dsr-burnley

The government is spending more, in both real terms of money and in terms of percentage of GDP, than any government since the war (apart from the covid and furlough year). By all means argue that they are spending it on the wrong things, but they are certainly spending it as if it wasn't their own (which it isn't) and as if they don't care whose children have to pay it back. https://www.statista.com/statistics/298465/government-spending-uk/

You're assuming that not more than 2% of them would leave the country, of course. Would that be true? Let's start with the very richest - the Hinduja brothers, tax exiles in the UK from India. If they were to be told they had to pay £700m per year for the right to stay in the UK, would they pay it? Or would they become tax exiles somewhere else? Or Jim Ratcliffe. He's already resident in Monaco, so getting 2% of his worldwide wealth would be impossible anyway. With £20m, you can set up a dodgy but hard-to-prevent foreign trust to hide the money, and it will cost less than £400k per year, and will have the added benefit of shielding the income and capital gains from UK tax as well. If only 500 of your 10,000 £20millionaires choose to do that, then there is a net loss to the Exchequer. Incidentally, £4bn sounds like a vast sum but in government terms, it isn't. It wouldn't run the NHS for a week, for example. It's £60 per person per year, spread out across the whole population. It would pay off 0.15% of the national debt, or it would pay the government's interest bill from now until next Wednesday. The government is unimaginably huge, far too big for tax-the-rich to have a significant impact. If tax-the-rich is to be a policy, let it be clear that it is a policy designed to appease envy and to make the rich take their money and investments and businesses elsewhere - it isn't a policy to raise money.

The problem is that both the Tories and Labour (and the Liberals and SNP, for that matter) all believe in high tax, high spend, sort of government that is incompatible with a low cost of living. Truss's theory that the economy needs to grow was bang on (even though her way of achieving it was miles off target). The current lot haven't got a plan for growing the economy, and as long as the economy doesn't grow but the population increases and the number of people paid to do nothing increases, then the cost of living will only go up.

Better leave an hour or two early in case the M62 / M6 are slow! Handy for the cricket, though. James Price is a good pro. But as Middleton got promoted to Lancashire League division 1 last year, I expect they'll lose more than they win.

It won't happen in every case, but at the very least an adult child living with parents should be contributing to the household expenses - enough that it isn't a net cost to the parents.

Surely even if there are grown-up kids living at home, the parents won't be supporting them? They'll either have a job or else enough benefits to live on. Mortgage payments are a valid point.

To say that a couple with gross income of £1,000 a week income and no mortgage is not "comfortable", is absurd. For example, you can have less than that and still afford two weeks' holiday in Europe (especially as they can go off-peak).

Presumably those figures are talking about CO2 reduction starting from the moment the fuel is in the truck. It doesn't include the CO2 used in generating the power, because obviously electricity is not (and probaby cannot) be generated entirely by renewable energy. We need to be careful about using agricultural land for power. There are 8 billion people on this planet who want to eat. Rich countries already use more than our share of the available farmland, and we're trying to stop poorer countries from converting forest to agriculture.

They ought to put more pressure on Egypt, who have also closed the border with Gaza. There are two million Palestinians. It should be plain to see why Israel isn't willing to give them shelter, but why aren't the Muslim nations - vast numbers over immense areas, they have plenty of room - providing accommodation for the 2 million Palestinians or as many of them as want to leave? The fighters can remain, the women, children, and non-combatants can leave until the fighting is over and the UN rescue package can start.

And of course they don't restrict it to rugby and boxing. Their logic applies to all sports where concussion is likely, which includes football and any team sport that involves two people chasing one ball, as well as horse riding, cycling, go karts, most athletic events, cricket, ... ... ... Surely the logical conclusion shouldn't so much be to abolish sport, but to insist that children wear crash helmets 24 hours a day until their 18th birthday?

It isn't possible to make it "safe". But then, it isn't possible to make being a passenger in a car "safe", or going to school "safe", or leaving the house "safe", or stopping in the house "safe". In fact, it isn't possible to make living "safe" because whatever we do, we die at the end. What they could do if they wanted to is assess the benefits brought about by various activities and see if the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. What they are doing is looking for evidence that a single child has suffered and using that as reason to call for a ban. If that's the criterion, then we might as well put children in solitary confinement in a padded cell until they're 18 to ensure they can't hurt themselves.

Perhaps the reason the police didn't take her seriously was because they could see that the mouth and nose of the two photographed children, were not the same shape. Same nose and different hairstyle, might be the same child; same hair but different nose, not the same.

Do you know what Hamas people are like? Did you see anything about the massacres at the pop festival? Do you honestly think you could be so evil?

Obviously you can't kill an ideology. The point of getting rid of Hamas is that Hamas is running Gaza and they need to be removed so someone else can run it. World War 2 didn't kill fascism, but it did get rid of Hitler.

Who had any idea that Israel was defenceless? It was certain from the beginning that Israel would wipe out Hamas if they went to war, as we all knew they would given the provocation. As for the things you don't agree with, how many of those were done by Churchill and the Allies in World War 2? They called for the eradication of the Nazis, and I'm sure there were people who described the Nazis as sub-human. We went to war with Germany, and women and children were killed. As for playing about with underwear, at least (unlike Hamas's actions) the women weren't still wearing it. There are three options: 1. Hamas is removed by Israel. 2. Hamas is removed by someone else. 3. Hamas is allowed to continue in government. Which one should be selected?

It's the same old argument that no country should ever go to war because of the collateral deaths of civilians. What's the practical alternative? Is leaving Hamas (who are no friend of the children of Gaza) in power, free to come and go and murder and rape, a valid option? If Hamas has to be got rid of, how can it be done without war? Where do the figures come from, incidentally? It seems an extraordinarily high proportion of children, bearing in mind that the total deaths of short of 30,000 includes close to 10,000 "soldiers". Are the figures reliable that say almost half of other casualties are children? Who provides those figures?

So why doesn't Hamas want a ceasefire? Why is Hamas fighting on? Have they any other purpose apart from raising the death toll yet higher in hopes that people will turn against the Jews and demand another Holocaust? One of the problems with this war is that people expect so little of the Gaza government. They see a terrorist get killed in a hospital, and they don't think "how awful, a terrorist sheltering in a hospital", they think "how awful, a soldier shot a terrorist in hospital". This is because Israel is expected to follow international rules and the Geneva convention or its modern equivalent, and Gaza is not. When Hamas fighters commit atrocities, it's a case of "what can we expect, they're Hamas. They're Palestinians. They're Arabs." Hamas are not being expected to behave like human beings. It is not expected of them. It ought to be expected of them. They are evil, as evil a group as can be found on this planet, I think most of us can agree - but they are still human beings and must be held to the standard of human beings. Why don't they surrender to the United Nations? Call for an instant ceasefire, promise to release all the hostages as soon as the UN arrives, and rely on UN protection? Israel would no doubt agree to withdraw in that event. (It might be useful if Hamas agrees to drop its stated ambition to kill every Jew, as well.)

I'd be surprised if there is an international law against it, frankly. Being in hospital does give combatants immunity from the process of war. (And Hamas have admitted that they were their "soldiers".) I think there might be an international law about using hospitals as a human shield, though.

To be fair, Hamas would have no reason to disguise themselves going into an Israeli hospital, because their targets would be the old, the sick, the children and babies. (Though I understand they are no longer holding any hostages under the age of 1 because their youngest had his first birthday earlier this month. If he is still alive.)

I think Doctor's point is that by restricting discussion about homosexuality in school to sex education classes, the USA is half-way down the same path that Hitler took towards gassing the Jews at Auschwitz. For some reason, it is important to him that any teacher who is inclined towards sexual intercourse with a member of the same sex, must be allowed to share that knowledge and practice with the four to fifteen year olds in his or her class. Regardless of what the parents think. To ban a kindergarten teacher from teaching the children about the theory and practice of homosexuality is (it seems) just the sort of thing that Hitler did. I agree, it's a stretch.

It's certainly a topic of interest in that I want to know about it and am interested in it. The answers have been helpful and informative. It's not "of interest" in the sense that I am going to get one, because it just isn't practical for me in its current form.

You think this drag law would or could be applied to women wearing trousers? They have laws about not letting children into films that aren't suitable; I don't see a great objection to children being banned from live shows that aren't suitable. Obviously it's a bit rough on people who want to appear before children wearing obvious fake breasts and ridiculous makeup, but let's face it - some people think that children should be protected from obviously sexual shows. I still don't know whether or not this law has been ignored in the past. If you're saying that no-one has ever broken this law and so trans people should be allowed to break it, then I disagree. If on the other hand you are saying that the law has been routinely broken without penalty, then I agree that would be wrong. Please post the examples (preferably not behind a paywall). As to whether the candidate guides should have been made clearer, I agree. But the US equivalent of the returning officer can't just ignore the law simply because the candidate guide was incomplete. I think your objection to my apparent illiteracy isn't that I am not reading what you say, because obviously I am. What you are objecting to is that I don't agree with what you say.

No point. I don't have a driveway and I'm not prepared to spend £10k+ on any car. I'll put up with having to use three pedals!

I find that gratuitous rudeness fails to persuade anyone to change their mind. Or perhaps you mean it literally, in which case I am happy to confirm that I am able to read and write. I don't subscribe to the Washington Post. Does it provide a list of times when candidates have failed to declare their previous names and the breach of law has been ignored?

Is this "smoother drive" simply because changing gears is such a faff for some people, or is it just the deceleration and acceleration of a gear change that is causing the angst? I have driven a petrol automatic, and didn't notice any advantage to it - perhaps because I'm just too used to suffering life's little difficulties and inconveniences such as having to change gear. Or am I missing the point? Is the better ride quality for some other reason?