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 UKMT March 2016 Spring is in the air, bringing Mothering Sunday, St. Patrick's Day, Easter, and continuing economic uncertainty. What happened over February? • The Independent and BBC3 announce that they are moving to online only, some new paper called New Day announces that it is new and different. • Junior dohtors hontinue striking, Jeremy Hunt hontinues missing the point of what they are striking over. • Apple's open defiance of the FBI on constitutional and civil liberties grounds deals something of a blow to Theresa May's Draft Communications Data Bill, which is now announcing that companies will only have to give over data if it is 'practicable'. Hacking of end users' devices remains on the books though. • The Tories continue to eat themselves over Brexit, with a shower of failures of humanity listing terrible reasons to support each side. • A plane was forced to change its course after some dick shone a laser pointer at it. A spokesperson from the pilots' union called for all lasers to be banned and claimed that a £10 laser pointer could easily knock a plane out of the sky. • RAF Typhoons were scrambled to intercept Russian bombers over British airspace at a cost of several million, leading some to wonder the validity of the above statement and/or the cost efficiency of Britain's air defence initiative. • Didcot Power Station continued to inspire confidence in British electricity infrastructure. Yvette Cooper claims that Britain needs a new app, not a working national power grid. • Jeremy Corbyn's cat refuses to name its position on Trident. Previous Threads UKMT February 2016 UKMT January 2016 - Not The Best Month UKMT December 2015 - Happy Xmas (War Is Over (lolno)) UKMT November 2015 UKMT October 2015 Pedogeddon Thread Pedogeddon Thread - Not-Racist Pakistani Edition Fash Thread Other Fash Thread #ukgoons on synIRC, in which crispix encourages us to mock Question Time. Finally, please keep the following points in mind: quote:1. It's not a person's fault if they are poor; The fundraiser for Bristol Mind in memory of Fluo is ongoing (thanks Serotonin): https://www.justgiving.com/Brenda-Bridges1/ Pesky Splinter posted:The hypocrisy is the most galling thing...and the sheer refusal to budge from ideology, (but that's pretty much applicable to every action they do e: The 2016 Budget has been announced. How does this affect you? Find out more: 
Guavanaut fucked around with this message at 18:08 on Mar 17, 2016 |
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Mar 1, 2016 01:12
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), but especially on their backwards-arsed drug policies.
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 13:26 |
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Oscars are a bourgeois construct.
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Mar 1, 2016 10:54
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Some variant on weltschmerz? Kinoschmerz maybe.
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Mar 1, 2016 11:35
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feedmegin posted:They'll soon be back. And in greater numbers.  Helen Highwater posted:Did I hit my head and wake up in an alternate timeline where the feudal system was somehow still a thing in TYOOL 2016? Renaissance Robot posted:*tugs forelock*
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Mar 1, 2016 15:34
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How are they actually going to hack the phones? It's one thing writing legislation permitting police to do something, but if legislation allowed police to phase through walls and take the form of animals it still wouldn't necessarily make it possible. I guess there are known vulnerabilities in some platforms, but Apple aren't acting like the type to cooperate and I can't imagine custom ROM providers for Android doing so either.
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Mar 1, 2016 16:34
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dispatch_async posted:Supposedly by ordering Apple to do so: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/02/investigatory-powers-bill-and-apple As for Apple does the UK government even have the capability to enforce that kind of gagging on a multinational that they can't even enforce tax codes on? What if Tim Cook calls them out in public from the US? Do they try to extradite him? Good luck getting that one through a court. Gideon might be able to get some of his new friends like Huawei to do it, but I can't see it playing out at all like they want.
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Mar 1, 2016 16:49
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Spangly A posted:the hilarity of her attempting to define "drugs" as anything but "things my sort of white people shouldnt do"? Renfield posted:If you zoom out, there's an event in Saudi Arabia Bedshaped posted:Some smartarse is going to come up with a fancy algorithm to convert terabytes of metadata into Oberleutnant's arrest warrent some day. e: ^^^ That's a point, didn't one of the UK agencies also infiltrate a SIM card manufacturer somewhere in the EU and pull some very unethical poo poo to steal private keys too?
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Mar 1, 2016 17:06
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She has people for that.
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Mar 1, 2016 19:13
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Didn't Willie the Third try that?
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Mar 1, 2016 19:19
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Is the pink elephant about star wars that it is really bad?
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Mar 1, 2016 20:17
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It kept doing them though. It might have been a lot easier to enjoy it decades later on in the fashion of Flash Gordon if it had stopped after one. Which was IV because reasons.
Guavanaut fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Mar 1, 2016 |
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Mar 1, 2016 20:40
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Well yeah, in any discussion about why the franchise is bad, one of the reasons has to be the badness of the fandom. 
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Mar 1, 2016 20:49
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hookerbot 5000 posted:The 1980's apparently. Though it could be selection bias. forkboy84 posted:Also, I shouldn't be surprised that Coohoolin likes The Corries, of course he'd like The Corries. I despair. Voyeur posted:LIGHTSABRES! LIGHT... SABRES! SWORDS MADE OF LIGHT THAT JUST CUT YOUR ARM OFF! LIKE *THAT*!
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Mar 1, 2016 23:03
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Given Lucas's love for dumb naming I can't believe he didn't have all that planned in advance.
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Mar 1, 2016 23:12
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MrL_JaKiri posted:Saga I: The Star Wars
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Mar 1, 2016 23:28
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The problem with the lack of democracy in the EU isn't that Slovakia has a say, it's that bodies like the European Round Table of Industrialists, which seems purposefully named to sound like a cross between a movie supervillain club and perfect conspiracy fodder, gets a disproportionate say. As do many other lobby organizations that purposefully exclude workers, small businesses, and the precariat. Nobody talks about that though, because it would be inconvenient to the Tories of both In and Out varieties who want the exact same thing in the UK, and already do so via more informal channels. This is a good thing.
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Mar 2, 2016 01:15
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Zephro posted:He's completely right, though. If you dislike the EU because it's too liberal then OK, but somehow arguing that Britain by itself would be a socialist paradise makes literally no sense when it's been the most neoliberal country in the world, including Murca itself, for the past thirty years. Yes, the independent nations of former Europe will probably try to be as atrocious as they writhe around in their collapsed cesspool, but their capacity to do so will be severely diminished. It might make things a tiny bit worse in Britain for a short term, but no worse for actual people than what the long view of the EU to "liberalise trade in services world wide and remove barriers to a truly global market” would do to public services. Tigey posted:The biggest issue with the lack of democracy in the EU is that there simply isn't a European 'demos' - or developed Europe-wide public consciousness. It basically comes down to issues of identity and legitimacy. We still primarily think in national terms - EU democratic institutions - such as the Parliament, are basically elite driven projects which lack legitimacy (I have dealt with many MEPs through work and in my opinion they live in an utter self-reinforcing bubble - far more even than Westminster MPs. The Belgians particularly). This is reflected in the mediocre turnouts and joke/protest votes during European elections. 
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Mar 2, 2016 11:14
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I'm not sure. I've heard that one a lot as part of Empire apologia in the form of "if Britain hadn't joined the scramble for Africa then France or Belgium would have just taken those countries and they were even worse" etc. and it doesn't really sit right with me. I'd love to believe in the Corbynite soft-euroskeptic view that the EU can be reformed from the inside out into a force for genuine social good, but all evidence seems to show it going in the exact opposite direction. Plus it would mean an uprooting of the EU's core raison d'etre as a force for globalization and privatization. Twinned with Tigey's point about the lack of a pan-European consciousness, something that would need to be constructed before such a thing could begin to happen, I'm pessimistic about the possibility of reform.
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Mar 2, 2016 11:44
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Spangly A posted:aside from giving the tories the power to scrap the human rights act I'd also like all my eastern european friends to not be deported and replaced with returning "expats" who will probably not be labour voters. GaussianCopula posted:What kind of atrocious poo poo are you referring to and what makes you believe that the post-EU world would not be dominated by multinational corporations, whose power will only increase relative to countries which they can play against each other? You could argue that a Brexit would lead to a deeper integration of the EU, in which the more state oriented countries of south Europe have more influence, which could be a force that counteracts the market oriented Anglo-Saxon ideology, but that would require you to believe that the EU in itself can be something positive, which is probably hard for you. If Brexit caused the EU to remain a thing but abandon market liberalism that might also be a good thing too (for everyone except Britain and the EU business elite). The thread seems to be repeatedly saying that you're some sort of nazi though, so I think my definitions of social good might be different to yours.
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Mar 2, 2016 11:57
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Doubleposting because this is a separate thing that just came my way, and is something that is of interest whether you're Leave (because it's another example of awful EU globalization) or Remain (because the Tories will probably just turn around and do the same but worse) but thread people might want to look at this, for all the good that internets petitions seem to do. https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/119659/ I'm surprised that TTIP has received little attention in the UK compared to other European countries, and the US left seems more concerned about TPP than TTIP, but that could just be confirmation bias at my end.
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Mar 2, 2016 12:20
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Pound_Coin posted:and we'll probably have to take back all the costa del sun expats
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Mar 2, 2016 14:00
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Zephro posted:Eh, I dunno. We're already skirting close to rerunning the 1930s as it is. We're repeating all the beggar-thy-neighbour stuff within the Euro, cooperation is visibly falling apart thanks to the refugee crisis, right-wing populists are doing well everywhere, and so on. Europe as a collection of individually sovereign nations has a terrible track record of killing colossal numbers of people in apocalyptic wars every few decades and I'm willing to put up with quite a lot if it lessens the chance of that happening again. There's NATO, which is used to
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Mar 2, 2016 14:22
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Oberleutnant posted:I really, really hope the government try to ban adblocking at some point. Tesseraction posted:It's not a requirement of the common market, and it's not universally negative - I hear it's a godsend in the post-communist countries and in (post-socialist? Malcolm XML posted:france loves it some CAP and will let it go over its dying embers 
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Mar 2, 2016 14:55
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vegetables posted:What would actually happen if France declared war on Germany? They could totally kick them in if they wanted. TinTower posted:I've found probably the most ridiculous statement to ever be put into the public records of Parliament. 
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Mar 2, 2016 15:13
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What's their obsession with the failure that is the Nordic model?
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Mar 2, 2016 15:21
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Booga posted:Didn't they ban fisting and pretty much any kind of BDSM in porn last year? And they were trying get poppers banned last month?
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Mar 2, 2016 15:28
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Food is a physiological necessity, not a form of work, therefore we will be withdrawing all employment rights from food service workers. 
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Mar 2, 2016 15:39
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TACD posted:It's not Full Isolationism Now but it's a firm choice to start down that path instead of improving the 'European nation' one we're currently travelling. Ultimately I'm not convinced by purely negative arguments (i.e. here are the bad things we will lose by leaving the EU) because they ignore the (admittedly difficult to quantify) good things we will lose at the same time. TACD posted:I think the Leave camp has to 1) state the positive benefits that we'll enjoy if we leave, and 2) make a case that these changes significantly outweigh the benefits we'll lose by leaving PLUS the inevitable costs any significant transition such as this will have. So far I've yet to see anybody (here or elsewhere) even complete point 1. TACD posted:(Sidenote: I don't know what your position was on the Indyref but everything you said could apply just as well to Scotland / the UK. I don't think many people were pro-independence on the basis of "we'll let that lot sort themselves out and come back later".)
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Mar 2, 2016 16:48
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Isn't it way past time that they made it a part of some general taxation with a ringfenced fund? I could see the point back when TVs were uncommon, and vaguely see it when terrestrial broadcast television was the only way for 90% of people to get television, but it's always been a regressive tax and now it's a fuzzily applied regressive tax. What next, bringing back the radio license for people that stream internet audio?
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Mar 2, 2016 17:26
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Canada tried out Mincome in one town of one province as an experiment. Switzerland voted on it in one canton, I think. Finland are discussing it.
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Mar 2, 2016 18:00
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OzyMandrill posted:We got a new estate being built in our village and all the old farts are up in arms. They even tried to make a 'Memory Book' to remember the village before it gets spoiled irrevocably. My father-in-law remembers similar old farts saying exactly the same thing in the 1980s when they started building the houses that the current complainers live in. But the NIMBY groups tended to marginalize the legitimate complaints, making them look less serious, and the construction company brushed everything off with "we already did traffic analysis at mid afternoon on a Wednesday and floodplain analysis in late summer" so now the legitimate complaints are riding sidecar to the NIMBYs to stall the thing and I can't see it going anywhere good either way. NO gently caress YOU DAD posted:She was apparently a bit of a Communist at school, but is now a small and petrified 60-year-old woman who's spent the last few decades having variations of "Oh No! The Blacks Are Coming!" beamed into her house via newspapers, TV and her circle of equally small, petrified friends. I don't think anything's getting through at this point.
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Mar 2, 2016 21:20
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NO gently caress YOU DAD posted:The fun doesn't come from insisting that every single migrant is a saint but from watching anti-refugee people try to explain why they think that isn't a good trade without admitting it's because Europeans are white. I didn't say it was a good reason.
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Mar 2, 2016 23:25
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Well sure, every time a nuclear war didn't happen we got moved into a less likely alternative universe.
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Mar 2, 2016 23:40
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Renaissance Robot posted:It is a strong reason though. It's the same thing that makes people roll their eyes and tell you to stop being melodramatic when you call IDS a murderer
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Mar 3, 2016 00:18
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TACD posted:It's troubling that information beyond an event horizon is currently outside the reach of the intelligence services. Can we allow the existence of such warrant-free singularities?  Pesky Splinter posted:Pretty much their same definition of 'psychoactive' too. 
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Mar 3, 2016 00:47
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They could probably reach a middle ground with mandatory protective equipment, as long as that didn't have the same effect as in gridiron football where tackling is replaced with head-first charges. Or gloves in boxing where torso hits were replaced with beating around the head.
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Mar 3, 2016 01:05
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Really the only perfect solution would be to concede that children do not have a choice in their own existence, which is always inevitably harmful, and ban kids. At least until a coalition of MPs and BBC staff suggest that there's a middle ground and it's called touch kids.
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Mar 3, 2016 10:22
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Faceplanting brickwork is character building. 
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Mar 3, 2016 11:45
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Safety is important, but it's also very important to distinguish between correlation and causation in these types of things. Are we sure that brain damage doesn't cause pro wrestling?
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Mar 3, 2016 12:14
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 13:26 |
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The natural gas supply will probably have run out by then, forcing a return to town gas, so there's always that.
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Mar 3, 2016 12:41
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