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NotJustANumber99 posted:tesco meal deal is like £3.40! 
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Sep 22, 2023 23:20
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Fumble posted:I went to a waitrose today and spotted a £26 bottle of fancy olive oil and im still a little bit in shock. I've seen more expensive, believe it or not. Think the most I've seen was a £35 bottle, and just 500ml of oil. Needless to say I've never tried that.
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Sep 22, 2023 23:21
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I wonder if relative purchasing power makes that more expensive than it would have been for a Roman Plebeian.
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Sep 22, 2023 23:22
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forkboy84 posted:I've seen more expensive, believe it or not. Think the most I've seen was a £35 bottle, and just 500ml of oil. Needless to say I've never tried that. And it still won’t be as good as stuff you can get at a corner shop on a Greek island for €5
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Sep 22, 2023 23:24
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fuctifino posted:Alas... Why dont peter and mary still live together?
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Sep 22, 2023 23:34
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fuctifino posted:Alas... those are some very silly names for settlements
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Sep 22, 2023 23:35
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if i walked in on someone playing sim city and they had used names like that it'd give me cause for concern
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Sep 22, 2023 23:37
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Brendan Rodgers posted:There is a time and a place for a giant bowl of unflavoured porridge, but if someone was eating it and raving about how it deserves some of those stars granted by the tyre company, you would know they need to try more foods. Also it's 70 frigging quid
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Sep 22, 2023 23:56
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crispix posted:if i walked in on someone playing sim city and they had used names like that it'd give me cause for concern  Brendan Rodgers posted:There is a time and a place for a giant bowl of unflavoured porridge 
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Sep 23, 2023 00:08
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crispix posted:those are some very silly names for settlements Not sure what Peter & Mary Tavy did to get places named after them but it can't have been good
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Sep 23, 2023 00:15
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forkboy84 posted:Not sure what Peter & Mary Tavy did to get places named after them but it can't have been good Probably for the crime of living along the banks of the river Tavy, I'd have guessed. e: Mary Tavy was named after the church of St Mary that was/is in the village e2: and Peter Tavy was named after the church of St Peter that was/is in that village fuctifino fucked around with this message at 00:26 on Sep 23, 2023 |
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Sep 23, 2023 00:22
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They should name their parishes after proper southwestern saints like Endellion and Nectan.
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Sep 23, 2023 00:31
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grobbo posted:Hell, yes. It's a sin that popular culture latched onto Harry Potter when we should have seen big-screen Jim Henson Jarvis adaptations instead.
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Sep 23, 2023 01:02
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Bobby Deluxe posted:I can never tell how good it is, because every time I check online it's either the second coming of christ or the worst affront to humanity since Jeffrey Epstein. It seems like the fallout 4 formula but in space, except also it's like, spread over a bunch of procgen planets, so you get the weird samey feeling of random generation and repeated encounters and also no sense of a cohesive world? Everything's just seemingly plopped around your landing site. I haven't got it and I like bethsoft games as a rule, just seems like they've basically stepped back on a bunch of important stuff in order to make it space themed. Honestly I was watching many a true nerd play it on youtube and I'm not even sure I want to continue, I normally like his stuff even though he's a bit extra, but the game just isn't holding my attention. It's like watching someone play no man's sky. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 01:17 on Sep 23, 2023 |
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Sep 23, 2023 01:14
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I've put 26 hours into Starfield and enjoyed it, but it feels like a game that will really come to life once modding tools are fully released. By which I mean, the weird limits Bethesda put into the game will eventually be overcome. Not the whole 'gently caress anything you can see' side of modding, although there's no kinkshaming here unless you're talking about Sarah, in which case what the gently caress is wrong with you?
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Sep 23, 2023 01:55
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By any objective measure Starfield is a middling-to-decent game. I have put over 160 hours into it since release.
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Sep 23, 2023 03:48
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Starfield is another perfectly OK Bethesda RPG but it didn't help that it came out right after Baldurs Gate 3 which is exceptional.
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Sep 23, 2023 06:49
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Anyone else involved in the university labour dispute who is as annoyed as I am with how it's proceeding? For those of you who aren't familiar with it, the UCU, the main university employee union, has been involved in the longest-lasting labour dispute in UK history (5-6 years now, I believe). We were striking last year and when the university negotiating body, the UCEA, refused to even negotiate, the union membership called for a marking boycott towards the end of the academic year. Normally, this is the nuclear option, as it means that students don't get their work assessed, can't finish exams, and ultimately can't graduate. Except that many unis, including my own, called the UCU's bluff and just guaranteed students the ability to graduate with a placeholder degree while docking the pay of participating staff 30-100% (my uni docked 50%). As soon as that happened, I could see that we were in a losing position, and indeed the UCEA barely budged over the summer while many academic staff lost a month or two of income and then withdrew because they just couldn't sustain it financially. I'm at a Scottish uni and our academic year starts in early September. The only real leverage our local UCU branch had was to strike in the first two weeks, which causes real disruption because it means that students can't get assigned to classes, advised on their degree path, etc. We had two weeks of strikes scheduled, but the local branch ultimately called them off at the last minute in exchange for the uni retroactively restoring pay for those who participated in the marking boycott over the summer. Then the national UCU called for strikes next week, and we were scheduled to participate... until our membership inexplicably voted to opt out, despite not receiving any offer from the uni. Now I'm reading that 89 of 140 branches across the country opted out of striking, at least in some cases because they've been offered what sound like token concessions by administrators (https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/sep/22/university-staff-union-backs-away-from-uk-wide-strikes-as-support-wanes). What the gently caress is this strategy?! The whole thing is such a shambles. The moment unis announced that they would undercut the marking boycott by awarding placeholder degrees the union should have called it off and switched to 100% indefinite strikes from the first day of the semester. That would have been a WAY more effective use of their leverage and saved people from real financial hardship. Now people are pissed off that all their suffering with the marking boycott was for nothing and are beginning to scatter to the winds.
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Sep 23, 2023 08:15
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Putting my call out again for Union Understander goons in this thread who might be able to advise me
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Sep 23, 2023 08:31
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Wait, does he have a doll version of himself on a shelf behind him?
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Sep 23, 2023 08:35
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What, a Mr Potato Head?
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Sep 23, 2023 08:49
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MeinPanzer posted:Anyone else involved in the university labour dispute who is as annoyed as I am with how it's proceeding? Not involved, but my general observation would be that large groups of people vote in stupid and self-defeating ways very often, and the fact that they're union members doesn't necessarily make them less prone to this. You could point to a failure of leadership if the case against accepting the proposals wasn't made well enough, but from experience it's often very difficult to stop people jumping on the first offer they get. My union very rarely recommends against accepting the negotiated annual pay award but the one time in recent memory that we did it was still voted through overwhelmingly because members see "more money" and say "yes please."
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Sep 23, 2023 08:50
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smellmycheese posted:Putting my call out again for Union Understander goons in this thread who might be able to advise me I know a few things, what's up?
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Sep 23, 2023 08:51
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smellmycheese posted:And it still won’t be as good as stuff you can get at a corner shop on a Greek island for €5 Yeah but that's only because it's their "thing". I bet if you live on the Greek island, you have to go to your local Περίμενετριαντάφυλλο and pay €5 to get a small packet of Monster Munch.
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Sep 23, 2023 08:57
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Bobstar posted:Yeah but that's only because it's their "thing". I bet if you live on the Greek island, you have to go to your local Περίμενετριαντάφυλλο and pay €5 to get a small packet of Monster Munch. Why do that if you can buy delicious oregano-flavoured crisps instead?
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Sep 23, 2023 09:15
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sebzilla posted:Not involved, but my general observation would be that large groups of people vote in stupid and self-defeating ways very often, and the fact that they're union members doesn't necessarily make them less prone to this. Frankly, at this point I would be OK to call off further action if the UCEA just offered a decent pay rise and nothing else, but we haven't even gotten that--our uni hasn't even made a token pay rise offer to entice the branch to call off its action and the UCEA is, to my knowledge, no longer even negotiating with the UCU. Now, my own branch has basically come away with nothing and we've pissed away all our possible leverage until next year by calling off the week 1-2 strikes. I was really energised by the start of serious action last year and I was optimistic that we could garner widespread support given the spread of union action across the country; now, given how much I pay in union fees monthly, I'm actually starting to doubt if it's even worthwhile belonging to the union.
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Sep 23, 2023 09:19
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sebzilla posted:I know a few things, what's up? I’ll PM ya
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Sep 23, 2023 09:31
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Filed under 'irony': https://twitter.com/dsquareddigest/status/1705273966607138887 (Davies here is talking in a party manifesto sense, but "iron discipline" as an agenda over PQE actually starts in 2016: the influence of the short-lived 2015 Economic Advisory Committee quickly collapsed as the committee was stridently anti-Brexit) https://twitter.com/dsquareddigest/status/1705275411058344033
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Sep 23, 2023 09:36
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MeinPanzer posted:I was really energised by the start of serious action last year and I was optimistic that we could garner widespread support given the spread of union action across the country; now, given how much I pay in union fees monthly, I'm actually starting to doubt if it's even worthwhile belonging to the union. I work in the NHS, and am a member of Unison and it seems like most of the big unions are just very poorly run at the moment. Unison completely shat the bed when it came to voting for NHS strike action, putting very little effort into encouraging people to ballot and then shrugging when it didn't reach the threshold. Unite are striking at the moment in some areas, but I have colleagues who spent hours calling around the day before the first day of strikes to try to find out what was going on and where. My site's reps' office closed at the start of the Covid pandemic and hasn't reopened. Where are the reps? I assume working from home, but who the gently caress even knows? As far as I can tell, there hasn't been a face-to-face meeting for over 4 years. The lack of effort being put in at a national and local level to actually make these unions work just seems pathetic right now, at the worst possible time.
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Sep 23, 2023 10:13
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kingturnip posted:I work in the NHS, and am a member of Unison and it seems like most of the big unions are just very poorly run at the moment. This has been my experience with Usdaw too.
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Sep 23, 2023 10:25
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kingturnip posted:I work in the NHS, and am a member of Unison and it seems like most of the big unions are just very poorly run at the moment. That is really demoralising, and it's incredible that they can't even take advantage of the contemporary ferment to really drive home their value to members. The problem is that the national UCU leadership and my local branch both are actually pretty active--they put on all kinds of events, have a pretty good get-out-the-vote campaign, have active meetings, etc. It's just that they seem to have completely miscalculated how to best use their leverage, and the opposing side is using that to divide and conquer at the moment.
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Sep 23, 2023 10:49
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Have the unions been taken over by Keiths?
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Sep 23, 2023 10:54
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Unison's bulk email system has been wankered for the last couple months and only recently come back up - i found out lately that because my Trust had been blocking some Unison emails due to DMARC failure, Unison's system had decided these work email addresses weren't valid. I had to go through about 80 individual records and reinput their work email addresses (bizarre thing where the form field was filled in but not registered when saved) Organising in my Trust is especially difficult as it's spread over several different London boroughs in a couple of hospitals and a bunch more little satellite sites. Not to mention you have some people working regular office hours and others doing 13 hour days - it's really hard to get people in the same Teams meeting let alone a physical space. Our branch has 2 volunteer reps for about 500 members, one of which has a full time job as a support worker and the other is a guy who's literally been in the NHS for 50 years. They do a great job helping our members but it's a pain in the rear end getting them to respond to any emails sometimes. We have a regional organiser and an area organiser but I don't know if anyone from the regional office actually assists in representing members when they have a grievance or whatever. Unison head office could definitely do a bunch of poo poo better but it's worth remembering a lot of the work on the ground is done by volunteers in between their full-time jobs. The agreement with my Trust is officers have an hour a week as "facility time" but I'm basically thinking about poo poo constantly. My current objective is trying to get the dozen or so people in my committee to the pub at the same time because we rarely have any actionable poo poo come out of our meetings and I would like everyone to get to know each other better in person, and hopefully the bonds from that will lead to better organising.
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Sep 23, 2023 10:57
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fuctifino posted:Have the unions been taken over by Keiths? Taken over implies they weren't already. This is blair legacy of unions. The Junior doctors already went through this, with BMA leadership badly managing the last junior doctor strikes which ended up petering out in 2015-2016. Junior doctors in the BMA spent the last 7 years organising and reforming the union, hence the BMA is the last union striking over the state of the NHS while every other union representing NHS staff has given up and told members to accept 6%.
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Sep 23, 2023 11:00
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A lot of my frustration with Unison/Unite is that they've put a lot of effort into growing the size of their unions over the last decade, but there doesn't seem to have been any benefit to people who were already members. Also, if the local membership has increased a bunch, have they recruited more local volunteers to pick up the extra workload? As far as I can tell, no - at least in my area. And I absolutely empathise with the volunteers who are probably snowed under by the quantity of work they could support with. But these are issues that national leadership or whatever should be dealing with, but don't seem to be. If I, as a (relatively) very left-wing person am sitting here during one of the biggest labour disputes of the last 30 years, thinking "What is the point of being a union member right now?" then there's something fundamentally flawed about the unions themselves. It's even made me ponder the idea of setting up a profession-specific union, which is remarkable considering how lazy I am. Of course, no-one gives a poo poo about my profession, so it wouldn't be a union with much clout, but still.
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Sep 23, 2023 11:19
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Tinfoil hat, but if I wanted to neuter the unions I'd absolutely infiltrate their middle management with people designed to gum up the works and not communicate and just generally be poo poo about it, to collect pay and do nothing. Of course that's just pretty much any and all managers everywhere soooo. I don't think anyone needs to do any infiltrating of anything as good management is really loving hard and nearly everyone who wants to do it should be immediately disqualified.
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Sep 23, 2023 11:36
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kingturnip posted:
You'd be surprised what a tiny union can do... I cast my mind back to 1978 I think it was when the Licensed Victuallers got the mighty T&GWU (now part of Unite) chucked out of the TUC - albeit not for long (I'm talking under an hour maybe!) because no one was paying attention to them when they called for action against T&G. This was the event that finally got my nan to realize that The Sun wasn't always a bastion of truth-telling. (We had watched it live on TV - because, hey, what's a girl & her nan gonna watch on TV - live action TUC)
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Sep 23, 2023 11:49
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kingturnip posted:A lot of my frustration with Unison/Unite is that they've put a lot of effort into growing the size of their unions over the last decade, but there doesn't seem to have been any benefit to people who were already members. This is actually what I am looking to do, hence asking for advice. Does anyone here have any experience / advice on how it is done and what is required ?
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Sep 23, 2023 11:57
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kingturnip posted:But these are issues that national leadership or whatever should be dealing with, but don't seem to be. This is where I am now, too. I was excited to join my union when I started at my new job a few years ago, and I thought by now we'd have had a decent-but-not-amazing offer that we could at least vote on, but we've actually gone backwards: a lot of members have lost out on wages because of a marking boycott that in the end only slightly inconvenienced some students, and last time the UCEA was negotiating with the UCU their offer was literally a 0% pay increase--not even a lowball 2% or whatever. So now I'm seriously questioning whether it might not just be more productive to quit the union and spend the money I'd be sending in membership fees to some other organisation...
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Sep 23, 2023 12:10
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https://twitter.com/DisRightsUK/status/1705108844769050929
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Sep 23, 2023 12:28
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