ThatBoyRonaldo

Hold up. Have I picked that up right? Dirty nappies hanging from door handles inside the house? There's a lot of stuff that gets posted here where you think 'aye I suppose that'd be a bit annoying' but relatively little that would really lower your opinion of someone. If I knew someone who willingly lived in squalor like that I don't think I could look them in the eye.

Great point. Back in ~2015 I thought Mason was a genius. Had the luck to be in the right place at the right time in that he was near enough the only person in the UK who seemed to get, or even take an interest in, Greece/Syriza around the time of the bailout. Then you had Postcapitalism come out and that was his thing for a while. Pre-Corbyn it was all genuinely very refreshing. Weird to think he's pretty much pissed away all that goodwill in favour of people who will literally never trust him given his former politics. Say what you like about the left of the labour party - the right are significantly more ruthless and have significantly longer memories. Of course, 'come to Athens, the revolution is happening' and that big stupit England flag face paint photo are the real high points of his career.

Peston has done very well off the back of about 2 weeks of work 12 years ago when we hadn't had a recession in so long everyone in the country except for the BBC economics editor had forgotten how the economy worked and he came across fairly well.

Can't believe I'm going to agree with 8mile here but Frank's is vile. Tried a new one I picked up in Tesco recently - 'Bulls Eye Carolina Reaper'. Certainly the hottest sauce I've ever bought in a supermarket but with a sweetness to it which is quite nice. Probably more for dipping than for mixing into a whole dish like you would with Tabasco or Cholula.

Terrific to see this thread is unreadable again. I know I've said it on this thread before but does anyone else find the discourse around Christmas just so infantile? I saw the Scottish political editor for the Times(!) tweet today about how there absolutely needed to be a UK-wide solution for families meeting up at Christmas as many extended families are spread across different jurisdictions. Surely if you've decided to live in a different country from your family, you're enough of an adult to celebrate Christmas with them via Zoom or something? The idea that our political leaders should make some kind of exception and temporarily lift restrictions for a single day just because it's Christmas is just totally wild to me. Even more so when you consider the Muslim community seemed to deal fine with Eid being cancelled with about 12 hours notice back in July. It's been obvious for months that a normal Christmas wasn't going to be possible, and yet it seems to have come as a surprise to some people.

Superb news

Yes - if this is the case it reflects really poorly on him, and not the government of the United Kingdom seemingly quibbling over £5m then going down to £22m out of sheer vindictiveness.

I'm obviously no expert here but it seems unlikely to me that absent real growth in the economy/wages the BOE will raise interest rates significantly at any point in the near future - the amount of precarious homeowners it would wipe out would surely be huge.

I don't have any religion but for the most part I'm a pretty live and let live kind of guy. I do find a lot of the 'gotcha' or 'well by your logic' type stuff applied to religious people tedious in the extreme though. I mean there was a post earlier in this thread making the point of 'why didn't God send his son to China which had a more developed civilization rather than the Middle East where things were more backward?'. Is this supposed to checkmate some devout Christian into disbelieving? You're talking to someone who believes an omnipotent deity operating outwith the bounds of time and space on a level completely beyond our ken controls the universe - they don't give a f**k that some p***k on a forum thinks they've found a flaw in the logic!

I'm very conventional in this regard having settled down fairly early with a wife, house, car etc (no kids yet) and I think I do feel like an adult but it's not for those reasons - it's more just about being secure in my own skin tbh. I know (more or less) what my priorities are in life, I know what my values are, I know who I can be arsed with and who I can't, and while I'm not perfect I'm fairly happy with my life, personality and choices. My wife occasionally says she finds me judgemental/stubborn but I tend to think I'd prefer that to umming and aahing my way through life taking everything and everyone at face value - I think that is connected to this feeling of adulthood. A couple of posters have touched on the politics of this question - if you are stuck living with your parents because you can't afford a deposit, or you are a graduate in a dead-end zero hours service job - it's important not to blame yourself for how you feel because the causes of your situation are at the very least in part much bigger than you are. Similarly, it's easy for me to say I feel like an adult, and easy for me to feel secure in my own skin as a middle class white guy with a good job, no dependents and my own home - ultimately it'd be fairly hard for me to f**k up badly enough to really threaten that. Self-help/positive thinking etc in a lot of cases will only get you so far - personally I think understanding the wider forces at play and realising that ultimately in a lot of cases there's only so much you personally can do about things by yourself can go a long way to helping with feelings of purposelessness etc.

Have a right thirst after reading these last few pages. Haven't got anything in the house but a week or two ago I tried a bottle of "71 Brewing Dundonian Pilsner". Very nice and went on their website to see about getting a case but £54 for 24 cans seems like silly money to me tbh.

Obviously whether the tube is actually a factor who knows but it wouldn't necessarily surprise me. I know a lot of people are still nervous about eating out, going to public places etc. I haven't been particularly, and aside from the odd cafe/restaurant that has poorly implemented distancing etc I've been fairly happy taking advantage of things reopening etc - but on a trip to Glasgow a few weeks back I took the Subway and I think that was when I found my limit. It didn't feel unsafe or anything but I was very conscious of the number of people in the carriage and the enclosed nature of it.

Tough team to get back in to isn't it. Probably the first time for years where there will be players left out the squad next time who'll be entitled to feel genuinely hard done by.

I'm sure there was a poster on here (@jacksgranda?) who said they had taken part in this - 'the most successful political strike in UK history'. Up the workers eh!

Went up Conic Hill the other day along with what felt like half of Glasgow. A very weird experience tbh.