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chem1st

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About chem1st

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    sciency stuff
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    chemist

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  1. Indeed. There should be another few threads on it (Mathers black beer). I've wrote a few over the years, I don't know why they have been deleted? Or perhaps they have been moved to an archive? Is there anyway of finding them? One regarding it being a Yorkshire drink, and another regarding it being duty free and calling for other drinks to be duty free, and one in 2012 lamenting it's imminent demise due to the Tories. George Osbourne killed it off, I recall writing a thread on here titled "RIP Mathers black beer ..." in 2012, I posted about the history of it being exempted from tax (alcohol DUTY) in the 1930s depression, else it would have been discontinued then, and lamenting a future where it ceased to exist if the company making stopped production, because of the proposed tax change by George Osbourne. The tax was not brought in, in the 1930s because it would not have collected any tax, in the first place, it would have caused production to cease, jobs to be lost and a British (& more importantly Yorkshire) product (and a part of Yorkshire culture) to disappear. I was advising people to stock up and arguing for it to be exempted from tax again. There should be a campaign to make black beer tax exempt, so that production in Yorkshire can be restarted, restoring/creating jobs and allowing the public to once again purchase and consume the traditional and medicinal beverage. If black beer was once again exempt from alcohol DUTY, then more tax would be collected (income tax, VAT etc.), and the product could also be exported bringing in much needed foreign currency, helping to address the balance of trade, albeit only by a small amount, anything to narrow the trade deficit we have with the rest of the world should be welcome because we haven't had a trade surplus since 1998!
  2. ONS, as usual. And it can easily be found out via google and other search engines. Using data and stats regarding housing tenure, and also regarding HB and LHA claims. There are well over 5million housing benefit (HB + LHA) claims. Just over 8 million households rent, - we can be generous and round it up to ten million. Thus, we can see using simple back of a DUTY FREE fag packet (or pre-2000 UK DUTY PAID fag packet) calculation, that over 50% of those renting have their rent paid in part/full by the state. If UB40 were to release their single, "One in Ten", with the lyrics; "I am the one in ten", today. Then they might be referring to the one in ten of housing benefit claimants who are registered unemployed and claiming JSA. Or perhaps the proportion of economically inactive people who are claiming JSA (not all of these claim housing benefit). Rather than the number of people 'unemployed'. It is also worth noting, when information is published regarding housing affordability, it is often regarding affordability AFTER housing benefit is taken into account. Housing benefit often being classed as income (you'd be surprised how often it is counted, but not openly referred to!), as in the recent English Housing Survey... Some more information from the 2013-14 EHS https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/461439/EHS_Households_2013-14.pdf
  3. Funny that you can fly from 14...
  4. More than 1/2 of tenants can't pay their rent as it is. With the majority of tenants receiving some form of housing benefit/LHA to help them pay their rent.
  5. We can ensure GDP has risen and will rise by increasing a fictitious number used to calculate GDP. Debt as a fraction of GDP then falls. We could include an imputation for sexual activity between partners based upon how much a prostitute may charge. This would allow GDP to rise substantially when the economically active and economically inactive get their end away. We already estimate a figure for prostitution, so surely we ought to include a figure for sexual activity between partners when money does not change hands. To ensure fair comparison between countries where prostitution is more/less prevalent.
  6. 12.3% of the economy (GDP) is rent and imputed rents. 8.9% of GDP is imputed rents and totally fictitious. 3.4% of economy is actual rent paid, and much of that is paid for by housing benefit and LHA. Housing benefit sets minimum rents, which in turn set imputed rents. These imputed rents make a massive contribution to GDP, even though they are fictitious. Most of the growth we have seen has been in rents and imputed rents, and it is due to increased housing benefit spending and the subsequent increase in fictitious imputed rents. The economic recovery is merely a manipulation of GDP via manipulation of imputed rent. Pretending an empty room in a house generates more GDP than it did previously is not a real economic recovery. We could remove 9% of GDP in the stroke of a pen and nothing would change. We could remove a further 1%, by significantly reducing rents, and vastly improve the living standards of millions of tenants in the UK and make the economy much more competitive in the process.
  7. Businesses like B&Q should be thriving, there ought be a building boom and houses being thrown up by the million. Within a few years they could close down, after a few years of tremendous trade, when the common man would be left in a home of his own, and the housing crisis would be over. Instead they struggle, as does the common man.
  8. http://www.sheffieldforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=505717 Discussed here previously. Sheffield Shiling has a nice ring to it And it would be great to have 240p in a pound.
  9. People are left destitute and forced to rely on foodbanks. This did not used to happen. We used to have a de facto basic income for all. In some respects we still do, but this is now much lower than it used to be and far harder to claim due to a very harsh means test. Sanctions do nobody any favours and they do not help people back into work, they prolong people's unemployment, cause mental health problems and even physical health problems, leading to many people ending up on the sick for long periods, instead of remaining on unemployment benefits for a short period before finding work. I'm not totally against having some form of sanction and punishment for those on certain benefits, but the way sanctions work now is counterproductive and does nobody any favours. A sanction should be a proportion of income e.g. 20%, not 100% of income. If I was to stab you multiple times and chop off your head, I would be housed, fed three meals a day, and have access to many things, library, gym heating, showers etc.. Yet if unemployed I would not be treat as well as this, and what meagre benefits I would be entitled to, could be sanctioned for up to 3 years for minor infringements of the rules, e.g. being a minute late for an appointment. Treating unemployed people so badly makes no sense whatsoever, and if a pregnant women is sanctioned, there is subsequently serious risks to her child due to her lack of income and ability to eat properly among other things. This can have serious affects upon the child and that is an insane risk to take, as the future citizens of this country can be harmed, and the financial consequences of such actions can be well into the millions of pounds to the society/country. ---------- Post added 21-02-2016 at 16:12 ---------- The state is not openly forcing poor people to have disabled children, but it's policies increase the likelihood of this happening, so essentially it is forcing the poor to have disabled children via poverty. Is it worth risking the health of future citizens for the sake of a few quid now, when the cost to the country could subsequently be in the millions? Surely we should give UK citizens the best start in life, one way of doing this is ensuring the mothers of UK citizens have a basic income that is secure and cannot be reduced by the state. Are you saying you are happy to put at risk the health of UK citizens before they are born?
  10. The benefit regime is much more strict now than it ever used to be, for both men and women, but particularly for women.
  11. if this happened, people who have been flying planes for over half their life would be unable to drive a car legally on public roads.
  12. People already have a number, and are identified by multiple identifications systems without their knowledge, information is collected and can be accessed by people with security clearance. Most people carry technology which identifies their location, can record all speech, and film you without your knowledge as well as myriad other things. Technology produced by companies which also make robots capable of killing humans based upon their own 'will' if you like, and can identify individual humans in mutliple ways. They can for example identify a person many miles away by visual characteristics without their knowledge. They can be programmed to kill certain individuals and are able to do this from many miles away, automatically. They are currently being used to man certain borders as sentries, and although they require human authorisation to kill by international law and currently when used to kill, humans must make the decision at this moment in time, they are more than capable of doing this without human authorisation, and laws can and will be broken. Ironically these robots are called LAWS.
  13. Forcing poor people to have disabled children. This is not something we should do, rather it is something we already do. It is something we need to stop happening. We apply stresses and strains upon poor pregnant women, not faced by previous generations, we restrict their incomes and deprive them financially, subsequently denying them the ability to eat a healthy diet, or enough calories to ensure they are fed well. This has knock on effects and hurts their children, leading to some of them to be born disabled. It is akin to Zika virus, but in our country, the willful harm of the next generations is confined to those of lower class. Because of this, it is not raised in polite conversation, seldom is it raised at all, and there is no fear about it in the media, unlike the fear of Zika, as Zika knows not of class boundaries and will harm poor and rich children, hence the fear of it. What is it, I talk of? Sanctioning pregnant women of course. How do we stop it, for starters we stop sanctioning women we know to be pregnant, but we must then also realise we have to stop sanctioning all women, as they may be pregnant and ensure they have a basic income so that they can always eat. Because when a women falls pregnant it is not instantly known. Basic income and the ability to eat healthily are fairly simple concepts and have been in place for many decades, only recently have we started denying people these basic social safety nets. The only women who could be sanctioned, without there being a risk of harming future citizens are those who are infertile, as depriving them of income does not risk harming a future generation. At the end of the day we shouldn't sanction anybody, but we must definitely not sanction pregnant women, and women who may fall pregnant. What do you think of this? Perhaps you fully agree with sanctioning and think it makes financial sense to sanction pregnant women and save £70 for a few weeks, then pay out disability benefits for life for a disabled child that can never work, due to the harm inflicted upon it before birth when it's mother was starved by the state?
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