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Reading the "moving to another country" chat from a couple of pages back and it got my interest - obviously because I've done it but also other reasons. Canada is alright. It's less unrelentingly-grim than life in the UK. The government are liberals and the two alternative parties are centre-left and centre-right, so there's no hope of anything actually good... but at least I don't have to see the government trying to loving crucify immigrants and all that poo poo on the daily. Of course things aren't perfect here - I wouldn't want to move here without being at a moderately good level of qualification etc. - though that said, there are jobs here if you know where to look, that you can do and get paid like $30/hr (£18.20) to start and like $42/hr (£25.50) after a year or two, with no real qualifications or with a short course of a few weeks. Stuff like welding or working as a utilities locator (goes and tells people on building sites and at their homes where to/where not to dig to hit pipes and cables). Also apparently there can be some quite well-paying jobs for stuff like call centres here, but I'm not sure if you have to be bilignual? Anyway if you're working minimum wage here or close to it, life is gonna be pretty poo poo. House prices here are less than in the UK (excepting Vancouver and Toronto), and petrol is cheaper, but almost everything else is more expensive. Food inflation is currently ridiculous - and it was already way more expensive than the UK. Healthcare is totally hosed, by design - Doug Ford (Premier of Ontario, most populace province, and all-around piece of poo poo) is trying to privatise it. Overall I'm still glad I moved here. I wouldn't move back - the political climate in the UK and the press are just too depressing. Thinking about that stuff got me wondering though. Is there anywhere in the world that isn't now hosed for ordinary people? Like, houses and food, energy and daily essentials are affordable for the average person, and there's good access to healthcare and reasonable working rights and social safety-nets and that kind of thing? I know some Northern European countries used to have reputations for that sort of thing but IDK if that's still true? Supposedly Spain and Portugal might have their poo poo together to some extent? I've seen some people mention Vietnam is a good place to live but IDK enough about it. E: Cat tax  We got the cats some paper rope for them to chase around. I figure it's probably better for their teeth than any kind of fibre rope, since they like to bite and pull on it a lot. It is a hit. Excuse my messy table, it's usually... well nah it's usually a mess tbh. WhatEvil fucked around with this message at 19:18 on Mar 9, 2023 |
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Mar 9, 2023 19:13
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I'd go to Canada if it wasn't for the mosquitoes and snow
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Mar 9, 2023 19:16
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Gort posted:I'd go to Canada if it wasn't for the mosquitoes and snow Oh yeah I mean those are factors. Mosquitoes aren't necessarily too bad. It depends where exactly you live, if your municipality has a program to reduce them etc. Otherwise you just avoid being outside at dusk and/or wear repellant. The snow can be nuts but again you get used to it. I guess if you don't like the cold and winter then yeah, fair.
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Mar 9, 2023 19:20
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I used to like the cold and then I lost 3 stone and I'm cold all the time and I seem to have an aura that attracts every biting insect in a mile radius
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Mar 9, 2023 19:37
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Gort posted:I used to like the cold and then I lost 3 stone and I'm cold all the time and I seem to have an aura that attracts every biting insect in a mile radius That happened to me. About 10 years ago I lost weight down to a 'normal' BMI and not only did I no longer float in the pool, or slowly rise if I sat on the bottom (which was scary - I never believed before that some people did not float) but I have never felt so cold in my whole life.
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Mar 9, 2023 19:44
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Hmm I was about to embark on a journey to lose a couple of stone and get back to a healthy weight... but now you've got me thinking if I should keep some blubber.
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Mar 9, 2023 19:51
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otoh if we're going to have more of those 42C summers, I can always put some more jumpers on in winter
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Mar 9, 2023 19:53
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h/t to our thread-exiled libdem for this but Jessflips read out Brianna Ghey's name in parliament and the fashfems are furious https://twitter.com/ThePosieParker/status/1633829695069523968
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Mar 9, 2023 19:56
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Miftan posted:Does Flint, MI have clean drinking water yet? There's a lot of data one way or the other on this, but to paint a broader picture of where we're at on this front, Mississippi's capital city with 150,000 residents hasn't had reliable running water for almost a year now, and large portions of it haven't in years. The last few years especially have been a voyage of discovery in regards to how our infrastructure and government is able to deal with twice a year 500 year floods becoming the new norm (they're preparing to consider acknowledging it and thank the Federal government for the dump truck full of cash that helped them and their pals consider the problem properly). Moving here you'll get a slightly better press and slightly better center-right opposition party, I can't imagine it'll be worth it. Even if you doubled your salary moving here, we're well set up to make sure you end up worse off anyway.
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Mar 9, 2023 20:10
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be fat do crimes 
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Mar 9, 2023 20:10
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Tesseraction posted:h/t to our thread-exiled libdem for this but Jessflips read out Brianna Ghey's name in parliament and the fashfems are furious https://twitter.com/ThePosieParker/status/1633829695069523968 Actually going to give Phillips a bit of credit there for one of the bolder pieces of activism in a career that's largely been an exercise in narcissism. Acknowledging Brianna as a girl (and specifically as a victim of misogynistic violence) is certainly more than her party leader would ever do.
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Mar 9, 2023 20:15
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how did the SNP end up with such duds to choose between for leader
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Mar 9, 2023 20:52
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crispix posted:how did the SNP end up with such duds to choose between for leader Put too many of their eggs in a Sturgeon-shaped basket. Mmm... caviar.
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Mar 9, 2023 21:18
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Also, the usual free-fall to the bottom of the talent pool that comes when you're the biggest political party. See also: the Tories and Labour.
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Mar 9, 2023 21:20
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Is she the anti gay marriage one?
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Mar 9, 2023 21:25
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Lol. The Boris Shagger has been fact checked by the Boer 
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Mar 9, 2023 21:29
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https://twitter.com/backoffscotland/status/1633919238451634176
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Mar 9, 2023 21:41
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grobbo posted:Is there a name for the phenomenon that I feel like we keep seeing with the UK media and in very different ways, Rowling and Lineker? I'd call it gatekeeping. In both cases they're rallying around a member of the elite and shifting the argument to decorum so they don't have to debate the substance.
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Mar 9, 2023 21:48
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WhatEvil posted:
Anecdotally, my Portuguese friend just came back from visiting home and said they couldn't work out how anyone could survive there with minimum wage any more, I think cost of living is pretty hosed there too now.
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Mar 9, 2023 21:55
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TheDeadlyShoe posted:I'd call it gatekeeping. In both cases they're rallying around a member of the elite and shifting the argument to decorum so they don't have to debate the substance. It doesn't matter if there's any merit to what they're saying, what matters is if the audience is going 'ooooh' or 'boooo' at them.
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Mar 9, 2023 22:03
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grobbo posted:Is there a name for the phenomenon that I feel like we keep seeing with the UK media and in very different ways, Rowling and Lineker? The British Press Corps
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Mar 9, 2023 22:44
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WhatEvil posted:
I don't particularly think the UK political climate is all that unique. Many European countries are currently wrestling with right wing popularism. The media though is probably the worst in the world. At least I can just disengage though. Every now and again I just unbookmark this thread and I generally feel better for it, but then some big thing happens and I just got to see what the threads take is. My wife leads a pretty blissful life completely devoid of politics, she couldn't care less.
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Mar 9, 2023 23:06
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Mega Comrade posted:but then some big thing happens and I just got to see what the threads take is. Wondering what us blokes thoughts are, eh?
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Mar 9, 2023 23:09
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WhatEvil posted:I know some Northern European countries used to have reputations for that sort of thing but IDK if that's still true? Supposedly Spain and Portugal might have their poo poo together to some extent? I've seen some people mention Vietnam is a good place to live but IDK enough about it. A friend lived in Vietnam for a good few years and married a Vietnamese woman, but moved back to the UK late 2010s. He loved it there, and he was very much a fan of the way it was utterly different to the UK, and said that whether it was Ho Chi Minh City or rural villages, everyone was just incredibly friendly and chill in a way he'd never encountered in western europe. However there was very real ever-present political censorship, ideological education in schools (I guess if you're worried about a country veering rightwards politically, Vietnam is one place you don't have to worry about that!) and also apparently the drinking culture is extremely problematic if you are remotely prone to having trouble that way. He always liked a drink but I think he was finding it hard not to head towards alcoholism, basically. That could, of course, just be him and the people he knew and worked with there. It's probably quite different and some of the cultural differences or political considerations will be less of a concern if you have a nice highly paid job in big multinational just working and spending your time with expats and people paid a lot to rotate there for a year or two, and living in areas with those folk tho, or of course it'd be fine if you specifically want to live somewhere with a Communist party in charge. He ended up moving back over here largely because he was uncomfortable about his kids continuing their education in Vietnam, as the ideological content taking up pretty signficant chunks of their lessons was starting to make him really concerned and he didn't feel the schooling was equal to the UK even beyond that. He definitely misses living there, but really just said it wasn't somewhere he'd want to bring up a family because it wouldn't really prepare them well for living somewhere else.
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Mar 9, 2023 23:51
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Microplastics posted:Wondering what us blokes thoughts are, eh? That's pretty disingenuous. But lol if it's a lol.
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Mar 9, 2023 23:51
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jokes on him then, the education system is collapsing so no worries about potential indoctrination or even basic education here!
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Mar 9, 2023 23:54
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Ataxerxes posted:Hah, small world indeed. I was there 2002 - 2007 and active in AURA at the time, though less so in the last year. Huh, no poo poo? That was when I was most active there. Wonder if we knew each other? I mostly played in David-the-giant or Fat-Tony’s games. Was a big loud guy with long blond hair and generally wearing too much leather lol. Actually now I come to think of it I’m pretty sure there was a Finnish dude in David’s Arcana Unearthed game in about 2003.. is the world really /really/ small?
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Mar 9, 2023 23:55
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Jel Shaker posted:jokes on him then, the education system is collapsing so no worries about potential indoctrination or even basic education here! The capitalist indoctrination will remain long after the basis education withers away
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Mar 10, 2023 00:32
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It'll somehow be far worse than just 'capitalist indoctrination', in the same way that the Adam Smith Institute always gets Adam Smith wrong and/or ignores what he said about land and sectarianism. [9am History] The Spectator Presents: The 1850s - Britain is food self-sufficient and the Irishman is too lazy to farm properly [10am Politics] The Daily Mail Presents: Hitler the Socialist (please don't read what we said about him at the time) [11am Ethics and RSE] Rachel Johnson Presents: Stanley Johnson did not benefit from nepotism via Boris Johnson [Lunchtime] Rod Liddle Presents: Nothing, he's just hanging around the girls toilets, but at least there's no genders in there
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Mar 10, 2023 01:08
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https://twitter.com/DawnButlerBrent/status/1633861977058492416
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Mar 10, 2023 01:17
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Tesseraction posted:I love to revisit that story from time to time lol  British house chat. I am currently staying in a house of a friend in West Norwood in London. She is working abroad for a few months. It's a 2 bed terraced house with a garden, in what apparently is considered to be 'a lovely part of South London' (I don't think so, but whatever). This house is so cold that, no matter how much you heat it, you are never warm in it. When you stand next to the windows, the wind happily travels through them, it's like living in a Colosseum. The bathroom, which must have been a bedroom in the olden days, with a massive single glazed window is a great place to get pneumonia, you have to heat it with an electric heater for 1 hour to have a shower in it. The kitchen has no heater/radiator in it. But the joke is on me. According to my friend, this house can be easily sold for £600K.
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Mar 10, 2023 01:51
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people on FB seem to be pushing this: https://action.electoral-reform.org.uk/page/123606/petition/1 I haven't yet suggested crossing out "male supermajority in the"
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Mar 10, 2023 02:06
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Better link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnmtMdTFi8I Jaeluni Asjil fucked around with this message at 02:47 on Mar 10, 2023 |
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Mar 10, 2023 02:44
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WhatEvil posted:Thinking about that stuff got me wondering though. Is there anywhere in the world that isn't now hosed for ordinary people? Like, houses and food, energy and daily essentials are affordable for the average person, and there's good access to healthcare and reasonable working rights and social safety-nets and that kind of thing? Honestly I think quite often we set ourselves a sadly low bar for what is considered a good standard of living. I live in Norway, which still tends to swap places with the other Nordics on lists of the best country for [thing you want in a society]. It's hard to imagine moving back to the UK at this point, and that is reinforced every time I visit. But there are still plenty of problems here and it doesn't take much imagination to think how much improved life could be for most people with really quite moderate* changes. I like it here fine, but it's not exactly the cosy egalitarian utopia the tourist brochures claim. Much like I think many people in the UK don't realise how bad things are there compared with close neighbours, people almost everywhere don't realise, or perhaps don't believe, that things could easily be much better. It's one of the things you saw with Corbyn, right? He said "things don't have to be poo poo" and the people who weren't saying "actually we like it this way" just said "we don't believe you". *definitions of moderate may vary
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Mar 10, 2023 02:54
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bornbytheriver posted:West Norwood in London South London is, at least from my family's experience (based in Norwood), where the paups are meant to rot in misery while commuting to provide services to the rich closer/north of the river. Any South London goons can feel free to counter me but coming from a nowhere town to visit family in South London was astounded how lovely the area was compared to my glorified car park for the train station.
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Mar 10, 2023 03:05
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Can't see this happening given how much MPs, govt ministers, cops etc use Whatsapp & I'm not convinced most of them would have the know-how to get round it with a VPN. https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/whatsapp-uk-ban-online-safety-bill-update-b2297496.html quote:WhatsApp could be banned in the UK, its head has warned.
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Mar 10, 2023 03:43
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Jaeluni Asjil posted:Can't see this happening given how much MPs, govt ministers, cops etc use Whatsapp & I'm not convinced most of them would have the know-how to get round it with a VPN. Well, that would be one way to try and "stop" this kind of problem:
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Mar 10, 2023 05:33
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I agree, the police must have the ability to read the police whatsapp groups, so we need to teach the police how to read.
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Mar 10, 2023 05:45
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maybe the police could use some skills wallets?
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Mar 10, 2023 06:20
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Camrath posted:Huh, no poo poo? That was when I was most active there. Wonder if we knew each other? I mostly played in David-the-giant or Fat-Tony’s games. Was a big loud guy with long blond hair and generally wearing too much leather lol. Yea, that was very likely me. Played some sort of lion humanoid fighter, if memory serves. David was and still is a nice fellow but I never much cared for Tony. The University of Aberdeen, for some reason, sent people to advertise at Finnish student fairs in the early 2000's which is how I ended up there. It was much easier to get into a History Bachelor's program than in Finnish university and due to the way things were with the SAAS and the EU you didn't need to pay tuition fees as an EU citizen. A far few Finns ended up studying in Aberdeen and Scotland in general.
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