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[Starver]

I don't know much about the bureaucracy, first-hand, but I can believe that in this rush to "do something with people not actively suffering a tragedy, because if we leave them there even a night and there is another tragedy, our heads will rollll...", all the most admirable parts of the ability to set to respond to adversity start to clash with all the best of British stubbornness in the face of unjust authority.

There apparently have been found and (semi-?)requisitioned a load of luxury flats(/apartments) to house some of the original evacuees from the flats(/towerblocks), but mostly they'll have had to resort to finding something like a downmarket Holiday Inn, doing deals to take as many rooms as they can to match the displaced occupancies. Forgetting the discrepancies between the animal occupancy policies (or effective realities) of the 'owned' apartments and those of the temporary replacements.


Note also that in the drive to examine for flaws the most concerning locations first, there has been a 100% 'failure' (i.e. need for immediate action) rate. They're front-loading the process disproportionally with the subset of people who will end up being  found to need to be safeguarded. This is good for immediately reducing now (more obviously than before) foreseeable future deathtolls, but also stresses the Just About Managing system more than a more naive systematic approach (e.g. an alphabetic review).

I don't envy anyone. Residents, authority figures, and certainly not those at the sharp end bridging the two.

[martinuzz]

The whole thing kinda looks like robot May going all "I promised I'd take action, look, I'm taking action now", with no thought to what this whole hasty mass evacuation means in personal and societal terms for those affected.

[Starver]

Tory DUP agreement announced: "Government deal involves no change to pensions triple lock, keeping universal winter fuel allowance and £1bn extra funding for Northern Ireland"

'Coalitions' let you drop unpopular things easily, without upsetting the people for whom they are popular too much... Probably the most politic way forward.

(ETA: Odd item in the list of other items agreed...  "No Irish border poll without 'consent of the people'"  -   There needs to be a vote to see if there should be a vote?)

[smjjames]

I spot Trump's influence: "he UK's 2% Nato defence spending target will continue to be met"

[Leafsnail]

I mean the Tories and the DUP were both committed to that one. So was Labour, even.

The really difficult thing is that they're essentially bribing the DUP with a massive lump sum, which is not going to look good to any voters outside of Northern Ireland. Especially in Scotland and Wales - usually the Barnett Formula means that the countries get money distributed to them evenly, but they're dodging it here. It also looks pretty silly to just magic up over a billion pounds out of nowhere after claiming there was no "magic money tree" during their election campaign.

It should also be noted that this deal is only good for 2 years - if they want to continue after that, they'll probably have to pay out again.

[NJW2000]

Yeeeesh, Tories paying the Irish with our tax money to stay in power... how's the Sun going to resist?

In other words, snark.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qOyT3ZkUxI

[Loud Whispers]

Honestly, if there's anything that's vaguely something about that election it's that for most of 'em, the winners have been crowed as losers and the losers as winners. I still don't really know what to think on that front. It's like... yes, your gains were great. But you lost. Yes, you lost tons, but you won. Yes, you're a minority government now and lost a lot of seats... but you're still the largest single political party on the island. I get the perspective but it's kinda' offputting, for whatever reason.

Well yeah, but you gotta look at it like this: Labour lost and gained a useful defeat, the Tories won and gained a useless victory. Before the general election was called, Theresa May had the support of the majority of the country, furthermore managing to convince the majority of MPs who all wanted to remain that they must support leave in lieue of the result. Meanwhile Corbyn was dealing with a paralyzed labour which was still dealing with coup attempt #14057 with shadow cabinet members sharpening the guillotine for their expected defeat of Jeremy. Theresa then calls the general election, trying to push through a massive consolidation of state security powers right up to the regulation of the internet, actually manages to fracture the consolidated Tory party MPs back into their pre-2015 factions of pro-EU and anti-EU factions, while Corbyn emerged having consolidated the labour party and permanently put an end to the neverending coup attempts placed against him. And of course it led to the loss of the Tory majority, which despite having come concurrently as the Tories increasing their vote share, does not translate into dependable MPs without seats

I spot Trump's influence: "he UK's 2% Nato defence spending target will continue to be met"

Unlikely

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

UK has always met its targets post world wars, and is amongst the five countries in NATO that actually met its commitment - Greece, USA, UK, Estonia and Poland, thus it would be a waste of effort to convince the UK into doing something it is already doing by popular support

Hello everyone, I trust you are all well? I see we have had much good discussion of the election and its aftermath.

Really happy to have you back OB. I think this year is a year for good mindful defeats... God knows, there's not a political party one can be pleased all that much by

[Loud Whispers]

Oh yeah and some amendment to keep the UK in the single market failed, which resulted in another split within the labour party as Corbyn was forced to remove Chuka's faction from the shadow cabinet. 3 weeks of unity in the labour party, gone again. But who cares about that when 1,500 rare Welsh honeybees just got exterminated by a local council who thought they were common wasps

[MetalSlimeHunt]

How the hell do you confuse bees with wasps at all? I'm no beekeeper, but I am pretty goddamn certain of the difference between a bee flying in my face and a wasp flying in my face.

Google says hives generally come in the tens of thousands, though nothing on this specific species, so...at least it's not that bad? Also, apparently this species of bee was wiped out in central Europe by the Nazis because they weren't satisfied with their honey output. Goddamn, the Nazis really just had the one response to every problem that they faced, didn't they?

[Starver]

Goddamn, the Nazis really just had the one response to every problem that they faced, didn't they?

The more I hear about these Nazi fellows, the less I like them.

[ChairmanPoo]

Goddamn, the Nazis really just had the one response to every problem that they faced, didn't they?

The more I hear about these Nazi fellows, the less I like them.

You think they were the baddies?

[Descan]

Goddamn, the Nazis really just had the one response to every problem that they faced, didn't they?

The more I hear about these Nazi fellows, the less I like them.

Here comes MSH speaking inconvenient truth to power: Nazis Were Bad

(ILY MSH I'm not being my usual dick ;3)

[Loud Whispers]

How the hell do you confuse bees with wasps at all? I'm no beekeeper, but I am pretty goddamn certain of the difference between a bee flying in my face and a wasp flying in my face.
Google says hives generally come in the tens of thousands, though nothing on this specific species, so...at least it's not that bad?

Oh nvm, they didn't kill 1,500. They killed 15,000. These bees aren't common ones either, these are Welsh black honeybees - they used to be British black honey bees before they went extinct. We only just rediscovered they weren't all extinct 5 years ago, having been nearly wiped out by a disease/world war farming 100 years ago. So we have this honeybee that's just come out of extinction that is vital to British apiculture and pretty much now found only in Wales, and 15,000 of them just got wiped out by the local council for no reason. Those are genes lost forever

Imagine if a disease wiped out all American corn, and then some bloke finds out that the corn still exists in Missouri. Then the governor of Missouri sets all that corn on fire because he thought it was a field of kudzu vines
That's the bee version of this

Also, apparently this species of bee was wiped out in central Europe by the Nazis because they weren't satisfied with their honey output. Goddamn, the Nazis really just had the one response to every problem that they faced, didn't they?

You should look up their efforts to recreate the auroch
They basically crossbred the denchest cows to create a mightily muscled super cow. Slight problem: The cows would try to murder anything that got near them

So they had at least two responses:
Can it be made killier? If not, kill it

"The ones we had to get rid of would just attack you any chance they could. They would try to kill anyone. I have worked with a range of different animals and they are far and away the most aggressive I have ever dealt with."

Nazi leadership were huge fans of these, but didn't manage to make them big enough for their like

*EDIT
Just found out they found the Welsh black honeybees on Anglesey. Absolutely d r u i d i c

[smjjames]

How the hell do you confuse bees with wasps at all? I'm no beekeeper, but I am pretty goddamn certain of the difference between a bee flying in my face and a wasp flying in my face.

You're talking about politicians here.

[Descan]

Okay so it's a local council so they're PROBABLY not this, but I wanna say it anyway:

I'd be surprised if a politician had ever even SEEN a bee or wasp.