Corona Virus and The Simpsons

[Cuchculan]

News to me if they did. But I only hear the Irish news. No idea why Russia would want the UK out of the EU. The UK would have been up in arms with them at that time because of a few deaths in the UK. Poison. Spy type stuff. That Russia denied. Maybe @Otherside knows something about Russia that I have yet to hear.

I am aware of the normal talk that Russia was said to have meddled in the voting during the referendum. Other than that, nothing.

[sunrise]

Saw a doc on Cambridge Analytica and thought it was mentioned. Here's stuff from Wikipedia on the subject:

• November 2017, it became public knowledge that Matthew Elliott, the chief executive of Vote Leave, was a founding member of Conservative Friends of Russia, and had been a target asset by someone known to be a Russian spy.^[23]

• The Russian government has sought to influence democracy in the United Kingdom through disinformation, cyber hacking, and corruption. While a complete picture of the scope and nature of Kremlin interference in the UK's June 2016 referendum is still emerging, Prime Minister Theresa May and the UK government have condemned the Kremlin?s active measures, and various UK government entities, including the Electoral Commission and parliamentarians, have launched investigations into different aspects of possible Russian government meddling.

• June 2018, The Guardian suggested that Arron Banks, the biggest donor to the campaign for leaving, and co-organiser of Leave.EU received the offer of a Russian gold mine, and had had a series of meetings with the Russian Ambassador. On 14 June 2018, Banks appeared before Parliamentary committee hearing, where he appeared to admit to having lied about his engagements with Russians, and later walked out refusing to answer further questions by citing a luncheon appointment with the Democratic Unionist Party

• 17 October 2019, the Intelligence and Security Committee of the UK Parliament passes a completed report on allegations that Russian government-sponsored activities had an effect on the outcome of the referendum to Downing Street.

[Cuchculan]

Long live Mother Russia. There are a lot of very rich Russians in the UK. Some own football clubs. Who knows what the others get up to. Is not illegal to sponsor a political party if it is public knowledge. They have to be able to say where money came from. Lord knows some of them would be happy to take it off anybody. I doubt anybody would refuse funding. Once the source of the funding was above board in the eyes of the law.

We all know what Russia were said to have done during the US elections. Much the same thing. Claim was they put Trump in power. True? We will never know. Bit like shaping the world the way they want it shaped. Or so we would be told.

[Otherside]

Yeah, Russia wanted the UK out of the EU. It meddled in the Brexit referendum. The report on it is finally coming out tomorrow.

Russia wants a weakened EU and weakened west. Putin has never quite managed to figure out that the cold war has ended. Sees a weakened west as a way to Russia being the big power in the world again.

See what the report says tomorrow I guess, but if theres nothing in it, why was it not released months ago?

[Cuchculan]

I guess with the whole virus thing, at least in Ireland, the Russia news was relegated to non important. The big question, if Russia was found to have backed Brexit by funding those who wanted to leave, is that illegal? They could say the money came from a rich Russian coal miner. If that coal miner does have other business interests within the UK, then surely it would be legal. They would be considered as just a backer. If they had no other interest in the UK at all, that is were it all becomes a bit more dark. Legal or illegal? How close this person is to the Russian government and the likes.

Will the EU be weaker without the UK in it? Is only 1 country. I am sure another country will now try and join the EU. This other country might border with Russia. As a lot of those new smaller countries are said to be in Europe. They hate Russia. Be worse for Russia to have all these former Soviet Union countries get into the EU. There is a good chance it could happen. If now staight away, in time.

[CloudMaker]

Increased unemployment benefits in the US are ending this month. The estimates show that within the next 30 days we’re going to see 30 million people evicted or foreclose on their homes.

The number will probably get even bigger. That’s just the next month.

How bad are things going to get when we have 30 million new homeless people walking around??

[Otherside]

I guess with the whole virus thing, at least in Ireland, the Russia news was relegated to non important. The big question, if Russia was found to have backed Brexit by funding those who wanted to leave, is that illegal? They could say the money came from a rich Russian coal miner. If that coal miner does have other business interests within the UK, then surely it would be legal. They would be considered as just a backer. If they had no other interest in the UK at all, that is were it all becomes a bit more dark. Legal or illegal? How close this person is to the Russian government and the likes.

Will the EU be weaker without the UK in it? Is only 1 country. I am sure another country will now try and join the EU. This other country might border with Russia. As a lot of those new smaller countries are said to be in Europe. They hate Russia. Be worse for Russia to have all these former Soviet Union countries get into the EU. There is a good chance it could happen. If now staight away, in time.

No way around it really, we're stronger together, and EU's one of the largest economies, and a rather influential country in the world. EU will certainly survive though, and UK will be hit a lot harder than EU. Got Germany and France still.

Not sure how long it'll take for the othter countries to join. Montenegro, possibly soon. 2025 earliest supposely. Others have other issues - some quite serious - that need to be resolved. Albanias got a huge corruption problem, Serbia refuses to acknowledge Kosovo exists. Ukraines not even got an application in at the moment, so definatley a long while off. Accession is very slow. Turkey is...definatley not getting membership.

[Otherside]

How bad are things going to get when we have 30 million new homeless people walking around??

Thats an insanely huge number to just happen all at once. Fallout from the virus is just huge. Terrifying.

Probably see a huge amount like that here once furlough payments stop.

[Cuchculan]

They have put a cap pn a lot of things here. For now. Won't last for ever. Rent freeze and the likes. Landloards not allowed put rent up. All falls under some legal issues. Can only do it for so long before it is no longer legal. Cost of housing and appartments here is through the roof. Students want them. Landlords are aware of that. The prices go up. for years they had been talking about a rap cap / freeze. They can't do that for a long period of time. Might get away with it for a month or two. Seems landlords have rights too. I would call it to rip people off. They would call it earning money / a living. Will hit home soon enough. Other issues going on here that were leaving people homeless before this pandemic hit. Banks been allowed to sell your mortgage off to other companies. They might sell about 2,000 mortgages in one go. After that you are as good as fucked. People who buy them up your price to one you can't afford. Once you miss a payment, you lose your house / appartment. Is a big thing here in Ireland. Loads of people assumed they had a mortgage with bank A. As the bank does not have to inform you that they sold your mortgage to company B. Suddenly you get a letter from company B about your mortgage. That is when you first find out you are no longer with bank A and the price has gone up. Soon you are out of a house. Again it is not illegal. Though I assumed it was to begin with. All above board. No idea how many mortgages have been sold over the past number of years.

In Ireland we also have the tracker mortgage scandal. The logic was that fixed rates for a period would offer customers a degree of certainty with regard to repayments. In the majority of cases, the understanding on the customers' end was that when the fixed-rate period of their mortgage was finished, they would be moved back on to their original tracker mortgage rate. But, that is not what happened. In many instances banks would not return customers to their original tracker rates, instead putting them on higher fixed-rate and variable-rate loans. And, in a lot of cases where customers were put back on trackers by their banks, this was done so at a higher rate than the original tracker agreement. The effect of this was that people ended up, in many cases, paying hundreds of euro more than they had to on a monthly basis to service their mortgages. This resulted in extensive financial strain being unnecessarily put on people, with a number of people having their homes repossessed. But that is just the account holders themselves, so the overall number of people affected by the issue is likely in the hundreds of thousands when the full household is taken into consideration. Twenty-three mortgage holders have so far been identified who lost their homes as a result of being improperly moved from their low-rate tracker product to a higher rate loan. A further 79 buy-to-let customers affected have also had properties repossessed.

For the record the whole tracker mortgage thing was deemed illegal and the banks had to pay back millions to customers.

[Otherside]

Dublin sounds as bad as London. Saw a tiny box room (looked more like a cupboard) in a shared house for ?2k the other day. Ricidulous.

It's currently illegal to evict anyone - even if they can't pay. Soon as that ends (think it will soon) those will start up, might be quite a few evictions happening.

[Cuchculan]

It shall be ending in 3 weeks time here. Then all hell will break loose.

Landlords rip students off big time. Best off looking for a family who take people in. Room from them would be cheaper. Here we have about seven to a room in some places. Shouldn't be allowed. Places are kips. Seven does not mean cheaper. Means the landlord makes a lot more money.

[Ironman]

Our main news headline was about hundreds of American tourists arriving in Ireland. Normally a good thing. There is uproar over it. America is the worst hit country in the world. Why are they even allowing people to leave the US? trump has banned all flights into the US. Until the US gets things a little better under control, all flights out should be banned as well. You arrive here and you are meant to self isolate for 2 weeks. Few of them got into trouble for refusing to self isolate. The main cause of the recent infections has been tourists. The people who give the health briefings are saying nobody should be allowed visit Ireland. But they are not the government. We are all waiting to see if the government acts on what the health experts are telling them they should be doing. Again we had no deaths yesterday. Was the same the day before. We have gotten the figures down to something that actually looks good. So why take risks?

Well, we have far more testing done here for one thing - I think I heard something like 60,000,00 tests have been administered in this pandemic and we just over 3,000,000 positives...... -> Second, you have to figure in the number of cases and then those who are no longer with us and those who are now okay. We also had spike in the southern part of the country.....but mainly in cities where the demonstrations had been going down. I have a mandatory mask thing in my state now, just to prevent the spread.

I will NOT be wearing a mask when I exercise - I already target my runs for like 1am just to make sure I am ALONE. The only people I see are the occasional car or the policeman. I already suffered through five straight weeks of no exercise and am just now (three months after restarting) trying to get a rhythm going. The summer heat and humidity even at night doesn't help this time of year. Last night it as 24.5c with 90% humidity. It was hard to breathe and sweat would not cool me down. I came home, drank four quarts of sports drink and water.....and STILL had a headache from dehydration! I can't wear a mask in those conditions!

I already wear a mask when I go to enclosed places like grocery shopping and stores, etc. If I am outside in the open air and not around anyone, I take off the mask. I have no problem with wearing a mask because i want to protect my mom. She's 72.

[Cuchculan]

Just confusing here in Ireland. New law passed. Making it mandatory to wear masks in shops. Only the shops have a sign up about it as if it was just a suggestion made by the government. You can still enter all shops without masks. The government mentioned fines and even jail time for not wearing a mask. Clear sign that states it was only a suggestion. Bit like saying ' it is up to you '.

Yesterday amused us a little. They announced 9 deaths from the virus. Why so funny? 1 of them was new. The other 8 happened about a month ago and were now been upgraded to covid-19. A whole month? Sounds like an old car. Just getting an upgrade. Kind of puts me in mind of this joke.

Attachment 4715

[Cuchculan]

They were talking about schools going back here. Kids up to a certain age won't have to social distance at all. Because they are not known as carriers of the virus. Then we reach another age group. They have to social distance in the classrooms. If a kid comes down sick / unwell they want a place for that kid to be able to go in the school. Maybe it is just me, but if you were a teacher and a kid came down sick, would you actually want to go near that kid? Or would it be a case of ' stay the heck away from me little Johnny '. Nothing was mentioned about protective gear for the teachers. Maybe they think it would frighten young kids? But if someone does come down ill, and they have zero safety gear for teachers, what do they expect that teacher to do? Following this they contact the parents of the child. Who are then meant to come up to the school and take their kid home. Why home? This just seems to be making a bad situation even worse. They did mention a new form of testing for young kids. Not the same sort of test an adult would get. It just all seemed so mixed up when listening to it. Instead of lowering the risk to others, what they were suggesting, to me, seemed to put others more at risk. Though on the plus side not many kids have had the virus. More just they have no idea what will happen when they return to a classroom setting. They are bringing in more teachers. Seems like they are running with the plan of half the class one day and the other half the following day. Maybe using other areas of the schools as well. Like teaching in the gym or the school library. Listening to it you would think they were making it up as they were going along. With no real idea what they were actually doing. New things been thrown in every few minutes. As if someone just had a new idea and whispered it to the person doing the talking.

[Otherside]

Masks are compulsory here in shops, cafes (when ordering, although obviously, you can take it off when actually eating/drinking). A lot of shops are reluctant to enforce it though (although most people here and doing it). Cant say I blame them for not wanting to ask a 16 year old staff member to do it after that bus driver was assaulted and died in France. Some stores have just gotten there security guy to enforce it.

Schools are on summer break now. England and Wales opened up a bit (only for a few age groups), Scotland didn't.

Due to the fact that Scotland has handled the pandemic pretty well (compared to England), support for independence has surged. To the point that Government has started panicking.