Guavanaut posted:

It's like when people romanticize the Victorian Era as when everyone was polite and then you read any literature about 'the city' from that era of mass urbanization and the more lurid stuff is all "the barber what murdered his customers and mugged them" and "the pieman that put cats in" and even the less sensationalist stuff is complaining about pimps and surly porters.

Bobstar posted:

DreddyMatt posted:

Seems incredibly dangerous. Gotta remain perfectly still getting sucked while someone holds a straight razor to your throat.

The Question IRL posted:

I'm fairly sure that there was QTE for this exact scenario in Shenmue 2.

keep punching joe posted:

Turkish barbers are a bit of a hack to exploit the entrepreneur visa. Cheap to set up, you don't need any formal qualifications, and you can hire family members. Useful if you want a cheap haircut, just hope it isn't a poo poo one.

Guavanaut posted:

I wonder what the next entrepreneurial venture to get accused of being secret brothels/drug gangs will be.

fuctifino posted:

https://twitter.com/mikegalsworthy/status/1689510488487481344

keep punching joe posted:

Turkish barbers are a bit of a hack to exploit the entrepreneur visa. Cheap to set up, you don't need any formal qualifications, and you can hire family members. Useful if you want a cheap haircut, just hope it isn't a poo poo one.

crispix posted:

website wants money to read it (lol) so i'll just assume ben had a fundamental problem understanding the "remain" and "leave" choices on the ballot

quote:

‘I made a huge mistake’: Brexit-voting Briton can’t get visa to live in his £43,000 Italian home

A 35-year-old graphic designer from Bristol told i he wishes he could ‘turn back time and vote Remain’

ROME – A 35-year-old Briton who voted for Brexit says he made “a huge mistake” and is now paying the price after failing to obtain a long-term visa that would allow him to live in his new Italian home.

Ben, a graphic designer from Bristol whose real name i has agreed to withhold, bought a four-bedroom cottage near Lake Turano, near Rome, for €50,000 (£43,000), two years ago.

But despite spending €60,000 (£52,000) on renovations and turning half the property into a bed and breakfast, he has failed to reach the minimum annual income to get the long-term elective residency visa (ERV).

“I was so wrong, and my application was rejected. I felt like dying, all my dreams were shattered,” he told i.

“I voted for Brexit because I thought it was actually going to make it easier for me to buy a home and live in the Med, so many American friends of mine have one and they’re non-European.

“Now I wish I could turn back time and vote Remain. I made a huge mistake.”

Ben is not the first Brexit-voting Briton to be blindsided by the new rules on travel and emigration to Europe after the UK left the European Union.

Last month, Greg Walter, a retiree from Winchester, told i he felt “betrayed” after voting for Brexit and then finding himself unable to get a visa to live in his Italian home full-time.

i contacted other Britons with second homes in Italy who initially gave their consent to a story then withdrew it over fears Italian consulates may penalise them for sharing their experience with the media.

The requirement to obtain an ERV is having a “passive” annual income of €31,000 (£27,000) per person, or €38,000 (£33,000) per year for couples, from pensions, annuities or rentals.

Ben is single and not retired, but thought revenues from running a B&B would qualify as a rental. When the consulate rejected his application he was told that having a B&B is “active income”, and that he would need to rent his whole Italian property on a fixed term if he wanted this to qualify – meaning he could not live in it himself.

He plans to re-apply next year but fears a rejection from the Italian consulate in London if he talks openly about his situation.

“It’s so complicated, they never gave me any information or assistance, now I’m scared that if I openly criticise them, they’ll reject my second application as vengeance,” he said.

He has decided to keep his Italian cottage tenant-free and will soon start renting on a permanent basis a three-bedroom apartment he owns in Brighton, confident it will qualify next time as “passive income”.

Immigration lawyer Elze Obrikyte at Giambrone & Partners in Palermo, who assists British visa applicants for Italy, believes their fears are partly justified.

“It is extremely hard to get a ERV, the rate of rejection is above 50 per cent and granting it is at the discretion of the single officer who handles the application and may freely interpret the rules when it comes to income requirements, so I understand applicants’ concerns in going public,” the lawyer told i.

The Italian consulate in London, which deals with the largest chunk of visa applications in the UK, dismissed claims there could ever be “payback” when contacted by i.

In a written email, it said that any statements to journalists by visa applicants “are in no case taken into account and the activity of the office in the examination of visa applications is substantiated only and exclusively in the verification of the possession of the requirements of the current legislation by the applicants”.

Darth Walrus posted:

Apparently they got bored of waiting for the refugee prison barge to catch fire?

Darth Walrus posted:

https://twitter.com/theipaper/status/1689678558199783445?s=46&t=ARI_L-v32Oind1-d9B3a3Q

Apparently they got bored of waiting for the refugee prison barge to catch fire?

DreddyMatt posted:

Don't know what rents are like in Brighton, but that guy is aiming for over 2k/mo for a 3 bed flat. Seems a bit ambitious.
Funniest result is he gets tenants in, gets his visa rejected, and has to rent out another property for the duration of the tenancy

Runcible Cat posted:

"It was never like this in the reign of Good Queen Anne!"

OwlFancier posted:

I mean maybe I'm biased cos I've been listening to lots of late 1800's/early 1900's ghost/detective fiction but it mostly seems like it's full of poshos writing about how positively ghastly the lower orders are and how they're definitely going to steal your jewels by jove.]

It's romantic in the sense that there's usually some very elaborate scheme involved and the detectives are terribly witty and brilliant but the fundamental sense of aristo anxiety about the state of everything (especially other aristos) is the big constant.

The overhwelming impression I'm getting of the era is that it's full of rich people who apparently have absolutely no imagination at all and spend all their day at "the club" boozing and hobnobbing with other pickled old gits and this is what passes for employment among their section of society, but they're all very miserable about it for some reason. While everyone else is incredibly stressed out about everything and dying of weird diseases or having their husbands killed at sea.

BalloonFish posted:

Gilbert and Sullivan wrote at least two songs with this line in it almost word for word.

Of course, they were satirising it and the characters saying/singing it are a sham intellectual and a blowhard overly-patriotic peer. But it must have been a genuine and common enough sentiment in the 1880s for Gilbert to write a lyric mocking it.

Pistol_Pete posted:

People in those days liked to read about rich people in their popular fiction as a means of escapism: you may not own a country house and be a member of one of the clubs off Pall Mall, but it's still an enjoyable fantasy to read about the people who DO live like that. It's not too different today: think about the number of costume dramas about poor olden day people vs the ones about rich fucks riding around in carriages and going to balls and stuff.

Guavanaut posted:

Probably because back then if you went out in public and stood outside a traditional barber's shop shouting "that's a brothel! amongst our homes!" they'd put you on thorazine Margaret.

Runcible Cat posted:

I have absolutely no doubt that "things are poo poo now but they used to be much better because people knew how to behave back then" is one of the great universals of human nature, and a genuine and common sentiment in every human society ever.

Julio Cruz posted:

nothing says "Turkish" like the name, uh, Aiden

kingturnip posted:

He might have anglicised it. Aydin is a fairly common Turkish name

Julio Cruz posted:

I mean if you're going to be a Turkish barber I don't see why you'd do that

(also you'd probably put "Turkish" somewhere on your shop, which this guy hasn't)