Alison K. Montijn🌻☕
@alisonkatebr
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Books, beers, writing, and politics-loving 🇬🇧 settled in 🇳🇱, after years nation-hopping in 🇪🇺. Not a fan of fascists. Big fan of cheese. Baby on the way.
Utrecht
Joined January 2016
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To anyone who belives in "unskilled" work:
change 50 double duvet covers in an hour. Alone.
Help a man with Alzheimer's who is afraid of you and everyone to get dressed and take his medication.
And then remember 37 table locations and numbers, and when you went to them all.
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yes, Keir Starmer is a talented but boring man. He has a family, he loves his mum, he takes his kids to the football, his wife works in the NHS. But you know what? Great. Most of us are boring people, when you get right down to it. I think the UK could do with a bit of normal.
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Not to worry, England, there is a prison crisis in the Netherlands too: a shortage of prisoners.
Due in part to, and stop me if this information is too much, having abandoned medieval concepts of retribution and shame and started thinking more practically about human beings.
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A person with a rainbow lanyard, a Muslim in a hijab, and a transwoman walk into a cafe and people like me, who have and are none of those things, think, well, hey, this is a nice cafe. People feel safe here. Guess I'll get a hot chocolate.
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singing in groups is banned
grouse shooting is not
your pub has to close at 10
Parliament's doesn't
Eton students got tests
Your kid won't. Neither will you.
You might be fined £10k for rule-breaking
Dominic Cummings won't be
I really, really despise this government.
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'everyone would like lower taxes' - yeah, I personally would not. I pay more tax here in NL than I would in the UK, and I pay it for an accessible, highly liveable country in which things are well-maintained. I like that. Living here is nice. Stuff runs and works.
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My child will be born in the Netherlands, go to Dutch school, speak and write Dutch, and participate in Dutch culture. In what sense will he or she not be Dutch? Because I'm not? So what?
This is not a difficult point to grasp really. Someone born and raised in Cardiff is Welsh.
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They could just build a processing centre in France to handle asylum claims. Voila, no sea crossings. No dinghies and dead children. No smugglers on that route. Any time they could do that.
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In general I wish they'd just totally remove the words "brave" and "battle" from all dialogue about illness. You don't have to be brave. It's not a battle. You just have to keep on trying to exist as best you can in the face of pain, same as people do. That's all it is.
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Much of the UK looks and feels like a poor country. We visit from NL, and it's shocking at times. Everything's tatty. Dysfunctional, high streets boarded up, trains and buses no shows, broken machines, signs of decay and poverty everywhere. It doesn't have to be like that.
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a HGV driver is for life, not just for Christmas
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This work-shy scammer thinks that having died in the 1630s and been naturally mummified is an excuse not to work. Sick note culture in action. He could work at Tesco.
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He did it! My Dutch guy who has nothing to do with England and has never seen this cake in his life has made me a glorious Battenberg cake because I was homesick! Look at it!!!
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I get really scared when I think about Johnson winning a majority and five years of that lunatic running amok unfettered. He is callous, self-serving, duplicitous and utterly untrustworthy on every level. He is a crook, and he is faithless, and he frightens me.
Anyone else?
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Gosh, this tweet blew up a bit. Heartening to know there are so many out there who understand that low pay is not in any way the same as low skill. I'm not expecting any likes from current Conservative MPs.
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find it unbelievable to watch England, in which almost every politician in the ruling party is misusing state funds, giving them to their friends and allies, and to see that the collective response is... nothing? The apathy is bewildering. Do you just not care? That was your tax.
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All that is left now in this tale, the final line, is for it to have been Sue Gray herself who was wheeling the suitcase of booze
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you can see the issue with Erasmus for these creeps. Ordinary British kid goes to study in Spain, meets fellow Europeans, and sees how similar we all are. Has a great time. Grows up to see her/him/themself as a European citizen. No legitimacy for their exceptionalism bullshit.
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I have never been involved in a sex scandal. Never fellated someone to get a job or received oral sex from a job candidate. Never shagged someone I knew to be married. Never siphoned taxpayer funds into my proclivities. Guess that's my chances of being a Tory MP finished then...
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also I want to just remind people that not very long ago the government faked a report that said there was, effectively, no racism in Britain. Wonder how they're feeling about that.
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in my work I sometimes sadly encountered children in situations of abuse and neglect and I will never be able to forget them. If you think asking kids to wear a mask is abuse, you have no idea what horrors some children carry with them. I hope you never have to learn.
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nice to know that while I missed my mum so much I used to feel physical pain in my heart when I heard her on the phone saying, her voice shaking, 'maybe we can travel soon', Tories were partying together not giving a shit.
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You should be able to see a dentist easily. Your doctor should have a medical degree and supervised training, not some half-arsed diploma. A train between two cities in the same country should cost less than a flight.
These are normal things to ask in the developed world.
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I'm from North Yorkshire. Holy mother of fuck. I love the place but North Yorkshire going Labour is like Liverpool going Tory. It isn't possible.
And yet it has happened. Sunak's constituency has a Labour mayor now. Blimey.
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#Yellowhammer
has made me angrier than I've ever felt about the Brexit. I didn't know there was a new level, but there is.
It's that sentence. "Low income groups will be disproportionately affected [by food price rises]." I can't get it out of my head. They're people.
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a reminder that you are allowed to both support strikes and find them very fucking annoying. They are meant to be annoying. You can experience the rich and full annoyance of it without being against the demands of the people doing it.
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I see the Brexit border plan is to have 8726 angry lorry drivers trapped in a Kent car park, helpless and raging about a form no one gave them, while their cargo is either rotting or not going where it needs to go. Sounds good. World beating.
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So the young, who are priced out of home ownership and charged a king's ransom to study what was once fully funded, and who are inheriting all of the unfixable damage we've done to the planet, should be happy because they have to do national service to say thank to the state. Mm.
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The National Trust believes that British wild places and heritage should be protected. The RNLI believes that no one should drown in British waters.
Not exactly woke. Kind of just doing what it says on their respective tins. It's sad to see such basic things be so politicised.
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Anyway, in the style of Liz Truss, here is an old photo of me holding a mysterious root vegetable I got in a veg box. I would also like to be famous, thank you.
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I'm really embarrassed by the anti-French stuff in the UK press. It is all just a bit sad. The realities of 2020 are not the realities of 1780.
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For the money it costs to deport a single luckless soul to Rwanda, the state could decide to give that person every chance imaginable. Give them a paid-up flat, access to a uni course, career counselling, a new wardrobe, and a car... and it wouldn't even make a dent in it. Mad.
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Just awful to think of universe in which I have to go back to the UK to care for my parents, but I can't bring Jorrit (my husband, my everything) because he's foreign and I don't earn enough. The thought of it makes me sick with stress. That is going to be some people's reality!
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I get pretty sick of being told how middle class I am for valuing the EU, education, and sincerity. My father left school at 16 to become a machine operator in Huddersfield.
The fact I don't present as you would expect says nothing about me but quite a lot about you.
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Just drives me spare; sorry to rant. My partner's grandfather was in the Resistance. He was punished for it. My mother-in-law's distant family were Jews and they were murdered. Many people starved to death in the Netherlands during the war. The UK doesn't own the war as its toy.
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If there is a general election I will come to England. I will sit down in a room with my mum, my lovely wonderful mum who has campaigned and worked for Labour, for food banks, for trade unions, for all sorts of "ordinary" people. And when the Tories lose, we going to dance.
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Can't say I'm a huge fan of Rachel Johnson's latest idea - give Putin what he wants (control of Ukraine, which won't be Ukraine) and the war ends. Yeah, great. Except the reason there is a war is that people in Ukraine aren't Russians, Rachel. This family is the absolute pits.
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Priti Patel's speech was basically 'please continue to hate immigrants and asylum seekers; we need your votes and have very little else to offer you but the promise of doing damage to these people. We need you to hate them. That's all we've got.'
About as you'd expect, then.
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"the most important event the world will ever see" is not the funeral, sorry Lindsay Hoyle
It will be my partner finally accepting that most of the disused cables he stores in his massive, ever-growing box of cables will not, in fact, "come in handy one day"
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From what I've seen the UK benefits system works on the principle that because 1% abuse the system, 100% have to be treated as criminals to stamp it out at all costs, causing nothing but misery.
Why not treat the 100% as in need of genuine help instead?
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The next year is just going to be Brexiteers moaning about the entirely predictable consequences of Brexit, isn't it? My daughter can't work a ski season! I can't go to my second home! Lurpak! What? Travel insurance?!
I've already had enough of it and it's only just begun.
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And getting in before trolls descend: is everything perfect here? No.
But you know what? Prison is an option only where all else fails, and seen as a place for psychiatric care intervention as much as punishment.
I'm very glad my tax money goes to that.
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I'm going to lose all my followers but fuck it. Sometimes I see a young trans person and it's quite obvious they are trans. I notice. And then I do precisely fucking nothing, because it doesn't matter. I think eh, good luck kid, it's really tough to be different. That I know.
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@balazscseko
Fucking terrifying, if you'll excuse my swearing. Without time limit? No parliament? Rule by decree? I don't know which line of this tweet is the most appalling.
Love to all in Hungary who are scared and sad today x
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If you are interested in reading about some of the schemes / ideas / possibilities of Dutch prison services, there is a good English article here:
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#Everydaysexism
looks like this. A man under pressure is confronted by a woman who is professionally qualified to confront him and who is courteous but not deferential.
He doesn't answer her arguments, because he can't. Instead he criticises her tone of voice, policing her.
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This is obviously not true of pockets of loveliness like most of Cambridge, parts of London, parts of Bristol, parts of York, well-heeled posh villages.
But the majority is grim. It is disgraceful how run-down it has been allowed to get - all political choice, all fixable.
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Obviously I was never going to vote Tory. But when I read that they're now angry about people having amenities close to their home, increasingly clean air, and safer roads for children to cross, when I hear they are actively against all these things, the mind simply boggles.
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Why the merry fuck would a country want to leave a human rights treaty that they helped to write! A sure sign of national decline, misrule and grave danger ahead for the ordinary people of that country.
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Right now I'm unemployed. I'm active in interviewing, and I'm financially okay. Dutch unemployment benefit (75% of my salary) lets me breathe as I get myself together and find the right job. I paid for it with my tax.
In the UK, I'd be taxed as well but penniless and powerless.
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I could also go on: the ever-growing number of pawn shops, frequently situated next to betting shops. A sign of economic need if there ever was one. Ads for short-term loans and pay on instalment options.
Really bloody awful. I cannot wait for the Tories to be out of power.
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I'm, uh, a tad surprised to hear from the Brexiteers that the EU has banned outside cafe tables. The Netherlands appears to have been in continual violation of this law since the EU was founded. I sit outside at a cafe at least once a week.
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Same goes for bars and pubs, restaurants, or any venue really. I find it a good sign when I see a range of people, some alternative in one way or other, having a chill time doing their thing. That's what I want life to be.
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I've taught adult refugees. The people everyone is so keen to boot out.
They're normal folk who've been through hell. Mostly they just want to move on, get an education and find a job, a home, friends, family. To be liked and safe and feel all right. Like the rest of us.
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Attracting a few xenophobes, as could be expected. I'm sorry the thought of a Dutch scientist (my partner) coming to Britain scares you that much. They are a dangerous group. Keen on cycle lanes and water management systems, handy with cheese-making. A grave risk to public life.
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maybe hard to explain also but I don't post stuff about the Dutch welfare state to be smug. I post it because it makes me incandescent with rage about the UK welfare state. The countries aren't economically that different, but people in the UK are being robbed blind. I hate it.
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in all seriousness, I have never felt less English or further away from the UK psychologically than over the last days. I don't really know who I am. Not Dutch either. Not anything. Someone who does not belong on that island anymore, if I ever did. Very odd experience.
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to be honest the biggest beneficiary of Brexit that I can identify thus far is Norway.
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No one's ever tried to convert me to Islam. No Muslim has ever harangued me about their religious views or ask that I change my life for them. No Muslim has ever told me I'm going to hell. No Muslim has insisted on praying for me against my wishes. They're just living their lives
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"The government can't protect every household," Sunak said today.
Yet they collect every household's tax fine. They expect every household to obey the law. They can punish every household. God forbid they keep their side of the contract. Not that they think there is one.
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I mean, if you find yourself one summer Saturday in a crowd yelling that you want doctors and nurses to be hanged, just... re-think your whole life. Now.
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I've used gender neutral toilets for all of my time in mainland Europe. Small pubs, cafes, and bars often have only one, which is for all customers. You just use it and carry on with your night. It's a toilet. That's it.
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My feelings on Corbyn have gone from
1. Nmhm. Rather old style and North Londony but okay...
2. I suppose he means well?
3. No, I don't think he does.
4. Perhaps he has a cunning plan.
5. Who is this guy and where is the opposition leader?
6. Getting very tired.
7. H E L P
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daily reminder that no one voted for a No Deal Brexit. It wasn't offered as an option, back in the golden days of sunlit uplands and frictionless trade, customs union, money for the NHS and no problems at all for anyone anywhere. All of which was, of course, bollocks.
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Haha, I see Strong Man Saj wants no more 'cowering' from the virus. The thing is, it's a virus. It's not going to be intimidated by a power stance and a glare.
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@liamyoung
and some wonder why women wouldn't go to the police to report harassment, unwanted touch, and all other the assorted 'minor' horrors that we're expected to learn to live with.
Disgraceful footage.
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So, the news today is basically
1. We need Romanians to come pick fruit, to save British fruit producers
2. We must end free movement by leaving the EU
3. Medical staff, many of whom are foreign nationals, are wonderful and important
4. We must limit immigration
EH?
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I just don't get Susan Hall as a candidate, to be honest. For a Tory MP in some random Wiltshire constituency or something, maybe? But for a massive, multi-national, global city full of huge diversity and difference like London? Really? Why?
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Re: Priti Patel. The thing with bullies is, they're nearly always perfectly charming to those they consider as their equals. They can be nice. The truth of who they are comes out when they think the other person doesn't have any power, or is otherwise unable to challenge them.
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and for the love of god, this is the last brexit tweet but I have to rage-scream, bear with me. I'm gearing up, warming up my vocal chords...
DO NOT TALK TO ME ABOUT BRITISH FISH. It is nostalgic, territorial bullsh*t. The UK SOLD her quotas! By choice!
Ahem. Thank you. Grr.
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Okay, goodness. I'm not used to this level of Twitter attention and feel very awkward about the whole thing now. But on the plus side: look how many of us are out there, standing up for people who do demanding jobs that aren't treated with enough respect. Loads of us.
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what is wrong with the UK is rainbow lanyards. If you ban these, the trains will run, the fields will be full of bees, children will have enough to eat and joy will reign
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Angela Rayner went on holiday, got drunk, ate heavy food, and had a good time out and about. That is what most of us do on holidays. You can do it in a fancy posh villa or you can do it at an all-inclusive resort or in a city hotel - all the same. Who cares. Good for her.
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We're not "lesser mortals" than Kate Middleton. None of us. I know that ordinary people reading this will be struggling through chemotherapy too. They'll be doing their best to live, for themselves, for their children. They'll be working through pain. Unbelievable attitudes.
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I have written this disclaimer many times, but I will add it again: this is an intensely capitalistic country, by no means a socialist paradise, but there is a strong welfare state and a communally-minded, efficient attitude to infrastructure. The UK could have this.
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@thinkovation
Turns out - stunning this one - that long prison sentences, taking people out of employment, family, and normal life for years, makes re-offending more likely.
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And by the by, this does not have to be a hyper "woke" place plastered with posters and flags. Where I am it is often just a little old fashioned pub where the atmosphere is friendly and open and it's clearly fine to just be whoever you are.
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Paula Vennells comes across as a thoroughly dishonest, evasive, cynical and immoral person. She has smashed the glass ceiling by being an equal dickhead to any male CEO. Good work Paula. Hope the end of the story is prison.
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People of my age in NL mix English and Dutch like water. Our friends pun and riff on English. They read Shakespeare and Blake etc in school as teens. There's cultural sensibility and knowledge there. Seeing their fluidity and skill makes the UK look linguistically amputated...
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And I really don't think even some pro-Remain commentators in the UK fully get the extent to which many in the EU, after years of negotiations, are just done with Brexit and the British. It is not issue number one. It's not even issue number ten. It's now someone else's problem.
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I see this is hitting the virals. I'm not slagging him off! Boring is so, so good. I celebrate the everyday beauty and preciousness of boringness and ordinariness in decent people who just love their families and strive to do their jobs well. It's great.
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people do realise you've had to have proof of vaccination to do stuff for decades, right? You need a yellow fever vaccine to get into many African countries. That system has been around since 1944. The reason being that it's a good system that leads to people not getting sick.
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Still. In happier news, my Dutch residency card came this morning. I already knew it'd been granted, but it's nice to see my little face on a card that says 'permanent residency' and 'no work restrictions'. It's renewable in 2030, so here's to a great next ten years, I guess.
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Some brilliant, clever, professionally valuable people never earn above £38.7K in their working lifetime. Some people who don't seem to serve any use to anyone earn well above 80k for most of theirs. Honestly, I think salary is the worst way of deciding on immigration rules.
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I mean, the basic impression I get is that the UK is about to collapse. There's the usual stuff - dodgy maintenance, classism, shitty private companies that can't run state services competently - I expect all that. This is something else. Something worse.
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Being multilingual is fine. Having more then one nationality is fine. Having mixed nationality parents and grandparents is fine. Having a partner of a different nationality is fine.
These are normal, boring things that a small, vocal group of twats are frightened by.
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A cleaner can be the best of people. A nurse can be formidably bright. A freelance artist can ooze talent and intellect. Yet they would not be welcome to the UK as immigrants under the 'Best and Brightest' plans.
It is not about Best and it is not about Brightest. Not at all.
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I don't think my parents have any way of coming to terms with the fact our washing machine is in the bathroom and it always will be in any house we live in in the Netherlands. They feel a strong cultural impulse towards putting it in the kitchen they cannot truly explain.
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I just think about all the girls/women I've taught - the bright ones, the funny ones, the chatterboxes, the quiet ones, the ones who ask tough questions, the ones who worry like mad about their essays, the ones who coolly ace everything. All those girls exist in Afghanistan too.
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To be honest, I used to think there was something terribly wrong with me for liking being alone. I can feel lonely at big parties, when everyone else seems to know someone. But I never feel lonely when I'm alone, doing my things in my own way. It brings me utter peace.
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Contactless is already up to 100 euro here in NL - handy at the shops, as it's best to not use keypads during Covid19. So Brexit has nothing to do with it, but whatever.
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@redditships
Hope I'm not the only person who finds this just very sad. Lose the horse, lose the golf, have a serious talk about what really matters... Kids don't need fancy photographers to do their party when they're eight anyway. They'd usually just prefer it if their dad was there.
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I see the Express has decided all "grey haired voters" want tax cuts. Mum's 78, and she sure as hell doesn't. She wants the people she works with at the food bank to get the help they need. Also, she dyes her spiky hair a beautiful coppery brown. Arseholes.
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Basically you could summarise my entire view on this Chartwells thing (and so much of UK government policy) like this:
poverty isn't a crime to be punished. Siphoning of public funds is, though.
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Brexiteers have finally reached the third panel.
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If no one in the media ever asks Liz Truss for her opinion on anything ever again, we will never hear about the opinions of Liz Truss. Just to throw a small idea out there to reflect on.
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If someone has no money and is terribly anxious, what they need most is not cookery skills courses, yoga to boost mental well-being, a brisk jog, a foot bath, a good talking to, budgeting tips, a support dog, being yelled at on TV, etc. What they need is... you know. Money.
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I didn't vote for Starmer to lead, and Labour aren't enough for me on climate. I have my doubts.
But between 'I have doubts' and what I feel about the Conservatives, who've shamelessly wrecked and plundered the country I love, is quite a gulf.
I'll vote Labour come the GE.
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Not that it's a good situation for Scotland now, but at least they have a leader who can speak coherently (and who likes books!) So will Scotland be accepting English refugees any time soon? I'm nice, hardworking, love salmon, beer, and whisky and can cope with dark winters.
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