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16  Community Forums / The Lounge / Re: The UK Politics and EU Referendum thread - merged on: December 10, 2019, 04:01:26 PM
a proper land value tax sorts out the issues of social housing more easily than banning private rent, and has the added bonus of redistributing income directly to the Exchequer.
17  Community Forums / The Lounge / Re: The UK Politics and EU Referendum thread - merged on: December 10, 2019, 02:22:06 PM
It’s certainly a good point that Blair benefitted from a booming economy, Thatcher did as well of course but didn’t spend the money on the NHS. Do you think austerity contributed to how poorly our economy has performed since 2010?

it is unarguable, to the economically literate, that this is the case. The whole idea of austerity economics has been shown to be based on a fundamentally flawed model and was ideologically rammed through anyway because fuck the consequences and the poor.
18  Community Forums / The Lounge / Re: The UK Politics and EU Referendum thread - merged on: December 03, 2019, 01:45:44 PM
Is Boris Johnson heading for another Brexit crisis?

Critics claim his deadline of a trade deal with the EU by December 2020 is impossibly tight


https://www.ft.com/content/9e015820-111d-11ea-a7e6-62bf4f9e548a

think about that on Dec 13th only, it seems

I think it’s clear that if the alternative was leaving without a trade agreement, he will extend the transition period.

which, of course, he's said he won't do.

not that his word counts for a single thing, but it is a thing he's said.
19  Community Forums / The Lounge / Re: The UK Politics and EU Referendum thread - merged on: November 22, 2019, 10:18:58 AM
The non-debate of the non-leaders. New post on Grey'sBrexit Blog reviewing the latest Brexit developments through the lens of the Corbyn-Johnson TV debate.

The awful truth is that we did actually hear all they have to say about Brexit.

Just up, now: https://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2019/11/the-no

fixed the link: https://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2019/11/the-non-debate-of-non-leaders.html

also: https://www.thetorymanifesto.com/
20  Community Forums / The Lounge / Re: The UK Politics and EU Referendum thread - merged on: November 19, 2019, 01:20:49 PM

Twitter at it's best.

"If they had kids".






I believe with Mr Johnson it's just prudent to assume he does have...
21  Poker Forums / Diaries and Blogs / Re: Vagueness and the Aftermath - A sporadic diary on: November 19, 2019, 01:17:27 PM
Do you ever feel like you've spent big chunks of your life waiting for the next stage?

I do.

Well perhaps not exactly waiting for the next stage, but a feeling of, "I just need to get X sorted and then I'm free to do Y.

The trouble being, there is always another X and I'm not sure what Y is.

Does that make any sense at all?

A common (related) problem is the XY Problem where you ask about your attempted solution to a problem, instead of asking how to solve your actual problem. (Asking about X, when you should really ask about Y)




As a salesman I came up against this a lot. Part of my process was to take the client through the steps of describing and defining Y and then showing him that Z was the best solution. Unless I only had Xs to sell obviously.



I just wanted someone to say "Oh yeah, me too, I know that feeling" etc.

Now my head hurts.


You were a salesman eh Dave? What did you sell?

Any more pics of the camper? Have you done much since the previous ones?

For most of my career I sold finance solutions to companies. Hire Purchase, Leasing etc for anything from photocopiers to 6 colour printing presses, cars to multi-wheel low loaders, excavators, mining gear, I even financed £100,000 worth of beer kegs once.

The pics I posted earlier were from Feb 2017. A lot has been done since then, it will never be finished, but it is fully functional and I got DVLA to agree that it is a Motor Caravan well before they got arsey about stuff earlier this year.

We added a bit of extra sleeping space...


I say we, but this was one job I knew I had to pay for.

The floor had to be ripped out and replaced, horse pee is horrible stuff.

Then we added some windows. Seitz are so expensive and look so wrong in a body like ours so I bought these wooden frames in kit form and got toughened glass sealed units, which all came in for less than one seitz.


Insulated it



and lined it out with OSB




Will post more when I can. Feel free to comment on what an outstanding job I did Smiley



That looks like an excellent job to me Dave. I'm looking forward to seeing more pics and hearing more detail.

I like the "it will never be finished" comment. Ongoing projects are great, people tend to take their time rather than rush to get it done.

Sometimes the journey is more important than the destination.

Nailed it.
22  Poker Forums / Diaries and Blogs / Re: An Idiot and His Cat: A Diary on: November 19, 2019, 11:08:16 AM
this weekend I was out of Prague and back in the UK for a family birthday.

whilst I was away, the Czech Republic celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution (Sametová revoluce) which brought to an end decades of brutal communist rule in the former Czechoslovakia.

My Czech teacher was a student at the time of the revolution and was showing us photos of the demonstrations and explaining in detail what happened. There's nowt so good as a proper oral history from people that were there.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50419667 is a good overview of then, and now

A few short years later, after free elections had made Vaclav Havel the first PM of the free Czechoslovak state, the country divided in the Velvet Divorce into Czech Republic (now Czechia, sort of...) and the Slovak Republic. The historic divorce meeting took place at Villa Tugendhat just outside Brno, the Czech Republic's second city. Built from concrete in the late 20s and following designs by a pair of German architects, the villa truly is iconic, not just here, but around Europe as one of the pioneers of modernism and functionalist architecture.

You can see why:

 Click to see full-size image.


 Click to see full-size image.


Anyway, 30 years hence and the Republic is still in a state of flux. The PM is a Slovak-born billionaire who stands accused of corruption and of being a collaborator with the Communist-era secret police StB (Státní bezpečnost / State Security). The Slovak Constitutional Court ruled in 2012 that there was no doubt that Mr. Babiš was certainly a collaborator but - obviously - made no comment on his suitability to be the PM of a different country. Many Czechs distrust him and there is evidence that he has misused EU subsidies for his own gain (the so-called Stork's Nest affair..) and would long for a return to the 'Lustration' period, where collaborators with the StB and other communist-era institutions were banned from the highest offices in the land. That law expired in 2000.

Mr Babiš, and his ally President Zeman (who maybe I'll write about another time as he is quite a character) continue. Babiš as the leader of a coalition goverment with his ANO ('YES') party who is facing calls to resign. The anniversary of the Velvet Revolution was the perfect opportunity for 250,000 people to descend on the Letenská pláň park in the city to rally and call for his resignation. That's part of the movement Milion chvilek pro demokracii ('A million moments for democracy'). Not bad, but not quite as many visitors as a similar rally in the summer which had perhaps 300,000. There's still some way to go to reach the numbers during the Velvet Revolution which numbered 800,000 or so. Although, of course, the country is smaller now..

Today they renewed calls for him to resign. It's worth noting, whilst he has many detractors, he has his supporters too. His party won the Euro elections with about 20% of the vote, and it's fair to say that outside of the metropoles of Prague and Brno he enjoys quite a swelling of populist support.
Removing him from power will not be easy - either at the ballot box or otherwise. There are now more than 500,000 signatures on one million moments petition for him to resign. A salve for democrats is that in the history of the world a non-violent protest engaging 3.5% of the population has never failed to bring about change. A fascinating article on that subject here.

If I've made a small contribution, it's that I pointed out this article to two young journalists I met in a bar on the eve of the larger summer protest and lo and behold, it appeared in their newspaper (ironically, owned by Babiš) the next day.

The population of the Czech Republic has 10.65m people, so the magic mark for 3.5% stands at around 375,000 people.

Below a comparison of the protests in November 1989 and November 2019 from iDnes, a daily newspaper.

 Click to see full-size image.


The next months promise to be interesting....
23  Poker Forums / Diaries and Blogs / Re: Vagueness and the Aftermath - A sporadic diary on: November 19, 2019, 09:17:03 AM
Do you ever feel like you've spent big chunks of your life waiting for the next stage?

I do.

Well perhaps not exactly waiting for the next stage, but a feeling of, "I just need to get X sorted and then I'm free to do Y.

The trouble being, there is always another X and I'm not sure what Y is.

Does that make any sense at all?

A common (related) problem is the XY Problem where you ask about your attempted solution to a problem, instead of asking how to solve your actual problem. (Asking about X, when you should really ask about Y)


24  Community Forums / The Lounge / Re: The UK Politics and EU Referendum thread - merged on: November 12, 2019, 10:42:18 AM
Labour hit with a large scale cyber attack

https://twitter.com/BBCBreaking/status/1194196575758823425

mind if I wanted to put pressure on govt to release report into Russian election interference, I'd claim there was a massive cyberhack attempt during this election as well Wink

I'm not suring no attack happened, as I'm sure someone tries every minute or so, just that I reckon there'll be very few verifiable details about the scale in the coming days.
25  Poker Forums / Diaries and Blogs / Re: Vagueness and the Aftermath - A sporadic diary on: November 10, 2019, 09:12:01 PM
Random thought of the day.


I wonder why parrots live 10 times longer than chickens? (and don't say because no one does Kentucky Fried parrot)

It’s to do with - as I understand it - metabolic rate, lack of predators and natural selection.

Basically if you have natural predators, you need to breed quickly before you get eaten.
That means you have to reach sexual maturity quickly, which means you have a lot of metabolic strain and this tends to shorten life span.

Additionally, any diseases or disorders which affect ‘older’ birds aren’t controlled for by natural selection because they have already bred by the time the defect shows up. Parrots on the other hand can control a bit more for these defects and thus live longer because they’ve fewer genetic defects in old age (somewhat simplistic view, but this is how I understand it)
26  Community Forums / The Lounge / Re: The UK Politics and EU Referendum thread - merged on: November 08, 2019, 09:41:20 PM
A close second to the poppy thing is the Shisha pipe and plastic wine and shot glasses in the background as if a single Tory MP has ever used a single on of them.
27  Community Forums / The Lounge / Re: The UK Politics and EU Referendum thread - merged on: November 08, 2019, 09:36:04 PM

Who do they think will be impressed by this oh-so-obviously staged photograph?

Picture the scene, as the cameraman (or woman) says "right, all stare at Liz, and Liz, I want you to stare at the camera & put on your gormless look, ok?"


 Click to see full-size image.


I’ve thought about it a lot and I *think* the thing about this photo that annoys me the most is that she’s the only one wearing a poppy.

‘Quick, someone get her a poppy!’, bellows the spin doctor. ‘We can’t allow a photo to be taken in November sans poppy. It won’t play well with Workington Man if she’s snapped without a poppy!’

‘I’ve got one, use mine!’ screamed the intern, bumbling forward to present a crumpled paper poppy they’d paid a pound for that morning.

‘We can’t use that! Look at it’ chastised the spin doctor as the intern faded back into the walls. ‘We’ll have to photoshop one one’ came the edict.

‘What about the others?’ questioned the graphic designer?

But the spin doctor was already gone. Andrew Bridgen had opened his mouth again and he was needed for damage control.

FIN
28  Community Forums / Betting Tips and Sport Discussion / Re: Stoke City FC on: November 07, 2019, 05:03:07 PM
Michael Walker in TheAthletic calling it a done deal for Michael O’Neill.

Apparently he’ll be at game this weekend in stands, then manage NI in last two qualifiers and then sign on at Stoke.
29  Community Forums / The Lounge / Re: The UK Politics and EU Referendum thread - merged on: November 06, 2019, 03:21:00 PM
 Click to see full-size image.



Some ego this Swinson

I read somewhere her hubby has had £3m in funding out of the EU so makes sense why she is so anti brexit

aye that's not true. unfortunately the rubbish spread about this issue goes much further than the fact checking posts (like this one: https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-50160148)

there are many many reasons to dislike Jo Swinson. This isn't one of them.
30  Community Forums / The Lounge / Re: The UK Politics and EU Referendum thread - merged on: November 05, 2019, 02:52:16 PM
yeah seems like it's a Tory lock.

You basically have a choice between Labour and Lib Dems if you hope that Brexit Party steals a bunch of points from Conservatives.

Lib Dems are probably more aligned (Remain + not Corbyn) but Labour had 8x as many votes in 2017 than Lib Dem.

So it's a flip. Vote based on your principles imo because I don't think you live in a constituency where tactical voting is likely to make a difference.

edit:
based on 2017 if the swing away from UKIP (vs 2015) goes back to Brexit Party, and Conservatives lose more to pro-remain Libs then maybe it might be close enough to vote for LDs...

 Click to see full-size image.
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