Not very hidden agenda to get more and more state bale outs...

[trigger_andy]

4 minutes ago, Phil_G said:

Isn't this exactly what we are discussing - whether someone knows where berries grow - others seems to think they grow in plastic containers and not from trees/bushes going off the information shared here.

 

Political echo chamber 🤣 just rolling out well established facts lets not get triggered andy

I suggested that no one can claim ignorance and need educated on matters such as berry picking in the wild when we have answers to almost every single question at our fingertips. You replied with a rant that included being right wing. 🙄

[Phil_G]

3 minutes ago, trigger_andy said:

I suggested that no one can claim ignorance and need educated on matters such as berry picking in the wild when we have answers to almost every single question at our fingertips. You replied with a rant that included being right wing. 🙄

It was not angry nor at any particular length so I don't think rant is a good summary. I was trying to write more about how it is not as easy as you make it out to be to educate yourself online, if you just follow theory that can get you into all sorts of trouble. You can't get hands on experience with the internet? Maybe some youtube guides would help with wild berry identification.

 

Have you read much epistemology theorists? This post is about covid, fuel economics and much more. All of which requires a lot of reading around to understand what's going on. It's not as simple as a book on which berries are edible but that provided a comical talking point. Apologies if deviating from that was inappropriate.

 

 

[Squaredy]

2 hours ago, sime42 said:

Thinking about the sub-topic here; free or not as the case may be, firewood. I've noticed that a lot of construction timber gets thrown out during renovation work. Largely softwood, granted and likely to be contaminated by various things, but still, it would make good firewood. Free I'm sure for those willing to collect and process it. It'll save the builders on skip or tipping fees after all. It could also perhaps be a workable business model if people wanted to go around collecting it at scale, and then selling it on as cheap firewood

This is sort of what the wood recycling projects do - but they charge the company disposing of the timber for what they collect.  And the best stuff is then sold as timber.

 

 Some of these projects are very successful with dozens of volunteers, and several paid staff.

[Squaredy]

7 hours ago, coppice cutter said:

There's a lot of nurses still on band 5, Mrs CC and all she works with amongst them, they don't earn anything like the figures you're quoting. Indeed that sounds more like bank or agency rates of pay.

 

Might be a starting point for the new 'university trained' sorts, I don't know, but they're not the ones keeping the wheels turning, admittedly very slowly, but that's not their fault.

 

To put it in perspective, Mrs CC worked on track and trace at weekends until they closed it, and her basic hourly rate for asking people questions over the phone and ticking the appropriate boxes, was higher than her basic hourly rate for nursing.

 

Furthermore, there was no comparison between the physical and mental demand of the two jobs.

 

If nursing is such a rewarding profession, strange that the health service is having to fly them in from other countries in droves just to meet a bare minimum of demand for their services.

Sorry, I thought nurses were always band 6 and above - my error.

 

So the starting salary for band 5 is £27,055.  And no the figures I was quoting are from the nhs website.

[Stubby]

3 hours ago, difflock said:

All local hedges are hanging heavy with blackberries, after a glorious hot sunny week of weather.

Yet I have seen zero impoverished food hungry people picking them, and these blackberries are only a 1/4 mile from the village.

But local foodbanks cannot cope.

Someone help me understand this paradoxical  conunderum?

Some of the locals from my village have out gathering . Damsons , sloes , blue berries and elderberries . Then we are " cun'rey folk " 🙂

[Stubby]

3 hours ago, coppice cutter said:

The real question is, are we going to have a particularly harsh, and early, winter.

 

Is that what nature is preparing for?

 

The swallows seem to have buggered off early this year too.

You need to seek out the Wise Woman . She knows all . 🙂

[GarethM]

Even cun rey folk don't want to smell of elderberries 

[Squaredy]

10 hours ago, John Skinner said:

are dying of starvation and lack of heat

I agree with much of what you say.  But is anyone really going to die because their home is less well heated than last year? 

 

And as for food - this is a problem with people not knowing how to cook (or how to manage their budget).  Simple home cooked food can be very cheap indeed.  In fact look at the trend over the last hundred years or so and you will find food is a much smaller part of people's income now.  Our ancestors could only dream of food being so easily and cheaply available as it is now.

[Mick Dempsey]

Great comedy thread.

 

Poor people should scour the countryside for wild berries and odd bits of wood to burn in their flat in Nelson Mandela house, Peckham. 

Edited September 2, 2022 by Mick Dempsey

[Squaredy]

19 hours ago, Mr. Squirrel said:

A better question might be why the government organisation, Ofgem, are upping a price cap designed to protect consumers to a level where they KNOW many can’t afford it.

This question does have a simple answer. 

 

If they set the price cap too low the companies supplying our energy would go bust (remember 30 or more have recently done so).  If they set no cap at all the prices would be even higher.  Also what never gets reported is that Ofgem also set a limit on the suppliers profits - currently 1.9% - so they are not profiteering from this.  The companies who actually produce the elctricity are doing very well - hence the windfall tax.