[ilduclo]

“[Thatcher] destroyed the fishing industry, steel industry, the coal industry, you name it, it all went downhill from there,” said Kelly Brown, a welfare recipient in Grimsby, a port town that elected a Tory MP for the first time since 1945. “But now, I’m hoping Conservatives look back on their mistakes, and I’m hoping they’re going to bring some things back.”

[!@#$%!]

carlos ghosn fled japan, lmfao

guilty or not, i have no way to know, i’m happy for the bastard. the japanese criminal justice system is fucking brutal.

[_tunic_]

There was a very interesting article in the Dutch newspapers about Economy in the US. Here's the Google translation:

Mid-range US drowns: "If we were sick we would not go to the doctor"

Help, the middle class is drowning! It could be an appropriate title for a new movie. The middle class, once the backbone of society, is under pressure. The work of neat citizens with a permanent (office) job or a small business of their own is being taken over by computers at a rapid pace. The flexibilisation of the labor market also makes the middle income uncertain.

Amber Spradlin (38) is an English teacher in Choctaw, Oklahoma, mother of two boys and married to a fellow teacher. You might think average middle class family. But Spradlin and her husband have kept their heads just above the waterline in recent years.

She remembers how it felt when the youngest was just born and they both went to daycare. "Desperate," it was sometimes, she describes. The health insurance for the two little ones alone cost $ 1,000 a month. Then she had not yet paid for childcare, and the repayment of her student loan still had to be sent.

Star hunting in bargains

"All in all, I took home less than $ 1,000 a month," says Spradlin. She has become a star in bargain hunting, though. But vacations didn't represent much. ,, And if there was anything about our health, we would not go to the doctor. While we are insured. We could not pay the personal contributions, the costs of medicines. ”

The American middle class is having a hard time. The income of a middle-class family was about the same in 2016 as in 2000. For lower-income families it even declined - only high-income families improved in those years. The gap between households with top incomes and the rest of the Americans was therefore greater than ever, according to research center Pew. The American dream promised young people for a long time that they would get better than their parents - now half of the young Americans are no longer satisfied, according to researchers from the Equality of Opportunity Project.

Great effort

Teachers like Amber Spradlin belong to the group of well-educated citizens who have great difficulty in living a stable middle class life. The discontent is so great that teachers have started to strike, especially in states where power is in the hands of Republicans who cut funding for public services such as education. Amber Spradlin was part of a major protest campaign in Oklahoma in 2018. She didn't teach for ten days. Teachers also took to the streets in West Virginia, Arizona and Kentucky.

The angry teachers are not only concerned with their salary, which has sometimes not been adjusted for a decade. It is also about financing for education in general. Many American schools lack everything. Teachers regularly pay for paper and pencils themselves. They sometimes represent classes of more than 40 children.

Debts

Public schools in the US are largely funded by local taxes. Prosperous areas have good schools, in less-favored regions there is little money for schools and teacher salaries. Especially there, the threat of teachers leaving for financial reasons is very real, says Mark Webb, teacher of chemistry and local foreman of an interest group for teachers in Oklahoma City. ,, Sad, but real. You can earn $ 15,000 more a year in Texas. "

Amber Spradlin built up debts while teaching teenagers in Oklahoma proper English. She hopes to be able to pay them off now that her own children go to school and she has less to spend on childcare. The car also needs new tires. She doesn't have an internet connection at home - she has to do it with her phone and the internet at school. It is a blessing that she has just paid off her study debt, because she desperately needs the 200 dollars a month to pay for the car to get through the winter. "A home computer," she muses about the things she can't afford, "that would be great."

Additional jobs

Both Spradlin and her husband have another job to make ends meet. She works as a homework supervisor during the summer holidays, he runs summer camps. It is very common for American teachers to do odd jobs to pay the bills. Ask around in states like Oklahoma and Kentucky, and you get to know teachers who work part-time as a pool vendor, or are at the checkout at the budget store Dollar General. Uber has made a business model of the financial stress of teachers and masters: the taxi app focused on looking for drivers specifically for teachers who have to earn extra.

In addition to stagnated salaries, teachers and other working Americans face enormous costs. Higher education is so expensive that young people get into debt for decades, or their parents tap into the pension savings box. In some states, childcare costs just as much as training at a local university, and medical costs are for many Americans - 20 to 25 percent, research shows - a reason not to go to the doctor in case of health problems.

Worry about the future

"My daughter had to be admitted [in a hospital] a few years ago because of a blood disorder and we almost went bankrupt," says Nema Brewer (46), media specialist from a school district in Kentucky and daughter of a miner who has set up a protest movement of teachers in her state when pensions threatened to be undressed. She got Republicans, Democrats and party-less people going for a strike and demonstrations.

Brewer is worried about the future. When she started working 17 years ago, her health insurance paid 90 percent of the costs. Now that is only 80 percent, and she has to pay 20 percent herself, while healthcare costs in the US have risen. Treatments cost just five to ten times more than in the Netherlands. The medicines for Brewer's daughter, for example, had a price tag of 18,000 dollars. "When will the personal contribution increase further to 25 percent?"

Thanks to her activism, Nema Brewer has undergone rapid training in the functioning of American politics and government, and warns against the power of lobbying large companies. "If the middle class does not unite, does not realize that the government is not working for them, and remains divided along party lines, then we will be destroyed."

Towards the end of the article they say "Treatments cost just five to ten times more than in the Netherlands." This is actually untrue, even the basic health care is far more expensive in the US compared to over here, such as simple dental surgery meaning braces for kids. Oh wait yeah it's Sunday morning. like 250 is ten times less than 2500 doh.

[tw2113]

I still legit wonder why it's possible to charge so much. I then wonder why we keep going "we just need to raise more money to cover all this" when if we were to reduce the amount able to be charged, things like insurance could cover more for more people without having to raise even more.


Stop trying to solve issues by simply throwing more money towards it, solve issues by making it not cost so much in the first place.


Also preventive care could debatably cost less than reactive care. Getting tests done for heart conditions chances etc, instead of waiting till after the heart attack occurs, among other possible examples.

[!@#$%!]

ssssssso.... 21 days to brexit??

[h8kurdt]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

ssssssso.... 21 days to brexit??

*Klaxon intensifies*

[!@#$%!]

gbp/usd dropped *some* in the last few days but nothing catastrophic.

been holding today around... 1.30?

[h8kurdt]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

gbp/usd dropped *some* in the last few days but nothing catastrophic.

been holding today around... 1.30?

That shit better get sorted out by MArch. I'm off to New Orleans for MArdi Gras and I want my damn money's worth

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by h8kurdt

That shit better get sorted out by MArch. I'm off to New Orleans for MArdi Gras and I want my damn money's worth

1.30 is decent. 1.50 is maximum level (eg if you had remained). 1.20-1.15 is disaster.

all other things being equal of course.

mardi gras! you dawg

[!@#$%!]

so what’s happening in northern ireland? all i got was a headline, no article

devolved government... sinn fein what?

so who was governing northern ireland? man, british politics are so confusing

[demonrail666]

It would take forever to explain poliics in NI. Bottom line because tof irreconcilable differences in the region, it's reverted back to a power-sharing model where opposing parties (most notably Sinn Fein and the DUP) agree to share key government positions. The details are far more complex but that's pretty much it.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

It would take forever to explain poliics in NI. Bottom line because tof irreconcilable differences in the region, it's reverted back to a power-sharing model where opposing parties (most notably Sinn Fein and the DUP) agree to share key government positions. The details are far more complex but that's pretty much it.

thanks.
but the timing of the agreement...anything to do with brexit, or possible independence, or irish reunification, or anything like that?

[demonrail666]

I might be wrong but I don't think there's any issue with timing, t's just taken until now for the parties involved to strike a deal. Believe it or not, a major sticking point has been whether the Irish language should have equal status in NI with English.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

I might be wrong but I don't think there's any issue with timing, t's just taken until now for the parties involved to strike a deal. Believe it or not, a major sticking point has been whether the Irish language should have equal status in NI with English.

i believe it, and it makes perfect sense within the logic of those 2 parties and their objectives. one party wants reunification with the republic, the other wants loyalty to the english crown, it’s symbolic but it’s political.

the first spanish grammar (nebrija’s) was dedicated to queen isabella (yes, in 1492 also) with a prologue that mentioned “language has always been companion to empire.” this is right when “castilian” started to become simply “spanish”.

e.g. see: https://dle.rae.es/

or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langua...rancoist_Spain

language is political! and what constitutes a language or a dialect is more political than linguistic.

today see: catalonia. last century: basque country. but hey, galicians speak basically portuguese and i don’t think they want to split from spain.

[demonrail666]

Yes of course, language is was and always will be political, even when it isn't weaponised the way that it clearly is in places like Spain, or Northern Ireland.

[Genteel Death]

Can we stop hearing demonrail666's opinions about Brexit until it really happens?

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Genteel Death

Can we stop hearing demonrail666's opinions about Brexit until it really happens?

???

[!@#$%!]

so putin wants to be czar and his cabinet quits? not in protest—but to let him. hahahahahhahahaaaaa

wow

[!@#$%!]

images from paris museum collections released free to the public

https://hyperallergic.com/536360/ima...to-the-public/

[h8kurdt]

Hard-line Brexiteers and the major rags are currently wetting themselves with fury that Big Ben should ring at midnight on the 31st to signal Brexit. Decided the only name suitable for these people are bong mongs