TheGrandNagus
@TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
- Comment on Retail giant Monsoon's CEO calls on UK to scrap tax loopholes benefitting Shein 1 week ago:
It’s astonishing we allow it to happen.
Starbucks, for example, contributes almost nothing to the UK (~4% effective tax rate), and they have a UK-based competitor, Costa, that doesn’t dodge taxes and pays an effective tax rate of over 20%.
Why the hell have our governments been allowing this to happen? Our businesses are playing at a massive disadvantage in their home market. It’s absurd.
- Comment on what if another country staged a coup in the US and deposed trump? 1 week ago:
Why do you keep putting random double spaces in half your comments?
- Comment on Too many young people find doing a day's work 'stressful', says Liz Kendall 1 week ago:
Our minimum wage is indeed fairly high, and the taxes that low earners pay is very low, but we do have problems. Wage compression in this country isn’t particularly good. Most people are either minimum wage or close to it.
Even a lot of highly skilled jobs aren’t highly paid, it’s a problem for the economy, for tax revenue, and for encouraging workers to go for better jobs/strive for progression. I don’t know what the government can do about it, but the answer certainly isn’t to pin it on young people and imply they’re lazy.
But one thing the government can definitely impact is what you mention at the end of your comment: government policy can certainly help bring down the big costs like property costs (both for people and businesses), energy, water, council tax.
- Comment on Parents sue TikTok over child deaths allegedly caused by ‘blackout challenge’ 1 week ago:
For anybody like me who doesn’t know what the blackout challenge is:
The blackout challenge is a social media dare that calls on users to strangle themselves with a belt, purse strings, ropes, and similar items until they pass out, all while uploading the resulting videos to TikTok. However, the challenge did not start on TikTok, nor is it exclusive to the platform.
What the fuck
- Comment on Too many young people find doing a day's work 'stressful', says Liz Kendall 2 weeks ago:
When you wake up early, start a long commute, work in a shit job (often with unpredictable hours), have an unpaid lunch break, work some more in your understaffed company, then start the long commute back home to your parents house because you can’t afford a place of your own, then yeah, I can imagine that’s stressful.
And it gets more so when you open social media or news and it’s always the privileged or the elderly (often they’re even one and the same) constantly shaming youth for being horrible lazy pieces of shit who won’t lift themselves up by their bootstraps.
The increase in minimum wage is a great thing. As is the incoming increase in workers’ rights. I won’t sit and pretend Labour are doing nothing. But more needs to be done if you want a mentally healthy workforce.
Just saying “too many find XYZ stressful” without detailing how you plan to change that isn’t helping.
- Comment on Thames Water seeks court approval for emergency cash 2 weeks ago:
Let it run out. Businesses should be allowed to fail. That’s capitalism.
If the state want to buy the assets for a bargain price, so much the better.
- Comment on The one drawback to walking at night 2 weeks ago:
I said OP knew exactly what kind of arguments this would spawn. And I believe that to be correct. It was inevitable.
- Comment on The one drawback to walking at night 2 weeks ago:
What? I’m very well aware of the fears people, especially women, have at going out alone at night.
What’s your problem?
- Comment on The one drawback to walking at night 2 weeks ago:
Predominantly other men. But that doesn’t make it ok.
Relax, David, you might get attacked or killed on your way back from work, but I don’t feel sympathy, because it’d probably de done by another man.
The reality is anybody can feel unsafe at night, and everyone is valid in thinking so.
- Comment on The one drawback to walking at night 2 weeks ago:
Almost like this is a submission specifically posted to elicit that exact response.
- Comment on I got the money saved in my mansions safe. 2 weeks ago:
Like I said, it’s difficult for many and impossible for others.
- Comment on I got the money saved in my mansions safe. 3 weeks ago:
More realistically, 3 months of expenses, not 6 of salary. Maybe go higher from there if you’ve paid off debts and stuff.
It’s unfortunately very difficult to achieve for many, and impossible for some. But if you can, you absolutely should have an emergency fund.
Some people can but don’t, either due to lack of financial education, lack of impulse control, or feeling they have to spend a lot to be happy.
Shit happens in life, from a broken boiler or car to a job loss. If you can, please build an emergency fund.
- Comment on UK shoplifting on the rise and more brazen, new survey says. 3 weeks ago:
No shit. Police forces have been gutted, there’s no prison spaces left, and the cost of living is high.
- Comment on Not enough teachers, children turned away: Schools 'can't cope' with population boom 3 weeks ago:
Tories gutting education over an extended period will leave the sector unprepared for an expected boom of children needing education… due to Johnson’s immigration policy of “just let a load of people in, it’s bound to boost GDP” (it didn’t).
The fact that the Tories are polling above 0% is a travesty.
- Comment on Camping with the far-right: What I learned from a year undercover 3 weeks ago:
Doubt many Brits voted for Trump.
- Comment on Axel Rudakubana: 'Evil' Southport killer jailed for minimum 52 years 3 weeks ago:
I dunno, even a 70 year old can do some damage. Particularly to someone vulnerable, and if they use a weapon.
Which is exactly what he did. He stabbed young kids.
I think a 70 year old psychopath brandishing a knife is still a danger to society. I hope he gets thoroughly assessed to see if he’s fit for release when the time comes.
- Comment on [deleted] 4 weeks ago:
Jesus Christ.
- Comment on Axel Rudakubana: 'Evil' Southport killer jailed for minimum 52 years 4 weeks ago:
No, I don’t think the death penalty is acceptable. It’s pretty well-researched why it doesn’t work very well.
And yes, I do think this sentence, at a minimum, is acceptable. Not even necessarily as a punishment (although that’s part of it), but because a small amount of people simply have to be kept separate from the public because they will never be safe to be around. This man is one of them.
- Comment on Benefit cheats could lose driving licences in anti-fraud drive 4 weeks ago:
I suppose that could be an effective punishment.
A monetary fine may mean little to a benefits scammer, and prison is obviously a silly punishment, particularly when prisons are in the shambolic and overcrowded state they’re in now.
When you drive, it’s a big part of your life (or maybe that’s just my perspective, living in rural Northumberland where my “public transport” is a twice-weekly shuttle-bus to Hexham), the threat of that being taken away would be a pretty huge deterrent in my view.
- Comment on Digital driving licences to be ‘put on phones this year’ 4 weeks ago:
Reminder that the UK is actually fairly lax in comparison to other countries when it comes to showing your drivers licence to police. Most countries require you to have it with you when you drive, the UK does not.
If you don’t want to show your license, don’t. Say you left it at home.
They can request that you come into a police station with it within 7 days, but in reality they probably won’t because they can trivially search for this information anyway.
Certainly don’t hand over an unlocked phone.
- Comment on Patients dying in hospital corridors, say nurses 5 weeks ago:
It’s been 6 months, why hasn’t Labour completely cleared the backlog, cured the flu, and completely fixed the NHS yet?
- Comment on Private parking rules review prompted by £2,000 five-minute fine 5 weeks ago:
Anybody who’s ever dealt with these companies knows exactly how scummy they are.
Pervious governments kept saying they’d do something about it, even announcing price caps (I think to £70 but I can’t remember), but it would always be silently scrapped after all the positive headlines had done their job.
I suppose the good part of having a Labour government is that if they were to announce this and scrap it, it would be in headlines for a week, so they’d be a lot less likely to do it.
- Comment on UK government removes highest number of illegal migrants in 5 years 1 month ago:
Still a lot lower than under Blair, but I suppose it’s still a lot better than the Tories.
Doubt we’ll see this on many fronts pages, though.
- Comment on Pound falls further as UK borrowing costs soar 1 month ago:
Angers me so much that we didn’t make use of cheap borrowing while rates were so low.
- Comment on 'Ripped off' caravan owners start compensation fight 1 month ago:
They’re such a scam.
Two family members – one who isn’t good with money and the other in the early stages of dementia – bought a static caravan together. They came to regret it.
The caravan itself was as expensive as a seaside flat (albeit in an area of inexpensive Northumbrian mining towns), except unlike a flat it’s an asset that depreciates massively, like a car, except even worse.
The APR on the loan was 14%.
Gas bottles cost a lot.
You had to have insurance (fair enough), but only through the caravan site’s company (absolutely not fair enough). As you can likely guess, their pricing was dreadful.
The site fees alone were almost £4000 a year, roughly the same as my mortgage on a 3 bedroom house (again, impoverished Northumberland seaside town, so pretty cheap mortgage). When you take into consideration they couldn’t pay that in a lump sum and so also had that as a 14% APR loan in addition to the caravan itself, it cost more than my mortgage for site fees alone.
Once the caravan is 10 years old you have to get rid of it. And you do not get good prices reselling them, because everybody else is trying to sell old static caravans of that age too.
Throughout the whole process, the sales rep tried to obfuscate details, fail to mention things, pretend that fees wouldn’t go up over time (they did, a lot). Not only that, he tried to create a sense of urgency that this had to be done quick otherwise they’d miss out – the same tactic used by phone scammers to force mistakes!
Some liability goes to my auntie of course, but not everyone is good at sifting through and properly understanding financial documents, and these companies know this. They take advantage. They’re every bit as predatory as payday loan companies IMO.
- Comment on Motorist gets ticket for being stuck in Lincoln hospital car park 2 months ago:
Private parking companies are absolute scum. Anybody who’s ever had the misfortune of dealing with them can attest to this.
The fact that the NHS were forced to sell a bunch of carparks to these criminals boils my piss on an almost weekly basis.
- Comment on Appeal court refuses to increase child rapist’s four-year jail sentence 2 months ago:
As the crimes were committed in the 1980s, Roberts’ sentence reflected the legal norms of that period.
I can see the logic to this, but holy shit, was 4 years for sexually abusing a 7 year old a typical sentence back then?
- Comment on Anglian Water fined £300,000 for sewage pollution in Norfolk 2 months ago:
Kill thousands of fish and god knows what other wildlife, get a measly £300k fine that will be paid by customers rather than management anyway.
Yet another turd in the septic tank that is Thatcher’s legacy of privatising everything that used to be owned by the public.
- Comment on Ministers considering renationalising British Steel if rescue plan fails 2 months ago:
Given the current Chinese owners are battling tooth and nail to not have to foot 50% of the bill for the new furnaces (which is already generous from the gov), I highly doubt they are good custodians of British Steel in the long term.
- Comment on MPs vote in favour of historic bill to allow assisted dying after emotional debate 2 months ago:
Canada literally isn’t the UK.
The motion that was passed is nothing like the framework Canada has.
Plenty of countries ban drinking alcohol. You may as well be saying that having restrictions on alcohol for under 18s means it’s a slippery slope and it’ll be banned here. After all, Saudi Arabia literally did it. America literally did it. Qatar literally did it. Etc.
Like I said, I want evidence. Not slippery slope fallacy. Show me MPs saying they intend to implement the system Canada has.