UKMT September 2016: Arguing in good faith with sources where necessary

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > UKMT September 2016: Arguing in good faith with sources where necessary

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LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/770991682145939456

e: and, since poll posts are not complete without some notional GE polling:

https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/770989832558485504

# ¿ Sep 1, 2016 00:32

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 16:08

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

spectralent posted:

On that note, what the gently caress is happening in france?

Someone stood in front of a mirror and said "sarkoman" five times.

# ¿ Sep 1, 2016 00:52

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

# ¿ Sep 2, 2016 09:56

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

So Japan has some opinions on Brexit (TL,DR: it's dumb, Japanese companies will be halting and reversing investment in Britain if it abandons single market membership and free movement): https://twitter.com/i/moments/772383518156550144

And some uppity negro said "hey, I wasn't kidding when I said that making a trade deal with a post-Brexit UK wasn't going to be a priority": https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/04/g20-theresa-may-warns-of-tough-times-for-uk-economy-after-brexit

# ¿ Sep 4, 2016 12:20

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

serious gaylord posted:

The council are making the bin collections every fortnight and I need to complain about it.

Are they doing all bins fortnightly, or just black ones and keeping weekly collection of recyclables?

# ¿ Sep 4, 2016 18:43

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

Jose posted:

you get recycling weekly? that makes even less sense since it doesn't go funky

Yeah, weekly collection of recyclables and kitchen waste (and garden waste if you cough up an extra �32 per year), fortnightly collection of general waste bins.

# ¿ Sep 4, 2016 18:46

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

Jose posted:

you have 4 bins? i've got general waste, garden waste and recycling. General waste is weekly

Five, although two are really boxes and the kitchen waste bin is quite small. I am a man of many bins.

Alternating between recycling and general waste collection on a weekly basis doesn't sound too bad provided that the recycling bin is decently large.

# ¿ Sep 4, 2016 19:13

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

Here are some numbers and bars. They are very numerical and bar-y.

# ¿ Sep 5, 2016 15:50

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

ThaumPenguin posted:

V. curious about the 4% of 2015 Conservative voters who wants Jeremy Corbyn to be Prime Minister.

I think there are many stranger numbers than that in the infographic - you always get a few people in polls who pick a weird option for shits and giggles.

Unrelated:
https://twitter.com/HSJEditor/status/772810979717578752

# ¿ Sep 5, 2016 16:08

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/773112668295139328 https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/773113691793420289

# ¿ Sep 6, 2016 12:08

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

https://twitter.com/OpenEurope/status/773138591312646144

# ¿ Sep 6, 2016 14:12

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

"you before corbyn" is a weird thing to hashtag

# ¿ Sep 6, 2016 14:35

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

https://twitter.com/SkyData/status/773278423233986564

# ¿ Sep 7, 2016 09:29

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

The delusional nutjobbery is spreading

https://twitter.com/JasonGroves1/status/773503474017374208

# ¿ Sep 7, 2016 14:12

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

MrL_JaKiri posted:

Nuclear power is Really Good fyi

Also, when you look at what it would take to establish country-scale non-nuclear generating capabilities, the alternatives rapidly start looking Really Insane.

# ¿ Sep 7, 2016 20:19

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

Zephro posted:

No, but it makes it expensive in the world we actually live in. Hinkley has "rerun of Sizewell B" written all over it. That was meant to be the first of a fleet of at least 8 new reactors. But it was so expensive and so delayed that none of the rest were ever built.

Are you sure about that? According to this contemporary report, it was delivered only a month late and under budget: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/critical-moment-for-sizewell-b-1570608.html

quote:

The completion of Sizewell B has slipped by only a month or so from the target date set in 1987, when the old Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) started the first major civil engineering works at the site. Its final cost will be tens of millionsof pounds less than the �2.03bn (in 1987 money) that was originally budgeted. When compared with the track record of big construction contracts in Britain (the Channel tunnel springs to mind), the completion of Sizewell B is a major achievement.

Wikipedia (yeah, yeah) says that the other planned reactors were abandoned because the Major government decided not to continue offering cheap finance rather than any major delays or cost overruns.

# ¿ Sep 8, 2016 08:41

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

TinTower posted:

In "oh poo poo we're going to get absolutely skullfucked" news, the European Parliament have appointed Guy Verhofstadt, leader of the liberal group in the Parliament and arch-federalist, to be their representative in any Brexit negotiations.

This would be concerning if the European Parliament were anything other than a mostly irrelevant talking shop. The Commission and Council matter, the Parliament is basically there to wibble ineffectually.

# ¿ Sep 8, 2016 15:18

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

https://twitter.com/MSmithsonPB/status/773915730429509632

# ¿ Sep 8, 2016 18:35

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

Ah, good, the man tasked with representing British trading interests is going around saying British businesses are shite. Just the sort of thing you want your trade secretary to be doing.

e: full article:

quote:

Britain has grown lazy and fat, with business executives more interested in playing golf on a Friday afternoon than exporting products overseas, Liam Fox, the trade secretary, has claimed.
In an extraordinary attack on those he represents in government, Dr Fox said that companies were not ready to take advantage of the trade deals he was planning to negotiate.
The minister, who is responsible for forging Britain�s place in the world after Brexit, even hinted that companies that did not take advantage of new export opportunities could face sanction. �If you want to share in the prosperity of our country, you have a duty to contribute to the prosperity of our country,� he said.
Dr Fox�s unguarded comments, made on Thursday night during a drinks reception for right-wing Tory activists in the House of Commons, will go down badly with business leaders and Downing Street.
Many companies have privately expressed concerns to Mrs May that the kind of �hard Brexit� favoured by Dr Fox would damage British industry. She will now have to contend with allegations that he is intent on blaming them if his plan to reinvent British trade is not successful.

Last night No 10 made clear that the comments represented Dr Fox�s personal views and not those of the government. Addressing supporters of the Conservative Way Forward group, Dr Fox said: �This country is not the free- trading nation that it once was. We have become too lazy, and too fat on our successes in previous generations.
�What is the point of us reshaping global trade, what is the point of us going out and looking for new markets for the United Kingdom, if we don�t have the exporters to fill those markets?�

Dr Fox, who was a GP before he entered parliament, added: �We�ve got to change the culture in our country. People have got to stop thinking about exporting as an opportunity and start thinking about it as a duty � companies who could be contributing to our national prosperity but choose not to because it might be too difficult or too time-consuming or because they can�t play golf on a Friday afternoon.�
Dr Fox, who was appointed to his job two months ago by Mrs May, also warned industry that his department was unlikely to protect any sector of the economy with import tariffs and was prepared to see them sink or swim in the post-Brexit trade world.

Such a move would have significant implications for industries such as steel, which has been made uneconomic by China �dumping� products at below cost price.
�We must turn our backs on [those] that tell us: it�s OK, you can protect bits of your industry, bits of your economy and no one will notice,� he said. �It is untrue. Protectionism has always ended in tears. We must be unreconstructed, unapologetic free traders.�

Business groups declined to comment publicly on Dr Fox�s remarks but privately one described them as �unhelpful, to say the least�.
A Downing Street spokesman said: �The principle behind our approach is to ensure British businesses can succeed in the world.�
Dr Fox also revealed that the government was preparing to change its investment policy to give greater weight to British companies looking to invest abroad, rather than encouraging foreign companies to invest in Britain.
�Up until the change of government, the policy was to get as much foreign direct investment into the United Kingdom as possible, but to largely ignore overseas direct investment elsewhere.
�And that�s a problem because it�s great the year we get the foreign investment and we get jobs created, but every year after that all their income flows that go to their parent companies or their parent countries are outward flows in our current account. Unless we have counterbalancing overseas development, overseas investment, we are unable to get those income flows to counterbalance that.
�That is why . . . we�re giving instructions tomorrow to our posts around the world to give equal weight to outward investment.�

"If you do not instantaneously reshape your business and the rest of reality to conform with my desires and the deals I have not yet negotiated, or outlined, or even begun work on in any way whatsoever, I will fine you!!!", said the perfectly sane man with a comprehensive understanding of his brief.

LemonDrizzle fucked around with this message at 00:20 on Sep 10, 2016

# ¿ Sep 10, 2016 00:09

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

health_and_social_care_act_2012.png

# ¿ Sep 12, 2016 06:08

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

Pesmerga posted:

I think it's also worth considering the very successful initiatives to portray taxation as theft that begun in earnest in the late 1970s-early 1980s, with full media compliance/encouragement, particularly from the Murdoch press. Rather than people seeing taxation as a means of generating money for the provision of the social services they use (remember outraged woman who didn't realise cuts would affect her, after all, she works!), they see it as subsidising state wastefulness and scroungers.

Ehhhhhh, taxes = theft has been a theme pushed in earnest for far longer than that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8OgkjcW0g4

(and, you know, people like Mill)

# ¿ Sep 12, 2016 08:10

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/poli...s-a3342936.html

quote:

Jeremy Corbyn�s seat looks set to disappear in a new map of boundaries, the Evening Standard has learned.
The Labour leader is currently MP for Islington North, but this will cease to exist in a controversial review ordered by the Tory Government.
Leaked details of the proposals, which will be published overnight by the Boundaries Commission, say his seat will be carved up and the pieces allocated to neighbouring seats.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2016 13:51

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

Interesting breakdown of British public opinion published by Opinium based on their polling data:

"Common Sense" + "Our Britain" together constituting 50% of the electorate sounds about right.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2016 17:10

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

sacre posted:

What is the reason for redrawing the boundaries?

To equalise the number of electors represented by each MP, and to reduce the total number of MPs from 650 to 600. The aim of the review is to ensure that each MP represents around 75k registered electors +/- 5% and to thereby eliminate inequalities that have accumulated over time as a result of population movements and demographic change; at the moment, some MPs in mainland constituencies represent only ~55k people while others represent over 100k. It's not gerrymandering - the review is conducted by an independent body - but it's bad for Labour because they are disproportionately favoured by the current boundaries.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2016 17:38

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

https://twitter.com/mattholehouse/status/775358742468685824

oh dear

oh dear oh dear oh dear

# ¿ Sep 12, 2016 17:41

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

OwlFancier posted:

The boundary commission may be but reason the changes are being undertaken is to weaken Labour.

No, it isn't. They have to be conducted periodically to keep up with population changes (otherwise, you end up with rotten boroughs); they've been conducted every 10-15 years since the fifties. The last one was completed in 2007; this one will be completed in 2018.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2016 17:53

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/775376281261268992
"I don't have a solution or any plausible way of even beginning to address the problem, but I'm very optimistic!"

This faith-based planning approach that the brexiteers are adopting is very interesting, I must say. I think the last political party that I've seen attempt something similar was Syriza with their bold plans for negotiating a new settlement with the eurozone. And just look how well that worked out!

# ¿ Sep 12, 2016 17:58

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

The boundary commission's recommendations have now been published - someone's made a good interactive map showing the old and new boundaries: http://election-data.co.uk/boundary-commission-proposals

Looks like Caroline Lucas may be in trouble - her constituency's been removed, with one big chunk being absorbed into Hove (currently a Labour-held Lab/Con marginal) and the other picking up lots of Tory wards from Brighton Kemptown (Tory-held Lab/Con marginal)
"Loss of Great Grimsby means Labour won't have a seat on the coast between Hull and Brighton."

# ¿ Sep 13, 2016 06:40

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/775681843295379457

# ¿ Sep 13, 2016 14:06

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

Illuyankas posted:

Linked on the side of that: "Want to age well - how about never retiring?" Literally work until you die, this rich and fit 97 year old Swiss dentist/athete is a totally average example of how that would work out. Listed in the Business news section, of course.

"Try to stay physically and mentally active as you get older" is pretty much the least controversial piece of advice imaginable about ageing, and "you're going to have to work well past 70 unless you're piling huge amounts of cash into retirement savings or are one of the few people still on a DB scheme" is also true without a very comprehensive reform of existing pension systems and taxation.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2016 08:49

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

Pesmerga posted:

If anyone is interested, there are debates on EU wide copyright reform taking place today, including proposals for social media platforms and Google to have to pay news websites for people linking to news stories.

The debate's being held in the EP, I take it?

# ¿ Sep 14, 2016 08:51

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

https://twitter.com/Channel4News/status/776008161669120000

# ¿ Sep 14, 2016 12:30

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

feedmegin posted:

Except, you know, the single best government we've ever had, in 1945.

Do you mean the one that created NATO and the British nuclear deterrent, sent the army to break communist strikes, and was led by a man who said "Labour has nothing to gain by dwelling in the past. Nor do I think we can impress the nation by adopting a futile left-wingism. I regard myself as Left of Centre which is where a Party Leader ought to be." ?

# ¿ Sep 15, 2016 10:38

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

Is Justin Trudeau a giant or did Sadiq Khan get zapped by a shrink ray during his childhood?

# ¿ Sep 15, 2016 23:03

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

Jippa posted:

I remember the new man stuff from the 90's. It was actually quite confusing as a young lad not knowing what you were supposed to be like, lots of mixed messages.

Whaddaya mean, there was an official guidebook and everything:

# ¿ Sep 16, 2016 10:47

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

shrike82 posted:

This is an argument for the reduction/removal of inheritance taxes to support generational wealth transfers.

It's not a very good argument given that it would concentrate wealth in already well-off families.

# ¿ Sep 16, 2016 12:14

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

imo if you feel the need for a prenup you probably shouldn't be getting married

like, if one of your big concerns when you're preparing to commit the rest of your life to your partner is "but what if they try to run off with all my stuff?????" then neither you nor your relationship are likely to be ready for that sort of commitment

# ¿ Sep 16, 2016 14:45

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

Pesmerga posted:

It would be nice if Open Access actually meant open access, and not 'let's charge authors for the privilege of publishing here, while keeping an obscene profit margin'. And as for books, publishers insist on ridiculous charges for reasons I don't understand, and can only assume is a prestige thing - they'd sell a hell of a lot more if they were sold for �30 rather than �80.

Who cares about open access now that sci-hub exists? All scientific publications are effectively freely available whether the publishers like it or not.

# ¿ Sep 19, 2016 13:04

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

Pesmerga posted:

Also, Corbyn's ex-wife didn't vote for him, big loving deal. Well, big enough for the Guardian to run it as their VERY IMPORTANT HEADLINE FOR THE LIVE BLOG.

It seems pretty comparable to the time when Cameron's mum signed a petition against austerity, which was widely reported : https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/feb/08/david-camerons-mother-signs-petition-against-cuts-to-childrens-services

# ¿ Sep 21, 2016 11:39

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 16:08

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-e..._source=twitter

quote:

Germany and France brushed aside comments from British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson suggesting there was no link between the EU's principle of free movement and access to its single market, saying they could send Johnson a copy of the Lisbon Treaty and even travel to London to explain it to him in English.
Johnson, a leading Brexit advocate who is known for his colorful language, told Sky News television on Thursday that the EU's position that there was an automatic trade-off between what access to the single market and free movement was "complete baloney."
Asked about the remarks at a news conference in Berlin, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble and his French counterpart Michel Sapin shot glances at each other before the German host responded.
"We just looked at each other because we're used to respecting foreign ministers a lot," Schaeuble said.
"If we need to do more, we will gladly send her majesty's foreign minister a copy of the Lisbon Treaty. Then he can read that there is a certain link between the single market and the four core principles in Europe," he added.
"I can also say it in English. So if clarification is necessary we can pay a visit and explain this to him in good English," Schaeuble said.
Sapin, in a French twist on Johnson's "baloney" jibe, said: "There are four freedoms and they cannot be separated. So if we want to make good European pat� then there are four freedoms that together make up the pat� in question.

# ¿ Sep 23, 2016 20:08

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