Darwinbots Forum
General => Off Topic => RANT => Topic started by: MightyPenguin on May 02, 2005, 12:59:08 PM
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Well?
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Never voted when I was there and don't plan to vote in absentia either.
I couldn't gives a rat's ass who gets into power. The whole lot of them are about as much use as a chocolate teapot.
Actually given the choice I would probably vote for the rat's ass!
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I always thought a 'none of the above' choice on ballots would be useful for voters to show their disgust without appearing apathetic by not voting.
Imagine the kind of message it sends when you say 'I went through all the trouble of getting to the voting booth on voting day only to not vote for any of you.' Ouch.
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I will probably vote Lib dem, although I want Labour to still be in goverment, twisted logic I know :rolleyes:
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All the parties suck. None of them will ever represent younger people, its simply not worth there time because we dont vote. Much better to spend the money on giving free money to pensioners.
Dunno if any of you noticed the perverse amount of time dedicated to trying to get pensioners to vote for various party, we are seeing the start of 'ageism'. Scrap council tax, tax cuts, free money and a host of other goodies for pensioners because they represent like 80% of the voting population. Nothing for people under 30.
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Much better to spend the money on giving free money to pensioners.
Free money eh?
What about the national insurance that they have been paying into SERPS (State Earnings Related Pension Scheme) all their lives.
about 3% of all earnings goes into this out of national insurance.
With a menial wage and working for 45 years and with minimal interest, this sum that the government forcibly took from each OAP comes to about 50,000.
If that same money had gone into a private pension scheme then it would be worth nearer to 500,000 probably.
Then they bitch and moan that they can't afford to pay the poor old pensioners the money that is rightfully theirs. They cut state pension until the OAPs are on the bread line.
Each person technically has a personal pension account though they just lump it all together into one fund which they then dip into to pay for other stuff.
Just imagine the scandal if a private pension company like Prudential did the same thing with your pension fund. It would make the ENRON scandal look like a picnic with Mary Poppins.
They have so many outs too. For example, if you don't pay NI for a single year, they cut your personal fund by about 5%, no matter how big it was initially. Take my case for example. I have now been away from England for 5 years and my NI pension fund is pretty much wiped out now. I paid into their crappy compulsary state pension fund for almost 20 years and I am never going to see a penny of it back.
I spent a couple of years dealing with this stuff profesionally as a financial consultant back in the late 80s.
The whole bloody government should be locked up for fraud if you ask me. The pension scheme is just a big fucking rip off!
I had better stop now. I'm starting to get annoyed.
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I'm not having a go at pensioners PY :P When I say free money Im reffering to the parties bribes to get pensioners to vote for them, not recieveing the pensions they paid into. I even agree that the state pension is just dumb. Im saying the government should be doing something about it so its not me that ends up paying the bill at the end of the day.
As you probably know the population is ageing in western countries and people are living a lot longer. This means that there are more pensioners for people of working age to support. So just how is the state going to fork out an ever increasing amount of cash to more people when they are getting reduced income from taxes due to less people of working age?
There are three real options.
1) Increase taxes for me
2) Decrease pensions
3) Increase the retirement age
None of them are good options but if no action is taken then the problem will just keep getting worse until we get a variety of nasty scenarios.
Also you may not be up on recent events over this side of the pond. Most of the private pension schemes have either gone bust or given very poor returns due to the stock market crashes, saying people should have invested in private pensions would mean there would be even more people relying on the state for support. The current shortfall in private pensions is £160 billion (count it).
You add all this up and then note the fact instead of taking action to reduce the future costs they are increasing pensions, giving tax breaks, handing out bribes (literally) and have already backed down from making the public sector retirement age 65, your left with the fact that not only are they doing nothing to solve the problem they are actively making it worse for there own short term political gain.
Maybe this should be moved to the Rant forum :D
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Maybe this should be moved to the Rant forum
Very probably :D
(topic moved. forward link left behind)
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ON THE SUBJECT STUFF:
Who the hell wanted Linkin Burthsday and Washington Burthday to be called 'Presidents Day', sounds like revolution is comming if they put away the names of ower 'founding fathers' -Michal Savage (some mean, talk show radio)
AND I VOTE FOR MY GRANDDAD TO BE PRESIDENT, if he was well enough , god bless him...
(dont reply)
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Bots, this is about the BRITISH election (which takes place TOMORROW, by the way). Fuck the Yankees.
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I always thought a 'none of the above' choice on ballots would be useful for voters to show their disgust without appearing apathetic by not voting.
Imagine the kind of message it sends when you say 'I went through all the trouble of getting to the voting booth on voting day only to not vote for any of you.' Ouch.
There is its called spoiling your ballot paper
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But you might do that because your stupid or incompetant.
I'd prefer a method that says "I'm smart enough to vote, but I hate all of you!"
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AAA finaly, you type "hr" in "[]" marks to get the extra line thing
O its the british election , dont know anything about that...
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You'd know if it was a us election because the bollot would look like:
Democrat
Republican
Waste Your Vote
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I voted for green party , sounded like green peace , wather its evil or not save the nature
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Labour got in. But they only have a majority of 66 seats- very nearly a hung parliment, if the Tories don't shatter into a hundred pieces for losing. Lib Dem are up 12 and the Tories 46.
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Labour is the conservative Republican-esque party, right?
Isn't Authoritarian Lassiez-fare (okay, I can't spell it) kind of opposite from what a labour party should be. I'd expect a labour party to be either communist or socialist.
That is, having the interests of labour in mind.
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:rolleyes:
Fuck me. Labour is centre right. When it was founded at the turn of the century it was *the*socialist party, taking over from the Dems as the Opposition. They founded the NHS and shit, but had to undergo idealogical reform after a series of blunders in the seventies put the Tories in power for two decades. They're still fairly left wing, pumping money into education (they introduced top-up fees, though) and the health service, but have whole-heartedly embraced the capitalist movement.
And, to be quite honest, they're a damn sight more left than the Democrats (the US ones, useless bastards that they are).
And I think Gorden Brown (the Lord Chancellor) would gut you if you said he's lassiez-faire.
Manifesto. (http://a4.g.akamai.net/7/4/15010/1/labourparty1.download.akamai.com/15010/manifesto_13042005_a3/flash/manifesto_2005.swf)
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Well then I'm really confused.
Maybe you can give us an idea of where all the parties are along the personal freedom/economic freedom grid?
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(http://www.bratch.co.uk/coven/political_compass.gif)
EDIT: Second Opinion. Notice they took different axis, so it's a bit hard to compare how we think of them.
(http://www.digitalronin.f2s.com/politicalcompass/images/enParties.gif)
(http://www.digitalronin.f2s.com/politicalcompass/images/enPartiesTime.gif)
(http://www.digitalronin.f2s.com/politicalcompass/images/USelection2004.gif)
EDIT: MORE!
(http://www.digitalronin.f2s.com/politicalcompass/images/axeswithnames.gif)
(http://www.digitalronin.f2s.com/politicalcompass/images/internationalchart.gif)
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We've has a consensus. The second one is the better.
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Then I'm right. Labour party is roughly Autoritarian/Capitalist.
That makes absolutely no sense.
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But their policies suggest otherwise.
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Hello I'm british bit to young to vote but everything that new labour promised we didn't get they siad they would give us stuff but they didn't and the country is going down the drain. theres my say
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That's mainly because some stupid twat decided to make Britain a part of the European Ecomomic Comunity.
Now what kind of dumb ass would tie the British economy to a bunch of southern European pillocks like the French and Belgians.
The Eurocrats in brussels have been penalising Britain for decades now. It's hardly surprising that the economy is going down the toilet. It's being dragged there by the morons who are already half way round the you bend and fast heading for the sewer.
And how about those lovely French farmers and truckers?
As soon as they get pissed about something what do they do?
They blockade the French ports so that British goods are completely locked out of Europe.
What the heck did the Brits do to them anyway? It wasn't our fault that the dozy dickheads spent the best part of a decade pulling strings in Brussels to hide their massive epidemic of mad cow desease while condeming poor British farmers who were quite willing to destroy an entire herd of cows because of a solitary case here and there.
Europe really gets on my bloody nerves. That's one of the main reasons I left the UK 6 years ago.
OMG It's a heck of a long way down from the top of this high horse
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Hehe, I think someone has some Euro-issues
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Hehe, I think someone has some Euro-issues
Oh Yeah!!! The EEC can go
There are plenty of countries in Europe that I like but IMO the EEC should just be disbanded. It is pretty close to comunism in my book.
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I'm not old enough to vote yet (only another 6 months ) but I wouldn't vote for any of the parties listed.
I'd vote for the Monster Raving Looney Party To be honest their policies make the most sense to me.
Plus their name is awesome
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You have a good point Lyra
They would probably do a pretty good job if they did win the election.
After all, beneath their cool name they actually beleive that it's the other parties who are the real loonies
Oh and BTW your avatar doesn't work. I clicked it a half dozen times and I never once saw you naked.
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I whould vote for Green Party. That's what I do in sweden, voting for a green party called Miljöpartiet (environment party) I think the environment is most important, and those kind of parties are the only ones that haven't been able to prove themselves because they never get enough votes. I don't know if they can rule a country though.
And Lyra's avatar is just a picture, not a link.
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And Lyra's avatar is just a picture, not a link.
Yeah I figured as much. (possibly because I can see any code in peoples messages and avatars )
I thought it might at least have been a nice little animated gif or something that activates when you click it but no.
Lyra had to raise all our expectations then dash them to the ground.
Bad Lyra
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I'm sorry
It would be an animated one if I had the programs to do that sort of thing, but... I have paint. Which isn't the greatest =/
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You certainly need something a bit better than paint to make an animated gif.
One of the most useful little programs that I have used lately is Irfanview (http://www.irfanview.com/main_download_engl.htm)
It is a neat little viewer/editor that allows you to convert file formats, stretch or resize pictures and all without the crappy loss of quality that you get with paint.
Have you ever tried loading up a bitmap then saving it as a jpeg in Paint?
Talk about a crappy picture.
Irfanview does it perfectly and it' "FREE"
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When you put FREE in quotes like that, it makes me think you mean something along the lines of "free with purchase."
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I totally agree*
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I've learned long ago that FREE on internet means HIDDEN CHARGES.
I used a program called Gif Animator some years ago, wich was very simple to use. I don't know if I have any of those animations left though.
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How about you just imagine that there aren't any speach marks then?
So far I haven't found any charges at all with irfanview. I use it all the time for resizing photographs. and changing their type from bmp to gif or jpg.
I haven't figured out if it can make animation sequences yet but then I haven't eally tried. To be honest it doesn't seem to have any capability to edit anything, just change its format, size, compression and the like.
It claims to be able to create slide shows and stuff though.
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I use Irfanview too. It's a great program for handling images. I couldn't find a way to create animations with it though, but it's possible to extract images from GIFs and AVIs.
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everybody do the happy dance!!!!!
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I canot vote for I are too young