BREXIT

For anyone using only Netsurf, Rick’s LOUDLY CRYING FACE (U+1F62D) emoji gets displayed only as the last four digits of the code point value, which doesn’t have quite the desired impact.

ROD’s two beta browsers, though, differ somewhat: the RISC OS port (October 2019) of Origyn (OWB) displays just an empty rectangle, whereas the port of Iris finds a completely different and monochrome version of a loudly crying face and displays that. Where from, one wonders.

Don’t even talk about what happened when we took a cockatiel on holiday. Suffice to say that one country didn’t care while the other demanded certificates, home quarantine, and three visits from a MAAF approved vet.

To be fair, isn’t there still an asymmetry regarding some animal diseases across The Channel, due to the UK being an island, wildlife being less good at swimming, and all that? So taking stuff from the UK to France isn’t necessarily a big deal for the French, but bringing things back could be a much bigger deal for the UK.

wildlife being less good at swimming, and all that?

Birds, meanwhile… :-)

gets displayed only as the last four digits of the code point value, which doesn’t have quite the desired impact.

Indeed. nemo isn’t here right now. I bet he knows the emoji by numerical value…

Where from, one wonders.

I presume part of the installation contains a range of extended fonts? I don’t have a copy of Iris so I can’t rummage around and see what/where.

Two hours left. I think I’ll watch Blade Of The Immortal. It lasts for two and a half…

The queues can be very long and slow.

Hmm. I fear you might be delusional.

I’m reminded of a group trip I made to Belgium a couple of years ago to indulge my “other” hobby. Most of the group turned out to be staunch Remainers, but one of the older, and more peripheral members was very vocally Leave and had been causing a certain amount of “annoyance” over the past few days by shouting “BREXIT” at waiters and hotel staff, whilst generally behaving in the delightfully cultured way that some Brits seem to do when abroad.

On arrival back at Manchester Airport’s Customs & Immigration (at some unreasonably late time on a Sunday night), we walked down the long hall, marvelling at the insanely long queue for “Non-EU” before joining the much shorter, but still very long and very slow queue for “EU Nationals”. Our favourite elderly companion was soon complaining (with apparently genuine distress) that he was struggling to stand in the queue; several of his more annoyed co-travellers simply pointed back up the hall to the end of the other queue and said “Stop whining; next year¹ you’ll be able to join that queue instead”.

There’s been a similar discrepancy in queue lengths every time I’ve been through Manchester Airport; I can’t say that I’m relishing my next trip.

¹ As it was at the time. Clearly getting Brexit done was harder than it at first seemed.

Happy independence day!

Okay Boris… Got Brexit done yet?

My God.

Just switched to a news channel that was reporting on the “celebrations”. Oh look, a bunch of mostly middle aged white men, quel surpris, listening to twat Farage. Then talking to some random people who are saying it took so long because of the remainers, blah blah… Such anger, resentment, and seething malevolence…and that’s when they were getting what they wanted.

As an aside to the folly of Brexit over the past three and a half years, it seems something has been slowly crawling out of the shadows. Something rather unpleasant.

Well, Farage’s Britain didn’t last long, did it?

Railways are being nationalised. There’s not a polluting plane in the sky. The government is paying people’s wages. When did Corbyn become Prime Minister?

Oh, he hasn’t. Yet. It just took a single bat over in China to show those obsessed with money the error of their ways.

For many years, the Tories and right wing bashed on Corbyn. Then the excrement smashed into the ventilation device at extreme velocity, and the government response was – after dithering and stupidity – to implement the sorts of things Corbyn might have thought up. In, like, three weeks.

implement the sorts of things Corbyn might have thought up. In, like, three weeks.

I saw a TV interview with him last week (a stop in the street type one) and off the top of his head he reeled off various measures they needed to take (tick items I recall zero hours contracts, self-employed…) and that’s just the employment/income side of things. He, and fellows, already had ideas.

Anyway, I did say BREXIT was bad – now look what’s happened.:^)

Oh, he hasn’t. Yet. It just took a single bat over in China to show those obsessed with money the error of their ways.

Oh some people are doing very well out of this. There’s a lot of money being made out of thin air to be thrown at certain parts of the private sector.

There’s a lot of money being made out of thin air to be thrown at certain parts of the private sector.

It might well end up as an interesting/valuable liner to their coffins. You just know the money that keeps the private sector funded is coming out of the pocket of the man on the street.

I’ve been interacting “face to face” (plus 2 metres) with colleagues that are also, officially, on annual leave so forgive me for any cynically loaded comments about people grabbing money out of this.

That’s my small break finished, back to work.

You just know the money that keeps the private sector funded is coming out of the pocket of the man on the street.

Isn’t that where it always comes from? It’s a circular process – You work and get paid. The taxman takes a cut to fund services, you buy stuff. The businesses use some of that money to pay their staff, round and round it goes.

Oh some people are doing very well out of this.

That’s not a surprise. There are some people so devoid of anything resembling morals that they do very well out of war.

It might well end up as an interesting/valuable liner to their coffins.

If this drags on too long, there may end up being big changes in how financial stuff is done. The banks can screw us over individually, but when it comes to numbers measuring in the millions, it’s a different proposition.

It is my hope that the forced lockdown will help to make the virus manageable, so that come summer time restrictions can start to ease and things can start to return to “normal”. There will, of course, be a financial shock and possibly a recession, but how much I think depends a lot more on what the people are willing to tolerate rather than the whims of the markets. And it’ll be up to the various governments and major financial institutions to make this work, because the alternatives don’t bear thinking about. Far better, really, to put everything on pause and pick up in a couple of weeks/months than to flail helplessly into complete meltdown.

That’s also something I don’t really get about American companies firing their staff. Yeah, it’s great for the shareholders because they aren’t throwing money at inactive people…but what happens when this passes and they need employees?

forgive me for any cynically loaded comments about people grabbing money out of this.

Why should we forgive you for speaking the truth? Some people are assholes. I only hope that in time the media will name and shame every last one of them.

but what happens when this passes and they need employees?

Do you really need to ask that , of course given that there will be a huge unemployed pool they will get those who are so desperate that they will take a job at any wage or contract type and so the cycle starts again.

The Americans did rather well from the Uk taxpayer in the last crash as they fined some of our banks/finacial sector rather a lot and who stumped up that cash, yea me and you as those banks took our money to stave off going bust.

As all this was set off by the sub prime market in America it is rather a good whizz by them.

Still when a rich person sells their stock just before the markets crash they are called brilliant whilst others are targetted for insider dealing..

“Jeff Bezos, the Amazon CEO, sold stock in early February just before the crash. He saved hundreds of millions in paper losses in the process.”

“Jeff Bezos, the Amazon CEO, sold stock in early February just before the crash. He saved hundreds of millions in paper losses in the process.”

Was that toilet paper losses? That would explain a lot.