UKMT February 2021 - No deal is better than a Baddiel

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > UKMT February 2021 - No deal is better than a Baddiel

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peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

Jose posted:

Lol who could for predicted this? Wonder how "it's just the flu" people will spin it

https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19...HI8eeMwqaJA58C8

The massive fall in flu deaths mean the actual excess deaths over normal aren't that high, meaning lockdown was never actually required. Also flu cases are just being called COVID.

These people's brains are the smoothest surface known to science.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2021 10:41

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 00:36

peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

Failed Imagineer posted:

Feeling blessed to live in the green zone lol

https://twitter.com/MaxCRoser/status/1356203389630218243?s=19

Somehow I feel this is under representing the vast network of British tax havens, but I am not a Forensic finance freak

It's not really. British-linked tax havens are heavily used in the finance/asset management industry as places to hide funds and personal wealth, which isn't what that map is showing and isn't the engine of the biggest global tax avoidance.

The really massive crimes are in the way multinationals shift profits around and very little of that runs through the UK. It's all driven by the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Ireland.

Particularly the Netherlands which somehow retains a reputation as being an excellent global citizen despite having an economy that's constructed almost entirely on the most rampant multinational corporate tax avoidance imaginable.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2021 14:20

peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

No possibility of me getting a vaccine any time soon but it happens through GP surgeries? So I need to be sure I'm registered?

Think I'm registered with a surgery from 8 years ago that's about 70 miles from where I live now.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2021 15:29

peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

goddamnedtwisto posted:

**** If they actually achieve this for just one week, let alone sustaining it for a couple of months, I will have to put my hands up and say that that's genuinely impressive. Like I said before though, once you get outside of the vulnerable groups takeup is likely to slow right down regardless of actual capacity

Why would it slow? Once you're outside of the vulnerable groups you're into all the people who have far fewer issues with getting to vaccinations centres etc, I'd have thought that at least to begin with take-up will improve if anything.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2021 16:10

peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

I am sceptical of that. Once it's open access (if that's how it will be worked), you could open vaccination centres 24/7 and have them full every minute of the day for a good while before you get through all of the people who are desperate for this imo

People do want to go back to normal and this is their ticket to it.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2021 16:48

peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

Of all the stupidity of Brexit the biggest oddity to me is how keen the government seems to be to immediately erect incredibly restrictive bureaucratic barriers and be utterly inflexible on them.

There will be a lot of barriers from the EU that we can't avoid, but half of these complexities are on our end and the only response seems to be "well you should have been more prepared for this deal that was signed 5 days before it came into effect. We produced several leaflets about it."

I thought we were meant to have a bonfire of the red tape.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 10:38

peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

Though I will say that the main complaint from the fashion industry seems to be that they can't import dirt cheap factory labour so easily

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 10:40

peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

I mean the first actual policy request in the open letter is about removing short term visa restrictions for garment factory workers.

I will happily go with "one of the main complaints" though

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 11:27

peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

Bobby Deluxe posted:

Any good recommendations for book sellers to avoid amazon? Preferably uk based to avoid current import fuckery, ideally with an android app so I can browse on my phone.

Nothing wrong with just using Waterstones imo

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 16:23

peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

A month in and they realise this is exactly the disaster they were warned about over and over again. Now they�re desperate to jump all over the vaccine import stuff to prove it�s the EU�s fault.

https://twitter.com/bbclaurak/status/1356867587406241793?s=20

# ¿ Feb 3, 2021 09:59

peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

Jose posted:

https://twitter.com/kateferguson4/status/1356876970181730307?s=19

Their victory lap over having made one correct decision in this whole catastrophe is nauseating.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2021 11:17

peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

Spangly A posted:

why didn't we think of immediately banning anyone hinting at dissent, these people are geniuses

I remember reading many articles about the Stalinist purges of the party that were definitely happening.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2021 17:41

peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

Comrade Fakename posted:

Obviously not, but it would help a lot with the larger populous I think.

He lost last time because he ate a bacon sandwich too Jewishly.

Anti-semitism for me but not for thee

# ¿ Feb 3, 2021 17:42

peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

Genuinely why are we opening a coal mine. Is it profitable?

How have we ended up at a political moment where the Tories are pressing for the reopening of coal mines.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2021 09:30

peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

goddamnedtwisto posted:

https://www.gumtree.com/p/property-...65cK8sJYV2Oge94

TBH this isn't the most ridiculous London property I've ever seen (although the lack of reference to a bathroom makes me suspicious) but even so, �370 a week for a "flat" too small even for a traditional Murphy bed, instead relying on the bed moving down on what looks like a garage door track and then being supported by the sofa and "kitchen table" is certainly an example of the free market innovation we all know and love.

I mean it won't be let. It's clearly listed by someone who doesn't know what has happened to London rents in the last year, though it would have been wildly overpriced before that. You can look on Rightmove and there's perfectly fine one bedroom flats in exactly the same place listed for the same or less than that.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2021 10:17

peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

I bought my last pair (about 8 years ago) from some service where you select 5 pairs, they send you all of the frames to try and then you send them back and tell them if you want to buy any of them. It was good and painless, everything came packaged so that you just put it in a post box to return the frames.

Glasses Direct I think it was?

# ¿ Feb 4, 2021 10:57

peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

goddamnedtwisto posted:

It's for coking coal, which is even more intriguing because that's about the lowest profit margin on coal you can get (you need a shitload of energy, plus expensive scrubbers, to turn coal into coke and it leaves a shitload of extravagantly toxic residue and there's just not that big a market for coke in western Europe any more). I'm deeply suspicious that this is the beginning of a process of "removing red tape" so we can become the China of Europe by just not giving a poo poo about pollution.

Is it a strategic asset thing? Like I could have some sympathy for the argument that we should maintain the institutional knowledge and minimum amount of infrastructure required for an end-to-end steel making process entirely within the UK.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2021 11:01

peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

Gort posted:

Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

This is why I will be refusing the covid vaccine.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2021 13:52

peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

Convex posted:

UK banks given six months to prepare for negative interest rates

What a shame covid has tarnished our wonderful brexit

They're really just saying please make sure your computers won't blow up if this did happen, rather than saying it's likely.

Mostly because when the idea was initially floated as a possibility half the banks said it would make their computers blow up.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2021 14:56

peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

The last rate cut mostly caused mortgage rates to go up, because banks were already at the floor of where they can make a profit on a mortgage so if they were going to ignore the base rate they might as well ignore it by more.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2021 15:00

peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

Jaeluni Asjil posted:

Probably not from the negative interest rates, but however as Guavanaut suggested, free current accounts might be on the way out, so how that used to work in the old days is you had to keep a certain balance in your account everyday through the month to get it free. (It used to be about �100).

Basically, one way or another, they're going to get you.

The mid 80s was when UK banks moved to a model of free accounts subsidised by punishing charges on stuff like unplanned overdrafts.

It's pretty unusual to be honest, in most countries people pay for current accounts and basic banking services.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2021 15:52

peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

~~3. Economy goes brrrrr~~

3. House price go up

# ¿ Feb 4, 2021 17:29

peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

Doctor_Fruitbat posted:

So is negative interest a good or bad time to buy a house, if you can?

Like most things it depends. Excellent time to borrow because mortgage rates are as low as they can possibly get. But when mortgage rates are as low as they can possibly get everyone can borrow more so house prices go up.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2021 17:48

peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

It is quite impressive to be an opposition leader going up against the Tories' "open schools for one day" thing and somehow come off worse

# ¿ Feb 5, 2021 10:37

peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

That website is thousands upon thousands of words about gut health

I feel like their attention grabbing marketing thing got lost when they decided to paste half of wikipedia into it.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2021 10:49

peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

I try to be chill with generation war stuff as it's mostly unhelpful, but I am finding the idea of vaccine passports so the boomers we've been sat inside for a year to save can go on summer holidays while the rest of are stuck on plague island to be extremely resentfulness-inducing.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2021 13:57

peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

Oh my god this line from the shellfish article

quote:

The government considered having Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Michael Gove send the letter to the EU, in an indication of how serious it believes the issue to be.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2021 15:21

peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

On the subject of our wonderful national press

https://twitter.com/flying_rodent/status/1357687655673257985

# ¿ Feb 5, 2021 16:27

peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

Reject the fiction that centrist managerialism is apolitical.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2021 20:48

peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

You've quoted the wrong Times editorial, the more telling one is this one outlining what Starmer needs to do to win full-throated approval from the press

quote:

Voters will never warm to timid Keir Starmer

I�ve sacked my publisher,� says Jeffrey Bernard in Keith Waterhouse�s play about the hard-drinking columnist, �I told her one of us has to be sober, and it isn�t going to be me.� Watching the Labour leadership, a feeling dawns that somebody is going to have to reach out to the wider nation, and it isn�t going to be Sir Keir.

This week, cack-handed suggestions that the Labour leader might spearhead a drive to present his party as �patriotic� only underlined the image problem such a move was meant to remedy. But leaked mission statements do not fulfil the mission. One bold move by a party leader is worth a hundred strategy documents. For example: how about Starmer�s stating an obvious truth that even most Tories shrink from? That in the distribution of vaccine stocks, our government�s first responsibility is to its own citizens. The rest of our continent and the world come second. A British prime minister should be trying to cool the row with the EU, so Boris Johnson can�t say that. An opposition leader can.

But he won�t. This column is not about vaccine stocks but about why you just know Starmer is not going to do the other things that a bold, forward and inquisitive opposition leader would sniff out as proof of a party�s nose for what the voters crave.

Last month on this page I described a nagging sense that the leader of the opposition was struggling to get out of second gear. His silly spat with the prime minister on Wednesday only heightens the suspicion that an interrogative Commons style that was at first labelled �forensic� and now begins to look like �peevish�, adds to worries that Starmer stays in second gear because he doesn�t have any more gears. His gritty facing down of his party�s Corbynite left impressed most of us, and he�s right to confront a minority of his party and show he�s not afraid. But the ultras to his left will surely be vanquished: he can and will meet this challenge, as did the early Tony Blair. That is first and second gear work. Next he�ll need the overdrive, the inspiration. Blair (and sometimes Neil Kinnock) had it. Does Starmer?

I recognise Labour�s aversion to acknowledging Blair, who irritated the hell out of Tory tribalists like me and infuriated hard-core Labour; but the former prime minister�s achievement in dragging a whole party out of the shadows and into the sunlight of broad public approval has to be the outstanding example of a rescue mission. So let�s look at the equivalent gestures an opposition leader in Starmer�s shoes today should consider: the aim being to rekindle his party�s relationship with the wider public. As you read, it will occur to you why Starmer won�t be going there, but hold your horses: I�ll come to that.

Take that �patriotism� rebrand. The moment it was leaked, Starmer drew in his horns and denied it was policy. Nervous back-pedalling can be almost a reflex with him. He should instead have doubled down, scorning shouts of �jingoism� from a few on his own side. Or take some other news this week: the death of Captain Sir Tom Moore. Johnson missed, and Starmer could have seized, the chance to say there were two heroes here. Captain Tom, of course � but also the great British public, whose warm heart and open generosity were what catapulted Moore to national attention in the first place. The Zimmer-frame walkathon was his, and good for him. The millions raised were from his fellow-citizens. Three cheers for them too.

Or another news item, revealed by The Times: Len McCluskey�s brush with construction-industry corruption on Merseyside. Why not speak out � risk a lawsuit, risk trade union wrath? The public would take Starmer�s side: just as they would have done last year if he had openly criticised teachers� unions� foot-dragging on a return to the classroom. He could be audacious too, on the behemoths of the British state; on nonsense about racial awareness-training for Covid taskforce volunteers, about the culture of �gov-dot-uk-says-no�. He could be the friend of the Deliveroo scooterman, the Uber driver who actually prefers a zero-hours contract, the new self-employed. He could complain not about free enterprise but the strangling of competition. There are issues here he could make common cause with the Lib Dems about, transcending the tribalism that voters detest. Voters (not his party) would like that.

There�s so much to be said about Edmund Burke�s small platoons, about liberty, about the British spirit of voluntarism and our open wallets when it isn�t for the taxman, about the power of the individual acting as free agent � and the contrast with corporate Tory fat cats, the City, greed and cronyism. Coming from a Labour leader, some of this would shock; draw fire from Starmer�s left; frighten the trade union horses. But if only he could see this, the surprise would help his wider purpose of making friends with 21st-century Britain. In a party leader struggling to be noticed, surprise is good. Alas, you could have coded a StarmerBot based on his first weeks as leader and it would have pretty much mapped the path Sir Keir has followed.

And I�m afraid there�s a reason beyond this particular man�s innate timidity and instinct to niggle and juggle rather than trumpet. The reason lies in what the Labour Party, in its very essence, to its very core, actually is.

Labour�s roots, structure, machinery, entire history, pit it against getting behind most of the surprises I�ve mentioned. Take the National Executive Committee. Arcane and remote, a grey monolithic mystery to most voters, the NEC�s whole historic purpose is in part to exercise a dead hand over the self-confidence of purposeful individual politicians. It�s the repository of the party�s long-term institutional memory: their inheritance. The primacy of the collective, the concept of Labour as a �movement�, is what has animated their century-old struggles.

�You don�t get me, I�m part of the union� is the song in the party�s heart � what gets them out of bed in the morning. This is a party not just led by Starmer but which has in part created him.

Blair was never that. So he cracked the whip for a while, and you can ride a zebra � for a while. But in the end it will throw you off, because it is a zebra.

So to return to where I started: one of us � modern Britain or a British Labour Party � is going to shape opposition politics for the years ahead. And it isn�t going to be Starmer�s Labour Party.

All Kieth needs to do is publicly poo poo on teachers for not wanting death and to embrace the notion that Uber Drivers Like Their Job Actually and the great British public will become big fans.

tbf I doubt he'd have any problem doing either of those.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2021 09:51

peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

I met Andrew once (pre-Epstein scandal) and no-one I've ever encountered before or since has given me such a concentrated impression of being an insufferable twat in so short a time. He radiates pure anti-charisma.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2021 17:45

peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

Lifehack: shop in Waitrose and you get so numb to the price that you can't tell if it's going up or down

# ¿ Feb 10, 2021 15:02

peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

Surely you�re better off with lager than �2.79 red wine.

Pretty sure the excise alone on a 750ml bottle of red wine is �2.23.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2021 16:54

peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

I think "are summer holidays allowed" discourse might be my personal low point of this entire year.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2021 11:53

peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

Jakabite posted:

Being a dick about people wanting to go on holiday after a year of lockdown misery isn't as good a take as most of this thread seem to think. God forbid people should be asking whether they might be able to go and do something enjoyable to blow off some steam in the near future.

I really don't care if they're allowed to or not but public discourse about whether Matt Hancock is morally right to have booked a trip to Cornwall is just melting my synapses.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2021 12:12

peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

Is it just random which vaccine people get?

Parents just had theirs and got the Pfizer one which surprised me, I figured we'd be sticking the AZ one into everyone at this point.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2021 16:30

peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

Guavanaut posted:

Depends what location you book here. Big hospitals with emergency rooms and cold storage tend to be Pfizer, smaller regional hospitals and vaccine centres tend to be AZ.

Not sure about second doses, they said at the time it'd be the same as the first dose.

This was a vaccine centre, but it's also in the Toriest of home counties so maybe they're funnelling the good stuff to their own.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2021 16:39

peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

Dig for Victory veg challenge of the week: I have 3 bulbs of fennel. What the gently caress do I do with 3 bulbs of fennel?

# ¿ Feb 12, 2021 15:07

peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

With the fairly competent vaccine rollout and the EU gently caress ups allowing them to spin it as a Brexit success I'm honestly surprised the Tory lead isn't bigger.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2021 18:44

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 00:36

peanut-: Feb 17, 2004; Fun Shoe

The new Adam Curtis is very good, he goes full bore at British racism.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2021 20:21

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > UKMT February 2021 - No deal is better than a Baddiel

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