James105

I am referring to those that work in 7-11s etc, not the customers of these places. No-one is required to wear a mask as a customer, and have not been for quite some time.

I'm pretty sure that people who drive petrol cars can do the same thing, but if they are in a hurry they can skip the "munch" and all the other stuff you occupied yourself with whilst you waited to fill your car 50% and get to where they want to go significantly faster.

I'm a very empathetic person, which is why it makes me sad to see so many people being forced (yes forced) to wear them in 7/11s etc. I don't care if someone wants to make themselves anonymous/invisible by wearing them, but a lot of people are still being forced to wear them. It's dehumanising for these folks to be forced to wear a mask. Still, on the bright side it gets us used to not seeing human faces when we go to these places as when they are replaced by automation/robots it will be less noticeable.

Time to reset the clock again. It's now been zero days since Biden had a "senior" moment. Does it ever get above 2?

"my fear is regardless of the outcome the fact that the suspect is a refugee will be used by the far right" I don't want to see kids getting stabbed in a park. Guess that makes me far right then.

Well yes, if you had bothered to read the article the thread was about you would realise it is about the UK. I've no idea why you keep prattling on about China.

"Will it ever end" Not for those who work in 7/11 or Starbucks etc it seems who do not have a choice but to wear a mask at work. Quite sad really. Haven't seen a smile from anyone who works in those in those places for the best part of 3 years now.

You sound very angry about someone simply sharing their views on Twitter that you happen to disagree with. Have you given any consideration to the fact that you might be the one with anger issues rather than the people who watch his content?

You are confusing UBI with a different scheme which is Minimum Income Guarantee. The trial mentioned in the OP would continue to pay out UBI even if someone found a job willing to pay them £1 million per year. One of the selling points of UBI is that since it is not means tested there is minimal administration costs as everyone qualifies as soon as they turn 18. https://www.ippr.org/blog/what-is-a-minimum-income-guarantee#:~:text=Defining a Minimum Income Guarantee,to meet their income floor.

It wasn't a simplistic assumption though. It's actual data and numbers. Besides, it has already been trialled elsewhere and - quelle surprise - people were happier when being given free money. I can confidently predict that the 30 people involved in this study will be happy about receiving free money unconditionally, but other than that it won't really answer the fundamentally essential question of how will it be paid for? https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/05/finlands-basic-income-trial-found-people-were-happier-but-werent-more-likely-to-get-jobs/ "The final results were published on Wednesday for a landmark two-year basic-income study conducted in Finland: Participants were happier when given free money, but they were not any more likely to land a job."

There is no spare money to raise though as the UK is already spending more than it receives in taxes. From https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/how-public-spending-was-calculated-in-your-tax-summary/how-public-spending-was-calculated-in-your-tax-summary#:~:text=These taxes made up around,commonly known as the deficit. In 2021/2022: Total tax income: £918 billion Total spending: £1,040 billion UBI will require probably at least an extra £1,000 billion of spending (minus £300 billion if existing welfare/pensions is scrapped). Where will the extra money come from?

Do you really believe in the concept of UBI though or do you believe it should be means tested so those like myself who do not actually need it do not receive it? Bear in mind that UBI specifically is a program in which every adult citizen receives a set amount of money regularly. Also, is £1,600 enough? A small flat in London will quickly wipe that out and presumably UBI would have to replace the existing welfare state. So no free housing, no state pension, no child support etc. Would disabled folks who currently receive more than able bodied folks find themselves getting the exact same even though their ability to gain income from work is extremely restricted to supplement this? Would they see this as unfair?

I'm one of the people, and answered what I would do with it as I can state this with some authority as I know me quite well. If you are asking me about other people I'm not really sure how you would expect me to answer such a thing, but if they need it as much as I do then it will accumulate in the bank or investments. Hope that helps.

Like I said, the people who say they want UBI do not really want UBI. If it is income capped it is not universal, it's what the UK currently has - a welfare system for those who need it.

Well if its given to me I won't do much with it as I don't need it. The existing benefits system is provided on need, so someone who is disabled and needs extra assistance gets a bit more than someone physically fit. A "universal" system would then treat everyone the same regardless of need. I think people who say they want UBI don't really want UBI. They would still want a system based on need rather than a system that gives free money to those who don't need it, and would still want people who need the extra help receive more than those who don't.

Well lets say this little scheme is implemented and everyone gets £1,600 per month tax free. That would cost (if there are 55 million adults) over £1 trillion pounds a year. The UK currently only collects taxes in total of about £768 billion per year, with the majority collected being income tax, NIC and VAT. That will clearly reduce significantly if millions of people no longer worked. There will have to be different kind of jobs invented as there is no way to make the numbers work on this just by squeezing corporations. Also, can you imagine what it would be like with too many humans in society without anything productive to do with their days? It would probably become a drink and drug fuelled hellscape.

So people that were lied to before are now supposed to just trust these same people now with this? Why would they? Once bitten twice shy etc.. People do not need a pump at home as petrol cars can travel significantly further between refuelling and when refuelling is needed it takes about 5 minutes rather than hours to fill the car up. I was responding to a post about the choices people currently are making in the UK, not what is occurring in the communist state of China. If that is the case it would be especially stupid to buy an electric car today as it would be effectively worthless in resale value if there is emerging tech coming out "any day now" that will replace the existing heavy, slow to charge (in comparison to refuelling), poor range batteries. Anyone with sense would hold off until solid state batteries are available if they do indeed solve the range and slow charging (in comparison to refuelling) problem.

What does this US economist use as the reason the USA has about the same inflation as the UK then? Considering most countries that had monumentally stupid covid lockdown policies and are suffering from the same kind of inflation I find it quite incredible that covid lockdowns are always given a free pass and something else is blamed.

I live in Thailand. Are they introducing 15 minute cities here?

People in the UK have had their fingers burnt when the government previously recommended that people buy diesel cars due to lower CO2 emissions before doing a reverse ferret on this (and then punishing anyone who listened to their bad suggestion with higher taxes) so are rightly wary of buying something based on yet another government recommendation. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/oct/01/uk-government-wrong-to-subsidise-diesel-says-former-minister If the technology was good enough, better value and more convenient than petrol cars then the market share will go up naturally. Why do you expect people to buy something that by every possible metric is less convenient than what they currently use? When Electric cars can be recharged in equivalent or less time than filling a car with petrol, they can travel at least the same distance and they represent better value THEN people will move to electric cars, or whatever the technology is that replaces gasoline. That is probably at least 2 decades away. If the UK really does ban new petrol/diesel car sales from 2030 without a significant improvement in EV tech or an alternative then that would be monumentally stupid as people will just keep running older cars that will probably pollute more than if they were allowed to buy newer petrol fuelled cars.

I agree with CS Lewis's take on this: "Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice,” wrote C.S. Lewis on the eve of World War II. “If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have begun."

I see this a lot with people in denial of facts. They don't like to hear the truth of a subject so dismiss it out of hand if it doesn't come from one of their lefty media overlords. Well, this will no doubt come as a disappointment to you as the left wing media reported on the same clinic too. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/tavistock-gender-clinic-lawyers-latest-b2143006.html https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/may/02/tavistock-trust-whistleblower-david-bell-transgender-children-gids https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-56539466

Well, in the UK this was thousands of kids. https://segm.org/GIDS-puberty-blockers-minors-the-times-special-report "Many parents, informed by trans activist groups their child may commit suicide if they went through the “wrong puberty”, signed the consent form. Others did research: they discovered that Lupron, while used to chemically castrate sex offenders or treat prostate cancer, is unlicensed for gender dysphoria. They read blogs by “detransitioners”, mainly young women in America – where private gender clinics perform double mastectomies on girls as young as 13 (a process TikTok-savvy surgeons jocularly call “Teetus Deletus”) – who later regretted this hasty, irreversible process. And they felt an urgent mission to tell the world what GIDS was doing." Kids are not allowed to get tattoos when they are under 18. Have a think about why this is and then you will be halfway to understanding why it is irresponsible to perform life changing surgeries on kids before before they have reached a mature enough age to provide informed consent.

Yes, it far is too much to ask for the "leader of the free world" to have the mental faculties to look where he is walking. This sort of thing just does not happen to anybody else.

Even left wing outlets were saying the movie is not good. e.g: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/may/27/the-little-mermaid-review-bland-but-good-natured-disney-remake-halle-bailey I presume they watched it.