User Profile

[malvolio]

British heavy industry in the 70s died because it couldn't compete with other countries' standards. Compare a Morris Marina to the equivalent Toyota for example, or a ship built for around a2/3rds the cost of a Clyde side yard. Not everything you read about Thatcher is even vaguely accurate; she was...

[malvolio]

It's all true, sweetpea.

We didn't have minimum wage legislation

We bought on a local government mortgage scheme just before it closed giving a 95% mortgage. Tte other 5% we had to find ourselves. Nothing o do with right-to-buy.

You clearly have no idea of the...

[malvolio]

Bought a £12,500 ex-council house on a sub-£3k a year salary working a three shift rotation, so "3x salary" doesn't work...

Didn't do university. Did day release/evening class at college but had to stop that when I went on the shift rotation.

We had zero social...

[malvolio]

Having worked and saved and paid taxes for 50 years (and still paying taxes now I'm retired), why should I sacrifice my comfortable, paid-for, spacious house to live in a shoe box for someone else? And get rid of a life's worth of possessions to do so?

OK, that's harsh, but it is reality....

[malvolio]

If it's properly hot, properly seasoned and properly oiled, steel or cast iron pans are non-stick anyway... But IME heating a dry non-stick to a high heat without any oil in it does do real damage. Heating the oil to a high temperature is rather less so....

[malvolio]

You're still not getting the point.

Nobody is against genuine immigration of people who have something to offer the UK. There are effective and available routes in for such people, even after Shabana's proposed reforms they will still exist.

Nobody is against offering sanctuary...

[malvolio]

Just to clarify for you...

What the papers (all of them) are saying is what the smugglers are selling to the illegals. Look at any of the many interviews with potential illegals parked in France and they all say the same thing; get to the UK and you get free housing and health care. I doubt...

[malvolio]

OK, so explain the difference between you saying what people are being told by the smugglers and what the papers are saying people are being told by the smugglers...

And, just for completeness, what makes them morons? ...

[malvolio]

Such as...

Otherwise, yet another unhelpful post....

[malvolio]

Not going to happen as long as we are led by a party that has abandoned "Support the Workers" as its credo for "Support the Disadvantaged", sees our money as theirs to do with what they like and borrows when it isn't enough, are so in fear of ethnic minorities at the expense of ethnic...

[malvolio]

The triple lock would work, if the measurement period was extended over a couple of years to lose short term peaks...

What does irritate (a lot does these days!) is that paying in to the system and supporting the country for many years and expecting some kind of return when you retire is...

[malvolio]

All I know is that I take the old state pension and a private one roughly of the same gross value. Paying for the latter as an annuity takes the return on a sum rather more than my NICs paid in over my working career.

OTOH I have second small private pension scheme out of a £3k payment...

[malvolio]

The frustration stems from people routinely claiming political bias when the point is about actions taken (or not taken) by politicians.

It's a bit like saying if you're against illegal immigration you have to be a racist. Pointlessly wrong, and just a way to prove you don't have a counter...

[malvolio]

Just to be very clear. it was also the UK that stopped the transatlantic slave trade, at some considerable expense and in opposition to the other traders, and was the first to ban slavery at home. Our younger and more woke generation routinely ignores (or is unaware of) that minor detail.
...

[malvolio]

While we can consider IR35 to be a lost war, the current version is at least capable of supporting an outside position with a lot less risk on the hiring side than previously. due in no small part to the work of Dave Chaplin.

However, we should not forget who lit the fire in the first place....

[malvolio]

Not what I said. Yet again. Your bias over political issues is getting tedious. Or do you really believe ministers spend their time discussing the minutiae of 100-page contracts and ITTs with service providers before they are awarded? Ministers set policy, which are broad-brush intentions, the detail...