RuamRudy

Bear in mind that this is a one off payment, not a regular allowance. To set up a team of people to vet the nation's pensioners for a one time payment surely seems, from any perspective, to be administratively wasteful. But if you aren't convinced, try this: Universal Benefits Are Actually Cheaper Than Means-Tested Ones

Maybe because they like it's antonym, the gammon?

It's cheaper than means testing - that's the only factor that matters.

This is a World News post and all should feel welcome to comment on all topics. I wouldn't let self appointed gate keepers try to tell you what topics your contributions are welcome on. Please feel free to add to the mix.

The Romans didn't invade the UK. They conquered what they called Britannia and is now called England and Wales. England and Wales are not the UK.

The cost of means testing it would exceed any savings made. This way the Scottish government can ensure that all pensioners get vital help next year.

That's true to an extent but I am skeptical that they can produce key components - compressor bearings, dry gas seals etc. Even the rail network is at breaking point because of the lack of availability of high integrity bearings. These types of items seem relatively trivial in isolation but they are all critical components of an integrated system. At the extreme end, think why Taiwan is so critical to chip manufacturing - if it was easy, the Chinese would have copied it years ago

I don't claim to be a Russia expert but I lived in Eastern Russia for 8 years, working on a Russian /European multi billion dollar oil and gas joint venture. The largest Russian content contribution to the project was... concrete. Everything high tech or precision engineered came from abroad. They may have a space program but I bet it relies heavily on imported technology and components.

That's great if the supplier trade only within BRICS, but in a global economy, that's unlikely. As for commodity trading, not many non government actors have the means to deal in oil. Precision engineering, aircraft parts, high spec bearings, electronics - all the things that Russia is incapable of manufacturing domestically and must be procured from international players.

Russia still needs to buy imported goods - triangular arbitrage means, if my memory serves me correctly, that the value of the rouble against the Tenge, Yuan or whatever currency they wish to trade in will still reflect the USD value. Imported everything will be more expensive.

Your gaslighting is getting boring now.

OK so you have added the word "allowed" to your proposal. I think they are already allowed to wear badges etc, so your post was redundant. Unless, of course, "allowed" wasn't actually omitted by accident.

Then please explain the intent of your response to help someone as thick as me to understand.

I get that you are inferring that the idea came from me. But if you had taken a few extra moments to read the post to which I was replying, you would see that I was sardonically summarising the proposal from @Nick Carter icp To be clear, I am not the one calling for the public identification of those who think differently from myself. So please direct your outrage towards him.

Of course the article was written to damage the BBC. Why, otherwise, does it ignore every other media outlet and focus only on the BBC? Anywhere that has a branch of the NUJ could, potentially, be affected, even the very newspaper the article appears in.

I suggest that you read the article. It's not a BBC suggestion but comes from the TUC. A murdoch muck spreader has published a disingenuous article to whip up the perma angry into a rage against the BBC when the BBC is not a party in the story. As this thread makes clear, they are very effective at riling the willingly gullible.

Good lord, are you serious? Yes, I think you probably are.

Maybe make it simpler - why not just force everyone you don't like to wear an easily identifiable symbol on their sleeve?

1) yes, in a week when we are getting the lies of Allison Pearson thrust into our timelines, I think that the TUC should be free to propose whatever it wishes if it's within the law. 2) No, but then again that's already covered by their charter.

Imminent means about to happen. You don't know that is the case, even though you inserted an 'if' afterwards, unconcerned as you appear to be with consistency. To clarify for you: a third party group made a proposal; a sector of the BBC employees said "we don't like that idea". End of story. As for the BBC, they may or may not have responded but article doesn't make that clear because it isn't interested in accurately representing the BBC stance; it just wants to further the murdoch agenda and stir up more angry old men to rail against it.

The key word being 'if'. That's why it's desperate - the desperation being all the BBC haters hoping that this transitions from a nothing to something they can really froth about.

It is not a BBC proposal; the article makes clear that it came from the TUC. However, as the very mention of the BBC is catnip to the perma angry, it's guaranteed to get lots of incorrectly attributed bile here.

Read the article - the headline is misleading. The initiative is from the TUC and NUJ, not the BBC.

The UN is clearly not perfect, but its very basis as an intended means of countries collectively formulating a consensus means that it will inevitably be influenced by the prevailing attitudes of the majority of its constituent members and this leads it open to bias. I don't know the form that reform should take, but I believe that its better to talk than not. Of course, if the criticisms of Israel were baseless then there would definitely be cause of alarm, but if your defence is that the other bad guys get less grief than us bad guys, then its still not a great look.

OK, so you have nothing but slander to offer? I guessed as much. Have a good day.