Guavanaut posted:

Apparently they kept doing it until 1939 by switching the locomotive out at Barking, but I guess during post-war austerity it was easier to switch the passengers out.

Ratjaculation posted:

If you ever go to a country where squat toilets are the norm, look on the seat of a western style-toilet for bootprints where the locals have overcome, adapted and thrived (and squatted)

JeremoudCorbynejad posted:

Anyway is it illegal to project an image of a penis on a national monument, asking for a friend

Jaeluni Asjil posted:

I remember going to a gay club - predominantly male clientele - in north London about 25 years ago with a gay friend and the seats in the 'ladies' all had shoe prints on. I think it was called something like the Salmon and Cucumber?

Borrovan posted:

Didn't Boris Johnson himself literally call a half-million quid salary for a part time job a "pittance", or "pocket money" or something? Or was it Gideon

goddamnedtwisto posted:

They started using Q-stock electric multiple units rather than loco-hauled in 1938, so I'm willing to bet that's the actual difference.

Aramoro posted:

Was it even a question that Momentum would back the Continuity Corbyn Candidate?

KOGAHAZAN!! posted:

Well, that's why I'm curious. We've got a third of the CorboThugForce here who voted against her. Forgot it was a pure approval ballot, though.

StarkingBarfish posted:

Guardian live feed is extremely salty about the inevitable momentum backing of rlb. Photo showing her beside corbs, saying turnout was low, and then the next post is about how starmer comes out top as a 'strong leader'

Guavanaut posted:

Would that be an issue? It sounds like it'd just remove one of the steps if the lines themselves aren't electrified.

OwlFancier posted:

I have to wonder why people have such strong feelings one way or another about the labour leadership candidates cos I know basically gently caress all about any of them.

What the hell makes starmer a "strong leader" he's not led anything yet.

goddamnedtwisto posted:

Nice hair, strong jaw, posh accent.

quote:

Five thousand people died before they could be reimbursed for a government error that left chronically ill and disabled benefit claimants thousands of pounds out of pocket, it has emerged.

Approximately 70,000 claimants were originally estimated to have been underpaid about £340m between 2011 and 2014, after being transferred from older benefits on to the employment and support allowance (ESA) during a government overhaul of incapacity benefits.

Figures released on Thursday, which showed 5,000 ill and disabled people died before receiving the money they were owed, were described as a “national scandal” by Marsha de Cordova, the Labour MP and disability rights campaigner.

The government has been conducting a review of cases potentially affected by the error, which arose when some people who were receiving incapacity benefit and severe disablement allowance had their claims converted to contributory ESA.

However, officials at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) failed to follow their own legal guidelines governing the transfer process, meaning that in many cases they failed to properly check claimants’ full entitlements. The review has been looking through 600,000 potential cases of those who missed out. Some 122,000 people have now been repaid £5,000 each on average, according to the new figures.

The ESA failure was overseen by the then Conservative former secretary of state for work and pensions, Iain Duncan Smith, who was in post for all but the last few months of the period covered by a damning public accounts committee (PAC) report. The current housing minister, Esther McVey, was a DWP minister between 2013 and 2015.

Evan Odell, a researcher at Disability Rights UK, said: “That 5,000 disabled people were denied the proper support to live independently before they died is scandalous, as is the 112,000 people who had had to wait years for these errors to be corrected.

“To make matters worse, the problems with the employment and support allowance system that have led to hundreds of millions of pounds of arrears payments are still present. Seventy-five per cent of ESA applicants who appeal DWP decisions to the social security tribunal win; this case is merely one more piece of evidence showing how ESA is not fit for purpose.”

Marsha de Cordova MP said: “It is a national scandal that a decade of delay has meant that 5,000 ill and disabled people have died before receiving the money that they were owed as a result of ESA underpayments.

“The government must now speedily complete the remaining reassessments for the thousands of people still waiting so that everyone who has lost out receives payment as quickly as possible.

“The Conservatives have consistently failed sick and disabled people. The continued delay in righting this wrong is disgraceful.”

The department said it has finished processing 97percent of potentially affected cases and so far around one percent of these have resulted in an arrears payment in respect of a claimant who has passed away.

A DWP spokesperson said: “We have worked hard to ensure that anyone affected by this issue receives the benefits they are entitled to, and in the minority of cases where a claimant has sadly died we have paid their next of kin.”

In 2018, a cross-party group of MPs criticised the DWP’s “culture of indifference” after it took six years to correct the error .

The cost of fixing the error, which the PAC report said stemmed from a string of avoidable management failures, was expected to cost the DWP at least £340m in back payments to claimants and £14m in administrative costs.

The figures showing that 5,000 of those affected date from 12 January 2020. The DWP expects them to change as staff continue to work on the exercise to check potentially affected cases.

Apraxin posted:

https://mobile.twitter.com/BBCPolitics/status/1217000076264050688
How does it keep getting stupider?!?

Niric posted:

There's a lot to parse in this article, both good and bad, but I thought this was an interesting take even though there's an awful lot to disagree with. It seems to come from a Brexit & Blue Labour sympathetic position, so there's certainly plenty of arguable and downright infuriating assumptions and statements, but the account of centrism and its electoral failings in particular I thought was well made, and it's worth reading the whole thing to get a slightly different analysis that's critical of both liberal centrism and Corbyn-style leftism.

Gray doesn't quite say this, but when he's talking about the New Labour project I think he touches on something that really doesn't get mentioned at all by people harking back to Blair: the tactic of directly and explicitly bringing the professional middle classes into your project only works when they aren't already your core vote. Labour's electoral coalition, and electoral problems, are not the same in 2020 as they were in 1992 (or 1987, or 1983)

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2020/01/why-left-keeps-losing

Apraxin posted:

https://mobile.twitter.com/BBCPolitics/status/1217000076264050688
How does it keep getting stupider?!?

goddamnedtwisto posted:

You can't tow an EMU behind a loco at much more than walking speed unless you extensively modify the loco to work with the brake system, which used the (solidly attached to the axles) motors for the majority of the braking effort - the pneumatic brakes were generally only used in emergencies or for parking (plot up in the right place on a tube train and you can actually watch the pressure gauge under the seats over the front-right set of wheels (oriented to the depot) if that floats your boat - if you see it flicker on the way into the station that normally means the driver's overcooked it).

I don't know about the Q-Stock in particular, but I'm willing to bet that the electrics weren't that sophisticated, so you'd also have to do something with all the electricity being generated by spinning the motors even when not braking. Just dumping it to earth through the tracks almost certainly wouldn't be an option on a non-electrified line, especially as that might also be the signalling system earth and gently caress knows what dumping shitloads of current into it would do.

Obviously you probably could design something that could be used as just a trailer when needed, but that's a lot of extra complexity, weight, and potential points of failure just to save someone having to change platforms at Upminster or West Ham.

OwlFancier posted:

I dunno all these loving weirdo libs who want to be daddy dommed by a strong leader weird me the hell out. If you're into that just put on the leather gear like a normal person. You don't need to enlist the entire apparatus of the state into fulfilling your wank fantasy.

Azza Bamboo posted:

Guavanaut posted:

the one where Sonic uses a toilet wrong

Pistol_Pete posted:

I've said it before, but John Gray could save himself a lot of typing simply by writing: "Everyone in the world is stupid, except me " and leaving it at that. He does have flashes of insight but they're always buried under an avalanche of pompous, old-man: "This statement is true because I assert that it is" intellectual laziness.

thespaceinvader posted:

The sycophancy is deeply disturbing, as is the open acceptance that loving 500 grand is something the coutnry couldn't just. Pay.

Like, 500 grand is the kind of money I personally could probably have accessed at one point, had I remained in full time work.

It's such a pittance they should be laughing him out of the room when he say we need to loving crowdfund it.

WhatEvil posted:

It's not about the money, or about big ben, or about the bongs. It's a jingoistic distraction to try to convince all the dumb gently caress Tory Leave voters that it's all patriotic and let's have a grand gesture to celebrate what a huge success Brexit is going to be...

Until they have to blame it on the perfidious EU for not giving us what we wanted and cheating the British people and Are Soverenteh.

goddamnedtwisto posted:

Not compared to "London Southend" and "London Oxford" it isn't.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbAal7jIWQ4

OwlFancier posted:

I have to wonder why people have such strong feelings one way or another about the labour leadership candidates cos I know basically gently caress all about any of them.

What the hell makes starmer a "strong leader" he's not led anything yet.

Bobby Deluxe posted:

Haven't caught up with the thread, but

1) Rarity, if you need a new handset I have a spare Xperia X I can send you free of charge,

2) Can someone just check podcast Rob is OK and that we keep any Polly Toynbee articles away from him?

Ms Adequate posted:

Are we still talking about airports?

gently caress Schiphol.

That's my entire airport take.

Bobstar posted:

I'm intrigued to hear why you dislike it

Debbie Does Dagon posted:

Not sure if this has been posted yet

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jan/16/people-died-benefits-error

gh0stpinballa posted:

i think emotionally i finally entered my 30s today, cos that loki guy on twitter exposed who is behind red roar or whatever and while it was kind of funny watching centrist dads poo poo their knickers for a bit, after that i was like meh who really gives a poo poo, if it wasn't that ghoul behind red roar it would be some other ghoul

edit: i've already forgotten the guy's name, lol mentally entered my 30s too it seems

sebzilla posted:

Goondolences.

Have you started making satisfied noises when you get to sit down, yet?

sebzilla posted:

Goondolences.

Have you started making satisfied noises when you get to sit down, yet?