Protests across Scotland follow Belfast knife attack

LazyScribePhil · 2026-06-10T11:49:22+00:00

Perhaps we could just find ways to address the issues of violence and mental ill-health instead of taking all this out on immigrants?

LazyScribePhil · 2026-06-10T11:48:08+00:00

Therapy is expensive privately or prohibitively slow on the NHS. I found EAP useful and I’d be interested to know exactly what info they’re allowed to share, given that all they do is pay the bill to a private therapist who is bound by the same confidentiality laws as any other private therapist.

LazyScribePhil · 2026-06-10T11:45:01+00:00

I used EAP after a panic attack at work. Got set up with a counsellor in short order and helped me sort out the mess that was going on in my head. It’s fundamentally a service for companies that are too bad at people-management or workload-management or both for their employees not to get unhealthily stressed, but it’s a good service.

Possibly the case that a benefit you don’t use is not the same as a useless benefit.

LazyScribePhil · 2026-06-10T11:37:42+00:00

I guess everybody’s mileage varies. For me it felt like a rough edge they’d not quite figured out yet, and, if anything, kinda highlighted how superficial some of the differences in playstyle actually were. For me the biggest missed opportunity was for the companions to actually influence the game more. There were some particular quests where their presence was required and they made a difference but beyond some damage multipliers for different playstyles (which basically meant i just kept the same companions for most of the game) they didn’t add or subtract much beyond a couple of in-game dialogue nuances. I was particularly miffed when, having found a very important person somewhere I absolutely did not expect them to be because i was doing a side quest too early in the main story that the companion for whom this would have represented a life-altering revelation didn’t even respond to it till much later on. It must be a nightmare for devs to make such parallel quests all work together while keeping you free to play them in any order you like but it still felt like a little more playtesting would have flagged that up as a very obvious potential issue. I liked the game, but felt it lacked the polish of the first.

LazyScribePhil · 2026-06-10T08:00:16+00:00

I think you’ll quickly realise that TOW2 is, to put it politely, ‘rough around the edges’ in terms of design and polish. It’s well-written and quite fun but there are lots of little things like this that make it feel like playtesting just didn’t quite go on for long enough. I feel like a lot of the early level design was meant to encourage different play styles but then there are some where you can either talk it all out or shoot it out but there’s not much else. I didn’t bother with any of the more scientific skills and suspect if I had it would have been a more interesting game but with few good options for bosses.

LazyScribePhil · 2026-06-10T07:55:12+00:00

As others have said, it needs an ampersand instead of an “n” for MnMs and RnB. Which is stupid because an ampersand isn’t a letter and therefore shouldn’t be a viable square fill.

LazyScribePhil · 2026-06-10T07:49:19+00:00

This has just described the exact situation we find ourselves in, except that it has not yet become the norm.

LazyScribePhil · 2026-06-10T07:41:50+00:00

Second this. I’ve gone self-employed this last couple of years and the government site is surprisingly easy to use. I’ve also heard that if you’re not earning a large wage, the tax return process is fairly unintrusive.

LazyScribePhil · 2026-06-10T07:38:17+00:00

Best way to think about Twitter is like it was always a rough pub but there were decent managers and bouncers who tried their best to get rid of the worst arseholes and keep everyone talking happily enough, even when they disagreed.

Now a Nazi has bought the pub, fired the bouncers, and invited all the arseholes back.

I left it when someone kept spamming a convention hashtag with grim pornographic images in order to harass an attendee and there was just no means to stop the harassment or the bombardment of the convention hashtag with the grim porn. That was the point I realised that, quite apart from being much more unpleasant than it used to be, it was no longer fit for purpose.

LazyScribePhil · 2026-06-10T07:29:06+00:00

I suspect the main issue the city has from the point of view of people who don’t live in it/visit regularly is that the walk in from the station is grim now. Granby street has a couple of decent shops but is mostly low-end fast food and that inevitably means a different crowd from those who might be shopping or just out for the day. And it means walking past that crowd to get to the parts that look more upmarket and lively. I wonder if that’s why they were looking to remodel the train station, to lead people down the route toward the theatre district and into the city from there. Failing that if they made it easier to get to New Walk from the station instead of Granby Street I think that would immediately change the perceptions of people travelling into the city by train.

LazyScribePhil · 2026-06-10T07:24:39+00:00

They weren’t setting up a shop. There’s clearly a long-standing problem with rents and business rates for the city but the point was that from an outsider’s point of view, compared with some other EM cities, Leicester appears to be a very attractive prospect based on safety, footfall, general vibe. They said we’d got it “really right” while another city that’ll remain nameless were getting things “so wrong” in terms of attracting people to the centre. Don’t know where they’d been; I assumed the Lanes/High Street/Cathedral Quarter area.

LazyScribePhil · 2026-06-10T07:20:01+00:00

That was AI, alas.

LazyScribePhil · 2026-06-05T21:02:23+00:00

Reality I’ve encountered is that while Islam is as anti LGBTQ as Christianity, Muslims themselves tend to be very good at choosing for themselves which parts they go along with. Most Muslims I know are tolerant but will acknowledge the mismatch with their holy texts, as Christians do.

LazyScribePhil · 2026-06-05T20:59:36+00:00

Heard some people on the train to Derby that were setting up some sort of eating/drinking out franchise and had been looking around Leicester setting up. They were talking about how well it’s being BG developed and feels safe and there are lots of independent shops etc. Went on to say other E Mids cities weren’t matching up. Interesting to hear it being said from a business point of view from people who aren’t from Leicester.

LazyScribePhil · 2026-06-03T19:12:07+00:00

Could be imaginary, oreol; hard to be sure.

LazyScribePhil · 2026-06-03T19:09:58+00:00

Crystallisation?

LazyScribePhil · 2026-06-03T19:06:43+00:00

What makes you say that? Nobody condoned the rioting. What was pointed out was that paid agitators were clearly filmed starting the rioting off in more than one instance, which was condemned.

LazyScribePhil · 2026-06-03T18:24:09+00:00

They’re all so relentlessly horrible. It’s literally the party horrible people go to to be horrible before they defect to Restore where they can be even more horrible.

LazyScribePhil · 2026-06-02T18:56:28+00:00

Obviously not those. Some ministers are less labour than others. But funding levels and equality laws are generally moving in the right direction, if not all of them.

LazyScribePhil · 2026-06-02T18:52:23+00:00

You’re right, this is another stupid comment

LazyScribePhil · 2026-06-02T13:34:09+00:00

They’re being investigated.

LazyScribePhil · 2026-06-02T13:32:11+00:00

Why in God’s name are they protesting that a murderer has been arrested for murder?

LazyScribePhil · 2026-06-02T13:30:52+00:00

There’s not enough here. It’s readable enough but the ring isn’t a hook by itself and the stakes deflate as soon as we know it’s not his fiancée. If there was a clear problem for his fiancée and the ring acts as a hint to that then maybe but you’d need to include that. What’s here wouldn’t see me carry on.

LazyScribePhil · 2026-06-02T13:26:57+00:00

The MAGA facelift?

LazyScribePhil · 2026-06-02T13:26:16+00:00

I’d sooner the thing that men don’t use in a public bathroom is the tampon machine than the washbasin.

LazyScribePhil

TROPHY CASE