Posts by Rich of Observationz
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She played at Mighty Mighty some years ago. Gold coin admission.
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Labour take Battersea.
I think we are seeing something of a political realignment, where the more affluent middle classes support a left-liberal party while the proletariat is increasingly drawn to populism. Of course, the actual personnel of the right-populist parties are incongruously posh.
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I think the British are still firmly in denial about the effects of Brexit.
[After the referendum, the stock market rose. That's kind of a reverse effect (same with Trump) - when there are real-world economic negatives, then the central banks will generally cut rates. That reduces the benchmark for returns from shares, and so share prices go up to compensate for this]
There seems to be a delusion that the UK government has some sort of influence over the EU and will be able to negotiate a deal. This is of course rubbish - the EU states have very little reason to offer a "good" (as in bad for European workers) deal and each individual state will have a veto - on issues they care about and generally if they don't like any aspect of the deal (Irish border, car imports, Gibraltar, banking licenses).
If May gets back in, then a not unlikely endpoint would be full tariffs on UK goods, plus a special tariff to recover the UK's debts to the EU; all goods subject to full border inspection; no recognition of UK standards bodies (so no exports of safety-critical items such as food, vehicles and aircraft parts) and no bank passporting.
That would shutdown a lot of UK businesses the day EU membership ceases (ironically, they'll be on overtime up to X-day to get as much stuff as possible finished and out of the country - then it'll be P45s for millions of workers).
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Hard News: Interesting Britain!, in reply to BenWilson,
Counting lasts 2-12 hours, roughly.
About 3am (1400NZ) we should have a good number of results.
By dawn in the UK (1800NZ) it should be pretty much known.
The final ballot boxes from the outer limits (a few constituencies don't start the count until morning) will be sometime (UK) Friday. -
UK Labour under Jeremy Corbyn is an complete fucking mess
It appears they would rather control a toothless opposition of say 150 MPs than govern
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You don't see too many guys my age playing rugby, their participation in the sport is sitting around in shitty bars drinking beer and reliving their glory days, and making homophobic and racist slurs the whole time, while the soccer guys are still running around actually doing their sport.
In Britain, that's pretty much the other way round. People interested in soccer spend their time hanging out in shitty pubs and making homophobic and racist slurs. Nothing to do with the code - it's a problem that will attach itself to the mainstream/working class sport in any country.
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Hard News: Drugs and why Dunne did it, in reply to Hilary Stace,
That is an unfair and untrue comment
Obvious hyperbole, I'd say. He'd need to be in his eighties. For the excessively factual, he was first a minister in 1987 (for Labour) and, has been seated in a ministerial limo, or at least a government supporting MP, for most years since then (1990-95 is the only time I can see his being an opposition backbencher).
And I don't think politicians, in particular ones who consider they can tell us what to put in our bodies, deserve fairness.
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So, should people go to jail for forging important identity documents?
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Hard News: Drugs and why Dunne did it, in reply to Matthew Hooton,
You don't get to have been a minister in every government since the Vietnam war without trimming a little to the winds.
Labour have put a hanger and flogger up in Dunne's loyal and beloved seat, so it's quite possible that there are a few Wellington liberals who might be inclined to give their electorate vote to the least illiberal of the candidates.
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Up Front: What's the Big Idea?, in reply to BenWilson,
Nah, for a resident, it's pretty straightforward, or at least it was in the 90s.
Solicitors and real estate agents charge less (much less for agents). You need the solicitor to check the title as it isn't a Torrens title system - but NZ solicitors don't charge less because they haven't got to delve through 17th century copyhold parchments. The bank will demand to sell you building insurance and probably life assurance, which they don't do here. Apart from that, it's just a few forms to fill. They didn't seem to nose much into circumstances either - just wanted to see bank statements and payslips and applied a 3x earnings limit.