Re: Club 50+
As for the general health care system, it’s A1.
Shouldn't that be N1 in France?
4575 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Jul 2009
I've still got the cheap wardrobe and chest of drawers I bought when I bought this house 29 years ago. I'd intended to replace them after a few years because they were all I could afford at the time, but they're still going strong. They look like tat but they still function, so I don't see any point in replacing them.
And before you can ask, no, I'm not married. Probably because most of my furniture is second-hand tat!
and allegedly the same result can be obtained at over half-a-mile using the air-search radar modes of the MiG-29.
There's a story from the Czech Air Force that the MiG-23's radar was capable of killing rabbits from a kilometre away. They used to test the scan/lock on a ground range; any bunny nibbling grass just in front of the target shed would end up in the evening meal.
she'd have parents turn up to parents evenings and sit quaking in their seats
One of my mates moved back to our home town, kids in tow, to learn that a couple of the teachers who'd taught us back in the 70s were still there and were now teaching his son.
He went to the first parent-teacher evening with justified trepidation. He sat down in front of one of his old teachers, introduced himself and asked about his son's progress. The teacher gave him a long look, tipped his head to one side and said laconically, "He's his father's son."
"because this other department are not co-operating"
Been there, done that, was ignored. Got so pissed off with the clusterfuck that I resigned for the sake of my sanity. Eight months after the original go-live date I'm told that it has finally gone live, to what might best be described as low acclaim. Now several former supposed colleagues are being forcibly resigned. I won't weep for them.
a custom-built wheeled cart that the jet lowers to the ground as it is flying 20' above the ground
I respectfully suggest that this would be worse.
Can we just say that, as a general principle, a supersonic aircraft in ground effect would not be a safe vehicle in which to ride?
When we went on holiday, my dad just flipped the Master Switch on the fuse box in the pantry, and turned the gas main knob all the way off before locking the front door.
Did he also unplug the TV aerial in case there was a thunderstorm? Mine did.
(We didn't have the problem with the freezer. It was in the garage, on a separate circuit. I suppose the local scallies could have tapped into that while we were away, but generally they didn't have the nous not to fall off ladders or stab each other with screwdrivers, so the lecky was comparatively safe.)
At least you get to train for those deeply worrying (but mostly rare) events.
With the advantage of decades of hindsight I do wonder if my hands-on HND shouldn't have included a module describing techniques for handling 'oh shit' moments and for covering up any consequences or reallocating blame. Would the 17-year-old me have been intrigued to see that in the college prospectus?
Maybe advanced user management (blackmail and cattle prods) should also have been in the module.
Apparently the lawyers have been getting nervous and their bosses are starting to sweat too. Some of the radio networks have been getting their right-wing talk-radio hosts to read out statements declaring their recent statements as not being necessarily true (for some veteran hosts, 'recent' will go back to 1987 and the end of the Fairness Doctrine!).
Maybe there is an advantage to living in the most litigious nation on the face of the planet, even if it takes the tragedy of an attempted coup and five deaths to get anyone to consider the vitriolic drip of little lies as a contributor to cause and effect.
there's a whole lot of rot to cut away
The US could start by performing a dickectomy on itself and cutting away Florida. They're going to lose the state to climate change anyway, so best just to make the cut now and save some money.
You can work on reason all you like, but if your underlying assumptions are wrong you're not going to be able to reach a valid conclusion. You've already demonstrated that you had the wrong idea of what constitutes trickle-down economics and you've already been given a link to the recent paper which assessed that it doesn't work as its proponents have claimed for the last forty years. It was always a contentious claim too, so the paper doesn't come as a surprise.
It's up to you what you do with that information.
Apparently the medical profession is shocked that there are fewer flu deaths than would normally be.
No, they're not shocked. This is an obvious and expected result of social distancing, mask-wearing and quarantine (self-isolation or lockdown). It's hardly a surprise that generic measures put in place to limit the spread of one infectious respiratory disease would also help restrict the spread of other infectious respiratory diseases. Greater awareness has also helped increase the take-up of the annual flu vaccine.
You really do have this all wrong. Please try reading a bit more about the subject. I know from your previous comments that you're about the same age as I am, and were therefore very likely exposed to the idea of Reaganomics and George H W Bush's rejection of it as voodoo economics just as much as I was (or more, given that I'm in the UK). The consistently high numbers of downvotes you're getting should tell you that your understanding of the matter is incorrect as a matter of fact, not of opinion.
I'm only going to respond to one particular point, because it's so blatantly short-sighted.
So the rich keep hold of the money by spending it (to get the asset). So where did that money go? To the previous holder of the asset. Who used it to fund their lifestyle. Paying many down the chain.
Where does the money go? Generally to purchase other assets, for the same reason that the original buyer bought assets rather than funded their lifestyle. Unless the economy is in an asset crash (housing market, tulip bubble, currency slump), in which case they'll buy gold or just move money offshore and sit it out.
That's not an example of trickle-down economics. Trickle-down economics is where wealthy people are given a tax break or refund which prompts them as individuals to spend a lot of money, eg buying a second superyacht that costs more than the value of the refund. The thinking goes that this keeps companies afloat and workers employed to build and operate the yacht, so that the government sees a greater economic benefit than if they'd spent the value of the tax break directly themselves, on bailing out businesses or paying workers to retrain. This is what has been shown not to work, because the money tends to get spent on assets and then effectively locked away in a vault until the asset is cashed in at a profit or no longer provides sufficient return. In other words, it just shuffles existing stuff around rather than stimulating the creation of anything new. Hence the tax break does little but increase inequality.
Trump won't end up in San Quentin. When his lawyers finally persuade him he has no choice but to take a deal they'll make sure he gets sent to one of those cushy jails for rich people, which are basically a country club without the table service and where the spikes on the perimeter fence point in rather than out. The most serious threat he'll face from the other inmates will be only being able to cheat on a 9-hole course rather than an 18-hole one.