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Thread: A Very Dark Future

  1. #1

    Default A Very Dark Future

    Deeply worrying news this morning.

    BBC News suggesting that the Covid19 pandemic will bring about the worst recession in 300 years. Meanwhile, Sky News are reporting that Brexit talks are close to breaking down, increasing the likelihood of us not getting a deal with the EU.

    Hunker down. It's going to be a bumpy ride.

  2. #2
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    Not to worry , the Tories are in charge . Nice of them to tell the taxpayers " it's your debt and your debt alone, not the rich mans debt" . Be safe ,vote Tory .

  3. #3

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    I doubt very much that whoever was in Power when this started, would have done any better!
    Smaller Countries generally had less probs with travellers returning.
    We will all survive. Remember Y2K!

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by The Horseman View Post
    I doubt very much that whoever was in Power when this started, would have done any better!
    Smaller Countries generally had less probs with travellers returning.
    We will all survive. Remember Y2K!
    I doubt that whoever was in power when this thing started could have done any worse. We have made a bigger mess of it than just about every other country in the world bar the USA and Brazil..and it remains to be seen if the early lifting of lockdown restrictions increase or decrease our infection and death totals. I suspect they'll start going up again.

    Smaller countries closed or restricted their airports sooner...or used PPE, testing and quarantine on arrivals and didn't just let them swan in. It is only now that we are setting up a pilot, for the love of pete, so how long will it be until it is rolled out to all airports?

    We will survive only to have the coronavirus shambles blamed on the hand-picked scientists, the EU and ourselves for not obeying the "rules", and the general population (except the relatively wealthy and the filthy rich) being hammered by increased austerity to pay for the money wasted by the government, as they sat back, twiddling their thumbs and let the virus run riot without sorting out tests, PPE and ventilators.

  5. #5

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    Compare us....Canada with close to 40 Million population. We had the same prob!

    1.3 million tested
    77,000 confirmed infected.
    5,700 Deaths.
    75/80% elderly, with an underlying condition. Many in Care Homes.
    Thousands flew back home...arrived and received a piece of paper Saying isolate.
    And shortage of everything!
    One of the reasons is that N95 Masks and Gloves had a 24 month ‘shelf life’! They were being replaced and the out of date ones were thrown out!
    It is simply a Human failing! My opinion!

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by The Horseman View Post
    Compare us....Canada with close to 40 Million population. We had the same prob!

    1.3 million tested
    77,000 confirmed infected.
    5,700 Deaths.
    75/80% elderly, with an underlying condition. Many in Care Homes.
    Thousands flew back home...arrived and received a piece of paper Saying isolate.
    And shortage of everything!
    One of the reasons is that N95 Masks and Gloves had a 24 month ‘shelf life’! They were being replaced and the out of date ones were thrown out!
    It is simply a Human failing! My opinion!
    Come on, you can't compare Canada's 153 deaths per million and 77,000 infected with the UK's 511 deaths per million and 243,000+ infected and say Canada had the same problem. Did Canada decide to let the virus do its worst in the provinces for a few weeks, solely in order to save the economy by building up herd immunity, before doing anything of use or ornament?

    Do you really think that it makes incompetency any more acceptable, in what was once a country which advised others on how to deal with pandemics, to say that this time other countries were just as incompetent as they were?

  7. #7

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    Quote Originally Posted by Oddquine View Post
    Do you really think that it makes incompetency any more acceptable
    My worry is that incompetence is becoming acceptable. Not only do we have the utter shambles that is the Covid19 response but we have to rely on the same arrogant morons getting us a Brexit deal. If their performance up to this point is any indicator of how they might handle what is ahead then Lord help us all. Yesterday, Gove was insisting it was all the EU's fault that negotiations were stalling. Arrogance doesn't begin to describe HMG's attitude. British exceptionalism still seems to be their guiding principle. What is it going to take for us to say enough is enough?

  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by Corky Smeek View Post
    My worry is that incompetence is becoming acceptable. Not only do we have the utter shambles that is the Covid19 response but we have to rely on the same arrogant morons getting us a Brexit deal. If their performance up to this point is any indicator of how they might handle what is ahead then Lord help us all. Yesterday, Gove was insisting it was all the EU's fault that negotiations were stalling. Arrogance doesn't begin to describe HMG's attitude. British exceptionalism still seems to be their guiding principle. What is it going to take for us to say enough is enough?
    If you mean Scotland, I suspect that the "too wee, too poor and too stupid to be independent" but "we quite like the perks we get from devolution" crowd still have the upper hand..or at least are more motivated to turn out and vote. Maybe once they start selling off bits of the NHS, and anything else they can lay their hands on, to the USA; once we are all getting cheap adulterated food imported from the USA: once our farmers and fishermen are sold out by Westminster, and once we are visited again by austerity with knobs on, while the better off manage fine, we might start to get hacked off. Stockholm Syndrome is a big problem for us and after being held captive for 300+ years it's a hard thing to counteract its brainwashing effects.

  9. #9

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    Firstly we stopped all Immigration and illegal immigration...What a thought!
    And how do u know the Food from the US was bad! I have never seen that.
    The UK is surviving, but Scotland at this juncture would not make it.
    And to take the people’s minds of the probs., you find a couple of Russian Bear Bomber taking a Joy ride, and take pride in Lossiemouth sending up a sortie of Jets to protect the Country. Huge News, or a couple of Rusty, Ruskie ships trying to invade the Country! Then the Submarines are released and they get caught on a sand bank!! Sure does take the people’s minds of the Virus or whatever probs u have!
    I am a Scot, and honestly I find that rather than this ongoing tirade against whoever is in power, take some time and contest the elections and get the people u want into Power.
    Or set the right people up to make decisions.
    What occurs in a Calamity, is that high profile people get parachuted into senior positions of Power, and they have no experience on how to manage same! Time for a change. It will take years, as I personally know, but you will be better prepared.
    I spend years in Emergency preparedness........along with other assignments.

    A note....over the years of coming back to the North, I was astounded at the amount of beautiful signs as one came the Towns and Villages.
    Brora and Golspie and many more, had I think 5 signs some engraved in Color, costing a small fortune each at the entrances, on both sides.
    Then double speed signs, usually 3 sets and on Berriedale, there were 7 slow down signs on each side of the road.
    Years ago on here I asked why the incredible waste of money...answer....that was The Council when we had lots if miney! Oh, and nowadays you cannot afford the Gritting, or have to send pregnant Women to Inverness.
    I am not saying this lightly...it is time to take back your Communities, Villages, Towns and the Country!
    Last edited by The Horseman; 18-May-20 at 14:14.

  10. #10
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    Deary me.

    When I got a text saying to "Get back in 'e org - The blue face painted, freedom fighting, Boris bashers are running amok", I thought that surely you could have been left to your own devices for a reasonable length of time, without the multi pronged attacks on balance - Alas no.... I have even tried taking Corky Smeek off the Ignore List to see if that has mellowed in any form - Even more Alas No.....

    Oh dear, where do we start? Well, all of this was predicted earlier this year. The population of the UK knew, or should have known, that the only way to keep us free of Coronavirus was to close the borders. To this day, they are still wide open, and only now is there a suggestion that people coming into the UK might get screened or quarantined. Sorry, but this horse bolted in January / February, and as was said back in March, it will be what it will be.

    Can any Government be blamed for that? I doubt it. Its the Sheeple who demand freedom of movement and open borders. Politicians like Trump try to secure their country better, but get shot down (sic) by the Sheeple who know better. Its perhaps no co-incidence that the 2 countries in the world with the most "coronavirus deaths" have the most porous borders. That's what the Sheeple wanted, and now, all of a sudden, they decide they do not like the consequences of it. Meanwhile countries with tightly regulated borders have all but brushed off the threat of coronavirus, with only a few cases / deaths.

    Then we have the folk that tried to put the fear of God into the Sheeple by suggesting that Brexit, in any form, hard, soft or otherwise, would be like driving off a financial cliff, so great, the consequences do not bear thinking about. Yet now, that has been totally eclipsed by the situation we are in today, with the greatest recession in 300 years. All because the Sheeple wanted free movement. Any negative impact of Brexit (if you are the kind of person who thinks it will have a negative effect, unlike those of us who can see it will have a positive effect) will now be so negligible compared to this completely avoidable "mega-depression", that its not worth even thinking about anymore.

    And as for incompetence. Well, I am afraid we don't have to look much further than Ross, Lochaber and Skye. The Portree care home probably has one of the highest concentration of positive cases and deaths in a group of people - Call it a population if you like. We have learned that there is much more than a passing bout of coronavirus at the root of that homes problems. So much so, that it has effectively been taken over by the NHS. You would think that their MP would have been on the case of this over the last years, making sure that service delivery was up to scratch. Again, alas no. Whilst all these problems at Home Farm have been building over the years, the local MP, like so many others in Scotland, have had their eye off the ball, and solely focused on independence. So its not just Govan where the constituents are suffering poor service provision due to the lack of their elected members actions - Skye unfortunately has seen it as well. Had Ian Blackford expended as much effort on sorting out care home provision in Skye, as he has blowing hot air in the House of Commons, then things would have been very different.

    Some very classic examples of reaping what you sow.

  11. #11

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    Corky.....The future Is Bleak if u sit on your...’A’ (rear end), and do Nothing. Nicely said!

  12. #12
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    If the Portree care home were included in the Coronavirus Worldometers table of world statistics, then the top few rows of the table, sorted in descending order of Cases per 1M population;


    Country Cases per 1M population (descending)
    Home Farm Care Home, Portree - In the constituency served by Ian Blackford, MP 882,353
    San Marino 19,279
    Vatican City 14,981

    And similarly Deaths per 1M of population;

    Country Deaths per 1M population (descending)
    Home Farm Care Home, Portree - In the constituency served by Ian Blackford, MP 294,118
    San Marino 1,209
    Belguim 784

  13. #13

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    @Orkneycadian. It's only right that I acknowledge your return to the forum. I thought perhaps you had been furloughed.

    The fact that you are seen as the white knight riding to the rescue of unionism (on this site at least) assures me that we are winning the argument. Your particular brand of uber-unionism, misogyny, wilfully misleading statistics and ridiculous comparisons (a privately-owned care home, run by a company based in Berkshire, having its death rate compared to nation states for example) is being seen for exactly what it is; nonsense.

  14. #14

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    Quote Originally Posted by Corky Smeek View Post
    My worry is that incompetence is becoming acceptable. Not only do we have the utter shambles that is the Covid19 response but we have to rely on the same arrogant morons getting us a Brexit deal. If their performance up to this point is any indicator of how they might handle what is ahead then Lord help us all. Yesterday, Gove was insisting it was all the EU's fault that negotiations were stalling. Arrogance doesn't begin to describe HMG's attitude. British exceptionalism still seems to be their guiding principle. What is it going to take for us to say enough is enough?
    Seems to me you are, and have been a supporter of what has been occurring!
    If one is not happy with life then they change it! You blame the Gov’t.....with no solutions....sad really.

  15. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by The Horseman View Post
    And how do u know the Food from the US was bad! I have never seen that.
    Chlorinated chicken? Jeez, what next. Before you know it they'll put putting chlorine in our water and washing supermarket salads in a chlorine rinse, then putting them in bags with an un-natural modified gaseous atmosphere.

    Whats that you say? They already do? You mean that our British / Scottish / Orkney water and lettuce need to have chlorine added to make them safe to consume? Well I never. If plain old water and lettuce needs it, then for sure, bacteria ridden chicken must be prime candidate for the chlorine treatment. They say to never wash chicken under the tap, for fear of water splashing the bacteria all over your work surfaces. https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-wel...h-raw-chicken/ You never hear that with lettuce. In fact, I see that you even now get supermarket chickens ready to go right in the oven, packaging an all, to contain all those nasty bacteria inside the modified gaseous atmosphere until the heat can get them (presumably your average consumer these days can figure out how to work an oven.....)

    The NHS state that most chicken sold in the UK contains campylobactor, a bacteria that can cause food poisoning, of which there are an estimated 300,000 cases in the UK per year - https://www.nhs.uk/news/food-and-die...ug-in-chicken/ - That's more cases in a year than of confirmed coronavirus in the UK this year so far. And 100 people reportedly die of eating contaminated chicken in the UK every year.

    Looks like chicken seriously needs to clean up its act.
    Last edited by orkneycadian; 18-May-20 at 19:30. Reason: Too many "then"s in one sentence!

  16. #16

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    Quote Originally Posted by The Horseman View Post
    Seems to me you are, and have been a supporter of what has been occurring!
    If one is not happy with life then they change it! You blame the Gov’t.....with no solutions....sad really.
    Don't you see the irony in what you are saying? 50% (at least) of the Scottish population are not happy and want change but can't get it because the other 50% (or fewer) have the Establishment and MSM continually spouting the "too wee, too poor, too stupid" mantra. And, it has to be said, they do this with some considerable success because many people in Scotland still use it as their justification for maintaining the Union. This is despite the huge mass of evidence which shows that an independent Scotland would thrive.

    Oh, and "Yes" I do blame HMG but I do have a solution. It's called Independence.

  17. #17

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    But the solution is to come up with a better plan, to do what is right for the Country.
    I dunno...Better Together seems so Sensible!

  18. #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by The Horseman View Post
    But the solution is to come up with a better plan, to do what is right for the Country.
    I dunno...Better Together seems so Sensible!
    We have come up with the plans, which we are now in the process of implementing. Like most of the world, we use democracy for this, even though at times it produces the Sheeple effect. The people of Scotland were asked democratically what they wanted to do in 2014, and they said "Stay in the UK" by majority. The people of the UK were asked in 2016 what they wanted to do, and they too, by majority, said "Leave the EU". These democratic decisions are in the process of being implemented. The first one is easy, we just need to do nothing, and the second one is slowly getting to fruition.

    We are fortunate that we live in a democratic country and union, and can make these choices.
    Last edited by orkneycadian; 19-May-20 at 11:36. Reason: Spelling mistooks

  19. #19

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    I was in the North a few days before the 2014 decision..
    I have a Pic of a man in a Canoe, with a YES sign paddling on the Inverness River. Uo and down for days!
    These dramatic changes take time and lots of Agnst!

    In North America, years ago, I had dealings with a large ‘Workers Union’.....500,000 members.
    We were discussing problems, and the Italian President was quite interested in my Heritage, and said at the next meeting he would bring a ‘familiar voice’, which really didn't mean anything..at the time.
    Weeks later we gathered at a Hotel, and with ‘flourish’ I was introduced to a man dubbed as ‘The Scottish Mafia’!
    A Glaswegian Union Organizer! What a guy... you would think he had just come off the plane frae Glesgey!
    A Q? Did the Scottish Unions ‘flatten the curve‘ as is said/bring more problems?
    Last edited by The Horseman; 19-May-20 at 13:23.

  20. #20
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    All of the unions, Scottish or UK, are doing their damndest to 'flatten the curve' by trying to keep their members home for as long as possible, on 80% taxpayer funded pay, whilst they do nothing / do up their houses, gardens etc, even though the work their members do / did do is key.

    Employers in England are now saying their employees don't want to return from furlough, even though they can and its safe for them to do so. They would rather do nothing for 80% pay than their job for 100%. And if their employer questions that, then the employee / union member just needs to trot out the "I don't feel safe" line. But the same employee, in feeling that its not safe to return to their work as, say a tube train driver, nicely isolated in the cab at the front, will happily head out to Costa for a takeaway coffee or B&Q for some DIY products. And of course the unions are insisting that all that danger, somehow becomes less if more money is available......

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