BRFR Cake Stop 'breaking news' miscellany

[Pblakeney]

I'm not entirely sure that we aren't twins who were separated at birth. Though I think my mum would have told me.

If you want a differential then I have a natural inability to play musical instruments.

 

[briantrumpet]

If you want a differential then I have a natural inability to play musical instruments.

I can probably match that with my complete inability to dance, though my attempts at tap dance could be put to good use in putting out ground fires.

 

[First Aspect]

My car has a combination of touchscreen and buttons.
The touchscreen is only used when parked for initial setup as I think they are a really bad idea (as above) but that's "progress".

I'm hanging on to mine because the replacement EVs I'm contemplating have touch screens. One (2nd hand EQE) has a dial on the armrest, which works well, but I can't justify the cost just now. Oddly, the refreshed version has the wankoscreen or something that extends across the whole dashboard, which is even less appealing.

I might just get an Alfa Brera or 159 and pocket the difference. It'll be a nightmare to own but nice to look at when it's broken.

 

[First Aspect]

I can probably match that with my complete inability to dance, though my attempts at tap dance could be put to good use in putting out ground fires.

Are you Roy Castle?

 

[briantrumpet]

Are you Roy Castle?

He was a bit of a hero - a pretty good trumpet player, who never smoked, but died in his 50s from lung cancer, from his days in smoky jazz clubs.

 

[Rusty Nails]

Interesting, if not surprising.

Being a dinosaur, can't say I'm a fan of them, but then equally I wasn't overly impressed by having 57 buttons available to my two hands on the hire car Fiesta I had a couple of years ago.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/full/10.1145/3746059.3747683

View attachment 11660

I get round that problem by not having a clue what half the buttons and controls do and only using half of the ones I do know about. I'll have to get round to reading the manual one day.

 

[briantrumpet]

If you want a really long read (on the state of the UK economy), this might be worth the effort (I've only got part-way through so far)

https://getting-out-of-the-hole.uk/

 

[PurplePenguin]

If you want a really long read (on the state of the UK economy), this might be worth the effort (I've only got part-way through so far)

https://getting-out-of-the-hole.uk/

View attachment 11661

They managed to annoy me with their first sentence.

 

[briantrumpet]

They managed to annoy me with their first sentence.

Which one? "The UK is in a hole"? It's pithy, at least, even if there are another 29,864 words after that.

On the plus side, there are quite a few graphs with zero Y-axes, if you just want to look at the pictures and not get annoyed by the words.

 

[Pblakeney]

If you want a really long read (on the state of the UK economy), this might be worth the effort (I've only got part-way through so far)

https://getting-out-of-the-hole.uk/

View attachment 11661

I proposed the below over on BR over a year ago, possibly more. It seems like a no-brainer and logical, even if it would hurt me personally at a financial level I can't see why it isn't done. It is fairer and streamlining tax can't be a bad thing. The only logical objection is that everyone would know their true tax level instead of the fudge we have now.

"The obvious answer is to abolish national insurance and raise income tax at an equivalent rate. This would simplify the tax system and strengthen work incentives. It would also raise substantial sums from people who don’t pay national insurance while enjoying high incomes. It would be bad for some poorer, self-employed people. But it would be progressive overall, because it would raise income tax on richer pensioners and self-employed people."

 

[briantrumpet]

Blimey. 'He rather closed off options for 'plausible deniability.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg4n0vxl376o

A teacher who described Islam as "satanic" and told pupils that "cocaine was purer back in the day" has been found guilty of professional misconduct.

The Teaching Regulation Agency, external panel heard that Patrick Lawler, who taught in Northumberland and Bristol, also brought the teaching profession into disrepute.

The teacher's views appeared in BBC Wales documentary Unmasked: Extreme Far Right, in which an undercover reporter infiltrated far-right group Patriotic Alternative (PA) and met members in parts of south Wales, and in England.

Speaking in 2024 to the undercover reporter at an event held by the group, he said a race war was "absolutely inevitable".

He told the reporter that "all" foreigners had no right to be in the UK and said if any refused to leave "the only way to get rid of them will be to kill every single one of them. And we will have to have hearts of steel to do that."

In 2019, Mr Lawler was employed by Bede Academy in Northumberland, and during what was due to be a class on medieval history, he instead started to discuss American civil rights activists, the panel heard.

It found that he told a visiting group of year six children that Rosa Parks "did not exist", and that Martin Luther King was guilty of plagiarism.

His comments were ruled "inappropriate and unprofessional", with the panel noting pupils of that age did not have the ability to challenge minority views presented in an "unbalanced fashion".

In a discussion about the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, Mr Lawler was found to have told pupils that "BLM" stood for "burn, loot, murder".

 

[briantrumpet]

I proposed the below over on BR over a year ago, possibly more. It seems like a no-brainer and logical, even if it would hurt me personally at a financial level I can't see why it isn't done. It is fairer and streamlining tax can't be a bad thing. The only logical objection is that everyone would know their true tax level instead of the fudge we have now.

"The obvious answer is to abolish national insurance and raise income tax at an equivalent rate. This would simplify the tax system and strengthen work incentives. It would also raise substantial sums from people who don’t pay national insurance while enjoying high incomes. It would be bad for some poorer, self-employed people. But it would be progressive overall, because it would raise income tax on richer pensioners and self-employed people."

And I guess that the suggestion of lowering the turnover level at which businesses must register for VAT wouldn't be such a big hurdle once 'Making tax digital' has been rolled out fully - the argument being that 'too many' people choose not to expand their businesses to stay under that limit.