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[Starver]

Take a deep breath. Clearly a sore point. Our MOT Tests[1] are only so bad if you have engaged a particularly gouging commercial garage to do the deed, insisting that far more 'faults' need fixing by them than they truly need to do.

Spoiler: On languages... (click to show/hide)

I believe Welsh is offered as a common alternative (in/near Wales) for our tests. Looking it up, I'm getting conflicting information. Some places say that since 2013 only English, Welsh and British Sign Language are possible to book for the practical, and English/Welsh for the Theory.

But a number of current-looking places (just from the search engine result overview, but mixed in with those saying "English! Only English!") still say that (with my bold) it says that "At the moment the driving theory test is only available in 20 languages as well as English. These are: Alabian, Arabic, Bengali, Cantonese, Dari, Farsi, Gujarati, Hindi, Kashmiri, Kurdish, Mirpuri, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Pushto, Spanish, Tamil, Turkish, Urdu and Welsh." And that (pre-recorded?) audio cues are available in the vehicle session itself for nineteen languages (English and Welsh being the typical 'live' options, though perhaps with the right examiner...) and that apparently doesn't(/didn't) preclude you from having an actual interpreter.

The snippets that say it isn't like that, any more, point towards the change being in 2014. And a Private Hire Vehicle licence will need actual certified English proficiency (spoken and written) from April 2023.

...which is both news to me and irrelevent to my own situation. Bidh mi a’ draibheadh ​​mu thrąth, ach chan e tacsaidh.

Not that I'm convinced this is Ameripol stuff any more. Which I seem to have dragged us away from. edit: And you noticed long before I did...  Whoops!

[1] Not RAS Syndrome, for once, as that's (somewhat anachonously) the Ministry Of Transport Test, though commonly only known as "the/an/my/your MOT".

[Micro102]

I think what bothers me about these conversations is they always devolve into the assertions that just because some people have more than others, it's either A) because those that have more are intentionally and maliciously taking more from the others or B) because those that have less are lazy and just want to leech off those that are "really doing the work."  Both of these are generally incorrect and never universally correct.

Somehow we have to get to the point where "labor and management" realize that they really are part of the same team, rather than working against each other.  If we keep reinforcing the idea that these groups are inherently opposed (which I don't believe) then people will act that way, when there's no reason they have to be.

I mean if you are moderately well off, and all you hear are people not well-off saying that you're that way only because you oppress people, that's got to feel terrible.  And if you are not well off and all you hear is people telling you it's because you don't work hard enough, that's got to feel terrible.

I want to see a "new" union, which is entrepreneurs and workers together, fighting against polarization...

With wealth inequality skyrocketing in America, it's not an assertion anymore. It's objective reality. Corporations leech money off their workers. When the wealthy just keep getting wealthier, then at some point we have already crossed the line of someone being malicious. And we aren't talking "well-off" here. We are talking "somehow earns the worth of dozens of doctors life times savings in a few years" levels of wealth.

Then we have rulings like citizens united, which lets corporations shovel money into political candidates. Which allows for even more corruption.

Some people are just scum and will reach massive amounts of wealth because the ethical barriers that would normally prevent someone from getting there are ignored. Everyone working together would have very little to no wealth inequality because if everyone valued each other equally, then they would seek to be paid equally. These are normally called worker cooperatives and I'd like to see more of them, if not outright enforce them. But as it is now, just pretending that everyone would get along if you just tell them to enough is objectively wrong. You need to pass laws preventing bad faith actors from abusing such things.

Ah yes, and I suppose I will also mention slavery and the old "company towns", where companies like Ford would  pay workers in "Ford bucks" so they had to rely on the infrastructure and supplied Ford had, and weren't easily able to leave. Some people literally want slaves. There is no compromising with them.

[Starver]

Ah yes, and I suppose I will also mention slavery and the old "company towns", where companies like Ford would  pay workers in "Ford bucks" so they had to rely on the infrastructure and supplied Ford had, and weren't easily able to leave. Some people literally want slaves. There is no compromising with them.

Yes, that's more on topic.

^♪♪You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me, 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store (dee daa dar daw doopeedee doo...)_♪♪

[Frumple]

Ah yes, and I suppose I will also mention slavery and the old "company towns", where companies like Ford would  pay workers in "Ford bucks" so they had to rely on the infrastructure and supplied Ford had, and weren't easily able to leave. Some people literally want slaves. There is no compromising with them.

I mean, do note this is the ameripol thread; some folks in this country put a great deal of effort into cultivating functional or literal penal slavery and we don't have laws on the books to prevent it. You don't have to mention company towns, or efforts by modern companies to make more of them, slavery outright still exists in the US and there's people fucking with our systems in order to extract more wealth from it.

[McTraveller]

I want to know what thoughts people have on how you'd actually prevent wealth concentration in any kind of economy where you allow individuals to pool their resources, and do it in a way that doesn't cause people to get angry about it (e.g. "government overreach!")

I hear the calls for things like taxing corporate income, but how do you do it in a way that can't be abused by reinvestment, or avoid traps of "oh we tax them 99%, but they still are earning $1B a quarter after taxes", so you'd have to end up with a policy that says "you get to keep $x, we tax everything else."  Then you get into the loop of trying to figure out what the "right" number is, or even "what is the right heuristic to pick if you wanted to somehow make the thresholds dynamic."

Maybe put another way - is there anything structural or systematic which is preventing "worker collectives" from being created and succeeding? I'm not talking specifics, for example I know you can't just create your own medical practice without certifications.  But there's nothing actually preventing a large group of people from creating a widget factory, etc.

[Frumple]

There's not going to be a way to do it without making people angry about it, if for no other reason than that the fuckers who stand to become less excessively wealthy in the process will cheerfully spend a fraction of their wealth to astroturf opposition.

... that's especially true with screeching about gov't overreach, as a great deal of the folks loudest about that particular canard have made it abundantly clear what they mean is the gov't doing stuff they don't like, with no consistency about it otherwise. You're looking for a concrete solution to the problem of a significant portion of the population being thoroughly detached from reality or even a modicum of consistency in terms of ethics or policy preference, that avoids pissing them off. Frankly, that's just flat out impossible. There's no way to do it when their opposition is based on who is acting, not what's being done.

[Dostoevsky]

Senate and House have now both passed imposing the Biden deal and forbidding a strike.

An amendment that would have included additional paid time off passed the House, but failed in the Senate 52-43 (needed 60). Got a few Rs supporting, but not enough. (Manchin also voted N.)

[Rolan7]

Fixing wealth concentration is a lofty goal I do support, but I'd rather focus on what we should do with the idiots, morons, utter buffoons who mismanaged the rail system to this point.

Practically I think the best solution is to sack them.  Somehow I doubt they'll ever have to work to live, but maybe they can get a job running a train if they have the knowledge.

The rail system, as a service fundamental to the American economy which requires government intervention to salvage, will be salvaged and run by the government going forward.  It's really weird that we tried to run it via obscene profit taking, but that experiment has concluded in failure so now we can move on like adults.

We *could* go after the the management for gross negligence which has materially threatened the American economy, but that seems unlikely.  Better to just let them retire in leisure, where they can do little harm, lest the other oligarchs get too nervous.

Due to their COLOSSAL screw-up it may be necessary to offer rail workers ironbound promises of better future conditions, along with scholarships and other encouragements that address the shortage of qualified workers.

Fakedit:

Senate and House have now both passed imposing the Biden deal and forbidding a strike.

An amendment that would have included additional paid time off passed the House, but failed in the Senate 52-43 (needed 60). Got a few Rs supporting, but not enough. (Manchin also voted N.)

Of course.
I hope Manchin... works red-eye shifts on a railroad.

[Lidku]

someone needs to stop ye

[Micro102]

Just saw that freight carries dumped about 30% of their employees over the past 6 years, which caused the 24/7 on call bullshit in the first place. Further evidence that railroad companies are lying about there not being enough staff.

[Loud Whispers]

someone needs to stop ye

Nobody cared who I was until I put on the mask
Ye a big guy
4 UUUU

[scriver]

Ye could.

But can ye?

[MrRoboto75]

Ye could.

But can ye?

There's a non zero chance Kanye offs himself in the next couple years.

[Lord Shonus]

There's a non-zero chance that he doesn't make it out of this year. He seems like he's trying to offend as many people as possible, and is part of a community that has a reputation for settling beef with bullets.

[scriver]

Pls don't remind me he suffers from legitimate issues, I get bad conscience easily