James105

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.

Is this some new fresh hell of an acronym or did you accidentally post your wifi password on here?!

Well done! You have pretty much described what safeguarding is.

If I defended the bill you would no doubt complain that it is off topic. So I didn't. However, if you insist. The bill in question mentioned in the OP was designed to prevent teachers or 3rd parties talking about sexual orientation and gender identities to kindergarten through grade 3 kids (5-9 year olds) and defer this topic to a more age appropriate time. I don't really think there is much to defend about that bill as most non pedophiliacs of rational mind would consider that safeguarding kids of that age from sexual literature or discussion is not really that controversial.

Not sure I needed to answer it considering it's literally in the OP of this thread but if you insist I'll copy the relevant bit down here for you and highlight the bit about Disney in bold to make it easier for you: "Trump, in a Truth Social post, criticized Disney for being a “Woke and Disgusting shadow” of its old self before taking aim at DeSantis, who has been in a feud with the company since its opposition of the state’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill."

This proves my point that Disney are a divisive company now that they have decided to get involved in Politics. Did the original version of this movie get review bombed? No. Why is that you ask? Because back then Disney focused on what they were good at and did not get involved in politics.

Once again, I didn't use the word woke (I used political) but a visual representation of just how divisive they are nowadays can be easily seen by looking at the IMBD ratings for their latest remake of a classic property (Little Mermaid) that has been put through the diversity blender: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5971474/ratings/?ref_=tt_ov_rt If I was a shareholder of Disney I would not be best pleased about this as it is so easily avoidable by simply steering clear of politics, sticking close to the source material (if remaking something people previously loved) and creating new stories that include diverse characters if they want to increase representation.

Since I didn't actually say any of what you said let me give you the definition of a straw man argument: "an intentionally misrepresented proposition that is set up because it is easier to defeat than an opponent's real argument."

What happened to the Disney that was universally loved and focused on creating entertaining stories rather than shoehorning "the message" into every bit of content they create? They are now a political - and therefore divisive - company. I fail to see how that will help their bottom line as they are alienating large portions of their potential customers and losing out in big markets such as China. Most people don't want to see DeSantis creating animated feature films in much the same way that most people don't want to see Disney creating overtly political movies.

But... did the German politicians laugh when Obama/Biden said it as they did with Trump? I suspect they are not laughing now. Perhaps if they had taken his wise words more seriously then they might not be in quite such a pickle.

Literally no-one could have predicted this was going to happen! Oh wait, somebody did:

If a male cannot compete in an open category it is not open. Perhaps you are referring to a category that is not open, but a category just for transgender people that excludes anyone who is not transgender and therefore not open. The article by the way suggests that the male category will become an 'open' category which means male, female, transvestite, transgender, 2 spirit, whatever else can enter. As it is open.

They took 9 months to long to come to a conclusion that only required half a seconds worth of thought. Had I been involved in the consultation this would have been wrapped up in a few seconds e.g: Is it fair for people born as males to compete against females in any sport where there is any element of strength or speed required? No. To prevent anyone from missing out the male category will now be open to anyone of whatever gender they claim to be and the female category will only open to females. Nobody is banned from participating as this covers everyone. You're welcome.

There might have been a societal change amongst some very noisy people on Twitter but there hasn't been a scientific one. Males cannot become females so should not be permitted to participate in female only categories when it comes to competitive sports. It doesn't need a consultation to establish this and certainly not a 9 month one to come to this conclusion. Maybe they decided in about a second 9 months ago that it was unfair to allow males to compete against females and then pretended to have a consultation to appease the science deniers who claim that a "trans woman is a woman" and should be given the same legal rights to protected spaces and sports as actual women.

A 9 month review to ascertain whether or not it is fair for biological males to compete against females? Even if it was a 9 second review that is still 8 seconds longer than is necessary for any sane or rational person to judge whether or not this would be fair.