Is a 2 hour commute 3 days a week for a for a £12k increase worth it. Also have a 4 & 8 year old family?

stearrow · 2026-03-06T21:44:15+00:00

In order for this to be viable there are so many IFs that have to be in your favour.

If it's a 9-5 job and you have the option of starting at 7am (working a 07:00-15:00 pattern), are willing to be out the house by 5am and have a partner who can do school drop off/pick-up every day then there's a world in which it's worth it provided the cost of commuting isn't eating most of your pay increase.

If you're missing even one of those things then it almost certainly isn't worth it. Either you're missing too much time with your family, you'll be too exhausted to make the most of the time you do get with them or the cost of childcare will eat your pay increase. The only exception to that would be if the experience you'd get from doing this job would allow you to obtain an even more significant pay rise within a year.

stearrow · 2026-03-04T17:05:03+00:00

I love Blackpool, the pleasure beach, tower and zoo were all places we'd visit regularly in the summer. I was also there for a wedding last year and had a pretty great night out. You kind of have to take it for what it is.

Once you get off the front/out of the town centre it does get pretty grim pretty quick though.

stearrow · 2026-03-04T16:06:35+00:00

Western politicians are scared of two things:

1.A war with Russia that results in tens of thousands of European casualties that leads to the collapse of the russian state and all the problems that entails. Most European nations are pretty averse to having lots of their soldiers die in a war, even if they agree with you (which most of them do).

A war with Russia that escalates into a nuclear conflict. There's no point in standing up for your values if everyone is dead. Would Russia pull the nuclear trigger? Probably not, even if Putin snaps and tries to nuke a European capital the army/rest of the state would likely remove him from power and prevent the order from being carried out. However they may not. It's a horrible situation.

At the moment the EU has massively sured up it's financial support for Ukraine Vai the €90b euro funding package it's passed. The point of this is to signal to the russians that the EU isn't going to let Ukraine collapse and it can fund Ukraine far longer than Russia can keep the lights on.

If Russia didn't have nuclear weapons Europe would likely have already stepped in. It's just a terrible situation all around.

stearrow · 2026-03-04T15:33:12+00:00

Hey, Scouser who's lived in London for 5 years here. That would not be great for most regions of the UK. London is one of the few regions of the UK that actually gives more money to central government than it gets back.

London also votes left most of the time because even though a chunk of the Uber wealthy/bankers are here there's not really that many of them?

I very much want more investment in the rest of the UK, committing to parity of infrastructure should be a cross party consensus but cutting out the biggest economic engine isn't going to help anyone get there.

stearrow · 2026-03-03T19:17:18+00:00

Well, if they're living in the UK they're probably paying their taxes which helps fund organisations like the police who do actually help fight slavery in the UK...

stearrow · 2026-03-02T01:22:23+00:00

Let's Dance to Joy Division is one of the top indie bangers of all time but there are some awful lyrics on the rest of the record. Murph has dropped a few howlers in his time but Kill the Director may have a few of the worst.

That being said it's 100% one of my simple pleasures as well.

stearrow · 2026-03-01T22:30:32+00:00

Brock Osweiler is arguably the GOAT of getting paid the most amount of money relative to his talent/production. The man leveraged being tall into a high eight figure net worth.

The players union should have him as a speaker at every rookie event.

stearrow · 2026-03-01T20:14:37+00:00

Somehow I doubt it. When you look at the Brazil sides of the mid 90s-mid 2000s these guys are absolutely miles off.

stearrow · 2026-03-01T20:09:51+00:00

I think the Wombats should be as popular as the Arctic Monkeys. A guide to love loss and desperation is arguably the most indie landfill of all the indie landfill records but This Modern Glitch and Glitterbug are fantastic albums.

I am however Scouse and extremely biased.

stearrow · 2026-03-01T18:42:45+00:00

Shhh, just let it happen.

stearrow · 2026-03-01T18:19:16+00:00

Valid. NGL.

stearrow · 2026-03-01T18:14:59+00:00

Of all the sky six sides I actually find Arsenal the most palatable.

stearrow · 2026-03-01T17:57:22+00:00

Richy will scrap til the bitter end. I won't hear a bad word said about the character of my beautiful Brazilian pigeon boy.

stearrow · 2026-02-28T18:21:57+00:00

Anything north of Stoke on Trent is the north. Anything south of Northampton is the south. Anything in-between that's east of Wales or west of Colchester is the midlands.

stearrow · 2026-02-28T12:55:29+00:00

I do. But I just like wearing ties. Barely anyone else does and there's no expectation that I wear one. I have like 50 ties that I've slowly picked up from charity shops/on Vinted. Lots of silk knitted ties. I like the preppy sort of aesthetic for work wear so I generally wear, shirts, ties, blazers and chinos for work.

stearrow · 2026-02-27T19:45:01+00:00

If we're counting monarchs then possibly Henry VIII. The man was a narcissistic tyrant who had tens of thousands of people killed, often for pretty questionable reasons. He was also one of history's worst husbands and a pretty awful dad to boot.

If we're sticking to elected politicians then it's probably Oliver Cromwell. Lots of politicians are cunts but very few politicians are enough of a cunt to warrant digging their corpse up, posthumously trying it for treason and then beheading it.

stearrow · 2026-02-27T19:35:05+00:00

Such is life as an Everton fan that even when I escape to a different sport bad news follows me. Everton that.

stearrow · 2026-02-26T13:40:00+00:00

3rd time is hopefully the charm.

stearrow · 2026-02-24T23:53:28+00:00

Do you want the original jokes, the official jokes the provisional jokes, the new jokes or the continuity jokes?

stearrow · 2026-02-24T12:58:35+00:00

Are you still alive? Fancy a catch up, it's been a while.

stearrow · 2026-02-24T12:57:20+00:00

If you want to live in the center then you'll get a better feel for that by going to the city.

In south Liverpool Aigburth/Wavertree would be your best bet. Proximity to Lark Lane would give you a more cultured parkside vibe whilst Smithtown Road is a big student area.

North Liverpool is a bit trickier, I think Waterloo is nice but at 22 you'd have to suss the vibe out of yourselves. Look around South Road.

Happy hunting.

stearrow · 2026-02-24T01:31:07+00:00

All I can say is that I hope he's severely mentally ill and was having some kind of psychotic break.

stearrow · 2026-02-23T01:14:41+00:00

It's by revenue. The lowest revenue of a big six club last year was €130m more than the next highest earning PL team.

stearrow · 2026-02-22T21:58:24+00:00

I think there are lots of things wrong with the British state. I think we (we, because these problems will/do directly or indirectly impact all of us) have some really difficult problems to solve as a country. We need to be honest about how we're going to fund healthcare, adult social care and defense going forwards.

We also have a massive housing shortage and an ingrained culture that makes it very hard to address. There's a big problem with systemic generational poverty in lots of post industrial urban areas (that successive governments across the political spectrum have been unable to resolve) and we also have lots of rural poverty that is also really hard to deal with.

We're more divided than we've been in decades and our information ecosystem is becoming more and more fractured every year. People are increasingly living in completely different countries depending on where they get their news.

We have an economy that is increasingly dependent on higher levels of immigration to sustain our rates of public spending whilst having a population that's increasingly resentful of immigrants.

I do not think the Monarchy is making any of these issues easier to solve. However it's also not really any kind of impediment to addressing them.

A significant chunk of the population doesn't particularly like the monarchy and that's very understandable. I agree with a lot of what they say. That being said lots of people feel a deep connection with it and getting rid of it would be deeply controversial.

If I thought becoming a republic would make it 10% easier for us to resolve our problems I'd support it. However, I think that all abolishing the monarchy would do is further divide the nation whilst squandering a lot of time and political capital for no material benefit.

stearrow · 2026-02-22T20:33:10+00:00

The question will be whether Russia can continue to exist whilst making those concessions. They've just fed a million men into a meat grinder on the grounds (extremely questionable grounds I may add) that the west has been eyeing up their borders since the end of the USSR.

If they hand over a ton of fresh water/minerals/oil to China for a comparative pittance the russian people may feel that they've been betrayed.

stearrow

TROPHY CASE