fuctifino posted:

https://twitter.com/DisRightsUK/status/1705108844769050929

The Wicked ZOGA posted:

Disregarding all the flaws in proposals to ban them - which are probably fairly obvious to most of us - why are American Bullies getting attention now? it feels delierately simplistic, most people don't really know about fiscal policies but they do know what dogs are

The Wicked ZOGA posted:

most people don't really know about fiscal policies but they do know what dogs are

The Wicked ZOGA posted:

Are Bully XLs even a breed that... exists? You can call any dog anything, backyard breeders don't keep rigorous records by definition

Nothingtoseehere posted:

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%.

History Comes Inside! posted:

I think that might be it!

Mega Comrade posted:

It's very loosely defined amongst breeders but not recognised as a breed by the Kennel club, I'm also not untirely sure if non XL American Bullies will also be banned or if its just the XL ones. So how would a ban work? Well it won't but its something the Government can point do as 'delivering what the people want' or something.
Bonus that it will require almost no effort or money spent.

The Question IRL posted:

Ball Gobbler breed of dog!

smellmycheese posted:

Thread seems to have missed this phenomenal cringe

https://twitter.com/channel4news/status/1705211616864735376?s=46&t=m_nNbkNoHG4lLitcpyHReg

Guavanaut posted:

MeinPanzer posted:

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.

fuctifino posted:

Have the unions been taken over by Keiths?

Just Another Lurker posted:

Looks like Labour is just a pale imitation of the Tories instead of their opposition.

quote:

One of the most surprising details to emerge after a recent prison escape in Britain wasn't that a terrorism suspect managed to sneak out of London's Wandsworth prison by clinging to the bottom of a delivery truck.

Or even that Daniel Abed Khalife, the former British soldier facing terrorism charges, was only being held in a category B security prison.

It was that on the day of his escape 80 members of the prison staff — nearly 40 per cent of its workforce — were absent. And according to government figures, the prison operating with staff absence levels of between 36 and 48 per cent was more or less normal.

The news prompted a scathing editorial from the Times newspaper: "Living conditions are often inhumane and unsanitary, levels of rehabilitation unsatisfactory, and prison officers are both inexperienced and overstretched following years of cuts," wrote the editorial board.

The exposed failings of the prison join a growing mound of public infrastructure problems feeding a deep sense of gloom spreading across the United Kingdom, England in particular.

Crumbling concrete in schools
At the end of August, just a few days before the start of the school year, the Conservative government led by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak ordered more than 100 schools to close buildings it said were at risk of collapse.

Weak and aging concrete with a shelf-life of about 30 years was the culprit. But the government had been made aware of the problem as early as 2018 after the collapse of a school roof in Kent.

For children prevented from attending classes in their actual schools — government numbers show 174 are now deemed to be at risk — it was a grim reminder of the remote learning that defined the COVID years.

Crumbling concrete closes over 100 U.K. schools ahead of new semester
Other public buildings, including hospitals and theatres, could also be at risk, as they were built with the same type of concrete.

And a senior official in the department of education has accused Sunak of refusing to rebuild more schools when he was head of the treasury in 2021.

The opposition Labour Party is driving home the failings every chance it gets, clearly hoping the crisis might signal an end to their long years in the political wilderness.

"Thirteen years into a Conservative government and the public realm is literally crumbling around the next generation," Labour MP and education spokesperson Bridget Phillipson said during a parliamentary debate earlier this month.

Polls suggest dissatisfaction ahead of election
In a September poll published by the Ipsos Political Monitor, eight out of 10 Britons said they were dissatisfied by the way the government is running the country.

The poll also put the Labour Party a full 20 points ahead of the Conservatives in terms of voting intentions in an election that must be held before January 2025: 44 per cent said they planned to vote Labour, while 24 per cent favoured the Conservatives.

Ford says there's a whole "wedding cake" of reasons for Britain's current state of discontent.

"Many years of austerity, cutbacks to public services, meaning a serious under investment in infrastructure, which has now produced the crisis in the schools in terms of concrete that should have been replaced many years ago, serious underinvestment in staff in the public sector, which is resulting in staff shortages in schools and in hospitals and major strikes," he said.

Dual doctor strikes
In England on Wednesday, consultants, senior doctors and junior doctors (those still undertaking clinical training), held a joint strike for the first time in the history of the National Health Service (NHS).

Dr. Rebecca Lissmann, a junior doctor working in obstetrics, was out on the picket line in front of the University College Hospital in London.

"I think it's important to say that I love the National Health Service," said Lissmann. "That's what we're here for. To defend a health service that's free at the point of use for everybody."

But she also says pressures on the NHS are both unsustainable and dangerous for patients.

"There's immense pressure to kind of do work outside your typical job because we don't have enough people, and you know, that's what you fear, because as a doctor you want to provide care that you're proud of. And if you don't have the staffing to do that, that's not a good feeling."

Hamish Bains, a medical registrar also on the picket lines, said he fears the NHS is "kind of structurally not sound."

Like many striking health-care workers, both doctors believe the government is making a political choice about the future of the NHS, pointing out that the strike has already cost millions of dollars that could have gone toward pay increase demands.

Over the summer, more than seven million people were on NHS treatment waiting lists for England, waiting lists Sunak has pledged to bring down.

He's blamed the strikes for putting that pledge in danger.

More challenges ahead
There are other nagging issues that speak to the sense of things falling apart in the United Kingdom.

Water companies have been accused of spilling sewage into rivers and the sea, and it's alleged the government has turned a blind eye.

And commuters say the rail system doesn't seem to work, even where there isn't a strike on.

No wonder headline writers in the U.K. find themselves converging on various versions of "Broken Britain" on any given day. The winter of discontent seems to have moved up a season.

It leaves all eyes on a coming election, which some expect to be called for next fall.

Ford, the political scientist, says the challenge facing any new government in Britain will be in getting the message across that fixing all that's broken is going to take time and money.

"It's going to really come down to whether or not hope beats despair in a sense," he said, speaking of those who will vote in the next election.

"They have to have faith in the ability of government to deliver those outcomes. And you know, that faith may have to sustain them for a while before things actually start to tangibly improve."

Gorn Myson posted:

Saw Stewart Lee doing a bit of stand up last week and it looks like his next big show will have a thread going through it that pays off with a routine attacking TERFs and JK Rowling in the manner you'd expect from him.

ronya posted:

the UK is not a major commodities exporter and so the payoff from being actively anti-green is correspondingly reduced.

Brendan Rodgers posted:

A lot of tories will have seen that internal combustion car cutoff date coming and been investing in the "solution" of replacing every car with an electric one, which is insane, but will certainly make them some money while we circle the drain. The car companies themselves will have invested massive capital already.

kingturnip posted:

Not before the election. Sunak needs his MPs to play nice to stand any chance at all of winning in May.
U-turning on this kind of issue will get a lot of culture war afficionados bent out of shape and plenty of them hate him enough as is. If they feel he's wrecking their gravy train ticket, it'll be knives out.

smellmycheese posted:

https://twitter.com/barneydavises/status/1705578102846325176?s=46&t=m_nNbkNoHG4lLitcpyHReg

ronya posted:

- The ideological thrust of the "broken Britain" newspaper angle is obviously a prelude to a renewed campaign against 'welfare', vaguely defined: people are less, not more, inclined to support redistribution when they feel personally worse off. Sunak certainly has indicated no plans to raise key taxes.

ronya posted:

- There's a vague theory (which I don't put much stock in, but it's fodder for an idle mind and these are idle thoughts) that the existence of Soviet competition to the Western sphere nudged the postwar West toward acceptance of welfare states. Well, today the premier communist power is very hot on supply side policies and capital spending, and not at all enthusiastic about welfarism. So...?

smellmycheese posted:

https://twitter.com/barneydavises/status/1705578102846325176?s=46&t=m_nNbkNoHG4lLitcpyHReg

smellmycheese posted:

https://twitter.com/barneydavises/status/1705578102846325176?s=46&t=m_nNbkNoHG4lLitcpyHReg