The I cant believe it’s not politics thread.

[Brizzle Fox]

2 minutes ago, kingkisnorbo said:

Immigration hyperbole and misinformation is the lowest hanging fruit for the right. Expect it to be deployed heavily in the run up to the GE. They adopt it because they know knuckle draggers will lap it up, just as they did with Farage when he was mildly relevant. It's a thinly veiled vehicle for racists.

I think you're being rather generous when you say thinly veiled...

[fox_up_north]

I really am appalled by the use of the word "invasion", when I spend my Sunday afternoons helping people from fuching Ukraine

[kingkisnorbo]

 

[Tielemans63]

13 minutes ago, Fazzer 7 said:

Indeed. We should hope Suella is resilient against this onslaught to get rid of her. She at least recognises that this invasion as she puts it has to be stemmed. 

Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't - but don't you think it's interesting that for the past 12 years, no home secretary has managed to find a reasonable solution? It's almost as if, for all it supposedly costs the taxpayer, there are private individuals and companies making a healthy profit from a system that strangely never seems to quite work.

 

Interestingly, Manston is run by a company called Mitie whose directors are registered at The Shard. They made a £6m profit last year despite (as Braverman implies herself today) doing a pretty terrible job. Their CEO, Phil Bentley paid himself £2m. Why is he being paid to fail?

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/06976230/filing-history

 

Incidentally, Mitie were also illegally handed a range of Covid contracts. How? Shockingly, Tory peer Phillipa Roe is the chair of the board and another Tory peer, Baroness Mcgregor-Smith was on the board of Mitie for a decade. Weird! https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/revealed-which-private-firms-won-governments-hotel-quarantine-contracts_uk_602d4732c5b6cc8bbf389f2f

 

Lastly, it has been widely reported that it can take up to 8 years and £2m per case to process an asylum claim. https://yorkshirebylines.co.uk/news/home-affairs/asylum-claims-now-taking-almost-eight-years-to-process/

 

Speeches like Braverman's today are a red herring imho. When you actually look into it, it's the usual case of shitty, ineffective government there to both deflect from, and facilitate, private wealth gain. 

 

There is no magic fix of course but there's a reason we routinely return to the same point and it's not just down to sheer incompetence. My point is that immigration may well be an issue but piss poor governance and corporate greed is a bigger issue and in my opinion there is little appetite to actually fix the 'immigration problem' but always a great desire to use it as a political weapon when the polls aren't looking too clever. Again, in my opinion, it's perverse that sections of the media project immigrants themselves as figures to be hated, and not the ***** making millions from human misery. 

 

Rant not aimed at you by the way!!

 

 

 

[SecretPro]

1 hour ago, yorkie1999 said:

I meant in st Agnes. The chemicals they spread on the fields will probably kill all the marine life though, hope those carrot crunching vegans are happy now.

Locals say the spill occurred at 09:30am and Defra didn't attend until 16:30 to take water samples (quite quick for Defra, who I've worked with a lot (alongside Environment agency) and can confirm are utterly useless, not because of the staff but because their budget has been slashed to nothing and staff reduced by unimaginable numbers, the actual staff left that do still care and are utterly exacerbated with the vested interests taking over are actually very good in certain situations). The discolouration had already dispersed with the tide by the time testing took place. 

 

South West Water had already confirmed there was sewage mixed with mudwater @kenny

'South West Water has confirmed its storm overflow in St Agnes triggered "briefly" at the weekend. It says sewage then mixed with mud, causing the discolouration' so somebody is lying or the testing took place too late to be adequate.

 

The drain filmed and shared by Fergal Sharkie is the only outlet for the Peterville Sewage Treatment works 500 metres away so regardless of 'this event' sewage is undoubtedly being released there when SWW deem it 'necessary'.

 

More worrying is why Storm Drains are pissing out when it was a dry day on 29th and only two spells of 30 minute rain on the 30th in St Agnes (again, according to locals). Hardly torrential or 'Storm' worthy. 

Edited 31 October 2022 by SecretPro

[yorkie1999]

16 minutes ago, SecretPro said:

Locals say the spill occurred at 09:30am and Defra didn't attend until 16:30 to take water samples (quite quick for Defra, who I've worked with a lot (alongside Environment agency) and can confirm are utterly useless, not because of the staff but because their budget has been slashed to nothing and staff reduced by unimaginable numbers, the actual staff left that do care are actually very good in certain situations). The discolouration had already dispersed with the tide by the time testing took place. 

 

South West Water had already confirmed there was sewage mixed with mudwater @kenny

'South West Water has confirmed its storm overflow in St Agnes triggered "briefly" at the weekend. It says sewage then mixed with mud, causing the discolouration' so somebody is lying or the testing took place too late to be adequate.

 

The drain filmed and shared by Fergal Sharkie is the only outlet for the Peterville Sewage Treatment works 500 metres away so regardless of 'this event' sewage is undoubtedly being released there when SWW deem it 'necessary'.

 

More worrying is why Storm Drains are pissing out when it was a dry day on 29th and only two spells of 30 minute rain on the 30th in St Agnes (again, according to locals). Hardly torrential or 'Storm' worthy. 

I dunno, maybe the fields are saturated or something, what I do know is, apart from a few weeks in summer along that bit, if it ain’t raining, it’s waiting to rain. We’ll see over the next couple of weeks cos there’s a big storm on its way. Still, at least they’ll be some compo to go round…and I don’t know what your worried about anyway, in countries like Belgium and Holland they pump human excrement and sewage on the fields to grow potatoes and carrots. I’m sure the fish love it…..gross

Edited 31 October 2022 by yorkie1999

[SecretPro]

As a side note, for anybody who wants to see where the poo is currently floating in Leicestershire, this map is pretty useful. Not sure how up to date it is but logs of the sewage spills nationwide and counts the number of hours it was released for.

 

https://theriverstrust.org/key-issues/sewage-in-rivers

[kenny]

19 minutes ago, SecretPro said:

Locals say the spill occurred at 09:30am and Defra didn't attend until 16:30 to take water samples (quite quick for Defra, who I've worked with a lot (alongside Environment agency) and can confirm are utterly useless, not because of the staff but because their budget has been slashed to nothing and staff reduced by unimaginable numbers, the actual staff left that do care are actually very good in certain situations). The discolouration had already dispersed with the tide by the time testing took place. 

 

South West Water had already confirmed there was sewage mixed with mudwater @kenny

'South West Water has confirmed its storm overflow in St Agnes triggered "briefly" at the weekend. It says sewage then mixed with mud, causing the discolouration' so somebody is lying or the testing took place too late to be adequate.

 

The drain filmed and shared by Fergal Sharkie is the only outlet for the Peterville Sewage Treatment works 500 metres away so regardless of 'this event' sewage is undoubtedly being released there when SWW deem it 'necessary'.

 

More worrying is why Storm Drains are pissing out when it was a dry day on 29th and only two spells of 30 minute rain on the 30th in St Agnes (again, according to locals). Hardly torrential or 'Storm' worthy. 

We have a real issue with the type of rain we get now. Our systems are really designed for the constant drizzle we got years ago, not the more tropical style heavy storms we get now. This meant we had constantly saturated subsoils that absorb the water more consistently.

 

We don't have the system of wide open culverts you see in warmer countries that are designed for exceedance storm events.

 

Furthermore, 100,000km of our drainage is combined systems which means the runoff mixes with the foul which can be discharged into the water courses. This doesn't mean every instance has sewage in it but it does happen.

 

I also suspect that we have insufficient reservoir storage nationally hence the droughts we had a couple of months ago.

[SecretPro]

7 hours ago, kenny said:

We have a real issue with the type of rain we get now. Our systems are really designed for the constant drizzle we got years ago, not the more tropical style heavy storms we get now. This meant we had constantly saturated subsoils that absorb the water more consistently.

 

We don't have the system of wide open culverts you see in warmer countries that are designed for exceedance storm events.

 

Furthermore, 100,000km of our drainage is combined systems which means the runoff mixes with the foul which can be discharged into the water courses. This doesn't mean every instance has sewage in it but it does happen.

 

I also suspect that we have insufficient reservoir storage nationally hence the droughts we had a couple of months ago.

Nobody is arguing what the issues are (they are as you have outlined, our sewage system is victorian), what they are arguing is that the issues are tackled head on rather than the tories voting in August to continue sewage discharge into our waterways instead of forcing the water companies to stop paying their CEOs millions of pounds every year and instead make the necessary investments to tackle the problems and upgrade the network. Why should we, the paying public and the Environment suffer because of their incompetence? We pay them enough. Our rivers are ecologically dead. Only 14% of our waterways are considered 'ecologically good' and I suspect all of those are either upland in nature or the least populated. The rest are, for all intents and purposes, dead. I'd happily pay more for my water if it meant the problems were getting solved.

 

Anglian Water were prosecuted in Leicester Magistrates Court just last week by HSE for wholesale sewage dumping and were ordered to pay fines of about £150,000. Paltry amounts in reality. 

Edited 1 November 2022 by SecretPro

[walkerleeds]

What did we do with our sewage before it got dumped in the sea?

[FoxesDeb]

22 minutes ago, SecretPro said:

Nobody is arguing what the issues are (they are as you have outlined, our sewage system is victorian), what they are arguing is that the issues are tackled head on rather than the tories voting in August to continue sewage discharge into our waterways instead of forcing the water companies to stop paying their CEOs millions of pounds every year and instead make the necessary investments to tackle the problems and upgrade the network. Why should we, the paying public and the Environment suffer because of their incompetence? We pay them enough. Our rivers are ecologically dead. Only 14% of our waterways are considered 'ecologically good' and I suspect all of those are either upland in nature or the least populated. The rest are, for all intents and purposes, dead. I'd happily pay more for my water if it meant the problems were getting solved.

 

Anglian Water were prosecuted in Leicester Magistrates Court just last week by HSE for wholesale sewage dumping and were ordered to pay fines of about £150,000. Poultry amounts in reality. 

Some might say chicken feed

[yorkie1999]

5 minutes ago, SecretPro said:

Nobody is arguing what the issues are (they are as you have outlined, our sewage system is victorian), what they are arguing is that the issues are tackled head on rather than the tories voting in August to continue sewage discharge into our waterways instead of forcing the water companies to stop paying their CEOs millions of pounds every year and instead make the necessary investments to tackle the problems and upgrade the network. Why should we, the paying public and the Environment suffer because of their incompetence? We pay them enough. Our rivers are ecologically dead. Only 14% of our waterways are considered 'ecologically good' and I suspect all of those are either upland in nature or the least populated. The rest are, for all intents and purposes, dead. 

Now that’s a funny subject about our rivers being dead that I don’t get, purely down to personal experience. I have fished rivers for nearly 40 years all over the country and there has been a massive decline in fish stocks over that time, and having talked to many anglers older than me, the boom years were the 50’s till the 80’s, when the rivers were at their most polluted, you only have to go down to the football ground to notice this because there’s no one sat there fishing anymore but in the 70’s it was packed.  Now, if you go down to the river soar or river Trent, have a look, it’s as clear and clean as anything, but surprise surprise, there’s not an angler to be seen and that’s because there’s hardly any fish in them. If you want to start fishing, fish near a sewage outlet, and you’ll catch, why? Because fish love shit and dead things.

[Jon the Hat]

13 minutes ago, walkerleeds said:

What did we do with our sewage before it got dumped in the sea?

Processed it and put in on fields as fertilizer?  Some has always been dumped into the sea.

[Jon the Hat]

1 hour ago, Tielemans63 said:

Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't - but don't you think it's interesting that for the past 12 years, no home secretary has managed to find a reasonable solution? It's almost as if, for all it supposedly costs the taxpayer, there are private individuals and companies making a healthy profit from a system that strangely never seems to quite work.

 

Interestingly, Manston is run by a company called Mitie whose directors are registered at The Shard. They made a £6m profit last year despite (as Braverman implies herself today) doing a pretty terrible job. Their CEO, Phil Bentley paid himself £2m. Why is he being paid to fail?

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/06976230/filing-history

 

Incidentally, Mitie were also illegally handed a range of Covid contracts. How? Shockingly, Tory peer Phillipa Roe is the chair of the board and another Tory peer, Baroness Mcgregor-Smith was on the board of Mitie for a decade. Weird! https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/revealed-which-private-firms-won-governments-hotel-quarantine-contracts_uk_602d4732c5b6cc8bbf389f2f

 

Lastly, it has been widely reported that it can take up to 8 years and £2m per case to process an asylum claim. https://yorkshirebylines.co.uk/news/home-affairs/asylum-claims-now-taking-almost-eight-years-to-process/

 

Speeches like Braverman's today are a red herring imho. When you actually look into it, it's the usual case of shitty, ineffective government there to both deflect from, and facilitate, private wealth gain. 

 

There is no magic fix of course but there's a reason we routinely return to the same point and it's not just down to sheer incompetence. My point is that immigration may well be an issue but piss poor governance and corporate greed is a bigger issue and in my opinion there is little appetite to actually fix the 'immigration problem' but always a great desire to use it as a political weapon when the polls aren't looking too clever. Again, in my opinion, it's perverse that sections of the media project immigrants themselves as figures to be hated, and not the ***** making millions from human misery. 

 

Rant not aimed at you by the way!!

Its more than 12 years though, although the drop in collaboration with France since Brexit is no doubt a factor - they are quite happy to see us struggling.  I also suspect that the slowdown in processing has been exacerbated by Covid, like everything else in the public sector.  We don't seem to have a clue what to do about it.  France also seem to have lost control of the Albanian gangs in around Calais which might explain that 2/3rds of those in the Mansten centre are from Albania, a NATO member country which is not currently at war etc.

 

Edited 1 November 2022 by Jon the Hat

[yorkie1999]

7 minutes ago, Jon the Hat said:

Processed it and put in on fields as fertilizer?  Some has always been dumped into the sea.

In other words, ate it.

[yorkie1999]

4 minutes ago, Jon the Hat said:

Its more than 12 years though, although the drop in collaboration with France since Brexit is no doubt a factor - they are quite happy to see us struggling.  I also suspect that the slowdown in processing has been exacerbated by Covid, like everything else in the public sector.  We don't seem to have a clue what to do about it.  France also seem to have lost control of the Albanian gangs in around Calais which might explain that 2/3rds of those in the Marsten centre are from Albania, a NATO member country which is not currently at war etc.

 

Gangs are opportunist’s that will always descend on where they can make the most money with the least amount of grief, the U.K. is a prime  target, an unarmed an undermanned police force with a relatively large customer base to flog drugs to. If I was in that business, I’d be setting the satnav to the U.K. 

[leicsmac]

8 hours ago, Fazzer 7 said:

I along with most law abiding normal rational people want to see this unwanted criminal vandalism stopped. I’m sure the clean up operation isn’t at all environmental friendly, and they really aren’t serving their cause any good whatsoever. The public are getting really pi$$ed off and rightly so. 

As other people have pointed out, it's rather absurd to focus exclusively on something so low-cost by comparison to the problem being highlighted itself which certainly is not.

 

If people want to get distracted by these people, then fair enough - that just shows to me they don't really care enough about the real problem to want it fixed anyway. If they did they'd simply be ignoring them, not giving them the attention they crave and going to with meaningful steps to sort the real problem out.

 

6 hours ago, Otis said:

It's criminal damage, I expect they'd think differently if they were spraying orange paint over your house/car or stopping you from getting to work.

Or perhaps don't worry about it because there are worse things happening in the world.

When the two things are so incomparable in terms of magnitude of harm, yes, absolutely that's what should be done. Or, at the very least, just a cursory evaluation of these folks while focusing most effort on the real problem.

 

Unless, as per above, using them as a convenient smokescreen to not take the difficult action on climate change appeals.

 

 

4 hours ago, Otis said:

The record temperature ever recorded was 56.7 in 1913. Over 100 years later this hasn't been beaten, yet you think we'll see 70c within the next 40 years.  

Absolute bonkers. 

It's likely that we won't see a temperature high of 70 degrees C in the next few decades.

 

What we will see, however, is consistently higher temperatures on average which will result (and are resulting already) in increased incidences of extreme weather, drought and flooding that will have consequences on access to food and potable water for up to a billion people in the equatorial regions. The knock-on effects of that will be...interesting.

 

 

3 hours ago, Fazzer 7 said:

I’d wager there’s quite a lot of utter hypocrites in their midst. 

 

Fallacy.

 

Partaking in society does not make one hypocritical for acting in favour of that society becoming better in terms of how it does things.

 

Especially when such solutions don't actually have to result in a reduction of quality of life - there's a number of ways to transfer to a less carbon-emitting society while still enjoying all the luxuries we enjoy today.

 

1 hour ago, kenny said:

The first point was:

 

No one can argue that is good. It’s utterly disgusting and it’s happening day after day 

 

Which is in reference to an article whereby storm water has discharged mud into the sea that has been shown to be free from sewage.

 

The next point was:

 

Whataboutery defence aside there. It’s known the government is allowing sewage to outputted into the waterways of this country. Can’t be disputed and my main point still stands. 
 

Yet a portion of the nation are outraged by someone throwing paint on windows 

 

It is a fact that the water authorities in this country do and have always discharged sewage mixed with flood water at flood exceedence events. This occurs in most developed countries as the infrastructure has not improved as climate has effected the nature of rainfall in the northern hemisphere.

 

The paint chuckers are pointless virtue signallers.

And yet, you accurately point out issues with the rainfall the UK is having these days which is leading to this kind of situation. The reason for that change in rainfall is the exact reason those "paint chuckers" highlight.

 

Their actions may well be pointless. The cause they highlight most certainly is not.

[Dahnsouff]

5 hours ago, leicsmac said:

….

 

Their actions may well be pointless. The cause they highlight most certainly is not.

So, and this to me is the million dollar question, how to reconcile these two viewpoints, both of which are true (ish)

 

I will admit that I do see the value of the paint, it keeps the crisis from leaving our consciousness, but is it less valuable than giving the cost of the paint to fund better insulation, or another improvement to tackle, rather than advertise, the crisis. Maybe the very fact it gets 1% of news is the win?

 

I get that the advertisement may potentially cause progressive action in others, but I do wonder if it does? Is there evidence it does have a beneficial effect? As if it is confirmed that it does, then yes, I will go buy an expensive pot of Farrow and Ball and throw it at John Lewis

[leicsmac]

Just now, Dahnsouff said:

So, and this to me is the million dollar question, how to reconcile these two viewpoints, both of which are true (ish)

 

I will admit that I do see the value of the paint, it keeps the crisis from leaving our consciousness, but is it less valuable than giving the cost of the paint to fund better insulation, or another improvement to tackle, rather than advertise, the crisis. Maybe the very fact it gets 1% of news is the win?

 

I get that the advertisement may potentially cause progressive action in others, but I do wonder if it does? Is there evidence it does have a beneficial effect? As if it is confirmed that it does, then yes, I will go buy an expensive pot of Farrow and Ball and throw it at John Lewis

For what it's worth, I think such gestures really don't have much utility even for for their (low) cost, so I tend to view them as not really worthy of attention, certainly not worthy of newsreels. So they're really doing mostly pointless things.

 

At the same time, the information on what is going on is out there for everyone to consume and understand, so if people want to get hung up on such stunts and so not devote as much time to the real issue by saying or doing something meaningful themselves, that's their choice and their responsibility for things not getting done too.

[SecretPro]

6 hours ago, FoxesDeb said:

Some might say chicken feed

Sorry about that 

 

Must have been a Freudian slip - Poultry are genuinely the number 1 polluter of Britain's rivers (a bigger problem than direct dumping from the Water Companies), but thats probably better discussed in the Environment thread. 

[grobyfox1990]

51 minutes ago, Dahnsouff said:

So, and this to me is the million dollar question, how to reconcile these two viewpoints, both of which are true (ish)

 

I will admit that I do see the value of the paint, it keeps the crisis from leaving our consciousness, but is it less valuable than giving the cost of the paint to fund better insulation, or another improvement to tackle, rather than advertise, the crisis. Maybe the very fact it gets 1% of news is the win?

 

I get that the advertisement may potentially cause progressive action in others, but I do wonder if it does? Is there evidence it does have a beneficial effect? As if it is confirmed that it does, then yes, I will go buy an expensive pot of Farrow and Ball and throw it at John Lewis

By engaging in the system? As I said the net zero review was due in last week. If all these so called people who care so much about the climate either responded, or got like minded groups together to respond/pressure their MPs, thats how change is forced. Shouldn’t be so hard to do if the average person is for transition. If they can gather a bunch of criminals together surely they can find some brain cells to engage in a transition debate. We have so many mechanisms in this country whereby you can force change. Climate is fashionable now, it appears to me most people are interested in ‘virtue signalling’ (hate that term..) or talking smack about their support for it on forums such as these without actually engaging or advancing on the topic 

 

edit - not too dissimilar to the atmosphere threads! Every day almost you see posts such as ‘done with lcfc clubs done mate what can we do it’s done’ then a UFS person says ‘singing section?’ Then radio silence follows..

Edited 1 November 2022 by grobyfox1990

[Dahnsouff]

1 minute ago, grobyfox1990 said:

By engaging in the system? As I said the net zero review was due in last week. If all these so called people who care so much about the climate either responded, or got like minded groups together to respond/pressure their MPs, thats how change is forced. Shouldn’t be so hard to do if the average person is for transition. If they can gather a bunch of criminals together surely they can find some brain cells to engage in a transition debate. We have so many mechanisms in this country whereby you can force change. Climate is fashionable now, it appears to me most people are interested in ‘virtue signalling’ (hate that term..) or talking smack about their support for it on forums such as these without actually engaging or advancing on the topic 

I would argue that by now is 100% clear what we can do on a personal level, and yes we need to lambast the Government, any Government, for not doing enough to tackle climate change, to press for the big changes, I know personally I have contacted my MP to complain which is sh&tty process, but I would also ask, are people also taking enough personal responsibility? We seem to only like convenient steps to tackle climate change at a personal level

[Dahnsouff]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63468313

 

Vote with you feet. Stop driving.

[SecretPro]

7 hours ago, yorkie1999 said:

Now that’s a funny subject about our rivers being dead that I don’t get, purely down to personal experience. I have fished rivers for nearly 40 years all over the country and there has been a massive decline in fish stocks over that time, and having talked to many anglers older than me, the boom years were the 50’s till the 80’s, when the rivers were at their most polluted, you only have to go down to the football ground to notice this because there’s no one sat there fishing anymore but in the 70’s it was packed.  Now, if you go down to the river soar or river Trent, have a look, it’s as clear and clean as anything, but surprise surprise, there’s not an angler to be seen and that’s because there’s hardly any fish in them. If you want to start fishing, fish near a sewage outlet, and you’ll catch, why? Because fish love shit and dead things.

Fish do like a bit of shit to be fair but fish generally aren't the best indicators of water quality, many species can eek out a living in some pretty shitty conditions. The death of our waterways is usually via the process of eutrophication over time and like with most ecological systems the best indicators are the little things, the insect larvae and aquatic insects which are the basis for the food web in most systems. Eutrophication generally kills off those insect larvae and other species which are vulnerable to changes (amphibians, white clawed crayfish etc), less insect larvae mean less food for those higher up the food chain like the fish, less fish is an indicator of less food and less food is an indicator of poor water quality, a lot of the time.

 

Of course eutrophication is a killer in many ways, usually via the proliferation of algae and the removal or suppression of oxygen in the water. High nitrogen in water is not good, no sir.

Edited 1 November 2022 by SecretPro

[Daggers]

7 hours ago, walkerleeds said:

What did we do with our sewage before it got dumped in the sea?

Stick your arse out of the window and drop it into the street.

 

And before that, just shit in the street.

 

And before that, just shit where you are and wonder why they haven’t invented streets yet.

 

And before that, into your hand and throw it at Ugg, and make some humorous grunting noises.