Bendy bananas
Now you’re just making it easy.
Bendy.
B-A-N-A-N-A-S. (Sung in the key of Gwen Stefani)
I’m pretty sure they clean the bananas first, Jon–they’re not heathens.
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hahaha, you owe me coffee and perhaps a keyboard
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Does it state why the visas weren’t processed in time? I can’t tell if it was incompetence or Maleficence….
It doesn’t say, but if I remember correctly, visa provision is one of those areas that has been privatised or outsourced at least. So, rapacious incompetence is the most likely explanation. However, as the responsible department is the Home Office which has a well-deserved reputation for maliciously inhumane incompetence, eh. Modern Britain, my friend, don’t be ill, poor or foreign.
Another view from Germany: https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/britain-in-crisis-the-uk-faces-a-steep-climb-out-of-a-deep-hole-a-6b61dc6f-e33f-46f3-bd27-743364dd675c
Tl/dr jeez you guys are so screwed.
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First up, how did I not realise you had a Ragdoll as your pic before? I have a Ragdoll, best cat ever!
On to article, I like this stat
In 2008, the year of the banking and financial crisis, 12 percent of people in the UK believed that their children would be worse off than them. Now, that number is 41 percent, Ipsos has found.
I heard the US version on a podcast today, and their number was 80%!!! 4 in 5 believe their children will be worse off. UK feeling positive?
I am not in the UK, but from the outside it still seems pretty cool. Obviously it sucks to be poor (like it is in America), but otherwise it is still talked about favourably?
Heh, easy mix up because you can’t see the feet. He’s actually a Birman, one of 4 running around the StC household. My pic is a blue point, and we have a chocolate point and two seals. The seals are the best-natured, weirdest, dimmest cats ever. My previous picture was the original Spice, a bloody-minded tortie and constant reminder to be careful when you pick a throwaway forum name because you might still be using it a decade later…
My feeling from the outside looking in after, blimey, almost 4 years in exile, is that the corrosion of the last 7 years, and the last 13 years, is deep but mostly unrecognised, or denied. My German colleagues and relatives still like the UK and want to visit: the country‘s image is still good, and a bit of royal bling this year won’t hurt that. But economic stagnation can’t be ignored forever.
Is there anything better than watching them stab each other. I put it to you there is not.
It found that 37 per cent of people aged 35 to 44 had relied on formal lending, such as credit cards, overdrafts or loans in March, compared with 16 per cent of those aged over 55 and 26 per cent for the population as a whole.
My food bill alone is up 40% this year.
All of this was known beforehand and it made no difference at all.
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Disenfranchisement.
Some good news! You know how Germany is this amazing beacon of economic prosperity and growth?
About that….
Did you post this in the wrong thread?
It’s just a technical recession. A revision recession! It’s nothing to worry about! Look, the US news is (always) worse! (jingle, jingle)
Hmm… possibly I misread the room? Thought some low key positive news (UK is bad from self inflicted wounds but also others are bad) might help?
Ah, yes, the room is sensitive. For context, it’s been a rhetorical trope of Brexit believers to pick out bits of relative bad news from other countries, or selected data points, and go „see! it‘s not just the UK and therefore not Brexit, you remoaner snowflake stop talking Britain down democracy will of the people sovereignty“, or words to that effect. It’s on a par with climate change deniers using the existence of snowstorms to prove that global warming isn’t happening. Those of us who are … doubtful about the value of Brexit, shall we say … have had years of this kind of argument and tend to be irritable in its apparent presence 
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That’s fair! As a citizen of the colonies I thought Brexit was a spiffing idea, in theory. Tapped into the national identity when Britain was a great and sprawling empire, plundering the riches of the lands of those with weaker military, undisciplined nations or low tech.
It still boggles the kind big it was.
The size of the British Empire – the amount of land and number of people under British rule – changed in size over the years. At its height in 1922, it was the largest empire the world had ever seen, covering around a quarter of Earth’s land surface and ruling over 458 million people . - NatGeo
But to actually stick up the middle finger to the rest of the world? Ummm… wtf? This is the sort of stuff you simply talk about over a cup of tea in the privacy of your sun room. Not something you actually do.
But to think over 50% of the population are pure idiots is dangerous. I remain curious as to why they thought it was a good idea, and how it is going for them. Would they take the same decision again?