I keep seeing people say this was staged because nobody actually finishes their last day of work holding a big full of shit from their desk, and plus number 10 has a back entrance for discreet comings and goings. And Cummings going, as well, I dare say.

I don't know why anyone would put on this but of theatre. What's the point?

>>91533
My theory is that it is vanity - Cummings likes being the centre of attention.

>Cumming's the name, going's the game

>>91533
What I'd like to know is what does he have in such a large box.

>>91537
I don't think it's his dignity in there.

>>91537

A pig's head.

>>90868

Couldn't agree more.

Trouble is the middle class tend to see their self-interest as aligning with capital, not the proletariat. This country's ingrained snobbery always cancels out any logical assessment of one's position in society, and therefore vulnerability to economic impact. Our preconceptions of class obscure the fact that earning £35k a year as a junior manager in the office puts you roughly on the same wage level as an experienced mechanic, which is undoubtedly a povvo job for people who only did BTECs. The difference is the mechanic likely has far greater job security.

Essentially this is the main con-trick the Conservatives have exploited to secure their position in office for the last ten years. You're one of us, not one of them.

Inheritance, not work, has become the main route to middle-class home ownership

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/09/inheritance-work-middle-class-home-ownership-cost-of-housing-wages

>>91363
Pay no attention to the shitstorm around the corner.

>>91363
Does this assume that grandparents give directly to their grandchildren, or their parents pass the money through without skimming too much?
Setting your life up on the assumption of a future inheritance is weird. Waiting until your parents die to pay off your mortgage runs a hell of a risk of them dying broke or living for ages, and you holding a mortgage you can't pay or renew, just when you were hoping to relax a bit.
I wouldn't turn down an inheritance, but people bleating about inheritance tax can fuck off. Tax it like income.

>>91385

I think inheritance tax is just a stupidity tax, as it's so fucking easy to get around. If your parents/grandparents have the sort of assets to make it an issue, they almost certainly have an accountant or money manager who has sorted it out for them anyway.

>>91034

As long as there is sun hitting the surface of this planet, and water in the oceans, there will be life. It won't be necessarily intelligent life, and you might not like what it is, but it will be life. Nature will continue, and absent some kind of truly catastrophic intervention like an asteroid shattering the planet into pieces or the core freezing solid, life on Earth is going to prove exceptionally hard to get rid of now that it's here.

>What we see as mechanisms is just local chaos being defeated by scale minus time.

Agreed, but that is a very difficult concept to sum up and explain. When I say "system" and "mechanism" I don't mean it's actually a loop of a process which always happens and has defined components, but more just a consequence of the way entropy and the universe we occupy works, on the scale of planetary biodiversity.

As inevitably as a car that runs out of fuel will eventually come to a stop, or the ball at the end of a Newton's cradle swings back to its resting position, a human species that destroys and depletes its natural resources will die off. Then, in time, the planet will "recover", as we see in smaller scale in exclusion zones like Chernobyl or Fukushima, and in larger scale like the previous planetary extinction events.

Ultimately a lot comes down to the fact we see our present state of existence as "correct", but the universe doesn't care. The Earth three billion years ago that was just volcanoes and lava lakes was just as correct.

>>91043
>life on Earth is going to prove exceptionally hard to get rid of now that it's here.
Okay but that's not really a self-balancing ecosystem so much as an infection that's never quite shaken.

>>91044

Now you're getting it, yes

Niw take some acid and think about it. It's fractal all the way down.

You lads actually raise a decent point. We should all strive to be a bit clearer in our language when we discuss "climate change", "ecosystem", and so on.

I don't think there's anything wrong with admitting that our primary motivation is preventing human suffering, which involves preserving or improving our present means of life.

The problem comes in that we're actually getting sidetracked by describing possible relationships between humans and environment, and people have radically varying ideas of what that should look like.

The main, incontrovertible fact that we should be focusing on is that we are absolutely fucked unless we realistically confront causes of climate change, like fossil fuel use.

Whether you think we should be living in mudhuts or techno-utopia is largely irrelevant to that fact.

>>91171
Yes, but the minute we stop disagreeing on a topic there's nothing else to be said about it, so it slides out of view and out of mind.

>>91054
There are two clear ones to choose from depending on your point of view.

>>91056
Mods locked both of them.

>>91057
You have a Biden and a Trump thread in /pol/ with the same title. Choose your weapon.

I offered my unifying supra thread, but my wisdom was not heeded.

>>91060
We're all very highly strung about this, let's be honest. By tomorrow morning there will be twelve.

>>91052
You penis.

>>90841
I don't hate them, but their numbers adversely affect small animal populations when their numbers aren't controlled by a large, dominant natural predator. The same thing happened with coyotes in Yellowstone. Their numbers went down massively, and as a result smaller mammals flourished.

>>90841
They keep shitting in my garden.

>>90843

So wolves actually eat foxes, or just compete for food etc? I wouldn't have thought they're very tasty.

I can see us just having a lot more urban foxes if they had more competition in the countryside. The thing they share with other animals considered vermin is that they're just as happy to adapt and live by scrounging out of our bins as they are hunting in the wild.

The last thing we want is them teaming up with rats and pigeons to plot our downfall. Crafty bastards, so I've heard.

>>90841

>Why does everyone hate foxes? It's not as if they're endemic like non-native hares or whatever it is in Australia.

If they get into a chicken shed, they tend to go into a frenzy and keep killing birds until they're exhausted or there's nothing left to kill. It would be one thing if they nicked the odd bird, but the sight of dozens of decapitated chickens is utterly enraging.

I don't understand why someone would dress up like a twat and chase after a fox with a pack of dogs, but I do understand why a farmer would go out lamping or support his local hunt.

>>90846

Weasels do the same thing, and they're only the size of a squirrel. If you want to imagine terror, imagine a weasel upscaled to the size of a dog.

>>90707

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make, but that's mainly because I was distracted by Kate Andrews. She could privatise my vital infrastructure IYKWIM.

>>90709
I said no because I'm asexual but I bet it doesn't account for that at all.

>Transgender women will still be allowed to play women’s rugby at all non-international levels of the game in England for the foreseeable future, the Guardian can reveal, after the Rugby Football Union decided that more evidence was needed before implementing any ban.

>The RFU’s position is sharply at odds with World Rugby, which last week ruled that trans women could no longer play elite women’s rugby after a major review of the latest science concluded that the risk of “significant injury” was “too great’”. However, the RFU’s view, which is understood to be supported by several other countries, is that more work is needed to assess whether there are safe ways to allow trans women to keep playing the sport they love.

>Last week World Rugby became the first international sports body to ban trans women from the women’s game following an eight-month review. It concluded that it was not possible to balance inclusivity with safety and fairness ‘in light of growing evidence that the testosterone suppression required by previous transgender regulations did not significantly impact muscle mass, strength or power”. World Rugby said that biological males, whose puberty and development is influenced by androgens/testosterone, are “stronger by 25% to 50%, are 30% more powerful, 40% heavier, and about 15% faster than biological females. That combination of mass, strength, power and speed means that in a direct physical contest, cis women in all these domains will be at significant risk of injury.”

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/oct/14/rfu-clears-trans-women-to-play-womens-rugby-at-all-levels-in-england

>>90762
Fuck off, this is not 'the trans thread' now.

>>90763
Most of the thread being about transport says otherwise.

>>90471

Seconded. For a light-but-insightful companion, I'd suggest Haven't You Heard? by Marie le Conte.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Havent-You-Heard-Gossip-politics-ebook/dp/B07SPLCYSV/

>>90472
Oh agreed - I have that book too and almost recommended it in that >>90471 post. I think both of them are very clever and do some of the best political writing around.

Opinium have Labour ahead.

>>90531
And so close to the next election.

>>90532
If they keep up this trend, they'll be around 200 points up by 2024.

>>90525

>>90526
I wasn't sure if you were ending your post with a self-defeating statement ironically for comedic value as that would have supported the arguments I made >>90517 here. We don't have much of a sense of humour those of us on the right.

>>90524
It doesn't help that Scottish Labour has always been terribly run. Fat and lazy after decades of dominating Scottish politics, they took the brunt of the blame for how uninspiring the first 3 terms of the Scottish parliament were, sending a bunch of non-entities to staff it because all of their big hitters (except Dewar, who died.) wanted a real job in Westminster.
Full of genuinely pathological loathing for the SNP (It's hard to think of any English precedent. The CPGB-ML has warmer words for the Conservatives than Scottish Labour has for the SNP) they destroyed their credibility as an opposition by constantly crying wolf, and with the the stupid old "Elections are won on the centre ground, which is eternally where Blair was in 1997" axiom in mind they've traditionally attacked the SNP from the right, opposing popular policies like free tuition and prescriptions on the grounds of being "something for nothing".

Their last chance to retake power was probably 2011, which they blew spectacularly for those two reasons. They've notionally wobbled left in 2016 and will probably stay there in 2020, but as the third party they're about as relevant as the Liberal Democrats and far more institutionally dysfunctional. Scottish Labour is a talent vacuum with no policy credibility (and no big ideas) staffed and run by non-entities who are so blinded by hatred for the SNP that they'll never figure out how they were outflanked by them. And I say this as a member.

>>90528
>And I say this as a member
Jesus Christ.

Never knew it was this bad up there. Got any other mad long posts? I love reading them when I am drunk.

As another thought, how can I become Scottish person? Basically, how long do I have to wait until my son can get free tuition?

>>90529
Three years.
https://www.saas.gov.uk/files/284/saas-guide-to-undergraduate-funding.pdf

Another Novichok poisoning.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-54002880

Heard a lad say earlier the Ruskies have won the cold war by pretending to have given up. A long long game.

>>90475

The mistake evidently is that the west assumed it to be an ideological battle, whereas it is just one of pure dominance of great powers. Russia is by no means in a position to control but that isn't their current goal. Their current goal is to make others positions untenable. It is a zero sum where weakening their opponent gains them strength.

>>90475
I think that former kipper candidate and pompous youtube loser, who I won't name, put a video out recently (that a mate sent to me), which was just loads of clips of that so-called ex-KGB dude going on about some batshit cultural subversion because of Commies. The entire conspiracy is as implausible as they come and basically adds fuel to that stupid Frankfurt School conspiracy theory which seems to think folks like Adorno were issuing instructions to spies within the state itself, rather than being rambling, a bit boring, but nonetheless fairly accurate at how modern capitalism is shaping social and productive relations. It's always handy to divert away from this basic truth and make it seem like a conspiracy to people who have never and will never bother to read Walter Benjamin.

>>90475

The cold war did end, but Putin leveraged the Russian intelligence and security apparatus to establish himself as gangster-in-chief. Putin's Russia has no ideology, it's just a tinpot oligarchy built on strongman populism.

>>90166
>How on Earth is a demented bastard like Claire Fox going to end up in the House of Lords?

I mean, why not invite a revolutionary communist into the HoL at this point?

>Tell me that wouldn't be better than the current shambles?

Better to have demarchy address the problem of the Commons. You don't kill a snake by nibbling at its tail.

Juries are citizens selected at random to adjudicate on a person's guilt, as advised by the judiciary and clerks of the court. Magistrates are the same except you apply to be one. Why can't we apply a similar system to the Lords?

>>90172
Have thought a lot about becoming a magistrate.

>>90169
>Trouble with that is that you're asking 300 random nobodies to read through new laws line by line, understand them in the context of existing law, and suggest amendments.
I doubt the existing lords do that on a regular basis.

>>90169
You could probably get the same quality of scrutiny by having the parties appoint a few tens of lawyers and having them explain the gist of the legislation and answer any questions the members have. "Do people actually want this law?" seems a more relevant democratic concern than "is this good law?", and far too often the position of the Lords seems to be opposed to the democratic side of the equation (that is, opposing laws people want or supporting laws that they do not) without much counterbalancing "Actually, with the way you've worded this you'd make it a criminal offence to have been born in Dorset, so we'll have to send it back for revision."

>>90006
Inflation has only been higher than returns from the average ABI Global and ABI Mixed Investment 40-85% Shares pension fund net of fees in two of the past ten years, the twelve months to 19 June 2016 and 2012. Even with the dot-com bubble, the financial crisis and shitting the bed over coronavirus the returns of your average global equity pension fund are roughly double that of inflation; if I wanted to cherry pick then over the past 10 years the ABI Global sector average has returned 135.03% compared with 30.39% for inflation.

If you'd have a negative return after inflation and fees then there would be no point whatsoever in investing. Are you on about cash interest rates? You're not investing your pension in a cash fund are you? That would explain a lot.

>>90007
Mmm, 50% better than inflation. That's not really that good, is it? And that graph is at somewhat of a high point, and I suspect about to go down a bit.
You're not making a compelling case for pensions having been a good investment (except for free company money, which is great but isn't always on offer).
The payments I made over the first 10 years of my working life will get me maybe three extra weeks in a private care home before running out of cash. For that benefit, I was a bit more strapped for those years, and had to make the expensive compromises that being broke entails.
I think that the 'save into a pension early, compound interest is magic' line favours the pensions industry far more than it favours the saver.
(If your pay never really goes up over time, it may look different? As it is, the amount I paid in back then, and the effort it took, just seems to have been wasted. More goes in each month, than that decade got me.)
Just working harder / getting more qualifications / being less broke all seem to be better investments in hindsight.

>>90008 Edit: not more each month, I wish. Every few months.

>>90008
>except for free company money, which is great but isn't always on offer

Yes it is, thanks to auto-enrolment. Employers have to contribute to a pension.

That 20 year snapshot is only applicable if you invested all of your money June 2000 and took it all out in June 2020, which won't be the case for people regularly saving into a pension. As I've said, you can change the time frame to suit your argument (pic related) but with compounding the longer you've invested the greater its effects, which is why the curve steepens.

Compounding works best when you have a large sum for it to be applicable to. For the overwhelming majority of people this means starting early and building the sum up this way. It may be different for you, but "opt out of your pension scheme and pass out of free money so you can instead use this money to help you work harder and advance your career" is terrible advice for the majority.

>>90010 Compounding works best when you have a large sum for it to be applicable to.

Having lots of money is often a good starting point for having lots of money. Bootstrapping's a bitch.

(I'd forgotten about auto-enrolment, good point, and it may well make things less crappy for the young / low waged than it used to be.)

>>89952

If a word filter for SURF causes words like inSURFere to break then this might be the worst worldfilter yet.

>>89954

Disagree.

>>89954
Don't be so bitSURFul you fragile butSURFly. It's no clusSURFuck or splatSURFest, you just have to inSURFace better. CounSURFeit your words. Then you'll have a masSURFul post worthy of winning a quarSURFinal, as robust as buckminsSURFullerene.

The German system is not too dissimilar, though the implementation is not quite the same. While there's no NI contribution there is instead a delightfully German word: "Krankenversicherungspflicht", which idiomatically translates to "insure yourself or we will do it for you". There's some additional paper work on top of this about the insurance institutions, e.g. you are in the "state system" by default but if you ever opt out[1] you cannot (usually) rejoin. For the end user it's not too different: if you need medical help, you can get it at nominal cost. If you want expedited treatment, your insurance or ability to pay matters.

So for these two examples, the reason Germany hasn't replicated the NHS is because the outcome is much the same. The same jokes about NHS treatment in the UK are being made about AOK treatment in Germany.

[1] Because you think you can do better in the private system.

I believe there is such a thing as a "best of both worlds" approach that mixes private and public healthcare. But I think you'd have to be very careful to make sure the competitive element of private providers stays, you know, competitive.

Despite the NHS being extremely cost effective, it currently has a horrible relationship with private contractors. PFI for instance is an unmitigated trainwreck. I can't help but notice the government has taken advantage of the covid crisis to drastically expand this relationship too- Instead of upgrading NHS lab services, they have instead outsourced and handed money to contractors to build new facilities. There's been understandable concern about oversight and accreditation in these labs, whereas the NHS has a very good track record for accuracy, auditing and accountability in its own.

The most important part is having things remain free at the point of access, I'm less concerned about who provides it than it being available, and not being a black hole for taxpayer money like a lot of private-public partnerships.

Did what a dad would do for his kid. It's absolutely nothing to do with his mastermind of Brexit and helping the Conservatives achieve the largest majority since Thatcher. Or was that Corbyn. Gonna be an overblown media frenzy made up bullshit backlash somewhere. And absolutely nothing to do with Mark Sedwill.

https://londonlovesbusiness.com/ian-blackford-mp-called-a-hypocrite-over-600-mile-trip-during-lockdown/

>>89942
Misery guts.

>>6158

Is this >>89942

>>89943

How do you explain the trip to Barnard Castle, which coincidentally fell upon on his wife's birthday?

They knew they were in the wrong, his wife even wrote an article in the Spectator pretending to be isolating in London.

He broke the rules first time, by returning to work after feeling better rather than isolating for the correct amount of time.

Blackford is whataboutism.

Man who reported second Dominic Cummings trip admits he 'made that up'

A man who claimed to have seen Dominic Cummings in Durham for a second time in April has admitted that he made it up, according to reports.

Tim Matthews said he altered figures on the popular Strava running app to make it look like he had seen Mr Cummings in Durham on April 19, after the PM's aide had returned to London from his first trip.

His claim was reported in the Guardian earlier this week. But he told the Mail on Sunday: "I made that up afterwards, a few days ago in fact. I modified it for a little bit of comedy value. I undid it later, I’m sorry. A bit of comedy value even if it was really inappropriate."

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/dominic-cummings-second-trip-made-up-a4455501.html