Elsewhere (187)
Christopher Snowdon on Tory paternalism:
[Conservative MP, Dr Sarah] Wollaston wants the government to ‘tackle’ the alleged problem of cheap food. She also wants to tell shopkeepers where to position their goods, explaining her reasons in words so pathetic it almost makes me weep: “Do I want to have a kilogram of chocolate for almost nothing when I buy my newspaper? Of course I do but please don’t offer it to me, please don’t make me pass the chicanes of sugar at the checkout while queuing to pay for petrol.” Younger readers may not know this, but at one time the Conservatives were reputed to be the party of free markets and personal responsibility. In 2016, however, it is a party for people – grown, adult human beings, mind – begging to have sweets put out of their reach on other people’s property and pleading with petrol station attendants to put wine gums on the top shelf.
Kevin Williamson on the return of politically correct subprime mortgages:
Under its new and cynically misnamed “HomeReady” programme, borrowers with subprime credit don’t need to show that they have enough income to qualify for the mortgage they’re after — they simply have to show that all the people residing in their household put together have enough income to qualify for that mortgage. We’re not talking just about husbands and wives here, but any group of people who happen to share a roof and a mailing address. And some non-residents can be added, too, such as your parents. That would be one thing if all these people were applying for a mortgage together, and were jointly on the hook for the mortgage payments. But that isn’t the case. HomeReady will permit borrowers to claim other people’s income for the purpose for qualifying for a mortgage, but will not give mortgage lenders any actual claim against that additional income. This is madness.
Remember, citizens. Standards must be eroded for the sake of “social justice.”
And Toby Young on a modern heresy:
[Dr Adam] Perkins published his findings last November in a book called The Welfare Trait, but you won’t have heard about it or seen it reviewed in any UK newspaper anywhere because his research has been judged to be off limits by the self-appointed guardians of the academic establishment and their outriders in the media. A senior editor of Nature, one of the leading academic journals, refused to consider it for review because she regards scientific research into the personalities of the long-term unemployed as “unethical,” and a sociology professor whom the publishers had asked to peer-review the book refused to do so on the grounds that any book linking benefit dependency to personality must be nonsense because personality is a “capitalist construct.”
Feel free to share your own links and snippets in the comments. It’s what these posts are for.
I’ll just leave this here…
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/artist-to-sit-naked-on-a-toilet-for-two-days-to-protest-bullst-art-world-a6827351.html
HomeReady will permit borrowers to claim other people’s income for the purpose for qualifying for a mortgage, but will not give mortgage lenders any actual claim against that additional income. This is madness.
This is sabotage.
This is sabotage.
Well, if you wanted to jeopardise the wellbeing of millions and wreak havoc in the economy, this would be a pretty good way to do it. As we know.
wants the government to ‘tackle’ the alleged problem of cheap food.
What a time to be alive.
Dr Sarah Wollaston is not so much a Tory paternalist as a nanny statist. Our socialist NHS encourages such behaviour, because it provides few incentives for people to look after their own health while NHS costs keep rising, so we must all be nagged into eating, drinking and living in the manner deemed healthy by the Chief Medical Officer, the ghastly Sally Davies, and her acolytes like Dr Wollaston.
because personality is a “capitalist construct.”
Wow.
>please don’t make me pass the chicanes of sugar at the checkout while queuing to pay
Such things are ubiquitous, and have been for decades. And being ubiquitous are the sort of thing that should just become background noise that gets filtered out in wetware. Indeed, I don’t know how one can function in modern society without filtering out the adverts at a pre-conscious level.
And being ubiquitous are the sort of thing that should just become background noise that gets filtered out
You’d think. I’ve ventured into petrol stations countless times and have generally managed to pay and escape without buying other things that I definitely didn’t want to buy. And I don’t spend my time in the queue fixating on wine gums and chocolate, and whereabouts they should be shelved so as to avoid tempting me, as if my mind were not my own.
I’m heroic that way.
Apologies if this highlighted elsewhere, but I can see hope for those who want to be glamorous but irrespective of school uniforms, may never attain it.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/why-i-advised-brighton-college-over-its-trans-uniforms-all-schoo/
…please don’t make me pass the chicanes of sugar at the checkout while queuing to pay for petrol…
Granted my experience with British gas stations is limited to that which I have seen on Top Gear (the British version, not the asinine ‘Murkan knock off), but if one is getting spilkes over having to see a Mars bar while paying for gas, couldn’t one just go to a station where one can pay at the pump and avoid the “problem” ?
Guardian reader total lack of self-awareness warning!
https://t.co/hSP9Cek6Y4
Dan L. Longo, M.D., and Jeffrey M. Drazen, M.D. have a proposal.
“Or even”. More at the link. I’m not clear on who Dr. Longo is, but Dr. Drazen is the editor-in-chief of the NEJM and really should know better.
An acquaintance of mine groups this and another strange incident (of a woman who unwittingly was a prostitute for several months) under the intriguing heading of “Problems you didn’t even realize were options”, where something has not only gone wrong, it has gone wrong in a fascinatingly bizarre way.
Couldn’t one just go to a station where one can pay at the pump and avoid the “problem”?
Yes, but then you wouldn’t get the chance to impose your will on other people.
“because personality is a “capitalist construct.””
Heh! So people in pre-capitalist societies had no personalities? Or indeed the comrades living in the glorious Union of Soviet Socialist Republics?
a woman who unwittingly was a prostitute for several months
Damn it, man. Don’t leave us hanging.
Tory Paternalism
Exactly right, a modern irritation is seeing this stuff creeping into Conservative party policy. Many of us voted that way to avoid nanny states and authoritarianism.
The Velvet glove, Iron fist site is interesting on various issues surrounding the public health industry. One post quotes Simon Cooke:
It is hard to think of a section of government that so completely (and for its practitioners unconsciously) embraces the warnings about soft totalitarianism set out by Orwell and Huxley – and especially the latter with his observation that totalitarianism would be a matter of acceptance not something violently imposed by a powerful, all-seeing state. Restrictions on our lives – repeat the mantra of don’t smoke, don’t drink, eat the right food – are accepted because the experts with their evidence tell us that embracing these restrictions is the right thing.
I used to work with some of these people, btw. I wish I could foget the numerous oversized egos and the endless meetings; meetings to decide what we were going to talk about in the next meeting; people loudly saying “I can’t do that, I’ve got meetings all that day; the bitching; the time wasting and so on
The spam filter is twitchy again. If anyone has trouble with comments not appearing, email me and I’ll set them free.
Tackling cheap food:
1. Abolish CAP/ farming subsidy; and
2. Reduce benefits/family allowance so to make it proportionally more expensive.
Damn it, man. Don’t leave us hanging.
In retrospect, I suppose, it was perhaps obvious that that offhand remark would tend to grab one’s attention by the balls.
Here’s the story.
Short version: man suggests to woman “you should have sex with other people”, woman agrees, discovers these other people were paying the man, finds it hard to pin down what crime occurred since she consented to the sexual encounters.
To Julia’s link:
I was upset but managed to keep my cool and I cut short our visit by a week.
I think I see the problem.
Meanwhile, in the world of arthouse cinema.
The “Homeready” program will allow a single unmarried woman with multiple children who are also single unmarried parents and who receive governmental benefits to ostensibly “pool” their income to buy homes which none of them could otherwise afford. When you consider that in many of these households, the residents receiving welfare benefits are teenagers who are otherwise unable to sign mortgage contracts, what you see is a transfer of more wealth from taxpayers to the indolent class.
The program is also a part of the push to change the demographics of suburban neighborhoods, all in the name of social justice.
If personality is a capitalist construct, multiple personality disorder must be hoarding.
Kevin Williamson on the return of politically correct subprime mortgages:
Zero-down-payment mortgages are back in San Francisco
Might . . . .
While remembering that there’s a hipster born every minute.
Indeed, I don’t know how one can function in modern society without filtering out the adverts at a pre-conscious level.
Usually by age twosomething one has learned to filter out the bits about having to remember how to balance while standing. Variations follow.
Remember, citizens. Standards must be eroded for the sake of “social justice.”
We are governed by…
(a) morons
(b) criminals
(c) criminal morons
Or indeed the comrades living in the glorious Union of Soviet Socialist Republics?
I’m reminded of the old Soviet joke that Leonid Brezhnev wanted a cult of personality like Stalin had; the only problem was that he didn’t have a personality.
My first mortgage, 25 years ago, was largely paid by flatmates. The bank would let me assume a small amount for boarders per week. Board is taxable income though.
As usual, it’s the dose that makes the poison. A small amount added to income for house sharing is OK, provided the owner can carry the load individually for a while if required.
No-one in their right minds will lend to shared mortgages between friends though. You need one person whose life can be ruined to focus the mind on repayment.
Chester, but did you actually declare the income for tax ? In some places a single boarder can be taken on tax free.
It was a common enough tactic when I was first on the housing ladder myself.
Regarding the accidental prostitute, she was ok with *acting* like a whore, but finding out that her boyfriend/pimp was benefiting fiscally from her promiscuity makes her feel “gross and alone”?
I’m having difficulty framing my contempt for this brainless bint, and for the “values” that led her to think her lifestyle, whether professional or not, was morally neutral. File under “karma” I guess.
Pity she’s unlikely to recognize just how she’s responsible for her own degradation, or adjust her behavior and mores to avoid a comparably stupid scenarios in the future.
Hopefully the entire story is a Penthouse Letter fantasy, but in this day and age, who can tell?
Ed, no I didn’t declare the money to the taxman. Probably the most illegal thing I have ever done. Only lasted a year, as I sold the house to shift towns.
A senior editor of Nature, one of the leading academic journals, refused to consider it for review because she regards scientific research into the personalities of the long-term unemployed as “unethical,”
But she doesn’t see an ethical problem in suppressing research?
But she doesn’t see an ethical problem in suppressing research?
I haven’t read the book yet, so I can’t speak to the particulars of Dr Perkins’ research. It may be flawed; it may be incisive. I’m not sure how it would be “unethical.” But it’s interesting to note the excuses made for not wanting anyone to find out. It seems to me that the possibility of learned dysfunction, and differences in disposition and psychology, are not unobvious from everyday experience and would be worth exploring. Unless, of course, some questions are no longer to be asked in our fearless, progressive age.
Speaking of research, My Life As A Badger.
When one sleeps in a hole one has dug in the ground, it is important that it be an accredited hole. Read the whole thing, as the kids say.
I find the comment of the Sociologist most bizarre. Even ignoring the implication that people in non-capitalist economies don’t have personalities, which is just silly; if capitalism really did create personalities that were inimical to the operation of the capitalist economy, then that would be a Very Important Discovery. The Sociologist ought to welcome the research – especially if ze was of a leftist disposition.
“Do I want to have a kilogram of chocolate for almost nothing when I buy my newspaper? Of course I do but please don’t offer it to me, please don’t make me pass the chicanes of sugar at the checkout while queuing to pay for petrol.”
Sarah Wollaston does not genuinely think like that, but British public discourse has become so infantilised that, despite her degree in medicine from Guy’s and over twenty years clinical experience, she feels it necessary to adopt the “Ooh, look at me, I’m a middle-aged woman and therefore a helpless chocolate addict” persona (as seen in a trillion Facebook posts) in order to speak unto the great unwashed.
It’s beyond pathetic.
My Life As A Badger
Swear to God, I think I read this exact same article in National Lampoon when I was a college freshman in the early 1980’s. Except they took out the sex.
“Do I want to have a kilogram of chocolate”…I’m a middle-aged woman and therefore a helpless chocolate addict…
Indeed, and who the hell, other than a chef, baker, or someone preparing for Halloween, buys 2.2 pounds of chocolate at one wack ?
Wollaston wants the government to ‘tackle’ the alleged problem of cheap food.
Wollaston’s evasion is quite breath-taking. The problem isn’t cheap food. It’s the fact that stupid people behave in ways that are not only costly to their health but also, thanks to our socialist healthcare system, costly to others.
I’m having difficulty framing my contempt for this brainless bint
She claims she’s studying engineering! Might want to give her designs a wide berth.
Fun with magnets:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJHlwJ1gsms
@Microbillionaire – Cool story, but one thing doesn’t make sense to me. If the paying customers played along at being friends with the boyfriend, they must have known she wasn’t in on the scam. So the john innocently asking the accidental prostitute if she was using the money to go to school doesn’t rely make any sense.
Really make any sense, dammit.
FMM
http://www.purdys.com/Almost-Perfect-Online-Exclusive-P934C108.aspx
Cheers
Farnsworth – pay-at-the-pump fuel stations are slowly being introduced to Blighty, but they’re still quite rare.
I don’t think the big petrol station operators and franchisees are terribly keen on them, because the profit margin on fuel is so thin they need to entice you in for a nuclear-hot coffee, a packet of Scampi Fries, and maybe one of those naughty magazines from the top shelf, just to break even.
Anyway, paying at the pump just creates more problems for nominal adults with the self-restraint of a toddler. What if you can’t stop yourself from buying the full £99 worth of fuel? What if you start drinking the stuff? What if you decide to have spontaneous gasoline fights like in Zoolander?
No, the State must step in and assign everybody a fully trained and accredited Mum. Or perhaps a specially trained helper monkey that will latch on to your leg and bite your genitals if you so much as look at a packet of Revels.
Steve–
. . . they need to entice you in for a nuclear-hot coffee, a packet of Scampi Fries, and maybe one of those naughty magazines from the top shelf, just to break even.
For heaven’s sakes, don’t they sell beer at gas stations in the UK?
> I’ll just leave this here…
> http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/artist-to-sit-naked-on-a-toilet-for-two-days-to-protest-bullst-art-world-a6827351.html
This one is interesting, it sort of looks like it’s actually satire about the normal sort of absurdist art we see on here:
> Ego and pretense has seriously f**ked with the quality of work being made in the art world, I’m also tired of the bulls**t trendy art dialogue about how the art world is driven by rich people who want shiny work and don’t care about meaning as well. But mostly I think it will be weirdly fun to be naked in public. [emphasis added]
Which amuses me; but the most amusing thing about that article would have to be this [nsfw] picture:
http://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/styles/story_large/public/thumbnails/image/2016/01/22/12/76ad6f_4f2fd0659bc54c22a67d1aa206a69f31.jpg
Combined with this description:
> Photographer Mathilde Grafstrom takes pictures of women who don’t have traditional model looks to combat negative self-image. Her Copenhagen exhibition was closed down by police in December, prompting complaints.
Yes, I know Scandinavian women have a reputation for being hot, but come on guys, that’s getting rather ridiculous.
For heaven’s sakes, don’t they sell beer at gas stations in the UK?
Well, from a realistic point of view, there’s that drinking and driving bit.
From the point of view being demanded of all of us, well, do the math. Once back into the car, one hand has the cigarette or candy bar, the other hand has the glass or can of beer, How is the poor, belagered or enbeered, hipster going to hold the the cell phone???!?!?
I’m wondering how one arrives at this attitude, the gist of which is, “How dare someone quote something bonkers that I said on a public forum?”
Lol. “Deliberately quoted”…