Stone Mason, Canadian ExPat living in the UK, Hobbyist musician.

  • 15 Posts
  • 2.15K Comments
Joined 3 years ago
Cake day: July 7th, 2023
  • Sturgist@lemmy.catoUK Politics@feddit.uk•Zero net migration would shrink UK economy by 3.6%, says thinktank
    9·
    2 days ago

    Not to mention declining birth rates across the UK. No immigration, no birth rate high enough to maintain the population… A few generations and you’re looking at a mostly geriatric population with not enough people working and putting into pension pots to cover all the folk no longer working. Not enough young people working to CARE for the massive elderly population. Rapid decline in taxes collected. Total collapse. End of the UK.
    It’s stupid. It’s not even a huge problem. The biggest thing I hear from people who buy the right-wing propaganda to any extent is that they, illegal and legal immigrants, are taking up all the resources that should go to the less fortunate people from here. I’m an immigrant from Canada, legal, I have no access to public funds and pay a (quite substantial) NHS surcharge on top of paying taxes. A low income/homeless support/advocate group in Glasgow made a statement recently saying that if every illegal immigrant/refugee was removed that day the rooms freed up wouldn’t even house half the homeless people.
    They’re not taking away the basically no support for the poor from the government, decades of malicious underfunding and austerity did that.

  • Sturgist@lemmy.catoPC Gaming@lemmy.ca•Obsidian's The Outer Worlds 2 Underperformed, and There Won't Be a ThirdEnglish
    18·
    2 days ago

    I enjoyed the first one enough to play through the whole way once, and play part way a few times after that. Like you said though. The writing was dull, and it seemed like they wanted it to be gritty, but funny, and the satire was too much. The writing was so weak that I didn’t even bother pirating the second one to see if I wanted to buy it. I think I might have chuckled once or twice on my first play through. And the rest of my runs, I just kinda zoned out of all the story stuff and shot things. The combat wasn’t amazing either.

  • Sturgist@lemmy.catoCanada@lemmy.ca•The multi-billion problem Canada’s oilpatch doesn’t want to disclose
    17·
    3 days ago

    Add onto that the very common practice of O&G companies playing shell games to leave Alberta with the bill for cleaning up spent wells.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_wells_in_Alberta,_Canada

    From the wiki page:

    The 100% industry-funded Alberta Energy Regulator (AER)—the sole regulator of the province’s energy sector—manages licensing and enforcement related to the full lifecycle of oil and gas wells based on Alberta Environment Ministry requirements, including orphaned and abandoned wells.[5][6][7] Oil and gas licensees are liable for the responsible and safe closure and clean-up of their oil and gas well sites under the Polluter Pays Principle (PPP)[8] as a legal asset retirement obligation (ARO).[5][6][9][10] An operator’s liability for surface reclamation issues continues for 25 years following the issuance of a site reclamation certificate. There is also a lifelong liability in case of contamination.[11][12]

    Then just a liiiiiiittle further down the page:

    As of March 2023, oil and gas companies owe rural municipalities $268 million in unpaid taxes;[17] they owe landowners “tens of millions in unpaid lease payments”.[18] Original owners of what are now orphan wells “failed to fulfill their responsibility for costly end-of-life decommissioning and restoration work”; some sold these wells “strategically to insolvent operators”.[18] Landowners suffer both “environmental and economic consequences” of having these wells on their property.[18] OWA funding is underfunded by at least several hundred million.[18] The total estimate for cleaning up all existing sites is as much as $260 billion. Remediation is paid for through federal and provincial bailouts, a PPP violation.[18]

    Really wish Albertans understood how badly they’re being hoses by O&G…

  • Sturgist@lemmy.catoOttawa@lemmy.ca•‘I thought I was doing 150’: Police stop driver going 164 km/h on Ottawa highway
    1·
    3 days ago

    🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣…no

    National speed limit is 70mph, so not far off Canada’s 110.

    Edit: it was by no means an easy go, I had taken my first road test twice, first time they failed me for not braking hard enough at a stop sign. Marked as rolling stop for the reason for failing.

    Edit 2: having put on my reading comprehension hat, I now understand that you were talking about the UK licensing. 🤦 Been a long day. And yeah, absolute shambles. A fair number of people seem to be really incensed over the proposed wait between theory and road test…

  • Sturgist@lemmy.catoOttawa@lemmy.ca•‘I thought I was doing 150’: Police stop driver going 164 km/h on Ottawa highway
    2·
    3 days ago

    and the licensing process is a joke.

    Idk, I grew up in Vancouver, and live in the UK… from talking to people who are in the process of/just got their license, my licensing experience was in most ways a lot more stringent and thorough. And I’ve had my license for over a decade.
    They’re just talking about changing it so that people have to wait 6 months before doing their road test after passing the theory test. There’s also only one step.
    I had a learners license after passing the theory, then a road test to get my new driver license, then ANOTHER road test to get my full license.
    People here can do their theory test, book for the next available road test, which fair enough could be several to 6 months in the future, and then be fully licensed. They can optionally stick a giant P magnet on the front and back of the vehicle to warn others that they have just passed in the last month…but it’s not mandatory.

    Edit: the only thing on the test here that I think should be implemented in Canada is being required to lift the hood(bonnet🎩) and point out the dipstick, oil fill spout, washer fluid fill spout, and then how to access the spare tire.