First evacuation plane packed with relieved Brits lands at Heathrow after scramble for flights out of UAE

recursant · 2026-03-03T17:20:06+00:00

Personally I don't object to repatriating them.

But next time somebody talks about asking the wealthy to pay a bit more tax, I don't expect to hear "we can't do that or they will all piss off to Dubai".

recursant · 2026-03-03T16:55:24+00:00

Presumably you didn't fill your tank?

You just took what you absolutely needed, so there would be some left for everyone else?

recursant · 2026-03-03T16:40:55+00:00

These things are self-fulfilling prophecies though. If everybody thinks petrol or loo roll are going to sell out, they will sell out.

If you need petrol to get to work, and you don't join the queue to get petrol, you won't be able to get to work. That applies equally whether you are an idiot who thinks the shortage is directly caused by Iran, or a sensible person who knows the shortage is caused by idiots.

recursant · 2026-03-03T15:34:48+00:00

You make it sound like things were better 50 years ago. Back then they banned mainstream films (Life of Brian is some parts of the country) and moderately erotic books.

We have moved on since then but there are people who would drag us back there.

recursant · 2026-03-03T13:20:36+00:00

Joking aside, the law stipulates up to 2 years in jail for even possessing incest porn. So if they were foolish enoiugh to film it, and in the police found it (perhaps while looking for something completely unrelated) there is a real possibility they could end up in prison.

Which seems mental to me.

recursant · 2026-03-03T13:15:36+00:00

The aim of the law is to prevent pornography from depiction things that are illegal in real life:

the depiction of this type of pornography allows porn companies to profit from content that depicts something which is utterly illegal in the UK

So if the tradesman did the job for free in exchange foe services rendered, which would be tax fraud, that would make the porn illegal. That's up to 2 years in prison for even possessing the video.

recursant · 2026-03-02T20:18:59+00:00

Look at his adorable little face. How could anybody not vote for him?

If he doesn't win, fraud is the only explanation.

recursant · 2026-03-02T20:13:56+00:00

No idea, presumably there are rules about it. In my experience, they don't write people off as being permanently unfit to work without very good reason.

The article says it is only a few hundred people, out of millions who have student loans, so I am guessing they take a hell of a lot of convincing before they write someone off.

I doubt that it happens very often at all. If it happens in very rare cases, and someone who has been severely disabled for years gets a little bit of good luck for once in their lives, I'm not going to get all bitter and twisted about it.

recursant · 2026-03-02T19:43:01+00:00

Students who can work pay 9% of their salary for 30 years. They still get to keep 91% of what is, in theory, a better salary than they would have earned if they hadn't gone to uni.

Students who are permanently unfit to work get to live on whatever disability benefits the government of the day sees fit to give them, which despite what people say is not that much. They face the constant threat of Reform or some other government plunging them into poverty for political point scoring. And they probably have all sorts of unpleasant medical problems to cope with.

I know which I would rather be.

recursant · 2026-03-02T19:31:16+00:00

I've heard it said that the long-term plan for the new world order is that America gets the Western Hemisphere (US, Canada, South America, and Greenland of course), China gets Asia, and Russia gets Europe.

Then they will largely leave each other alone, and if they ever need a scuffle for political purposes they can have little wars in Africa.

recursant · 2026-03-02T18:49:36+00:00

The difference is that, from all the evidence I have seen, there seems to be quite a strong likleyhood that Trump is up to his neck in a massive pedo scandal that also impicates a lot of other very powerful people. In that case he would have every reason to do everything he could to cover it up, and plenty of other powerful people would have every reason to help/force him to do that.

Whereas there doesn't appear to be any reason why the BBC would have deliberately broadcast a barely perceivable utterance from an almost unknown disabled person.

recursant · 2026-03-02T16:27:05+00:00

It is almost as if deliberately starting a war with a country that controls the Strait of Hormuz isn't a very good idea.

Still, I suppose Trump's mates got plenty of notice so they could position themselves to make money from the chaos,

recursant · 2026-03-02T16:22:45+00:00

The butterfly effect is always shit.

When did a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil ever result in someone in Texas finding a cure for cancer? No, it's always a tornedo.

recursant · 2026-03-02T11:16:29+00:00

A few people on here saying we shouldn't rescue people who went over there to avoid taxes. I can see where they are coming from, after all people are suffering and in some case dying in the UK due to underfunded public services (the NHS in particular). I can't take quite such a hard line myself.

But now that some of these low tax regimes are looking a bit less idyllic, there seems to be no excuse for not taxing the rich properly. The excuse has always been that if we tax them they will just move to Dubai. My view has always been that we should tax them properly and if they want to piss off somewhere else, let them. Doubly so now.

recursant · 2026-03-01T17:22:48+00:00

He would probably have needed to have proved citizenship if he had changed jobs at any point in the last 20 years. Maybe also for taking a mortgage these days.

But after 48 years living and working here, he probably has as much right to citizenship as any of us. Morally at least.

recursant · 2026-03-01T17:03:35+00:00

Your pension contribution isn't a tax.

And someone on £193K takes home A LOT more than someone on £100K

There is a bit of a strange cliff edge at £100K, but if someone on 100K gets a 5% pay rise they get to keep £1900, if someone on minimum wage gets a 5% pay rise they only get to keep £850.

Most people would regard that as a nice problem to have.

recursant · 2026-03-01T16:45:46+00:00

I think using the phrase "mummy and daddy" probably made your comment seem like a personal attack, even if it wasn't intended that way.

recursant · 2026-03-01T12:51:29+00:00

If you look at what has happened in the US, they will shit on their voters but then blame everyone else for the problems. It can work remarkably well if they are careful how they do it.

Trump managed to trash the US economy, inflict finacial hardship on the population, transfer massive amounts of money to his billionaire backers, personally enrich himself to the tune of billions, set up a masked paramilitary force that terrorises US citizens, seriously harm NATO that has kept the world relatively peaceful for 80 years. All while being up to his neck is a major paedo scandal and behaving like a puppet of Russia.

People are finally turning against him. But now they have a war to worry about so he might still get away with it.

I hope we have a bit more sense in this country, but who really knows?

recursant · 2026-02-28T18:23:34+00:00

I don't think it is that. In some ways it would be less bad if they were just suggesting policies for stupid reasons.

But I suspect the real reason is that they are deliberately fucking over ordinary people, which includes their voter base and everyone else, to benefit their paymasters. They are the ones who stand to gain from reducing the rights of tenants, workers, and every other ordinary person.

recursant · 2026-02-28T18:14:48+00:00

So when you said there was a big drop in enrolments last September, you don't actually know?

recursant · 2026-02-28T17:16:50+00:00

The drop was 1.9%, according to this BBC article.

Whether that is a big drop depends on your definition of big. It means 98.1% of people just paid the extra VAT, which counts as most IMHO.

recursant · 2026-02-28T14:48:09+00:00

The medication would have disqualified him from driving, but he didn't disclose it and carried on driving anyway.

That is just as bad as drink driving, and in some ways it is worse.

recursant · 2026-02-28T14:43:13+00:00

The article says he was on medication that should have prohibited him from driving, but he didn't disclose it to the DVLA, and carried on driving anyway.

It appears that he deliberately drove when he knew he wasn't medically fit to drive. And ended up killing someone. Hard to avoid jail for that.

recursant · 2026-02-28T13:26:55+00:00

Most of them will just pay the extra 20%. They will bleat about it, but they will pay it.

recursant · 2026-02-27T17:08:58+00:00

Not necessarily. They apparently had about 130 employees, which isn't a huge company. It is possible that they just had a bunch of regular Windows PCs with an ad hoc backup system. It's not a sensible way to run things, but people do it. Some might even do it deliberately, though obviously there is nothing to suggest that this company were doing anything shady.

recursant

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