snowychap Posted July 17, 2020 Share Posted July 17, 2020 Anyway, @blandy, this is becoming a discussion quite a way from the topic at hand so we should perhaps leave it there. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snowychap Posted July 17, 2020 Share Posted July 17, 2020 (edited) 45 minutes ago, blandy said: That's a shame. I dunno that anything's changed to make that a viable stance for the Gov't to take. Surely they need a justification - didn't the courts put an end to it? They undertook a 'review' and, unsurprisingly, the review came to the conclusion that any problems with International Humaitarian Law were 'isolated incidents' and that there was no pattern to them and that: Quote Saudi Arabia has a genuine intent and the capacity to comply with IHL. Liz Truss - Hansard Effectively, they say that the undertakings given to the Court and to Parliament were on a particular basis and having reassessed the licences and incidents, that even though they've come to the same conclusion (i..e. that the Saudis are a nice bunch of blokes) this is on a new assessment process and therefore any undertakings no longer apply. There's more of Truss's reasoning on the Hansard link. Edited July 17, 2020 by snowychap Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snowychap Posted July 17, 2020 Share Posted July 17, 2020 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NurembergVillan Posted July 17, 2020 Moderator Share Posted July 17, 2020 1 hour ago, blandy said: The mention of "Salford" to me meant "UK operated drones" (rather than US operated drones, or Iranian ones or Israeli ones or whatever) and therefore, I wanted to check/caveat my assumption before writing anything else. So the answer as to why my reply concentrated on the UK side of it was because Rob raised that and because this thread is about the current UK Gov't party and not the US or wherever and we need to stay broadly on topic. As I also said - happy to discuss wider stuff in the right thread(s). My ambiguity has prompted quite the debate. Seems like a healthy, respectful one though. I used Salford purely because the original poster had referenced the Manchester Arena bombing. The bomber (I think) lived in Fallowfield, but most posters have never heard of that so it might've got lost. Turns out it got lost anyway! Overall my point was meant more broadly about civilian victims of any kind of armed violence, but as it is a UK citizen we're talking about, the UK forces are a useful focal point for the conversation. We've drifted quite far off-topic, but then also not. Ultimately, the actions of our government and therefore any resultant military (either our own, the Saudis, whoever) force leads some people to feel they need to fight back. Us selling arms to KSA whilst also whispering to them to tone it down a bit is too nuanced of a well-intentioned act for someone who has been on the receiving of said Saudi missiles. Actions have consequences. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HanoiVillan Posted July 17, 2020 Share Posted July 17, 2020 Partly about coronavirus, but mainly about the impact of longer waiting lists and other forms of austerity on health outcomes in the NHS: I'm one of the thousands of extra cancer deaths we'll see this year [...] 'It took two months from my initial referral to the start of my radiotherapy treatment. I begged the oncologist for an earlier appointment, but the waiting list target was 62 days, and so I had to wait out the full 62. After three gruelling months of daily radiotherapy delivered inside a rotating sci-fi machine, I remained optimistic; the treatment had been tough, but the odds of a cure looked good, and if that failed, there was always surgery. I was on a train on the way to the women’s semi-finals at Wimbledon last July with my daughter Naima when my oncologist called. “The scan is clear,” she said. “You’re free of the cancer.” I blessed the wonderful NHS staff, we had a celebratory day out and, yet again, I felt I was living a charmed existence. But by September I was having symptoms again, this time rectally. The oncologist thought this was radiation damage, but agreed to further investigations after several appointments. It then took four weeks for an appointment to see a gastroenterologist and a further two to actually have the sigmoidoscopy and biopsy. And then two more spent waiting for the results. There were multidisciplinary meetings and a plan for yet another scan, to check that the cancer hadn’t spread too far to be operable. I was the last patient through the PET scanner on a chilly Christmas Eve last year. The results, which came in early January, were encouraging, but I’d need radical surgery to remove large chunks of my internal organs. And, guess what, I’d have to wait for an appointment to see the surgeon, who would only then put me on his list, which had a six-week wait. By this time my faith in good luck and the NHS was becoming shaky. I begged the oncologists for an earlier appointment and asked my GP to step in, all to no avail. To its credit, the hospital wasn’t going to allow any queue jumping. But that left me with an agonising wait, knowing this aggressive ball of cells was dividing and growing. The operation finally took place on 27 February, almost five months after the cancer had recurred. Once he’d taken a look inside, my surgeon closed me up again, with a heavy heart. It was now impossible to remove all the cancerous tissue – they got there too late.' more on link: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisp65 Posted July 17, 2020 Share Posted July 17, 2020 Trying not to go off topic but this is excellent so far: Once Upon A Time In Iraq I think it’s in episode 1, there’s a US recon marine or some such. He says he was trained to be a killing machine. They put up a sign in Arabic telling people if they drove down this road they would be killed. He then spent a day killing everyone that drove down the road. Men, women, children, families, whoever, he’s a killer. Turns out people couldn’t read. The point being, I guess, he believed he was legitimate. I’d imagine it turned a fair few Iraqi families against him and his kind. Which to roll back a few pages, is why we can’t pass judgement on who gets access to basic justice and human rights. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blandy Posted July 17, 2020 Author Moderator Share Posted July 17, 2020 34 minutes ago, snowychap said: Truss's reasoning Oxymoron, but thanks @snowychap. Seems like a (and who'd have thunk it) Tory trick of basically we'll do what we want and eff you" or " a bit of time has passed, shuffle this out and no one will notice, hopefully". Marvellous! * * for clarity, that "marvellous may contain sarcasm, rather than support for the baby eaters policy.". 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post bickster Posted July 19, 2020 Moderator Popular Post Share Posted July 19, 2020 3 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xann Posted July 20, 2020 Share Posted July 20, 2020 Quote Yesterday Boris Johnson committed himself to a public inquiry into the government’s handling of the coronavirus. He didn’t say when, though he gave the distinct impression that the ideal time would be a long way into the future. By when he would have had time to line up any number of patsies to take the rap for his own failures. One of whom is sure to be the government’s chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance. It’s fair to say that Vallance has been a little slow off the mark right from the very start of the pandemic. Not so much with the science – though he’s hardly excelled at that – but with PR management. For a long time, he was under the impressions that his prime role was to provide the government with independent scientific advice; it’s only over the course of the last few weeks he’s realised his real function was to be a human shield for Boris. And he’s clearly not happy about having been suckered in this way. So for Vallance, a two-hour appearance before the science and technology select committee was an ideal opportunity to lay the foundations of his fightback. A chance to redirect the blame to where it really lay. And in Greg Clark, the committee chair and former cabinet minister, he had someone who was only too happy to indulge him. Boris is only just beginning to realise that, for all his acolytes who fawn over every Latin word, he has some powerful enemies on the Tory backbenches... ... The killer line came when Vallance insisted Sage had recommended an immediate total lockdown on 16 March. A bit late in the day possibly, given the rate of infection in the UK was increasing exponentially and that dozens of other countries had already introduced lockdowns, but still a good week before Boris could be bothered to getting round to doing anything about it. But then jockey club director, Dido Harding – soon to be chief executive of the track and trace system – had wanted the Cheltenham festival to go ahead and it would have been a shame for Carrie Symonds to have had to cancel her baby shower at Chequers. So all in all, it was probably worth the 20,000 extra deaths the week’s delay entailed. Guardian What scum they are. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HanoiVillan Posted July 20, 2020 Share Posted July 20, 2020 (edited) Flying under the radar of 'annoying things the Conservatives are doing' has been the redesign of the Student Loans Company website, so that it is now on a .gov website, contains less information, and pushes hard on the 'make voluntary overpayments' message. Martin Lewis is rightly angry about it: Student Loan Company's new 'quick repayment' tool is dangerous and irresponsible, says Martin Lewis 'The Student Loans Company (SLC) has moved its site from SLC.co.uk to Gov.uk. Far from taking on board widespread concerns that student loans information is misleading and promotes financially poor decisions by graduates, the SLC has in some places “doubled down on the opposite”, according to MSE founder Martin Lewis. [...] Most concerning and irresponsible is the ability to make ‘quick repayments’ – in part or in full – without logging in. For many graduates making extra payments doesn’t make any difference to what they have to repay in future and is therefore just flushing money away unnecessarily. Worse still, once voluntary overpayments are made, they cannot be undone. This quick repayment system had been live for a week with no warnings for graduates of this danger, until MSE notified the SLC. On the back of this notification, the SLC did thankfully add some warning text, but it’s still far from ideal. Even when logged in, the new Gov.uk site still has the large overall ‘debt’ figure front and centre – continuing to focus on the damaging ‘your balance’ figure against expert recommendations, which could scare graduates into making repayments that aren’t in their best interests. [...] [Martin Lewis writes] "The first thing university leavers see when they log in, in a large font, is the amount of ‘debt they owe’. This is demoralising, damaging and dangerous. Owing £30,000, £300,000 or £3 million makes no difference to your annual repayments, which are set at 9% of everything you earn over a threshold (currently £26,575 per year). "The only impact the amount of debt has is whether you clear it or not within the 30 years before it wipes. And it’s predicted the vast majority – 83% – of university leavers won’t be earning enough that their repayments clear it in full. They’ll keep repaying it for the whole 30 years, like an additional tax – so the debt amount for them is pretty irrelevant. "Yet this new site follows the old one in majoring on this scary, but often irrelevant, number. That makes many think they should overpay like a normal debt. Yet unless you’re making huge overpayments, for most people overpaying does diddly squat – you’ll still continue to repay 9% of everything over the threshold for 30 years. Overpaying is a total waste of money. "So I was flabbergasted to see it went live with a ‘quick repayment’ system, without detailed warnings, cautions and explanation. That’s irresponsible and dangerous beyond belief - it's doubling down on the damage."' more on link: https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2020/07/student-loan-company-s-new--quick-repayment--tool-is-dangerous-a/?utm_content=1595225495&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook,twitter I can confirm, having logged on to this new website myself over the weekend that this is correct. The shift from slc.co.uk to gov.uk is disconcerting, and is not acknowledged anywhere on the site (why was it necessary?). Also there now appears to be no way to access monthly statements, to see how much you paid last month. The whole thing appears to be a needless cruelty. Edited July 20, 2020 by HanoiVillan 2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StefanAVFC Posted July 20, 2020 Share Posted July 20, 2020 Paying SF back from abroad is awful too. The threshold for me is absolutely tiny compared to the UK threshold. £11,635.00. Earning over that isn't difficult, so I end up paying more than I would in the UK. Feels a bit like a punishment. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chindie Posted July 20, 2020 VT Supporter Share Posted July 20, 2020 22 minutes ago, StefanAVFC said: Paying SF back from abroad is awful too. The threshold for me is absolutely tiny compared to the UK threshold. £11,635.00. Earning over that isn't difficult, so I end up paying more than I would in the UK. Feels a bit like a punishment. It is. As far as the government is concerned they've paid for you to go improve Poland's economy. The rate is a discouragement to do that - they want graduates working here and repaying that loan through boosting our economy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stevo985 Posted July 20, 2020 VT Supporter Share Posted July 20, 2020 45 minutes ago, Xann said: Guardian What scum they are. Probably another reason they're trying to gaslight the public into thinking we locked down on 16th March 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Davkaus Posted July 20, 2020 Share Posted July 20, 2020 (edited) 27 minutes ago, Chindie said: It is. As far as the government is concerned they've paid for you to go improve Poland's economy. The rate is a discouragement to do that - they want graduates working here and repaying that loan through boosting our economy. This is just not really true. The lowered threshold for repaying the loan in Poland is due to Poland having a lower average wage. It's intended to be roughly in line with the UK threshold when adjusting for the average wage. If it was set to the same as the UK threshold, it would mean people who earn very well abroad in some countries avoid paying, while people who earn relatively less in more expensive countries end up paying when they can less well afford it. For comparison, on a plan 1 loan, the UK threshold is about £19k, but you don't pay anything until you hit 27k in Switzerland or Norway, 23k in Australia, and the threshold is the same in America, which rather flies in the face of it being a punitive measure against people who migrate. The average salary in Poland according to some very quick googling is just under £10k. 11.6k seems a pretty decent amount over there, so starting to pay it back doesn't seem unreasonable. Edited July 20, 2020 by Davkaus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stevo985 Posted July 20, 2020 VT Supporter Share Posted July 20, 2020 (edited) 1 hour ago, Davkaus said: This is just not really true. The lowered threshold for repaying the loan in Poland is due to Poland having a lower average wage. It's intended to be roughly in line with the UK threshold when adjusting for the average wage. If it was set to the same as the UK threshold, it would mean people who earn very well abroad in some countries avoid paying, while people who earn relatively less in more expensive countries end up paying when they can less well afford it. For comparison, on a plan 1 loan, the UK threshold is about £19k, but you don't pay anything until you hit 27k in Switzerland or Norway, 23k in Australia, and the threshold is the same in America, which rather flies in the face of it being a punitive measure against people who migrate. The average salary in Poland according to some very quick googling is just under £10k. 11.6k seems a pretty decent amount over there, so starting to pay it back doesn't seem unreasonable. Wouldn’t a lower average salary mean a higher threshold is required to make it fairer? If the average salary in the UK is 25k and the average salary in Poland is 10k, shouldn’t the min wage you need to be earning to start paying it back be higher? Edited July 20, 2020 by Stevo985 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StefanAVFC Posted July 20, 2020 Share Posted July 20, 2020 7 minutes ago, Stevo985 said: Wouldn’t a lower average salary mean a higher threshold is required to make it fairer? If the average salary in the UK is 25k and the average salary in Poland is 10k, shouldn’t the min wage you need to be earning to start paying it back be higher? That was my thought too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Davkaus Posted July 20, 2020 Share Posted July 20, 2020 (edited) 12 minutes ago, Stevo985 said: Wouldn’t a lower average salary mean a higher threshold is required to make it fairer? If the average salary in the UK is 25k and the average salary in Poland is 10k, shouldn’t the min wage you need to be earning to start paying it back be higher? Cost of living, is probably a more relevant factor than salary, really, those things typically correlate quite well. Don't let my mangled explanation be a criticism of the policy though. In Poland, the UK threshold of £19k puts you in the top 10% of earners, but is slightly below the UK threshold. Why would someone in the top 10% of earners in their country not be repaying their student loan when they can clearly afford it? Likewise, 19k well below average in Norway, so making someone repay their UK student loan when they're earning a low wage in the country they live seems fair enough to me. Edited July 20, 2020 by Davkaus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stevo985 Posted July 20, 2020 VT Supporter Share Posted July 20, 2020 20 minutes ago, Davkaus said: Cost of living, is probably a more relevant factor than salary, really, those things typically correlate quite well. Don't let my mangled explanation be a criticism of the policy though. In Poland, the UK threshold of £19k puts you in the top 10% of earners, but is slightly below the UK threshold. Why would someone in the top 10% of earners in their country not be repaying their student loan when they can clearly afford it? Likewise, 19k well below average in Norway, so making someone repay their UK student loan when they're earning a low wage in the country they live seems fair enough to me. I don’t even know if what I said makes sense. It’s made my brain hurt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StefanAVFC Posted July 20, 2020 Share Posted July 20, 2020 20 minutes ago, Davkaus said: In Poland, the UK threshold of £19k puts you in the top 10% of earners Bloody hell, I had no idea about that. I am very sheltered where I live I guess because I wouldn't put myself in the top 10% looking at what others have. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StefanAVFC Posted July 20, 2020 Share Posted July 20, 2020 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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