UKMT September - The Baby That Saved Britain

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > UKMT September - The Baby That Saved Britain

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/30/david-cameron-schools-should-teach-mainly-in-imperial-measurements

quote:

Schools should teach pupils mainly in imperial and not metric measurements, David Cameron has said.

Four decades since metres and litres replaced yards and pints on the curriculum, the prime minister suggested he would prefer to see a return to the old system.

�I think I�d still go for pounds and ounces, yes I do,� Cameron told BBC2�s Newsnight when asked which should be taught predominantly.

This is possibly the most :bahgawd:

thing ever

edit: 1958: Edmund Hillary's Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition completes the third overland journey to the South Pole, and the first to use powered vehicles. They travelled 123,312 ells (2,152 furlongs), carrying 12 butts of water and 3 hundredweight (336 pounds) of food.

Zephro fucked around with this message at 08:54 on Sep 30, 2014

# ? Sep 30, 2014 08:51

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# ? May 11, 2024 11:06

Doctor_Fruitbat: Jun 2, 2013

Zephro posted:

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/30/david-cameron-schools-should-teach-mainly-in-imperial-measurements

This is possibly the most thing ever

Has anyone ever given an actual good reason for imperial, amongst the many, many reasons against it, other than "well I like it!".

quote:

National debt is completely and totally unlike household finances. The thing is that people just aren't used to thinking of money on those terms and default to thinking about credit cards, egged on by politicians who want to manufacture a crisis to implement their political agenda.

The thing that really gets me about this is that people have access to loans and credit cards in their daily lives and they understand that the two aren't the same thing, yet have this blind spot in regards to national finances that would be quite easily crowbarred open if they just thought about it even for a second.

# ? Sep 30, 2014 08:59

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

Doctor_Fruitbat posted:

Has anyone ever given an actual good reason for imperial, amongst the many, many reasons against it, other than "well I like it!".

"We had an empire once!"
"Imperial units were good enough to beat the Nazis!"
"It's like the EU, innit? Square bananas..."
"I wish it was still 1935, when everything made sense"
" :bahgawd:

"

Pretty much covers it, I think.

# ? Sep 30, 2014 09:00

Spangly A: May 14, 2009; God help you if ever you're caught on these shores

A man's ambition must indeed be small
To write his name upon a shithouse wall

JFairfax posted:

So... yeah... I mean it sounds like the doses you're talking about aren't going to be the same league as kids who can hoover up a couple of Gs in a day or two, but it's a pretty solid recreational drug with some sever physical effects with prolonged heavy use...

Yeah, it's a big point of contention that is being raised by the community a lot more than the stigma is, somewhat surprisingly. Patients and families are all very receptive. I cant remember the dose the UK is trying, the American ones all picked .5mg/kg and ran with it. A single IV of 35-40mg Ketamine every month isn't going to cause any long term problems that we know about, but given it's harm potential in recreational use it's a big leap of faith to push for widespread trials when we already know the potential consequence.

But don't forget the younger up-and-comers in the NHS loving love the stuff, it's replaced morphine as our go-to emergency anaesthetic across Britain already. When dealing with shock or trauma in a paramedical situation, especially in young patients, Ketamine's respiratory stimulation makes it a no brainer over opiates. For the same reason you can apparently see it in dental care environments too, but to my knowledge it's disliked in areas outside London.

And yeah, it's a big loving problem in a lot of places. I attempted to do a documentary about the trade in Kent a while ago since it seems to be completely unknown to the powers that be, but after full disclosure that a balanced and fair documentary about people who sell dirty ket to 13 year olds at the posh grammar schools might not look great for them, the subjects rapidly lost interest.

Doctor_Fruitbat posted:

if they just thought about it even for a second.

never in human history will this happen.

# ? Sep 30, 2014 09:11

Spangly A: May 14, 2009; God help you if ever you're caught on these shores

A man's ambition must indeed be small
To write his name upon a shithouse wall

As an aside I get infused with a chimeric monoclonal antibody grown in mice every six weeks. It shuts down part of my immune system and leaves me at risk of cancer as well as extremely rapid death from a specific group of infections including measles. I knowingly chose this treatment after spending two days being informed on it and then signing a disclaimer. It was an excellent decision.

If you told me I never again had to worry about the loving pills and timing it right to avoid mild withdrawals and mania risk and unstable mood from missing a dose and watching myself sleepwalk through an overdose as everything I've learnt in CBT decides not to work, I'd rip my bladder out and begin pissing through a straw right there and then.

We're not talking about getting patients high to get their minds off it, we're talking about a potential fire and forget medication for a seriously debilitating condition that doesn't have the millions of circumstantial contraindications that our current best treatment does, all while being decidedly more effective. I'll throw in a kidney.

# ? Sep 30, 2014 09:21

Prince John: Jun 20, 2006; Oh, poppycock! Female bandits?

haakman posted:

That's the one I mean.

It is a great post, but the thing that irritates me is the way that we were pissing money up the wall long before the economic crisis.

I'm all in favour of deficit spending your way out of a recession, but running 6 years of budget deficits during a record boom is just nuts. There are countries that *gasp* run budget surpluses in times of strong economic growth and, had we done so, we would have been much better placed to ramp up government spending when the crisis hit. It's a partisan source, but this lib dem commentator suggests that the size of the national debt would have been halved by removing the deficit in the years before the downturn.

As it is, we're now in our 12th consecutive year of budget deficit and, on the coalition's more aggressive plans, we'll only balance the budget come 2019 - after 17 years of continual budget deficits - longer if Labour return to power, based on their current plans. (Labour have only committed to balance the budget, excluding investment spending, by 2020. I can't find any commitment to balance the budget if investment spending was included.)

The post is a great defence of deficit spending in response to a crisis, but when a country runs a deficit for nearly 20 years that's not really the situation we're dealing with. There are wider points about governments needing to take fiscal responsibility seriously. I get the anger against austerity and I realise there is a valid criticism to be made of whether spending is being cut too soon, but I'm really pleased to finally see a government make a firm commitment to balancing the books and I hope that once we're back in sustained growth we start running surpluses again. Debt interest payments are predicted to be a cool �70bn a year by 2017/18 and that's money that can be much better spent on public services.

# ? Sep 30, 2014 09:41

kim jong-illin: May 2, 2011

Spangly A posted:

But don't forget the younger up-and-comers in the NHS loving love the stuff, it's replaced morphine as our go-to emergency anaesthetic across Britain already. When dealing with shock or trauma in a paramedical situation, especially in young patients, Ketamine's respiratory stimulation makes it a no brainer over opiates. For the same reason you can apparently see it in dental care environments too, but to my knowledge it's disliked in areas outside London.

Not quite right - we like ketamine predominantly because it's haemodynamically neutral rather than because it doesn't cause respiratory depression. All other anaesthetic/analgesic agents and combinations will drop your blood pressure, which is not a good thing when you're already in hypovolaemic shock. Ketamine actually causes a modest rise in blood pressure and heart rate, which is why we tend to use it these days. The lack of respiratory depression is a bonus effect but, outside of reduction of dislocations, most people getting ketamine are getting it as part of a general anaesthetic, which means they're going on a ventilator anyway so respiratory depression isn't such a big concern.

Loving Africa Chaps is the anaesthetist here so he can provide more accurate detail than me, I just use ketamine for reducing dislocations.

# ? Sep 30, 2014 09:46

Spangly A: May 14, 2009; God help you if ever you're caught on these shores

A man's ambition must indeed be small
To write his name upon a shithouse wall

kim jong-illin posted:

Loving Africa Chaps is the anaesthetist here so he can provide more accurate detail than me, I just use ketamine for reducing dislocations.

Tbh it was his posts that made me aware ketamine was becoming a bigger thing in the NHS.

Thanks for the correction, I knew it was something to do with a depressant effect that everything else had.

# ? Sep 30, 2014 09:59

Bozza: Mar 5, 2004; "I'm a really useful engine!"

Using feet and inches is better for manual work in lots of cases because it's inherently designed to be easily divisible into integers:

1ft = 12"
1/2ft = 6"
1/3ft = 4"
1/4ft = 3"

This is a pain in the arse in metric, but it's not like you can't work round this.

# ? Sep 30, 2014 10:54

Gonzo McFee: Jun 19, 2010

On why we have to cut benefits to in work families : "It's a fair choice. The alternative is to put up taxes or cut departmental spending." David Cameron, supposed human being with human feelings.

# ? Sep 30, 2014 11:06

Guavanaut: Nov 27, 2009; Looking At Them Tittys
1969 - 1998; Toilet Rascal

Twisto's debt post should be linked in the OP for each thread.

Bozza posted:

Using feet and inches is better for manual work in lots of cases because it's inherently designed to be easily divisible into integers:

1ft = 12"
1/2ft = 6"
1/3ft = 4"
1/4ft = 3"

This is a pain in the arse in metric, but it's not like you can't work round this.

Yeah, one thing that I like about Imperial in general is the use of powers of two in denominators, fractions of an ounce or grain always went 1/2 1/4 1/8 1/16 1/32. Now everywhere seems to use decimals for fractions of either system though.

And this never worked properly with larger British volumes, because of the 20oz pint instead of a 16oz pint.

# ? Sep 30, 2014 11:14

HortonNash: Oct 10, 2012

Spangly A posted:

, I'd rip my bladder out and begin pissing through a straw right there and then.

As someone who does thanks to a congenital defect, I'd give anything, anything, not to have to. It's been utterly life ruining and repeatedly humiliating when you need to explain yourself (for a variety of reasons).

But, I know you didn't mean it like that, because you're not a dick.

# ? Sep 30, 2014 11:34

Spangly A: May 14, 2009; God help you if ever you're caught on these shores

A man's ambition must indeed be small
To write his name upon a shithouse wall

HortonNash posted:

As someone who does thanks to a congenital defect, I'd give anything, anything, not to have to. It's been utterly life ruining and repeatedly humiliating when you need to explain yourself (for a variety of reasons).

But, I know you didn't mean it like that, because you're not a dick.

I'm sorry man, I used bullshit language and made light of it. That wasn't what I wanted to do, I wanted to get across how frustrating it is to take 20 pills a day that only work when my body fancies it while alternatives are stifled for reasons that I, and a large number of other patients, find not good enough. Clearly I failed, my bad.

From my end, the Crohns has given me a brief taste of that, and I try to block out how completely dehumanising it felt to me. I take back what I said.

In unrelated news, as well as continuing their class cleansing, the tories have decided to censor TV from "extremists".

So that's violations of the human rights act, attempts at political censorship, and a pretty open attempt to tell the poors to just hurry up and die. How's the polls? I think I'm done with this country if they somehow scrape power.

e; oh and the other UKIP defector was Barnes, deputy mayor of London. Is there any reason to care?

Spangly A fucked around with this message at 11:51 on Sep 30, 2014

# ? Sep 30, 2014 11:48

ronya: Nov 8, 2010; I'm the normal one.

You hate ridden fucks will regret your words when you eventually grow up.

Peace.

I kind of want to nitpick at twisto's essay but it presents the essentials of a mainstream position pretty well so I guess not

(also, a relevant graph:

red RPI, blue CPI. Target is 2%. Draw your own conclusions.)

ronya fucked around with this message at 11:59 on Sep 30, 2014

# ? Sep 30, 2014 11:53

PlantHead: Jan 2, 2004

Zephro posted:

"We had an empire once!"
"Imperial units were good enough to beat the Nazis!"
"It's like the EU, innit? Square bananas..."
"I wish it was still 1935, when everything made sense"
""

Pretty much covers it, I think.

You can actually use it to measure stuff if you don't have a ruler.
A foot is a foot, a yard is a stride, an inch is the middle knuckle of your finger, a pint is the amount your bladder holds etc.
All very rough but it is damned handy if you need to measure stuff roughly....can I have a pint of water, sure let me just fill this up with piss and then we know how much I can give you.

# ? Sep 30, 2014 12:18

Trickjaw: Jun 23, 2005; Nadie puede dar lo que no tiene

Wait just a drat minute. IDS wants to trial prepaid cards for claimants? That can only be spent in prescribed places on prescribed goods? Holy gently caress. I hope this is as much of a screw up as universal credit.

# ? Sep 30, 2014 12:27

Answers Me: Apr 24, 2012

Doctor_Fruitbat posted:

Has anyone ever given an actual good reason for imperial, amongst the many, many reasons against it, other than "well I like it!".

It's following the same principle as all their education policies: appeal to the 'things were better back in my day' crowd.

# ? Sep 30, 2014 12:35

Guavanaut: Nov 27, 2009; Looking At Them Tittys
1969 - 1998; Toilet Rascal

This is why we can't have nice things.

Prepaid cards would be a good way to do a Citizen's Basic Income, because you wouldn't need a bank account for it to be paid into. They could work through the existing Link system so that they could be used in stores or via ATMs. If I remember right the first mention of a debit card was by a sci-fi author in the 19th century, in whose future society the citizen's dividend was paid into one.

But no, it has to be a restrictive system to gently caress people over.

e: It was Edward Bellamy in Looking Backward.

Guavanaut fucked around with this message at 12:43 on Sep 30, 2014

# ? Sep 30, 2014 12:38

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

The Tories are talking up their chances of becoming more numerous than pandas in Scotland in the aftermath of the No vote and the SNP's attempt to sell themselves as more Labour than Labour:

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/30/david-cameron-no-vote-conservative-party-scotland

quote:

David Cameron has told Scottish Tory activists that the no campaign�s victory in the independence referendum has created a huge opportunity to win back seats at the general election.

The prime minister told a fringe meeting at the Conservatives� national conference in Birmingham that the party could capitalise on its larger supporter base and growth in political activism during the campaign.

...

In her conference speech on Tuesday, [Ruth Davidson, leader of the Scottish Tories] is expected to say that the battle for centre-left votes between the SNP and Labour will create a political opportunity for the Tories to capture �sensible centre-ground� votes.

�In this referendum campaign we�ve found our voice, and people across Scotland have noticed,� she is expected to say. �The last two years have proved beyond any reasonable doubt that, far from being �toxic�, it was the Scottish Conservatives who spoke up and stood up for Scotland�s silent majority. It was us who made the confident, patriotic case for the UK.�

The Tories are thought to be targeting seats in Perthshire, held by the SNP culture spokesman, Pete Wishart, where the no vote won by 60% to 40%; north-east Fife � a county where the no vote won 55%; and Angus, where the no vote took 54%.

The Tories are also eyeing Aberdeenshire, a core SNP area where the outgoing SNP leader, Alex Salmond, has his Holyrood seat and the Westminster leader, Angus Robertson, has his constituency, yet which voted decisively against independence by 60% to 40%.

...

Despite winning more than 400,000 votes in the 2010 general election and seeing its support grow in last May�s European parliamentary elections at the same time as Ukip support doubled to 10%, the Tories have struggled to win enough constituency-level support in Scotland to take individual seats.

However, Tory activists also believe they have an opportunity to attract centre-right voters after the Scottish government and Yes Scotland ran a strongly centre-left pro-independence campaign.

Not sure how much chance they have of pulling it off but if they want to blow money and resources trying it, I'm all in favour.

# ? Sep 30, 2014 12:44

Cerv: Sep 14, 2004; This is a silly post with little news value.

Spangly A posted:

e; oh and the other UKIP defector was Barnes, deputy mayor of London. Is there any reason to care?

no he's not. Victoria Borwick is.

# ? Sep 30, 2014 12:47

MrL_JaKiri: Sep 23, 2003; A bracing glass of carrot juice!

Bozza posted:

Using feet and inches is better for manual work in lots of cases because it's inherently designed to be easily divisible into integers:

1ft = 12"
1/2ft = 6"
1/3ft = 4"
1/4ft = 3"

This is a pain in the arse in metric, but it's not like you can't work round this.

1 ft ~= 30cm
1/2 ft = 15cm
1/3 ft = 10cm
1/4 ft = 7.5cm oh no!!!

# ? Sep 30, 2014 12:49

big scary monsters: Sep 2, 2011; -~Ｓｋｕｌｌｗａｖｅ~-

LemonDrizzle posted:

The Tories are talking up their chances of becoming more numerous than pandas in Scotland in the aftermath of the No vote and the SNP's attempt to sell themselves as more Labour than Labour:

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/30/david-cameron-no-vote-conservative-party-scotland

Not sure how much chance they have of pulling it off but if they want to blow money and resources trying it, I'm all in favour.

Pretty sure that if anyone won it for No it was Gordon Brown, with a strong assist from the SNP. If anything the Tories tried to distance themselves from the campaign when it looked like it might not be a sure thing any more.

# ? Sep 30, 2014 12:51

Microplastics: Jul 6, 2007; It's what's for dinner.

PlantHead posted:

You can actually use it to measure stuff if you don't have a ruler.
A foot is a foot, a yard is a stride, an inch is the middle knuckle of your finger, a pint is the amount your bladder holds etc.
All very rough but it is damned handy if you need to measure stuff roughly....can I have a pint of water, sure let me just fill this up with piss and then we know how much I can give you.

Having grown up with metric instead of imperial, I can measure metric with various parts of my body (giggity) easily enough. 10cm is the length of my forefinger, 1cm is the width of my little fingernail, and 30cm is the length of my forearm. Inches don't make any of this easier.

I'm not sure what real-world situation would call for a roughly-measured pint of water though.

And anyone who has a foot which is a foot long has a freakishly large foot. My feet are relatively big and they're only 10in.

# ? Sep 30, 2014 13:05

Saki: Jan 9, 2008; Can't you feel the knife?

It's pretty hard to measure exactly what won it for No isn't it? I liked Brown's speech but its importance is probably overblown.

# ? Sep 30, 2014 13:05

Fans: Jun 27, 2013; A reptile dysfunction

While pinning anything on No winning is hard it wouldn't be a stretch to say the "Uncertainty" narrative was what did it. The Yes campaign couldn't provide answers to a lot of questions until negotiations had been done and they couldn't really negotiate in good faith until after the vote. They were always going to get hosed on this and I'm surprised they didn't explain it better that there were going to be long negotiations before independence and Scotland wasn't going to just cast off into the great unknown the moment a Yes Vote happened.

# ? Sep 30, 2014 13:18

Spangly A: May 14, 2009; God help you if ever you're caught on these shores

A man's ambition must indeed be small
To write his name upon a shithouse wall

Cerv posted:

no he's not. Victoria Borwick is.

Former. There are nearly 1.5k seats in Parliament, I'm not going to remember who's deputy mayor

# ? Sep 30, 2014 13:19

Spangly A: May 14, 2009; God help you if ever you're caught on these shores

A man's ambition must indeed be small
To write his name upon a shithouse wall

Saki posted:

It's pretty hard to measure exactly what won it for No isn't it?

Not really, it was never going to happen. I don't know anyone who was even paying attention until the lone Yes poll.

As someone pointed out in this thread, something like forming an independent nation is going to have it's Yes members from the start, whereas uncertainty/No will swell at the end. They never had a lead so in hindsight it was only worth paying attention to for the tory meltdown.

# ? Sep 30, 2014 13:21

namesake: Jun 19, 2006; "When I was a girl, around 12 or 13, I had a fantasy that I'd grow up to marry Captain Scarlet, but he'd be busy fighting the Mysterons so I'd cuckold him with the sexiest people I could think of - Nigel Mansell, Pat Sharp and Mr. Blobby."

Fans posted:

While pinning anything on No winning is hard it wouldn't be a stretch to say the "Uncertainty" narrative was what did it. The Yes campaign couldn't provide answers to a lot of questions until negotiations had been done and they couldn't really negotiate in good faith until after the vote. They were always going to get hosed on this and I'm surprised they didn't explain it better that there were going to be long negotiations before independence and Scotland wasn't going to just cast off into the great unknown the moment a Yes Vote happened.

If they couldn't present policies the Yes campaign would have had to present values which would have had the various factions fighting each other immediately after agreeing that they all stood for a 'better Scotland'.

# ? Sep 30, 2014 13:23

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

big scary monsters posted:

Pretty sure that if anyone won it for No it was Gordon Brown, with a strong assist from the SNP. If anything the Tories tried to distance themselves from the campaign when it looked like it might not be a sure thing any more.

I don't know that you can pick out any one event or thing as having won it - most No voters had made their minds up over a month before the vote. I think the bigger point is that the SNP pulled hard to the populist left during the campaign and that's created a giant sucking vacuum on the right in Scottish politics. Scottish public opinion is not short on right wing sympathies, so that vacuum will be filled sooner or later; if the SNP aren't willing or able to contest it, the Tories are the party best positioned to reclaim their old territory.

# ? Sep 30, 2014 13:34

big scary monsters: Sep 2, 2011; -~Ｓｋｕｌｌｗａｖｅ~-

Yeah it was probably an exaggeration to say that it was Gordon Brown wot won it. As has been pointed out, Yes never really looked likely to take it and I was actually serious about the SNP being in large part responsible for that, it felt like they really let the narrative get away from them. But for the Tories to claim that it was their efforts that swung the vote is just silly.

# ? Sep 30, 2014 13:39

Gonzo McFee: Jun 19, 2010

big scary monsters posted:

Yeah it was probably an exaggeration to say that it was Gordon Brown wot won it. As has been pointed out, Yes never really looked likely to take it and I was actually serious about the SNP being in large part responsible for that, it felt like they really let the narrative get away from them. But for the Tories to claim that it was their efforts that swung the vote is just silly.

The Tories have never and will never understand how hated they are in Scotland. They don't even know why.

# ? Sep 30, 2014 14:03

Collateral: Feb 17, 2010

Re: Depressionchat: an off label, and effective, anti-depressant are any of the various opiates, opiods and what have you. Only they are addictive. Unlike every other anti-depressant ever. So they are haram.

# ? Sep 30, 2014 14:06

gorki: Aug 9, 2014

big scary monsters posted:

Yeah it was probably an exaggeration to say that it was Gordon Brown wot won it.

I am sorry

# ? Sep 30, 2014 14:22

Paul.Power: Feb 7, 2009; The three roles of APCs:
Transports.
Supply trucks.
Distractions.

Bozza posted:

Using feet and inches is better for manual work in lots of cases because it's inherently designed to be easily divisible into integers:

1ft = 12"
1/2ft = 6"
1/3ft = 4"
1/4ft = 3"

This is a pain in the arse in metric, but it's not like you can't work round this.

Something I find hilarious (and possibly kinda useful sometimes?) is that 1/11 of a mile is a neat 160 yards (which can in turn be divided by 2 five times). If you like maths then Imperial can be pretty fun to play around with.

Paul.Power fucked around with this message at 14:29 on Sep 30, 2014

# ? Sep 30, 2014 14:26

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

Paul.Power posted:

Something I find hilarious (and possibly kinda useful sometimes?) is that 1/11 of a mile is a neat 160 yards (which can in turn be divided by 2 five times). If you like maths then Imperial can be pretty fun to play around with.

Though the Babylonian system, being base-60, is even better. It also has the benefit of being even older, and therefore better in Tory minds.

# ? Sep 30, 2014 14:34

ThomasPaine: Feb 4, 2009; We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.

I've been thinking about the idea of a Citizen's Income recently. The Greens (who I'm very fond of) are committed to the idea, and I do like it - every single person gets paid a living wage every month, paid by taxation, whether or not they work. However, it strikes me as difficult in the same way, for example, universal bus passes are for the elderly. It seems ultimately a waste to spend a substantial amount of money topping up the incomes of millionaires by a few thousand pounds a year where that money could be better spent.

The Greens obviously want to raise taxes (and also want a maximum wage in addition to a better minimum wage, which I love) but all of these things rely on each other to work and would be a nightmare to implement. Anyone better versed in this area fancy giving their thoughts?

e: The SSP's policies are actually perfect, just a shame they won't lose the 'Red Star Socialism' schtick that turns so many people off. Could really see a merger between them and the Greens happening if they were willing to make a few minor compromises.

ThomasPaine fucked around with this message at 14:41 on Sep 30, 2014

# ? Sep 30, 2014 14:38

Guavanaut: Nov 27, 2009; Looking At Them Tittys
1969 - 1998; Toilet Rascal

Zephro posted:

Though the Babylonian system, being base-60, is even better. It also has the benefit of being even older, and therefore better in Tory minds. If only it weren't scuppered by having been invented by people who were almost certainly brown and spoke funny.

We still have to deal with that bullshit to this day though. Time, angles in degrees, even the supposedly metric Europeans have their speed signs with an SI numerator and a Babylonian denominator.

Decimal times with decimal distances.

(Although there are some arguments for why octal or hexadecimal would be better than either)

e:

ThomasPaine posted:

I've been thinking about the idea of a Citizen's Income recently. The Greens (who I'm very fond of) are committed to the idea, and I do like it - every single person gets paid a living wage every month, paid by taxation, whether or not they work. However, it strikes me as difficult in the same way, for example, universal bus passes are for the elderly. It seems ultimately a waste to spend a substantial amount of money topping up the incomes of millionaires by a few thousand pounds a year where that money could be better spent.

Three of the best points about the Citizen's Income are that it reduces the amount of intermediary paperwork devoted purely to punishing people on benefits, saving millions in the process, that it is truly universal, so it completely gets rid of the 'them and us' divide that is used to demonize people on any form of benefits (although the is so much cognitive dissonance in the 'squeezed middle' that I don't doubt someone would find a way), and that it remains no matter how much you earn, so there is no line anywhere where people might be better not working.

I honestly don't think that a millionaire getting a small living stipend is an objectionable thing, as long as they are also taxed through income/capital gains/land value, which would far exceed this anyway. Otherwise you would have to put an office in place for setting a cutoff point, which is open to the politics of exclusion.

Guavanaut fucked around with this message at 14:49 on Sep 30, 2014

# ? Sep 30, 2014 14:39

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2014/09/30/osborne-redefines-the-triple-whammy-its-now-triple-non-taxation/

quote:

It is very hard to imagine how George Osborne could have delivered more injustice in one announcement than he did yesterday.

What he announced was that anyone who had invested in a pension fund but who had not drawn down all that fund to pay a pension at the time of their death could now have their estate withdraw that money from that pension fund tax free and then pass it on to their heirs, also entirely tax free without any inheritance tax applying.

In principle what this means is that a person with ample spare income or wealth can now put money into a pension fund and get tax relief on it at their highest marginal tax rate (which means up to a 45% rebate) and then leave that money accumulating in that fund tax free until it reaches a ceiling of �1.25 million, at which time it can then be left until they die, at which time there is no tax on exit, offering considerable savings, and no inheritance tax either, the latter saving at least 40% in many such cases.

What Osborne has therefore created, as the FT confirms, is the most perfect tax free way for the wealthy to not only pass money between generations but to actually claim a tax subsidy whilst doing so. The result is quite staggering. This is triple non-taxation for the wealthy, and you can only presume that was his intended outcome.

The evidence that this government is promoting the trickle up of wealth in this country has been accumulating over time, but this has to be one of the most blatant exercises to encourage that ever presented by a government in this country. It really is staggering.

Oh good, a new way to leave stacks of tax-free dosh to Hector and Jacinta!

Zephro fucked around with this message at 14:47 on Sep 30, 2014

# ? Sep 30, 2014 14:44

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

Guavanaut posted:

We still have to deal with that bullshit to this day though. Time, angles in degrees, even the supposedly metric Europeans have their speed signs with an SI numerator and a Babylonian denominator.

Decimal times with decimal distances.

(Although there are some arguments for why octal or hexadecimal would be better than either)

Give me radians or give me death!

# ? Sep 30, 2014 14:46

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# ? May 11, 2024 11:06

Blacknose: Jul 28, 2006; Meet frustration face to face
A point of view creates more waves
So lose some sleep and say you tried

Zephro posted:

http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2014/09/30/osborne-redefines-the-triple-whammy-its-now-triple-non-taxation/

Oh good, a new way to leave stacks of tax-free dosh to Hector and Jacinta!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qjBec3fpBI

are you surprised

# ? Sep 30, 2014 14:56

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > UKMT September - The Baby That Saved Britain

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