BS: Brexit & other UK political topics

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 23 Sep 21 - 01:24 AM

E10 petrol - so far so good, that combined with a new timing belt makes my 2003 Nissan Micra go like a bomb as we used to say - beat an expensive Audi away from lights yesterday !!!

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 22 Sep 21 - 06:58 PM

..so what about all the backed up stationary traffic
keeping their engines turning over pumping out toxic exhaust fumes...???

These road protesters are self defeating showboating pillocks,
and their immature 'student politics' tactics are a liability for our/their cause...

..and remember I am a lifelong militant cyclist/pedestrian/public transport advocate...

These middle class eco twats are a free gift for jeremy clarkson
and his pernicious dominant petrol head culure warriors...

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Sep 21 - 06:19 PM

Above the law? We're talking about a government who illegally prorogued parliament, who have put lives in Afghanistan in danger, who supported Blair in his murderous Iraq campaign, I mean, don't get me started! These guys have a valid issue, they are sticking their heads above the parapet, they are non-violent, and, sure, they're causing inconvenience... Well so were those striking dockers, firemen, miners, schoolworkers, Black Lives Matter, Extinction Rebellion, the guys who tore down that bloody racist statue...We live in a country where you are laughingly ignored unless you stick your neck out and make yourself bloody unpopular with the unthinking, stinking, indignant Tory masses. I hope you don't think that the best way to get attention is to write polite letters to the Guardian...

Steve (long-time neck sticker-outerer, multiply-threatened leftie, good mate of the best action man I ever met, the murdered Blair Peach...)

And you can always make laws up as you go along. "It's illegal to put your vulnerable human flesh and blood on a piece of tarmac in order to inconvenience gas-guzzling, polluting, environment-wrecking internal combustion-driven behemoths..." Wow!

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 22 Sep 21 - 05:51 PM

I'm a lefty eco advocate..

.. but would agree those over persistent motorway disruption protesters
are a bunch of sanctimonious self-indulgent anti-social middle-class pillocks...

Prison may be a tad harsh, but asbos and and electronic tagged house arrest
would be very justified.

They are no more above the law than any of the rest of us...

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Sep 21 - 04:56 PM

Why are they scum, Bonzo? Surely you can support non-violent protest, or shall we become a totalitarian state?

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 22 Sep 21 - 04:53 PM

Whichever side of the Brexit debate you stand on one bit of good news is that due to Brexit and other problems, pyrotechnic suppliers say they will be down on supplies by 70%. Yay!!

Not 100%.... yet, but a 70% decrease is still quieter for our hounds.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 22 Sep 21 - 04:31 PM

"Politicians frequently lie it would seem. which contributes to people deciding to take direct action, like the protesters on the m25 , i hope they disrupt the lives of people who support the present status quo in the UK"

I'm not sure that people delayed in getting to hospital appointments by that scum would agree with you.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 22 Sep 21 - 03:32 PM

You might be surprised to hear that I completely agree with you, Dave. She was phenomenal during PMQs, grilling Voldemort.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 22 Sep 21 - 02:17 PM

My nan used to read Tea leaves..

So I just might have inherited the dark pagan Powers of Scrumpyshire council estate witchcraft...???

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 22 Sep 21 - 01:40 PM

Just watching Angela Raynor lay into the Tories. She needs to take over from Sir Keith. Can you wish a non serious complaint that will put him out of the commons for a few months PFR? :-D

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 22 Sep 21 - 12:40 PM

But that squirming is usually more painfull for us than them..

Oh and I'll also wish they get chronic inflamed rashes on their groins
way more uncomfortable than their traditional tory vice contracted STDs...

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 22 Sep 21 - 12:09 PM

They do enough squirming as it is!

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 22 Sep 21 - 11:15 AM

Not wishing harm on tory politicians...???
I'm not as wimpy and squeamish...

ok.. compromise..


I wish they all get severe thrombosed hemorrhoids..

How hard are the benches in Parliament...???

That'd make PM questions sessions more satisfying to watch...

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 22 Sep 21 - 09:02 AM

Here you go, Rain Dog

Britain’s hopes of early post-Brexit trade deal with US appear dashed

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Sep 21 - 07:54 AM

So Starmer, the Labour "leader" who has been so abysmal in taking up cudgels with the clown who is pretending to be running the county (lessee...no trade deal...empty shelves...where are the lorries...gas crisis...NI border issue totally unresolved...allies we couldn't get out of Afghanistan now put in peril by a stupid email blunder...allowing Priti Patel to be in charge of anything at all... All that and more on top of the multitudinous balls-ups regarding coronavirus...) is now blatantly trying to marginalise all but his own crony factions by changing the rules on leadership elections. If he thinks that's the way to party unity he's in cloud cuckoo land. Johnson gets away with yet another incompetent bungle just about every other day, but Starmer is showing no response worthy of the term.

One more heave after the next election then, lads? I did try to tell you!

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Rain Dog
Date: 22 Sep 21 - 07:21 AM

Pray tell us more details of this non-existent trade deal.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 22 Sep 21 - 07:20 AM

Peter Brookes in The Times today, finger on the pulse, as usual!

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 22 Sep 21 - 07:13 AM

Seems that there is to be no trade deal with the US. I am relieved that we will not have to lower standards and sell off the NHS but it is yet another Brexit promise that cannot be fulfilled.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Sep 21 - 06:34 AM

Come to think of it, I had similar qualms when one or two otherwise reasonably rational Mudcat yanks were wishing Trump dead...

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Sep 21 - 06:31 AM

My feelings too.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Raggytash
Date: 22 Sep 21 - 05:41 AM

Much as I dislike the Conservative front bench (and back benches, come to that) I would not wish on them any physical harm.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 22 Sep 21 - 04:02 AM

Sad thing is, Dick, a lot of people thought voting to leave the EU was a protest against the status quo. They were conned of course but to give them a bit of solace, they were conned by the masters of misinformation.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: The Sandman
Date: 22 Sep 21 - 03:53 AM

i think it would be wonderful if all of the conservative front bench jumped in front of cars on the m25 and got run down

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: The Sandman
Date: 22 Sep 21 - 03:35 AM

Politicians frequently lie it would seem. which contributes to people deciding to take direct action, like the protesters on the m25 , i hope they disrupt the lives of people who support the present status quo in the UK

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 21 Sep 21 - 06:38 AM

“There will be no downside to Brexit, only a considerable upside”
David Davis, Brexit Minister,
10 October 2016.

On the face of it, Mr Davis seems to have been lying, does he not? Who would have thought it, a Brexiteer telling a lie?

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: DMcG
Date: 21 Sep 21 - 05:02 AM

Also, I have been told that many farmers are considering limiting their crops next year to what they can harvest. Why should they pay the costs of planting, fertilizing etc etc more than they can be confident of harvesting? From a business point of view, it makes financial sense for them to plant less. Not good for the country, of course, but better for them individually.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: The Sandman
Date: 20 Sep 21 - 08:15 PM

no, Soviet Russia, apparently had other advantages such as very cheap travel throughout Moscow.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Sep 21 - 07:57 PM

Well call me Mr Simplistic, but we have masses of empty shelves in the shops, we have a massive crisis regarding gas prices and supply, we can't get the lorry drivers needed to deliver the goods, we have a severe shortage of carbon dioxide which is threatening the food chain and quite likely seeing off the chances of getting a Christmas turkey...or chicken...or a ham....

Wasn't this a bit like wot Soviet Russia was like 40 years ago? Will Bozo get away with it? Well who knows...

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 17 Sep 21 - 04:52 AM

Cheers, chaps. I'll explore, though whether my 30-second burst on QT is worth paying £8+ for... Worse, the camera panned round to Margaret f*****g Hodge who was smiling and enthusiastically agreeing with me...

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 17 Sep 21 - 02:12 AM

Someone local will be able to digitise it for you, Steve. Look it up on th'interweb

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 17 Sep 21 - 02:06 AM

Google ‘transfer VCR tapes to DVD’. There will almost certainly be small businesses within driving distance who do that for you - there’ll be a charge, I think I paid eight quid a tape, but it was a good few years ago. We had all our VCR tapes (including our wedding, and my old R&R band playing the Millennium Mega-bash at Scunthorpe Baths Hall) transferred to DVD.

A Blu-ray player should play DVDs OK.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Sep 21 - 07:43 PM

Begod, Jon, you're absolutely right. Not DVD... those massive great big cassette jobs is wot I meant...

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 16 Sep 21 - 07:36 PM

You'd get a new DVD player on Amazon for about £25 and Blue Ray players should work with DVDs. Are you sure you don't mean VCR?

We've still got a working VCR in the living room. There is also one that my PC monitor stands on but I doubt if it still works.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Sep 21 - 06:39 PM

I'll look into it...technophobe that I am... I can't even do these bloody links on this website....

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 16 Sep 21 - 06:23 PM

USB DVD Rom players - less than 20 quid...

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Sep 21 - 06:16 PM

By the way, I was in the Question Time audience twenty years ago at the Eden Project. The panel was that LibDem bloke whose name I can't recall, who lost everything when he was exposed for using rent-boys, Margaret f*****g Hodge, Shami Chakrabarti and Liam f*****g Fox. I actually got to ask a question from the floor and three million people saw me asking it. 2,999,998 people forgot all about it within seconds. I had a terrible cold and I only stuck my hand up because my son wouldn't stop nudging me to do so. (it was about whether we should have an elected House of Lords - wake up there at the back!). I recorded it on a DVD (remember those?), which I can no longer play on anything I have!

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Sep 21 - 05:54 PM

Bloody hell, Bonzo, Question Time is coming from Croydon! Are you in the audience? Am I looking for a man with three legs (or is that just your braggadocio...?)

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: peteglasgow
Date: 16 Sep 21 - 07:06 AM

yes, i feel your unease...i had a similar experience when i learned that david cameron and his wife had enjoyed a gillian welch and dave rawlings gig in london, days after i'd seen them in manchester and thought it was a great gig. now, my memory of that night is tarnished. these people have no right to enjoy the finer things in life - they should just stop in and count their money, chortling over the whining of the little people whose miseries they enjoy, devising new ways to screw everything up for their own gains.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Sep 21 - 05:46 AM

A severe tragedy has just befallen me. I've just discovered that our new Culture Secretary, Nadine Dorries, is a Liverpool fan.


...Pause for a moment's silence...


And no, I wasn't trying to make a joke by putting "Nadine Dorries" and "culture" in the same sentence...

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: peteglasgow
Date: 14 Sep 21 - 07:24 AM

to considerably widen the thread perspective here - and with reference to northernness or not on the 'our emma' thread - here's a quote from william the conqueror included in 'Book of Trespass' by Nick Hayes that i'm currently reading - the year after Harold fell orf his 'orse, William commenced a campaign titled 'The Harrying of the North'

- 'in mad fury i descended on the english of the north like a raging lion, and ordered that their homes and crops with all their equipment and furnishings should be burnt at once and their great flocks and herds of sheep and cattle slaughtered everywhere. So i chastised a great multitude of men and women with the lash of starvation and, alas! was the cruel murderer of many thousands, both young and old, of this fair people.'

- Alas indeed! I'd thoroughly recommend the book - it convincingly develops the argument that the owners of the land, the enclosures, the obscene greed and cruelty of our class system endures to this day in only slightly amended form.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 11 Sep 21 - 01:10 PM

Wonderful news from Pakistan:

Operation Ark is finally over Pen Farthing has confirmed that the Nowzad staff team & dependents are now in Islamabad Pakistan under care British High Commission & will soon be on way to join the animals in Britain.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 10 Sep 21 - 07:37 AM

It were lovely. On top of an 'ill and tha could see reet over t' th'acme in Swinton.

SPB - We covered that earlier and think it might but it was left undecided.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 10 Sep 21 - 06:38 AM

You 'ad 'ouse in Wogdin, Dave?? You were lucky...

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 10 Sep 21 - 06:32 AM

In other words, will the rate increase from 2% to 3.5%?

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 10 Sep 21 - 06:30 AM

With the contributions cap it looks like care corporations have been given the green light to hike their charges at the tax-payers expense. Does that mean that the government will fully reimburse local arthrotomes that choose to do the same to close care budget deficits? The other question I have about the NI increase is will this apply above the UEL, or proportionally hit those earning below the threshold?

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 10 Sep 21 - 03:33 AM

Bonzo - I know what you mean but you are not quite right. Both my Mother and Father went into care with dementia that was not NHS funded but local authority. Both times were means tested and, had they have had any assets, they would have been taken into account. That is also something that needs to be addressed as there is inequality in funding some illnesses and not others.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 10 Sep 21 - 03:27 AM

Steve - I had to smile at the part in the letter that said they bought a house for £10,000 in 1974. That was the year we bought our first house and it was £950 :-)

Two up two down in Walkden. It had a small bathroom upstairs but the lavvy was still downstairs and would have been outside if not for the fact that a lean to kitchen had been put on the back. Sort of...

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 09 Sep 21 - 07:23 PM

By the time I'd typed all that shite, today's Guardian became yesterday's Guardian. Wouldn't want youse searching in vain... :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 09 Sep 21 - 07:22 PM

A letter in today's Guardian:

I have some sympathy with my fellow pensioners saying that they have already paid their whack. But there are two major caveats to that (Letters, 6 September).

First, contributions to the state pension in the 1960s and 70s were based on people living to their late 60s or 70s, not over 80, and didn’t cover social care – so we have not really paid what we are now drawing. And even my workplace pension was calculated on my living to just about 80, not considerably longer.

Second, when it comes to saying we worked hard for our houses, that is again not wholly true. Even allowing for inflation, the house bought in 1974 for £10,000 should now be worth only £107,00, not £300,000 – that is a £193,000 windfall gain. Similarly, a house bought for £250,000 in 1988 should now be worth £525,000, not selling for more than £1m.

Let’s not tax the “just getting by”, but have a wealth tax: 50p income tax on those earning over £50,000 and 60p over £100,000. And haul in those with hidden offshore assets and income, and other tax avoidance schemes.

Britain can afford decent health and social services, and to rebuild our battered economy. Now is the time for those who have profited over the last 40 years to pay up.

So cards on the table here. I'm a classic boomer. I bought a house on the edge of Epping Forest in 1978 for £14,750 and sold it for £62,500 eight short years later. So I bought a house in Cornwall in 1986 (this one) for £82,000. Twenty years ago it was valued at £400,000 but we didn't sell it and we're still here, so God knows what it's worth now. The biggest mortgage I ever had was £55,000. That was paid off ten years ago. For the last few years of it, months before the financial crash, I got a fix that had us paying next to no interest on it. Mrs Steve and I were both teachers, now long-retired on "gold-plated" final salary pensions. Mrs Steve, poor thing, had to wait seven whole months after her sixtieth birthday to get her state pension. I got mine at the new rate on my 65th birthday. In the last decade or three we've had a number of handouts from various demutualisation schemes, and I was canny enough to get much of our savings into safe fixed-rate schemes paying four percent or more (not these days any more, of course, though we still have two five-year fixed ISAs at 2.3%).

I have never used an accountant and I have never taken any risks on the stock market, etc., as I don't regard myself as a clever enough chap with finances. Until recently I used to find the good deals on the inside back page of the Guardian, though now I can find out online where the best safe place is to put the dough that I have. When we first got married, Thatcher and Howe made sure that interest rates were sky-high and we struggled for a while, but, of course, massive inflation and the next house price boom soon fixed that.

Are we part of the Golden Generation? Well Mrs Steve and I both think we are. Boomers who fell into decent jobs (which wasn't too hard) were in the right place at the right time by sheer good fortune. Everything has gone right for us. We are now "economically inactive," as they say, and the vicissitudes of life such as austerity and coronavirus scarcely touch us economically. In fact, because Mrs Steve and I haven't been able to go on our couple of foreign holidays a year for the last two years, we've got richer. Not for us the insecurities of furlough, zero-hours or the threat of unemployment. Not for us the sheer impossibility for most young people of getting on "the housing ladder." We've bloody cracked it, we have. But the thing is that we've cracked it mostly by dint of sheer good luck. Which is why it sticks in my craw to hear Boris bleating about the God-given rights of "people who have worked hard all their lives to buy their houses and save up", etc., to pass their fortunes down to their undeserving offspring. They got those fortunes by good luck and because we have an incredibly unequal society. When we boomers die, all that dough should go BACK to society, not to the kids who never lifted a finger to earn it in the first place.

If that makes me a bloody leftie, well that's grand! But I'm a well-off leftie, mostly down to sheer good luck. Do I feel guilty? Yep. Will I give my money away? Er...

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 09 Sep 21 - 04:19 PM

Not that I would wish it upon anyone, but if you are ill - eg suffering from cancer, all care will be paid for.