A wilding

9 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Unlike Trump the guy probably can't brush of a civil determination of responsibility and still run for elected office.

Well he could if he wanted to, but would be doing it as an independent.

A plus for the powerful political party system in the UK I suppose. Though I do wonder what would happen if a popular figure like Johnson in his heyday was accused of such behaviour. Though, that said, the only thing that made my Johnson supporting aunt doubtful about him was his private life, so I am hopeful.

I don't blame them for the spit hood if she was genuinely spitting at them. The rest sounds a bit much though!

This is something Raja likely knows more about than me, but I have seen hospital staff put padded mittens and a sort of spit trap on a very confused old woman in intensive care to stop her making a nuisance of herself. They were very gentle about it though.

6 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

Met police are no longer going to attend MH only calls.

Which is right, huge waste of our time and we don't have the required skills, but who is going to pick up the slack? 

I definitely sympathise with the police here. They indeed don't have the training.

Anecdote: a relative of mine was temporarily caring for a confused elderly relative last year, filling in a gap in her professional care. A minor emergency occurred, which had the side effect of distressing the elderly relative, causing them to flail about somewhat aggressively. They phoned 111 (NHS non-emergency helpline) to get some help. The 111 operator, rather than arranging advice or assistance, told them to call the police!

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

Putin showing signs of having lost the ability to read:

 

However that is how dictatorships such as Russia work. They tell their citizens that black is white and the citizens are required to believe it, despite the evidence of their senses. And the citizens, with no experience of any other sort of government, do come to believe it in a way, while feeling a sort of disabling guilt that part of them can't stop seeing that black is not actually white at all.

That said, Putin's feet of clay are definitely beginning to show now.

50 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

This is glorious. LMFAO.

 

Actually the news is now saying that he expects the taxpayer to pay for his new lawyers as well.

13 minutes ago, Gaston de Foix said:

Thanks, I might pick this us up.  I enjoyed Salmon Fishing, although I always wondered what the author thought about the (quite different) movie.  

My favourite Paul Torday is The Girl on the Landing  which is a story about the supernatural that also has something to say about the use of psychoactive drugs.

Just read Sea of Tranquillity by Emily St. John Mandel. I found her Station Eleven somewhat heavy going, but this one was much lighter, an entertaining jeu d'esprit that nonetheless tackles issues such as the simulation hypothesis and the trolley problem. And there is an amusing self insert of an author on an extended publicity tour following their most recent book, about a pandemic, unexpectedly becoming a best seller. Plus a wry comment about a character lumbered with having "St." in their name.

Also been reading The Death of an Owl, the last book by Paul Torday (of Salmon Fishing in the Yemen fame.) This was generally up to his usual standards, though possibly a little flat in tone, and is a typical uncomfortable read. It is a savage portrait of an ambitious near psychopathic UK Tory politician. The comparison with Boris Johnson is inevitable, except that Torday died in 2013 (the book was tided up and published by his son in 2016). Scarily Torday's fictional politician, despite being a complete scumbag, is in several ways a better person than Johnson.

4 hours ago, Toth said:

The other thing is that now sometimes when she enters my room when I'm working at the computer she may crane with her head over my shoulder to look at something that caught her attention on my computer screen (apparently because her eyes are becoming worse) and then complains about me recoiling and tensing up about it, saying I shouldn't act like this because it's not like she cares what I'm doing.

And yet those instances are far in between. Most of the time she genuinely just wants to talk to me about stuff she picked up on TV or at work (or look out of my window or check on the cat or the time on my clock or putting away stuff in the drawer...) and reacts unhappy about why I'm almost never saying anything in response, just being tense and silently waiting for her to go away. It's like all my current anxiety runs on accumulated resentment and that is the part I have to overcome in order to come to true acceptance. Because as it is I fear if I ever get into a relationship with someone, I'd similarly just be searching for stuff to resent and reasons to withdraw. I can't live like that. So I'm trying to not minimize all my tabs anymore when she enters and treat it as normal so that my anxiety has nothing to feed on.

Hmm.

For the record, in any normal relationship, if you were working on the computer in your room then your partner would leave you in peace to get on with it. They might perhaps stick their head round your door to ask if you fancied a coffee break or something similar. Certainly they wouldn't come in and engage you in casual conversation or do random stuff around you when that was clearly distracting you. And peering at your screen without explicit permission is considered way beyond the pale - there might be confidential stuff on it.

I love my wife dearly, but in the unlikely event that she were to start doing that sort of thing then I might well minimize all my tabs and sit there waiting for her to go away as well. She would quickly get the point I am sure. Though I would be more likely simply to say I was going to be busy for the next however long and ask her to go away until then - but clearly your mother would react badly to that.

12 hours ago, Heartofice said:

The whole point here is that children of divorced parents on the whole perform much worse in almost all metrics, from mental health to performance at school. Avoiding that scenario and putting effort into primarily creating a safe and secure environment for kids should be the priority.

Just to pick up on this.

You have made a classic correlation/causation error here.

It is indeed generally considered proven that children bought up within a stable loving relationship have statistically better life outcomes, but that is irrelevant. You need to show that, once a relationship breaks down to the point where divorce is being considered, it is better for the child for the parents to stay together anyway, even if only because society pressures them to do so, rather than get divorced. As I understand it, what evidence there is tends to show the opposite.

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

Except of course the UK already has a free ID card service that anyone can get if they wanted it. 
https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-photo-id-voter-authority-certificate

We received our official government leaflet informing us about this new ID card in yesterday's post. Far too late to apply for it, even if they had not brought the deadline to do so forward.

On Thursday's elections and the new voter suppression measures.

I see that the Right are pre-emptively declaring that left wing activists are going to pretend en masse not to have id at polling stations, so as to "disrupt the elections". Thus implanting the idea that what voter suppression does happen will just be fake news.

Telegraph article

They get more like the US Right every day.

1 hour ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

A book about Johnson

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/apr/30/anthony-seldon-boris-johnson-at-10-biography-interview

I am seriously tempted to buy this as a present for a certain elderly relative who is still (half) convinced he is wonderful ...

1 hour ago, horangi said:

Also, I recognize that all politics are local, but are grass verges, parking fees, and whatever 'high streets' are, issues that would motivate even a single voter to cast a ballot one way or the other?

 

As someone who knows many people who canvas during local elections, quite possibly yes. Apparently it sometimes seems that parking issues are the only thing people want to talk about on the doorstep. Though in Tory land it seems that they mostly want to talk about preventing any more houses being built in their area. (I know people who would never vote Tory in general elections, but do so in local elections because they "are against building more housing estates" - that is one lie that they do seem to have sold successfully.)

Aren't bullies often pathetic inept people who just happen to be in a position to bully?

Another vote for Sunshine. Extraordinary atmosphere and imagery, which means I can overlook the uneven plot and bad physics. I had the poster of the psychiatrist starring staring into the sun as my wallpaper for a while.

Tsk. Everyone knows that The Fellowship of the King is actually a UK based Christian organisation. This Polychron person has stolen their name.

However, from a UK perspective the history of the term is different. To the very best of my knowledge, it was introduced in the UK by right wingers criticising generally left leaning ideas. Though subsequently there have been half hearted attempts by left wingers to embrace the term (I think mistakenly as it just plays the Right's game). I would be interested to know if anyone can come up with any counter examples.

It is another example of the UK following the US, right wingers over here seem often to pick up labels already used by US right wingers, and for much the same reasons.

And didn't this whole thing get started off by Liz Truss calling high taxes "woke"?

@Heartofice Basically that it is the people who complain about wokeness who "view people primarily through the lens of race and gender"..

21 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

How so? If you view the world through an intersectional lens where race and gender is the primary characteristic of someone to pay attention to, and everything is a series of privilege and oppressions, how can you not treat people differently?

Because my experience of people complaining about "wokeness" is that what they really mean is that they feel that they can no longer causally be rule about or harass women, blacks, gays, etc as they used to.

Edit: as for Liz Truss, she is a fool desperately trying to justify herself.

So the definition really is projection then.

50 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

No, not sure what is hard to understand here. I’m saying you don’t need to view people primarily through the lens of race and gender to treat people equally, in fact it might prevent you doing so. 

So woke people treat people differently depending on their race or gender?

1 minute ago, Cas Stark said:

A bunch of people post about how conservatives are so dumb/evil/liars they can't even define 'woke'', hardy har har. 

Then, someone posts a definition of woke ,and it it's all no wait, that's not the right definition.

You can't make it up. 

So you also think that wokeness means believing that people should be primarily defined by their differential characteristics such as race or gender?

Because from where I am sitting, that feels very much like projection by the sort of people who use the term "woke". Or is that the point?

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

If you think that the only way to treat people equally is the view everyone through the lens of race or gender then.. hate to tell you.. you’re woke.

So you are claiming that treating people equally means that you are "viewing everyone through the lens of race or gender". What sort of argument is that?

7 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Exactly, words are constantly changing and being added, language is always in flux. 

And the classic example is "refute". It used to mean "disprove", until a selection of dishonest politicians started to use it to mean "deny". Because "I refute that I took the money" sounded more convincing than "I deny I took the money".

2 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

A belief that ... people should be primarily defined by their differential characteristics such as race or gender.

That is really what "woke" means? Surely it is much more about treating people equally whatever their race or gender?