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*** OFFICIAL BREXIT SUNLIT UPLANDS and #MEGA THREAD ***

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  1. #2926
    One of the country's stupidest politicians just hired one of the country's stupidest lawyers.

    https://twitter.com/AvaSantina/statu...92541802160128


    Cliffs: Matt Hancock was the health minister during most of Covid. He quit after he was caught playing kissy-feely with an aide on closed circuit camera. He then tried to get back in everyone's good books by going on a celebrity survivor-type show. Every week he was voted for by the public to do the most disgusting tasks. He also wrote a book about the pandemic which has sold about 300 copies.

    Anyways, he's back in the news now because the woman "journalist" he hired to ghost-write his book leaked 100,000 of his whatsapp messages to a newspaper and they've been publishing the juicy bits. Said woman also has form for outting her clients, some guy who she narked on and ended up in jail or summat.

    I almost feel sorry for Hancock, it must suck being that dumb.
    I just think we should suspend judgment on Boris until we have all the facts through an inquiry, police investigation, and parliamentary commission...then we should explode him.
    also,
    I'd like to be called Lord Poopy His Most Gloriously Excellent.
  2. #2927
    I guess "dumb" is a relative term. Our fearless leader during covid struggling with the difference between percentages and proportions.

    https://twitter.com/Kit_Yates_Maths/...73732568203267
    I just think we should suspend judgment on Boris until we have all the facts through an inquiry, police investigation, and parliamentary commission...then we should explode him.
    also,
    I'd like to be called Lord Poopy His Most Gloriously Excellent.
  3. #2928
    Can't wait for Hancock's lawyer to host a press conference at Harrod's Landscaping.
    I just think we should suspend judgment on Boris until we have all the facts through an inquiry, police investigation, and parliamentary commission...then we should explode him.
    also,
    I'd like to be called Lord Poopy His Most Gloriously Excellent.
  4. #2929
    Yeah, suck on THAT, refugees! No slavery for you!

    https://mobile.twitter.com/RishiSuna...58789103747072
    I just think we should suspend judgment on Boris until we have all the facts through an inquiry, police investigation, and parliamentary commission...then we should explode him.
    also,
    I'd like to be called Lord Poopy His Most Gloriously Excellent.
  5. #2930
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
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    What was that supposed to say?

    'Cause it sounds like if someone is human traficked into the UK and held as a slave, the UK is all, "You didn't enter the country legally, so you can stay a slave, lol."
    You can find any pattern you want to any level of precision you want, if you're prepared to ignore enough data.
  6. #2931
    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    What was that supposed to say?

    'Cause it sounds like if someone is human traficked into the UK and held as a slave, the UK is all, "You didn't enter the country legally, so you can stay a slave, lol."
    That's pretty much the gist of it yeah. If you're desperate to get here to seek asylum, not only will we shut down every legal means of doing so (which they've already done for most countries of origin), but now we'll deny you basic human rights of protection from criminals if you manage to get here illegally.

    Very good chance the plan is going to prove to be illegal itself, which means either the UK gov't would have to leave the UN convention on human rights, the European Court, or both, or climb down from their stupid policy idea.

    I don't think making the UK more fascist would really go down well with the public as we're not as full of #MEGAtards as they wish we were, but they may well feel they are so far behind in the polls they've got nothing to lose.
    I just think we should suspend judgment on Boris until we have all the facts through an inquiry, police investigation, and parliamentary commission...then we should explode him.
    also,
    I'd like to be called Lord Poopy His Most Gloriously Excellent.
  7. #2932
    ChatGTP using a woke lefty algorithm confirmed.

    https://mobile.twitter.com/Russell_C...69046092120064
    I just think we should suspend judgment on Boris until we have all the facts through an inquiry, police investigation, and parliamentary commission...then we should explode him.
    also,
    I'd like to be called Lord Poopy His Most Gloriously Excellent.
  8. #2933
    Well I don't believe for one minute that this is AI "thinking" about the question and offering its independent "opinion".

    For one, that response looks like it was written by a human. Ok maybe we're there and that's a win for AI. But to be able to compare the words "vermin" and "parasites" with "cockroaches" and "swarms" in a social language context, to understand the complexity of the question it was asked and to then take a moral position on the matter, this is kinda absurd. And that's before we ask the question of what the AI's source of information is.

    So this doesn't seem to me like an accurate portrayal of AI in 2023. I could be wrong though. If so, we're mere years away from full scale adoption of AI systems in everyday life, including customer service. Bad news for call centres in India.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  9. #2934
    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    Well I don't believe for one minute that this is AI "thinking" about the question and offering its independent "opinion".
    Well as you know AI is not doing "thinking" or having "opinions," any more than a chess computer "thinks" Bishop to g3 is a good move. It's just scraping the internet for words and phrases putting them together into English using some tricks.

    I've seen some pretty nonsense things from ChatGTP, but this was on specialist subjects, and things I specialise in myself. Still might have been good enough to fool a layperson, dunno.

    That said, I think if there's a hot topic (by which I mean a substantial amount has been written about it), it will do ok.

    And I imagine the "woke" answer to the question posed in this instance arises because it is much more common for people to write bad things about stuff like discrimination or whatever than to praise it. Most people, even if they're not running around doing the wokey cokey, are at least decent human beings.
    I just think we should suspend judgment on Boris until we have all the facts through an inquiry, police investigation, and parliamentary commission...then we should explode him.
    also,
    I'd like to be called Lord Poopy His Most Gloriously Excellent.
  10. #2935
    Quote Originally Posted by poop
    Well as you know AI is not doing "thinking" or having "opinions," any more than a chess computer "thinks" Bishop to g3 is a good move. It's just scraping the internet for words and phrases putting them together into English using some tricks.
    I mean I just think it's a bit of a stretch to call this "artificial intelligence" any more than a calculator is AI. I guess a calculator isn't learning, but it's still completely at the mercy of the human who coded it. It's not an intelligence separate from humans. It's basically a super advanced version of a programme I could have coded on a Commodore 64 when I was 12. Instead of only being able to answer a handful of questions with yes/no answers, it can understand a complex sentence and respond with one. But it's doing the same thing. Nothing special about this, nothing futuristic or anything.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  11. #2936
    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    I mean I just think it's a bit of a stretch to call this "artificial intelligence" any more than a calculator is AI. I guess a calculator isn't learning, but it's still completely at the mercy of the human who coded it. It's not an intelligence separate from humans. It's basically a super advanced version of a programme I could have coded on a Commodore 64 when I was 12. Instead of only being able to answer a handful of questions with yes/no answers, it can understand a complex sentence and respond with one. But it's doing the same thing. Nothing special about this, nothing futuristic or anything.
    Have you heard of the Turing test? This is coming pretty close to being able to pass for a human.

    It may not be doing anything different than a calculator in the sense that it's not thinking for itself or doing anything creative, but it does seem like a fairly substantial step closer to being good enough to fool you into thinking it's a person writing things, and not a computer program.

    And that is a big deal with all sorts of ramifications. One thing that is currently going around academia now is that people are worried students will put their essay question into ChatGTP and have it write an essay for them. And if it does, and they can pass an essay question while putting in zero effort whatsoever and remaining undetected, it's a problem for education.
    I just think we should suspend judgment on Boris until we have all the facts through an inquiry, police investigation, and parliamentary commission...then we should explode him.
    also,
    I'd like to be called Lord Poopy His Most Gloriously Excellent.
  12. #2937
    Well that's a problem for education that there's no point in hiding from, because it's inevitable, whether it's 2024 or 2034.

    One way or another, the way people are taught and demonstrate their knowledge will need to fundamentally change in the very near future. Colleges and universities should already be addressing this.

    As far as the Turing test goes, well that one response to that one question linked above, it seems to me that it was written by a human. But that doesn't mean it passes the Turing test yet. I want to ask it more questions, try to get a hint of its personality, its likes and dislikes, its flaws as a person, memories and nostalgias, things that are extremely difficult for a machine to mimic.

    Like, if you have an intelligent conversation, and then ask something completely irrelevant and stupid, does the AI recognise this change in conversation to be odd, and respond in a human way that is consistent with the personality it has portrayed to this point?

    Machines can already fool people who don't probe, but if you ask the right questions and with a degree of personality inconsistency that you'd only expect another human to pick up on, a proper Turing test, I don't think such a machine exists yet. That seems a long way off, at least in terms of fooling all humans.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  13. #2938
    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    Well that's a problem for education that there's no point in hiding from, because it's inevitable, whether it's 2024 or 2034.

    One way or another, the way people are taught and demonstrate their knowledge will need to fundamentally change in the very near future. Colleges and universities should already be addressing this.

    As far as the Turing test goes, well that one response to that one question linked above, it seems to me that it was written by a human. But that doesn't mean it passes the Turing test yet. I want to ask it more questions, try to get a hint of its personality, its likes and dislikes, its flaws as a person, memories and nostalgias, things that are extremely difficult for a machine to mimic.

    Like, if you have an intelligent conversation, and then ask something completely irrelevant and stupid, does the AI recognise this change in conversation to be odd, and respond in a human way that is consistent with the personality it has portrayed to this point?

    Machines can already fool people who don't probe, but if you ask the right questions and with a degree of personality inconsistency that you'd only expect another human to pick up on, a proper Turing test, I don't think such a machine exists yet. That seems a long way off, at least in terms of fooling all humans.

    Yeah I think ChatGTP is designed to answer more general types of questions. I don't think it's trying to pretend to be a fully developed person or anything, so you're probably right you could trip it up.

    Also, this just in: ChatGTP has been banned from presenting football on the BBC.
    I just think we should suspend judgment on Boris until we have all the facts through an inquiry, police investigation, and parliamentary commission...then we should explode him.
    also,
    I'd like to be called Lord Poopy His Most Gloriously Excellent.
  14. #2939
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
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    ChatGPT may be able to write essays, but as poopy noted, it doesn't "know" what it's writing. It's just collecting up a bazillion statistics about words and then applying those statistics to string words together.

    It can do some things surprisingly well, like write computer code with minimal mistakes. There are mistakes, but it's still able to crank out hundreds of lines of code in seconds, and the "programmer" only has to proofread that code, not create it. In the hands of a competent professional, it could absolutely amplify what they can get done in a day.

    It can do some things surprisingly badly. If you ask it enough questions, it'll say dumb things, and then you can ask it to elaborate on the dumb things, and it can go a bit nuts. I've seen it insist that -1 was a positive number.

    The problem is that students don't know what's smart and not in the eyes of a professional, and some students will cheat (they're humans, after all), and if those students who cheat don't get caught, then more do it. When enough do it and don't get caught, it becomes a thing students will assume is known about by professors, and since the professors know and don't stop it, then it must be fine.
    Which is, of course, absurd. Still, I've seen it happen a couple times already, and I've only been in academia for 6 years.
    You can find any pattern you want to any level of precision you want, if you're prepared to ignore enough data.
  15. #2940
    Thing is, if you ask a student to go out of the classroom to write an essay, or answer questions, in a completely unsupervised environment, and the essays these students hand in are marked and form a part of their overall grade, then there's a problem that isn't going away, because the tools are being developed that will help people cheat. And if successfully cheating gives people an advantage in life, then there's a huge incentive to do so.

    So the solution seems to be to not allow essays and unsupervised research to be graded. We need to change the way people are graded. More focus on supervised exams, research and orations.

    Obviously I don't know what I'm really talking about because I don't work in education, but solutions need to be found, otherwise the education sector is in big trouble.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  16. #2941
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
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    This is pretty much on the nose of what both students and professors are doing.

    Professors need to clearly state with good reasons why using a program like ChatGPT will undercut the students' goals of educating themselves, and render the cost of said education a total loss. Not only that, but their degree may get them a job, but their inability to perform said job will either land them unemployed or under-payed compared to their competent coworkers.

    Students need to realize that if they can use ChatGPT to answer questions, so can their employer, so why does said employer need an employee that is trained to do that? They don't. It's been the same thing in math for decades. If your boss can use a free online program to solve integrals, then they don't need to hire you to solve integrals. They need to hire you to figure out which integrals to solve. That's the human advantage... knowing which questions to answer.


    Professors are racing to try to figure out the limitations of ChatGPT and to form questions that subvert the limitations thereof.
    It's a new twist on an old game, but ever since students had the internet in their pocket and could use Google to answer questions, the game was afoot.
    You can find any pattern you want to any level of precision you want, if you're prepared to ignore enough data.
  17. #2942
    Quote Originally Posted by mojo
    Students need to realize that if they can use ChatGPT to answer questions, so can their employer, so why does said employer need an employee that is trained to do that?
    Well when the day comes that it's economically advantageous to replace humans with AI without a loss in quality, jobs are lost. The employer won't pay a human to do something a chatbot can do. But we're nowhere near that day yet.

    The bigger concern for me is that if students can get good grades by using ChatGPT, why would a savvy employer think that a degree is worth anything? When public faith in the grading system is lost, there's no point in bothering.

    Professors are racing to try to figure out the limitations of ChatGPT and to form questions that subvert the limitations thereof.
    This is akin to putting up sandbags when the river is still rising. It's not a long term solution.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  18. #2943
    Wokerati losing their shit over Cruella's trip to Rwanda.




    Thing is, it's never going to happen. The agreement's been in place for over a year and they've deported exactly 0 people there. I'm more annoyed about having to pay for the policy, the trip, and all the time wasted in parliament and the courts, than I am about some swivel-eyed loon's cruel fantasy that's never going to come true.
    I just think we should suspend judgment on Boris until we have all the facts through an inquiry, police investigation, and parliamentary commission...then we should explode him.
    also,
    I'd like to be called Lord Poopy His Most Gloriously Excellent.
  19. #2944
    To be fair though, she does seem to be enjoying it a bit too much....


    I just think we should suspend judgment on Boris until we have all the facts through an inquiry, police investigation, and parliamentary commission...then we should explode him.
    also,
    I'd like to be called Lord Poopy His Most Gloriously Excellent.
  20. #2945
    Blojo's testimony before the parliamentary standards committee about to begin. Rumour is his defense to the charge that he deliberately lied to parliament about the parties he was having during lockdown is going to be that he was too stupid to understand the laws he created.

    I just think we should suspend judgment on Boris until we have all the facts through an inquiry, police investigation, and parliamentary commission...then we should explode him.
    also,
    I'd like to be called Lord Poopy His Most Gloriously Excellent.
  21. #2946
    You're surely got to admire that defence.

    I'm too stupid to understand the laws too, that's why I smoke weed. Shame I don't rob banks, this defence seems a bit waste on a stoner.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  22. #2947
    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    You're surely got to admire that defence.
    I admire the chutzpah, that's true.



    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    I'm too stupid to understand the laws too, that's why I smoke weed. Shame I don't rob banks, this defence seems a bit waste on a stoner.
    Sadly the defense is inadmissible for plebs like us.
    I just think we should suspend judgment on Boris until we have all the facts through an inquiry, police investigation, and parliamentary commission...then we should explode him.
    also,
    I'd like to be called Lord Poopy His Most Gloriously Excellent.
  23. #2948
    I just think we should suspend judgment on Boris until we have all the facts through an inquiry, police investigation, and parliamentary commission...then we should explode him.
    also,
    I'd like to be called Lord Poopy His Most Gloriously Excellent.
  24. #2949
    Goddamn Wokian, reporting on cruel treatment of refugees! They'll be next if they're not careful.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...droidApp_Other
    I just think we should suspend judgment on Boris until we have all the facts through an inquiry, police investigation, and parliamentary commission...then we should explode him.
    also,
    I'd like to be called Lord Poopy His Most Gloriously Excellent.
  25. #2950
    "...asylum seekers were also told that if they complained about the quality of food served to them the police would be called."

    This is so ridiculous is has to be completely made up.

    The majority of asylum seekers the charity is supporting are people of colour.
    This is listed as a "concern". What's the solution? More white asylum seekers? Imagine typing this, imagine being an editor and letting this go to print. Fuck me dead.

    Of course the majority of asylum seekers are people of colour. The kind of countries that people want to flee are largely in Africa and Asia. This isn't the UK's fault, so why list it as a "concern"? Because it's the fucking Guardian.

    Most of the complaints are related to food. We're talking here about "Home Office hotels", not detention centres. People are free to come and go as they please from hotels. If they're not free to come and go, then it's not a hotel, it's a detention centre.

    So, given they are free to come and go, and given asylum seekers are entitled to certain benefits, they are free to go and buy whatever food they prefer. Obviously serving mouldy bread is offensive and unacceptable, but that's also a very easy claim to fake, and seems unlikely to be deliberate given how inexpensive bread is.

    The Guardian really is trash. It's no better than the Daily Mail.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  26. #2951
    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    "...asylum seekers were also told that if they complained about the quality of food served to them the police would be called."

    This is so ridiculous is has to be completely made up.
    Maybe, but if they're just reporting what people say in interviews, then sure people are going to exaggerate. Don't think that's the Guardians' fault. They clearly say it's a report based on interviews.




    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    This is listed as a "concern". What's the solution? More white asylum seekers?
    Think the point is if it were white people, they'd be getting better treatment. Like, how many Ukrainians have had to live in these asylum centers for even a day, never mind over a year?




    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    Most of the complaints are related to food. We're talking here about "Home Office hotels", not detention centres. People are free to come and go as they please from hotels. If they're not free to come and go, then it's not a hotel, it's a detention centre.
    They don't empty out the Ritz apart from the staff so asylum seekers have a place to stay. These hotels are dumps that were empty before the gov't hired them. And it's all so some Tory crony can send the taxpayer a giant bill for doing the minimum they possibly can and still get away with it.




    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    So, given they are free to come and go, and given asylum seekers are entitled to certain benefits, they are free to go and buy whatever food they prefer. Obviously serving mouldy bread is offensive and unacceptable, but that's also a very easy claim to fake, and seems unlikely to be deliberate given how inexpensive bread is.
    So you're an asylum seeker living in that hotel at Heathrow for a year. You get something like £5 a day which is about enough to buy a candy bar at the airport. You're not allowed to work to earn any more and fuck knows when they'll get around to processing your claim. I'd bitch if the bread was mouldy too.



    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    The Guardian really is trash. It's no better than the Daily Mail.
    lol, the Guardian is obviously lefty and a "wokepaper," but it's nowhere near as ridiculously alarmist as the DM. Just compare this article here to the front page of the DM on any given day. It's all "ARRRGGGHGHGGHH something something MEGA!!!" in giant font. Every. Fucking. Day.
    I just think we should suspend judgment on Boris until we have all the facts through an inquiry, police investigation, and parliamentary commission...then we should explode him.
    also,
    I'd like to be called Lord Poopy His Most Gloriously Excellent.
  27. #2952
    Quote Originally Posted by poop
    Maybe, but if they're just reporting what people say in interviews, then sure people are going to exaggerate. Don't think that's the Guardians' fault. They clearly say it's a report based on interviews.
    If the Daily Mail were interviewing dribbling morons about rape gangs, you'd rightly think that it's not even worth reading, let alone printing.

    Any real journalist who was told that asylum seekers were being threatened with the police for complaining about food would take such comments with a healthy pinch of salt and perhaps do a little investigating to see if there's any merit to such ridiculous claims.

    Think the point is if it were white people, they'd be getting better treatment. Like, how many Ukrainians have had to live in these asylum centers for even a day, never mind over a year?
    Let's not forget, we're not talking about detention centres here, we're talking about Home Office hotels. I wouldn't at all be surprised if Ukrainians were put in such accommodation.

    Nobody arriving here by legal means should have to stay in a detention centre unless they outstay their visa or break the law.

    These hotels are dumps that were empty before the gov't hired them.
    Well that might be so, but it's not like we have lots of empty hotels just waiting to be filled. Most hotels are thriving businesses and don't want to take on these government contracts. Those that do are desperate for the money, and with good reason. Their hotels are usually in run down places with low demand, meaning they struggle to invest to keep up to standard.

    What do you expect? How can we possibly improve on this? Enforce government contracts on good quality private hotels that are doing just fine catering for tourists and travellers?

    A shit hotel is a far superior place to live than a camp in Calais, or a slum in whatever country they came from. And it's supposed to be temporary. So I don't really see a problem here.

    And unless there's multiple pictures of mouldy bread, well that's a photo I could fake if you give me a few days. I can make it look like I just bought some mouldy bread from Tesco to stir a bit of shit on Twitter. But not yet.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  28. #2953
    Apparently we are being asked to plegde allegiance to his Royal Chuckness when he gets his fancy royal crown at the coronation next Saturday. lol, that's so goofy I might just do it.
    I just think we should suspend judgment on Boris until we have all the facts through an inquiry, police investigation, and parliamentary commission...then we should explode him.
    also,
    I'd like to be called Lord Poopy His Most Gloriously Excellent.
  29. #2954
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
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    In the US, we make children pledge allegiance to a flag (and the republic for which it stands).

    It's just one of the really dumb things a nation that calls itself "The Land of the Free" has going on.
    You can find any pattern you want to any level of precision you want, if you're prepared to ignore enough data.
  30. #2955
    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    In the US, we make children pledge allegiance to a flag (and the republic for which it stands).

    It's just one of the really dumb things a nation that calls itself "The Land of the Free" has going on.

    We had similar when I was a kid in Canada, every morning in school iirc. But they stopped doing it a long time ago.

    It's at least defensible to expect people to be loyal to the country they live in. What isn't defensible is to expect them to be loyal to a person who is only their head of state through an accident of birth (or by being anointed by a sky wizard, depending on which origin story you go along with).
    I just think we should suspend judgment on Boris until we have all the facts through an inquiry, police investigation, and parliamentary commission...then we should explode him.
    also,
    I'd like to be called Lord Poopy His Most Gloriously Excellent.
  31. #2956
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
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    You can find any pattern you want to any level of precision you want, if you're prepared to ignore enough data.
  32. #2957
    We can't fix the potholes 'cause we spent all our money on the fancy carriage and sparkly hat.
    I just think we should suspend judgment on Boris until we have all the facts through an inquiry, police investigation, and parliamentary commission...then we should explode him.
    also,
    I'd like to be called Lord Poopy His Most Gloriously Excellent.
  33. #2958
    oskar's Avatar
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    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mychEecFJgU

    I think it's just incredible that we can witness something like this in current year. The amount of energy people have been putting into ceremonial nonsense for thousands of years... It's a miracle we ever discovered electricity with this going on.
    The strengh of a hero is defined by the weakness of his villains.
  34. #2959
    10+ hours, did it really take that long? FML.
    I just think we should suspend judgment on Boris until we have all the facts through an inquiry, police investigation, and parliamentary commission...then we should explode him.
    also,
    I'd like to be called Lord Poopy His Most Gloriously Excellent.
  35. #2960
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    Quote Originally Posted by Poopadoop View Post
    10+ hours, did it really take that long? FML.
    My favorite part was when King Charles said "It's coronation time!" And then coronated all over the place.
    The strengh of a hero is defined by the weakness of his villains.
  36. #2961
    It'd be funny if he keeled over tomorrow and they had to do the whole thing over again with Will in 3 months.
    I just think we should suspend judgment on Boris until we have all the facts through an inquiry, police investigation, and parliamentary commission...then we should explode him.
    also,
    I'd like to be called Lord Poopy His Most Gloriously Excellent.
  37. #2962
    My favourite part was when I got to work at 10pm for the night shift after sleeping the day, settled down with a cuppa, read the news, and only then remembered it was Coronation day. I might actually be the person in the UK who gave the least fucks about it, excluding braindead people, babies, and any feral humans living in the forest.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  38. #2963
    I mean yeah it's a shameless waste of money and an undemocratic load of bollocks, but actually it probably made more money than it cost in tourism so there's that. You foreign twats like the RF more than we do, that's why we can't get rid of them. If they didn't bring in the tourists there would be no argument for keeping them.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  39. #2964
    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    I mean yeah it's a shameless waste of money and an undemocratic load of bollocks, but actually it probably made more money than it cost in tourism so there's that. You foreign twats like the RF more than we do, that's why we can't get rid of them. If they didn't bring in the tourists there would be no argument for keeping them.
    If we confiscated all their property and sold tickets, I reckon we'd get just as many tourists and the profits would enitrely be going to us instead of them. No-one comes here to get a glimpse of King Chuck, they want to see palaces and castles and shit.

    In fact, if we made some sexy bint our Queen and David Attenborough the King we'd get twice as many tourists as we do now. And we wouldn't have to pay them as much.
    I just think we should suspend judgment on Boris until we have all the facts through an inquiry, police investigation, and parliamentary commission...then we should explode him.
    also,
    I'd like to be called Lord Poopy His Most Gloriously Excellent.
  40. #2965
    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    I mean yeah it's a shameless waste of money and an undemocratic load of bollocks, but actually it probably made more money than it cost in tourism so there's that.
    31k extra tourists, and it cost somewhere between 100 and 250 million £. So probably a money loser, depending.
    I just think we should suspend judgment on Boris until we have all the facts through an inquiry, police investigation, and parliamentary commission...then we should explode him.
    also,
    I'd like to be called Lord Poopy His Most Gloriously Excellent.
  41. #2966
    31k seems like an absurdly low number, I've seen more watch a Birmingham City match.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  42. #2967
    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    31k seems like an absurdly low number, I've seen more watch a Birmingham City match.
    Most of the crowds were local flagshaggers.
    I just think we should suspend judgment on Boris until we have all the facts through an inquiry, police investigation, and parliamentary commission...then we should explode him.
    also,
    I'd like to be called Lord Poopy His Most Gloriously Excellent.
  43. #2968
    oskar's Avatar
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    I visited Prague recently. Tour guide was very eager to show us where they threw the king's council out the window. Was like: started 30 years of war, but was totally worth. Didn't seem to hurt tourism. Just food for thought.
    The strengh of a hero is defined by the weakness of his villains.
  44. #2969
    Quote Originally Posted by oskar View Post
    I visited Prague recently. Tour guide was very eager to show us where they threw the king's council out the window. Was like: started 30 years of war, but was totally worth. Didn't seem to hurt tourism. Just food for thought.
    The most visited palace in the world is the Forbidden City in Beijing. Fun fact: China doesn't have a monarch any more.

    Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle don't even make the list. Versailles is third, and Louis XIV is long gone too.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._and_monuments
    I just think we should suspend judgment on Boris until we have all the facts through an inquiry, police investigation, and parliamentary commission...then we should explode him.
    also,
    I'd like to be called Lord Poopy His Most Gloriously Excellent.
  45. #2970
    oskar's Avatar
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    Palace of Versailles
    You know what to do.
    The strengh of a hero is defined by the weakness of his villains.
  46. #2971
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    .
    The strengh of a hero is defined by the weakness of his villains.
  47. #2972
    If one is anti-monarchy protestor and ten is a lunatic waving a flag with Union Jack face paint then I'm about a 6.

    A living royal family presumably has more value than not. It doesn't take a lot to payback the cost if you review over a longer window than just this weekend and look beyond tourism.

    It would be interesting to see how the event was covered elsewhere. Advert breaks stuffed full of UK tourism advertising? Probably.
  48. #2973
    Quote Originally Posted by oskar View Post
    You know what to do.
    Lose a world war?


    Bazingaaaaaa!
    I just think we should suspend judgment on Boris until we have all the facts through an inquiry, police investigation, and parliamentary commission...then we should explode him.
    also,
    I'd like to be called Lord Poopy His Most Gloriously Excellent.
  49. #2974
    Quote Originally Posted by The Bean Counter View Post
    If one is anti-monarchy protestor and ten is a lunatic waving a flag with Union Jack face paint then I'm about a 6.
    I'm about a 3, not bothered enough to take up my pitchfork, but would rather they were gone.

    It's not just about tourism (which I don't think they contribute to at all, just their properties do), it's about the larger context of 1) someone having enormous wealth without effort and/or ability; and 2) the perpetuation of classism, which you only have to live in a republic to see is relatively nonexistent in (civilised) places outside of the UK.
    I just think we should suspend judgment on Boris until we have all the facts through an inquiry, police investigation, and parliamentary commission...then we should explode him.
    also,
    I'd like to be called Lord Poopy His Most Gloriously Excellent.
  50. #2975
    I mean, forgetting about how the wealth was obtained, I'm not against a dying person being legally permitted to give away their assets to whoever they like. The downside of that is wealth accumulation in rich families. That does suck. But what sucks more is the state saying "your assets aren't actually yours, they're ours and we'll take them back when you die". I have a greater moral problem with that than I do inheritance.

    Of course, where the wealth has been obtained by historically questionable methods, it's a different debate, but that's a matter for courts, not something I'm going to concern myself about because it's politicised and subject to misinformation and propaganda, it's a can of worms I don't care to open. Pretty much every country in the world has something in their history to be ashamed of. There are bigger problems with the RF than their history, such as protecting nonces today.

    Poop, do you really think classism isn't a thing in Europe? France certainly has class issues, that's a civilised republic isn't it? Surely Germany does too, and for sure Italy does. That's the three big comparable countries to the UK in the EU. There are laws in both the EU and the UK that protect people from discrimination, so it's a socioeconomic problem. That isn't something you can change by just demanding it or voting for it. The only way to remove class from society is if there is income equality, but why the fuck should I get paid the same as a doctor? My job has evolved from making beds and cleaning toilets to sitting on my ass all night drinking tea, trying to stay awake while hoping the fire alarm doesn't go off. I deserve to be in a lower economic class than doctors. The doctor deserves a nicer house than I do, a nicer lifestyle. In a world where we all have different tasks requiring different skills, intelligence and physical abilities, we're going to have income inequality, and therefore class.

    Social discrimination (as opposed institutional discrimination) is kind of inevitable in free market societies. People tend to socialise with those on relatively equal financial footing. If my friends were rich, I wouldn't be able to afford to eat where they wanted to. You'd probably be guilty of that yourself. If you have two equal candidates for a job, one comes from a poor background and the other a wealthy background, and you give the job to the poor guy for that reason, you're discriminating against the rich guy. That's classism. It works both ways. You can morally justify it to yourself easily and sleep just fine at night, but it's still classism.

    If a society is classless, it surely has bigger problems.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  51. #2976
    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    I mean, forgetting about how the wealth was obtained, I'm not against a dying person being legally permitted to give away their assets to whoever they like. The downside of that is wealth accumulation in rich families. That does suck. But what sucks more is the state saying "your assets aren't actually yours, they're ours and we'll take them back when you die". I have a greater moral problem with that than I do inheritance.
    The state taxes us, that is taking wealth from people. I suppose you want to abolish that too? Ok, no more roads, etc.

    And I don't have a problem with inheritance in principle. I have a problem with the royal family getting £100m a year of our money to walk around being useless.



    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    Of course, where the wealth has been obtained by historically questionable methods, it's a different debate, but that's a matter for courts, not something I'm going to concern myself about because it's politicised and subject to misinformation and propaganda, it's a can of worms I don't care to open. Pretty much every country in the world has something in their history to be ashamed of. There are bigger problems with the RF than their history, such as protecting nonces today.
    Fine, let them keep some of their property. But stop giving them grants and tell them they have to earn a living like the rest of us. And pay taxes like the rest of us.



    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    Poop, do you really think classism isn't a thing in Europe? France certainly has class issues, that's a civilised republic isn't it?
    I haven't lived in Europe, but I doubt it is an issue the way it is here. My postdoc is French, and she says class is not a thing in France the way it is here. That's what happens when you abolish the monarcy. In Canada and the US (where I have lived), no-one talks about what class a person is. It just isn't a thing.

    And I know for a fact that class has been historically a bigger issue here than in Germany, France, and Italy.



    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    The only way to remove class from society is if there is income equality,
    Class and income inequality are related, but they're not the same thing. You've never lived anywhere else, so you don't get it.

    I know a fellow prof who has a bug up his ass because he comes from a working class family. Nobody where I'm from would give a shit, they'd just say 'so what?'. But he brings it up all the time and so obviously it's a big thing here.

    Even the language you use here. People use the words 'working class', 'middle class', 'upper class', all the time when they talk about politics. So again, obviously it's a big thing.



    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    but why the fuck should I get paid the same as a doctor?
    I think you're confusing me with a communist. I never said everyone should earn the same amount. It should just be less disparate, like in Scandinavia (or Canada for that matter). And you shouldn't have a whole group of aristocrats who's biggest contribution to the world is say "pwahhh!" and riding around on horses and shooting foxes. Fuck off.




    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    Social discrimination (as opposed institutional discrimination) is kind of inevitable in free market societies. People tend to socialise with those on relatively equal financial footing.
    It doesn't have to be as gross as it is (income inequality).




    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    If a society is classless, it surely has bigger problems.
    Like what?
    I just think we should suspend judgment on Boris until we have all the facts through an inquiry, police investigation, and parliamentary commission...then we should explode him.
    also,
    I'd like to be called Lord Poopy His Most Gloriously Excellent.
  52. #2977
    Quote Originally Posted by Poopadoop View Post
    I'm about a 3, not bothered enough to take up my pitchfork, but would rather they were gone.

    It's not just about tourism (which I don't think they contribute to at all, just their properties do), it's about the larger context of 1) someone having enormous wealth without effort and/or ability; and 2) the perpetuation of classism, which you only have to live in a republic to see is relatively nonexistent in (civilised) places outside of the UK.
    On (1), is there a line for the amount you think is reasonable to pass on? Are there any conditions where you think that amount should be flexed?

    On (2), I'm assuming you're not counting the US as a civilised place. The class system that I see isn't good.
  53. #2978
    Quote Originally Posted by The Bean Counter View Post
    On (1), is there a line for the amount you think is reasonable to pass on? Are there any conditions where you think that amount should be flexed?
    The royals should pay inheritance tax the same as everyone else. I'm not too fussed over how much, but if it's (say) 10% for other people it should be 10% for them.



    Quote Originally Posted by The Bean Counter View Post
    On (2), I'm assuming you're not counting the US as a civilised place. The class system that I see isn't good.
    They have huge income inequality, but most of their social segregation is based on race, not class (though the two tend to be correlated). And they don't really have a class of aristocrats like there is here, or at least it's a lot smaller.
    I just think we should suspend judgment on Boris until we have all the facts through an inquiry, police investigation, and parliamentary commission...then we should explode him.
    also,
    I'd like to be called Lord Poopy His Most Gloriously Excellent.
  54. #2979
    Fun fact: Canada has zero inheritance tax, because people generally don't get stupidly rich in the first place.
    I just think we should suspend judgment on Boris until we have all the facts through an inquiry, police investigation, and parliamentary commission...then we should explode him.
    also,
    I'd like to be called Lord Poopy His Most Gloriously Excellent.
  55. #2980
    I mean look at people like Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees Mogg, and for that matter probably half of the Tory party. All fabulously wealthy aristocrats whose biggest skill seems to be to talk with an affected accent.

    What good are they doing the country? None, in fact they're doing it a lot of harm. And yet people are conditioned to think of them as superior beings. What a shower.
    Last edited by Poopadoop; 05-09-2023 at 05:48 PM.
    I just think we should suspend judgment on Boris until we have all the facts through an inquiry, police investigation, and parliamentary commission...then we should explode him.
    also,
    I'd like to be called Lord Poopy His Most Gloriously Excellent.
  56. #2981
    I wondered that about inheritance tax on the RF. It's 40% on assets worth over £325k here, but your surviving spouse doesn't need to pay it. Would be hilarious if Charlie had to cut a cheque for £100m+.

    Fun fact: my long-term partner would have to pay £70k tax if I go first to stay in our house, as tax upon death is one of the only parts of English law where being married matters.

    The class system has definitely changed in the UK for the better in the past 30 years, but clearly not all of the way there. Using working, middle, etc, is more now just a way of defining economic status like it is in the US. IMO, that's been because UK students were able to go to university for free for many years and blur the lines of class. State education up to the age of 18 has also improved a lot. Your colleague that you mention is proud of their humble routes to make it in a profession previously reserved for those born with a silver spoon in their mouth.

    To Ong's point, it can be difficult for people to get along when there is too wide a gap in economic status. That's on both parties to resolve. Snobbery still exists, but definitely on both sides of the fence (like making fun of accents!). Some of the wealthiest people I've met (inherited wealth) have been the nicest people I've met, with titles like Lord and Lady. A lot of the time they don't have much cash and a crumbling house.

    India is on the extreme when it comes to the class system. I don't like what I see at all in California, with race and economic status often linked. Everybody has a Mexican housekeeper or gardener, state schools are frowned upon, many can't afford health insurance. That's very much a class-based system under my interpretation.
  57. #2982
    Quote Originally Posted by The Bean Counter View Post
    I wondered that about inheritance tax on the RF. It's 40% on assets worth over £325k here, but your surviving spouse doesn't need to pay it. Would be hilarious if Charlie had to cut a cheque for £100m+.

    Fun fact: my long-term partner would have to pay £70k tax if I go first to stay in our house, as tax upon death is one of the only parts of English law where being married matters.
    Because it's your house? But doesn't common-law count? Or do you have to be married to share assets that way.



    Quote Originally Posted by The Bean Counter View Post
    Your colleague that you mention is proud of their humble routes to make it in a profession previously reserved for those born with a silver spoon in their mouth.
    That might be some of it, but, and n=1, I think in the context he uses it that he's a bit paranoid that others look down on him. That's how it comes across to me anyways. And my point was, no-one would have this complex in Canada (and I don't think the US either).



    Quote Originally Posted by The Bean Counter View Post
    To Ong's point, it can be difficult for people to get along when there is too wide a gap in economic status. That's on both parties to resolve. Snobbery still exists, but definitely on both sides of the fence (like making fun of accents!).
    I wasn't making fun of the accent, I was just pointing out how phony it sounds, and how sad it is that it works on people. e.g., no-one has spoken the way JRM does for 100 years, but people call him a "gentleman," when he's a fucking twat.



    Quote Originally Posted by The Bean Counter View Post
    Some of the wealthiest people I've met (inherited wealth) have been the nicest people I've met, with titles like Lord and Lady. A lot of the time they don't have much cash and a crumbling house.
    The title alone doesn't make you an aristocrat in my definition, and yes I've met some nice ones as well. Absolutely lovely. It's the ones with masses of inherited wealth who act like they earned it by being born into a super-rich family that get up my craw.



    Quote Originally Posted by The Bean Counter View Post
    India is on the extreme when it comes to the class system.
    Yup, it's an extreme and awful example.


    Quote Originally Posted by The Bean Counter View Post
    I don't like what I see at all in California, with race and economic status often linked. Everybody has a Mexican housekeeper or gardener, state schools are frowned upon, many can't afford health insurance. That's very much a class-based system under my interpretation.
    A lot of those Mexicans are first-generation immigrants doing jobs no-one else wants. It's not particularly different from Polish or Romanians coming here to pick our fruit (in the oldy days, I guess there's a Brexit benefit for you).

    But I agree the general lack of public services in the US is bad. I paid roughly the same amt of tax there as I did in Canada % wise, and never saw much of it going back into the community.
    I just think we should suspend judgment on Boris until we have all the facts through an inquiry, police investigation, and parliamentary commission...then we should explode him.
    also,
    I'd like to be called Lord Poopy His Most Gloriously Excellent.
  58. #2983
    Quote Originally Posted by poop
    The state taxes us, that is taking wealth from people. I suppose you want to abolish that too? Ok, no more roads, etc.
    No. Taxing people is not the same as telling people what they can and cannot do with their assets.

    And I don't have a problem with inheritance in principle. I have a problem with the royal family getting £100m a year of our money to walk around being useless.
    Ok, it's just inheritance is an important factor when it comes to dynasty families.

    £100m a year is chump change fwiw. Jude Bellingham will cost more than that this summer. If that's how much it costs to maintain and staff their properties, and pay for their security, that's fine. They obviously need security. That's not their fault, that's the fault of bad actors.

    Fine, let them keep some of their property.
    Try to absorb the tone of this comment.

    "Let them keep..."

    You're talking as though you have the authority to take away legal possessions of someone else based on your moral opinion of whether they deserve their possessions.

    The RF has exactly the same rights as you do when it comes to property. Nobody can say you don't deserve a nice car so we'll just take that away from you and leave you with a Fiat Panda. That's essentially what you're implying with language like "let them keep...".

    I haven't lived in Europe, but I doubt it is an issue the way it is here. My postdoc is French, and she says class is not a thing in France the way it is here. That's what happens when you abolish the monarcy.
    I mean, you seem to think we have class in this country because of the monarchy, like that's the reason for it. That's utterly ludicrous. It's not the 1400s anymore. We're not a society of royal landowners and peasants in the 2000s. The RF might represent the extreme elite, but that's not something any normal person can relate to.

    Class happens because of income inequality. It's socioeconomics, nothing to do with the constitutional status of a state.

    France definitely has social issues, mostly Paris and Marseilles. Migrants are not treated well and are treated as a lower class. You've got a fine wining and dining culture, world class museums and galleries, this shit is expensive. French culture is so refined that it's going to breed class into their society. Do you think the poor people gazing through the windows of Paris' finest eateries and hotels think class doesn't exist in France?

    In Canada and the US (where I have lived), no-one talks about what class a person is. It just isn't a thing.
    We regularly use terms like "working class" and "middle class" but that's nearly everyone in the country and basically mean the same thing. Then you've got "lower class" which is the unemployed and low earners, and the "upper class", which is a small class of people. It's almost entirely casual economic classification. These same groups of people exist in the USA, and if you think it's not a thing you obviously don't know the terms "redneck" and "trailer trash". These are highly classist terms. Maybe Canada is different, which is funny because they aren't a federal republic, as you're aware. They're a constitutional monarchy, like us, because they have the same king.

    And I know for a fact that class has been historically a bigger issue here than in Germany, France, and Italy.
    Sure, historically, given our RF did once yield ultimate power over the population. And there was near constant rivalry and vying for the throne. Loyalists get rewarded with land, rivals get exiled and executed, it was a completely different world back then. I don't think there are many RF supporters who want to go back to those days.

    I know a fellow prof who has a bug up his ass because he comes from a working class family. Nobody where I'm from would give a shit, they'd just say 'so what?'.
    Most people in the UK don't give a shit, and you'll find individuals in USA and Canada who have the very same bug up their ass, if you're unlucky enough to meet such a person. Doesn't everyone in USA want their kid to be a doctor? Class exists in USA because people naturally seek a better lifestyle.

    You met an arsehole. There are tons of them in the UK and everywhere else.

    Even the language you use here. People use the words 'working class', 'middle class', 'upper class', all the time when they talk about politics. So again, obviously it's a big thing.
    We use those terms because we recognise it instead of pretending it doesn't exist.

    And you shouldn't have a whole group of aristocrats who's biggest contribution to the world is say "pwahhh!" and riding around on horses and shooting foxes.
    Well they shouldn't be shooting foxes for sport, it's illegal, but other than that you're quite literally being classist here. Why do you care what they do with their spare time?

    btw, as much as fox hunting is brutal and definitely a sport to them, its purpose is to ensure the fox is terrified of human contact. If they weren't hunted like that, if they didn't have as much reason to fear humans and dogs, they'd be a bigger problem. It's not pest control it's complete and utter dominance over a potentially dangerous predator. Fuck foxes. They're not our cute furry friends. They need to be kept in their place.

    Like what?
    You recognise that income inequality and class are related, but I think you're underplaying how related they are. A country with no class is a country with no income inequality, which very probably means everyone is poor. Even Qatar has class, a country where every Qatari citizen is rich, because they import labour and don't grant economic migrants citizenship.

    For the most part, income inequality is driven by market forces. Footballers are filthy rich because so many people around the world are willing to pay absurd amounts of money to watch them play. Everyone agrees they get paid too much, but how do you control it? It's a free market, people can and do choose to pay. So footballers are paid what they are economically worth.

    People are paid what they're worth to their employer based purely on economics. How do you close the income inequality gap? By regulating the cost of goods and services?

    The inequality gap in a civilised country is the natural evolution of a market. It's like a civilised food chain. You can't close the gap by design, not in a free market, it happens if market forces dictate. All you can do is climb the food chain. The cost of inertia is you are plankton, drifting through life for the benefit of others.

    You can create the socioeconomic conditions to improve job opportunities, such as bringing in hi tech jobs, but that might increase the wage gap, not decrease it. If 10000 people who were previously earning the average suddenly got a pay rise of 50%, the wage gap just increased slightly, despite the fact that the average wage also just went up.

    So this is why low income inequality probably means more serious problems. It's likely a low income society.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  59. #2984
    The wage gap will always be high in a society with lots of low paying jobs and lots of high paying jobs. Why is such a society bad?
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  60. #2985
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
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    Saying we don't have a class problem in the US is a weird thing to hear.
    Social class is everything in the US. We don't talk about it in public, or often in private, really, but it's everything in our daily interactions.

    Wealth = status
    The appearance of wealth alone gets you a lot of doors opened.
    The appearance of poverty will get a lot of doors closed.
    We don't talk about it, but it's everywhere. You simply can't miss it.
    You can find any pattern you want to any level of precision you want, if you're prepared to ignore enough data.
  61. #2986
    Skipping the wall of text above this and will just assume I'm wrong about everything.


    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    The wage gap will always be high in a society with lots of low paying jobs and lots of high paying jobs. Why is such a society bad?
    Would you really prefer to live in a society where some people are fabulously wealthy and some are horribly poor vs. one where the resources are spread out a bit better?
    I just think we should suspend judgment on Boris until we have all the facts through an inquiry, police investigation, and parliamentary commission...then we should explode him.
    also,
    I'd like to be called Lord Poopy His Most Gloriously Excellent.
  62. #2987
    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    Saying we don't have a class problem in the US is a weird thing to hear.
    Social class is everything in the US. We don't talk about it in public, or often in private, really, but it's everything in our daily interactions.

    Wealth = status
    The appearance of wealth alone gets you a lot of doors opened.
    The appearance of poverty will get a lot of doors closed.
    We don't talk about it, but it's everywhere. You simply can't miss it.

    Like I said, wealth is not the same as class.

    In the US, there is much less cap-doffing reverence for someone who is born wealthy than there is here. People respect someone who earns their wealth much more than someone who falls ass backwards into it by being born into the right family.
    I just think we should suspend judgment on Boris until we have all the facts through an inquiry, police investigation, and parliamentary commission...then we should explode him.
    also,
    I'd like to be called Lord Poopy His Most Gloriously Excellent.
  63. #2988
    Thankfully we've moved on from the simple three tier system of class in the UK, based upon your inherited wealth and titles and having a posh voice. Any recognition of "class" today is a mix of education, attitude/behaviour and income/wealth. All of these things tend to be interdependen, but you can of course be rich and act without any class.

    I'm thankful that we've moved on, as I've benefited a lot from free education and a reduction in snobbery. I was somebody that had a working class chip on my shoulder, but that quickly went away at university and at work.

    I think as the current over 60s die off, we have another step change in the blurring/removal of class barriers. Older people in my experience do appear more deferrent to Lord and Lady whassname. Maybe that explains why they keep voting for Eton-educated PMs.
  64. #2989
    Quote Originally Posted by Poopadoop View Post
    Skipping the wall of text above this and will just assume I'm wrong about everything.




    Would you really prefer to live in a society where some people are fabulously wealthy and some are horribly poor vs. one where the resources are spread out a bit better?
    You're asking me if I'd rather live in a made up world where the value of peoples' labour is in line with your idea of "fair" rather than the real world where the value of peoples' labour is determined by economic conditions and market forces.

    And you're asking me what I'd prefer like I have a choice.

    I want to live in the world where I'm married to Kari from Mythbusters.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  65. #2990
    Quote Originally Posted by Poopadoop View Post
    Like I said, wealth is not the same as class.

    In the US, there is much less cap-doffing reverence for someone who is born wealthy than there is here. People respect someone who earns their wealth much more than someone who falls ass backwards into it by being born into the right family.
    This is a reflection of poop's imagination rather than the real world.

    You seem to think that in USA, people earn their wealth, while in the UK, people are born into it. You think that's the difference between UK and USA. At least, that's the impression you're giving. Surely you don't actually think it, because you're surely not that stupid.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  66. #2991
    How do you intend to create this "fairer" world poop? Are you going to reduce the number of low paying jobs, reduce the number of high paying jobs, and increase the number of middle paying jobs? That would reduce the income gap.

    Who the fuck needs people earning proper money like doctors and whatnot? Wankers, being richer than normal folk and widening the income gap. How fucking selfish of them to be on 6 figures a year. They should be on half that so I'm not as poor (relatively, I'll still have exactly the same spending power though).
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  67. #2992
    Seeing as you skipped that wall (fair enough) I'll just quote one comment from it for you...

    Quote Originally Posted by ong
    If 10000 people who were previously earning the average suddenly got a pay rise of 50%, the wage gap just increased slightly, despite the fact that the average wage also just went up.
    You're talking about the income gap like it's a bad thing. That isn't necessarily the case. It's an indication of a diverse economy. If there were only high paying jobs, I'd be unemployed and nobody would be making your hotel room ready for you. Either that or your hotel room is going to cost a shit ton more. Take your pick.

    Low paying jobs keep the economy ticking over. We need them. We also need high paying jobs if we want to call ourselves an advanced economy. So the gap between the top and bottom is going to be wide in an economy such as ours. It's a good thing. Stop being jealous of other people and focus on your life.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  68. #2993
    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    How do you intend to create this "fairer" world poop?
    IKR? It has only happened in places like Scandinavia and Canada because of accident, not because they tax the wealthy more than we do, so the gov't can provide proper public services.
    I just think we should suspend judgment on Boris until we have all the facts through an inquiry, police investigation, and parliamentary commission...then we should explode him.
    also,
    I'd like to be called Lord Poopy His Most Gloriously Excellent.
  69. #2994
    Quote Originally Posted by The Bean Counter View Post
    I think as the current over 60s die off, we have another step change in the blurring/removal of class barriers. Older people in my experience do appear more deferrent to Lord and Lady whassname. Maybe that explains why they keep voting for Eton-educated PMs.
    Yeah let's hope you're right. My fear with any argument that "when old people die they're outdated attitudes die with them" is that it may be they're just replaced with 'new' old people whose attitudes move towards what their parents' were. But I suppose it's a bit of both going on, some attitudes change with age and others change with the times.
    I just think we should suspend judgment on Boris until we have all the facts through an inquiry, police investigation, and parliamentary commission...then we should explode him.
    also,
    I'd like to be called Lord Poopy His Most Gloriously Excellent.
  70. #2995
    Our glorious PM Sunak is one of the richest people in the country and pays 22% tax, which is far below what the average person in the UK pays. I'm closer to 33% for the sake of comparison and I am far less wealthy than Fishi.

    That's not market forces rewarding talent and initiative, that's an oligarchal gov't creating laws that make themselves richer at everyone else's expense.
    I just think we should suspend judgment on Boris until we have all the facts through an inquiry, police investigation, and parliamentary commission...then we should explode him.
    also,
    I'd like to be called Lord Poopy His Most Gloriously Excellent.
  71. #2996
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Poopadoop View Post
    Like I said, wealth is not the same as class.

    In the US, there is much less cap-doffing reverence for someone who is born wealthy than there is here. People respect someone who earns their wealth much more than someone who falls ass backwards into it by being born into the right family.
    I may not have perfectly stated what classism is in the US, but work with me a bit.
    I'm a physicist, not a sociologist.

    I have read a book about classism in the US, though. And it painted a very interesting picture of how the US has adapted our class issues against the backdrop of "The American Dream" that anyone can rise from any social group due to their own choices and hard work.

    Which is what has been happening in the US for like 200 years. The class system didn't go away. It just got very subtle and sneaky and it's a social taboo to talk about it in just about any context.


    But look at any US city, and the surrounding areas and you'll see the class lines drawn hard and fast. Impoverished neighborhoods 1 or 2 city blocks from the most wealthy neighborhoods and ne'er the twain shall meet. Utilizing public transit is a symbol of lacking wealth and people are treated differently if they're perceived to be unable to afford a car or cell phone. The stores and restaurants and public spaces people occupy are heavily segregated based on all sorts of class identifiers.



    Again... I'm a physicist and not a sociologist. Classism in the US may look different to elsewhere, or not. IDK.
    What I do know is that classism is yuge in the US, and even your treatment under the law is heavily swayed by both your actual and perceived status.
    And yes, in the US, wealth is considered one of the biggest markers for status. This whole ethos of, "your choices determine your social class" is fundamental to the lies we say about ourselves, here.
    You can find any pattern you want to any level of precision you want, if you're prepared to ignore enough data.
  72. #2997
    Quote Originally Posted by Poopadoop View Post
    IKR? It has only happened in places like Scandinavia and Canada because of accident, not because they tax the wealthy more than we do, so the gov't can provide proper public services.
    It's hilarious you keep referring to Canada. We were talking about how the monarchy was to blame for class in the UK, and you keep telling me how the income gap in Canada, a constitutional monarchy, is not as wide as it is in the UK.

    Why is the income gap not as wide in Canada? Don't they have as many high paying jobs as we do?
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  73. #2998
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
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    Ong... Given that we agree that disparity in the pay of different jobs is a net social good,

    Is it always a net good that the disparity in pay be ever more extreme?
    Or is there some balance that is required for social stability?

    Should Bezos be making as much more than his employees as he does? More, sure. But THAT MUCH more?
    Is that better for social stability than a *more* equitable sharing of the company's profits to which all its employees play a part?

    Doctors should earn more, OK. How much more, though? And what is the actual cost to the society as a whole as we crank that dial one way or the other?


    You are aware of the problems with cranking it all the way to a flat line with everyone receiving equal pay regardless of their job. Do you see the problems with cranking it all the way the other direction where there is a poverty class and a uber rich class?

    Would the phrase "Let them eat cake" inspire any sense of the dangers on that end of the dial as well?
    You can find any pattern you want to any level of precision you want, if you're prepared to ignore enough data.
  74. #2999
    Quote Originally Posted by mojo
    Is it always a net good that the disparity in pay be ever more extreme?
    Or is there some balance that is required for social stability?
    It's not always good. Qatar is the simplest example, you're either very rich or you're poor, depending on your citizenship status. The question is why there is a wide income gap. If it's because a diverse economy is performing better than the global average, meaning a higher influx of very high paid jobs, then that isn't a problem.

    There already is a balance. If someone gets too rich, I mean literally too rich, not poop's idea of too rich, then that has such a negative impact on the economy that it causes total social and financial collapse. Nobody can get that rich. To become ludicrously rich, you need to either get lucky, or take advantage of other peoples' economic output, which ultimately means slavery or paid labour. So that means a healthy economy is required if you want to get rich in a civilised society where people have employment rights and protections. You have to exploit people legally.

    Market forces set the balance. If social stability is a problem, then better economic education is needed, instead of shit slinging identity politics which sets people against each other.

    Should Bezos be making as much more than his employees as he does?
    idk about Bezos specifically, but let's assume we're talking about a law abiding tax paying non corrupt rich ass motherfucker. How much he earns is a product of his economic relationships with other people and entities. People enter into contracts based on what is understood to be a mutually beneficial arrangement. If an employee of this hypothetical rich guy isn't happy with this arrangement, he can ask for a raise or quit. What business is it of outsiders to cast moral judgement? What do you care how much richer this guy is than his employees? Market forces made it happen, in this non corrupt example.

    Of course you have a right to cast moral judgement where corruption is concerned. That's a different argument, unless you're of the belief that you can only get rich by being corrupt. If you believe that, then you're naturally going to distrust rich people.

    I'm not naive. I know there's a lot of rich corrupt fuckers in this country and USA, Canada, everywhere except maybe Iceland. But I'm also not lacking that much faith in the capitalist system that I believe the only way to be rich is to be corrupt. I believe a lot of people are rich due to legal (read fair) accumulation of wealth through hard work and/or smart business decisions.

    Doctors should earn more, OK. How much more, though?
    How much doctors are economically worth is difficult to calculate in the UK since it's not market forces that determine their value... the government basically decide how much a doctor is worth, and that in turn influences the value of a good doctor to a private health company that wants to offer a superior service for profit. As far as the private sector goes, doctors can be paid whatever they can earn. That's a matter for the doctor, the health provider, and the willingness of the patient to pay the necessary cost. Market forces. The public sector, we should pay them as much as we can afford. I'm not going to pretend I'm remotely qualified to estimate that.

    Do you see the problems with cranking it all the way the other direction where there is a poverty class and a uber rich class?
    Poverty is very much a relative term. Poverty in England does not mean the same as poverty in Brazil. But for some reason the word still seems to carry the same weight.

    True poverty is extremely rare in the UK, and presumably USA too. Not non-existent, we have homeless people begging on the streets, but even that is far preferable to living in the crime ridden shanty towns of Rio.

    If we're talking about poverty in the relative context, then it always exists, because it just means the unemployed or very low earners. I can tell you from ten years of being unemployed that it was a personal choice. I lived in "poverty" for that period of time through choice. I was always capable of dragging my sorry ass into a hotel and cleaning bogs. I just couldn't be bothered. That was because a life of "poverty" in the UK isn't actually all that bad. Maybe not so fun if you have kids, but most people with kids tend to be more motivated to work than me. Nearly everyone in the UK is capable of working, and doing so lifts them out of poverty. Nearly everyone has the opportunity and power to not live in poverty. And those that don't, we take care of. That's the ideal society. We don't have that ideal, but nerfing rich fuckers isn't the way to create it.

    No person is cranking up the dial. Market forces are. It's like a tide, it can't keep coming in. Eventually the same forces that cranked the dial up start to crank it down. That's assuming you have a healthy free market economy.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  75. #3000
    Quote Originally Posted by Poopadoop View Post
    Our glorious PM Sunak is one of the richest people in the country and pays 22% tax, which is far below what the average person in the UK pays. I'm closer to 33% for the sake of comparison and I am far less wealthy than Fishi.

    That's not market forces rewarding talent and initiative, that's an oligarchal gov't creating laws that make themselves richer at everyone else's expense.
    Tell it to the taxman. You'll believe what you want to believe. The glorious BBC claim he's paid £1m in tax since 2019. I can't be bothered to click the article to see what that is in terms of %, but presumably this 22% you've stated isn't just income tax, it's an average of his income tax and capital gains tax and whatever else. You're just running with it because waaa waaa fuck the Tories.

    Pay someone to do a thorough audit of Sunak's tax affairs and let me know if anything is amiss. You'd certainly be rewarded for your efforts from anti-Tory media outlets. Get cracking.

    How did Sunak get rich in the first place? His parents were migrants from South Africa, and they in turn are the offspring of Punjabi migrants. His Dad is a GP and his Mother is a pharmacist.

    He got rich being a hedge fund manager. He was profiting from rich people who wanted to invest their money. He didn't inherit Daddy's empire, he didn't exploit your labour, he went to college, studied shit, got a job with some rich cunts, and invested other rich cunts' money, becoming a rich cunt in the process. If he was good at his job and generating profit for his investors, then he earned his wealth. Market forces did that.

    So is he paying enough tax? I assume so, because it would be very bad for his political career if he wasn't. He doesn't seem like a dumbass to me. He doesn't strike me as the "no fucks given" type.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong

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