scratchee

@scratchee@feddit.uk

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨For Women Scotland Attack Gay Man In Graphic Social Media Outburst⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s some of course, somewhere around 15-25%, less than the men as is sadly standard. Looks like there’s another 25% edging towards nervous thanks to the media coverage.

  …org.uk/…/new-report-tells-us-how-public-actually…

  In the end, too people follow the media, which follows the money.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨For Women Scotland Attack Gay Man In Graphic Social Media Outburst⁩ ⁨⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Checked with my wife, “jk Rowling is the wicked witch of the literature world”. So not all the women here thankfully. Mostly just a few rich arseholes trying to ruin things. Same old story.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Man who posed as medical student at hospital fails to appear for sentencing⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Our prison system is a mess right now, so give this guy a nice long sentence, he might just be the best warden we’ve ever incarcerated

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Home secretary to make some migrants wait 10 years or more for right to settle in UK⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Thankfully people don’t behave that way on average. A few outliers don’t matter much.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Home secretary to make some migrants wait 10 years or more for right to settle in UK⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Cheaper now and forever as far as I can see, so yeah, some cans are better for kicking than others.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Home secretary to make some migrants wait 10 years or more for right to settle in UK⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I do support policies that make immigration less exploiitative, but I don’t support curtailing immigration much, the alternatives suck.

  I do accept other options exist (eg encouraging more people to have kids), but they are much more expensive, like multiple percentage points of gdp more expensive. Like we’d have to curtail pensions to afford them, or set a tax increase larger than any in living memory.

  We could solve this without immigration eventually if we had the willingness to spend that much money. It’d take 20 years to start working (people take a long time to grow up) and in the meantime we’d need a lot of political will (nobody would enjoy the kind of tax rises we’re talking about), but yeah it could be done.

  We’ll have to do it one day, we can’t benefit from immigration indefinitely, but doing it early does mean spending vast amounts more money. It’s not like this gets cheaper over time, we’ll have to keep spending every year. So rushing into it before we need to gives few benefits that I can see. Especially since we’re competing with other countries that aren’t doing it, and therefore can spend their money in ways that encourage investment (ie outcompete the uk for investment) instead. Once immigration settles down (as it inevitably will, unless there’s enough destabilising wars to undo all the progress around the world, hopefully not), all the countries currently depending on immigration will be forced to solve the birth rate problem at once, then at least we’re competing on a level playing field and might not suffer so badly for adjusting our spending.

  So no, I don’t agree with doing it now, because there’s a cheaper option and cheaper means we can afford to spend the money on other things. We’re struggling already, think how much harder it would be if we were throwing all our welfare spending into convincing people to have kids instead of into pensions or the nhs. Some issues get worse when you kick the can down the road, but this one just sits and waits for us to confront it, so delaying that as long as possible is the optimal choice.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Home secretary to make some migrants wait 10 years or more for right to settle in UK⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  You’re not wrong that it suppresses wages. And if we “just” wanted to fix that we could (by increasing the minimum wage for immigrants perhaps). Interesting that all our anti-immigration policies are less about doing that and more about bullying people.

  But on the flip side, we do need immigration. Wage suppression is only a part of it, at some point wages can’t go up because the money doesn’t exist (especially for the kind of roles we need, the kind of person who needs a carer doesn’t have unlimited funds), and we’ll need it more and more as time goes on too. We genuinely need a growing pool of workers whilst we have an aging population. We’re not making enough young workers ourselves to care for our aging population.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Home secretary to make some migrants wait 10 years or more for right to settle in UK⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  If someone doesn’t work for 20 years? Other than any Brits who go to university, I don’t think it’s particularly relevant here.

  This is discussing people who do work, and how long they need to work before we trust them enough to treat them like citizens.

  If someone comes here at 18 and works for 5 years… this may shock you, but they’ve been a net benefit to the country to the tune of 5 man-years of work (minus their salary, which presumably is less than the labour, or nobody would be throwing money at them). They are already better for the economy than an equivalent Brit since they didn’t spent 18 years being a drag on the economy (instead they were a drag of whatever poor country wasted the resources prepping them for us!).

  Hypothetically the absolutely most untrusting and stingy position we could take would be to require someone to work long enough to pay off the cost of caring for them for the rest of their life. That would mean assuming they immediately stop working the moment they earn leave to remain. But that would be like a life insurance company saying “we’ll insure you for £100000 but you need to pay us £100000 to cover the risk”.

  Thankfully we can very easily predict how people behave in aggregate. We could pick a number where we’re near guaranteed to come out ahead, I bet it’d be embarrassingly short (most people work to just before pension age). But that’s not what’s driving this policy. This policy exists to look “tough on immigration”, but not too tough because we are actually dependent on immigration. Enough to ruin lives without you know… accidentally having any real effect on immigration numbers, since they would be a disaster.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Home secretary to make some migrants wait 10 years or more for right to settle in UK⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I never said evil, but I do think immoral, as I outlined in my previous comment, we’re talking about benefitting from people dedicating a significant amount of their working lives to this country doing jobs we are failing to do ourselves. Leaving those people in limbo for so long isn’t fair to them. This is just statistics to us, but it’s their lives getting uprooted.

  If people are bouncing between different countries and jobs, good for them, and this policy won’t change things for them one bit, because they already wouldn’t be eligible, and if they’re bouncing around they really wouldn’t be interested either.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Home secretary to make some migrants wait 10 years or more for right to settle in UK⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  We are desperately dependent on immigrants to keep our nation functioning. Then leaving them living in uncertainty for almost half their lives potentially seems like scumbag behaviour.

  If we actually wanted to reduce immigration all we need to do is give migrants more rights, require generous pay and suddenly there wouldn’t be so much demand for them because they wouldn’t be worth the price, but we won’t do that because we need them too badly to fill the hole in our economy, all the bad jobs that there aren’t enough uk nationals to fill. Treating them as equals who can earn their right to live here simply by doing the work we cannot do ourselves anymore feels like the least we can do, a minimum of the respect they are due. Dragging it out as long as possible is the action of a dodgy boss, not a nation worthy of respect.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Did Tommy Robinson break the law by promoting a dodgy trading scheme?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, he gets detriment of the doubt at this point

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Judge praises trans man who spoke out after months of transphobic abuse⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I thought hobbits were supposed to be resistant to the taint of evil? Proudfoot is a wonderful name besmirched by this loser’s existance.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨More than half of UK first-time buyers paying more for mortgage than they did for rent⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s still better in the long run, I guess the reduction in the deposit percentage means anyone who can afford a monthly mortgage isn’t far off affording the deposit too? Obviously combined with the total mortgage amount getting rediculous

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft pulls out of AI datacentre project in Essex over power supply concerns⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s sad, they would have helped the local community so much!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Half of adults would not go to war for the UK, poll suggests⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t think cat meat is particularly pleasant. Nope, you’ve convinced me, the super nazis are a problem that needs to be dealt with after all.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘Bully in every way’: domestic abuse survivors say ex-partners behind far-right UK street patrols⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Wow, they really didn’t seem the type did they?

  You never can tell.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Burnham accused of U-turn after initially backing political donations cap to fall below £500k⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, that makes sense, the people giving massive individual donations probably do have opinions about this, wouldn’t surprise me if they’re laying on the pressure, kinda why we shouldn’t allow it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Burnham accused of U-turn after initially backing political donations cap to fall below £500k⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Not sure I follow your logic there. If I was a politician who hasn’t received £500000 total donations, I’d want to add a £500000 cap so my competition can’t either.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨US threatens Britain over Falklands⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Don’t forget that scientific advancement is crucial to any war effort, can’t forget to invest in science. Medical research and energy research both have obvious implications for any war effort and should be prioritised, but a well rounded portfolio of research topics gives us the best chances of staying ahead of the curve!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Behold, "the whole story of Steam's economy in one picture": the top 1% of games earn 84.5% of estimated revenue, and most games barely make anything⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  In a vacuum it sucks, but we’re grading on a curve here. The nice thing about valve is that it’s asleep at the wheel. Yes they’re making ridiculous amounts of money but they could be making more if they decided to “develop” their platform, and it would be bad for everyone. Cthulhu sleeps and I for one would prefer the situation continue.

  As for the billionaire…. I have no strong opinion about him, but again we’re grading on a curve here, it’s amazing how few countries he’s ruined or pedos he’s been in photos with, I have limited hate to spread around and I don’t have sufficient justification to smear any on him.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Burnham scraps restrictions on disabled people’s bus passes in England⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Good, always felt a bit second class citizen. “You can use the busses but not when they’re needed by the people we actually care about”

  Busses are busy in peak hours because people need to travel to work at those hours. Disabled people get free bus passes to expand their travel options given they’re much more limited. But god forbid a disabled person actually has a job and needs to travel at peak times, clearly the government wouldn’t want to encourage that…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Wildfire phone alert was 'entirely appropriate', government says⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think it depends on volume.

  Once or twice a year for arguably not too major things is better than never, because it helps test the system and people won’t get overwhelmed by 1 or 2 alerts a year. Like a fire drill, but maybe slightly more useful since it actually is providing some actual info hopefully.

  If you go higher than that, you need to start raising the bar so that you don’t (excepting the emergency action requirement you laid out)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Met chief questions why Simon Levy was freed after assaulting prison officer⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  “But miss…. John was doing it too” - children and police chiefs apparently

  Tbf I agree with him. The police fucked up, and sounds like the prison service did too.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Britain ‘Does Not Have Enough Water’ for Planned AI Data Centre Boom⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Better solutions have always and will always exist, but they cost more to implement.

  Piping grey water to a data center either means placing it somewhere with an appropriate pipe with appropriate filtration performed, or building a new pipe/filtration. Drinking water in comparison is easily accessible anywhere. They don’t care about the impact or even the per unit cost, they just want to build on the cheap and take advantage of local infrastructure, and they figure in this ai boom the actual running costs are irrelevant because ai companies will pay for anything that works, efficiency be damned

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨UK government drops plan to stop paying coastguard volunteers⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’d certainly prefer if they didn’t have to find out the hard way that so many obviously bad ideas are bad, you’d think they could predict the results with just a little thinking ahead.

  On the other hand, a u turn is better than blindly pushing through every bad take they have, so on that basis, I propose more u turns.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Outgoing British PM Starmer pushes IRGC terror label⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  An important difference, but doesn’t invalidate the point the previous poster made

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Ofsted drops ‘clumsy’ and ‘offensive’ guidance linking autism and extremism⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  They made the mistake of writing it down and got punished with public oversight. I’m sure they’ll remember to only share their bad takes verbally from now on.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨in the uk they encourage smokers by printing cigarette packs as collectibles⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Well you know what they say, the only defence from a bad guy with alcohol is a good guy with alcohol.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘Truly horrific’: the stories of five people affected by the NHS maternity scandal⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Fuck, is that article hard to read.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Record number of people waiting for NHS diagnostic tests in England⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I actually don’t mind it too much in theory, private healthcare works better in the uk because 1. Anyone who uses it also pays for nhs cover anyway, so they’re paying in but not using the resources, saving money for everyone else. And 2. Private healthcare stays out of the emergency room, this is where duplicate effort is an enormous waste since you need them all over the country, having an emergency room not everyone can go to is just insane.

  That said, i guess the danger is anyone who does pay private has an incentive to push back against the nhs, maybe that’s ruining things, though I bet they’d be doing it even harder if they were forced to lie next to poor people in the hospital, so I’m not sure we can avoid that