chrisp65

1 minute ago, colhint said:

They supply a lot of non generic drugs. If you or your family or friends are using them on prescription, there's a fair chance some come from israel. A man must have a lot of belief to deny his loved ones some meds they might need.

No, you’re right, we need these generic drugs that can only be sourced from Israel.

Let’s not condemn mass murder and mass civilian punishment by starvation, let’s keep helping.

Chino’s around the house and garden.

If we weren’t expecting visitors, shirt untucked.

5 hours ago, blandy said:

I hate to break this to you, but it’s the voters in Israel that prop up their governments, and up until very recently the unwavering support of US administrations. The UK couldn’t prop up the Isle of Man. I mean I’m the same as you in avoiding knowingly buying anything made or grown in Israel as my equally futile and pointless gesture, that mostly assuages what’s left of my conscience. Israel’s government gives not two **** what our opposition parties, or government say or do. Their population is furious about how the hostages haven’t been rescued, but generally are supportive of the actions being taken “against Hamas” (deliberate inverted commas) according to polls.

If we’re trading with them, and giving them military assistance, we’re propping them up.

I’m not suggesting they have an absolute reliance on us or that the regime will fall without us. 

25 minutes ago, sne said:

I treat Israel as I would have South Africa if I'd been an adult back then. Would never visit, go out of my way to never knowingly buy anything produced in Israel, be it oranges or soda streamers or whatever.I know there is tech produced there that end up in products that I'm sure I've bought but it is what it is. Don't watch stuff they are competing in, be it a football game or a song contest.

Means absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things but I feel better about it.

It’s both futile, and the only thing that will make a difference.

I was in a supermarket recently and on that day every type of potato they were selling was from Israel. I’d only gone there for spuds, for a meal we were having. But I couldn’t buy them. I changed the whole meal plan we had something else and we had that meal a few days later when the spuds were from Pembrokeshire. Well done me.

It’s obviously the most middle class of  tiny little protests, but it’s something directly in my control, so I did it. It’s not lost on me that I’ve struck against the international war machine by switching to pasta. Also, that farmer in Israel just might be Palestinian, however unlikely. Also the farmer in Pembrokeshire might be supporting the IDF with free spuds. You can’t know everything. But you can do your little bit of what feels right.

It’s a nasty apartheid regime, we have to treat it like that. If it gains some basic humanity and respect for life, we can help protect it against other nasty murderous regimes. 

Right now they are committing crimes, killing babies, starving mothers on Mother’s Day. So I don’t buy their spuds and I won’t be voting for the cowardly apologist UK politicians that prop them up, red or blue.

31 minutes ago, ml1dch said:

They probably mostly do care in a "oh how sad, someone should do something" way. But short of being a bit sad and angry about it, there isn't really much that anyone actually can do. 

You could always research what the various party leaders think of it, and vote accordingly.

16 minutes ago, bickster said:

Richard Norris, Dub…. Yep sold!
Oracle Sounds Volume 2

Plain brown card sleeve. Not much point posting a picture, it would be very dull

6 Dub tracks.

Sort of leading up to the release of his new book and a book signing he’s doing towards the end of the month in a brewery in town followed by the return for one night only of the old Thursday Psyche night he used to do at The Bierkeller. the Hangout, where he won’t play this stuff at all  

I’d nearly posted a few days ago about the sheer quantity of output from him, and the accompanying tsunami of emails and notifications from Bandcamp and the like to tell me he’s released another thing.

Then this one popped up in yet another Norris notification, and I was grateful for the tip off, so decided not to grumble.

Ah, i thought he was going to say wrong cinema, but they’d just painted a wall beige so he watched that instead and it was slightly better than Dune 1.

With the current lines on there being a maxed out credit card, no clear war crimes in Palestine, how working out the family budget at the dining room table taught Rachel Reeves economics, and no hiding place or excuses for youths on benefits, it can often be the case people end up accidentally in the wrong party.

I don’t understand what voters want sometimes.

If you phone emergency services there is a decent chance they will not turn up. Hospitals are failing, schools are failing, they are passing the cost of local government on to us, so the swimming pools are closing and the sports fields are being sold for housing without amenity.

They’ve just put some extra money in the pockets of people that earn £55k by increasing tax on people that earn £21k.

Yet voters still aren’t happy.

A fickle bunch.

I always thought it was very moving the way she almost met the residents of Grenfell and then almost got something done about Grenfell.

Lord Snooty confirmed the other day that our arms sales to Israel were so comparatively small it wasn’t worth stopping them. Even though we are very very close to becoming concerned about all the dead children.

Well, in some late night negotiations, we’ve just agreed that our house can be a location for the local Uni to do some filming for the masters film / screenwriting course end of year piece.

They get the house for a couple of days. We get a cake.

They’ve verbally promised it’s not a porno.

4 hours ago, OutByEaster? said:

Blimey, someone put an awful lot work into the bleedin' obvious there.

Apparently tomorrow they’ve got an exclusive on where bears shit.

It is a strange conflict indeed.

Lord Snooty Cameron had words with the visiting Israeli delegation yesterday, where apparently he warned them that we were getting very close to needing to start thinking about possibly warning them that we were approaching the end of our tolerance of recent events. Stern stuff indeed.

The guy from the BBC asked if this meant we would stop supplying arms. He was told that our arms sales to our trusted and valued long term Israeli friend and ally were very minor in comparison with what the U.S. sold them, so no. 

8 minutes ago, bickster said:

I thought the 8,000 houses were specifically for Barking Riverside? Genuine question btw I've probably just assumed this

I ask the question because they've already built the station at the end of the DLR but haven't yet built the homes and I wouldn't put it past this govt to announce something that was already announced

Also there is currently a new consultation underway to extend the DLR via a tunnel under the Thames to Thamesmead, yes Thamesmead doesn't have a rail connection currently but it is literally down the road from Abbey Wood which is already on the shiny new Elizabeth line and the distance from Thamesmead to Abbey Wood is much less than an awful lot of people in the UK have to travel to a 2 trains a day station. Abbey Wood to Canary Wharf, -> minutes. Why build a tunnel at the cost of over a Billion quid

Yep, there’s 8,000 residences in Barking as part of it. All part of an overall package with lots of national strategic infrastructure size works such as a new tunnel to extend the rail system, new housing estates, science parks. It’s every sector is being mobilised, every pool of funding being used. A new 23 storey building for Canary Wharf itself, alongside the one that will be without a tenant in 2027. A Canary Wharf life sciences park. All to coincide with the change in the planning laws where conversion of office to residential will be classed as permitted development and not require planning.

Hunt has shown he wants to redirect levelling up funding to London, Cambridge, Surrey, and Buckinghamshire. 

4 minutes ago, Genie said:

Why is London getting any money is my question. Levelling up was for the UK outside of the south east to get investment to “level it up” to the facilities and infrastructure of the London region.

Not only is London getting money, it’s getting more than the entirety of Wales. It’s madness. They couldn’t even be arsed to disguise the Canary Wharf investment by saying it’s from another fund, they are calling it levelling up. What is it levelling up with? 

It would be like the PL giving out money to PL clubs to level up with the big 4 of 5, but then giving Man City more money than the entire bottom half of the table combined.

It’s fascinating, HSBC have announced they are not renewing their lease in 2027. So in advance of that there is development money to attract science projects to the area and new housing to the area to make the transition as seamless as possible. Years in advance of a building being vacated.

Imagine a similar level of forward planning and investment for steel workers or car makers or ship builders.

4 minutes ago, MakemineVanilla said:

I think it fits the definition of rehypothecation; which is to say, the Government is using collateral they do not own (public money) to finance future assets, that is to say, party donations.

All my usual sarcasm to the side.

I’d be quite sure that within sight of the big shiny silver windowed financial towers of Canary Wharf there are still pockets of deprivation hanging on trying not to be pushed out by the aggressive ‘gentrifcation’ of everything and anything touched by lots of money. There will be people that obviously don’t want to be poor, but also can’t engage with the financial jobs on offer and the creep of the £5 takeaway coffee shop and the artisan baker. 

But to put it in to context, from my own personal point of interest, the money for Canary Wharf is £242 million. The money for all Wales, three and a half million people, is £170 million.

We really do need these awful tories and tory copyists out of office for a very very long time.

If the story is legit, and that’s a sizeable if, then perhaps it’s an illustration of ‘our’ news versus news around the world. We would think it crazy to go to Russia on our holibobs because we see pictures from the frontline and magnakarl’s kill stats. 

But perhaps the news in India isn’t quite so involved and the seven guys aren’t that interested and there are lots of places that aren’t as poorly rated on trip advisor as Kharkiv.

So I guess it’s just as possible some Indians could go to Russia, as some English guys could accidentally go to Colima in Mexico with a murder rate of 2%.

28 minutes ago, blandy said:

Here’s a talking point. I was musing a few years ago, while sat in a huge stationary traffic jam on the motorway. The jam, it turned out was because someone was threatening to jump off a bridge. I was on my way to a Fall gig and had some leeway, but I wondered what’s the calculation? Motorway closed both directions. Thousands of people stuck. Is one of them gonna beat their wife/ plunge into depression/ insert terrible outcome here/ whatever? Because of the actions of a disturbed person?  At what point is the greater good/ least harm caused by just either grabbing the “jumper” or they jump?

It’s a philosophical question, not a point of view.

Yep, it’s unquantifiable, other than knowing that the person on the bridge is definitely at risk of harm, all the other scenarios are just that, scenarios. I do know for a fact that statistically, social services are always in a spike of activity after a significant football or rugby event. If the event goes the wrong way, plenty of people get boozed up and knock their partner about. But would the greater good be to stop competitive sport and just have medals for taking part? 

I’ve had similar thought, I was on a train to London, there was a diversion up around Gloucester and Cheltenham, then we were stopped for that same reason, a person sat on a bridge. I was going to a business meeting, I was going to pitch for some work at a time when there wasn’t that much work around. It could have been that the business meeting was make or break for 20 jobs, so twenty families and their mortgages and their plans.

Unless we invest in public services to a point they can give out questionnaires and assess possible risks, I guess they’ve got to deal with the actual risks, one at a time in a linear fashion. 

I guess someone else in that traffic jam or on that train could be a paramedic, now late for a shift, and the unknown person having a heart attack or stroke now doesn’t get the assistance they need in a timely manner. But we’re talking about a butterfly effect. It could equally be a case that a lorry driver now isn’t doing 55mph with his head in the footwell looking for his dropped phone.

Lastly, I guess society has decided that minimal investment in mental health provision has saved us all £1.37, but the inconvenience of the traffic jamb has caused £4 of inconvenience to a couple of hundred people, so that’s clearly the way forward.

Celebrating 45 years of Sparks asking Giorgio Moroder to have a dabble with No1 Song In Heaven.

24 minutes ago, bobzy said:

I don’t think it’s (generally) the generation struggling to get on the housing ladder who have second (or third etc) homes, if I’m honest, but there’s certainly something that people have aspired to with “passive income”.

AirBnB has a lot to answer for. 

I suspect there is some irony in that some of the generation that can’t afford homes are consoling themselves with weekends away in an air BnB which creates demand for more air BnB and puts house prices up.

There are something like 600,000 air BnB in the UK, now a large number of those will be tents and novelty helicopter experiences. But a few hundred thousand will be houses and apartments. Imagine a drop in demand and a hike in costs resulting in a quarter of a million more homes for living in becoming available. 

Just now, tonyh29 said:

I did a repeat prescription  last night via the NHS App , has your nominated chemist on it where you go and pick it up from and just a couple of clicks ... I'd guess that's available to everyone  ?

presumably 28 days is so you don't get 6 months worth in one go and flog them on E-Bay 

Yeah, I had 6 months supply from the hospital no problem, just handed me a carrier bag full.

There is an app, and there’s a section of the GP’s website specific for repeat prescriptions, but it hasn’t been working. Except, it clearly was working to some extent because when they eventually produced a prescription for what I wanted, it was exactly what I’d submitted via the app.. The whole experience just felt like they were being a bit crap about doing some basic admin and coming out with the classic ‘i.t. Problems’.

The one thing I am grateful for, prescriptions are free. I’d be clocking up some costs if they weren’t.

31 minutes ago, Seat68 said:

My doctor is dreadful. He has prescribed shrugs and isn't willing to try anything. After badgering I had a CT scan yesterday but am months away from a neurologist. 

6 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

yeah I was thinking about your experience as in some ways its similar to mine ( all be it different symptoms)  .. it took me my third doctor before I got someone to take it seriously  ( second one asked me if I was after a sick note for time off work ) .. 

Don't know how many doctors there are at your local surgery , but maybe work your way through all of them until you get one that comes up with a thorough plan to investigate your symptoms 

It’s definitely a very mixed experience the GP visit.

I’ve had some where they clearly weren’t paying attention and I failed to even gain eye contact, others where it was clearly a subject that interested them and I was their pet project.

Most recently, I’m having to micro manage my GP, I’ve had 6 months of meds from the hospital and these are now at an end. Getting the subsequent follow up repeat prescription from my GP has taken 2 weeks, and that’s when I’d told them I only had 1 week supply of medicine left. As it happened, I had more than that, and just as well I did. It needed me to take time out of work yesterday and basically stand at the GP Reception desk until I had a physical copy of a correct prescription in my hand. Not a lie that they’d sent it to the pharmacy, that their I.T. was down, that they hadn’t received my hospital notes, or even a prescription but for some un requested rash cream. I was perfectly polite, but had to stress a number of times I had run out of meds and was standing there until I got the correct prescription, having been fobbed off with multiple excuses for 2 weeks.

Even then, what I got was a prescription for 28 tablets for something I’ve been told I’ll be on for life. So I guess I go through all that again in a couple of weeks.

One of my previous fave experiences with the GP was a few years ago when I was getting what’s easiest described as sex migraines. I’d get to the magic moment and instead of it being a pleasant experience, it was like being hit over the head with a baseball bat. First doctor clearly too embarrassed to talk about it. Second doctor loved it! Had a colleague in another practise doing a paper on it, so I was seconded to the other doctor and had a surprisingly detailed few months of trying a few different things and reporting back! Mad times, basically had a note from the doctor for trying out different ‘techniques’ all in the name of medical science.

Have to say, that remains my all time favourite medical problem by quite some margin.