Today's discussion about the news
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To quote another thread, that is unhelpful.
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Yeah, not doing themselves any favours. I've said before that demanding extra money because previous pay rises, that they accepted, were suddenly deemed insufficient wasn't great and they've now had what seems a very reasonable back dated deal. I agree to an extent with Stevo on this, whilst I feel they were due a decent pay rise they do seem to have got into the mindset of holding the Government to ransom knowing the damage their strikes can do. Hopefully the majority of the membership will be reasonable and it's just classic Union rep blowhards making a noise.
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What do you expect someone to say who wants higher wages for his members when asked a question about next year?
"Thank you so much, I don't care about getting more next time now"?
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No, but it isn't normal to threaten a further strike on the day you've accepted a double digit pay rise over each of the next two years, indicating that you want the same over the proceeding two years to get back to fuck knows when in comparison to some other professions. It just isn't realistic.
If they do it again in April, I am pretty sure there will be quite a strong public backlash.
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Yeah, he should have said "We're really happy, can't believe they gave us that tbh, that will see us right for next year too!"
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They have a 22% pay rise over 2 years. So yeah, given the membership approved it, pretty much that's what he should have said. Anything else needed to be more measured.
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It would be pretty easy to say "we've just agreed a deal and will negotiate our future pay deals at the appropriate time". It was a pretty stupid response but then that's what I expect from Union reps, being confrontational is their default setting.
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This deal is already 6 months behind schedule, so it is appropriate to start preparing expectations for the pay review body which should report in March.
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It's the BMA. They are setting out their stall for a fight over the not unreasonable position that the NHS can't just keep having its budget increased ad infinitum.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
It will be back dated.
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The next pay review should still go according to the standard timetable and come into effect in April.
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Gotta give it to Israel for selling pagers with hidden explosives in them to assassinate senior leaders in hezbollah.
I mean, that keeps collateral damage to a minimum and wrecks the enemy’s main way of communicating. Win win.
edit. Turns out they sold hundreds and detonated them all! Ooof
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What are pagers? Sounds 1980s to me...
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They've wasted months of police work getting up on that wire.
Rawls is an asshole.
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why do you applaud setting off large number of explosive devices with no knowledge of their location and a high probability of proximity to innocent civilians?
doesn't matter who does it, it's the action of terrorists
my bike - faster than god's and twice as shiny0 -
Because its a very effective, if absolutely far fetched and barely possible to the point of impossible, way of targeting your terrorist enemy who spend their time hiding in proximity of civilians as human shields.
So, given Hezbollah is intent on "destroying israel" and is happy to lob missiles into cities indiscriminately, not to kill enemy soldiers, but just to cause terror, I'd say finding a way to plant explosives actually on the enemy, who really don't have another reason to use said pager, is actually both extremely effective and remarkably good at minimising collateral damage versus the alternative wich is what, missiles, or invasion?
If you can't see that, and think this is terrorism rather than very targeted action, you don't really understand how war works. If you think you can defeat an enemy that hides amongst civilians with no civilian casualties, I have a bridge to sell you.
From the FT:
https://www.ft.com/content/dbaac693-2fd2-41bc-b5e7-6c2c7dd92277
Since Hizbollah operatives were the most likely group to be using the pagers in Lebanon, an attacker could be relatively sure that they were mainly engaging with militant targets, the ex-official said.
What is interesting is who has been damaged by these pagers who spend a lot of time declaring they have "no interaction with Hezbollah". Why would the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon need a Hezbollah pager?
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i understand war perfectly
israel is happy to arm terrorist 'settlers' and send in the idf to back them up, destroy villages, steal, imprison, torture, and kill, all on land it is illegally occupying
hamas, hezbollah are a loathsome product of the hatred this spawns
if they did what israel just did, you'd rightly call it terrorism
my bike - faster than god's and twice as shiny0 -
A pager can't be Hezbolah, it is just a thing that receives messages.
Presumably they didn't target just Hezbolah pagers so anyone with that brand of pager just got blown up?
I guess it's better than levelling entire cities
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Given hezbollah only recently moved to pagers and were suddenly in need of a lot of them at short notice, I think the analyst quoted in the FT is likely to be right.
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Yes year 3 their basic is now £50k. They get +37% for any evening or weekend work, overtime for hours worked over 40 and extra if they are on call.
I suppose the question is what they consider reasonable but I'd like to see them challenged when they make their claims to get what a barrista earns because I doubt any get that. I do get some (not all) countries pay doctors more but if we pay public servants the most they could earn on a worldwide basis we'd be in even more of an economic mess.
Maybe it's time for our secret services to infiltrate the BMA and ask for a pay cut, we've no qualms using such tactics against other pressure groups - yes of course I'm (half) joking
[Castle Donington Ladies FC - going up in '22]0 -
it's reportedly a supply chain attack
israel (presumably) became aware of the plan to issue pagers to people, and were able either to intercept the devices that were ordered or use a shell company to win the order and build from scratch
it's a standard technique, in the past the usa has intercepted comms equipment in transit and modified it to allow monitoring of encrypted traffic, other countries agencies have used supply chain attacks to penetrate/monitor criminals. software download platforms, app stores etc. are another target
my bike - faster than god's and twice as shiny0 -
If it was a precursor to a specific attack where the disruption of communications and structures would assist the military objectives, then it seems entirely valid.
If they set them, then got found out and blew them all up regardless of where they were for no great military advantage, then possibly less so.
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I imagine it's pretty complicated to get explosives into so many that are able to go off exactly when you want them to.
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I mean, we will find out. It is a remarkable feat, regardless.
We can obviously question the strategy behind invading Lebanon or even just escalating the situation, but come on, you got to tip your hat to the executors of the attack. Incredible.
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It shows they have the skillz.
Shame they can't operate so neatly elsewhere, where they need to just raze the place to the ground, apparently.
2020/2021/2022 Metric Century Challenge Winner0 -
The key difference with other well paid professions is the overtime. The BMA doesn't seem to understand that much of the rest of the workforce routinely does unpaid overtime.
The comparison to a barista is absurd and shows that well paid professionals can lack perspective.
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not really, once you are in the supply chain you are in control of what's in a device, both hardware and software
one report said it may have been hmx, this is one of the fastest explosives (over 9km/sec), it can be used in the implosion assembly of nuclear devices, only a small amount would be needed to cause serious damage, it's also relatively insensitive so unlikely for accidental detonation by dropping etc. to result in discovery
pagers etc. can receive group-broadcast messages, it'd be trivial to use a character sequence, say, "a11 go b00m now rofl", as the trigger for detonation
my bike - faster than god's and twice as shiny0
