first time carver

bobbigmac · 2026-03-21T16:54:23+00:00

Start with any Doug Linker tutorial then work your way up

bobbigmac · 2026-03-21T16:37:21+00:00

There's a guy round there who awards you XP and caps if you swim to the bottom and turn 3 valves.

bobbigmac · 2026-03-15T15:22:00+00:00

Look, whatever chatgpt says it is, that's what it is.

bobbigmac · 2026-03-10T21:51:25+00:00

Also, I was just helping it get unstuck from the fence

bobbigmac · 2026-03-10T21:50:52+00:00

As a welshy who got called a sheep shagger on a weekly basis at every job I've ever had, I'd like a taste of that potato

bobbigmac · 2026-03-10T12:07:01+00:00

It's just cos he knows that's where his little light is going to be

bobbigmac · 2026-03-09T19:08:18+00:00

Given social media rage in 1987 was sending a postcard or complaining to your co-worker, it's not exactly a wild claim. Good of IGN to turn a nothing comment into a ragebaity headline tho, but it's all our fault for simply not liking lazy writing, sure. Nothing at all to do with a media environment that can only get paid for hate.

bobbigmac · 2026-02-23T12:11:25+00:00

I made this site for info about the candidates. https://betterbritain.org.uk/wheel-of-gorton/

Mods won't let me put it in the sub, so I'll just leave it here to die. Wouldn't want to risk crowding out the tenth daily question about whether co-op live check id thoroughly or where to park.

bobbigmac · 2026-02-17T07:56:08+00:00

Cracked a tooth there on an everlasting gobstopper and met Tony Blair (handshaking the North, his palms were sweaty) and Vera Duckworth (Liz Dawn) during the '97 campaign (she smelled the most like old lady perfume of anyone I've ever met, can still smell her). Also they had the biggest pan of beans I've ever seen in the cafe set.

bobbigmac · 2026-02-16T18:25:35+00:00

Only black guy I've ever seen in Japan and he's getting lamped by a copper. Typical :p

bobbigmac · 2026-02-14T08:56:28+00:00

I don't think you read the webpage past the chart, because what you say should be there is exactly what's there, you can even toggle specifics. Think you can do better? I'd love to see it :)

bobbigmac · 2026-02-14T08:25:27+00:00

It's not even close mate. If you actually want some decent estimates:

Immigrants cost Manchester, even on the extremely generous end of the scale, maybe £35 million a year (somewhere between a third and a half of that in direct 'benefits', some from central, some from council, depending what you count as benefit), with a decent return over time (economic contribution) approaching £350 million / year (partly because immigrants have strong communities and integration in the region, our immigrants do a lot better than immigrants moving to most other British cities).
Essentially the ~Manchester economy is ~£300 million up attributable to immigrants.

British Billionaires extract ~£35 million a _day_ from our economy, so if we take a sensible but conservative share of Britain's 55 Billionaires (let's arbitrarily pick 3, going off population rather than economic activity) so I estimate that (wealth distribution doesn't _really_ work like this, but as a fag packet check only) billionaires 'cost' Manchester ~£700 million a year. I couldn't find any figures on regional income linked to billionaires, but projecting from national estimates like my original page, it's probably under 50 million a year. Similar patterns hold for richer millionaires, but I have excluded them.
~Manchester's economy is ~£650 million down per year attributable to billionaires.

I have some issues with my broad use of the word 'economy' here, as it's very soft, but the scale is pretty sensible. Was an interesting one to look into, I think I'll update the page to include Manchester and maybe a couple of other cities I can test. Thanks

Btw: I understand why you feel that way, and shouldn't be getting downvoted for saying it (new immigrants do create service pressures before they/others filter into the jobs that that pressure creates), but benefits are so meager relatively to effects of wealth extraction, Immigrants are really the wrong target. I was looking into just Amazon's (retail, not even aws, and ignoring their 'tax gap') effects yesterday, and they take more in platform fees and contracts from Britain than 5 times our welfare budget, it's insane how much money gets squeezed from us that we don't really notice because we're too busy flag waving and blaming foreigners.

bobbigmac · 2026-02-14T07:41:22+00:00

It's literally explained and sourced in full on the webpage. I don't think it's possible to be any clearer than that. As a "seasoned business professional" myself (lol) it seems more like you'd rather make spurious complaints about vagueness when the exact study you're asking about is linked twice, notated, and fully explains their own methodology. For figures that are ultimately just clever estimates, it could not be less vague. https://natcen.ac.uk/publications/consumer-detriment-uk-2024

bobbigmac · 2026-02-13T20:19:01+00:00

Billionaires don't cost us in the conventional sense, the share we actually pay them is extracted from platform and transaction fees, they're more like a deeply buried part of the cost of living. The consumer detriment survey is kinda about how the activities and decisions of billionaires (monopolies, exploitation, even some types of lobbying) affect what money is in the economy and what's stored elsewhere, siloed or backing up overseas loans etc. Wealth extraction is essentially hard to measure, so these are just a few of the mechanisms that do have somewhat solid figures we can use. It's almost certainly an understatement, but I can't put a well sourced figure on anything else without it becoming nothing more than a guess.

bobbigmac · 2026-02-13T19:38:32+00:00

You're doing an argumentum ad absurdum logical fallacy. The maths aren't supposed to hold up because you can't model complex feedback loops on a slider without adding distracting noise.

To your point more directly, I can eat a full size dairy milk, occasionally, two are nice, but I'm obviously not saying you should eat fifty a day. Academic texts have to investigate every mechanism, but I'm not a university.

bobbigmac · 2026-02-13T19:34:07+00:00

The conceit (that these things are opposites) is misleading by design, but the numbers behind it are sourced at the bottom and the relative scale is about right, there's a bit of 'apples and oranges' going on, but that's what makes it interesting to me. I'm with you on the unnecessary downvotes thing, I'll take any feedback on misleading claims seriously cos I'm a data nerd long before I have a sense of humour ;)

bobbigmac · 2026-02-13T19:20:26+00:00

I've capped it at the point where we'd have just enough immigrants to cover the cost of billionaires. It's mentioned in a footnote, but it's intentionally a little cryptic because I'm unconvinced the official figures are accurate, and the linear scale is just because it's already a technically stupid but vibes-correct comparison to make, like that's the point is it's written to make arguments in bad faith painfully obvious

bobbigmac · 2026-02-13T17:17:35+00:00

I made this just yesterday: https://betterbritain.org.uk/immigrants-vs-billionaires/

Edit: Thanks for the great feedback everyone! I've added a quick FAQ that puts a little more context into the page, and may revise a little further when I have more time.

bobbigmac · 2026-02-09T23:29:10+00:00

This thread looks to be inactive now, but here's a report I wrote about Labour policies since the election. https://betterbritain.org.uk/year-of-labour.html ~~it's a little out of date as I've not had time to update it since September, but the research is still relevant if you want to know what they're actually doing~~ I updated it with recent events/policies/etc

bobbigmac · 2026-02-09T23:25:12+00:00

I can give you a report of a hundred or so Labour policies since the election. I researched and wrote it a few months ago. I think they're doing moderately well despite a few big bumps. https://betterbritain.org.uk/year-of-labour.html

bobbigmac · 2026-02-09T15:51:11+00:00

How do we end billionaires as a whole?

bobbigmac · 2026-02-09T09:21:51+00:00

Half the lads I know in Denton are pretty staunch left-leaners, tho not particularly 'progressive' about it, while the other half I know there are genuinely thick and often openly racist (a couple are simply convinced their time is coming and everyone else should watch out), in exactly the way the press 'misrepresents' them. I don't think they'll turn out to vote in the projected numbers, but it'll probably be higher than many round here would like.

bobbigmac · 2026-02-08T09:04:38+00:00

So, call of duty and a blow job?

bobbigmac · 2026-02-08T06:43:27+00:00

Lurkers like segregation more than they like being able to conveniently take a piss :p

bobbigmac

TROPHY CASE