James105

This seems to be upsetting all the right people... lovely. If Trump being on Twitter upsets you then remember it is your choice whether or not to follow him and read his posts (if he actually posts anything again), and you are free to block him if that makes you feel better. You are equally free to not use Twitter at all and receive all your news from your safe spaces (CNN, Guardian, Morning Star etc). Ricky Gervais made an educational video for all those who are concerned that they might read something they don't like on Twitter:

Woke, soy latte drinking "engineer" stealing a living at Twitter who overestimates his importance writes an article. Writing that article is probably the most work he has done all year. If these people are who they claim to be why wouldn't they be able to produce evidence of the work they have done? As mentioned, it seems like a perfectly reasonable question and one that anyone who writes code will easily be able to produce with about 5 minutes effort if they wanted to keep their well paid jobs. The only reason Twitter would go down is if the "engineers" built a house of cards, or via deliberate sabotage, and if that is the case Musk is better off without them and replacing them with more capable or trustworthy people.

Do you not find it amazing that even though Twitter has closed its offices, laid off a lot of staff, that Twitter seems to still be working just as it was before? Twitter is a platform that others use to create content (not it's staff), and I cannot recall seeing any significant updates or feature additions over the last few years which kind of begs the question of "what exactly are these software engineers doing with their days?", which is the question that Musk appears to be asking and is quite a reasonable one imho. It's not that complex an app to maintain and they (probably) have 1,500 - 2,000 developers that are probably quite well paid. I've no idea who slate.com are but I imagine the person who wrote that article is also stealing a living hence the reason he is jumping to the defence of fellow living stealers.

Ok halfway there, now we just need the bars to be legally allowed to open (and sell alcohol) for all the matches which will of course help the Thai gov recoup some of this money by the hugely increased spending in these bars that will occur during the world cup period.

I don't get it. Does Thailand not have broadcasters that can sell advertising to cover the costs of showing the football? The world cup is literally the most popular sporting event in the world attracting hundreds of millions (if not a billion plus) viewers. Obviously it is quite late in the day for broadcasters to sell advertising space now but I'm baffled how they have managed to mess this up. I didn't realise TV companies showing football relied on government intervention and I have never heard of a country not managing to be able to show this before. I've also heard they have delayed the decision to decide whether or not to allow bars to stay open until 4am to show the 2am games until 29th November, a full 9 days after the world cup has started, and even then they are only (apparently) planning to trial it in Phuket first! It's only a 4 week tournament so by the time the "trial" ends the world cup will probably be over.

https://nypost.com/2021/01/12/the-threats-and-violence-twitter-wont-police/

I think you are confusing 'fact-checking' with fact-hiding, as evidenced by the banning of the NY Times when they factually reported on the Hunter Biden laptop as this could have had an impact on who they wanted to win the last election in the US.

Twitter did allow hate speech, as long as it was directed at people who didn't vote the correct way.

I presume if someone was to "follow the money" far enough this report would be sponsored by the likes of Philip Morris. Didn't "medical professionals" back in the day endorse smoking proper cigarettes as being good for your health, whilst on the take from big tobacco? One day people will wake up and realise they are constantly being lied to, but I don't think that will happen in my lifetime. It goes without saying that inhaling anything in your lungs is less healthy than not doing so, but I find it very difficult to believe that a vape can come close to competing with the 7000 chemicals (250 known to be harmful) that make up tobacco smoke, yet the focus always seems to be on how "dangerous" vapes are whilst ignoring the dangers of actual smoking. If they really cared about your health they would simply ban tobacco smoking. Have to hand it to the tobacco companies though, they have done a good job painting vapes as evil, and not the products they make. It's quite the achievement that they can legally make and sell literal addictive poison and have governments in their pockets banning (probably much, much safer) competing products that could hit their profit margins.

Generally speaking, people who vote for the least worst option. The economic turmoil being felt by all countries was due to excessive over reactions to covid and shutting down productivity for the best part of 2 years, printing hundreds of billions of £ which, to no-one's surprise except for the lockdown lovers and their childlike grasp of the economic consequences of such actions, had a hugely negative economic impact which will probably be felt for decades. Labour, based on what they said over the last few years, would have locked down for longer and harder, printed even more money and caused even more financial hardship.

I think we both know you would not have mentioned her parents background if she was the daughter of white European, Australian or North American immigrants...

She is British born and recognises that in her country of birth too much immigration is an issue, and also recognises that too much immigration causes problems with integration for the people that live there, whatever the background of their parents. Her job is to deal with that. What colour she happens to be should not be part of the conversation, and the people who think it should be are (to put it politely), a bit racist.

Due to the housing market it wouldn't be fair to use assets to determine someones wealth for tax purposes. There would be situations of trying to extract money from cash poor pensioners that bought a house worth £20,000 decades ago that is now worth millions but they can barely afford to heat it in the winter. A top 10% earner makes £54,000 per year which is £3291 a month salary after tax. After mortgage, council tax, energy etc that probably leaves about £1500-2000 per month. If they have a mortgage then each interest rate rise is a big hit on their disposable income as each 1 or 2% rise will probably take away at least 10% of this. If they don't have a mortgage then on that amount saving for a deposit means years of living frugally and they are probably trapped inside the rental market. I think if you told someone on that amount they were wealthy they would laugh at you.

Sigh, the likes of yourself would no doubt have believed the "real science" at the time that the sun revolves around the earth and would have considered Galileo to be a right wing conspiracy theorist when he suggested otherwise. The "accepted wisdom" should always be challenged and people should be allowed to listen to those challenges and form their own opinion. Twitter (in its current guise) would have banned Galileo for going against the approved narrative if it had been around back then.

"will be able to air their (legally held) views" For some reason you decided to miss the full sentence here. Twitter currently censors and bans people for for airing (or expressing) their views that some may find offensive, even if the law allows them to say so. Prominent doctors and scientists were being censored for questioning the accepted covid narrative and others have been banned for claiming that men cannot become women. Musk has promised not to censor these views. See the difference? Do try to keep up.

The way to solve this then is to reduce the tax free allowance to (let's say) £5000. Then the people who earn less than £12570 will be able to benefit from the tax cuts! Everyones a winner!

"Speculation" ????! Let me guess, this "Speculation" has come from a communist/left leaning rag that cannot bear the thought that people will be able to air their (legally held) views and that those who take offence on behalf of others will not be able to censor them. To repeat the oft used phrase that the left provide whenever a legally held (but offensive to some) view is censored or someone like Trump is removed from the platform - it's a private platform and they can do what they want and those who don't like it are perfectly entitled to create their own etc...

Another way of looking at that: Taxpayer 1 earning £22570 per year currently pays £2,014 income tax. Taxpayer 2, earning £112,570 per year currently pays £32,538 income tax. So after the tax cut tax payer 1 will pay just £1914 and tax payer 2 will pay a whopping £31,538 income tax! So tax payer 2 is earning 5 times as much as tax payer 1, yet pays 15 times more income tax.

They are not giving the rich anything, they are just taking a little bit less of their money in taxes so they can choose how their hard earned income is spent, rather than the state. Now if your argument is that if the tax income is reduced, then so should the services that are paid for by taxes, then I would agree with you. NHS budget would be a good place to start I think, along with reducing benefits to incentivise those in receipt of them to take up one of the over 1 million job vacancies available.

Well, blow me down with a feather! The people who pay the most tax will save the most when it comes to tax cuts. It even looks as though those who do not pay any tax will not benefit from a tax cut at all! How can this be? This is outrageous! This is no different to Ferrari knocking 10% off their cars at the same time as Ford does the same. Those who can afford the Ferrari will make a much, much bigger saving - the rich just get all the breaks! Right, that's it, time to head over to the Guardian/Morning Star comments section so I can express some outrage...

She is an idiot. There is 2 years before the next election so there was no need to panic, and she has demonstrated that once again, the PM can be controlled by media hysteria. The Tories complaining about tax cuts are in the wrong party as cutting taxes is a bread and butter Conservative policy.

I suggest the 5 monkeys experiment offers some valuable insight into why people are still doing these things, despite being vaccinated and despite already having covid several times etc.

They are despised by a very angry left wing twitter mob, but then they always have been. That mob, whilst incredibly loud, does not carry enough votes to win elections, it merely prevents people sharing their views publicly due to the vitriol they receive by having the "wrong view", giving the angry mob the false impression that everyone agrees with them. I suspect the majority of working taxpayers do not like the idea of working hard and paying taxes so that they can fund the work shy on benefits, even if they do not say it out loud or tell the polling companies how they feel, and just because people in your own echo chamber despise the Tories, does not mean that is how the silent majority (the people who actually carry the votes needed to win) feel about them.

She needs to hold the line otherwise her position will become a lot worse. I'm still finding it mildly amusing that the markets lost their minds over a tiny £2.4bn tax cut for the wealthy, yet doesn't even blink at the hundreds of billions wasted on covid measures, gifts to Ukraine etc. What she probably needs to do is start looking at cutting services to help pay for these giveaways and make the state a bit smaller. I'm pretty sure the NHS would still find time to make their TikTok dancing videos if their diversity and equality budget was cut.

If you tell kids that there is a sky wizard that exists that works in mysterious ways, or you tell kids there is a fat guy who comes around once a year and delivers presents to them if they are well behaved, they will believe you. Because they are kids. One day they will grow up and realise what the hysterical adults of today took from them, and they will not be happy about it.