648 karma · joined September 3, 2014
Having worked with such people, I can confirm they still exist in the UK public sector and have only increased their power. They have an amazing ability to see a cloud in every silver lining. They detest any simple solution to anything.
I'm not sure how useful it is in general for people to forum shop round countries for education, except for Americans where going domestic seems to be a recipe for permanent debt rather than improving life opportunities. Even expensive countries seem to be a way better option for Americans seeking to avoid the constant thread of bankruptcy.
There is a big difference between how the law works in theory and how it works in practice. Especially is one side is Amazon and has, to all intents and purposes, unlimited cash to drag out expensive litigation. Many large companies win like this in practice when, in theory, they have no merit to their case.
However, some basic searching suggests Italy could be one route provided you have Italian heritage : http://www.italyheritage.com/genealogy/citizenship/
And Malta is generous on the financial front : http://www.ccmalta.com/publications/malta-citizenship-invest... A house purchase looks cheaper than pure capital investment. Malta is a nice place to live too.
You need proper professional advice though. Google will get you started on places to inquire.
Compared with North America, you don't need to have any local trading licenses or registrations. There are no requirements for lawyers to draw up articles of association and register (accountants just use pre-approved templates).
Opening bank accounts was simpler (and much cheaper in my experience) too. You just take in your ID and confirmation of the company registration. Most banks will give a deal and many even have free banking. North American banks are generally eye-watering in their fee scales in comparison.
Having done both, the UK is way simpler, quicker and less onerous than North America. It also opens up the entire EU as you don't need to keep registering or licensing in each place (unlike in North America).
On residence/citizenship (note, NOT required to have a UK company!), the UK is a pain in the ass. They have become all crazy about immigration and put all sorts of obstacles in your way.
Find a different EU country for residence - forum shop. Some grant based on even a small amount of heritage (like multiple generations back) and some grant based on ca$h. If you have a few hundred thousand $, you should be able to buy your way in. Otherwise, a business startup with employment within a number of months is another route.
Once you have EU citizenship in one country, you have a Charter Right to go to any other you please.
Perhaps it's just me, but I have a feeling some misogyny may have been involved in the way she was forgotten at the time. Thankfully someone thought to check her claim rather than dismissing it outright which was a very real risk - something I think was clear in the telling of the story.
There's a couple of things which are relevant :
1. It seems unclear if it was the driver who had opened the door to rush the passenger out at a set of lights (not sure of the SF rules on that, but in various European countries, the police can ticket drivers for that alone - traffic lights are not a legal spot for passenger entry or exit).
2. The picture of the supposed damage shows a very minor scratch in the trim. Something more akin to normal wear and tear. The $1,600 bill for that supposed damage seems like a lot of bill padding.
In fact, it sounds like a scam by the driver to me and the uber customer is stuck with a $250 bill and no way to dispute it or the facts involved in the case.
Normally, for insurance, if you have to pay out, you get salvage rights on the replaced part. The best course would be for the customer to claim the supposed replaced door as salvage and then try to sell it on eBay (I'm sure some publicity will help get a good price). It also makes sure this supposed replaced door is really replaced.
It's a long time since any UK politician resigned on principle or on honor. I think the late Robin Cook was the last (over the Iraq invasion which he believed was illegal).
Private Eye has an endless stream of 'highly suspect' (since any suggestion of 'corrupt' may get HN into trouble, just to be clear, I'm not saying 'corrupt'.) activities of various government ministers, none of whom resigned or even came close - despite their misdeeds being exposed. Look at how many were caught in the expenses scandal - some UK politicians even tried to hold on while being convicted of fraud and other criminal convictions (with some initial success too, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazir_Ahmed,_Baron_Ahmed). That's never going to fly in the US.
You really need to go back to Margaret Thatcher's cabinet before you can really find many examples of resignation on the back of government screwups.
I think a resignation is more likely in the US than the UK. And it's not at all likely in the US.
I agree with you that it is not, but cooking foil could reasonably be interpreted as being food waste because it's involved in cooking food and likely to have bits of food stuck to it.
If you travel round the world, different places have very different lists of what is permitted. In London, bones were a no-no for food waste, but in Toronto, the organic waste bin allows bones, pet litter, used diapers, paper plates and even paper towel with cleaning products in it - all in regular plastic shopping bags (so no need for cellulose bags like in the UK). Frankly, I have no idea how they sort that lot out - I hope no-one actually touches any of the stuff.
The whole process is so complex (in every location) that is is almost impossible to get right and that is the fundamental problem getting an effective recycling regime to work. (Though, Toronto does have a handy trash guide on their website to help you pick where it goes http://www1.toronto.ca/wps/portal/contentonly?vgnextoid=03ec...)
It was all so much simpler in my remote rural past where anything organic was eaten by the dog, anything flammable was burned for heating and the remains (essentially a few tin cans and glass jars) went into the trash (in theory, that was easily recyclable but it was before it was a Thing).
Mine went along the lines of it's recycled if it's paper but not if it's certain types of paper unless it has a recycle logo on it but then not if it's has any food residues. The list went on like that for multiple pages. Handily it was in around 12 languages too, but I was in London (and technically an immigrant, so I suppose the multiple languages were for me).
Then there's the fine for having an empty bin on collection day but also a fine for having the lid ajar from ever so slightly more than the bin holds - you were allowed up to 1/4 of an inch (yup, documented in the explanation leaflet) (and they have private contractors going around at 4am to check that and issue fines before anyone gets up in the morning).
Plus, of course, once it's all collected, the council send it all to landfill and don't bother recycling it at all. [1] And still do it after being caught. [2] Or they just dump it in Africa or China instead of landfill/recycling. [3]
There are endless examples of the bone-headed UK public sector approach to recycling which makes it a waste of time. Sir Humphrey Appleby would be proud.
I don't think you're being fair trying to blame it on some sort of illiterate proles.
[1] http://www.courier.co.uk/Wealden-council-sending-residents-r...
[2] http://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news/10467239.Council_aga...
[3] http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/538317/Britain-sends-ton...
I worked on a site selling second-hand goods and there were around a dozen robots patrolling the site every day, completely ignoring the robots.txt (but fetching it in order to specifically look at disallowed links first). They homed in on any trademarks and kept fetching the pages repeatedly.
They became such a bandwidth hog that I had to block their IPs (whole CIDR blocks) - if you blocked the user agent, they immediately re-fetch with a faked IE or Mozilla UA and then used that to trawl the site.
Once they have their 'evidence' of the mark use, they would post (regular snail mail) automated threats with the offending web pages printed and the TM terms highlighted. Typically demanded money (but not always) plus a promise never to use the TM ever again and destroy all computer records containing the TM.
Thankfully the shop owners just ignored them as, like the article points out, it's perfectly legitimate to use a trademark in context. Besides in the country concerned it was a trading description offence to incorrectly describe the goods (fines and loss of license to trade in second hand goods). (i.e. if it is a genuine Gucci handbag, you describe it as that but if it is a fake, you must not mention Gucci. Enforcement officers checked regularly that the rules were followed - surprisingly logical and sensible and trumps any nonsense from an automated TM enforcement bot).
Employers bent on evil normally give you around 3 months then 'restructure' the company (i.e. give you a new job title) as a mechanism to say it is a new job and not covered. They still need to wait 90 days before they can enforce that and you have the option to reject it (but get your CV updated in the meantime because you're leaving).
Employment law varies enormously from state to state, country to country etc. People in the US used to At Will will have no concept of what it is like to be With Cause (and vice-versa).
However, even With Cause employers can get rid of anyone they want. In the UK it's classed as a 'right to manage your business' and the worst downside is a small compensation payment which rarely exceeds a few thousand pounds (occasionally there are large payouts for the most egregious things, especially racist or sexist bullying). In the US, payouts could be larger but for many businesses they just see that as part of the exit package and budget accordingly. Always remember, in a business, no-one cares about you and these people are not your friends.
Having been through it multiple times, my advice is always have your CV up to date and if you don't like the look or smell of the situation, it's time to leave. You will feel much better and less stressed if you feel in control of your destiny and not being played by some Evil Overlord who doesn't give a damn about you.
There is a show called UK Border Force which shows how almost trivial it is to evade deportation (destroying documentation is key and claiming to be from a country on poor-ish terms with the UK - e.g. Iranian, Chinese etc. which refuse to provide travel documents to undocumented people). I have no idea why the UKBA allowed the show to be made as it makes them look like gullible chumps most of the time. I recall one clearly 30+ man being allowed entry as he claimed to be 13-14 years old and a refugee. The nice voiceover simply stated he disappeared from the hostel within 24 hours and was not heard from again. The border guards had clearly caught him out on his age and story but had to go along with it since he stuck to his ridiculous story and refused to admit it was nonsense. It seemed that easy.
I entered the UK at Gatwick a few months ago and a woman in front of me was registered asylum seeker from France (i.e. she somehow arrived in France and claimed asylum, receiving a letter confirming receipt of her claim from the French authorities). She had flown to Vienna and been refused entry as she had no other forms of documentation (i.e. NO PASSPORT, just that 1 page letter in French). The Austrians let her choose where she wanted returned to and she picked England, so was on the same flight as me. She was well versed in the UN convention on refugees to the point of arguing particular sub-clauses of one article which she was using to travel document-less and which gave her, she claimed, rights to enter the UK. After around 15 minutes of arguing on convention details, she was allowed entry to the UK. Either she had failed to convince the Austrian border guards or she had simply gone there in order to be deported to the UK as a mechanism to get entry. Whichever it was, she got to the UK with just that 15 minute discussion. We schmucks behind her took longer to get in with our passports.
"The article examines the connection between natural ultraviolet light (UV) radiation and the incidence of cancer in human beings."
This device uses artificial UV and then it's to activate titanium oxide on the handle (presumably some type of catalytic reaction is set up).
It's possible, on external handles, it could use natural UV but they state the main application is indoor, hence the capture of the door movement to generate the power for the UV light. Does sound rather clever.
However, as another poster has already said, the 'old fashioned' tradition of brass door knobs and general brass fixtures in toilets and even [very] old hospital beds has been shown to be very effective in killing bacteria. It was only after these were phased out in places such as hospitals, that resistant bacteria became a serious problem. (Though the time to disinfect seems to be much longer than this UV/titanium oxide version, so it could be an improvement in high traffic areas.)
Quite simply, I don't think this is setting up a binary choice between bacteria and cancer.
I have a cousin who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer and, like everyone, have lost various other relatives and friends to cancer over the years.
One thing which is very clear from their experience is that all cancer treatment is experimentation on living people, with a hope that some combination of treatments will bring a cure. For some people there is a brief success (reduced tumor size, sometimes to undetectable levels) but, outside of some cancers which are very treatable, this is normally a brief pause.
Treatments people receive today are because of the experiences of people in the past which showed a good response and this is fed into developing and fine-tuning what is done today. The hope is this experimentation will mean more success in future and longer lives with better quality.
There are lots of anger filled comments (understandably so) here. The reality is you are best to receive the experimentation early on when it can bring benefits, but to also recognize it's not always going to benefit you for long and the benefit may go to someone a few years from now who have a better treatment and better results because of your experiences.
I think that's really the only positive thing you can take from the experience.
If you ever do get diagnosed, the bucket list thing is good. That's what I'm doing with my cousin while she has time. There is only a brief interval to tick that off; take it before it's too late.
I was suggesting it was a throwback to the very early days of the internet expansion when people had a much simpler understanding of how it would all work and were excited to get involved. I think there are some enlightening stories to be told from various UK governmental departments which are not normally the source of such forward thinking.
Background: there were some pretty forward thinking people in the UK Gov at the early stages of 'the internet'; Parliament got it's own TLD when it was a case of sending an email to be allocated a TLD and various bodies got IPv4 allocations before they even had any sort of working networking going on. There are bits of the stories around if you look hard enough, but I've never seen it pulled together - I'm sure it would make interested (and probably classified) reading.
French law permits such things as prosecution of libel of dead people which English law does not. There is really no concept like free expression in the English law sense (and most certainly not in the US constitutional sense).
I doubt this case would have played out the same way in any other province. No other province operates enforcement units to trap businesses using English in order to fine them for not using French or having French words smaller than English ones. (for a recap of that nonsense, start with http://world.time.com/2013/04/08/quebecs-war-on-english-lang...)
The nonsense is that it is trivial to bypass such location filtering.
Don't hold your breath on the BBC losing that license fee anytime soon - there is too much money being made off it by all sorts of companies [not just the BBC]. Despite having long left the UK, their sub-contracted enforcement company still send me reminders to my old UK address every few weeks and tell me they're coming to visit me to check my TV equipment and that they'll take me to court when they catch me ! They've spent hundreds of pounds more than the license fee sending those letters and having people visit to be told I don't live there any longer. They still turn up every 2 months or so. They've had years to update their records but never do.
That perspective is normally a Christian influenced one. Not all religions offer an Afterlife (and in some, the one offered is just another repeat in a different form based on how well you did previously).
Other comments make what I think is probably the best advice here. If you're finding thoughts of death (or anything) are causing you disturbance and anxiety, you need to consider professional support you feel is helpful. This can most certainly be religious but it is sensible to also find a good counseling service as, sometimes, these things are not so much a religious need but caused by something you need to work out in a manner distinct from religion.
You are at an age when many people suffer from degrees of mental health episodes. It's relatively normal and not a big deal if you get some support. Almost all move on from it, perhaps a little wiser for the experience of knowing that life's not so black and white as it is as a child & adolescent.
The very idea of prison time for RBS re-cycling the Enron ideas of debt vehicles is laughable.
Enron people went to jail and the banks (like RBS) then had regulators permit exactly the same debt-swap bullshit that killed Enron. Banks went on to trade in debt - an eventual cause of the financial meltdown. RBS was a major culpable party but their chairman, Fred Goodwin, managed to get away with returning the knighthood and a fraction of his pension, while protected by a super-injunction making it illegal to reveal to the public he was a banker[1]. He continues to enjoy 'Royal Family' level police protection, has his properties removed from Street View [2] and is granted a level of establishment protection no-one else could dream of if they had been responsible for any catastrophe of even a fractional proportion.
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/business/2011/mar/10/fred-goodwin... [2] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/20/fred-goodw...
only had vision turned to "bullshit".
I'd have though "paradigm" was way more likely than "vision" to score as useless bollocks to censor.
There's a long way to go if vision is all it picked up !
I do like the concept though... A lot.
edit: I see from the link in the comment posted by ddingus that there is also an errata with a fix for the bug in the original code. http://codebase64.org/doku.php?id=base:errata_for_rankin_s_6...
Also, if your hypothesis was true, then it would need to hold for other [Roman] Catholic groups for that to be the key factor. That does not seem to be the case as, according to Wolfram Alpha, the top life expectancy (at 84.4 years) is Macau, followed by Japan (83.6) then Switzerland (82.6) and Australia (82.5) tied with Andorra. Italy is 6th though.
While there are Roman Catholic countries high up, there are also higher ranked, non-Roman Catholic ones.
There are many convincing cases of benefit derived from religious faith but I'm not sure you can make such a case for life expectancy.
Are you sure about that ? 2,000 incarcerated children would disagree.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/mar/07/juvenille-judge...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Mitnick#Arrest.2C_convic...
But in the US, parole officers see their role to add additional punishment through threats and inserting petty and vindictive 'rules' into the lives of released prisoners in order to reinforce their authority and express the displeasure of the authorities. There are countless examples of people being returned to prison for trivial and even made up violations of parole - remember private prison is big business in America with lots of money to be made from returning people to prison (and sending them there in the first place).
Other countries see parole officers tasked with helping ex-prisoners return to society and keeping them out of trouble through support and assistance. Often parole officers are social workers or psychologists specializing in dealing with ex-offenders. A return to prison is seen as a failure of the parole officer rather than of the prisoner.
However, go to the real home of 'socialist medicine' [who thought up that name?] in Europe or the UK, you pay a fixed price (8 pounds in England - completely FREE in Scotland) for drugs. Drug companies get to charge a fee which differs but if they rip the piss out of the pricing then the NHS gets to set a price (the Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme - it's complicated but it's discussed here https://www.ucl.ac.uk/european-institute/analysis-publicatio...).
Now, countries like India are even more aggressive - rip the piss there and they just license a local company to make the drug and you get a kick in the nuts for your price gouging ways.
The result is companies really rip off US patients and elsewhere they are a lot more careful and can charge dramatically lower prices (but still as much as they possibly can) to avoid regulation or enforcement measures.
Americans really need to rethink healthcare - starting by dropping all the pejorative stuff like 'Socialist Medicine' would help refocus peoples minds.
People in Europe don't focus all their attention on getting healthcare like people in the US - I have a friend who uses his measly 1 week vacation every year to come to Europe and purchase his year's supply of medication as it's way cheaper than even his co-pay, including flights, accommodation etc, to buy over the counter in Europe. That's just nuts.