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Answers Me posted:If I were counting ballots anything weird drawn on it would cheer me up, it'll be the mass of Xs for Tories and UKIP that'll leave me upset This, and the actual hard work of determining if someone writing 'not these wankers' meant all the choices or showed an actual preference. The obviously and comically spoiled ballot is the humanitarian way to spoil. Also how often do you get to draw dicks on government forms?
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Oct 1, 2014 13:10
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 07:47 |
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Jack the Lad posted:Spoiling your ballot accomplishes nothing but wasting your time and the ballot counter's time. Participating in democracy is never a waste of time, even in non representative elections. Organised boycotts is one thing but just not showing up is dumb.
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Oct 1, 2014 13:12
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serious gaylord posted:It's a very awkward position. No-one wants to bring the ire of the chinese government on them. I think a cautious distance will be observed by all of the parties over this. No one is meeting the Dalai Lama either for the same reason.
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Oct 1, 2014 14:54
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tentish klown posted:I like the x-axis on that graph. I like the way that the bottom 10% of the population and the top 10% of the population combined (read:20% of the population) take up the same amount of space as the other 80% of the population. Yes but people live off pounds not percentages. Changes in taxation which do nothing for the bottom 20% of taxpayers (as your graph shows) and returns more to the highest earners is hardly striking a blow for the common person is it?
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Oct 1, 2014 19:05
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Urgh this is awful, people treating UKIP with anything but utter contempt frustrate the hell out of me.
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Oct 2, 2014 23:05
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GMO muesli and synthetic sandals then.
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Oct 2, 2014 23:34
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Umiapik posted:Yeah but whoever wins the next election is almost certainly going to have to cut spending and raise taxes by considerably more than they've admitted to. Also, looking at the business cycle, we're due another recession in the not too distant at all future (i.e. In the next couple of years). Considering that we're running a £75bn deficit in the middle of what's supposed to be a strong recovery, heavens knows what'll happen when the next downturn kicks off. It would be crazy if UKIP tears the Conservatives apart and completely failing to handle another recession destroys Labour (them being in power) all in the next parliament.
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Oct 4, 2014 16:12
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Aromatic Stretch posted:People said this about the 2010 election due to the scale of the expected cuts. "Whoever wins in 2010 will be out of power for a generation". Reminding everyone why they were called the nasty party and almost losing Scotland as well as having votes and members taken by UKIP is hardly positioning them well. In a soundbite based world with falling living standards for many a party which historically spends more versus a party which historically cuts more should be a walk over. Of course Labour are singing from the same hymn sheet as the Conservatives and another recession will destroy them because there's no way they'll have the ideological perspective to weather it.
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Oct 4, 2014 17:20
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A conference room, recently used to host Glasgows' Federation of Small businesspeoples annual meeting. The carpet is patterned, mostly green with red dots leading to a small wood panelled area by the stage which holds a set of decks and a man dj-ing who unfortunately reminds everyone a bit of Jimmy Saville. On the panelling a small group of middle aged and older people stand beneath the beams of those flashing multicoloured light stands. The men wear old suits and the occasional one still has their (yellow) tie on, the women wear plain dresses and sensible shoes. Together they all do that old person shuffle dance you see at weddings, holding their wine glasses and trying not to spill any while looking at each other and smiling. Every single one of them is thinking 'Yes, I am still relevant. Yes I am.'
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Oct 4, 2014 22:40
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Fangz posted:Rochester's swing would seem to suggest a lot of Libdems switching to UKIP. That would be quite surprising, I'd have thought UKIP would be pulling those 18% tories, the occasional weird lib dem and then getting people who wouldn't otherwise vote to say they'd vote UKIP.
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Oct 5, 2014 00:16
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That is disappointingly different from my vision, but I hope they all had a nice time 
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Oct 5, 2014 00:53
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DesperateDan posted:There's better car shows on youtube now anyway, watch, as some people stuff the innards of a GT4 inside an old mini- the badly acted, awkward scripted parts are already done better than topgear and without the casual racism I don't care about cars and can't build anything with my hands but this owns. namesake fucked around with this message at 12:57 on Oct 5, 2014 |
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Oct 5, 2014 12:54
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kapparomeo posted:Does anybody actually have a story of an ethnic-minority family whose child disappeared in similar circumstances to Madeline McCann and was universally rounded on and demonised by the media, or is this just what the Book of Correctness tells you should happen? No because the point is that they don't get into the headlines at all. It's the lower class white families which get hauled up and told off.
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Oct 6, 2014 21:34
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The Collected Posts of the Something Awful United Kingdom Megathread by George R. R. Lowtax
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Oct 7, 2014 13:07
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Well part of the problem is that by not trying to create an all encompassing movement which reflects the different struggles you'll almost inevitably miss part of the cause that you were trying to fight for anyway, like second wave feminism becoming white middleclass womens issues, workers rights ignoring the relation between work and home life, etc. Humanity also has a bad habit of overlooking the oppression of others when it suits them so if you're geniunely egalitarian you shouldn't really be too comfortable with just leaving others to their struggles else the powers that be offer you a dirty deal and you end up being a new oppressive group. Just throwing everything together obviously creates a huge mess as well but it's better to at least have an eye towards bringing everyone together.
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Oct 7, 2014 21:53
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^^^^It's probably due to the social position of sex workers which makes them more vulnerable to being victims of violence than others because of their job combined with the uneasy social attitude lots of people have to sex work which makes it easier to publically get away with attacking sex workers. Yes, the right mostly consists of human beings rather than lizardpeople and terminator robots so there's usually some point you can at the very least discuss and propose reasonable solutions between you. The problem is getting them involved in a project or campaign without tripping a redline in their head by suggesting you want lower house prices or something. namesake fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Oct 7, 2014 |
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Oct 7, 2014 23:15
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Aromatic Stretch posted:Was there really a realistic alternative to Thatcherism? I've heard the argument that without Thatcherism you would have to try and bankroll the welfare state that helps us not punish the poor on the back of British Leyland and other doomed manufacturing industries. Absolutely. I mean as an example we're subsidising the railways more than we did when they were publically owned and abandoning the industry to the whims of the free market (which then collapsed) just increased the welfare costs we're facing today. Even if you think the rightwing slide was unavoidable (which it probably was) it didn't have to be a supply side Thatcherist rightwing we slide into. The UK has typically been different from the rest of Europe in industrial policy but it didn't have to be.
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Oct 7, 2014 23:26
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I find the idea that only women can be called feminists strange because there are women who aren't feminists and feminist movements can include men but should acknowledge that non-men have a particular and important part in the movement. It functions neither as an alternative term for something else or as an important analytical or organisational distinction and seems more about a particular group dynamic rather than any greater functionality.
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Oct 8, 2014 13:38
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If you're only showering for five minutes how do you fit a wank in there?
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Oct 9, 2014 20:43
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Aromatic Stretch posted:I too long for the days when there was sweet herbs, fresh air, and a life expectancy of 35. Life expectancy before the modern age is heavily skewed downwards due to the massive rate of infant mortality. If you lived past 5 you could easily expect to live to be 50 or older. A lovely 50 years of malnutrition, illiteracy and hard labour, but 50 years.
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Oct 9, 2014 21:23
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UKMT - Unwashed feminists only Also yeah I can see that hygiene beyond 'stopping spreading disease' is a bit of a social convention where acceptable and normal are socially determined rather than any sort of objective good or right but so what?
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Oct 9, 2014 22:02
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Question Time has Eric Pickles and a UKIP economic spokesperson in Clacton on Sea right now. This is going to be awful and then I'll wake up to having a UKIP MP in the country.
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Oct 9, 2014 22:44
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CoolCab posted:I'm going to be campaigning for this man. And I will not. Good day sir!
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Oct 9, 2014 22:50
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CoolCab posted:take me with you Well it's a rural Conservative area so it's pretty but..... yeah. Back to spoiling my ballot as usual I guess.
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Oct 9, 2014 23:05
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KKKlean Energy posted:A little off topic, but: This sweat of your brow - would you say you're entitled to it? Come on, clearly he's for securing for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service. Let's not get silly about this.
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Oct 9, 2014 23:10
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I'm striking on Monday! Although given the level and organisation of the unions at my workplace itll probably be more 'showing up to work later and hoping legal protections actually mean something'.....
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Oct 10, 2014 12:36
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Bobstar posted:What union/sector (if you don't mind me asking)? This is us at the moment, though I doubt it'll come to strike in the end. Unison/healthcare. Little bit nervous because the other parts of my team are away and no one knows I'm a union member so the chances of my managers being unhappy are quite large. I'm not in a hospital though so no one will die. Have you contacted any of the Ritzy staff in Brixton? They've been striking over pay just recently although I don't know the final outcome of that.
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Oct 10, 2014 13:03
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David Cameron: I chose Squirtle, not just because it is the traditional Conservative blue but because it represents a lot of British values; its tough outer shell shows our commitment to standing up and protecting not just ourselves but others around the world, its water element celebrates our fine naval traditions and nautical industries and even though it is small now there's a blastoise in each of us ready to come out when given the right opportunities in this great country. Ed Miliband: Ditto. Nick Clegg: I'm more of a monster rancher myself.
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Oct 13, 2014 13:01
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I guess their original front page story was considered libelous at the last minute.
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Oct 13, 2014 22:07
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Phoon posted:What the gently caress are we gonna do about Crabzilla?  Megagull has got it sorted.
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Oct 13, 2014 22:16
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Autonomous Monster posted:This guy: From the man who brought us videos like 'What is Reddit?' and 'How many countries are there?'. As with all speculation it can get a lot right and a lot wrong. It assumes a demand for wage labour is a necessity although the core of his argument is the exact opposite; that automation makes it unnecessary. It's absolutely true that the amount of capital proportional to labour has grown massively and there are many social forces for why that is so but the key is that they are social forces, not natural and unchangable forces. The major difference between humans and horses is simply politics; either we will actively use politics, the ability to organise and participate in group structures larger than ourselves and larger than basic instincts tell us to, to adapt to this change or humanity will for the most part have to be broken as you would break a horse to keep the system running. I forget where it was said on this forum but we know humanity in general is hosed when drones break up a protest being held by the police. As a part of that I feel he is arguing too strongly for the creative and thinking and learning instincts of machinery; they can examine input and data, find patterns, etc. It seems to rely on the big data argument that with enough data finding links you don't need analysis which will always be wrong to a large extent because it is analysis by humans, assessment of outcomes which will matter (unless there is a robot revolution). As such (as now) it'll be the directors, the owners of capital who have the final say in assessing what is good and bad. Hell that's a pretty good argument for democratic control of industry right there.
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Oct 15, 2014 20:27
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it's different this time 
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A Sloth posted:Hasn't the big drop in unemployment been due to a big drop out from the labour market as has been the case before with the headline grabbing percentage drops? Explicitly so over this quarter: quote:The number of jobless people fell by 154,000 to 1.97 million in the three months to the end of August, quote:The number of people in employment rose by 46,000 over the three months, which was the weakest quarterly gain since May last year. quote:Those classed as economically inactive, such as students, long-term sick and those retiring early, increased by 113,000 in the quarter to more than nine million
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Oct 15, 2014 21:30
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Prince John posted:I've just plowed my way through Red, Green and Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. One of the key themes in the book is the transition from capitalism to a sort of cooperative-based system where workers own the means of production. Co-op sizes are limited and co-operatives can band together to get the scale of large companies where required. I've always said no, but would be ok with living in such a world. The competitive nature of the market will still require workers pitting themselves against each other directly in terms of cost (of their products), working to the limits of their productive capacity for as little reward as they can manage rather than producing according to their own will. Marketing, quotas, typical management behaviour and politics, short termism would all be maintained but since it's pretty certain that you would at worst develop major inequality between industries rather than individuals the general standard of living for people would be improved.
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Oct 15, 2014 21:45
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I look forward to all the discussion about housing on the green belt, a welfare and environmental issue involving the Tories, labour and the Gree.....hahahaha, it'll have UKIP talking about how many migrants come to live here.
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Oct 19, 2014 11:40
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So medical types, here's the Medical Innovation Bill http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-29684785 and http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2014-15/medicalinnovation/documents.html Sounds and looks atrocious to me; giving complete defense from neglience to a doctor for trying treatments when there's no NICE approval or evidence for its efficacy (and in one amendment, any approval from any regulatory body!) can only be a way of putting pressure on doctors to try the latest wonder drug that some pharma company bribed a paper to start yelling about right? Even getting another medical professional to sign off on the choice will only slow the process down and mean the private medical companies need to invite a few more doctors to their dinners. Ebola is going to gently caress up our medical service even if it doesn't arrive here....
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Oct 20, 2014 19:48
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Clearly there's only one solution to this issue: abolish all nationalities and states.
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Oct 21, 2014 19:09
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At least this can be the month we all point anyone to if they accuse the thread of having a hivemind.
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Oct 21, 2014 20:31
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marktheando posted:Jakiri (who has good opinions on things that aren't rowing) is the only poster who argues otherwise but somehow it has become a thing where people think that everyone here loves rowing. We do love a good row.... amongst ourselves.
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Oct 21, 2014 21:17
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Coohoolin posted:Screw poppies, the only thing I'm wearing are my RIC and Yes badges. I bet some orange Maybe! or Later! badges would sell ok right now.
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Oct 21, 2014 21:28
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 07:47 |
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Hey everyone read this, it involves the UK, history, welfare, politics, economics and universal basic income so everyone should be interested in it: http://internationalsocialistnetwor...campaign=buffer Personally I'm astounded by how good it it. I don't understand why they're so insistent on universal basic income not being the same as negative income tax when it really, really is but I'm guessing they've had some annoying arguments with someone over it or possibly are just loath to recommend anything associated with Friedman.
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Oct 21, 2014 22:23
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