately humanity more broadly.
Great men are flawed. Intelligent people can see that. Ideologues can not.