Be Excellent To Each Other

Surely something like this you want funded by government, or at the very least licenced, then when a company does something like this it can be investigated, and if deemed appropriate, they lose their licence.

You'd go bust very quickly

Well it would certain beat perennial impotence at Westminster.

I can see the argument about why a *new* drug would have a high initial cost to offset R&D. But an established product where the rights have already been traded? Pure opportunism, and the guy is an horrific cunt. Any promises along the lines of helping people in future with the money does not justify fucking over people that absolutely need the drug at that cost right now

This *actually* made me laugh

Good grief!

On social strata:

It is possible here (Shipley/Saltaire) to go somewhere for a night out and there are 3 different prices: Unemployed, low waged and high waged as cover and for drinks at the bar.

It isn't clear what the boundaries are, though.

House of Commons to debate a petition about immigration on 19 October. The motion, 'that this House has considered an e-petition relating to immigration', is a little less harsh than that of the petition itself.

Interesting interview of Jim Murphy in the New Statesman regarding this new 'post truth' era of UK politics that we've been discussing.

https://archive.is/kjRZ5

I can't decide if this is a new phenomenon or if Twitter/sinister Facebook/etc is just amplifying existing tribalisms. Either way, I find it depressing that people are increasingly willing to shout down or even block people from giving opposing views rather than engaging or respecting that, deep down, they might care about the same issues and want the same result (better schools, people lifted out of poverty, a safe country etc) but want the approach to be different. We haven't yet polarised to the extent of the US where it seems the other team are almost evil traitors, but I do worry.

Amusingly, reading below the line on 'Wings over Somerset' (I know I shouldn't), some are accusing him of living in an echo-chamber and ignoring realities....

Oh, I agree entirely regarding polarisation; 'blocking' someone on Twitter or wherever is just so much easier than having to face a challenging debate, opposing views, compelling scrutiny and/or evidence, or whatever. Until very recently I'd never blocked/ignored anyone, and most certainly never for someone merely disagreeing with my politics. I think it's *good* to have people disagree with you and test your ideas (and yes, mine are frequently found wanting )

As for our old mate Stu, well, what can I say eh?
One thing's for certain, he's made a damn good living from it, plenty of people seem prepared to pay vast sums of money for this stuff. IMO that's no different to what the tabloid press have been doing for years.

For me the most disappointing aspect on that score was that guy who challenged the 'wee blue book' but from what little I saw (admittedly), seemed to just get provoked into abuse/slanging match and any debate was lost. I'd like to see a straight debate between Stu and his knowledgeable detractors on this score, but I doubt we ever will.

Heh. So, Jeremy Corbyn's Shadow FARMING Minister appears to have suggested comparing meat-eaters to smokers...?



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/a ... arthy.html

Ah, with people like that sticking up for our farming industry, who needs enemies?

So then, we've got a Shadow Chancellor who wants to 'foment the overthrow of the Capitalist system', and a Shadow Farming Minister who seems to think consumers of British meat are social lepers or similar, ripe for berating and "social reprogramming", presumably. All jolly good stuff, eh.

Frankly, it's all enough to make me want to eat a dirty great juicy, rare British beef burger in her presence, or perhaps indulge in a plateful of rare roast Welsh black beef rib with (goosefat) roasties and Yorkshire pud, dripping generously with a good, rich meat gravy. Whilst running a hedge fund, naturally, for that idiot McDonnell's benefit.

I know it's a propaganda sheet and that we trade with a lot of dodgy regimes, but reading reports of stories that Osborne is praised for 'not stressing human rights' issues still makes me a little uncomfortable.



'And other than that Mrs Lincoln, how was the play?' comes to mind.

I know I'll be derided as a massive cynic here, but seriously, what else was he supposed to do? Osborne is over there to drum up business, jobs and business ties for the UK, no more, no less. So if that's the objective, and it very plainly is, it's a good idea not to piss off your (very powerful) host by banging on about things where we have nil influence anyway? He's sticking to his clear, constructive agenda, objectives and diplomatic narrative, like a grownup. Just like the rest of us have to do in the real, business world, all the time.

Osborne's job is to get US jobs, which by all accounts it looks like he might achieve, by being gracious, polite and humble in the presence of his hosts. Good on him, I say. (Can anyone imagine Obsorne's opposite number, that bellend McDonnell, belming, blundering and offending his way across China on UK plc's behalf...? The mind boggles; we'd be lucky to sell so much as a stick of wood to them after that)

Oh I know. You don't criticise the host's wife at a dinner party, after all. I'm enough of a cynic or realist to understand why he's doing it (and I'm a free trader anyway) but it still leaves a bad taste in the mouth especially when you read about the government encouraging 'British values' domestically.

Of course, praising him for not raising it is probably drawing attention to it more than not mentioning it in the first place.

Exactly, otherwise why even go in the first place.



It's just the old sixth form idealism vs. realpolitik thing that's been fueling arguments and threads like this since the WoS days (and frankly before even that, as Hearthly will testify). Yes, it would be lovely if we could wave a magic wand and stop all the evil and nastiness in the world, yes it would be fantastic to remove every last trace of hypocrisy and double standards from every single position and stance our government takes, but you know it isn't going to happen so we might as well make the best, and most of it. Frankly this pragmatism and fundamental realism about what's what is the keystone of my entire politics, which have been borne out time and again. We're becoming a nation of Caveys and, Scotland aside, voting accordingly...



Well yes, there is that. But it was the Chinese, not the British, who raised this, so that's OK with me, objectives (hopefully) achieved and maintained.

This will all sound very cynical to some here, because it basically is, but people need to wake up and smell the coffee. Apart from anything else, the UK is a pretty minor league world player these days and we need to start being realistic about that, too.

On cynicsm: What Saudi Arabia should do right now is to say "The crush that killed over 700 people was a sign from Allah that life is precious " and then use that to quietly step down from beheading and crucifying that teenager which is causing a then a huge reputations headache. They can retain their pious reputation and not be seen to be bowing to external pressure.

Well, it's a tough life being on the UN Human Rights Council.

I'd also like then to stop bombing Sanaa. W erytime it appears on my twitter news feed I check to see when someone I know there last logged on to Facebook.

while telling the idiots that I can't stand that they're twats

stupid bitch

Unfortunatly she does have a point. We may not like it, but if everyone in the world ate as much beef, lamb, pork, chicken etc as we did in the west, there would not be enough farmland to cope.

She absolutely has a point. Saying it seems a bit like career suicide, but the farmers have been getting fucked over for decades anyway.

I'd like to keep eating my inefficient delicious meat, please.

You don't have to eat meat, that's fine, but you can fuck off with your proselytising about your vegetarian/veganism.

I love meat as much as the next man

But we should be being encouraged to eat less of it. It's bad for us, it's bad for the environment, and with the rate of growth of the population it's not sustainable.

It's not nice to hear, but it's where we should be heading, I wouldn't be surprised if in 50-100 years time, we'll be considered barbarians for eating animals, in the same sort of way as wearing fur, watching a bull fight, cock fight, dog fight, going on a fox hunt, whale hunt etc is considered today.

Meh. Whilst I certainly would agree that tarring meat-eaters as some class of social miscreant overdue for 'PC reprogramming' is utter tosh of itself (not least because we're omnivores, have canines and are DESIGNED to eat meat), for me the main issue was that she said all of these things, on record, as the Shadow FARMING MINISTER...?

Man alive, just how wet behind the ears do you have to be? She's only been in the job mere days!

What's next I wonder? The Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer saying he's fomenting the destruction of Capitalism? Oh wait.

What a clueless bunch of dicks. Not that I care, mind, because I'm shortly flying out for a week on a lovely sunny Greek isle, so laterz guys!!

we are designed to eat meat, we are not designed to have 7billion+ of us at the top of the food chain.

I am sure you are aware that normally it's a food pyramid.

How big does the pyramid need to be if there are 7 billion people at the top of it?

Oh, and, we're designed to eat some meat, like one or two meals a week. Not one or two meals a day.

Do farmers only produce meat?

Obviously not, but farmers do produce meat, and one thing the farming minister should do is act in the interests of farmers. Proposing to put half of them out of work is an odd position for the farming minister to take.

But you knew this.

No. Often they produce nothing and get paid for it.

How much more of the world do you want to use for farming?

Everything purple is farmed goods that are used to feed animals or machines. Only the green is used to feed people directly.

That's a lot of unused land that could be used to make more bacon

If we could use the farming methods used in the light areas on the dark areas we could improve world yeilds by almost 60%

Not sure that pigs works well in deserts or ice?

Yet another reason why genetic modification is important.

I'll advocate for strict global population controls before I support any attempt to ban bacon. Genetically modified super-bacon. Mmmm.

Too many people having too many kids that all want to eat my fucking bacon, that's the problem.

The head of our penis is designed to scoop the sperm of the previous male from the vagina of our current mate. I'm not convinced I want to do that just because I'm designed to.


If you're talking about set-aside, that was abolished* in 2008.


Have fun!


* Technically it wasn't abolished, but the amount of land a farmer wasn't allowed to farm dropped to 0%, so I guess it could come back again.

Really we need to be putting a lot more resources in developing cost effective synthetic meat. There are a great many advantages to growing meat in a lab.

Additionally our canine teeth are, relative to our other teeth, tiny, and they are getting smaller. Ancestrally our evolutionary forebears bore far larger canine teeth, but we are evolving away from that dining model as the ability to sustain ourselves in healthy non-meat products through the developments of farming, and the greater energy yield from stored and cooked food means that it is not a necessary part of our diet. In fact, meat is too readily available and Is eaten by many people far too readily. If consumption was reduced across the west it would have massive health benefits if, as Malc said, it constituted a small part of a meal two or three times a week.

I think the shadow farming minister should have said that she was for the promotion of reducing the amount of meat consumption in the UK for the health and crop space benefits this would provide, rather than a stronger rhetoric.

Christ on a bike, McDonnel came across terribly on R4 this morning.

Piers Morgan was reasonable, non-annoying, and right on the 'Today' programme just now. I feel slightly dirty.

My word, that must've come as quite a shock, Mali, quelle surprise and all that...
'Bear shits in woods shocker'...

Heh. Incredible to think that, with all due respect to her, someone who is quite so completely and utterly mediocre could actually seriously consider themselves up for being the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom...? Mind you, with some of the people being elected as political party leaders of late, I suppose it really does give succor to this.

Sad to hear of Denis Healey's passing recently; reading his Obit, he apparently had a Double First from Oxford, fought for his country in the war and had a glittering political career, was always his own man. I, of course, disagreed with the man's politics most vehemently (as indeed did history), but I couldn't fault his very considerable calibre, character and credientials (and at least he saw Benn and the Loony Left off). What a fabulous CV - these are the type of people who should be even considering such a move. In comparison, a few less-than-terrible appearances on QT doesn't really cut it.

Edit - apparently she voted against same-sex marriages as well, which (IMO) is a completely ridiculous and unsustainable position, and surely a huge black mark.

Seriously? Crikey, I'd have to see that to believe it.
Actually, no, on second thoughts, I'll take your word for it mate.

Was he talking about gun control in the US? Only time I've ever seen him come across as not being a raging fuckwit.

Dunno mate, you'll have to ask Kern.
I regard any exposure to Piers Morgan in much the same light as exposure to hard gamma rays....