- Pork Pie Hat
- Apr 27, 2011
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Q: Are we all going to die from ebola?
A: Short answer, no. Not unless it mutates into an airborne virus.
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Aug 2, 2014 20:34
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- Adbot
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ADBOT LOVES YOU
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Apr 19, 2024 05:29
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- Pork Pie Hat
- Apr 27, 2011
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You missed the possibility that MI5 is full of paedophiles who were just protecting their own 
Or full of Russian infiltrators who saw it in their long term interests to allow Western institutions to be full of paedos, all the better to discredit and undermine the bourgeois capitalist swine at a late date. Say, sort of now-ish.
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Aug 3, 2014 18:45
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- Pork Pie Hat
- Apr 27, 2011
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Speaking of union talk... Bruce Carr, the lawyer who was asked to review union law to see if new laws could be introduced to combat 'intimidation' by union activists, has refused to evaluate rules around strikes and trade disputes after policy announcements left his views 'meaningless'.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/aug/05/union-law-review-barrister-bruce-carr-minister
"The Guardian' posted:
An independent review of laws governing industrial disputes has been dramatically scaled back after the QC in charge objected to recent ministerial announcements on introducing anti-strike laws.
The Carr review, led by the employment law specialist Bruce Carr, was asked by the Cabinet Office minister, Francis Maude, and the business secretary, Vince Cable, to examine union laws and come up with recommendations to stop intimidation by activists.
But Whitehall sources said that policy announcements by Maude last month suggesting that the Tories would introduce new laws to curb unions' rights to picket had rendered Carr's own review "meaningless". Instead, Carr told ministers that he would not come up with any recommendations for legal changes.
The announcement will embarrass Maude, who has previously insisted that Carr's review was neutral and able to come up with new laws without political interference. It will please the unions, which have consistently argued that the review was a political stunt since it was announced by the prime minister in November.
Carr said in a statement on the review's website that he had become increasingly concerned about the quantity and breadth of evidence that the review has been able to obtain. "In addition, I am also concerned about the ability of the review to operate in a progressively politicised environment in the run-up to the general election and in circumstances in which the main parties will wish to legitimately set out their respective manifesto commitments and have already started to do so.
"Any recommendations which might be put forward without the necessary factual underpinning would be capable of being construed as the review making a political rather than an evidence-based judgment, whichever direction such recommendations might take.
"As such I have agreed with the secretary of state for business, innovation and skills and the minister for the Cabinet Office that the review will produce a scaled-down report, which reflects on the process of attempting to obtain evidence and which sets out the story as best we are able to tell it from the limited evidence which we have gathered, but will not make recommendations for change."
It is understood that Carr first raised his own concerns that the review had been severely compromised last month, after Maude announced a package of new laws to curb the rights of unions to take industrial action. The plans centred on forcing union leaders to prove that half their members supported a walkout and that a large proportion had voted. Otherwise, a strike could be ruled illegal.
But the plans also suggested that a future Tory government would introduce a criminal offence to stop picketing and would strengthen the code of practice on picketing by giving it statutory force. Carr told ministers that this announcement cut right across the review, it is understood.
David Cameron first revealed plans for a review of union laws in November, in light of the "leverage" tactics deployed by the Unite union at the Grangemouth oil refinery in Falkirk. At the time, Labour was in the midst of a damaging row over tactics employed by union officials in Falkirk to dominate the local party.
But the planned review, which was due to look at industrial relations in the round and the Grangemouth case in particular, stalled after the Trades Union Congress (TUC) objected to what it felt was a lack of consultation. It was due to be completed later this month.
The review's terms of reference were limited in March to an assessment of the alleged use of extreme tactics in industrial disputes, including leverage, which directly targets managers, and the effectiveness of the existing legal framework to prevent inappropriate or intimidatory actions in trade disputes. The Grangemouth investigation has also been dropped.
In a joint statement issued in April, Maude, and Cable confirmed the review would make proposals and recommendations for change.
The TUC labelled the inquiry a headline-grabbing party-political stunt. Labour had privately argued that the review was primarily designed to embarrass Ed Miliband due to his links with Unite.
Privately, ministers have said they doubt there are any holes in the law regarding picketing, or union activists trespassing on managers' private property. But they felt there may be an issue about the way the law is enforced by police. The precise terms of reference involve "the alleged use of extreme tactics in industrial disputes, including so-called 'leverage' tactics; and the effectiveness of the existing legal framework to prevent inappropriate or intimidatory actions in trade disputes".
Reacting to Carr's statement, the TUC general secretary, Frances O'Grady, said the Tories should repay the cost of the inquiry. "Bruce Carr has been cynically used by the government in a party political stunt for the Conservative party. He is right to recognise this politicisation, so I am not surprised at his decision not to make any recommendations and simply review the few submissions sent to him.
"But the politicisation is not new, it was built in from the start … and now Mr Carr has found his work entirely pre-empted by a Conservative party press release."
Mark Serwotka, head of the PCS union, said: "The Tories handpicked Bruce Carr to do their bidding but even he couldn't stomach their anti-union rhetoric, exposing the review as a facade for an attack not just on more than 6 million trade union members but on all working people and their communities."
Up yours Maude and Cable!
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Aug 5, 2014 16:10
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- Pork Pie Hat
- Apr 27, 2011
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I am shocked and appalled that not one of you has mentioned one of Britain's newest cities as a London alternative.
The best part is it's only 35 mins from London!
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Aug 6, 2014 16:16
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- Pork Pie Hat
- Apr 27, 2011
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Before I stoped eating meat I used to love a Greggs Christmas sandwich.
None of that sentence was a euphemism.
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Aug 6, 2014 21:45
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- Pork Pie Hat
- Apr 27, 2011
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Hey, you remember dogfucker from the end of the last thread?
Well according to the nme he was sacked from his band, they're going to re-record their new album with guest drummers and donate any profits from album sales to the RSPCA.
Got to keep up with the dogfucker news, thread.
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Aug 7, 2014 17:05
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- Pork Pie Hat
- Apr 27, 2011
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Haha stupid Royal Extremists..
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Aug 8, 2014 10:58
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- Pork Pie Hat
- Apr 27, 2011
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I'm going to step in and break up this mad funny bants Inception with some Tory dog whistle bingo bulshit.
The Independent posted:
Iain Duncan Smith blames rising immigration levels on people who refuse to get a job
People who refuse to get a job are responsible for increasing the level of immigration into the UK, according to Iain Duncan Smith.
In a speech on Monday, the Work and Pensions Secretary will reverse the claim that migrants are taking jobs that otherwise would have gone to British people by saying they are coming to Britain because of the number of British people who choose to live on benefits.
He will also insist that the economy will not recover completely unless people currently on benefits “play a full and productive part”.
“Immigration into the UK has been a supply and demand issue,” he will tell an audience in London, according to extracts of his speech published in The Daily Telegraph.
“Businesses needed the labour and because of the way our benefit system was constructed, too few of the economically inactive took the jobs on offer.”
The Conservatives are reportedly considering making further cuts to welfare and Mr Duncan Smith suggests he believes there is more to be done.
“The core and point of the economic plan, the driving force, is the quality of the people who make it happen — the British people — for no plan can work unless their wellbeing is at the heart of it,” he said. “But none of this is deliverable if we don’t deal with the British domestic problem.
“This economy can never be where it should, holding its own in this tough world marketplace, unless British families play a full productive part in that plan.”
Last month, Labour’s shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Hilary Benn, warned that the Government’s welfare reforms were causing “misery for hundreds of thousands of the poorest people, driving them into courts and into debt”.
“This is the Government effectively raising taxes for the very poorest,” he said as new figures revealed more than 2.3 million people in England – including war widows, carers and disabled people -- were set to have their council tax benefit withdrawn or significantly cut.
In July last year, David Clapson, 59, who had diabetes, died in his flat in Stevenage from an acute lack of insulin after his benefits were withdrawn because he missed to appointments with Jobcentre staff. His electricity was cut off, so the fridge containing his insulin was not working. He was found to have nothing in his stomach and ÂŁ3.44 in his bank account.
“I don't think anyone should die like that in this country, alone, hungry and penniless,” his sister Gill Thompson told The Guardian this month. “They must know that sanctioning people with diabetes is very dangerous. I am upset with the system; they are treating everyone as statistics and numbers.”
Don't forget that it's true because he believes it is true and if you disagree then clearly you don't believe it enough.
e: Apologies for the terrible formatting, I'm phone posting.
Pork Pie Hat fucked around with this message at 12:22 on Aug 11, 2014
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Aug 11, 2014 12:18
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- Pork Pie Hat
- Apr 27, 2011
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So they had a combined income of ÂŁ160k per year? (Without the private healthcare 'consultancy' fees).
And this little wankstain is complaining that he couldn't find somewhere nice to live?
gently caress off then. You won't be missed.
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Aug 12, 2014 12:51
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- Pork Pie Hat
- Apr 27, 2011
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Yeah, the wedding itself, we'd be happy going down to the courthouse and paying whatever modest fee there is, then going to a slightly-better-than-usual restaurant and spending the rest of the night watching Netflix, max price probably ÂŁ150 or something like that. She and I totally agree that getting into massive debt for your wedding day is weird and unwise, which is good because my previous girlfriend wanted all the works and was very displeased whenever I made noises about being satisfied with much less.
I vote you go on Don't Tell The Bride, with the only proviso being you let the thread organise the wedding. What could possibly go wrong?
(Or, go on DTTB, use as much of the Beeb's 12 grand as you can to buy expensive rings, after the wedding sell the rings, use the money for your wife's teeth. Bosh.)
Pork Pie Hat fucked around with this message at 23:21 on Aug 12, 2014
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Aug 12, 2014 23:19
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- Pork Pie Hat
- Apr 27, 2011
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Random question: is it still possible to buy a SIM/mobile in the UK without having to fill out a form saying who you are and where you live? I was reading up on the 7/7 bombings and they used PAYG phones to avoid leaving a trace. I know this is hard/impossible to do in lots of other countries these days, but is Britain one of them? It's oddly hard to find out by Googling (or else my Google-fu is bad).
edit: apparently I have plat despite having never paid a single red cent for this account
I'm pretty sure it is possible. Loads of pound shops sell PAYG SIMs and I doubt they'd ask you to fill out a bunch of paperwork.
In other news I had my first cigarette for 6 months today. gently caress me it was vile, how do people ever get started? I'm not criticising smokers, hell, I was one for long enough, but man alive, the one I just had was just ewww.
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Aug 18, 2014 17:18
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- Pork Pie Hat
- Apr 27, 2011
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Just keep trying until you like it, you big baby.
Hahahaha you are of course absolutely right, I'm just out of practice.
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Aug 18, 2014 21:44
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- Pork Pie Hat
- Apr 27, 2011
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OK, thanks. That helps makes sense of what I was reading.
No worries, if you have problems getting hold of one I'm more than happy to get one for you.
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Aug 19, 2014 13:49
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- Pork Pie Hat
- Apr 27, 2011
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middle-class people like me to spend our money on better healthcare
http://www.bupa.co.uk/ or do as HortonNash suggests.
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Aug 19, 2014 16:28
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- Pork Pie Hat
- Apr 27, 2011
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Glad you all read the rest of the sentence, in which I point out that I'm not complaining about having to share healthcare with plebs but rather saying that people who can afford to pay a basic amount for healthcare (like me) don't deserve to get it for free, and there should be a second tier to relieve the strain on the lower tier for the people who actually need it.
As it's nice to see you actually followed that link and discovered that you can see a Bupa GP for Ł70. See? http://www.bupa.co.uk/individuals/self-pay-treatments/gp-services. Most of those Bupa GPs have shittier opening hours than my local NHS GP, but whatever.
So, why don't you stop slumming it with us 'plebs', take your middle class money and gently caress off.
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Aug 19, 2014 17:14
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- Pork Pie Hat
- Apr 27, 2011
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Nor is it the 'Ł300' you were quoting earlier. So either pay up so you don't have to spend time rubbing shoulders with the poors, shut up, or gently caress off back to oz.
Na, UKIP hate you because you're foreign. We hate you because you're a dickhead.
Truth.
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Aug 19, 2014 18:00
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- Pork Pie Hat
- Apr 27, 2011
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Energy company refuses to pass on fall in wholesale prices to consumers because it might not be able to gouge them again after the next election:
http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/aug/22/npower-blames-labour-energy-price-freeze
The Guardian posted:
The chief executive of one of the UK's biggest energy companies has said his firm has not reduced fuel bills because of the Labour party's threat to freeze prices.
The claim was made in a letter from Paul Massara, the head of npower, to Ofgem, the energy regulator.
Massara claims that dropping prices – at a time when there is a dip in wholesale gas prices – would be risky because npower would not be able to raise them again should Labour win the next election and put in place a proposed freeze.
In the letter, published in The Times, Massara claims the Labour proposal has complicated any possible falls in energy costs at a time when gas prices have more than halved.
"The political and media pressures at the moment make it more difficult to reduce prices and then increase them again next spring," he wrote.
"Then we are acutely aware that if the Labour party were to implement their proposed price freeze, we will be living with the consequences of our standard rate tariff price for a very long time and beyond the level of risk that we could manage in the wholesale market."
The correspondence came after Ofgem wrote to energy suppliers in June to ask why they had not passed on price drops to the consumer.
Npower is the subsidiary of Germany's RWE group.
Last September, Ed Miliband said Labour would freeze gas and electricity bills in the UK for 20 months if it wins the 2015 election, claiming the energy companies have been overcharging.
"The potential Labour price freeze has, of course, also complicated all pricing decisions further," said Massara in his letter.
"Won't someone please think of our profits?!"
e: forgot the link.
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Aug 22, 2014 15:19
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- Pork Pie Hat
- Apr 27, 2011
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Pretty much every quote in that piece makes me angry, from Fact and their "millions of pounds" of losses for Universal Pictures to the filth's "We assisted the Federation Against Copyright Theft throughout this case with search warrants, forcing entry to addresses and making arrests. We also supported with evidence recovery and interviewing suspects.Fraud comes in many guises and ultimately affects all of us." I can think of a particular kind of fraud the CPS have only yesterday declined to prosecute. That can't be one of the "many guises" he meant though.
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Aug 22, 2014 15:31
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- Pork Pie Hat
- Apr 27, 2011
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[...]but no matter what the offence if you show that level of disrespect to the process you're going to get hosed over no matter what the offence is.
So if it's at least partly about the level of 'disrespect' he showed, then it is a 'know your place, proles' sentence, as gorki said.
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Aug 22, 2014 22:29
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- Pork Pie Hat
- Apr 27, 2011
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Security services close to identifying jihadi killer of James Foley
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/24/security-services-close-identifying-jihadi-isis-killer-james-foley
The Guardian posted:
Security services are close to identifying the British man dubbed "Jihadi John", who is suspected of beheading the American journalist James Foley, the British ambassador to the US has said .
Sir Peter Westmacott said voice recognition technology had been used to pin down the identity of the man, believed to be a British-born militant from London.
"We are not far away from that [identifying the man who beheaded Foley]," Westmacott said in an interview on US television. "[W]e are putting a lot into it, using voice recognition technology to try to identify him. I cannot say more than this but I know we are close."
The masked militant, who was shown on video beheading Foley, has threatened to kill a second US hostage, journalist Steven Sotloff. Intelligence and security sources declined to comment on weekend reports that a key suspect was Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, 23, who left his home in Maida Vale, west London, last year and recently tweeted a picture of himself holding up a severed head.
Westmacott said the fighter in the video was just one of many militants – hundreds of them from the UK – prepared to murder and die for Islamic State, formerly known as Isis.
"This problem goes beyond one horrific criminal. As many as 500 British subjects have gone to Syria or Iraq to take part in jihad," he told CNN.
"There are more going from other European countries too, and this is a betrayal of all our values. All western countries have a very small number who have become radicalised or brainwashed enough to take up this cause. But this is not the majority and the Muslim Council of Britain has come out formally against this."
Westmacott said the UK was "very active" in the region. "It is a threat to us. We've picked up 60 or 70 of our subjects coming back from Iraq and Syria intending to do damage to our country," he said. "We are very active, very present, we have a lot of humanitarian involvement and we have been shipping arms to the Kurdish government."
But Westmacott repeated assurances made by members of the government, including the foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, that Britain would not put "boots on the ground" in Iraq. "At the moment the Iraqi government is not asking us to do more than we are doing," he said. "It's right to say that we are present alongside the US in an active role … but we are not getting involved in another Iraq war … We are not planning direct action at this point. We are not putting British boots on the ground."
Intelligence agencies are investigating links between other Britons believed to be part of an apparently closeknit group fighting with Isis in Syria and Iraq. They stressed the sensitivity of a covert operation that has been going on for a year but has intensified and become more urgent since the video of Foley's death last week. They are combing databases from surveillance and communications intercepts and analysing intelligence gleaned from open sources such as social media.
It also seems clear that many of the estimated 500 Britons who have travelled to Syria to join Islamist groups, and even the 200 who are believed to have returned, are not known to the security and intelligence agencies. Foley's killer is said by other Isis fighters to be known as Jihadi John, one of three Britons known as "the Beatles" and given the names of John, Paul and Ringo by their captives – foreign hostages or prisoners held by Islamic State.
In the Sunday Times, Hammond said Foley's killing was an "utter betrayal of our country". He wrote: "It is horrifying to think that the perpetrator of this heinous act could have been brought up in Britain." He warned if Islamic State were not stopped it would commit an act of terror in the UK. "[Islamic State] members are turning a swath of Iraq and Syria into a terrorist state as a base for launching attacks on the west … Unless they are stopped, sooner or later they will seek to strike us on British soil," he said.
American reporter Peter Theo Curtis was freed by his Syrian captors on Sunday after nearly two years in captivity.
Curtis was held by the al-Qa'ida-linked Jabhat al-Nusra group who had demanded a ransom for his release. He was freed following intervention by Qatari officials, 22 months after being seized, reportedly seized in the Turkish city of Antakya.
Doesn't voice-recognition need something to compare the sample of 'Jihadi John' to? Presumably this is where the mass-surveillance and phone tapping the NSA and GCHQ have been doing will show everyone that having no privacy is totally worth it, right?
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Aug 25, 2014 14:53
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- Pork Pie Hat
- Apr 27, 2011
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I doubt that idea will take hold with the rest of the Tories, but if it does, I hope the opposition goes full-on soundbite and bleats about how sacrificing that cornerstone of our British Values™ means that the terrorists have won.
That'll be the same Labour party that removed the right to silence, introduced ASBOs and all the rest of the OUR SECURITY bullshit would it?
e: Which, I appreciate, may well be your point.
Pork Pie Hat fucked around with this message at 15:22 on Aug 26, 2014
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Aug 26, 2014 15:06
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- Pork Pie Hat
- Apr 27, 2011
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The rule was changed from
to
But that was under thatcher, in 1984, and has nothing to do with Labour, and it hasn't changed since.
It was in 1994, which is probably why I was misremembering it as Labour. I do accept though that it was the Tories.
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Aug 26, 2014 18:09
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- Pork Pie Hat
- Apr 27, 2011
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e: No idea why this was posted twice.
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Aug 26, 2014 18:10
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- Pork Pie Hat
- Apr 27, 2011
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Monster Munch, world's greatest invention or Satan's own arse biscuit? Are all Northeners culturally ignorant whippet fanciers or is everyone from London really just dead cool and that? Do you like trains? Why not? Oh you know who probably is a paedo but we cant say for sure? [REDACTED]. So anyway there was this guy in a band who shagged dogs, turns out he was a vet, does anyone know him? People who put milk in tea first are worse than five Hitlers. Or are they in fact better than 6 Jesuses? Jesi?
There, that's probably enough to keep ScotNatChat out for a page or so.
e: Redacted because you never know who reads this, and I just pulled a name out of thin air.
Pork Pie Hat fucked around with this message at 23:28 on Aug 28, 2014
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Aug 28, 2014 23:21
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- Pork Pie Hat
- Apr 27, 2011
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No quote because I'm phoneposting, but Ukip's current Clacton candidate says he won't stand aside for the Tory defector
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/aug/28/ukip-clacton-carswell-roger-lord
And the hilarity continues....
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Aug 28, 2014 23:47
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ADBOT LOVES YOU
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Apr 19, 2024 05:29
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- Pork Pie Hat
- Apr 27, 2011
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In 'Shutting The Stable Door After The Horse Has Done One' news:
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/aug/29/cameron-seize-passports-terror-threats
The Guardian posted:
Cameron plans to seize suspects' passports in response to terrorist threat
Prime minister announces plans for legislation to deal with increased security threat posed by homegrown militants
David Cameron announced plans to introduce new powers to strip terrorist suspects of their passports to tackle a "greater and deeper threat to our security than we have known before".
In a hastily convened press conference at Downing Street, the prime minister said he would announce legislation to deal with the security threat posed by homegrown militants.
The measures, set to be announced in the Commons on Monday, would be the first new counter-terrorism powers to be introduced since Islamic State (Isis) militants took hold of large swaths of Syria and moved into Iraq.
Cameron said urgent action was needed to address the "poisonous narrative of Islamist extremism" and specifically Isis, a terrorist group he said was planning to establish a state on the shores of the Mediterranean.
He was speaking hours after the UK threat level was raised from substantial to severe for the first time since 2010. This means that an attack is deemed to be "highly likely" – although not necessarily imminent.
Cameron said: "There's no doubt in my mind that Isil [Isis] is targeting all of us in western Europe. The attack in the Jewish museum in Brussels was perhaps the clearest indication yet that this is an organisation that wants to kill entirely innocent people in pursuit of its agenda. I'm absolutely satisfied that Isil would make specific threats to the UK as well."
Setting out the scale and nature of the government's response to the threat, Cameron said that 500 Britons are believed to have left the UK to fight in Syria and Iraq. He said he was "shocked and sickened" by the beheading of the American journalist James Foley in an Isis propaganda video presented by a British-accented fighter.
He said: "It was clear evidence, not that any more is needed, that this is not some foreign conflict thousands of miles from home that we can hope to ignore. The ambition to create an extremist caliphate in the heart of Iraq and Syria is a threat to our own security here in the UK."
Cameron said the threat could not be solved by dealing with the perceived grievances towards western foreign policy, adding: "The root cause of this threat to our society is quite clear. It is a poisonous ideology of Islamist extremism that is condemned by all faiths and by all faith leaders.
"It believes in using the most brutal forms of terrorism to force people to accept a warped world view and to live in an almost medieval state – a state in which its own citizens would suffer unimaginable brutality, including barbaric beheadings of those who refuse to convert to their warped version of Islam, the enslavement and raping of women, and the widespread slaughter of Muslims by fellow Muslims. And, of course, the exporting of terrorism abroad."
i) See, we can't just admit that bombing the poo poo out of foreign countries might make people just a teensy bit pissed off at us.
ii) Nice little bit of irony in that last sentence there. I assume he doesn't mean the state terrorism we export, given (i), but you never know, he might have become accidentally self-aware for a second.
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Aug 29, 2014 18:18
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Aug 2, 2014 20:34
