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Recent political stuff:
- The vote to see if Britain should adopt Alternative Voting has failed.
- Lib Dems lose lots of councils and councillors, whilst Labour make the majority of the gains in England.
- The Scottish National Party do really well in the elections.
A link to the BBC politics page containing relevant information.
Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 3rd 2023 at 11:15:30 AM
Yes, decimalisation was separate to EEC membership, but its key events occurred at the same time as the key events that led to EEC membership, which has made it easy for the Brexit campaign (in the past) to tie the two together.
Very rough timeline below:
- EEC formally begins: 1958
- EFTA formally begins: 1960
- UK sets up a committee to investigate decimalisation: 1960
- Formal announcement of intent to join the EEC: 1961
- Brexit campaign begins as a sort of lobby group.
- France vetoes UK application: 1963
- The decimalisation committee publishes its report (UK should decimalise): 1963
- UK announces intention to decimalise: 1966
- UK resubmits its EEC application: 1967
- France again vetoes UK: 1967
- Decimal coinage begins a series of staged introductions in preparation for Decimal Day: 1968
- French change of government: 1969
- UK Parliament approves the plans to decimalise: 1969
- Negotiations for British membership begin again: 1970
- Brexit lobby steps up a notch
- Decimal Day: 1971
- UK accession treaty signed: 1972
- UK joins EEC: 1973
- Brexit lobbying begins in earnest.
- UK referendum on membership: 1975
- Brexit lobbyists realise it's the public they need to target, not the politicians; the modern Brexit campaign begins.
edited 28th Aug '17 7:49:04 AM by Wyldchyld
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
Just a harmless giant from a foreign land.
They want corporal punishment back? In schools?
Because I'd support it for parliament....
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Figure of Hourai
Referring to things in Old British Money and Imperial units just makes you sound like you're still living in the 1390s. It's not surprising the Brexiters are fond of it, given their Merrie Olde England fetish.
I... really don't understand this arbitrary hatred for systems. Yes, the money change was worth it (that was why it was done) for other reasons but there's nothing... inherently wrong with Imperial units.
And we're never going to stop using miles because changing the road signs is not worth it.
edited 28th Aug '17 7:54:35 AM by RainehDaze
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Would that it were so simple.
For Parliament, you say? Imagine someone taking a knout to Michael Gove.
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
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Yes, it's corporal punishment for schools. I did debate whether or not to put 'for schools' into the tablenote , but it's in the original chart in the Independent article. The bulbs are also 'traditional incandescence bulbs'.
edited 28th Aug '17 7:58:22 AM by Wyldchyld
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
Visiting from the Hoag Galaxy
Corporal punishment is a terrible idea in general. It's very easy to slip over the line into abuse, if the line even exists in the first place. Especially since it tended to be disproportionate a lot of the time.
Beating someone will not teach them why something was wrong, just that if they do something wrong, they get beaten. And sometimes no one actually explains properly what is wrong either.
Not Three Laws compliant.
Oh, bother.
So is the only actual defense of corporal punishment that dumbass "spare the rod" bit from the Bible?
Disgusted, but not surprised
Well, no, there's the BUT TRADITION or BUT IT DIDN'T DO ME ANY HARM defences too.
"Yup. That tasted purple."
The reason the youth of today is so bad and schools are so violent is because kids don't have the tar beaten out of them when they're young.
That's the reasoning.
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
A procrastination in of itself
Yeah it's not a bible thing so much as a "well it didn't do me any harm, I turned out fine" thing, which honestly would sound more convincing come from people who didn't come across as anything but fine or reasonable.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Visiting from the Hoag Galaxy
I'll be honest, even the act of saying "I turned out fine, let's beat the crap out of little kids for talking back" makes me think you didn't turn out fine. Because when you endorse the idea of corporal punishment, you're endorsing the idea of pummeling children.
One thing you might notice with a lot of people is that they don't seem to understand why certain things are wrong. They're just scared of being punished. It might sound like that's acceptable, but when you get a population of people who follow rules they think are arbitrary because they don't want to get beaten up, you get a population of people who either refuse to allow any changes because they don't understand the status quo anyway, or people who are incredibly resentful of the status quo because they don't understand it.
edited 28th Aug '17 9:00:45 AM by Zendervai
Not Three Laws compliant.
Greens call for urgent inquiry into East Sussex chemical cloud
Caroline Lucas, the party’s co-leader and MP for Brighton Pavilion, said an inquiry was needed to determine “how this gas came to be in our atmosphere and engulfing our beaches and an action plan put in place to ensure this never happens again”.
About 150 people required treatment for stinging eyes, sore throats and vomiting in the hours after the haze was first reported to have arrived from the sea at Birling Gap, between Eastbourne and Seaford, just before 5pm on Sunday.
The haze was described by a witness as “immense” as it loomed off the coast of the Seven Sisters chalk cliffs that afternoon.
UK Home Office 'cannot be trusted', say EU citizens' rights groups
Grassroots campaign groups across the UK and Europe wrote to EU negotiators on Monday to say the Home Office “cannot be trusted” following last week’s debacle when the department mistakenly sent up to 100 letters to EU nationals living in the UK ordering them to leave the country or face deportation.
“If serious errors like this can be made whilst the UK is still administering a system based on EU freedom of movement rights, what is likely to happen when it is running its own system, having ‘taken control again’?” asked British in Europe, a coalition of 11 citizen campaign groups across the EU and the UK.
It is also opposed to the application process for settled status and want their rights to be automatically rolled over to the post-Brexit era.
“The British government have pretended for a long time now that they care about EU citizens. We are seeking guarantees for our lifetime, not one, two or five years.
“The ‘settled status’ on offer would give the Home Office extraordinary powers and after last week’s maladministration it is plain to see they cannot have a role here because there is no way the Home Office can guarantee those rights,” said Hatton.
British in Europe, which includes groups representing Britons living in France, Spain, Germany, Belgium and Holland as well as the UK, told EU negotiators in its letter that while it recognised that the Home Office needed to make preparations for withdrawal from the bloc, it did not see why they had to be treated as fresh immigrants under immigration law.
Jeremy Hunt continues war of words with Stephen Hawking over NHS
Hawking had again stated that the direction of health policy was towards “a US-style insurance system run by private companies”. Hunt insisted Hawking was incorrect, adding: “The NHS … will remain a single–payer, taxpayer-funded system free at the point of use – and should do forever as far as I’m concerned.”
In a tweet earlier in the week, Hunt had accused Hawking of spreading falsehoods. “Most pernicious falsehood from Stephen Hawking is idea govt wants US-style insurance system. Is it 2 much to ask him to look at evidence?”
The controversy began a week ago when Hawking, one of the most revered and admired scientists in the world, gave a speech at the Royal Society of Medicine in which he said: “The crisis in the NHS has been caused by political decisions.”
He also wrote in the Guardian: “We see the balance of power in the UK is with private healthcare companies, and the direction of change is towards a US-style insurance system.”
Hunt responded with an article in the Sunday Telegraph saying Hawking was a personal hero of his, but accusing him of making “a series of claims about the NHS without any evidence at all.”
edited 28th Aug '17 9:04:20 AM by Wyldchyld
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
The whole "spare the rod" thing is actually a mistranslation. The passage meant originally something along the line that you ruin your child if you don't guide it...which, I think, we all can agree to. If a child never experiences any bad consequence from bad behaviour, you basically get Dudley Dursley.
Oh, bother.
It's almost amazing how so many fucked up things are due to people either improperly translating religious texts or taking them too literally.
(Avatar by Coffee)
Actually it's a pretty good translation. The "rod" in question, שבט, usually means "whip", and stands in that particular line (Proverbs 23:24, to be exact) for "painful punishment" (not necessarily physical, though). It talks about how a person who hates his son spares him his rod, while the father who loves his son teaches him morals from early on.
x3 Uh, why are EU citizens supposed to get a say on something that's pretty clearly a British governmental affair?
edited 28th Aug '17 10:10:13 AM by desdendelle
The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground
Because that affair is about them. Same reason why Israel might be interested in how its citizens are treated in Iran, for example.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Also, isn't London going total double standard on this issue, wanting full rights for their citizens in Europe?
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
Just a harmless giant from a foreign land.
Yes.
(Avatar by Coffee)
London being hypocritical doesn't mean non-British citizens should get to do something they shouldn't; that's a "two wrongs to make a right" thing. And, well: while they have a right to be interested, to demonstrate, to talk about it, whatever, what they don't have is a right to make demands or to have a say about it. To use the "Israeli citizen in Iran" metaphor, Israel can say things about that citizen, it can tell the Iranians that it wants X, Y or Z to happen, but it has no right to tell the Iranians to change their laws.
The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground
Figure of Hourai
And what they're asking for would be analogous to saying that Iran should have no say on the Israeli citizens there.
Wanting to be involved is one thing, but that involvement being a demand that the Home Office has no say is questionable.
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As is the Home Office dithering over the rights of EU citizens. Because that means time frames where they'll likely effectively have none. Tory Home Office = no way that could go badly. 
In short: both sides being dicks. :/
edited 28th Aug '17 12:30:52 PM by Euodiachloris
(Avatar by Coffee)
Well, the EU citizens are like guests in Britain, ne? And one of the house's owners seems to be a mite assholish.
The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground
Just a harmless giant from a foreign land.
Until Brexit is final, the UK is a member of the EU and thus any EU citizen (which, again, until Brexit includes UK People) enjoy freedom of movement within it.
Some of the people in the UK have been living there as permanent residents for decades until an non-binding Referendum with a tiny majority of two thirds of the electorate got interpreted as Divine Will Of The People and threw their entire living situation into a bender.
And I'd be a bit assholeish in mood if I had gotten a letter out of the blue threatening me with deportation without any legal basis in this entire shitbang.
edited 28th Aug '17 1:09:38 PM by 3of4
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Oh, I'm not saying that the EU residents shouldn't be angry about this. I'd be angry in their place, too. But I am saying that in the end they're in no place to demand anything from the British government.
The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground
"Because it isn't that complicated to understand if you don't get stuck worrying about each individual coin, and decimalisation is a massive undertaking that involves repricing everything and replacing every single extant piece of currency and getting people to accept the new system.
It was an expensive and somewhat complicated process."
Seems like it was worth it, if only for the benefit of sounding more like a post-Enlightenment society.
Referring to things in Old British Money and Imperial units just makes you sound like you're still living in the 1390s. It's not surprising the Brexiters are fond of it, given their Merrie Olde England fetish.
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."