Huguenot

I think there's bit of confusion isn't there? t-e-d? I may have misunderstood, but it's just a loan isn't it? Yes, it's paid back through a levy on your electricity bill and can only be used on greening your house, but it's just a loan? The government seem to offer a few hundred quid subsidy at most, but if you're going to do major heating or insulation work it'll be a ?10,000 loan paid off over 25 years at around 7% to 8%. There's even early repayment fines. Some deal. HMG seem to be loan-sharking? You'd be better off in many cases simply extending your mortgage wouldn't you? Happy to hear that I'm wrong?

I know I oversimplify EP, but's a short hand way of illustrating that the British public frequently denies its own craven demands, literally lies to itself, in order to gain some sort of farcical moral high ground.

I think the only 'obvious' thing about that article was a capacity for astonishing historical revisionism, and a willingness to embody the vicissitudes of the global economy in one individual. It doesn't shock me. My father was a lifelong labour supporter from a blue collar Manchester family. He voted Conservative to both elect and retain Maggie. Maggie didn't create the social changes of the 80s, the nation did, and they did it because the alternatives were worse. Maggie didn't shut down British heavy industry, that's quite simply stupid. British industry was destroyed by globalization. We had globalization because we wanted Japanese televisions and international travel, not because Maggie made it. You can say that 'Maggie didn't save northern communities' but in many northern communities 70% of employment is still public sector. That's about all a government can do, it can't do anything else. Do you know at one point the government owned all the pubs in Carlisle, Thomas Cook and Pickfords Removals? How stupid is that? The governments arranges holidays and moving house??? This twattish attribution of the downside of our national social choices is pathetic. It doesn't surprise me, because it happened to Blair. You know why Blair went to war in Iraq? He went to war for oil. He went to war for oil because the nation wouldn't accept anything else. All the mewling and puking about it is grand scale hypocrisy. The most depressing thing about Britain during this period of national decay is the habit of the British to sit in their own mess kidding themselves it wasn't their fault, pillorying other people for their downfall.

Haha 5 cross posts in 5 minutes!

It doesn't T.E.D The stupidity of his subheading says it all: "We are in the midst of the third great economic collapse since the Second World War: all three have taken place since Thatcherism launched its great crusade" Owen Jones wasn't even born until 1984, he is a trade union researcher and a socialist activist. He's barely more than a student union fist pumper. As a result of his desperately limited life experience he has no recollection of the 3 day weeks, the power cuts, the collapse of industry under the purview of the rapacious left wing crusades of the unions. This country has never been on its knees to the extent that it was in the mid 70s. In short, he's a teenage dick with an agenda, who tells lies to get headlines.

"...her informed detractors' hesitant cowardice when presented with the opportunity to actually celebrate her death" This is ridiculous. I imagine that many of those 'informed detractors' who criticized her have evolved beyond the Stone Age thrashing of dead corpses with sticks. Do you ever feel that the world has passed you by Vicanna? ;-)

No LadyD, it's not a guess. The only alternative to the future described in that article would have been someone else doing a 'Thatcher'. The fact that it was Thatcher that did it is largely neither here nor there - and no excuse to demean ourselves by pursuing her into the grave like a lynch mob pulling pieces out of her body. The foolish aspect to those that despise her is that they lack the imagination to consider the alternatives - and most importantly whether it would have been an improvement. The truth is that the nation was staring in the face of a socialist implosion that would leave us not in a glorious agrarian idyll, but rather a desperate post industrial clusterfuck European outlier like the Ukraine. To claim otherwise is revisionist.

*piles all the smartphones in the middle of the table* First one to touch theirs picks up the bill.

Sorry EP, I should have explained myself - I think Churchill was first elected in 1900. I think up until 1918 only about half of men (those wealthy enough) and no women could vote. Women under 30 still couldn't vote until 1928. By then Chruchill was 54 had been in parliament for 28 years. So he didn't build his career by appealing to the electorate like today's politicians have to - even the deference given to the aristocracy at the time may not have appointed him had there been universal suffrage.

Totally agree SJ. Winston Churchill wasn't exactly an elected politician in the modern sense, not only because the voting system wasn't the same, but also because attitudes to leadership weren't the same. Leadership was largely regarded as something one acquired through birthright, and the electorate were predominantly deferential. Combine that with the highly controlled media, and you basically had a ruling class who came under no scrutiny at all. If he'd have been here today, he wouldn't have made it anywhere near parliament, because the population wouldn't let him.

And wait for my list of famous people with brown hair! Brown hair may well be a sign of genius! A lot of those are more than 150 years ago, which seems to me to be a bit tenuous when speaking of 'spelling' since correct spelling wasn't exactly a settled discipline.

Ah, I don't know EP. You may be right, I blame the inertia of Yorkshiremen. The 'y' seems to denote plural though no?

Interesting one Alex K / nashoi :) 'They' to denote a singular individual of indeterminate gender has been in use for at least 500 years. I continually catch myself on it because I'm unsure whether I'll be understood. So sometimes it's s/he and sometimes just 'they'. Good quote from Shakey: Arise; one knocks. / ... / Hark, how they knock! ? Romeo and Juliet Popular usage would signify it's acceptable, and I'd we can accept 'thou' (singular) being replaced by 'you' (plural) then we'd have to accept 'their' referring to the possessions of an individual of indeterminate gender. So I think Sue clears it on that one!

Mayonnaise.

The 'let me fix that for you' (and variations) is a regular joke across the Internet, it's ironic (because it hasn't 'fixed it' it's changed it) - I'm sorry you haven't come across it before. Imagine Del Boy saying it, and you'll get the tone. One of the first tips on Internet forums is to remember that the written word doesn't have any tone in it, so it's very easy to read negative intent that don't really exist I have no idea about your level of education, and since nobody else brought it up it may be that you're assuming a criticism when it doesn't exist. You weren't part of the discussion in the thread here, so it seems that you were bearing a grudge and looking to insult someone. That doesn't really seem much better than what you're accusing others of? It's basically trolling. I don't think you necessarily have to 'toughen up' in the face of abuse or bullying - more to ask if there was any abuse or bullying in the first place. Disagreeing with you is neither abuse nor bullying. Either way, are you a Chavez revolutionary supporter?

If he's after a fun beach holiday at that time of year he'd be better off in Koh Samui or Koh Phangnan (Gulf of Thailand) rather than Phuket, Krabi or Phi Phi (West Coast) because of rainfall. Most of the rain will fall late afternoon. However, in general it's not an ideal time for snorkeling or diving on either side, as the water is stirred up by the monsoon and gets murky. He'll still have a good time though. As Loz said, he might want to schedule some time in Bangkok or Chiang Mai so there's other stuff to do if it rains a lot.

Who, me? Not really much of a contribution.

Haha :)) that's your summary of the Chavez era? Leaving aside its accuracy, you are aware that apart from the nationalization of resources you have just described most liberal modern democracies? It speaks to the occluded vision of suburban revolutionaries that you couldn't see is as you wrote it. By your description, the Chavez revolution was only to take on the attributes of modern Britain. The next question is accuracy. Did Chavez really achieve all these things, or is it no more than the usual revolutionary rosy veneer over a seething mass of corrupt self interested autocrats?

'Recycling is not good for the environment'.??? I don't know what brought you to that conclusion. The article you referenced only said that there was evidence of fraud in some elements of the processing chain. To leap from that to saying 'recycling is not good for the environment' is the same as saying 'eating is not good for you' because there's a couple of dodgy restaurants in Peckham. It's nonsense.

I think you may have missed Vicanna's point alice - he was simply saying that if I didn't believe in the petitions that I therefore didn't believe in general elections. It was nonsense and he was trying to get a rise. You seem to be making a completely separate point that elections are a con. I suspect that may be something to do with what your expectations are. Governments have very little room to 'change' anything. Most of the budgets are committed years in advance, the bank balance is desperately tight.

"CCTV is no solution. Police patrolling is an actual deterrent." Really? I take it that you've never actually been a thief? May I give you absolute assurance that during my teenage years a policeman was a target, not a deterrent. The idea that a street corner policeman would actually turn up sufficiently quickly to tackle my petty larceny is laughable.

Vicanna - "Would you apply the same 'logic' to voting? Sounds like you would." No Vicanna, that's slightly dim isn't it? A petition about whether pies should have sides does not have equivalency with electing your representative in parliament. Parliament, you may have noticed, governs the country. Petitions about pies don't. I congratulate you on conquering the heretofore unachievable challenge of merging your brain with a loofah. Every couple of seconds mate.... BREATHE.

What Penguin68 says is technically true - but not substantively. There's virtually no difference in fuel efficiency (and hence emmissions) between driving at 20 in 3rd or 30 in 4th.

Slacktivism isn't it? All the psychological benefits of 'doing something' without any meaningful action.

I remember going to a vaccination clinic on Piccadilly when I went to China. I just turned up, said where I was going, and they pulled 'use and throw' vaccinations out of the fridge and banged them in one after another. Excellent stuff.