I listened to the whole thing. I was driving on my scooter with earphones and I thought she was excellent. Almost brought a lump to my throat. So well constructed. If she isn't next Labour leader it'll be because she's no longer around
I hope you weren't doing this from France, because you have just admitted to a crime.
What's the crime? Listening to the radio while driving a scooter. They are a bit odd. I was stopped for not wearing gloves which is a new law. Odder still the gloves have to be black
Biggest problem at the moment is not people drinking too much, its the widespread and copious use of coke across society. Its totally unmissable if you go out anywhere.
That’s a value judgement, that it’s a “problem”. Is it any worse than booze health-wise? Tobacco?
The PB lefties seem to be taking the Total Shittiness of the Starmer Government quite badly
I guess it must be painful tho. 14 years of hope and waiting and all that patiently invested faith, and then… THIS
It's not that bad because I didn't have high hopes going in to it.
Also, so far, the largest decision of substance has been on cutting WFA, and given where I think the country is at the moment - budget deficit too large, but need to increase investment spending - that definitely has the air of a decision that was so right it should have been done years ago.
Obviously it's great that PB Righties have been able to take to the pleasures of opposition so quickly and with so much enthusiasm. Right-wingers railing at a Labour government just feels like the natural order of things. You Righties were desperate to be in opposition for years.
Yes some truth in that. Being in opposition is quite fun - you can really put the boot in. And Labour present quite the target
I’m still surprised by the tantrum-throwing despondency of some PB lefties, however
Their plight is explained by Kubler Ross on stages of grief. KR is about responses to SHOCK, not death. It's about how people in their 40s with no apparent health issues respond to "I wouldn't start reading any long novels" diagnoses. That's not the Tory party, which died in a hospice in July, to almost everyone's relief, after 3 years in and out of hospital. Not a shock. Starmer and Co's couldn't-make-it-up levels of cynical incompetence: huge shock, not just to the left but to anyone who was sort of hoping to be competently governed for five minutes. But the non-left have the compensation of at least getting a good laugh out of it.
Yes, you could be right
Also I am getting serious anger at HMG from my lefty friends. Last night (as I mentioned on here) one of my oldest Labour-voting friends was spitting venom about the stupidity of Starmer and Co, he didn't even wait for me to tease him about it: he launched right in. And a glimpse at the BTL comments on the Guardian, today, beneath the rolling blog about Reeves, offers quite the spectacle. The Labour lefties are furious about the austerity and WFA and all that, and the Blairities are furious about the grift and incompetence
" difficult decisions" Rachel Reeves has taken
-should I get the dress or the trouser suit ? - should I ask Lord Alli to buy the shoes too ?
New
Reeves enjoyed a week holiday in Padstow in July gifted to her by Richard Parker, Labour donor and now mayor of West Midlands and while logging her stay, she omitted her family members enjoyed the stay which benefit has to be declared
This is possibly going to end in resignations
I suspect not.
As you conceded in our exchange yesterday, the problem isn't the gifts themselves which probably aren't that different to those received by Prime Ministers and Cabinet Ministers in the past (perhaps not the scale of them) when the order of the day was either Gannex raincoats or shooting parties on a friend's estate.
The two problems are first the commitments made by Starmer and others as to how they would comport themselves in Government which were long on generalities ("cleaning up Government") and short on specifics and which has left them open to the slightest receipt of the smallest thing being a case of grift or venality.
Second is the juxtaposition of accepting freebies, going on free holidays and the rest at a time when many pensioners are going to lose the winter fuel allowance and the cliff-edge nature of the means testing has a number of pensioners losing the £250 on the basis of having income less than £5 over the threshold.
Both are unnecessary self-inflicted wounds which, you could argue, is part of the learning process about being in Government but it's given the Tories, who, let's face it, have had a pretty rotten last couple of years, something to smile about (or it will until we seek the parade of the unelectables next week).
What I find strange is no one in Labour saw or realised what the public reaction would be. Absent the wfa debacle, the grift itself is probably not too serious - the Ecclestone affair was far worse. The wfa announcement was just plain stupid - if you do something like this, the losers will be the first to scream and scream loud and long.
I suspect the wfa announcement will be tempered in the Budget by some tapering of the cliff edge and perhaps some changes on who is involved.
But that's why I think there might have to be a resignation or two
This is now such a mess Labour have to spill some blood to propitiate the angry Gods. A human sacrifice is needed
If it happens it will surely be a lesser minister. Perhaps that daft Education woman with her "but the bribe was too nice to resist!" Taylor Swift tickets
OTOH if they start sacking people where does it end?
As my lefty friend said yesterday, "it's just so fucking stupid"
Your lefty friend again! I can imagine you going round the bars in Camden and drinkers start leaving like there's a flood 'Oh fuck not him again! All he talks about is Starmer' He hobbles you into a corner and bores you to death. I'm out of here.....!'
You don't imagine he travels the world because he can write? No, the landlords of Camden clubbed together and sent him off places, just to protect their trade.
He's like one of those incontinent farting dogs. Can you imagine him sitting there with his marionette before they throw him out....
'You take it from me Archle, Starmer and Reeves are getting their comeuppance...."
You, @Anabobazina and @DougSeal really aren't taking Labour's First 100 Day Debacle very well, are you?
I don’t give a fuck about that . What I take personally is the fact that you have no respect for your fellow humans.
I take it personally as you have described me as “subhuman” and unworthy of life. It’s got nothing to do with the travails of a government I voted for without any particular hope for the future.
I’ve been through too much in my life to take people like you picking at others (including my) misfortune as a laugh for your personal amusement. You rejoice in others misfortune. That’s why you fuck me off so much.
When did I ever call you "subhuman"??!!
If I did it was a joke. And I sincerely apologise if it was a joke that went down badly
Fuck off. You know exactly when it was you disingenuous piece of shit. Trying to squirm out of it now is pathetic. If you’re going to make comments like that at least be a man and stand by them. You are a contemptible human being. And despite your sneering metropolitan media sense of superiority I am somehow unworthy to breath your oxygen I am too. You are the worst.
I really have no idea what you're on about
I've just checked vanilla and the only usage by me of "subhuman" is referring to ISIS, which is fair comment, and also the view of far right Israelis towards Palestinians, also fair comment
You will find @Gardenwalker calling Sarah Vine "subhuman", which does seem a bit strong
Really?
She married Michael Gove for Christ's sake. She if not actually subhuman, then certainly subhuman adjacent.
One of my oldest female friends is very close to Sarah Vine. Apparently, she is really nice. And great for gossip
Michael Portillo did the best dismantling job I've ever seen done by a politician on a 'journalist'. She is a real piece of work. ....
Portillo and Abbott were a double act and Vine was in the studio with them and Andrew Neil. They read out an article about Ed Miliband at home with his wife that she'd written and Portillo asked if she didn't feel ashamed writing something like that when her husband is himself a politician?
She at least blushed. But it was quite disgusting and personal and she knew it. Abbott couldn't bring herself to say anything but Portillo to his credit said it was sickening.
I think this might just be my favourite PB sub-thread of all time. An utterly vitriolic attack (no doubt entirely deserved) suddenly veers with no warning into a deconstruction of Sarah Vine's journalistic qualities.
I know tempers might still be raised but chapeau to you all nevertheless.
Biggest problem at the moment is not people drinking too much, its the widespread and copious use of coke across society. Its totally unmissable if you go out anywhere.
That’s a value judgement, that it’s a “problem”. Is it any worse than booze health-wise? Tobacco?
Yes. If you take enough you die in your 30s,or 40s of heart problems. It transforms 98% of users into complete arseholes. Getting it to the end user entails unimaginable cruelty and suffering. I have seen, for instance, the video popularly called "funkytown" of a bloke in Colombia having his hands taken off with a chainsaw and my value judgment is that that sort of thing ought not to happen. And I doubt it was great for him "health-wise".
I listened to the whole thing. I was driving on my scooter with earphones and I thought she was excellent. Almost brought a lump to my throat. So well constructed. If she isn't next Labour leader it'll be because she's no longer around
I hope you weren't doing this from France, because you have just admitted to a crime.
What's the crime? Listening to the radio while driving a scooter. They are a bit odd. I was stopped for not wearing gloves which is a new law. Odder still the gloves have to be black
Its illegal to listen to headphones while in operation of a car, scooter, motorbike, etc in France. You aren't even allowed to use hand-free headsets for calls.
Oh god, the puritan Keith is at it again! Even @Anabobazina has got to be getting sick of this government?
Politics UK @PolitlcsUK · 30m 🚨 NEW: The government is considering forcing pubs to close their doors early to target harmful drinking
This...
This...
This has to be a joke. Surely. Are they TRYING to be the most hated government in history, and in record time?
Do you think Starmers ever been drunk in his life?
I'd much rather have RAYNER as PM, as at least she knows how to have a good time and enjoy herself
"The government is considering forcing pubs to close their doors early to target harmful drinking"
Oh FFS. The harmful drinking is being done at home on the sofa at wine o'clock not at 11:30pm on the Dog and Duck.
However, a Department for Health spokesman denied any changes to licensing hours were being considered.
As usual, PB is flying off at the deep end I suspect. It seems to be a sanction for problem late-night venues, if anything. Let’s see.
How would they know? They are not at the party conference where policy is being outlined at fringe meetings.
I’ve been to lots of party conferences (of all parties) and lots of stuff gets floated that never gets anywhere near policy. Why don’t you wait and see?
I listened to the whole thing. I was driving on my scooter with earphones and I thought she was excellent. Almost brought a lump to my throat. So well constructed. If she isn't next Labour leader it'll be because she's no longer around
I hope you weren't doing this from France, because you have just admitted to a crime.
What's the crime? Listening to the radio while driving a scooter. They are a bit odd. I was stopped for not wearing gloves which is a new law. Odder still the gloves have to be black
I am watching Michel Roux's French country cooking and he just told everyone that Francois Mittterand used to eat sea squirts with scrambled eggs for breakfast, "for his Mojo"
Oh god, the puritan Keith is at it again! Even @Anabobazina has got to be getting sick of this government?
Politics UK @PolitlcsUK · 30m 🚨 NEW: The government is considering forcing pubs to close their doors early to target harmful drinking
This...
This...
This has to be a joke. Surely. Are they TRYING to be the most hated government in history, and in record time?
You know when we all used to have a little bit of a chuckle and a joke about Starmer being a humourless sod?
Maybe he actually is a humourless sod, who really does get his kicks out of being solemn and telling people what they can or can’t do and banning stuff and telling people it’s best for them? And that’s who we’ve elected, and we’re in for five years of misery and being told off and being given charmless Arsenal anecdotes?
It could be a long five years….
Please no sneer, smear or leer for two-tier free gear Keir.
Biggest problem at the moment is not people drinking too much, its the widespread and copious use of coke across society. Its totally unmissable if you go out anywhere.
That’s a value judgement, that it’s a “problem”. Is it any worse than booze health-wise? Tobacco?
Yes.
Coke makes people utter twats.
Well so the tired stereotype goes. More likely it makes some people unpleasant, some people energetic and some people happy. Just like booze, it affects different people differently I should think.
Biggest problem at the moment is not people drinking too much, its the widespread and copious use of coke across society. Its totally unmissable if you go out anywhere.
That’s a value judgement, that it’s a “problem”. Is it any worse than booze health-wise? Tobacco?
Biggest problem at the moment is not people drinking too much, its the widespread and copious use of coke across society. Its totally unmissable if you go out anywhere.
That’s a value judgement, that it’s a “problem”. Is it any worse than booze health-wise? Tobacco?
Yes. If you take enough you die in your 30s,or 40s of heart problems. It transforms 98% of users into complete arseholes. Getting it to the end user entails unimaginable cruelty and suffering. I have seen, for instance, the video popularly called "funkytown" of a bloke in Colombia having his hands taken off with a chainsaw and my value judgment is that that sort of thing ought not to happen. And I doubt it was great for him "health-wise".
Well the latter two-thirds of your post are a consequence of its prohibition. Booze is a killer - a big killer - if, just as you rightly point out with cocaine, “you take enough”.
Biggest problem at the moment is not people drinking too much, its the widespread and copious use of coke across society. Its totally unmissable if you go out anywhere.
That’s a value judgement, that it’s a “problem”. Is it any worse than booze health-wise? Tobacco?
Yes.
Coke makes people utter twats.
Well so the tired stereotype goes. More likely it makes some people unpleasant, some people energetic and some people happy. Just like booze, it affects different people differently I should think.
Biggest problem at the moment is not people drinking too much, its the widespread and copious use of coke across society. Its totally unmissable if you go out anywhere.
That’s a value judgement, that it’s a “problem”. Is it any worse than booze health-wise? Tobacco?
Yes. If you take enough you die in your 30s,or 40s of heart problems. It transforms 98% of users into complete arseholes. Getting it to the end user entails unimaginable cruelty and suffering. I have seen, for instance, the video popularly called "funkytown" of a bloke in Colombia having his hands taken off with a chainsaw and my value judgment is that that sort of thing ought not to happen. And I doubt it was great for him "health-wise".
Well the latter two-thirds of your post are a consequence of its prohibition. Booze is a killer - a big killer - if, just as you rightly point out with cocaine, “you take enough”.
I am generally quite pessimistic about drug control, but it is worth noting that, for the first time in a long time, Fentanyl overdoses are DOWN
I listened to the whole thing. I was driving on my scooter with earphones and I thought she was excellent. Almost brought a lump to my throat. So well constructed. If she isn't next Labour leader it'll be because she's no longer around
I hope you weren't doing this from France, because you have just admitted to a crime.
What's the crime? Listening to the radio while driving a scooter. They are a bit odd. I was stopped for not wearing gloves which is a new law. Odder still the gloves have to be black
I am watching Michel Roux's French country cooking and he just told everyone that Francois Mittterand used to eat sea squirts with scrambled eggs for breakfast, "for his Mojo"
Biggest problem at the moment is not people drinking too much, its the widespread and copious use of coke across society. Its totally unmissable if you go out anywhere.
That’s a value judgement, that it’s a “problem”. Is it any worse than booze health-wise? Tobacco?
Yes. If you take enough you die in your 30s,or 40s of heart problems. It transforms 98% of users into complete arseholes. Getting it to the end user entails unimaginable cruelty and suffering. I have seen, for instance, the video popularly called "funkytown" of a bloke in Colombia having his hands taken off with a chainsaw and my value judgment is that that sort of thing ought not to happen. And I doubt it was great for him "health-wise".
Well the latter two-thirds of your post are a consequence of its prohibition. Booze is a killer - a big killer - if, just as you rightly point out with cocaine, “you take enough”.
On the former point you are right which is why I would end prohibition, but it is a completely false equivalence to pretend that booze is as bad as coke, its not.
Coke turns its users into complete and utter twats in a way that booze does not.
The PB lefties seem to be taking the Total Shittiness of the Starmer Government quite badly
I guess it must be painful tho. 14 years of hope and waiting and all that patiently invested faith, and then… THIS
It's not that bad because I didn't have high hopes going in to it.
Also, so far, the largest decision of substance has been on cutting WFA, and given where I think the country is at the moment - budget deficit too large, but need to increase investment spending - that definitely has the air of a decision that was so right it should have been done years ago.
Obviously it's great that PB Righties have been able to take to the pleasures of opposition so quickly and with so much enthusiasm. Right-wingers railing at a Labour government just feels like the natural order of things. You Righties were desperate to be in opposition for years.
Yes some truth in that. Being in opposition is quite fun - you can really put the boot in. And Labour present quite the target
I’m still surprised by the tantrum-throwing despondency of some PB lefties, however
Their plight is explained by Kubler Ross on stages of grief. KR is about responses to SHOCK, not death. It's about how people in their 40s with no apparent health issues respond to "I wouldn't start reading any long novels" diagnoses. That's not the Tory party, which died in a hospice in July, to almost everyone's relief, after 3 years in and out of hospital. Not a shock. Starmer and Co's couldn't-make-it-up levels of cynical incompetence: huge shock, not just to the left but to anyone who was sort of hoping to be competently governed for five minutes. But the non-left have the compensation of at least getting a good laugh out of it.
Yes, you could be right
Also I am getting serious anger at HMG from my lefty friends. Last night (as I mentioned on here) one of my oldest Labour-voting friends was spitting venom about the stupidity of Starmer and Co, he didn't even wait for me to tease him about it: he launched right in. And a glimpse at the BTL comments on the Guardian, today, beneath the rolling blog about Reeves, offers quite the spectacle. The Labour lefties are furious about the austerity and WFA and all that, and the Blairities are furious about the grift and incompetence
" difficult decisions" Rachel Reeves has taken
-should I get the dress or the trouser suit ? - should I ask Lord Alli to buy the shoes too ?
New
Reeves enjoyed a week holiday in Padstow in July gifted to her by Richard Parker, Labour donor and now mayor of West Midlands and while logging her stay, she omitted her family members enjoyed the stay which benefit has to be declared
This is possibly going to end in resignations
I suspect not.
As you conceded in our exchange yesterday, the problem isn't the gifts themselves which probably aren't that different to those received by Prime Ministers and Cabinet Ministers in the past (perhaps not the scale of them) when the order of the day was either Gannex raincoats or shooting parties on a friend's estate.
The two problems are first the commitments made by Starmer and others as to how they would comport themselves in Government which were long on generalities ("cleaning up Government") and short on specifics and which has left them open to the slightest receipt of the smallest thing being a case of grift or venality.
Second is the juxtaposition of accepting freebies, going on free holidays and the rest at a time when many pensioners are going to lose the winter fuel allowance and the cliff-edge nature of the means testing has a number of pensioners losing the £250 on the basis of having income less than £5 over the threshold.
Both are unnecessary self-inflicted wounds which, you could argue, is part of the learning process about being in Government but it's given the Tories, who, let's face it, have had a pretty rotten last couple of years, something to smile about (or it will until we seek the parade of the unelectables next week).
What I find strange is no one in Labour saw or realised what the public reaction would be. Absent the wfa debacle, the grift itself is probably not too serious - the Ecclestone affair was far worse. The wfa announcement was just plain stupid - if you do something like this, the losers will be the first to scream and scream loud and long.
I suspect the wfa announcement will be tempered in the Budget by some tapering of the cliff edge and perhaps some changes on who is involved.
Love to know who you would temper the wfa announcement - there are very limited datasets available hence the switch to pension credit as it's the only other dataset that is usable...
Council House bands. A-C
Crude and doesn't help that much as 60% are in bands A-C.
Difficult to argue that band D and above need it, even if they are asset rich and cash poor.
Now tell me which households in bands A-C have people who qualify for it?
And how you are going to administer the payments because you've now got councils involved...
Every pensioner who recieves a state pension has a national insurance number, a date of birth and an address. Each of those addresses has a council tax band, which are maintained by the Valuation Office not local councils. Its a relatively simple data merge.
As I said, crude. Imperfect certainly but it would solve 98% of the problem.
No doubt there will be load of whataboutery but never let the perfect by the enemy of the good.
Btw single person discount to stay, if not already noted. Huzzah from saddo loners like me.
And an excellent guardian comment: labour winning power is the dog which chases cars catching up with a car.
Get it done, raising the money with a tax on the Chiltern Tories who made the most unneeded bit cost so much by insisting we made a largely flat railway line go through a tunnel.
Joking of course, but it is incredibly stupid not building the bits that genuinely make a difference to capacity on overstretched northern lines and have the potential to provide vital links, because David Cameron and his MPs wasted billions ensuring people they met at the farmers market would never have to listen to trains like common plebs.
Or perhaps it was just never a particularly good project, and has been sold on the basis of being 'infrastructure' because we 'need infrastructure', when actually it has all the appropriateness in serving our national infrastructure needs as handing a deep sea diver a toaster and telling him use it to breathe underwater.
There's an argument they could have chosen a better route, sure and have run it better. But a new North to South rail lines that looks pretty much like HS2 - which might as well be High Speed as that's not the main reason for the cost, is absolutely necessary (as are the others that were supposed to link to it) unless you want the railways to become close to unusable before too long.
If we scrap it we'll end up having to build it at some point - just 20-30 years later than we should have and long after it was necessary.
It was always missold as speed rather than capacity - if you take the fast few stop intercity services off the existing lines you can run more frequent local trains and increase capacity. Otherwise you're looking at managing demand and ever more broken railways.
It's what that idiot Sunak and the Tories completely failed to understand when they 'scrapped it'. By doing so they were condemning the railways to exactly the disastrous problems they claimed the saved money would fix.
It is those who oppose it and have tried to stymie it who have been both incredibly stupid and probably set back rail transport in this country back decades.
Meh. I appreciate your passion, but it's an awful lot of fuss over a single railway line that will have no impact on the vast majority of peoples' lives, whether it's about speed or capacity.
I also disbelieve profoundly in the power of new infrascture to revive economies. It won't. Revive the economies, then build the infrastructure - it will be clear what is needed, and potentially the private sector will build it.
Go on then - how do we revive the economy of the North without investment?
But again, there you change the goalposts - you realise it sounds silly to say 'without HS2' so you generalise it to 'investment', as if HS2 *is* the personification of all infrastructure spending - except it isn't. It is one, very expensive and very geographically-limited project, that even in the most wildly optimistic projections, will not 'revive the economy of the North'.
Since you asked however, there are many things without 'investment' that we can do to revive the economy of the North, which is (or was) primarily an industrial economy.
1. Increase the supply of low cost energy to businesses until it is as cheap here as it is in the USA - it is wholly uneconomical to run a business that makes things in the UK. 2. Support businesses with the tax conditions necessary for them to thrive - low Corporation Tax being one that springs readily to mind, as well as specific tax incentives to get high quality manufacturing businesses off the ground. 3. Take justified steps to protect British manufacturing companies from their Chinese and other global rivals' attempts to compete unfairly with them, including reciprocal tariffs, penalties for dishonestly acquired IP, etc.
1) So how would you get that low cost energy? 2) then how do you kick off high quality manufacturing because that also requires demand and where is that going to come from. Now granted you could import companies by lowering corporation tax but they will leave as soon as you start to increase the tax rates so it's only a temporary solution. 3) so that will keep the UK domestic market but how would you stop EU countries from purchasing the Chinese knock offs at a cheaper price.
1. We have had many conversations about this - they are well rehearsed. Suffice it to say are a nation abundant in energy sources - gas, oil, tidal, energy-from-waste, and that's before you get to small reactors. We do almost everything possible to create dysfunction and perverse incentives that ensure that energy is exorbitant here. Indeed many see the high price of energy as a moral mission.
2. The demand has not gone anywhere; the things just aren't being made here, for the reasons I outlined (unless I misunderstood in what sense you meant demand).
3. We're not owed lunch - we must create the necessary support for our businesses to thrive, and then have them compete on world markets and succeed or fail. There are some things we're actually already pretty good at that have high growth potential (drugs, cosmetics), others we've historically been good at that have high potential to do well (high quality garments, yarns and fabrics, leathers).
Gas and oil isn’t cheap when the other option is selling it on the global market at the current market price. As for tidal and energy from waste how does that work unless the Government invests in it (which to me would be infrastructure investment).
As for your other points replace we are good at with we were good at…
If that were an inviolable truth, prices of gas and oil would be the same in the US as they are here. They aren't, and I assume that is because supply is enough to export and to sell domestically at an attractive rate. Some could give us a more detailed explanation I'm sure.
I find your latter 'point' rather asinine. I don't get the feeling you particularly like the economy or want it to succeed.
@Luckyguy1983 As long as we import *some* gas, domestic producers will be able to charge a penny below the import price.
I think the USA is a net exporter, so the competition is all within the US, and producers need to factor the costs of exporting (as compressing and exporting etc)
S
I don't think it is implausible that this country could become a net exporter of oil and gas. The idea of fracking working here is poo-poohed with great gusto, but note the fracking ban. Since when did you need to ban something that has no chance of getting off the ground?
You amuse me, you're all in favour of land being used for fracking to generate energy . . . but if land gets turned to solar farms or wind farms to generate energy then you scream that its disgraceful as that land should be used to produce food and nothing else.
Why is it OK for people to use their own land for fracking to generate energy, but not OK to use their own land for solar or wind if that's what they want to do with it?
I have not proposed a ban on solar farms, and I certainly haven't proposed to ban wind turbines from farms because as far as I know you can still farm around wind turbines.
I do believe that it's perverse to incentivise the building of solar on good agricultural land, and what farmers should be incentivised to do is produce food. It seems unlikely that fracking does prevent agricultural land use in the same way that solar farms do - I imagine their impact is more like that of wind turbines. But if they do preclude agriculture in and around them, of course that should should be judged on a case by case basis, clearly not by a blanket ban. As PB's favourite libertarian, are you in favour of continuing the ban?
Biggest problem at the moment is not people drinking too much, its the widespread and copious use of coke across society. Its totally unmissable if you go out anywhere.
That’s a value judgement, that it’s a “problem”. Is it any worse than booze health-wise? Tobacco?
Yes. If you take enough you die in your 30s,or 40s of heart problems. It transforms 98% of users into complete arseholes. Getting it to the end user entails unimaginable cruelty and suffering. I have seen, for instance, the video popularly called "funkytown" of a bloke in Colombia having his hands taken off with a chainsaw and my value judgment is that that sort of thing ought not to happen. And I doubt it was great for him "health-wise".
Well the latter two-thirds of your post are a consequence of its prohibition. Booze is a killer - a big killer - if, just as you rightly point out with cocaine, “you take enough”.
On the former point you are right which is why I would end prohibition, but it is a completely false equivalence to pretend that booze is as bad as coke, its not.
Coke turns its users into complete and utter twats in a way that booze does not.
I have met many people who were turned into twats by booze. And its role in domestic violence is a matter of record.
The PB lefties seem to be taking the Total Shittiness of the Starmer Government quite badly
I guess it must be painful tho. 14 years of hope and waiting and all that patiently invested faith, and then… THIS
It's not that bad because I didn't have high hopes going in to it.
Also, so far, the largest decision of substance has been on cutting WFA, and given where I think the country is at the moment - budget deficit too large, but need to increase investment spending - that definitely has the air of a decision that was so right it should have been done years ago.
Obviously it's great that PB Righties have been able to take to the pleasures of opposition so quickly and with so much enthusiasm. Right-wingers railing at a Labour government just feels like the natural order of things. You Righties were desperate to be in opposition for years.
Yes some truth in that. Being in opposition is quite fun - you can really put the boot in. And Labour present quite the target
I’m still surprised by the tantrum-throwing despondency of some PB lefties, however
Their plight is explained by Kubler Ross on stages of grief. KR is about responses to SHOCK, not death. It's about how people in their 40s with no apparent health issues respond to "I wouldn't start reading any long novels" diagnoses. That's not the Tory party, which died in a hospice in July, to almost everyone's relief, after 3 years in and out of hospital. Not a shock. Starmer and Co's couldn't-make-it-up levels of cynical incompetence: huge shock, not just to the left but to anyone who was sort of hoping to be competently governed for five minutes. But the non-left have the compensation of at least getting a good laugh out of it.
Yes, you could be right
Also I am getting serious anger at HMG from my lefty friends. Last night (as I mentioned on here) one of my oldest Labour-voting friends was spitting venom about the stupidity of Starmer and Co, he didn't even wait for me to tease him about it: he launched right in. And a glimpse at the BTL comments on the Guardian, today, beneath the rolling blog about Reeves, offers quite the spectacle. The Labour lefties are furious about the austerity and WFA and all that, and the Blairities are furious about the grift and incompetence
" difficult decisions" Rachel Reeves has taken
-should I get the dress or the trouser suit ? - should I ask Lord Alli to buy the shoes too ?
New
Reeves enjoyed a week holiday in Padstow in July gifted to her by Richard Parker, Labour donor and now mayor of West Midlands and while logging her stay, she omitted her family members enjoyed the stay which benefit has to be declared
This is possibly going to end in resignations
I suspect not.
As you conceded in our exchange yesterday, the problem isn't the gifts themselves which probably aren't that different to those received by Prime Ministers and Cabinet Ministers in the past (perhaps not the scale of them) when the order of the day was either Gannex raincoats or shooting parties on a friend's estate.
The two problems are first the commitments made by Starmer and others as to how they would comport themselves in Government which were long on generalities ("cleaning up Government") and short on specifics and which has left them open to the slightest receipt of the smallest thing being a case of grift or venality.
Second is the juxtaposition of accepting freebies, going on free holidays and the rest at a time when many pensioners are going to lose the winter fuel allowance and the cliff-edge nature of the means testing has a number of pensioners losing the £250 on the basis of having income less than £5 over the threshold.
Both are unnecessary self-inflicted wounds which, you could argue, is part of the learning process about being in Government but it's given the Tories, who, let's face it, have had a pretty rotten last couple of years, something to smile about (or it will until we seek the parade of the unelectables next week).
What I find strange is no one in Labour saw or realised what the public reaction would be. Absent the wfa debacle, the grift itself is probably not too serious - the Ecclestone affair was far worse. The wfa announcement was just plain stupid - if you do something like this, the losers will be the first to scream and scream loud and long.
I suspect the wfa announcement will be tempered in the Budget by some tapering of the cliff edge and perhaps some changes on who is involved.
Love to know who you would temper the wfa announcement - there are very limited datasets available hence the switch to pension credit as it's the only other dataset that is usable...
Council House bands. A-C
Crude and doesn't help that much as 60% are in bands A-C.
Difficult to argue that band D and above need it, even if they are asset rich and cash poor.
Now tell me which households in bands A-C have people who qualify for it?
And how you are going to administer the payments because you've now got councils involved...
Every pensioner who recieves a state pension has a national insurance number, a date of birth and an address. Each of those addresses has a council tax band, which are maintained by the Valuation Office not local councils. Its a relatively simple data merge.
As I said, crude. Imperfect certainly but it would solve 98% of the problem.
No doubt there will be load of whataboutery but never let the perfect by the enemy of the good.
Btw single person discount to stay, if not already noted. Huzzah from saddo loners like me.
And an excellent guardian comment: labour winning power is the dog which chases cars catching up with a car.
Get it done, raising the money with a tax on the Chiltern Tories who made the most unneeded bit cost so much by insisting we made a largely flat railway line go through a tunnel.
Joking of course, but it is incredibly stupid not building the bits that genuinely make a difference to capacity on overstretched northern lines and have the potential to provide vital links, because David Cameron and his MPs wasted billions ensuring people they met at the farmers market would never have to listen to trains like common plebs.
Or perhaps it was just never a particularly good project, and has been sold on the basis of being 'infrastructure' because we 'need infrastructure', when actually it has all the appropriateness in serving our national infrastructure needs as handing a deep sea diver a toaster and telling him use it to breathe underwater.
There's an argument they could have chosen a better route, sure and have run it better. But a new North to South rail lines that looks pretty much like HS2 - which might as well be High Speed as that's not the main reason for the cost, is absolutely necessary (as are the others that were supposed to link to it) unless you want the railways to become close to unusable before too long.
If we scrap it we'll end up having to build it at some point - just 20-30 years later than we should have and long after it was necessary.
It was always missold as speed rather than capacity - if you take the fast few stop intercity services off the existing lines you can run more frequent local trains and increase capacity. Otherwise you're looking at managing demand and ever more broken railways.
It's what that idiot Sunak and the Tories completely failed to understand when they 'scrapped it'. By doing so they were condemning the railways to exactly the disastrous problems they claimed the saved money would fix.
It is those who oppose it and have tried to stymie it who have been both incredibly stupid and probably set back rail transport in this country back decades.
Meh. I appreciate your passion, but it's an awful lot of fuss over a single railway line that will have no impact on the vast majority of peoples' lives, whether it's about speed or capacity.
I also disbelieve profoundly in the power of new infrascture to revive economies. It won't. Revive the economies, then build the infrastructure - it will be clear what is needed, and potentially the private sector will build it.
Go on then - how do we revive the economy of the North without investment?
But again, there you change the goalposts - you realise it sounds silly to say 'without HS2' so you generalise it to 'investment', as if HS2 *is* the personification of all infrastructure spending - except it isn't. It is one, very expensive and very geographically-limited project, that even in the most wildly optimistic projections, will not 'revive the economy of the North'.
Since you asked however, there are many things without 'investment' that we can do to revive the economy of the North, which is (or was) primarily an industrial economy.
1. Increase the supply of low cost energy to businesses until it is as cheap here as it is in the USA - it is wholly uneconomical to run a business that makes things in the UK. 2. Support businesses with the tax conditions necessary for them to thrive - low Corporation Tax being one that springs readily to mind, as well as specific tax incentives to get high quality manufacturing businesses off the ground. 3. Take justified steps to protect British manufacturing companies from their Chinese and other global rivals' attempts to compete unfairly with them, including reciprocal tariffs, penalties for dishonestly acquired IP, etc.
1) So how would you get that low cost energy? 2) then how do you kick off high quality manufacturing because that also requires demand and where is that going to come from. Now granted you could import companies by lowering corporation tax but they will leave as soon as you start to increase the tax rates so it's only a temporary solution. 3) so that will keep the UK domestic market but how would you stop EU countries from purchasing the Chinese knock offs at a cheaper price.
1. We have had many conversations about this - they are well rehearsed. Suffice it to say are a nation abundant in energy sources - gas, oil, tidal, energy-from-waste, and that's before you get to small reactors. We do almost everything possible to create dysfunction and perverse incentives that ensure that energy is exorbitant here. Indeed many see the high price of energy as a moral mission.
2. The demand has not gone anywhere; the things just aren't being made here, for the reasons I outlined (unless I misunderstood in what sense you meant demand).
3. We're not owed lunch - we must create the necessary support for our businesses to thrive, and then have them compete on world markets and succeed or fail. There are some things we're actually already pretty good at that have high growth potential (drugs, cosmetics), others we've historically been good at that have high potential to do well (high quality garments, yarns and fabrics, leathers).
Gas and oil isn’t cheap when the other option is selling it on the global market at the current market price. As for tidal and energy from waste how does that work unless the Government invests in it (which to me would be infrastructure investment).
As for your other points replace we are good at with we were good at…
If that were an inviolable truth, prices of gas and oil would be the same in the US as they are here. They aren't, and I assume that is because supply is enough to export and to sell domestically at an attractive rate. Some could give us a more detailed explanation I'm sure.
I find your latter 'point' rather asinine. I don't get the feeling you particularly like the economy or want it to succeed.
@Luckyguy1983 As long as we import *some* gas, domestic producers will be able to charge a penny below the import price.
I think the USA is a net exporter, so the competition is all within the US, and producers need to factor the costs of exporting (as compressing and exporting etc)
S
I don't think it is implausible that this country could become a net exporter of oil and gas. The idea of fracking working here is poo-poohed with great gusto, but note the fracking ban. Since when did you need to ban something that has no chance of getting off the ground?
You amuse me, you're all in favour of land being used for fracking to generate energy . . . but if land gets turned to solar farms or wind farms to generate energy then you scream that its disgraceful as that land should be used to produce food and nothing else.
Why is it OK for people to use their own land for fracking to generate energy, but not OK to use their own land for solar or wind if that's what they want to do with it?
I have not proposed a ban on solar farms, and I certainly haven't proposed to ban wind turbines from farms because as far as I know you can still farm around wind turbines.
I do believe that it's perverse to incentivise the building of solar on good agricultural land, and what farmers should be incentivised to do is produce food. It seems unlikely that fracking does prevent agricultural land use in the same way that solar farms do - I imagine their impact is more like that of wind turbines. But if they do preclude agriculture in and around them, of course that should should be judged on a case by case basis, clearly not by a blanket ban. As PB's favourite libertarian, are you in favour of continuing the ban?
No I abhor the ban, just as I abhor the ban on onshore wind, or prohibitions on change of use of land.
Let people do what they want with their own land.
If its not productive, they won't do it, if it is, they will.
So hypothetically if a farmer decides they want to stop farming and exclusively use their land for wind or solar, not incentivised by the state but purely by free market economics, are you OK with that?
I listened to the whole thing. I was driving on my scooter with earphones and I thought she was excellent. Almost brought a lump to my throat. So well constructed. If she isn't next Labour leader it'll be because she's no longer around
I hope you weren't doing this from France, because you have just admitted to a crime.
What's the crime? Listening to the radio while driving a scooter. They are a bit odd. I was stopped for not wearing gloves which is a new law. Odder still the gloves have to be black
Ha ha, peak France 😄
The Style Police
Indeed. You can have any colour of glove you like as long as it’s black 😃
I am watching Michel Roux's French country cooking and he just told everyone that Francois Mittterand used to eat sea squirts with scrambled eggs for breakfast, "for his Mojo"
The PB lefties seem to be taking the Total Shittiness of the Starmer Government quite badly
I guess it must be painful tho. 14 years of hope and waiting and all that patiently invested faith, and then… THIS
It's not that bad because I didn't have high hopes going in to it.
Also, so far, the largest decision of substance has been on cutting WFA, and given where I think the country is at the moment - budget deficit too large, but need to increase investment spending - that definitely has the air of a decision that was so right it should have been done years ago.
Obviously it's great that PB Righties have been able to take to the pleasures of opposition so quickly and with so much enthusiasm. Right-wingers railing at a Labour government just feels like the natural order of things. You Righties were desperate to be in opposition for years.
Yes some truth in that. Being in opposition is quite fun - you can really put the boot in. And Labour present quite the target
I’m still surprised by the tantrum-throwing despondency of some PB lefties, however
Their plight is explained by Kubler Ross on stages of grief. KR is about responses to SHOCK, not death. It's about how people in their 40s with no apparent health issues respond to "I wouldn't start reading any long novels" diagnoses. That's not the Tory party, which died in a hospice in July, to almost everyone's relief, after 3 years in and out of hospital. Not a shock. Starmer and Co's couldn't-make-it-up levels of cynical incompetence: huge shock, not just to the left but to anyone who was sort of hoping to be competently governed for five minutes. But the non-left have the compensation of at least getting a good laugh out of it.
Yes, you could be right
Also I am getting serious anger at HMG from my lefty friends. Last night (as I mentioned on here) one of my oldest Labour-voting friends was spitting venom about the stupidity of Starmer and Co, he didn't even wait for me to tease him about it: he launched right in. And a glimpse at the BTL comments on the Guardian, today, beneath the rolling blog about Reeves, offers quite the spectacle. The Labour lefties are furious about the austerity and WFA and all that, and the Blairities are furious about the grift and incompetence
" difficult decisions" Rachel Reeves has taken
-should I get the dress or the trouser suit ? - should I ask Lord Alli to buy the shoes too ?
New
Reeves enjoyed a week holiday in Padstow in July gifted to her by Richard Parker, Labour donor and now mayor of West Midlands and while logging her stay, she omitted her family members enjoyed the stay which benefit has to be declared
This is possibly going to end in resignations
I suspect not.
As you conceded in our exchange yesterday, the problem isn't the gifts themselves which probably aren't that different to those received by Prime Ministers and Cabinet Ministers in the past (perhaps not the scale of them) when the order of the day was either Gannex raincoats or shooting parties on a friend's estate.
The two problems are first the commitments made by Starmer and others as to how they would comport themselves in Government which were long on generalities ("cleaning up Government") and short on specifics and which has left them open to the slightest receipt of the smallest thing being a case of grift or venality.
Second is the juxtaposition of accepting freebies, going on free holidays and the rest at a time when many pensioners are going to lose the winter fuel allowance and the cliff-edge nature of the means testing has a number of pensioners losing the £250 on the basis of having income less than £5 over the threshold.
Both are unnecessary self-inflicted wounds which, you could argue, is part of the learning process about being in Government but it's given the Tories, who, let's face it, have had a pretty rotten last couple of years, something to smile about (or it will until we seek the parade of the unelectables next week).
What I find strange is no one in Labour saw or realised what the public reaction would be. Absent the wfa debacle, the grift itself is probably not too serious - the Ecclestone affair was far worse. The wfa announcement was just plain stupid - if you do something like this, the losers will be the first to scream and scream loud and long.
I suspect the wfa announcement will be tempered in the Budget by some tapering of the cliff edge and perhaps some changes on who is involved.
Love to know who you would temper the wfa announcement - there are very limited datasets available hence the switch to pension credit as it's the only other dataset that is usable...
Council House bands. A-C
Crude and doesn't help that much as 60% are in bands A-C.
Difficult to argue that band D and above need it, even if they are asset rich and cash poor.
Now tell me which households in bands A-C have people who qualify for it?
And how you are going to administer the payments because you've now got councils involved...
Every pensioner who recieves a state pension has a national insurance number, a date of birth and an address. Each of those addresses has a council tax band, which are maintained by the Valuation Office not local councils. Its a relatively simple data merge.
As I said, crude. Imperfect certainly but it would solve 98% of the problem.
No doubt there will be load of whataboutery but never let the perfect by the enemy of the good.
Btw single person discount to stay, if not already noted. Huzzah from saddo loners like me.
And an excellent guardian comment: labour winning power is the dog which chases cars catching up with a car.
Get it done, raising the money with a tax on the Chiltern Tories who made the most unneeded bit cost so much by insisting we made a largely flat railway line go through a tunnel.
Joking of course, but it is incredibly stupid not building the bits that genuinely make a difference to capacity on overstretched northern lines and have the potential to provide vital links, because David Cameron and his MPs wasted billions ensuring people they met at the farmers market would never have to listen to trains like common plebs.
Or perhaps it was just never a particularly good project, and has been sold on the basis of being 'infrastructure' because we 'need infrastructure', when actually it has all the appropriateness in serving our national infrastructure needs as handing a deep sea diver a toaster and telling him use it to breathe underwater.
There's an argument they could have chosen a better route, sure and have run it better. But a new North to South rail lines that looks pretty much like HS2 - which might as well be High Speed as that's not the main reason for the cost, is absolutely necessary (as are the others that were supposed to link to it) unless you want the railways to become close to unusable before too long.
If we scrap it we'll end up having to build it at some point - just 20-30 years later than we should have and long after it was necessary.
It was always missold as speed rather than capacity - if you take the fast few stop intercity services off the existing lines you can run more frequent local trains and increase capacity. Otherwise you're looking at managing demand and ever more broken railways.
It's what that idiot Sunak and the Tories completely failed to understand when they 'scrapped it'. By doing so they were condemning the railways to exactly the disastrous problems they claimed the saved money would fix.
It is those who oppose it and have tried to stymie it who have been both incredibly stupid and probably set back rail transport in this country back decades.
Meh. I appreciate your passion, but it's an awful lot of fuss over a single railway line that will have no impact on the vast majority of peoples' lives, whether it's about speed or capacity.
I also disbelieve profoundly in the power of new infrascture to revive economies. It won't. Revive the economies, then build the infrastructure - it will be clear what is needed, and potentially the private sector will build it.
Go on then - how do we revive the economy of the North without investment?
But again, there you change the goalposts - you realise it sounds silly to say 'without HS2' so you generalise it to 'investment', as if HS2 *is* the personification of all infrastructure spending - except it isn't. It is one, very expensive and very geographically-limited project, that even in the most wildly optimistic projections, will not 'revive the economy of the North'.
Since you asked however, there are many things without 'investment' that we can do to revive the economy of the North, which is (or was) primarily an industrial economy.
1. Increase the supply of low cost energy to businesses until it is as cheap here as it is in the USA - it is wholly uneconomical to run a business that makes things in the UK. 2. Support businesses with the tax conditions necessary for them to thrive - low Corporation Tax being one that springs readily to mind, as well as specific tax incentives to get high quality manufacturing businesses off the ground. 3. Take justified steps to protect British manufacturing companies from their Chinese and other global rivals' attempts to compete unfairly with them, including reciprocal tariffs, penalties for dishonestly acquired IP, etc.
1) So how would you get that low cost energy? 2) then how do you kick off high quality manufacturing because that also requires demand and where is that going to come from. Now granted you could import companies by lowering corporation tax but they will leave as soon as you start to increase the tax rates so it's only a temporary solution. 3) so that will keep the UK domestic market but how would you stop EU countries from purchasing the Chinese knock offs at a cheaper price.
1. We have had many conversations about this - they are well rehearsed. Suffice it to say are a nation abundant in energy sources - gas, oil, tidal, energy-from-waste, and that's before you get to small reactors. We do almost everything possible to create dysfunction and perverse incentives that ensure that energy is exorbitant here. Indeed many see the high price of energy as a moral mission.
2. The demand has not gone anywhere; the things just aren't being made here, for the reasons I outlined (unless I misunderstood in what sense you meant demand).
3. We're not owed lunch - we must create the necessary support for our businesses to thrive, and then have them compete on world markets and succeed or fail. There are some things we're actually already pretty good at that have high growth potential (drugs, cosmetics), others we've historically been good at that have high potential to do well (high quality garments, yarns and fabrics, leathers).
Gas and oil isn’t cheap when the other option is selling it on the global market at the current market price. As for tidal and energy from waste how does that work unless the Government invests in it (which to me would be infrastructure investment).
As for your other points replace we are good at with we were good at…
If that were an inviolable truth, prices of gas and oil would be the same in the US as they are here. They aren't, and I assume that is because supply is enough to export and to sell domestically at an attractive rate. Some could give us a more detailed explanation I'm sure.
I find your latter 'point' rather asinine. I don't get the feeling you particularly like the economy or want it to succeed.
@Luckyguy1983 As long as we import *some* gas, domestic producers will be able to charge a penny below the import price.
I think the USA is a net exporter, so the competition is all within the US, and producers need to factor the costs of exporting (as compressing and exporting etc)
S
I don't think it is implausible that this country could become a net exporter of oil and gas. The idea of fracking working here is poo-poohed with great gusto, but note the fracking ban. Since when did you need to ban something that has no chance of getting off the ground?
You amuse me, you're all in favour of land being used for fracking to generate energy . . . but if land gets turned to solar farms or wind farms to generate energy then you scream that its disgraceful as that land should be used to produce food and nothing else.
Why is it OK for people to use their own land for fracking to generate energy, but not OK to use their own land for solar or wind if that's what they want to do with it?
If onshore fracking was economic in the UK then it would be happening, as for oil, in £s it's close but any new fields would be likely to be West of Shetland and that means expensive to develop and operate.
I'm pretty sure that's a gif from a previous conference, not the one this year.
Yep, Rayner's hair is a different shade this year. On a similar theme watched "Small Town, Big Riot" earlier. Less heinous than reposting social media from "concerned citizens" about Southport though.
Biggest problem at the moment is not people drinking too much, its the widespread and copious use of coke across society. Its totally unmissable if you go out anywhere.
That’s a value judgement, that it’s a “problem”. Is it any worse than booze health-wise? Tobacco?
Yes. If you take enough you die in your 30s,or 40s of heart problems. It transforms 98% of users into complete arseholes. Getting it to the end user entails unimaginable cruelty and suffering. I have seen, for instance, the video popularly called "funkytown" of a bloke in Colombia having his hands taken off with a chainsaw and my value judgment is that that sort of thing ought not to happen. And I doubt it was great for him "health-wise".
Well the latter two-thirds of your post are a consequence of its prohibition. Booze is a killer - a big killer - if, just as you rightly point out with cocaine, “you take enough”.
On the former point you are right which is why I would end prohibition, but it is a completely false equivalence to pretend that booze is as bad as coke, its not.
Coke turns its users into complete and utter twats in a way that booze does not.
I'm always astonished at how many drug drivers the police find whenever they bother to stop a few cars. Perhaps they have a sixth sense when they choose who to pull over, but still.
A few of my cyclist friends reckon a lot of the scarier interactions we have with drivers is down to coke. I think it's just *people*, but I'm starting to wonder.
Biggest problem at the moment is not people drinking too much, its the widespread and copious use of coke across society. Its totally unmissable if you go out anywhere.
That’s a value judgement, that it’s a “problem”. Is it any worse than booze health-wise? Tobacco?
Yes. If you take enough you die in your 30s,or 40s of heart problems. It transforms 98% of users into complete arseholes. Getting it to the end user entails unimaginable cruelty and suffering. I have seen, for instance, the video popularly called "funkytown" of a bloke in Colombia having his hands taken off with a chainsaw and my value judgment is that that sort of thing ought not to happen. And I doubt it was great for him "health-wise".
Well the latter two-thirds of your post are a consequence of its prohibition. Booze is a killer - a big killer - if, just as you rightly point out with cocaine, “you take enough”.
On the former point you are right which is why I would end prohibition, but it is a completely false equivalence to pretend that booze is as bad as coke, its not.
Coke turns its users into complete and utter twats in a way that booze does not.
Really not sure that's true
When I was banged up the screws were massively down on booze, because they knew it encourages violence. It is simultaneously a depressant and a disinhibitor, ultimately it puts many in a bad mood but encourages them to act out that bad mood. Hence the awful stats on alcohol and wifebeating etc
The wardens were much less concerned by dope, and not that concerned by coke. The first just makes you eat, and then sleepy, the second makes you talk like a twat and shove a firework up your arse, it doesn't reliably make you physically aggressive in the way booze does
Interestingly Professor David Nutt does rank booze as more dangerous than coke when both societal and individual factors are taken into account. Of course, he was sacked by the last Labour government because they didn’t like his findings.
Oh god, the puritan Keith is at it again! Even @Anabobazina has got to be getting sick of this government?
Politics UK @PolitlcsUK · 30m 🚨 NEW: The government is considering forcing pubs to close their doors early to target harmful drinking
This...
This...
This has to be a joke. Surely. Are they TRYING to be the most hated government in history, and in record time?
Exactly what I was about to say. Stamping on puppies law next (yes, I know Leon would like that)? Ban Yorkshire puddings? Replace Saturdays with another Monday?
This has got to be expectations management. They're putting this out there so that we're all eternally grateful when the pubs are allowed to continue plying their trade.
I think we need a law that forces everyone to get 8hrs sleep a night from 10pm to 6am including all of us debauched PB night owls... 😂
The PB lefties seem to be taking the Total Shittiness of the Starmer Government quite badly
I guess it must be painful tho. 14 years of hope and waiting and all that patiently invested faith, and then… THIS
It's not that bad because I didn't have high hopes going in to it.
Also, so far, the largest decision of substance has been on cutting WFA, and given where I think the country is at the moment - budget deficit too large, but need to increase investment spending - that definitely has the air of a decision that was so right it should have been done years ago.
Obviously it's great that PB Righties have been able to take to the pleasures of opposition so quickly and with so much enthusiasm. Right-wingers railing at a Labour government just feels like the natural order of things. You Righties were desperate to be in opposition for years.
Yes some truth in that. Being in opposition is quite fun - you can really put the boot in. And Labour present quite the target
I’m still surprised by the tantrum-throwing despondency of some PB lefties, however
Their plight is explained by Kubler Ross on stages of grief. KR is about responses to SHOCK, not death. It's about how people in their 40s with no apparent health issues respond to "I wouldn't start reading any long novels" diagnoses. That's not the Tory party, which died in a hospice in July, to almost everyone's relief, after 3 years in and out of hospital. Not a shock. Starmer and Co's couldn't-make-it-up levels of cynical incompetence: huge shock, not just to the left but to anyone who was sort of hoping to be competently governed for five minutes. But the non-left have the compensation of at least getting a good laugh out of it.
Yes, you could be right
Also I am getting serious anger at HMG from my lefty friends. Last night (as I mentioned on here) one of my oldest Labour-voting friends was spitting venom about the stupidity of Starmer and Co, he didn't even wait for me to tease him about it: he launched right in. And a glimpse at the BTL comments on the Guardian, today, beneath the rolling blog about Reeves, offers quite the spectacle. The Labour lefties are furious about the austerity and WFA and all that, and the Blairities are furious about the grift and incompetence
" difficult decisions" Rachel Reeves has taken
-should I get the dress or the trouser suit ? - should I ask Lord Alli to buy the shoes too ?
New
Reeves enjoyed a week holiday in Padstow in July gifted to her by Richard Parker, Labour donor and now mayor of West Midlands and while logging her stay, she omitted her family members enjoyed the stay which benefit has to be declared
This is possibly going to end in resignations
I suspect not.
As you conceded in our exchange yesterday, the problem isn't the gifts themselves which probably aren't that different to those received by Prime Ministers and Cabinet Ministers in the past (perhaps not the scale of them) when the order of the day was either Gannex raincoats or shooting parties on a friend's estate.
The two problems are first the commitments made by Starmer and others as to how they would comport themselves in Government which were long on generalities ("cleaning up Government") and short on specifics and which has left them open to the slightest receipt of the smallest thing being a case of grift or venality.
Second is the juxtaposition of accepting freebies, going on free holidays and the rest at a time when many pensioners are going to lose the winter fuel allowance and the cliff-edge nature of the means testing has a number of pensioners losing the £250 on the basis of having income less than £5 over the threshold.
Both are unnecessary self-inflicted wounds which, you could argue, is part of the learning process about being in Government but it's given the Tories, who, let's face it, have had a pretty rotten last couple of years, something to smile about (or it will until we seek the parade of the unelectables next week).
What I find strange is no one in Labour saw or realised what the public reaction would be. Absent the wfa debacle, the grift itself is probably not too serious - the Ecclestone affair was far worse. The wfa announcement was just plain stupid - if you do something like this, the losers will be the first to scream and scream loud and long.
I suspect the wfa announcement will be tempered in the Budget by some tapering of the cliff edge and perhaps some changes on who is involved.
Love to know who you would temper the wfa announcement - there are very limited datasets available hence the switch to pension credit as it's the only other dataset that is usable...
Council House bands. A-C
Crude and doesn't help that much as 60% are in bands A-C.
Difficult to argue that band D and above need it, even if they are asset rich and cash poor.
Now tell me which households in bands A-C have people who qualify for it?
And how you are going to administer the payments because you've now got councils involved...
Every pensioner who recieves a state pension has a national insurance number, a date of birth and an address. Each of those addresses has a council tax band, which are maintained by the Valuation Office not local councils. Its a relatively simple data merge.
As I said, crude. Imperfect certainly but it would solve 98% of the problem.
No doubt there will be load of whataboutery but never let the perfect by the enemy of the good.
Btw single person discount to stay, if not already noted. Huzzah from saddo loners like me.
And an excellent guardian comment: labour winning power is the dog which chases cars catching up with a car.
Get it done, raising the money with a tax on the Chiltern Tories who made the most unneeded bit cost so much by insisting we made a largely flat railway line go through a tunnel.
Joking of course, but it is incredibly stupid not building the bits that genuinely make a difference to capacity on overstretched northern lines and have the potential to provide vital links, because David Cameron and his MPs wasted billions ensuring people they met at the farmers market would never have to listen to trains like common plebs.
Or perhaps it was just never a particularly good project, and has been sold on the basis of being 'infrastructure' because we 'need infrastructure', when actually it has all the appropriateness in serving our national infrastructure needs as handing a deep sea diver a toaster and telling him use it to breathe underwater.
There's an argument they could have chosen a better route, sure and have run it better. But a new North to South rail lines that looks pretty much like HS2 - which might as well be High Speed as that's not the main reason for the cost, is absolutely necessary (as are the others that were supposed to link to it) unless you want the railways to become close to unusable before too long.
If we scrap it we'll end up having to build it at some point - just 20-30 years later than we should have and long after it was necessary.
It was always missold as speed rather than capacity - if you take the fast few stop intercity services off the existing lines you can run more frequent local trains and increase capacity. Otherwise you're looking at managing demand and ever more broken railways.
It's what that idiot Sunak and the Tories completely failed to understand when they 'scrapped it'. By doing so they were condemning the railways to exactly the disastrous problems they claimed the saved money would fix.
It is those who oppose it and have tried to stymie it who have been both incredibly stupid and probably set back rail transport in this country back decades.
Meh. I appreciate your passion, but it's an awful lot of fuss over a single railway line that will have no impact on the vast majority of peoples' lives, whether it's about speed or capacity.
I also disbelieve profoundly in the power of new infrascture to revive economies. It won't. Revive the economies, then build the infrastructure - it will be clear what is needed, and potentially the private sector will build it.
Go on then - how do we revive the economy of the North without investment?
But again, there you change the goalposts - you realise it sounds silly to say 'without HS2' so you generalise it to 'investment', as if HS2 *is* the personification of all infrastructure spending - except it isn't. It is one, very expensive and very geographically-limited project, that even in the most wildly optimistic projections, will not 'revive the economy of the North'.
Since you asked however, there are many things without 'investment' that we can do to revive the economy of the North, which is (or was) primarily an industrial economy.
1. Increase the supply of low cost energy to businesses until it is as cheap here as it is in the USA - it is wholly uneconomical to run a business that makes things in the UK. 2. Support businesses with the tax conditions necessary for them to thrive - low Corporation Tax being one that springs readily to mind, as well as specific tax incentives to get high quality manufacturing businesses off the ground. 3. Take justified steps to protect British manufacturing companies from their Chinese and other global rivals' attempts to compete unfairly with them, including reciprocal tariffs, penalties for dishonestly acquired IP, etc.
1) So how would you get that low cost energy? 2) then how do you kick off high quality manufacturing because that also requires demand and where is that going to come from. Now granted you could import companies by lowering corporation tax but they will leave as soon as you start to increase the tax rates so it's only a temporary solution. 3) so that will keep the UK domestic market but how would you stop EU countries from purchasing the Chinese knock offs at a cheaper price.
1. We have had many conversations about this - they are well rehearsed. Suffice it to say are a nation abundant in energy sources - gas, oil, tidal, energy-from-waste, and that's before you get to small reactors. We do almost everything possible to create dysfunction and perverse incentives that ensure that energy is exorbitant here. Indeed many see the high price of energy as a moral mission.
2. The demand has not gone anywhere; the things just aren't being made here, for the reasons I outlined (unless I misunderstood in what sense you meant demand).
3. We're not owed lunch - we must create the necessary support for our businesses to thrive, and then have them compete on world markets and succeed or fail. There are some things we're actually already pretty good at that have high growth potential (drugs, cosmetics), others we've historically been good at that have high potential to do well (high quality garments, yarns and fabrics, leathers).
Gas and oil isn’t cheap when the other option is selling it on the global market at the current market price. As for tidal and energy from waste how does that work unless the Government invests in it (which to me would be infrastructure investment).
As for your other points replace we are good at with we were good at…
If that were an inviolable truth, prices of gas and oil would be the same in the US as they are here. They aren't, and I assume that is because supply is enough to export and to sell domestically at an attractive rate. Some could give us a more detailed explanation I'm sure.
I find your latter 'point' rather asinine. I don't get the feeling you particularly like the economy or want it to succeed.
@Luckyguy1983 As long as we import *some* gas, domestic producers will be able to charge a penny below the import price.
I think the USA is a net exporter, so the competition is all within the US, and producers need to factor the costs of exporting (as compressing and exporting etc)
S
I don't think it is implausible that this country could become a net exporter of oil and gas. The idea of fracking working here is poo-poohed with great gusto, but note the fracking ban. Since when did you need to ban something that has no chance of getting off the ground?
You amuse me, you're all in favour of land being used for fracking to generate energy . . . but if land gets turned to solar farms or wind farms to generate energy then you scream that its disgraceful as that land should be used to produce food and nothing else.
Why is it OK for people to use their own land for fracking to generate energy, but not OK to use their own land for solar or wind if that's what they want to do with it?
I have not proposed a ban on solar farms, and I certainly haven't proposed to ban wind turbines from farms because as far as I know you can still farm around wind turbines.
I do believe that it's perverse to incentivise the building of solar on good agricultural land, and what farmers should be incentivised to do is produce food. It seems unlikely that fracking does prevent agricultural land use in the same way that solar farms do - I imagine their impact is more like that of wind turbines. But if they do preclude agriculture in and around them, of course that should should be judged on a case by case basis, clearly not by a blanket ban. As PB's favourite libertarian, are you in favour of continuing the ban?
No I abhor the ban, just as I abhor the ban on onshore wind, or prohibitions on change of use of land.
Let people do what they want with their own land.
If its not productive, they won't do it, if it is, they will.
So hypothetically if a farmer decides they want to stop farming and exclusively use their land for wind or solar, not incentivised by the state but purely by free market economics, are you OK with that?
I wouldn't love it, but all other things being equal, it's peoples' right to do things I don't necessarily love.
I believe that the market sorts out most things, and I am certain that greater value lies in the food produced by fertile land than the potential power energy produced by small solar installations on top of it.
Biggest problem at the moment is not people drinking too much, its the widespread and copious use of coke across society. Its totally unmissable if you go out anywhere.
That’s a value judgement, that it’s a “problem”. Is it any worse than booze health-wise? Tobacco?
Yes. If you take enough you die in your 30s,or 40s of heart problems. It transforms 98% of users into complete arseholes. Getting it to the end user entails unimaginable cruelty and suffering. I have seen, for instance, the video popularly called "funkytown" of a bloke in Colombia having his hands taken off with a chainsaw and my value judgment is that that sort of thing ought not to happen. And I doubt it was great for him "health-wise".
Well the latter two-thirds of your post are a consequence of its prohibition. Booze is a killer - a big killer - if, just as you rightly point out with cocaine, “you take enough”.
On the former point you are right which is why I would end prohibition, but it is a completely false equivalence to pretend that booze is as bad as coke, its not.
Coke turns its users into complete and utter twats in a way that booze does not.
Really not sure that's true
When I was banged up the screws were massively down on booze, because they knew it encourages violence. It is simultaneously a depressant and a disinhibitor, ultimately it puts many in a bad mood but encourages them to act out that bad mood. Hence the awful stats on alcohol and wifebeating etc
The wardens were much less concerned by dope, and not that concerned by coke. The first just makes you eat, and then sleepy, the second makes you talk like a twat and shove a firework up your arse, it doesn't reliably make you physically aggressive in the way booze does
Absolutely. An excellent post (and see my post above). The point about booze ultimately putting many a bad mood is on point.
Biggest problem at the moment is not people drinking too much, its the widespread and copious use of coke across society. Its totally unmissable if you go out anywhere.
That’s a value judgement, that it’s a “problem”. Is it any worse than booze health-wise? Tobacco?
Yes. If you take enough you die in your 30s,or 40s of heart problems. It transforms 98% of users into complete arseholes. Getting it to the end user entails unimaginable cruelty and suffering. I have seen, for instance, the video popularly called "funkytown" of a bloke in Colombia having his hands taken off with a chainsaw and my value judgment is that that sort of thing ought not to happen. And I doubt it was great for him "health-wise".
Well the latter two-thirds of your post are a consequence of its prohibition. Booze is a killer - a big killer - if, just as you rightly point out with cocaine, “you take enough”.
On the former point you are right which is why I would end prohibition, but it is a completely false equivalence to pretend that booze is as bad as coke, its not.
Coke turns its users into complete and utter twats in a way that booze does not.
Really not sure that's true
When I was banged up the screws were massively down on booze, because they knew it encourages violence. It is simultaneously a depressant and a disinhibitor, ultimately it puts many in a bad mood but encourages them to act out that bad mood. Hence the awful stats on alcohol and wifebeating etc
The wardens were much less concerned by dope, and not that concerned by coke. The first just makes you eat, and then sleepy, the second makes you talk like a twat and shove a firework up your arse, it doesn't reliably make you physically aggressive in the way booze does
Coke can make you paranoid and that's probably not a good thing in an over subscribed prison.
Interestingly Professor David Nutt does rank booze as more dangerous than coke when both societal and individual factors are taken into account. Of course, he was sacked by the last Labour government because they didn’t like his findings.
Biggest problem at the moment is not people drinking too much, its the widespread and copious use of coke across society. Its totally unmissable if you go out anywhere.
That’s a value judgement, that it’s a “problem”. Is it any worse than booze health-wise? Tobacco?
Yes. If you take enough you die in your 30s,or 40s of heart problems. It transforms 98% of users into complete arseholes. Getting it to the end user entails unimaginable cruelty and suffering. I have seen, for instance, the video popularly called "funkytown" of a bloke in Colombia having his hands taken off with a chainsaw and my value judgment is that that sort of thing ought not to happen. And I doubt it was great for him "health-wise".
Well the latter two-thirds of your post are a consequence of its prohibition. Booze is a killer - a big killer - if, just as you rightly point out with cocaine, “you take enough”.
I am generally quite pessimistic about drug control, but it is worth noting that, for the first time in a long time, Fentanyl overdoses are DOWN
Biggest problem at the moment is not people drinking too much, its the widespread and copious use of coke across society. Its totally unmissable if you go out anywhere.
That’s a value judgement, that it’s a “problem”. Is it any worse than booze health-wise? Tobacco?
Yes. If you take enough you die in your 30s,or 40s of heart problems. It transforms 98% of users into complete arseholes. Getting it to the end user entails unimaginable cruelty and suffering. I have seen, for instance, the video popularly called "funkytown" of a bloke in Colombia having his hands taken off with a chainsaw and my value judgment is that that sort of thing ought not to happen. And I doubt it was great for him "health-wise".
Well the latter two-thirds of your post are a consequence of its prohibition. Booze is a killer - a big killer - if, just as you rightly point out with cocaine, “you take enough”.
On the former point you are right which is why I would end prohibition, but it is a completely false equivalence to pretend that booze is as bad as coke, its not.
Coke turns its users into complete and utter twats in a way that booze does not.
Really not sure that's true
When I was banged up the screws were massively down on booze, because they knew it encourages violence. It is simultaneously a depressant and a disinhibitor, ultimately it puts many in a bad mood but encourages them to act out that bad mood. Hence the awful stats on alcohol and wifebeating etc
The wardens were much less concerned by dope, and not that concerned by coke. The first just makes you eat, and then sleepy, the second makes you talk like a twat and shove a firework up your arse, it doesn't reliably make you physically aggressive in the way booze does
Absolutely. An excellent post (and see my post above). The point about booze ultimately putting many a bad mood is on point.
Yes. In my experience cocaine makes the user manic and self-aggrandizing, you think you are the cleverest person on earth and full of good ideas, and jokes, so you insist on dominating conversations - if you can - and you want to shove a firework up your anus coz you think it will be totally hilarious, especially for your coked up friends
If it makes you fight it is usually as a display to your peers, LOOK I AM HARD AS WELL, it doesn't encourage violence per se
Alcohol really does. It disinhibits all instincts, from the libido to the death instinct, so if you have a violent grudge or a lurking resentment, when you are blind drunk that will come out, and you WILL attack people, especially those smaller than you, like wives
Biggest problem at the moment is not people drinking too much, its the widespread and copious use of coke across society. Its totally unmissable if you go out anywhere.
That’s a value judgement, that it’s a “problem”. Is it any worse than booze health-wise? Tobacco?
Yes. If you take enough you die in your 30s,or 40s of heart problems. It transforms 98% of users into complete arseholes. Getting it to the end user entails unimaginable cruelty and suffering. I have seen, for instance, the video popularly called "funkytown" of a bloke in Colombia having his hands taken off with a chainsaw and my value judgment is that that sort of thing ought not to happen. And I doubt it was great for him "health-wise".
Well the latter two-thirds of your post are a consequence of its prohibition. Booze is a killer - a big killer - if, just as you rightly point out with cocaine, “you take enough”.
On the former point you are right which is why I would end prohibition, but it is a completely false equivalence to pretend that booze is as bad as coke, its not.
Coke turns its users into complete and utter twats in a way that booze does not.
Really not sure that's true
When I was banged up the screws were massively down on booze, because they knew it encourages violence. It is simultaneously a depressant and a disinhibitor, ultimately it puts many in a bad mood but encourages them to act out that bad mood. Hence the awful stats on alcohol and wifebeating etc
The wardens were much less concerned by dope, and not that concerned by coke. The first just makes you eat, and then sleepy, the second makes you talk like a twat and shove a firework up your arse, it doesn't reliably make you physically aggressive in the way booze does
Coke can make you paranoid and that's probably not a good thing in an over subscribed prison.
Yeah I'm not saying it's great, just that the screws were REALLY concerned about booze above all else - even coke and heroin - which says something (this is in the innocent days before Fent and Meth etc)
Biggest problem at the moment is not people drinking too much, its the widespread and copious use of coke across society. Its totally unmissable if you go out anywhere.
That’s a value judgement, that it’s a “problem”. Is it any worse than booze health-wise? Tobacco?
Yes. If you take enough you die in your 30s,or 40s of heart problems. It transforms 98% of users into complete arseholes. Getting it to the end user entails unimaginable cruelty and suffering. I have seen, for instance, the video popularly called "funkytown" of a bloke in Colombia having his hands taken off with a chainsaw and my value judgment is that that sort of thing ought not to happen. And I doubt it was great for him "health-wise".
Well the latter two-thirds of your post are a consequence of its prohibition. Booze is a killer - a big killer - if, just as you rightly point out with cocaine, “you take enough”.
I am generally quite pessimistic about drug control, but it is worth noting that, for the first time in a long time, Fentanyl overdoses are DOWN
Interestingly Professor David Nutt does rank booze as more dangerous than coke when both societal and individual factors are taken into account. Of course, he was sacked by the last Labour government because they didn’t like his findings.
Coke and booze really go together like fish and chips, salt and pepper and Renee and Ronato.
I don't think you can separate them. Where older generations would have smoked and drank, younger generations drink and get coked up.
That’s a very fair and true point. But the OP claimed that coke was more societally harmful (it isn’t) and booze less dangerous (it is statistically more dangerous).
The reason booze gets an easier ride is because it’s legal and widespread, pure and simple. If we had rational approach to drugs policy that wasn’t based around prohibition we’d consider them all together in a fairer light. The health freaks would probably stick to mushrooms (and maybe the odd E).
Biggest problem at the moment is not people drinking too much, its the widespread and copious use of coke across society. Its totally unmissable if you go out anywhere.
That’s a value judgement, that it’s a “problem”. Is it any worse than booze health-wise? Tobacco?
Yes. If you take enough you die in your 30s,or 40s of heart problems. It transforms 98% of users into complete arseholes. Getting it to the end user entails unimaginable cruelty and suffering. I have seen, for instance, the video popularly called "funkytown" of a bloke in Colombia having his hands taken off with a chainsaw and my value judgment is that that sort of thing ought not to happen. And I doubt it was great for him "health-wise".
Well the latter two-thirds of your post are a consequence of its prohibition. Booze is a killer - a big killer - if, just as you rightly point out with cocaine, “you take enough”.
On the former point you are right which is why I would end prohibition, but it is a completely false equivalence to pretend that booze is as bad as coke, its not.
Coke turns its users into complete and utter twats in a way that booze does not.
Really not sure that's true
When I was banged up the screws were massively down on booze, because they knew it encourages violence. It is simultaneously a depressant and a disinhibitor, ultimately it puts many in a bad mood but encourages them to act out that bad mood. Hence the awful stats on alcohol and wifebeating etc
The wardens were much less concerned by dope, and not that concerned by coke. The first just makes you eat, and then sleepy, the second makes you talk like a twat and shove a firework up your arse, it doesn't reliably make you physically aggressive in the way booze does
Absolutely. An excellent post (and see my post above). The point about booze ultimately putting many a bad mood is on point.
Yes. In my experience cocaine makes the user manic and self-aggrandizing, you think you are the cleverest person on earth and full of good ideas, and jokes, so you insist on dominating conversations - if you can - and you want to shove a firework up your anus coz you think it will be totally hilarious, especially for your coked up friends
If it makes you fight it is usually as a display to your peers, LOOK I AM HARD AS WELL, it doesn't encourage violence per se
Alcohol really does. It disinhibits all instincts, from the libido to the death instinct, so if you have a violent grudge or a lurking resentment, when you are blind drunk that will come out, and you WILL attack people, especially those smaller than you, like wives
Biggest problem at the moment is not people drinking too much, its the widespread and copious use of coke across society. Its totally unmissable if you go out anywhere.
That’s a value judgement, that it’s a “problem”. Is it any worse than booze health-wise? Tobacco?
Yes. If you take enough you die in your 30s,or 40s of heart problems. It transforms 98% of users into complete arseholes. Getting it to the end user entails unimaginable cruelty and suffering. I have seen, for instance, the video popularly called "funkytown" of a bloke in Colombia having his hands taken off with a chainsaw and my value judgment is that that sort of thing ought not to happen. And I doubt it was great for him "health-wise".
Well the latter two-thirds of your post are a consequence of its prohibition. Booze is a killer - a big killer - if, just as you rightly point out with cocaine, “you take enough”.
On the former point you are right which is why I would end prohibition, but it is a completely false equivalence to pretend that booze is as bad as coke, its not.
Coke turns its users into complete and utter twats in a way that booze does not.
Really not sure that's true
When I was banged up the screws were massively down on booze, because they knew it encourages violence. It is simultaneously a depressant and a disinhibitor, ultimately it puts many in a bad mood but encourages them to act out that bad mood. Hence the awful stats on alcohol and wifebeating etc
The wardens were much less concerned by dope, and not that concerned by coke. The first just makes you eat, and then sleepy, the second makes you talk like a twat and shove a firework up your arse, it doesn't reliably make you physically aggressive in the way booze does
Absolutely. An excellent post (and see my post above). The point about booze ultimately putting many a bad mood is on point.
Yes. In my experience cocaine makes the user manic and self-aggrandizing, you think you are the cleverest person on earth and full of good ideas, and jokes, so you insist on dominating conversations - if you can - and you want to shove a firework up your anus coz you think it will be totally hilarious, especially for your coked up friends
If it makes you fight it is usually as a display to your peers, LOOK I AM HARD AS WELL, it doesn't encourage violence per se
Alcohol really does. It disinhibits all instincts, from the libido to the death instinct, so if you have a violent grudge or a lurking resentment, when you are blind drunk that will come out, and you WILL attack people, especially those smaller than you, like wives
Liked the post because of the good sense within it obviously, not because of its grim conclusion. But yes booze is the ultimate disinhibitor.
(it is also full of sugar and is very bad for your waistline, as I’ve discovered since reaching my mid years!)
Biggest problem at the moment is not people drinking too much, its the widespread and copious use of coke across society. Its totally unmissable if you go out anywhere.
That’s a value judgement, that it’s a “problem”. Is it any worse than booze health-wise? Tobacco?
Yes. If you take enough you die in your 30s,or 40s of heart problems. It transforms 98% of users into complete arseholes. Getting it to the end user entails unimaginable cruelty and suffering. I have seen, for instance, the video popularly called "funkytown" of a bloke in Colombia having his hands taken off with a chainsaw and my value judgment is that that sort of thing ought not to happen. And I doubt it was great for him "health-wise".
Well the latter two-thirds of your post are a consequence of its prohibition. Booze is a killer - a big killer - if, just as you rightly point out with cocaine, “you take enough”.
On the former point you are right which is why I would end prohibition, but it is a completely false equivalence to pretend that booze is as bad as coke, its not.
Coke turns its users into complete and utter twats in a way that booze does not.
Really not sure that's true
When I was banged up the screws were massively down on booze, because they knew it encourages violence. It is simultaneously a depressant and a disinhibitor, ultimately it puts many in a bad mood but encourages them to act out that bad mood. Hence the awful stats on alcohol and wifebeating etc
The wardens were much less concerned by dope, and not that concerned by coke. The first just makes you eat, and then sleepy, the second makes you talk like a twat and shove a firework up your arse, it doesn't reliably make you physically aggressive in the way booze does
Isn't the point about how it's used and that coke is it being combined with booze? On its own it makes you an overactive and thinking jabbering tit and magnifies certain aspects of your personality. So you'll get users who are a a nightmare, but most people will just be irritating and self-absorbed.
The moralising over the current trend of use is that it's used as part of an all day bender down the pub/at the game/and so on rather than the traditional pick me up towards the end of a night out or at home. Meaning people to booze far more and far longer than they would otherwise do. So you get the ugly scenes and violence when you combine the two.
Interestingly Professor David Nutt does rank booze as more dangerous than coke when both societal and individual factors are taken into account. Of course, he was sacked by the last Labour government because they didn’t like his findings.
Coke and booze really go together like fish and chips, salt and pepper and Renee and Ronato.
I don't think you can separate them. Where older generations would have smoked and drank, younger generations drink and get coked up.
That’s a very fair and true point. But the OP claimed that coke was more societally harmful (it isn’t) and booze less dangerous (it is statistically more dangerous).
The reason booze gets an easier ride is because it’s legal and widespread, pure and simple. If we had rational approach to drugs policy that wasn’t based around prohibition we’d consider them all together in a fairer light. The health freaks would probably stick to mushrooms (and maybe the odd E).
Don't get me wrong. I'd legalize most drugs (including coke) and tax them (I'd draw the line at the Opiates though)
Coke is absolutely rife and basically a way of life for most people under 40 these days so clearly Prohibition has failed.
The only sensible way forward is to legalize and regulate. Same with Cannabis (but even more so) and probably Ecstasy .
I am watching Michel Roux's French country cooking and he just told everyone that Francois Mittterand used to eat sea squirts with scrambled eggs for breakfast, "for his Mojo"
Biggest problem at the moment is not people drinking too much, its the widespread and copious use of coke across society. Its totally unmissable if you go out anywhere.
That’s a value judgement, that it’s a “problem”. Is it any worse than booze health-wise? Tobacco?
Yes. If you take enough you die in your 30s,or 40s of heart problems. It transforms 98% of users into complete arseholes. Getting it to the end user entails unimaginable cruelty and suffering. I have seen, for instance, the video popularly called "funkytown" of a bloke in Colombia having his hands taken off with a chainsaw and my value judgment is that that sort of thing ought not to happen. And I doubt it was great for him "health-wise".
Well the latter two-thirds of your post are a consequence of its prohibition. Booze is a killer - a big killer - if, just as you rightly point out with cocaine, “you take enough”.
On the former point you are right which is why I would end prohibition, but it is a completely false equivalence to pretend that booze is as bad as coke, its not.
Coke turns its users into complete and utter twats in a way that booze does not.
I'm always astonished at how many drug drivers the police find whenever they bother to stop a few cars. Perhaps they have a sixth sense when they choose who to pull over, but still.
A few of my cyclist friends reckon a lot of the scarier interactions we have with drivers is down to coke. I think it's just *people*, but I'm starting to wonder.
I remember a police person of my acquaintance turning up outside my house with the back of their car filled with flashing traffic cones. Killing themselves laughing at ALL THE FLASHING LIGHTS.
Biggest problem at the moment is not people drinking too much, its the widespread and copious use of coke across society. Its totally unmissable if you go out anywhere.
And a big contributor to the recent uptick in violence around football matches.
Biggest problem at the moment is not people drinking too much, its the widespread and copious use of coke across society. Its totally unmissable if you go out anywhere.
And a big contributor to the recent uptick in violence around football matches.
Certainly been a big factor around here (Celtic/Rangers). Cocaine has taken the place of 'a chaser'.
The actors I get mixed up are Edward Norton and John Cusack.
But they don’t even look like each other.
Gillian Jacobs and (before she got really famous) Margot Robbie.
Keira Knightley and Natalie Portman.
One of the best is the two Korean actors Kim Byung-Chul, and Jo Woo-Jin.
They appeared together in Mr Sunshine (great historical drama series, btw), and it was nearly halfway through watching it before I realised they were two different characters (it’s a running joke in the drama).
Biggest problem at the moment is not people drinking too much, its the widespread and copious use of coke across society. Its totally unmissable if you go out anywhere.
That’s a value judgement, that it’s a “problem”. Is it any worse than booze health-wise? Tobacco?
Yes. If you take enough you die in your 30s,or 40s of heart problems. It transforms 98% of users into complete arseholes. Getting it to the end user entails unimaginable cruelty and suffering. I have seen, for instance, the video popularly called "funkytown" of a bloke in Colombia having his hands taken off with a chainsaw and my value judgment is that that sort of thing ought not to happen. And I doubt it was great for him "health-wise".
Well the latter two-thirds of your post are a consequence of its prohibition. Booze is a killer - a big killer - if, just as you rightly point out with cocaine, “you take enough”.
On the former point you are right which is why I would end prohibition, but it is a completely false equivalence to pretend that booze is as bad as coke, its not.
Coke turns its users into complete and utter twats in a way that booze does not.
Really not sure that's true
When I was banged up the screws were massively down on booze, because they knew it encourages violence. It is simultaneously a depressant and a disinhibitor, ultimately it puts many in a bad mood but encourages them to act out that bad mood. Hence the awful stats on alcohol and wifebeating etc
The wardens were much less concerned by dope, and not that concerned by coke. The first just makes you eat, and then sleepy, the second makes you talk like a twat and shove a firework up your arse, it doesn't reliably make you physically aggressive in the way booze does
Absolutely. An excellent post (and see my post above). The point about booze ultimately putting many a bad mood is on point.
Yes. In my experience cocaine makes the user manic and self-aggrandizing, you think you are the cleverest person on earth and full of good ideas, and jokes, so you insist on dominating conversations - if you can - and you want to shove a firework up your anus coz you think it will be totally hilarious, especially for your coked up friends
If it makes you fight it is usually as a display to your peers, LOOK I AM HARD AS WELL, it doesn't encourage violence per se
Alcohol really does. It disinhibits all instincts, from the libido to the death instinct, so if you have a violent grudge or a lurking resentment, when you are blind drunk that will come out, and you WILL attack people, especially those smaller than you, like wives
Interestingly Professor David Nutt does rank booze as more dangerous than coke when both societal and individual factors are taken into account. Of course, he was sacked by the last Labour government because they didn’t like his findings.
Coke and booze really go together like fish and chips, salt and pepper and Renee and Ronato.
I don't think you can separate them. Where older generations would have smoked and drank, younger generations drink and get coked up.
That’s a very fair and true point. But the OP claimed that coke was more societally harmful (it isn’t) and booze less dangerous (it is statistically more dangerous).
The reason booze gets an easier ride is because it’s legal and widespread, pure and simple. If we had rational approach to drugs policy that wasn’t based around prohibition we’d consider them all together in a fairer light. The health freaks would probably stick to mushrooms (and maybe the odd E).
Don't get me wrong. I'd legalize most drugs (including coke) and tax them (I'd draw the line at the Opiates though)
Coke is absolutely rife and basically a way of life for most people under 40 these days so clearly Prohibition has failed.
The only sensible way forward is to legalize and regulate. Same with Cannabis (but even more so) and probably Ecstasy .
Cannabis literally smells like dog turd. Gives me a billious attack.
Biggest problem at the moment is not people drinking too much, its the widespread and copious use of coke across society. Its totally unmissable if you go out anywhere.
That’s a value judgement, that it’s a “problem”. Is it any worse than booze health-wise? Tobacco?
Yes. If you take enough you die in your 30s,or 40s of heart problems. It transforms 98% of users into complete arseholes. Getting it to the end user entails unimaginable cruelty and suffering. I have seen, for instance, the video popularly called "funkytown" of a bloke in Colombia having his hands taken off with a chainsaw and my value judgment is that that sort of thing ought not to happen. And I doubt it was great for him "health-wise".
Well the latter two-thirds of your post are a consequence of its prohibition. Booze is a killer - a big killer - if, just as you rightly point out with cocaine, “you take enough”.
On the former point you are right which is why I would end prohibition, but it is a completely false equivalence to pretend that booze is as bad as coke, its not.
Coke turns its users into complete and utter twats in a way that booze does not.
I'm always astonished at how many drug drivers the police find whenever they bother to stop a few cars. Perhaps they have a sixth sense when they choose who to pull over, but still.
A few of my cyclist friends reckon a lot of the scarier interactions we have with drivers is down to coke. I think it's just *people*, but I'm starting to wonder.
How much of that is because traces of drugs hang around in people's systems rather longer than alcohol? You'd have to have a pretty major session to still be over the drink drive limit 24 hours later, but if you'd done some coke at the same time, I think the plod could have you 24hrs later for drug driving, despite the fact you probably wouldn't actually be impaired in reality.
Biggest problem at the moment is not people drinking too much, its the widespread and copious use of coke across society. Its totally unmissable if you go out anywhere.
And a big contributor to the recent uptick in violence around football matches.
Certainly been a big factor around here (Celtic/Rangers). Cocaine has taken the place of 'a chaser'.
I would have thought that Rangers supporters would all be on anti-depressants.
Biggest problem at the moment is not people drinking too much, its the widespread and copious use of coke across society. Its totally unmissable if you go out anywhere.
That’s a value judgement, that it’s a “problem”. Is it any worse than booze health-wise? Tobacco?
Yes. If you take enough you die in your 30s,or 40s of heart problems. It transforms 98% of users into complete arseholes. Getting it to the end user entails unimaginable cruelty and suffering. I have seen, for instance, the video popularly called "funkytown" of a bloke in Colombia having his hands taken off with a chainsaw and my value judgment is that that sort of thing ought not to happen. And I doubt it was great for him "health-wise".
Well the latter two-thirds of your post are a consequence of its prohibition. Booze is a killer - a big killer - if, just as you rightly point out with cocaine, “you take enough”.
On the former point you are right which is why I would end prohibition, but it is a completely false equivalence to pretend that booze is as bad as coke, its not.
Coke turns its users into complete and utter twats in a way that booze does not.
I'm always astonished at how many drug drivers the police find whenever they bother to stop a few cars. Perhaps they have a sixth sense when they choose who to pull over, but still.
A few of my cyclist friends reckon a lot of the scarier interactions we have with drivers is down to coke. I think it's just *people*, but I'm starting to wonder.
How much of that is because traces of drugs hang around in people's systems rather longer than alcohol? You'd have to have a pretty major session to still be over the drink drive limit 24 hours later, but if you'd done some coke at the same time, I think the plod could have you 24hrs later for drug driving, despite the fact you probably wouldn't actually be impaired in reality.
Yes, good point. The limits are set exceptionally low for illegal drugs - you're essentially being prosecuted for taking the drugs rather than the impairment. *
But it still demonstrates just how widespread use is.
*The limit is lower in Scotland for alcohol too; you can barely get away with a half pint as you can in England.
Oh god, the puritan Keith is at it again! Even @Anabobazina has got to be getting sick of this government?
Politics UK @PolitlcsUK · 30m 🚨 NEW: The government is considering forcing pubs to close their doors early to target harmful drinking
This...
This...
This has to be a joke. Surely. Are they TRYING to be the most hated government in history, and in record time?
Do you think Starmers ever been drunk in his life?
I'd much rather have RAYNER as PM, as at least she knows how to have a good time and enjoy herself
"The government is considering forcing pubs to close their doors early to target harmful drinking"
Oh FFS. The harmful drinking is being done at home on the sofa at wine o'clock not at 11:30pm on the Dog and Duck.
Yes, better all round to crack down on off sales. Ban 19 crimes.
Non wine drinking friends brought us some 19Crimes. It was so awful we didn’t even put it in the gravy. Cleared the drains, though.
I'm quite partial to 19 Crimes. I've only done up to junior level with the Court of Master Sommeliers though so I bow to your superior appreciation.
Leon, who has probably sunk more wine than most of us, has spoken not disapprovingly of it.
Yes, 19 Crimes is fine, and perfectly palatable. Esp the "Red Blend"
People who snark at it don't remember how bad "mediocre wine" USED to be (and fair enough, they may be younglings) Anyone over 45 can remember red or white so bad it made your tongue curl and your brain assume (correctly): instant hangover
Wine is a bit like airplanes. Fifty years ago planes regularly crashed, now these crashes are so rare they are noticeable and make headline news (even small ones). Ditto wine. Fifty years ago wines were often so bad it was hard to keep them down after a couple of glasses, now that is exceptionally unusual
19 Crimes would have passed for "rather good wine" back in 1984
The theoretical advantage - if it could be made to work reliably on a large scale - is much cheaper (another order of magnitude or so) cost to get mass into orbit.
Biggest problem at the moment is not people drinking too much, its the widespread and copious use of coke across society. Its totally unmissable if you go out anywhere.
That’s a value judgement, that it’s a “problem”. Is it any worse than booze health-wise? Tobacco?
Yes. If you take enough you die in your 30s,or 40s of heart problems. It transforms 98% of users into complete arseholes. Getting it to the end user entails unimaginable cruelty and suffering. I have seen, for instance, the video popularly called "funkytown" of a bloke in Colombia having his hands taken off with a chainsaw and my value judgment is that that sort of thing ought not to happen. And I doubt it was great for him "health-wise".
Well the latter two-thirds of your post are a consequence of its prohibition. Booze is a killer - a big killer - if, just as you rightly point out with cocaine, “you take enough”.
On the former point you are right which is why I would end prohibition, but it is a completely false equivalence to pretend that booze is as bad as coke, its not.
Coke turns its users into complete and utter twats in a way that booze does not.
I'm always astonished at how many drug drivers the police find whenever they bother to stop a few cars. Perhaps they have a sixth sense when they choose who to pull over, but still.
A few of my cyclist friends reckon a lot of the scarier interactions we have with drivers is down to coke. I think it's just *people*, but I'm starting to wonder.
How much of that is because traces of drugs hang around in people's systems rather longer than alcohol? You'd have to have a pretty major session to still be over the drink drive limit 24 hours later, but if you'd done some coke at the same time, I think the plod could have you 24hrs later for drug driving, despite the fact you probably wouldn't actually be impaired in reality.
I assume they're judging that by the nature of the interaction rather than plod having done someone for road rage.
Alcohol is about same as class A drugs it seems, if you're likely to get tested then avoid weed or bennies
Lets hope it's not a train coming at us at 100mph 😂
Sir Keir will also announce new legislation to crack down on welfare fraudsters, which Labour says is expected to save £1.6bn over the next five years. Under the plans, the Department for Work and Pensions will get new powers to investigate suspected benefit fraud and recover debts from individuals who can pay money back but have avoided doing so. Labour said there would be safeguarding measures to protect vulnerable claimants.
I think if you can hedge, its worth backing Trump. Its the 'real' economy thats the problem for Harris as the incumbent. If you look at the figures Americans are dropping their discretionary spending. Yes the totem that is fuel is down and the interest rate cut may be seen as a relief, but a lot Americans are either running on credit or paring back or both.
I think if you can hedge, its worth backing Trump. Its the 'real' economy thats the problem for Harris as the incumbent. If you look at the figures Americans are dropping their discretionary spending. Yes the totem that is fuel is down and the inettest rate cut may be seen as a relief but a lot Americans are either running on credit or paring back or both.
Absolutely: consumer disposable income has been hammered across the developed world. If Haley was the Republican candidate, they would be cantering to victory right now.
It is only because the Republicans chose Donald Trump as their nominee that there is even a contest right now.
Biggest problem at the moment is not people drinking too much, its the widespread and copious use of coke across society. Its totally unmissable if you go out anywhere.
That’s a value judgement, that it’s a “problem”. Is it any worse than booze health-wise? Tobacco?
Yes. If you take enough you die in your 30s,or 40s of heart problems. It transforms 98% of users into complete arseholes. Getting it to the end user entails unimaginable cruelty and suffering. I have seen, for instance, the video popularly called "funkytown" of a bloke in Colombia having his hands taken off with a chainsaw and my value judgment is that that sort of thing ought not to happen. And I doubt it was great for him "health-wise".
Well the latter two-thirds of your post are a consequence of its prohibition. Booze is a killer - a big killer - if, just as you rightly point out with cocaine, “you take enough”.
On the former point you are right which is why I would end prohibition, but it is a completely false equivalence to pretend that booze is as bad as coke, its not.
Coke turns its users into complete and utter twats in a way that booze does not.
Really not sure that's true
When I was banged up the screws were massively down on booze, because they knew it encourages violence. It is simultaneously a depressant and a disinhibitor, ultimately it puts many in a bad mood but encourages them to act out that bad mood. Hence the awful stats on alcohol and wifebeating etc
The wardens were much less concerned by dope, and not that concerned by coke. The first just makes you eat, and then sleepy, the second makes you talk like a twat and shove a firework up your arse, it doesn't reliably make you physically aggressive in the way booze does
Absolutely. An excellent post (and see my post above). The point about booze ultimately putting many a bad mood is on point.
Yes. In my experience cocaine makes the user manic and self-aggrandizing, you think you are the cleverest person on earth and full of good ideas, and jokes, so you insist on dominating conversations - if you can - and you want to shove a firework up your anus coz you think it will be totally hilarious, especially for your coked up friends
It's crane fly season already, it seems. Summer is over. And the largest crane fly in Christendom is lurking in my flat. Actually lurking is the wrong word. It's more frenetic than lurking.
The GOP has "morphed" into an "incredibly dangerous" party, says @KenBurns "It's going to be difficult for the Republican Party to figure out a way to escape the specific gravity of the darkness that engulfs it.” https://x.com/AliVelshi/status/1837906220037873857
"Specific gravity" is a ratio between the density of two objects. He meant "absolute gravity".
I don't know.
Those who let Trump into the Republican ecosystem in 2016 were pretty dense to do so.
Trump was only the ological progression (I won't say endpoint, but I hope it to be so) of how the Republican Party had devolved over the previous decades: racism, isolationism, denial of facts and wilful ignorance. These were already part of the party's DNA before DJT arrived - it it hadn't been so, he couldn't have seized the party so quickly.
"Janet Jackson says Kamala Harris is ‘not black’ The singer said she had heard Ms Harris’s father ‘was white’. But Donald J Harris is a Jamaican-American academic"
The GOP has "morphed" into an "incredibly dangerous" party, says @KenBurns "It's going to be difficult for the Republican Party to figure out a way to escape the specific gravity of the darkness that engulfs it.” https://x.com/AliVelshi/status/1837906220037873857
"Specific gravity" is a ratio between the density of two objects. He meant "absolute gravity".
I don't know.
Those who let Trump into the Republican ecosystem in 2016 were pretty dense to do so.
Trump was only the ological progression (I won't say endpoint, but I hope it to be so) of how the Republican Party had devolved over the previous decades: racism, isolationism, denial of facts and wilful ignorance. These were already part of the party's DNA before DJT arrived - it it hadn't been so, he couldn't have seized the party so quickly.
Biggest problem at the moment is not people drinking too much, its the widespread and copious use of coke across society. Its totally unmissable if you go out anywhere.
That’s a value judgement, that it’s a “problem”. Is it any worse than booze health-wise? Tobacco?
Yes. If you take enough you die in your 30s,or 40s of heart problems. It transforms 98% of users into complete arseholes. Getting it to the end user entails unimaginable cruelty and suffering. I have seen, for instance, the video popularly called "funkytown" of a bloke in Colombia having his hands taken off with a chainsaw and my value judgment is that that sort of thing ought not to happen. And I doubt it was great for him "health-wise".
Well the latter two-thirds of your post are a consequence of its prohibition. Booze is a killer - a big killer - if, just as you rightly point out with cocaine, “you take enough”.
On the former point you are right which is why I would end prohibition, but it is a completely false equivalence to pretend that booze is as bad as coke, its not.
Coke turns its users into complete and utter twats in a way that booze does not.
Really not sure that's true
When I was banged up the screws were massively down on booze, because they knew it encourages violence. It is simultaneously a depressant and a disinhibitor, ultimately it puts many in a bad mood but encourages them to act out that bad mood. Hence the awful stats on alcohol and wifebeating etc
The wardens were much less concerned by dope, and not that concerned by coke. The first just makes you eat, and then sleepy, the second makes you talk like a twat and shove a firework up your arse, it doesn't reliably make you physically aggressive in the way booze does
Watched a YouTube channel a while back, a guy called Larry Lawton, ex con USA about life inside.
He was talking about prison hooch and how they made it. Looked rank.
Comments
Coke makes people utter twats.
I know tempers might still be raised but chapeau to you all nevertheless.
Think we should delete it or something - I was feeling sorry for Reeves even before I knew the clip was bogus.
SEA SQUIRTS
No one is quite sure why
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2024/20240515.htm
https://interconnected.org/home/2021/06/23/songbird
Bad as a pet cat.
Coke turns its users into complete and utter twats in a way that booze does not.
I do believe that it's perverse to incentivise the building of solar on good agricultural land, and what farmers should be incentivised to do is produce food. It seems unlikely that fracking does prevent agricultural land use in the same way that solar farms do - I imagine their impact is more like that of wind turbines. But if they do preclude agriculture in and around them, of course that should should be judged on a case by case basis, clearly not by a blanket ban. As PB's favourite libertarian, are you in favour of continuing the ban?
Let people do what they want with their own land.
If its not productive, they won't do it, if it is, they will.
So hypothetically if a farmer decides they want to stop farming and exclusively use their land for wind or solar, not incentivised by the state but purely by free market economics, are you OK with that?
Was he a bad guy or a good guy? No one is entirely sure if he was a Nazi informer or a Resistance hero
He kind of embodies the shame and glory of France, perhaps that is why he had, perplexingly, the French-est last meal, ever
On a similar theme watched "Small Town, Big Riot" earlier.
Less heinous than reposting social media from "concerned citizens" about Southport though.
A few of my cyclist friends reckon a lot of the scarier interactions we have with drivers is down to coke. I think it's just *people*, but I'm starting to wonder.
When I was banged up the screws were massively down on booze, because they knew it encourages violence. It is simultaneously a depressant and a disinhibitor, ultimately it puts many in a bad mood but encourages them to act out that bad mood. Hence the awful stats on alcohol and wifebeating etc
The wardens were much less concerned by dope, and not that concerned by coke. The first just makes you eat, and then sleepy, the second makes you talk like a twat and shove a firework up your arse, it doesn't reliably make you physically aggressive in the way booze does
Surely Keir would welcome that. After all, he believes in rerunning democratic votes at the slightest trace of a change in opinion, doesn't he?
So much more they want to be talking about but they can't because of this totally unforced policy error that wont even save the £1b claimed.
And if universal benefits are a terrible idea why have ministers literally today committed to bring in free breakfast for all primary kids from April?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11660210
'Vanessa Feltz Monstrous Al Fayed Tried To Frighten Me Into Submission'
(I knew her husband!)
I believe that the market sorts out most things, and I am certain that greater value lies in the food produced by fertile land than the potential power energy produced by small solar installations on top of it.
I don't think you can separate them. Where older generations would have smoked and drank, younger generations drink and get coked up.
And thanks to Fentanyl, they are dying out?
If it makes you fight it is usually as a display to your peers, LOOK I AM HARD AS WELL, it doesn't encourage violence per se
Alcohol really does. It disinhibits all instincts, from the libido to the death instinct, so if you have a violent grudge or a lurking resentment, when you are blind drunk that will come out, and you WILL attack people, especially those smaller than you, like wives
Gruesome but plausible
The reason booze gets an easier ride is because it’s legal and widespread, pure and simple. If we had rational approach to drugs policy that wasn’t based around prohibition we’d consider them all together in a fairer light. The health freaks would probably stick to mushrooms (and maybe the odd E).
1. Major corporations — including @doordash, @google, @walmart, @cvs, and @microsoft — have bankrolled an ongoing multi-million dollar effort to elect @markrobinsonNC. the next governor of North Carolina
Follow this thread for details…
https://x.com/JuddLegum/status/1838208167638974925
(it is also full of sugar and is very bad for your waistline, as I’ve discovered since reaching my mid years!)
The moralising over the current trend of use is that it's used as part of an all day bender down the pub/at the game/and so on rather than the traditional pick me up towards the end of a night out or at home. Meaning people to booze far more and far longer than they would otherwise do. So you get the ugly scenes and violence when you combine the two.
Coke is absolutely rife and basically a way of life for most people under 40 these days so clearly Prohibition has failed.
The only sensible way forward is to legalize and regulate. Same with Cannabis (but even more so) and probably Ecstasy .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haughey_(TV_series)
"Haughey is a four-part mini-series documenting the life of former Taoiseach Charles Haughey"
That was... a long night.
Gillian Jacobs and (before she got really famous) Margot Robbie.
They appeared together in Mr Sunshine (great historical drama series, btw), and it was nearly halfway through watching it before I realised they were two different characters (it’s a running joke in the drama).
Imagine how bad I would be if I DID
https://www.tweglobal.com/brands
But it still demonstrates just how widespread use is.
*The limit is lower in Scotland for alcohol too; you can barely get away with a half pint as you can in England.
People who snark at it don't remember how bad "mediocre wine" USED to be (and fair enough, they may be younglings)
Anyone over 45 can remember red or white so bad it made your tongue curl and your brain assume (correctly): instant hangover
Wine is a bit like airplanes. Fifty years ago planes regularly crashed, now these crashes are so rare they are noticeable and make headline news (even small ones). Ditto wine. Fifty years ago wines were often so bad it was hard to keep them down after a couple of glasses, now that is exceptionally unusual
19 Crimes would have passed for "rather good wine" back in 1984
Check it out from around 23:50
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gn1sbj8s-fA
The US is again developing a space gun.
Longshot is a building a cannon to gradually accelerate a projectile up to orbital launch speeds.
https://www.longshotspace.com/technology
The theoretical advantage - if it could be made to work reliably on a large scale - is much cheaper (another order of magnitude or so) cost to get mass into orbit.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/09/23/light-at-end-of-this-tunnel-starmer-tells-britain/
Alcohol is about same as class A drugs it seems, if you're likely to get tested then avoid weed or bennies
https://www.drugs.ie/drugs_info/about_drugs/how_long_do_drugs_stay_in_your_system/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0e1gjexyxno
Be interesting to see how this pans out.
On coke, I have no idea how you tell whether someone's been taking it. I don't even know what cannabis smells like, lol.
Beringer is pretty decent. And Penfold's make some very nice wine.
It is only because the Republicans chose Donald Trump as their nominee that there is even a contest right now.
I can see the appeal for those who like to live dangerously and feel like winners. I prefer a greater sense of stability these days.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2024-election-forecast/pennsylvania/
"Janet Jackson says Kamala Harris is ‘not black’
The singer said she had heard Ms Harris’s father ‘was white’. But Donald J Harris is a Jamaican-American academic"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2024/09/23/janet-jackson-kamala-harris-black/
He was talking about prison hooch and how they made it. Looked rank.
Did you get to try any inside ?