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Seaside Loafer posted:It seems like practically everyone else has at least 2 languages. English and whatever. If that were true, there would be absolutely no issue with working abroad as an English speaker; right now, it depends on the country. I know that Sweden has a very high rate of English as a foreign language, but when a French group were in my uni, I had severe difficulty communicating concepts to them a lot of the time. Idiomatic language is the hardest part of communication across languages and that doesn't come easily until you're immersed. I definitely agree with "more language", but the issue as an English speaking country is, which one? For the continent, it's easier, since English has become the international language for most things, with French the international language for the rest. Again, it's a skill that most people in Britain wouldn't use because the neighbours we commonly visit are also English speaking nations. At least with France, they can travel to Germany and communicate in English.
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May 6, 2014 17:16
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Seaside Loafer posted:Right so to clarify for the EU zone French is the most usefull second language to have? Maybe? The use of French beyond France is more limited to stuff like the internals of the EU and that. Could easily be German, due to both Germany and Austria using it. With French under your belt, related languages like Spanish, Italian, Romansh etc. become a lot easier, though, compared to German where the benefits are (mostly) given by knowing English. EDIT: If you want to learn an EU language for the sake of learning an EU language, go with Norwegian, Swedish or Danish. Knowing English will likely give you the most benefit going into them.
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May 6, 2014 17:35
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baka kaba posted:Ohhhhh, so 2 AM is when all the balance/extreme leftist bias occurs Depends. Sometimes you get people like that who discuss how capitalism leads to inevitable inequality and sometimes you get people talking about how wonderful the free market is and asking why people don't work as hard as they used to.
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May 7, 2014 10:01
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quote:The idea is to deter patients from missing consultations – a problem that costs £160million a year.
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May 7, 2014 12:54
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SybilVimes posted:You don't go to my GP do you, that's exactly how ours does it too. Same system up here too. That said, I've missed the deadline before and used words like "depression" and "anxiety" and was booked in the next day's appointments, so it's not overly rigid that serious things get passed over.
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May 7, 2014 14:55
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General China posted:If you have ever been to a university you cannot apply ( Only one poster I know of gets through this and he is too cool to apply anyway ) As a Scotsman, I attend university, but at the behest of the prole, socialist free education. Can I still apply?
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May 8, 2014 00:27
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Truly, let's destroy the trade links with our close neighbours and rely on long sea routes to get our goods. Also, they explicitly mention an Northern Irish, an English and a Scottish "assembly", but not a Welsh one. Sorry Wales 
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May 9, 2014 15:17
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LemonDrizzle posted:Watching the EU commission presidential candidates debating tonight, the size of the gulf between what Cameron wants/aims to extract from the EU and what the prospective presidents want is just mind-bogglingly vast. Even the conservative candidate was arguing for things like a unified Euro army, a unified European immigration policy for non-EU citizens, and funds to support EU citizens to migrate in the union to find employment. I would assume that you become in the running for EU president either by being super pro-federalism or being super anti-EU, depending on the climate for the group as a whole. I can't see someone being a candidate and saying "well I like the EU but I don't want us to be too close" which is what the main three parties all are (except possibly the Lib-Dems?).
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May 9, 2014 19:45
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bitterandtwisted posted:The Libdems got their MEP in Scotland elected with 11.5% last time according to Wikipedia, so it doesn't seem impossible. I find it difficult to take any of the EU polling in regards to Scotland seriously; no way are the Tories going to gain votes in Scotland after the last 4 years of government. Same with Lib Dems, the 10% is way too high a number (only a 1% decline) after their tanking in the last Scottish election.
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May 10, 2014 12:48
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Pasco posted:It is perfectly possible that people who would never vote for the Tories / Lib Dems / UKIP / whoever in national elections would then vote for them in these EU elections.
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May 10, 2014 13:47
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SybilVimes posted:Were there this many right wing racism-orientated parties in the last EU election? I'm pretty sure I remember it being Lab, Lib, Con, UKIP and BNP and that's it, now we seem to have 5 or 6 parties pandering to the 'dem muslims Both Britain First and An Independence From Europe are splinters from the BNP and UKIP respectively. No2EU seems to be a left wing, less xenophobic based party that just wants out of the EU rather than protecting the homeland.
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May 10, 2014 23:39
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djf posted:The charismatic Farage myth is going to be in tatters soon. His showing on Sunday Politics shows he is going to be abysmal as soon as debate expands beyond catchy EU boogy-men sound bytes. Yeah, whenever he's interviewed, it's always on the EU, immigration or how much he likes beer. As soon as people ask about economy, energy, welfare etc. UKIP's terrible, unthought policies will show and hopefully folks will take notice.
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May 11, 2014 12:42
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"Who is responsible for the ongoing attempt to eradicate the British culture and British identity through assimilation?" The British Empire? The Act of Union 1707? EDIT: Och, I've missed the deadline for proxy voting. I didn't realise it was six working days :/ QuantumCrayons fucked around with this message at 18:36 on May 13, 2014 |
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May 13, 2014 18:12
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Lord of the Llamas posted:That's a shame since it was probably the most explicit statement in the summary of their EU manifesto The way the BBC article puts it is that the EU regulations as they stand wouldn't allow it. It could be related to imposed austerity measures reduce how much you can raise the wage by in one go, it could be that a minimum wage rise must occur nationally and not by sector. It could also be that it would impose extra restrictions on companies attempting to take contracts as they'd have to be vetted as able to pay the new higher wage, meaning that it could impose monopolies? Basically, it makes the EU pledge make more sense: there's currently issues regarding living wage due to EU regulations, elect us and we'll try our best to fix them. Stottie Kyek posted:The SNP just told their members to vote against a bill supporting a living wage and taking action on blacklisting and zero-hours contracts, they're not especially left-wing themselves. QuantumCrayons fucked around with this message at 23:51 on May 15, 2014 |
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May 15, 2014 23:49
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Jedit posted:The SNP support anything that will give them a vote in September. Who cares why they support it? The important thing is they do support and it and they do follow through on it.
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May 16, 2014 02:31
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Ddraig posted:As we know, students now have free tuition, babies have more incubators and ARE BOYS have proper body armour because all politicians mean what they say, especially with elections so close. In Scotland, yes, possibly (since NHS funding isn't being cut as much as the English one, if at all) and not ours to deal with. As far as political parties go, the SNP are pretty centre-left and pretty good at fulfilling what they say they're going to fulfil. Other parties may have actually implemented the policies previously, but the SNP are happy to continue to support the policies' implementations.
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May 16, 2014 04:02
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Barry Foster posted:I know several people who genuinely, 100% believe that Britain is and always has been the greatest culture in the world. I really enjoy it when people say this, because I get to remind them that the "British culture" itself is a multicultural group. After watching that English Democrats PEB, I realised that I feel really sorry for English folks who hold civic nationalist views; they're always going to be lumped in with or drowned out by weird folks like the BNP and the ED. QuantumCrayons fucked around with this message at 17:27 on May 17, 2014 |
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May 17, 2014 17:23
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Kin posted:As someone who's carried about various forms of ID card for years (Uni ID, gym ID, drivers licence, etc), I've never really understood the backlash against them. When a normal company has a terrible data breach or data loss, they often go under within a year. When a government has a terrible data breach or data loss, things carry on as normal. The government is pretty bad at protecting data.
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May 18, 2014 01:33
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Cerv posted:Haha. Not true in the cast majority if cases. Is it only severe data losses that cause this? I might have mis-remembered the stats.
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May 18, 2014 10:12
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goddamnedtwisto posted:Loss as in data is gone and totally unrecoverable? Yeah, possibly, but there's a huge selection bias there because the kind of business that has so poor a backup process is going to be on the ragged edge long before the loss. Solely based on unrecoverable data loss e.g. failure or loss of backups too. I'll try and find the paper(s) I read on it. I don't quite agree with the selection bias, since a company's ability to understand the importance of (or possible critical downside of not) backing up doesn't necessarily impact their ability to work within their specialised sector. Often it's as simple as the higher ups in the company not seeing IT as important as another department.
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May 18, 2014 11:55
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goddamnedtwisto posted:A higher-up dumb enough to not realise their company will go under for the sake of the price of a tape drive is a higher-up who's fairly unlikely to understand other concepts like "fire insurance", "paying rent", and "not betting the whole takings on the Grand National". The data loss is just the straw that broke the camels back. It's less "didn't back up at all" and more "didn't test backups and they've failed for two weeks running, we have horribly outdated information". A whole load of companies just backup and never bother to attempt a recovery test and come back in however long to find it's useless. That said, I suppose you're correct: companies with a poorer understanding of backup safety probably do have a poorer understanding of general contingency planning.
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May 18, 2014 12:48
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Jack the Lad posted:I don't get why anyone would spoil a ballot. A 100% turnout with a 70% spoil rate would be a whole lot better than a typical 30% turnout. It would get the parties thinking "well they care enough how the country's run, lets try and engage" rather than "lazy folks". May also get some other parties running more often (for example, do the Greens run in every council constituency?). I am not voting today because I missed the deadline for proxy. I'm sorry if UK is renamed Faragia.
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May 22, 2014 12:34
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Walking through Dundee earlier, I saw the Roseangle polling station has SNP, Lab, Lib and Green placards placed outside. No sign of Tory or UKIP, thankfully.
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May 22, 2014 15:11
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Broniki posted:What the gently caress is wrong with Dundee? St Andrews stole them all.
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May 22, 2014 20:30
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Kin posted:Cross over to the other side of the kingsway. It's been protecting you from most of them for years. Living beside Pitkerro and Whitfield in my first year at uni was the best experience I've ever had. Most break ins I've ever had too.
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May 22, 2014 23:02
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A Sloth posted:Yeah, all those white North Western Europeans. Most 'mongrel' nation in Europe.
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May 23, 2014 20:05
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I find the people that spout this shite have an even odder concept of racial purity than good old NSDAP Nordicists. Like, way to deny an ethnic group because a few foreigners mingled shitlord.
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Illuminti posted:What do I think Britishness is? Well it's societal not ethnic. A certain inherited understanding (I don't want to say respect) of our institutions and systems of law and order. A common basis for our sense of humour and the way we interact. I realise "Britishness" is a completely nebulous thing, but i think I would consider those things part of it. A Scot's legal system, humour and culture is distinct from an Englishman's from the south of England, which is distinct from a Welshman'
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May 24, 2014 13:27
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Illuminti posted:The differences are part of Britishness having evolved over 100s if not 1000s of years. If you think they are that distinct then I'm afraid I'll just have to disagree with you. They're not. "Britishness" has only existed as a thing since the early 1700s, because before that "Scottishness" and "Englishness" were the cultures (Ireland joined later, not sure how prominent the Welsh identity was at the time). Scotland has its own legal system which is very different from the English legal system. The countries were distinct before the Treaty of Union and didn't suddenly squash together into a big cultural lump afterwards, and many people living in Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland and England would define them as their own nationality, rather than British. If there's a difference in how they would identify, there's probably a difference in the way the culture is. Even if, as you claim, it took hundreds of years for these concepts of Britishness to merge into one whole, why are you not offering the new immigrants to London the same timescale to do so? Illuminti posted:I am interested in what you all think off the large amounts of Brits living in large clusters in Spain. Do you think they are integrating well, do you think they have benefited the regions they are in, bringing much needed diversity and colour? Would Barcelona feel Spanish if half it's population was German and English? QuantumCrayons fucked around with this message at 18:02 on May 24, 2014 |
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May 24, 2014 17:58
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Zohar posted:BBC is putting UKIP at 36.24%. That's only for the current tallies. Fallen to 33.62% now, could fall even more, especially as the Scotland vote stills seems to be coming in.
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May 25, 2014 22:08
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Extreme0 posted:Since the greens gaining a seat are now near nill. What percent of the vote must the SNP have to get a third seat? Three times whatever UKIP gets.
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May 25, 2014 23:31
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IceAgeComing posted:if Glasgow's not in: then there will be key. I don't see many UKIP votes in Glasgow: Labour will probably win, the SNP will be close though! Yeah, if Labour win Glasgow, then it could up the voting total to enough that UKIP's shrinks in comparison, ideally enough for SNP to close the gap more. fe; Even if SNP don't prevent UKIP from taking a seat, they seem to have maintained their percentage, which is a "good enough" kind of result.
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May 25, 2014 23:36
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Myrddin_Emrys posted:Will be interesting to see what they do in Europe now they have so many seats. I have little doubt they'll continue their trend of not much or nothing, truly bringing the change in politics the people want.
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May 25, 2014 23:48
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I'm preparing for the screeds of social media posts saying "well looks like Scotland isn't so different after all", ignoring the UK having triple the average Scottish UKIP vote.LemonDrizzle posted:If it ends up with a 2/2/1/1 split on top of that, it goes from bad to nightmare.
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May 26, 2014 00:06
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LemonDrizzle posted:They were polling >40% at the start of the year and speculating about taking 4 MEPs. Over five months, they've lost a quarter of their support and potentially fallen back to only 2 MEPs. That's a pretty severe kicking. Were they UK polls or Scotland specific polls? I remember seeing the UK ones giving odd numbers, but I never saw the Scotland ones. Jedit posted:^^^ Why would UK polls bother to include the SNP?
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May 26, 2014 00:36
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LemonDrizzle posted:Scotland-specific (a UK-wide poll that put the SNP on 40% would be astonishing to say the least). I was more meaning a UK-wide poll where the Scottish respondents gave the 40% rate. I'll go and see if I can find them, 'cause I would be surprised at them having polled that high. EDIT: Ohey they did. Looks like Lab, Con, UKIP and the Greens all took more than expected back in January. Even last week, Con was 4% lower than they came out with. QuantumCrayons fucked around with this message at 00:43 on May 26, 2014 |
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May 26, 2014 00:41
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Pork Pie Hat posted:If anyone was thinking of reading Thomas Piketty's "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" but didn't want to pay £30, WHSmiths are doing it for half price. Might just be for this week though, I'm not sure. Best news I've heard all day; heading down to get it now!
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May 30, 2014 13:23
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