>>98403
>this survery
>mfw

Orwell said it best: One can only be truly happy once they realise happiness is not the point of life. This was from Down and Out in Paris, which I recommend you read. It was from a time when the majority of Parisians (and Londonians) lived in terrible poverty, similar to what a lot of people in Sri Lanka and El Salvador are living in now. And they were truly happy in a way, because they knew they had no point in trying to achieve their ambitions, unlike people who were a wee bit richer like you or me who thought they might have a chance. By giving up on those ambitions and focussing on getting food out of pure necessity, the only thing they could do, which was a simple goal, life became simpler and far less frustrating.

Basically, of COURSE those people are going to feel happier, and of course the study's going to reflect this, because they're COPING BETTER as they're used to the situation, whereas westerners can't bloody cope because they life a better quality of life and the downturn is more noticeable. I'd rather bloody live here than Venezuela.

Happiness and sadness are not always logical or based on seeing things as they truly are. Surveys like this are flawed. Don't tell me the mental wellbeing of an Australian is THAT FAR below that of the United States. There's far more to it than happiness, and that's contextual to begin with.>>98403

>>98428
Forgot to say - I've lived in Australia and Britain, and I know which country I'd rather live in for the sake of me health and security. Britain is a better place to live, even if Australia is NICER. And Australia's not too bad to begin with.

>>98429
Australia is a far, far, far, better place to live in thn the UK on almost every metric.

>>98430
It's full of Australians though.

>>98430 Have you lived there? I have, and it's a lovely place, but you have to define 'better' with these metrics. Not the same as nicer (and it is certainly NICER) don't get me wrong. But I've been in the deep end of the healthcare system over there and I'd rather deal with the NHS, yes, really. And I'm white. If you're Aboriginal, well...

>>98352
OP here. Sauce pls.

>>98354

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/61840077

>>98355
>We asked the Department for Transport (DfT) how it got to this [median] figure and it initially said it had taken the median figures from the ONS for four categories of rail workers, added them up and divided by four
LOL

>>98356

According to the ONS, train drivers earn an average of £59k. ASLEF only represents drivers, not other rail staff; it's ASLEF that are going on strike next week, not the RMT.

Cleaners and other low-paid workers on the railways can legitimately argue that they're struggling to make ends meet, but drivers absolutely cannot. They are well paid by any reasonable standard.

>>98357
>They are well paid by any reasonable standard.
And how exactly do you think that came to be?

>>98329
Umbrage. Umbridge is a character from Harry Potter.

>>98330
Well, he started it. Nice way to ignore everything else in the post, too.

>>98333

If you get offended by people cherry picking and pulling things you say out of context in whatever way it suits them, then maybe .gs is not the right place for you.

>>98335
If he gets so offended by a little venting that he has to sit there and act like a five year old maybe .gs isn't the right place for him.

>>98328
This is exactly the sort of thing I'm getting at. There is so much in the way of people sneering and then dressing it up as morality that you have to remind yourself there are genuine souls actively working to improve the lot of their fellow man.

>Could it be a moneymaking scheme in the long run?

The income from ULEZ charges and fines all go straight to TfL and only make up about 2% of their income. If it was just about making money, it would have been much easier and far less controversial to just increase tube fares by a few pence.

95% of vehicles in London are already ULEZ compliant, because the rules really aren't especially strict; any petrol car made after 2006 or any diesel made after 2015 is compliant. Nearly all affected vehicles are diesels. ULEZ revenues are declining rapidly, partly because of the natural turnover of cars reaching the end of their useful life and partly because people can just sell their old diesel to someone outside London and buy a similarly-priced petrol car.

ULEZ alone has had a small but significant impact on air quality, mainly because of the relatively small number of vehicles that are affected. It has to be seen as part of a broader package of measures - bus and taxi upgrades, action on wood burning, loads of boring stuff involving industrial plant and boilers - that taken together have had an undeniable and massive impact on air quality in London.

Looking at the protesters, there seems to be a huge overlap with the anti-lockdown/antivax/climate denial/15 minute cities crowd. There's a cohort of middle-aged Facebook users who, for various reasons, have become very paranoid. They're annoyed about some or other government policy, they go on Facebook to moan about it and are persuaded that it's actually just a hoax perpetrated by them to control the masses. Once they've bought in to one conspiracy theory, they seem to start collecting them like Pokemon. On one level it's understandable that people have lost trust in politics, but it's still startling how quickly people can make the leap from "I don't like being told to wear a mask" to "they are engaged in a secret global conspiracy to eradicate humanity". It's also depressingly predictable that they often seems to be a transparent euphemism for "Jews".

>>98260 I appreciate the time you've put in here. Thanks.

Do you have a source on that 2% income and the few pence increase?

On the other hand fares in the last year went up 5.9% on average, and with the most popular trip of Brixton to Oxford Circus at £2.80 to £2.97, and with 594486 journeys per year (at least in 2022) that adds up to £101,062.62; crude figures but if you look at all these here taken from the link below and do the arithmetic it adds up quick, and those are just the most popular journeys.

Basically I'm saying it doesn't need to be much of a moneymaker now.

But I'm talkng about the long run, as in once all cars are compliant, what next? Will they get rid of it or find something else to make money off,, say the battery's production origins the pollutants involved in production and safety, for example? It's not implausible that they could do that

What is the small but significant impact ULEZ has had on the air pollution? I'm all ears. And yes, I can't stand that lot. I have very strong views about the lockdown from a civil liberties perspective but those guys are just surface level morons. I had the jab and it was fine. I didn't grow a second head under my armpit, the liars... I'm from Essex. Already got one there!

>>98283

https://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/2022/11/the-most-popular-tube-journeys.html

The link

>>98283

In 2022/23, the ULEZ generated £224m. There was a big peak immediately after the previous expansion, followed by a fairly rapid decline. We don't yet have data for the 2023 expansion, but we'd expect a similar pattern. We expect ULEZ revenue to drop to about £100m by the end of next year.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-65778065

TfL's revenue in the most recent budget was about eight billion quid, forecast to increase to about nine billion. Their financial position in recent years has been complicated and volatile, mainly because the pandemic massively reduced passenger numbers - they were expecting around £5bn in fare revenue in 20/21, but because of the pandemic took less than £2bn. The post-pandemic recovery in passenger numbers has happened more slowly than anticipated, in part due to industrial action. Passenger revenue was still down on pre-pandemic levels in 22/23, but they expect to top £5bn for this FY. 5.9% was a big fare increase in absolute terms, but of course that's against a backdrop of very high inflation and lower-than-normal passenger numbers.

https://board.tfl.gov.uk/documents/s19826/TfL%20Budget%202023-24.pdf

A number of scientific papers have been published on the impacts of ULEZ, based on air quality monitoring data across London. Air quality has quite dramatically improved in London over a fairly short space of time, particularly NOx emissions. There's some disagreement about how much of the improvement can be attributed directly to ULEZ, but everyone agrees that ULEZ has had an impact. A similar picture emerges in other European cities that have implemented LEZ schemes - it's not enough on its own, but it does make a difference. We've also seen a reduction in hospitalisations due to conditions like COPD and asthma within the ULEZ area.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967070X22002955

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac30c1

Message too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>98285 Before I delve into all this, I will say that I don't like the one size fits all approach. People should be allowed to apply for exemptions on an individual basis, imo. They should of course, be required to submit some evidence.

>>97910

An ex of mine was a peripatetic lecturer. There are some unbelievably shit degrees being taught in this country and I think it's entirely fair to call them a rip-off. Charging a barely literate teenager nine grand a year for four contact hours a week is a vulgar parody of higher education. The students don't benefit, the lecturers are on zero-hours contracts that barely meet the minimum wage, but the senior administrators are doing very nicely indeed.

IMO the government deserve a great deal of blame for systematically neglecting further education. They talk a good game when it comes to promoting vocational education, but there's no money behind it. FE colleges are effectively being forced to move away from teaching vocational subjects, because they just can't afford it - they get less funding and have much higher costs.

>>97909
>Didn't even realise someone with three Es could go to uni.
Probably works out cheaper than buying when you get there.

>James Daly has the smallest majority in Great Britain. The Conservative MP scraped to victory in Bury North in 2019 winning only 105 more votes than his Labour rival James Frith. He has a fair claim to being the most endangered Tory in the country. But today as he faces the fight of his political life, Mr Daly is not afraid to tell it as he sees it even if it means describing some of his own constituents as “crap”.

>“When you think about the family it’s about stability,” the MP said as he explained his political philosophy to i. “Most of the kids who struggle in Bury are the products of crap parents and so what do we do to try to address that issue? On the left it would just be we’ll throw money at this and hope something sticks, somebody like me thinks about this more fundamentally.”

>As a member of the New Conservatives, the right wing parliamentary group of about 20 Tory MPs, Mr Daly has his own brand of “common sense” politics and “social attitudes to life”. “New Conservatives get a bad rap,” he says. “I think New Conservatives represent very much working class conservatism. We’re not a strange right-wing sect. It’s just people who want to give people the best chance to succeed and thrive in life.

>Mr Daly says politicians need to be “brave enough” to articulate views like his opinion on “crap parents”. But he also implies there should be limits to such plain speaking. On Mr Savile, he says the “challenge for Jimmy” in becoming “a mainstream politician” would be to “come away from being this person who can say what he wants”. But the MP adds, “he’s great with people”. And that’s where he argues Labour and its leader fall short because “Keir Starmer ain’t gonna inspire people”.

https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/crap-parents-why-children-struggle-tories-most-endangered-mp-2817474

>>98237
So does he ever share the results of this fundamental thinking of his?

>>98237

Fundamentally it's hard to disagree with the idea that bad kids are raised by crap parents. I mean, stands to reason. He's not making a groundbreaking insight there, he's just stating the bloody obvious. I suspect however, that he has thought very little about the rational follow up question of why crap parents are crap parents to begin with.

He makes what might be a valid point that Labour would just throw money at it, but you also notice he doesn't actually propose any solution at all himself. If he's so concerned about stability in families, I might point out that the way the system works under the Tories still encourages benny scrounger mums to boot out the dad and become single parents.

Anyway who cares what this numpty thinks, him and those like him likely never going to be an MP again.

>>98077

Don't think he's woken up yet.

If he's still sleeping one of us is going to have to do a welfare check.

I've run out of television shows to watch so I've followed in my senile uncle's footsteps and have resorted to politics as a source of entertainment.

Did Nige ever give a proper reason for standing down as UKIP leader after Brexit? Surely if he truly cared about it, he would've stayed on as leader to keep exerting pressure and influence on the tories?

>>98088
He wanted to retire as his job was done rather than overstay his welcome. This feels pretty reasonable if you ask me, in 2016 it all seemed so bloody simple didn't it. His one-issue platform had achieved victory and it increasingly came up in interviews of the period that he was liable to retire even if it went the other way as he regretted losing his private life.

But then he got pulled back in after it immediately fell into chaos and UKIP needed a leader. Then he realised the party had gone from the BNP for rich people to regular BNP. Honestly despite his hints I don't think he'll seriously run for leader and the establishment end of the party would never allow it for obvious reasons. At least with Corbyn he was technically part of the Labour party and nobody thought he'd win until it was too late.

>>98089>>98088
I follow Ukip on facebook, it's hilariously endearing how they keep banging on about how they can win, and never mention that pretty much every time they lose their deposit.

There's no possible ulterior motive for Sunak going laughably pro-motorist or expanding North Sea drilling.

>>97897
North Sea drilling expansion has been in the pipeline since Truss. Remember when we collectively shit ourselves last winter?

>laughably pro-motorist

I think he's trying to use the ULEZ victory as a angle to show he has an electoral chance. Call me a conspiracy theorist though.

Can someone get Keir to nail his trousers to the mast on scrapping the temporary VAT rise once he definitely gets in? At least it's something tangible rather than all penises and oil.

Angela Raynor has been named Shadow Minister for Told-No-by-the-Treasury into Labour's reshuffle.

Good to see the Kendall mint cake is coming back.

>>97907
I know Lisa Nandy is a thicko but stripping her of levelling up must be especially painful given it's her whole image.

>>97567
Take a guitar and sing a song like Lisa Simpson.

>>97567

>What exactly am I supposed to do when I join a picket line? Do I just stand around awkwardly, occasionally shouting some pre-approved lines and waving a sign menacingly?

Basically, yeah. In theory you're there to discourage people from crossing the picket line and going in to work, but in practice you're mostly there to be seen by the general public. Your union will almost certainly send a rep down to hand out banners and make sure that no-one does anything illegal.

>Ministers have made a breakthrough in their talks with civil servants over pay after backing down to offer officials in less senior roles a one-off payment of £1,500 to help with the cost of living.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jun/02/uk-ministers-back-down-and-offer-civil-servants-1500-to-end-pay-row

How does a one-off 'cost of living payment' of £1,500 stop the effects of inflation outpacing wages?

>>97732
Every day a deal is delayed is a day when those workers are without the pay rise that should have already been agreed and implemented by now. If this helps cement a deal sooner rather than later, then they're going to start receiving the agreed pay sooner rather than later. This deal should have been agreed in time to be paid in April. We are now into June, and there's a possibility that it's already too late to get a deal signed off in time to hit June payroll. Obviously it doesn't do anything about "sticky" inflation (i.e. prices for some goods subject to crisis inflation not returning to pre-crisis levels), but at the same time back pay received in September doesn't help people today.

Junior doctors and consultants are going out on the 20th of September and the 2nd to 4th of October. Try not to die.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-66674058

>>93678
>>93683
Surely if wage stagnation would arrest inflation then the past 10 years would've proved it, if not been part of a long-trend of multi-decadal deflation. Unless it's all been counteracted by the government giving free money to people with connections and property 'investors'. Oh dear I've made myself angry.

>>93678

Theoretically, maybe, but it presents a huge co-ordination problem. One of the key catalysts of the Winter of Discontent was the imposition of pay increase controls in an attempt to limit inflation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_of_Discontent#Incomes_policy

Wales basic income: Pilot will give care leavers £19,000 a year

A £20m experiment offering a basic income to young people leaving care will launch in Wales on Friday.

From 1 July, the Welsh government will offer about 500 18-year-olds £19,200 a year before tax - no strings attached.

One care leaver said the cash would be a "safety blanket" and others hope it will help give the 18-year-olds a good start.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-61950546

>A universal basic income of £1,600 a month is to be trialled in England for the first time in a pilot programme.

>Thirty people will be paid a lump sum without conditions each month for two years and will be observed to understand the effects on their lives. Two places in England have been selected for the micro pilot scheme: central Jarrow, in north-east England, and East Finchley, in north London.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jun/04/universal-basic-income-of-1600-pounds-a-month-to-be-trialled-in-england

>>97730
>East Finchley

I'd be interested to see what happens if people in the multimillion pound mansions win. Let's hope their new wealth doesn't send them off the deep end.

>>97603
Just wait until you hear how they got Al Capone.

>>97605
From what I get, he paid hush money to a porn star because they had a shag while he was married. Morally reprehensible, sure (no surprise from an amoral populist grifter) but I wouldn't think it was illegal.

Is this just a weird quirk of American law?

>>97606
That's not illegal. He recorded it as a business expense. Falsifying business records is not legal.

>>97607
Got it, thanks for clarifying.

>>97604

>Elizabeth Holmes was indicted June 2018 and sentenced to over a decade in November 2022. She's still not seen prison.


Part of the reason for that was that she was pregnant at the time of sentencing. It's at a judge's discretion to postpone the beginning of a person's sentence in cases like that.

In Victorian Britain, there was a turn of phrase called Pleading the Belly, where women could hope for leniency if they were pregnant during a trial. It didn't normally end up reducing their sentence, but they could be allowed to give birth to their child prior to starting their prison term.

In Elizabeth Holmes' case, on the other hand, it's increasingly looking like she and her lawyers are using it to stall the judiciary system and buy her lawyers time to get the sentence overturned after all.

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/17/1164380277/elizabeth-holmes-theranos-prison-sentence-delay-appeal

Which makes her not a hint less dishonest than during her time at Theranos where she was defrauding investors out of billions.

>The US has shot down another unidentified flying object, this time over Lake Huron near the Canadian border, in what is the fourth such incident this month.
>The incident on Sunday is the third time in as many days that an unidentified high-altitude object has been shot down by American fighter jets.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-64620064

Someone mind checking in with a nuclear missile silo to make sure they're alright. Just a hunch.

>>97520
They're almost certainly monitoring the War Thunder forums.

The yanks have shot down four objects, they don't know what those objects are, they can't ascertain how they were remaining airborne and they might have lost track of where the debris landed.

2033 is continuing on a streak of being totally normal.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-us-canada-64627059

>>97525
>He also adds the US government knows what the balloon was was doing, where it was going and emphasises how much larger it was - capable of carrying three school buses and flying at a much-higher altitude.
Damn they could fly higher than three school buses that's incredible.

>>97526
What?

>>97458

Should have done it for the OP image alone.

>>97459

I just thought it was Robert Llewellyn with a bad hangover.

>>97460
I thought it was a member of Blue Man Group.

>>97461
OP's pic is quite clearly white. Nice racebait, Red Man Group psyop.

The best constitution you can have is something like New Zealand's, where you have a unitary state with a single-chamber parliament elected by proportional representation, in a Westminster system where what parliament says goes, with a monarchy (but not really, just a spokesman who stops you needing a stupid president) and with a bunch of nice democratic window dressing like a bill of rights which makes you feel safe and progressive but which isn't really enforceable, so you don't ever get into the tedious judicial-vs-legislative battles and constitutional debates that define the US, and you don't get the stupid upper house games you see here or in Australia.
It's the gold standard, it's as close to perfect in every single way as you can get... except that it would fall apart the moment you took the nice agreeable New Zealand politicians out and put our coterie of Daily Mail pandering aspiring human rights abusers in.

This could perhaps be a sneaky tactic by Labour to invoke Brexit without actually bringing it up. Rather than risking infuriating everyone by going all Daily Express about the B-word, Keir Starmer can plant the seeds in the same people's minds by talking about the Enemies of the People. I don't know of anything else the House of Lords is famous for, certainly among people who don't follow politics.

Also, if you pass a law in the House of Commons to abolish the House of Lords, surely that will need to go into that self-same House of Lords for approval. I don't think they will approve. So K-Starmz can really say whatever the fuck he wants.

>>97352 Keir used to be an effective lawyer for free speech (in so much as it actually exists in our Sceptic Isle) and ever since he got a peerage got really shit. It reflects so many Labour voters as well. I mean it's fun to call the Tories The Fash but I'll believe it for real when Labour types who call them Fash for a pandemic safety bill that stops protests don't do an immediate U-turn and cheer for an online 'safety' bill by the same people, just because Keir likes it.

>>97365

British governments in general tend to lean authoritarian to appease the hand-wringing Chealsea Tractor school run Mumsnet arsehole brigade.

That said, remember the twilight years of Blair/Brown's Labour, where we were all worried about the privacy invasion of CCTV cameras and ID cards? It all seems quite quaint in retrospect considering what has transpired over the last decade.

>>97370 You talkin' about the right wing Farmer Palmers or the left wing Malcolm and Cressida types?

>>97332

>None of this is new, he's been at this for years

He's had poorly-managed bipolar disorder for years. He clearly does believe what he's saying, but it's impossible to say whether or not that's symptomatic of his mental illness because he has been very ill for a long time. The "real" Kanye, the medicated and stable Kanye is just a distant memory at this point.

It's shameful that so many people are wheeling out Kanye in a transparently exploitative effort to drum up views, but it's also shameful that people aren't recognising the severity of his illness. He isn't in control of his words or actions, he doesn't have the capacity to make decisions in his own interests and any British court would immediately recognise that fact.

It feels like we've been here before.

>>97335

Britney never endorsed the Third Reich to be fair, but she did have the haircut.

>>97334
>He's had poorly-managed bipolar disorder for years. He clearly does believe what he's saying, but it's impossible to say whether or not that's symptomatic of his mental illness because he has been very ill for a long time. The "real" Kanye, the medicated and stable Kanye is just a distant memory at this point.

Also consider that he's been living a decadent life of a multi-millionaire for years and his only real exposure to the world at large is crowds of baying fans and media telling him how amazing he is, and scores of companies lining up to use his name for marketing. That can lead people to become pretty detached from reality even if they're sane to begin with.

>>97336

You can get a person out of the trailer park...