ECCOnoob

Yeah yeah same old story. How much time will pass before, and of course totally coincidental, certain groups of fans from a certain football club are once again caught up in some stadium based fiasco..... I'm sure some will argue they are just victims of a string of misfrtune. For others will say a clear pattern of behaviour. Either way, it's bound to be added to their list of things they never shut up about.

Can't be such a "recent brainwave" because they closed part of the road when I went to matches over 20 years ago. Football grounds, sports stadiums and other event venues control, divert or block off traffic all the time. You might want to dismiss it as health and safety gone mad but it is sensible. The venues, the stewards, the local authority, the police all have a duty of care. We are not in the 1900s anymore. You need to wise up to the modern world. Accidents and injuries are no longer dealt with by someone shrugging their shoulders and self-pitying. Its dealt with by finger pointing, negligence investigations and litigation.

Don't be so ridiculous. You can't host a major sporting event in the middle of the city without some form of disruption to someone. Most sensible and proportionate people understand that. If you're going to use the 'P' word let's get this into reality. It is a small handful of occasions when there will be temporary road closures. It's hardly some long-standing arrangement which is going to frequently ruin people's lives. If people actually bothered to look, one of the biggest reasons for the road closures is so they can undertake the traditional fan walk that comes with these tournaments. There is going to be massive gatherings in Devonshire Green where the fan parties and other activities are taking place which will then turn into several thousand people trotting on foot down to Bramall Lane. It is therefore more than an sensible thing to do, to be temporarily closing and divert traffic away from the main road which cuts through that walk route. Goodness sake we have have a multitude of running races and other such which frequently close or disrupt roads throughout the year - but people manage to cope.

Jesus Christ this place does my nut sometimes. Waaa waaaa waaa the city never does anything, this city is always overlooked, why do we never get any good events, why does everything go to Leeds and Manchester.... Waaaa waaaa waaa the council are stupid, it's all a big waste, nobody is going to go, what's the point, how dare I be mildly inconvenienced, why can't it go somewhere else.....

Let's not turn this into a young vs old debate. Bad drivers are bad drivers and they come from a wide range of of shapes, sizes, age groups and backgrounds. For every young reckless teenager tearing around the housing estates in their second-hand Corsa, there is equally going to be a Deirdre or Brian pootling along in their new automatic Peugeot, getting in the way, making sudden stops, failing to maintain progression, unable to properly read road signs, mistakenly going down the wrong way on motorways, or blindly following the sat nav into a ditch etc.... I am not wholly convinced there is simply "more" bad drivers these days than there would have been back in the day , certainly when thinking in ratio figures. The big difference now is obviously lots more vehicles on the road. There is also much more awareness of bad driving thanks to the massive increase in dash cams, CCTV, hyped up televised programmes.... I'm sure there was plenty of speeding, near misses, horn blowing and finger gesturing 50 years ago, but it wouldn't have been seen, caught or broadcast anywhere near to the same extent. If anything, given the widespread implementation of average speed cameras, CCTV, dash cams and now increasing automated safety systems in cars including radar emergency breaking, lane departure awareness, self parking etc I would like to think that one will be a lot better off in an accident in 2022 than would have been in 1972. I don't want to go back to the days of Uncle Bob trying to mend his own car because he read a book on it once or piling 8 kids in the back seat with no seat belts.

Drama, escapism, bitchiness, schadenfreude and general feeling of superiority over the meatheads and bimbo contestants. Low brow, populist content which everyone loves to hate but they'd soon get stucked into its trashy narrative if they let themselves. Rich or poor, educated or not, we all revert back to caveman days. Deep down, behind our snobbish intellectual facades, we all love a bit of gossip, scandal, exotic locations, bare flesh and watching others fail.

The reality is they are being manufactured as simply as shelling peas in massive town size factory floors by rows of workers on back to back rolling shifts for pennies an hour. We simple consumers get in awe about the technological wonderment and wizardry that makes these giant screens with the perceived ridiculously low bargain price on the shop shelf.... but I bet the actual base cost of manufacturing the TV set is about a 10th of that.

Well, said Mr Lynch is the one banging on about safety being the primary reason for the strike... He's been the one criticising and doom mongering about machines taking place of people and the supposed catastrophic effects that will have. When such hysteria gets posted on here people are entitled to counter it. Especially when it has no bearing in reality.

Oh take your tin foil hat off you hysteric. You talk about real life. Right now, computers are keeping your lights on, your water flowing, your gas circulated, your internet and telephones working, your television and radio broadcasting, your supermarket shelf stocked with food, your pubs stocked with beer and stopping planes from falling out the sky and landing on your bonce. Yes of course all of that has some level of human involvement, but in modern society, and it has been for over 50-years, the vast majority of those humans would not be able to do their job and run without computer control nor do they all necessarily require the same amount of Manpower as previously. Grow up. You talk as if the implementation of these new practises are going to eradicate entire safety inspections, controlling, auditing, analysis. They don't chuck out these things on some whim. They take years of development and fine-tuning and testing and approval before they are implemented. Given the green light for completely self-driving cars is coming ever closer, you really ought to stay indoors as clearly you won't feel safe anywhere thanks that evil despicable silicone chip eh? With a thinking like yours you must be a union man's wet dream they could chuck any old fodder to justify clinging on to outdated methods, unnecessary job roles and refusals to embrace change and people like you must lap it up.

Nobody is saying computers will do everything. Nobody is saying it's going to eradicate all human involvement. But you can't be so naive to think that things don't change, staffing levels on certain tasks reduce or that things don't evolve. You might be astounded to know at many aspects of a modern day car service or MOT involve computerised measuring, diagnostics, analysing and scanning. There are dozens of aspects of modern life that used to require vast amounts of Manpower which is now done perfectly well, efficiently and safely buy computerised methods and just a handful of staff. The rest move on to different things, learn new skills and adopt the use of new technology. Without it we will still be running the age of steam, with our hand written paper tickets and manually controlled signal boxes.

Got there ahead of me. Computers, remote surveillance and electronic monitoring is already being used widely across industry. Jesus, there are parts of the rail network where surveillance is already being done remotely using helicopter cameras. People have no idea the sorts of data, monitoring, inspection and measuring the can be checked by computers in the fraction of a second these days. I'm smelling a whiff of Union scaremongering. The usual favoured tactic to try and justify clinging onto outdated unnecessary jobs and refusing to adapt to change. Heard it all before. Of course safety important, but that doesn't mean things don't evolve. ...We had all this crap with the whole train driver AND conductor nonsense when it came to a simple task of closing doors.... We had all this crap when it came to removing manual ticket barriers in favour of of automated gates, yet amazingly thousands of people get through station platforms through automated gates without the world imploding or mass fatalities..... We had all this crap when they were muting automatic train control and yet networks all over the world are managing such operations with little incident... We had all this when they talked about remote-controlled level crossings and yet somehow the fatality numbers haven't rocketed significantly beyond the same numbers of manual ones..... The lady protest too much I think.

Seriously??? I think you need to take your ear plugs out Anna. Are you completely blase to the constant phrases equally being thrown around such as..... the extreme right, those right wing Tories, righty racists, right wing scum, right wing brexit supporters, right-wing elitists, right wing Farage supporters, right wing GB news viewers, right-wing flag shaggers,right wing Daily Mail brigade..... If we are going down some tangent over who is perceived to be the bigger victim, let's have a totally unscientific broad-brush check. A quick Google shows that the words 'right' 'wing' 'scum' give hits of over 3.5 million whereas a combo of words 'left' 'wing' 'looney' merely reaches 1.3 million. I'm sure that there is far more obviously complex nuances to be considered which I'm not going to engage in but let's not pretend this is all one-sided. The polarisation is clear across both sides and is only going to increase thanks to trends in snappy soundbites, out of context videos splattered across social media, increasing the lazy journalism more interested in chasing the ad revenue and top search results rather than investigative detailed reporting, and of course a generally apathetic electorate who can barely bring themselves to read beyond the headlines on anything political or economic let alone bother to properly research and and inform themselves. Why bother? After all, all they need to do is wait for their favourite DJ or columnist or talking head to start giving their uncorroborated opinions and that will do for them..... they will just follow the herd.

Yeah yeah blah blah. Talk the talk, but like everyone else you'd be straight to the solicitors the first time anything happened. Heard it all before about "stupid" health and safety rules and "overbearing" control and "lack" of common sense and "greedy" compo lawyers..... and yet people keep doing stupid, negligent and clumsy things. The reality is, "..all this health and safety nonsense..." was all just as present 30, 50, 60 years ago - people are just not recalling it through their rose tinted nostalgia and childhood memories. Through my day job, I am more than aware of claims being pursued by long retired workers trying to blame companies for their injuries or ailments despite the fact that back in the day they were full of bravado and machismo ignoring the rules, taking shortcuts, refusing to wear safety gear, refusing to follow training provided... I've seen plenty of insurance files from way back in the 60s and 70s with plenty of people bringing common law claims for slips trips falls and general clumsiness. Blimey the subject was even plot points in two of our popular sitcoms from three to four decades ago. The compensation culture might be more visually prevalent and in our Media these days but don't think it some newfangled concept. As RJRB has rightly said above, the whining is just a load of rose tinted nostalgia with some perception that everything was better 'back in the old days' before all these overbearing nanny state issues came into play. That is nonsense. Every generation will have the same moans as they get to a certain age. Every generation has that period where they look back and start comparing. Every generation will feel that their TV, music and media was so much better when compared to the current one. Every generation will become more and more detached from technological developments and start bemoaning that this newfangled stuff is all too complicated and it was better the way it was....... of course what one perceives to remember in their nostalgia trip is very often far different to what was actually the reality back then. We have to accept that that life is constantly evolving.

That is not even remotely close to the sort of behaviour that Assange et al has been doing. Legitimate whistleblowing sources and publication through a well-established and regulated newspaper can hardly be compared to the sort of mass data hacking, unverified information trawling and uncontrolled publication on the public internet. Like it or not Anna, some things need to be kept secret for public safety, national security or even military strategy. Even when whistleblowing and annonymous sources do appear, it's the job of professional journalists to be responsibly reporting it to the wider public, not amateur sluths, social media busybodies and conspiracy theorists trawling willy-nilly through masses of illegally hacked information. For all the wonderful praising about information freedom, what about thinking about some of the dark side of it....What about when completely innocent people are wrongly identified get death threats or attacked. What about when a completely innocent victim's personal, financial, employment or or medical information has been scooped up in these mass trawls and thrown out there on the web for anyone to see, manipulate or use. What about when live military operations are jeopardised and soldiers are are endangered because classified data has been thrown out there for any wrongdoer to react to. Works both ways. At the very least people like Edward Snowden, have more intelligence to keep a lowish profile and show some decorum unlike ego filled Assange.

No it is the subject of a court hearing with all the appropriate test of evidence, representations and rule of law. That is why America want him. Why the hell should we been lumbered with him. He's not a British citizen. He had clearly choosen not to return to his home country and even the Ecuadorian Embassy got sick of his behaviour and threw him out. He's had his day in court over here several times and in each they found against him. He and his legal team repeatedly failed to provide any satisfactory evidence that he will be ill treated in the US- so what exactly is the Home Secretary supposed to do? This issue has to be tried one way or another. There is no legitimate reason for him to be here and his anti-hero status splashed all over certain brands of the Press and Twitterarti are certainly not sufficient.

I'm inclined to agree with this. Whilst I I'm not wholly dismissive of comments from other posters and agree that travel could broaden the mind...... I would emphasise the word "could". For all genuine benefit to a child learning about foreign culture, different words, different signs, monetary skills, social interaction......etc I am not wholly convinced that little Darren or Brittany are going to have a fulfilled educating excursion on their two week all inclusive to Benidorm or some trip to a shared apartment with the parents best mate from the pub. All feels a little bit of a cop-out for parents who are wanting to simply take advantage of cheaper holidays. Well tough. Unfortunately, the reality is having kids is a choice. A financial one is a big factor. The law is clear on mandatory education and thus for parents choosing to breed that means sacrifices need to be made. As others have said, why should the teachers have to pick up the slack for parental convenience. They are there to teach a scheduled, planned and well-rounded curriculum. Ad hoc days out are one thing but it is very obvious why these fines had to be implemented as clearly too many coincidental absences were on the increase. Looking at the wider picture, lets also not forget how incredibly privileged we are in this country to have a mandatory taxpayer-funded education for all children. Look at what happens in other countries and the lengths people have to go through to get their kids into any sort of schooling . Our privilege is well and truly shown when parents take this wonderful free education for granted just because they want a nice little cheap trip to the sun.

I don't believe it's that simple. They are taking a hit on the over 65 discount because it's a good marketing gimmick. Just the same as many other retailers are pushing hard on the "blue light discounts" or "loyalty cards vouchers" etc. It's all costs out of a marketing budget as a PR tool. There are far wider reasons why stores like Iceland or more expensive generally. Firstly, a big contributor to the price on the shelf is the buying power of the company. Iceland is certainly nowhere near as big in number of stores or scale compared to the big four like Asda, Sainsbury's, Tesco and Morrisons and that means it will not have the ability to drive down the wholesale price or hardball suppliers compared to its rivals. Also, it's store format is very different so it will have less ability for storage and distribution compared to the massive warehouses that other supermarkets have. Let's also not forget, that when Iceland was formed many years ago, it had an entirely different business model. It was supposed to be a specialist frozen food centre which, like Bejam, for many years were operating alongside supermarkets who had a bigger focus on general groceries and dry goods. As time has moved on, the supermarkets have expanded their frozen range to not only rival places like Iceland, but complete you overtake it. Iceland itself has suddenly had to diversify and start catching up in a difficult market. Finally, there is a locations, unlike many of its supermarket rivals who focus on big huge out of town warehouses with lots of parking, many Iceland locations are within Suburbs or town centres or malls. Less space, Less parking and often higher rent. Its pretty much the same reason why the big brand supermarkets who also have small subsidary stores in town centre locations often have different prices to those prices in the superstore out of town. It's not always so black and white.

I am not aware of many left Anna. I think there are a couple of private companies still offering to places like office blocks or industrial parks for schools but most of the milk delivery service has expanded into wider groceries now. Most people I know just include milk as part of their regular grocery delivery each week from the supermarket. My supermarket has it around 65p a pint. I doubt a 'proper milkman' would be able to offer anything around that price for home delivery of just milk alone.

Depends if there is an argument on whether ASDA treat its suppliers and dairy farmers better than other supermarkets. They're very often seems to be an uneasy balance and complete detachment between consumers chasing the cheapest prices, demanding lower and lower costs at the Checkout against suppliers who are being absolutely stripped to the bone in terms of their raw materials, labour and own costs. Supermarkets by their size of buying power have suppliers over a barrel who have no option but to accept their demands for fear of losing their primary source of business. Of course occasionally us consumers find out, campaigns are launched with usual token protest and slacktivism demanding fair treatments of farmers, higher wages for staff, banning of Far East sweatshop labour blah blah blah.... but it soon gets fizzled out and ignored because sooner or later the price wars start again with us consumers reverting to type, not really giving a toss and simply demanding cheap cheap cheap. Can't have it both ways. Cheap prices on the shop shelf are only possible by cheap supply or manufacturing process. If we want a fair deal for our farmers... if we want no sweatshop operations in emerging countries... if we want all these demands for higher wages.... if we want British made goods and higher quality WE have to be prepared to pay for it. We screamed about how our economy, workforce and high streets are being destroyed by the corporate "greed" and "obscene" profiteering from online corporations yet at the same time we flock to the convenience, prices and range offered on things like Amazon or eBay. We post our tweets and hashtags showing solidarity to all these striking workforces on our transportation demanding they have a fair rate of pay yet at the same time recoil in horror whenever ticket prices increase...... well, does nobody think that one might have any effect on the other? We are just as much a part of the problem as anyone else. Whether we like it or not, businesses are there to make money. That's it. They're not charities obligated to absorb any demands the workforce put on them. If supply or labour costs go up, so does the end product. Simple as that. Given that most of us are also heavily invested in UK PLC through our pensions, or savings or Investments or basic employment longevity, we want companies to be making profits. We won't continual growth. It certainly wouldn't be in our favour to go the other way. We have all seen the catastrophic results when that happens. We can all demand a fair days pay for a fair days work but that has to be paid for by a fair and representative price on the shelf. We all love picking up our £3 t-shirts and bragging on Instagram about our clothing hauls from certain well-known discount stores. Prices like that are easy to achieve when you are paying the poor sod manufacturering it 13p an hour in Bangladesh. Just think about what causative effect might happen if all those same garments suddenly returned to being manufactured by someone in Leicester or Halifax on £10 or £12 an hour. Do we think places like Primarni would retain its populist status with all the girls and boys going in changing their wardrobe every 5 seconds.

I don't know where you're looking. Firstly I have never seen any multi loo roll packs for less than £1. But even if they were 80p they are still selling a 4 packs of loo roll from £1.75 certainly not £3.20. Perhaps you need to start looking the shelf below and going for a home brand rather than big label. After all, It's not quite like a Gucci handbag or Chanel suit. I don't think someone is really that bothered what "brand" gets seen flushed down the pan. I hardly think the neighbours are going to be judging.

Jack of all trades. Master of ....

My my, you do get around. In the space of the couple of threads, you appear to be a master economist with specialisms in the Dominican, a social scientist who knows all the intricacies in transgender issues, a qualified highways engineer who knows how to run Toronto traffic systems better than anyone, a chief legislator who knows all about how to sort out gun control better than the politicians and now seemingly an elite level teacher/governor whose actions on committees have not only been totally invaluable it appears single handedly saved the school. Anything more and you will be needing a cape.

Assuming you also like to go back to those much simpler times before there was things like minimum wage, restricted maternity leave and no shared parental leave, no flexible working arrangements..... According to the ons, the current net weekly wage as a national average is approaching nearly £500. Back in the mid 1990s it was barely scraping £200. Bank of England interest rates in 1990 we're averaging between 10 and 13% now they are are down to less than 1%. There is much talk about "outrageous" inflation and "crippling" living costs but let's not get too Rose tinted about life back then. It's all relative and for many it was just a tough if not even tougher back in the day.

Yes and you will also find equally voluminous amounts of information explaining how the drivers are aware of this potential trick and what they do when it happens including stopping immediately and asking the passenger to leave at that point of the journey. If necessary, they can can aldo raise support requests with all the customers account details, identity, bank card details and address logged on the system at the click of a button which could easily be passed over to the police despite the customer trying to pull a fast one. Nice try but it still doesn't detract from my primary points about convenience, security, safety and auditability electronic transactions have over physical cash.

To be fair. I don't think normal bank holidays bring in mass numbers of people from around the world, huge amounts of Media crews nor draw attention to the Country on the world stage in quite the same way do they..