Red Oktober posted:

Reminds me that it’s advent calendar season. This year mine is a different beer every day so I probably have to break the tradition of “open the calendar in the morning and eat the chocolate before breakfast” as applied to beer.

endlessmonotony posted:

Anyone got an update on Keir's deeply held values?

Jose posted:

Get your wife to peg you

EvilHawk posted:

So we're allowed to stay overnight in accommodation, but not allowed to meet people you're staying with.

I guess blindfolds for everyone?

Communist Thoughts posted:

fwiw i think the general staff of the NHS are hard working and much more admirable than me, but the executives don't seem any better than PHE(pbuh) or SAGE or any of the other trusted UK scientific institutions that turned out to be total horseshit this year.

Lord of the Llamas posted:

How do I do that?

Jakabite posted:

Seriously some of you seem like you’ll be disappointed if it goes well.

Jakabite posted:

There’s not really any incentive for this to get hosed up as far as I can tell. Not that it won’t, but it also might go alright?

Jakabite posted:

Agree with first point, but on the second isn’t it specifically the case that this isn’t being contracted out? Or am I mistaken? If I am then doomposters please accept my humblest apologies

Jaeluni Asjil posted:

Grenfell inquiry:

https://www.bdonline.co.uk/news/kingspan-threatened-to-sue-for-defamation-after-flawed-tests-exposed-grenfell-inquiry-hears/5109206.article

(Building Design - register a free account to read all).

quote:

In 2006, the firm had changed the product to a newer version called ‘new technology’ K15 which had turned a December 2007 testing rig into a “raging inferno” that had to be extinguished out of fears it would endanger the testing laboratory.

Jose posted:

my last flight i drank so much and went to piss so much i got the elderly couple in the seats next to me, since i had a window seat, bumped up to first class and was able to get drunker and then stretch out across the aisle to sleep

goddamnedtwisto posted:

I'm in my 40s, I have no more use for a crotch. However unless my hands and feet are bound (and there's no potential tooth-holds on the way out) there's still no way anyone's getting me to jump out of a plane.

feedmegin posted:

I mean this is SUPER not true, but those companies are making historicals or other scifi or fantasy stuff. GW has the margins it does because it owns Warhammer and has the trademarks to prove it (hence all the incredibly daft names for poo poo in Age of Sigmar. Can't be an Elf, got be an Aelf Treeshagger or something)

mediaphage posted:

i wonder if as 3d printers inevitably get cheaper and easier to use and higher quality over time whether we’ll see an open source replacement eventually take hold.

thespaceinvader posted:

Fantasy accents: I mostly didn't used to bother with accents for RPG characters but since play has moved largely to discord I've found it VERY helpful, not to mention enjoyable, to do accents for my characters, as it makes it a little clearer when speech is intended to be in character rather than out of character.

Communist Thoughts posted:

20 orks is 36 quid nowadays not 20

Guavanaut posted:

Reveilled posted:

Have you seen the Oath of the Common Man homebrew?

feedmegin posted:

Got any Squats?

NotJustANumber99 posted:

Theres 11 in that box.

NotJustANumber99 posted:

They blocked my credit card when I drunkenly tried to add it to my Google pay app thing on my phone when I'd run out of money. Dunno how they knew I was drunk.

peanut- posted:

With reference to that Helen Pidd tweet about the eternally racist Northern brain

Soricidus posted:

Sure it’s bad, but just think how much worse it could have been if Corbyn had got into no 10 and started just handing out public money while failing to negotiate a brexit deal

forkboy84 posted:

Go to meetings & heckle him at every opportunity.

quote:

British Gas was once a great company, but the company has been let down by successive regimes of mismanagement.

Every time the “solution” has been to cut jobs, pensions and working conditions whilst the gravy train to the top brass has changed little. Our members have done everything they’ve been asked, always on the promise that this will lead to prosperity - but hasn’t.

The latest round of talks kicked off with British Gas parent company, Centrica, threatening to dismiss the entire workforce if they didn’t accept management proposals.

This style of negotiation is wrong and GMB members who have given decades of their lives into the company deserve better.

After months of pressure from MPs of all parties and even the Conservative government, the company will not take the threat off the table and so GMB has had to ballot for industrial action.

Join us in sending a message of support to GMB members facing the prospect of having new contracts imposed on them from 7th January.

Red Oktober posted:

Alarming amount of electricity knowledge in this thread, love it.

OwlFancier posted:

Did you actually not know what a totenkopf is?

ShaneMacGowansTeeth posted:

thread hivemind,

Vitamin P posted:

Chamber of Secrets - Girls toilet is where they brew the potion to change their bodies

quote:

Student activists are preparing for the biggest wave of university rent strikes in four decades amid growing frustration at heavy-handed hall lockdowns, the prospect of paying for empty rooms and little face-to-face teaching when they eventually return in the new year.

There are at least 20 rent strikes currently under way or being organised on campuses, with activists at both Oxford and Sussex universities this week signing up hundreds of students ahead of the new term. Other institutions also preparing action include Goldsmiths, University of London, and Edinburgh and Cambridge universities.

Matthew Lee from Rent Strike, a grassroots group that is coordinating many of the campaigns, said students were fed up with being treated as cash cows for universities, especially in the midst of a pandemic when in-person teaching and campus life was so limited. “This is the biggest wave of student renter militancy in over 40 years,” said Lee. “The last time there was resistance on this scale was in the mid-1970s.”

Activists across the country are hoping to emulate a successful mass rent strike at Manchester University, which last month led it to cut rent in its halls by 30% for this term. However, the first-year students, who organised the campaign, are determined to join other universities to force rent cuts for the rest of the academic year.

The number of students pledging to withhold rent has tripled, with almost 600 ready to strike in January.

“We are going to keep withholding our rent,” said Ben McGowan, one of the Manchester organisers, who hasn’t had any real face-to-face teaching yet. “And we are helping other universities set up their own strikes because every student in the country deserves a rent cut.”

The movement in the city has been growing since hundreds of hall residents tore down fences erected to prevent them moving freely around the campus last month, intended, according to the university, as means to stop the spread of the virus.

McGowan said students are expecting rent cuts to cover the government’s staggered return, which will see students on non-practical courses come back across a five-week period. “Students should not be paying for halls when they are not there,” he said.

Nearly 200 students have pledged to withhold their rent in Sussex. “In 24 hours, we got 198 names,” said Ellie Concannon from Sussex Renters Union. “Students are getting desperate because money is going to very tight over the Christmas period.”

Concannon added there wasn’t enough support for new students struggling to make friends on largely shut-down campuses or to help them find scarce part-time work. “There are loads of students in dire situations … but there’s no availability for mental health services for months,” she said.

In Cambridge, more than 400 students have promised to join a rent strike amid anger at redundancies in some colleges. “The colleges are so rich they absolutely have the means to make rent cuts and ensure staff are not laid off,” said Laura Hone from Rent Strike Cambridge. “Yet they continually put profit ahead of the welfare of students and staff. They are run like businesses – that has become particularly stark in the context of the pandemic.”

Hone stressed that the strikes sweeping the country were about more than disruption during the pandemic. “The education system should prioritise the welfare of students and staff, but universities are not going to come to this conclusion on their own. Students have to make them listen and rent is the most powerful leverage we have.”

The largest rent strike in the country is at Bristol University, where more than 1,400 students have been demanding rent cuts, more support and no-penalty contract releases. They plan to continue next term and have signed up 200 more students in recent weeks.

“The national rent strike movement is really picking up speed,” said Saranya Thambirajah, one of the first-year strikers in the university’s halls. “We are going to keep on fighting for a 30% cut for the whole academic year.”

The National Union of Students president, Larissa Kennedy, said students had been encouraged to move into halls because universities were heavily dependent on rents and tuition fees. “Students have been essentially lied to,” she said. “They were told campuses would be safe and there would be face-to-face teaching but, within days of arriving, many found teaching was completely online – or everything bar two hours of in-person teaching was online. Understandably, students feel like they been trapped on campuses so universities can collect rent and fees.”

Kennedy said the increasing discontent was a “very clear rejection” of the post-2012 funding model for higher education, which requires universities to generate more revenue from students to make up for reduced funding from central government. “Universities have turned into mega landlords, collecting millions of pounds in rent every year,” she said. “A massive chunk of the inadequate maintenance support most students get is funnelled straight into these institutional landlords.”

Research by the NUS found that the average rent for student accommodation accounted for 73% of the student loan in 2018, up from 58% in 2012. Universities generated £1.9bn from residential operations, including hall rents, in the last academic year.

Bristol University said it would be offering students a 30% rent rebate for seven weeks to reflect the staggered return in 2021, along with penalty-free contract releases for students whose health has been impacted.

A Manchester University spokesperson said: “The university will be unable to provide further reductions, but students can decide to break their accommodation contract without financial penalty.”

The University of Sussex said staff were working tirelessly to ensure that living on campus was possible during the pandemic. Cambridge University said the majority of its students appreciated the high-quality education it had provided.

OwlFancier posted:

That still requires them to get over the hurdle of acknowledging a problem instead of jumping straight to "if it's my time to starve to death for the country then it's my time" which is more than I expect of the loving mouthbreather contingent in this hell country.

Bobstar posted:

Remainers did keep saying "ok but this time they'll surely realise their folly" at every key event along the way

thespaceinvader posted:

But the converse is that if remain had made those same choices... what could they have argued? How could they have lied to peple to make them change 40 years of embedded propaganda about how the EU is to blame for everything?

OwlFancier posted:

This is, IMO, the best way to work, and I hope it sees adoption elsewhere.

radmonger posted:

Unsurprising as it only launched in 2014.

Doctor_Fruitbat posted:

The hell supermarket are you going to? Tesco doesn't even need you to select contactless, you just tap ready to pay, scan your card and gently caress off.

crispix posted:

I feel for the person they have near the doors who has to challenge people who aren't wearing masks. You just know they're going to have at least a dozen GUBMINT WANNA INJEYACT ME WIH GAY NANAMACHINES WAKE UP SHEEPLE wingnuts every day