blandy

Yeah. Though it’s not simply just him. Their whole set up is deeply protective and supportive of Israel and has been for a very long time. Biden really detests Netanyahu, whereas Trump likes him and enabled him to go further away from 2 state settlement. And congress wants to send aid (why?, what for?) to Israel and sell them a who ton more bombs and planes. It’s mad.

That’s the point. Parliament debating what words of very strong or very weak words of “Stop it you monster”, for Netanyahu to completely ignore is all very liberal and democratic…and almost entirely performative. There is no (publicly available) information or evidence that the UK is assisting genocide. We’ve certainly not condemned it, which is offensive to many people, including me and most of the uk, and that’s sad for us liberal folk over here. In terms of arms sales, as has been posted previously, we sell them almost nothing that goes bang, or launches things that go bang. Bits for radars, and then we sell America bits of the F35 and some displays for F16s that they then sell to Israel as completed fighter jets. The thing is, if we stopped that today, it makes no difference either. It’s a token gesture. We probably should and we probably won’t. Israel gets pretty much all its wooshbangs from America and Germany and its own manufacturers. We’re not a player to anything other than to a tiny extent. It’s also the case that, acknowledging Israel is governed by a horrendous amalgam of right wing extremists and a crooked monster, forged together by the Hamas attacks) that under more normal times Israel is surrounded by nations and groups who want to eliminate it and it therefore needs to have the means to defend itself. Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and the rest are as genocidal in mentality as Israel has become. The irony is that Israel has undone, for a generation(s) the progress that was happening towards a better relationship with its neighbours in the way it has reacted to Iran’s and Hamas’s “initiative” on 7 October.

None of them do.

This may be a slightly obtuse point, but anyway, here it is. Remember there were all these people arguing about the words in, and the calls for, parliamentary votes on a ceasefire/humanitarian pause and all that? Then, eventually all the MPs did calls for the frightfulness to stop. I expect they feel all the happier for their righteousness. But rather oddly it made absolutely no difference to anything at all and Israel carried on with its war criming and collective punishment and barbarity, like they completely don’t listen or take any notice of what UK MPs say or vote on. So George the shill isn’t going to have any luck there either. Still he’s got a few quid out of being an MP for a bit, again, so there’s that.

Oh, Jees. You’ve put something back in my memory that had been wiped. It’s even worse than the other ones, the Junction one and the Cats one. I curse you to the torment of having a fly refusing to get out of your campervan, for a length of time that is mildly annoying. That’ll learn you.

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I don’t feel any guilt...I’m also not actively working against anything really. There’s some things I (minorly) act for, but none of them are the current flavour of the month. They’re just stuff I kind of care about away from social media trends or news stories of the day.

I didn’t write the thing you quoted in your post. That was @bickster . Personally, I don’t believe I’ve oppressed anyone. All I’ve done is try to be not too much of a bell to anyone, whatever their background/ ethnicity/ culture / sexuality etc. I doubt I’ve fully succeeded in that lofty ambition, but I’ve tried.

Being lucky by accident of birth isn’t oppression.

Who have you oppressed today? Or maybe if you’ve had the day off oppressing, who did you oppress so far this year? I’m being facetious of course, but grouping “all white men” as one group is a bit of a step. Most of our, yours and mine, ancestors were likely peasants, or farmers or factory workers, or servants, rather than slave traders and feudal lords. I kind of object to the notion that I’m part of a group that oppress other people. I completely accept that in Western Europe, the US, Australasia etc. white folk are the majority ethnic group and have inherent advantages because of that and because of a legacy of colonialism and so on. All that said. I might be up for a spot of freelance oppressing if there’s a vacancy amongst the elites. I wouldn’t come cheap though. I’d want a title, some swans, and the right to inbreed.

Yep, I could have added that, too. Even worse on cool for cats. words removed

Because I can’t stand the sound, basically. [I’m the same with Queen]. Also because it was played so many times on the radio when it was released. And it’s dreary and sad.

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Indeed. Though they can't rape female prisoners if they're in a male prison, and that seems to be the issue for one camp.

It kind of is. You can either vote for the Tory and therefore be a mug, or vote for Labour, who are apparently just as bad, and thus be a mug, or you can vote for a tiny yellow or Green or Reform party, and see one of the big blue or red parties get in, like the mug that (non-specific) you are, or you can stay at home and see exactly the same thing happen, mug muggety mug mugs.

You may not have heard of it, because it’s rare. But it’s also fact and reality. It’s happened multiple times and Prisons are usually the location, though not exclusively. People with todgers being put in women’s prisons because they either identified as women, or had been gender reassigned as women and then going on to sexually assault other prisoners. That’s obviously a lamentable situation. I guess the question is how do you stop that and also stop completely innocent and decent trans people from being discriminated against or victimised. There’s kind of 2 extreme camps (can I say camp?). One is shouting for the rights of Trans people trumping the rights of women born as women, and the other is shouting for the rights of born women trumping the rights of trans people. And then each calls the other haters and dangerous and evil and…so much noise, so little understanding.

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That’s the thing with being publicly owned. The government of the day can be as dreadful an owner as some private company. “Yeah, nationalise it, and put Chris Grayling in charge, that’ll sort out all the problems”.

There's 5 - Sweet, Sour, Umami, Spicy and er, another one, innit. Probably salty or bitter or something - I believe that's a Small Heath speciality, that last one. What a thicko.

Only because when Thatcher privatised it, she wrote off the debt of the nationalised water company which was in 1989 £5 billion. They were all loss making when publicly owned too. Obviously the privatisation has made things worse, with all the dividends and stuff taken out. Rot in Hell, Thatch.

I guess the share price will currently reflect the situation - uncertainty over the future, and without looking it up, I assume it's fallen recently. If the company and the government come to some sort of compromise then things (and the share price) will change again (back upwards). The current situation, where the shareholders are refusing to put in 500 million more quid, [because (in their view) it's just gonna be money down the drain for them, as they don't view the constraints of Ofwat to make cash injection tenable] is them playing hardball as a gambit, really, I think. It's a move to try and get some concession around the stringency and timeframe of the regulatory requirements Ofwat imposes (under the direction of parliament). So like I say, if there's some alleviation of that, then the share price goes back up, the shareholders inject the cash, and the customers of Thames water get higher bills, but the Taxpayer generally does not pay. It's a split cost between the shareholders and the customers. Thames water's profits have slumped, and it's got a mountain of debt (much of which was accumulated via paying out dividend historically). Essentially, currently and recently its income is not enough to cover daily costs plus obligations to fix all the stuff that's decrepit and broken and lacking. And the shareholders won't give it more money, and so far borrowing more from other markets looks a non-starter. So yes they're potentially up shit creek. The thing is, and this is where I guess we see the solution differently, I think that changing the ownership of the company makes zero actual problems go away. The things that need fixing, in terms of infrastructure and pipes and stuff need fixing whoever owns it. The cost will be the same under either ownership model. Being parochial in the extreme, why should my taxes go up to fix a bunch of stuff caused by a privatised London company's mismanagement and shenanigans? The shareholders, directors and (sadly) customers need to be on the hook for the fixes. You're right about the behaviour of the people that broke it, and that's where they need to be held accountable and held responsible for fixing it, not given the easy way out of just hand it all back and leave us lot to pick up the pieces. Ban them from holding directorships, fine them, lock them up if they've done anything criminal. Stop the transfer of assets from one part of the web of companies (the actual, regulated, water bit) under the Thames water umbrella to another part(s). They've properly taken the piss, and the tories have let them. But anyway, I'm pretty sure it's not the end of the saga. And, also, while Thames water is particularly rotten and broken and may end up (worst case) back in public ownership, it's not the case with every other water company - a national, er, nationalisation of all the companies is unnecessary in terms of addressing the various problems. It might be ideologically preferable, but given the general state of everything, there are bigger issues that need sorting out first, and time and resources spending on, for the next government.

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Self destructive behaviour.

Yep, I agree with that. It’s an interesting contrast to look at who has been allowed to own critical national infrastructure like water and power and compare that to Tories doing their nut and blocking forrins from owning the Daily Telegraph, their in house loo roll of choice. Many if not all the water companies have set up matrixes of companies that shuffle funds between them, such that the declared dividends to shareholders are only a part of the money going out (and, to be fair, in). And the government and Ofwat have, unsurprisingly, been behind one or more steps behind in terms of stopping it.