EU referendum are you in or out

[gilesgoat]

In Italy NOTHING IS SIMPLE...

Yeah I certainly found that.
Simple yes/no questions result in a gathering of adjacent co-workers, a discussion that at times - naively to me at least - seems verging on physical attack.
Only to be told 20 minutes later "yes", "no", or more often "we have 5 or 6 other scenarios".

Lots of talk on things that don't matter, little or nothing on things that are essential.

I've been working for too many years in a place where we had "the system of distributed ignorance" whoever you were asking things to was "I don't know about that" ..

I think "a lot of that attitude" comes that in Italy "everyone has HIS/HER OWN vision" that is kinda "immutable" so to find a common ground/perspective/sight it's VERY difficult.

Couple that with NOBODY wants to take responsibility to have said "yes/no" so at best you'd get a "perhaps" or "could be" or "maybe".

But ALSO in FAR TOO many cases you REALLY have to deal with people that "cannot make a definitive mind on the subject" they TRULY don't know 100% what they really want/mean/should do/etc.

To be fair nowadays we often find in situations where YOU know PERFECTLY what you mean/want/do but that sometime "is not something you can explicitely say" ( without getting into BIG troubles ) so it's a bit like Pirandello "One, no one, one hundred thousands" .. there's what you want, what no one should know and what "everyone else wants" ..

Still "nothing compared to this" .. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaina_seven-valued_logic

But yes "logic problems have ( or should have ) only 2 states" .. yes or no and nothing in between

[(o)(o)]

I found this "to get an idea" they seem to say ( it's complex ) that assuming you use 2700Kw/H / year on a 3Kw contract that is going to cost you 587 eur at the end of the year.

https://luce-gas.it/guida/bolletta/luce ... -variabili

NO IDEA what are "Arim" and "Asos" and why it costs 105 eur per year ( according to that ) "for management of the power meter" ..

Insanely complex. OTOH it's transparent, you can see where your money is going.

All these figures are for electric.. (gas is hitting us harder) :

2700kWh by that link in Italy is €587 which is almost exactly £500

What's the cost in UK ?

Todays EDF fixed* tariff = (daily charge 365 x 23.50p) + (unit charge 2700 x 27.92p) * (Tax @5%... 1.05) = £882 (€1030)

There is a quite a bit cheaper for variable tariff, but it's still WAY above £500 and we know a further price hike is coming

It's quite variable depending on how much energy one uses. If one uses more one pays more for the Kw too.As far as I could find out it averaged 0.14€ back in April.

Last April I was paying approx €0.21 (18.12p at todays ER) on electric averaged over 4233kWh

This* is going up to €0.37 (31.43p)

By my rough estimates vs IT and PO it looks like Britain pays 30-40% more for electric anyone got more thorough calcs?

I'm a bit worried because my energy provider sent me an email a few weeks ago, the usual "your tariff is ending" thing, and saying they'd switch me to a new tariff costing just over 30% more (still the cheapest option for me according to the comparison sites at the time). I just had a look on their website and their cheapest tariff now available is damn near double what I'm currently paying. The new tariff is due to start next month, so I really hope they're going to honour the price mentioned in the email, as I've not heard otherwise from them in the meantime.

I'm in a building made in late 1700s, so efficiency isn't really a thing..

Contemplating the fixed deal that's locked to Oct 2024 as I'm hit disproportionately by rises

My annual bill is going up from approx £1100 to £2100

[merman]

Project Fear, remember that?

How the Remainers were told they WERE WRONG - there would be no shortages and food would be cheaper.



Oh.


And now it emerges that Lord Frost and Boris only signed up to a Brexit deal - including the Northern Ireland protocol - to get the General Election win. They are playing politics with lives and the whole future of Ireland, not to mention running England into the ground.

[Ollie]

It's been an open secret for ages that a certain faction of the party only supported the deal in Parliament because Johnson promised them in private that he would renege on it.

[zip accident]

It's been an open secret for ages that a certain faction of the party only supported the deal in Parliament because Johnson promised them in private that he would renege on it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_Dee ... eap_(song)

[VNVObit]

It's been an open secret for ages that a certain faction of the party only supported the deal in Parliament because Johnson promised them in private that he would renege on it.

Johnson’s biggest concern is that NI will do well compared to the rest of the UK so will highlight the benefits of remaining in the Single Market (they still have a seamless border to the EU) which obviously isn’t possible with Brexit

[KlaxonCow]

Johnson’s biggest concern is that NI will do well compared to the rest of the UK so will highlight the benefits of remaining in the Single Market

Which, unfortunately, would motivate the Tories to treat NI worse on the UK side of things, to balance things out against any benefit remaining in the Single Market might confer to them, to avoid them having any noticeable success that would highlight that Brexit has damaged us.

And that's how a nation gets turned into a political football.

[(o)(o)]

1. The Tories hate the Good Friday agreement because it's a Labour success. IMO they would rather jettison that and return to 'the troubles' rather than allow that to prevail.

2. Dominic Cummings has revealed that the Tories never intended to honour NI protocol part of Brexit (it was pre-planned to renege on the deal with the bits that were not liked rejected) - and he should know he was advisor to the PM at the time. That means the government were acting in bad faith. That means that all global entities negotiating trade deals and treaties with Britain are now aware that our government is prepared to sign agreements on the dotted line, in bad faith.

[gilesgoat]

I sent a parcel containing a gift value 20 pounds about, really, from UK to Italy ..

Took over 3 weeks to get here !!

When it arrived ( today ) my dad had to pay 10 EUR of "customs" to get it, 10 EUR OVER A 20 POUNDS VALUE !!!

.. THANK YOU BREXIT

Now you tell me "if it's like that" WHO is ever going to do "commerce" with UK/EU ???

[Cassiel]

I sent a parcel containing a gift value 20 pounds about, really, from UK to Italy ..

Took over 3 weeks to get here !!

When it arrived ( today ) my dad had to pay 10 EUR of "customs" to get it, 10 EUR OVER A 20 POUNDS VALUE !!!

.. THANK YOU BREXIT

Now you tell me "if it's like that" WHO is ever going to do "commerce" with UK/EU ???

Yes, this. I've lost about 80% of my European customer base simply down to the extra VAT/duties they now have to pay on top. I can't even blame them. Suddenly I'm a much more expensive option than I used to be.

Would the EU even let us back in if we asked?

[tufty]

Would the EU even let us back in if we asked?

Of course they would. However, that would be on absolute base terms, not the enormously privileged terms the UK used to have. Schenghen? Yep, you'd need to sign up to that. Euro? Yep, you'd almost certainly need that too. The veto power the UK used to have? Don't make me laugh! etc etc.

But it would still be a better deal than the UK have now.

[Dio]

I think you're wrong on the Euro (they'd settle for dual-currency, pricing and paying everything in both currencies) and we could probably haggle our way out of Schengen, but we'd certainly have to give up the veto and the rebate. Never gonna happen though so hey.

[PFVA]

I'm not sure if this has to do with Brexit or with Covid 19, or if it's some other reason but the MSC Cruises used to come by here originating in the UK. Now they seem to be originating here. Their new ship, the Virtuosa has 5 home ports, three in the Gulf, one in Genoa and the 5th one is Lisbon. They always had home port in the UK, and this thing is big, can take 6000 + passengers. I got to think that maybe they didn't want to travel from the UK because the passenger would have to fly there and Brexit bureaucracy would complicate things, but cruise ships are international and passengers come from all over the world not just the EU. Then I thought maybe it would be a Covid 19 thing, the ships aren't actually full in these times.

I got intrigued with the change that's all.

Note: That thing is f... big, actually tall. I'm not particularly fond of cruise ships but the engineering ability of having that enormous thing floating is quite impressive.

[Dio]

Note: That thing is f... big, actually tall. I'm not particularly fond of cruise ships but the engineering ability of having that enormous thing floating is quite impressive.

It's because everything that needs to be at the bottom of a boat is really heavy. And everything above the waterline is made of tissue paper in comparison. After that it's just about making sure there's enough air inside.

[KlaxonCow]

I'm not particularly fond of cruise ships but the engineering ability of having that enormous thing floating is quite impressive.

All you have to do is make the overall density less dense than water. Then it'll float.

Size and weight are actually irrelevant - so make it as big and monstrously heavy as you like, so long as the density's less than the water it's floating in, it'll float in that water.

Indeed, as Neil DeGrasse Tyson covers in the video below, because ice is about 10% less dense than liquid water, an ice cube - or even a massive iceberg, or even the entire Arctic ice sheets - will be 10% above water and 90% below water:



So you can even control how deep into the water it'll float - how much is above and below the surface - from that ratio of its density to the density of the water it's in.

If it's overall half as dense as water, say, then it'll have half its mass above water and half below.

And, from the physics, all that matters is the density, not the size or the weight. Although, yeah, density is the ratio of size to mass. So you can have as much mass as you like, so long as its size is big enough to spread that mass out, so that the overall density is less than water.

So, perhaps counterintuitively, making it bigger is actually how you ensure that it floats.

A solid sphere of iron, like a cannonball? It's going to sink. But if you took that same amount of iron and made a massive hollow ball of iron - with air inside it - then even though it's the same amount of mass that it was before, it'll float. And it's floating, exactly because we made it bigger. Because bigger actually means less dense, and being less dense than water is how you float.

So, weirdly, the bigger the ship, the better it floats. And you'll notice with these massive cruise ships that, the bigger they are, the more of the ship is above water than below it.

Notice how, with these truly gargantuan ships, how little of the ship is below water, compared to how much is above water:



When it comes to floating, bigger is actually better, oddly enough.