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Post by garry on May 7, 2021 10:56:03 GMT
The margin of victory caught my eye - 52% of the vote! Cant say I’m surprised what with virtue signalling, taking the knee, white privilege, etc, labour are a million miles away from the mindset and concerns of normal northern working class communities. I suspect they’ll do some navel gazing and argue that they need to move left or right when what they need to do is move into the real world, talk about normal issues and stop being so worthy.
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Post by Roadrunner on May 7, 2021 12:27:50 GMT
I agree. Last week it was all wallpaper for Boris and this week its curtains for Keir.
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Post by LandieMark on May 7, 2021 15:00:23 GMT
I'm not holding a lot of hope, but it would be good to give them a bloody nose in terms of Durham County Council. They have been spending money hand over fist on their own projects while continually ignoring local communities stating lack of funds due to cuts. Meanwhile they are spending over £50m on a new city hall.
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Post by Big Blue on May 7, 2021 15:17:14 GMT
.........what with virtue signalling, taking the knee, white privilege, etc, labour are a million miles away from the mindset and concerns of normal northern working class communities .......... what they need to do is move into the real world, talk about normal issues and stop being so worthy. These are the problems without a shadow of a doubt. They are more concerned with what the media are doing / expecting and avoiding looking like radical lefties and no matter how hard the local members pound the streets and doorsteps the overriding message is the one seen in the press and on tv. This hasn’t been an issue for Conservatives as the message is the same in all cases. The substance behind the messaging from either party is not something to be looked into but the Labour issue is still this matter of “them and us” but the “us” are no longer kids in rags, crackly wireless comedy shows and rickets - they’re modern families that want to have a decent kitchen, fancy tv and wall to wall carpet / Amtico - aspirations which when I were a lad were the preserve of the higher end working-middle class. The whole Brexit messaging has also fucked them as the northern worker can see more opportunities under an overtly Brexit parliament, some this my friend has witnessed as the hospitality industry he supplies into opens up. In London and the SE the businesses are struggling for staff because the EU staff have all gone home whereas up north (apologies for the generalisation) the locals are genuinely filling the gap in the service industry. There has to be an acceptance that the dark mills and pits were no longer the only future for these communities at some point and it’s arriving fast.
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Post by Tim on May 7, 2021 15:40:18 GMT
My only concern with this at present is that there needs to be a decent opposition to keep the Tories on the straight and narrow (or at less off-piste than they appear to be heading) and I don't think we have that.
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Post by Bob Sacamano v2.0 on May 7, 2021 15:51:52 GMT
For me this was a nailed on certainty and I think it'll be repeated more and more as the months and years go by. For Labour to field a pro Remain candidate in an area that voted leave by 70% was sheer madness. For the "London liberal intellectuals" to then spend years calling these voters thick, racist, gammons but then asking them to vote Labour, well that was always going to end well wasn't it?
But more than that there has been a huge change on Teesside since the Conservative Mayor, Ben Houchen came into power. He's just been re-elected by a huge margin and that is only to be expected - he's delivered far more than he promised and there's a real sense of optimism and pride in the area these days. I know from my dealings with the Labour council in the area they considered that industry had no future in the Tees Valley and they saw a post industrial Teesside based around retail, leisure, and tourism (read: lots of people in minimum wage jobs plus tax credits). Teessiders are proud of their industrial heritage and want to bring real, well paying jobs to the area, something Ben is doing. He fought against Labour to buy the airport, he fought against them to buy up the old SSI site and create a huge industrial site twice the size of Gibraltar for modern industries, he got the freeport, brought Treasury jobs and lots of other initiatives you don't hear about. Labour's plan was to preserve and turn the old steel works into a museum as it would provide 100 jobs and showcase the heritage (despite the fact the blast furnace was only built in the 70s and people were only too pleased when it was demolished and they got rid of an eyesore).
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Post by michael on May 7, 2021 18:15:20 GMT
It’s a bit of a result which has kept me busy recently. I laughed out loud when they fielded Paul Williams, he had enough baggage with brexit but was the gift that kept on giving after it was revealed he’d signed off on the cuts he was campaigning against at the local hospital and the whole MILF Twitter posts plus his Saudi links mobilised the left against him. Jill, who came across as quite meek in most of the press, is a force to be reckoned with. I think she’ll be a great MP.
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Post by Stuntman on May 7, 2021 20:29:04 GMT
My only concern with this at present is that there needs to be a decent opposition to keep the Tories on the straight and narrow (or at less off-piste than they appear to be heading) and I don't think we have that. I listened to the results declaration on the radio this morning, and after registering my shock at the sheer margin of victory, I had exactly the same thought as Tim expresses here. Fair play to Ben Houchen by the sound of things. There were various local-to-Hartlepool voters of different traditional/tribal allegiances on the radio this morning, and all of them praised him very highly.
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Post by michael on May 7, 2021 20:55:56 GMT
The SNP are probably the true opposition at the moment. Labour outside of metro areas has been in decline for years, this hammering is exactly what they need as it gives them a chance to properly look in the mirror and understand where they went wrong. The problem is I don’t think they’ll do it. They’re addicted to a narrative of tories selling the NHS and the voters just don’t buy it. I think the Greens are where a lot of their support is right now. Labour have nothing to offer.
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Post by alf on May 10, 2021 9:59:14 GMT
I was pretty surprised by the election results and mainly the scale of the issues for Labour. Starmer seems like a decent human being and I thought maybe having a normal person in charge of the party instead of the Marxist professional protester that went before might bring them an immediate bounce. Clearly not. I saw comments about "Long Corbyn" - that his hollowing out of the centrist party elements in the local organisations has had a significant ongoing detrimental effect on the party.
Naturally "observers" like Corbyn have said the results are because the party is not left wing enough.......
Interesting comments above.... For this white southerner, Black Lives Matter is an important movement, along with the "me too" movemements around the world, it was timely and exposes real inequality. The environment matters as well. But there does indeed need to be a balance with the issues that matter to most of the people, most of the time.
It's a messy time for politics - I'm no BoJo fan but I'm happy his lot are in power as I see them as the best of a bad bunch when it comes to the Economy, which is by far the most important single factor in making the lives of more people better. Labour do indeed seem to be professional politician virtue signallers determined to focus maximum effort to minimum benefit, and it still feels they want to clip the wings of people who have dared to do well for themselves, to an unhealthy degree. The greens are far worse - they seem to want us to live back in the stone age. The Lib Dems seem harmless enough until you look into their policies, which are often a weird mix of socialist and barmy, they lack any credibility to me to suggest they could run the country. A total lack of credible opposition at a time when there is a PM in charge who personally I do not think is honest, even if he does have some of the intellect and decisiveness that makes him suited to the role.
Then there is the SNP - indeed the opposition - I can't stand that woman but have the same reluctant admiration for her guile as I had for Salmond, and Martin McGuinness. It's a one-policy party able to rally people of all backgrounds behind them, many of whom might be aghast at the actual results that come of that one policy if it is carried out. It's much easier to offer the promised land and cherry pick all the bits you want and present that as the future, than sell the present, so I think independence will come - and the long term beneficiaries will be the poorer areas of England.
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Post by Deleted on May 10, 2021 11:02:50 GMT
The SNP have to habit of trying to sell paradise. How on earth they believe that paradise is even on the table I do not know. The first fish having escaped her guilt by way of her mp's while the actual investigation stated she HAD mislead the Scottish Parliament seems to think she is good to go but the facts and economics of the thing just do not add up. Does she really believe that Scotland will march up to the eu and get admission? I wish no ill will on the Scots who I think of as bloody good people for the most part (Just like the rest of us) and I can see Scotland being pretty badly raped by the action of leaving the UK. What will THAT result in, on a human level?
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Post by Tim on May 10, 2021 11:12:30 GMT
..... so I think independence will come - and the long term beneficiaries will be the poorer areas of England. I was talking about the results with my Mum - a staunch LimpDem voter courtesy of Menzies Campbell and his energetic activists. This used to be a strongly Tory constituency but they pissed that away by only ever showing up at the election then disappearing for 5 years while assuming they would get back in. Basically the same mistake Labour have made with the North of England. Anyway I wonder if BoJo now has a bit of a headache on his hands. The Blue Wave is great for the party but they're now going to need to be serviced to keep them onside. Isn't that going to take a chunk of cash? I know the following is a simplistic point but London/The South East is getting Crossrail, possibly Crossrail 2, HS2 (is that actually going to bring any serious benefit to the northern parts of the UK?) and the Heathrow expansion. On current counting thats probably about £200bn of infrastructure spending. Meanwhile the Northern, er, Powerhouse region is getting what? I know there was talk of an upgrade to the Trans-Pennine rail route but hasn't that been fudged and anyway from memory the budget was a few hundred million? Looking at population densities there seems to be a bit of a mismatch and, yes, I know London is a huge generator of UK income but if the last 12 months has taught us anything it's that a lot of jobs aren't necessarily stuck in one location. So maybe the time has really come for Government, whichever party is in power in the future, to spread its wings a bit further and make the rest of the UK feel a bit more included? That's also go a long way to reversing the rise of the SNP ....
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Post by johnc on May 10, 2021 12:33:30 GMT
The SNP's green friends have policies which can only be described as Communism. They even want local People's Assemblies to decide on policy - they will probably only be open to the party faithful!
See here, from their manifesto:
Economy
• In manufacturing, set conditions for Scottish content in supply chains where possible and invest in deployment of innovative renewables
• For businesses with a turnover of £5m or more, make worker or union representation mandatory on company boards and require them to publish an environmental, social and corporate report alongside their annual financial reports
• Support the partial replacement of corporation tax at the UK level with a carbon tax that increases over time in line with our climate targets
• Introduce a 1% annual "millionaire's tax" on wealth and assets above £1m - including property, land, pensions and other assets
• Scrap council tax and replace it with a residential property tax related to property value
• Replace air passenger duty with a frequent flyer levy, where passengers pay increasing sums for flights after their first return in 12 months - but excluding domestic flights in the Highlands and islands
The £5m turnover requirement is a joke because it imposes a huge cost and administrative burden on what is, in real terms, a very small company. I know of several £5m+ turnover companies which are run by fewer than 10 people. The millionaire's tax will hit every dentist, doctor, head teacher or head of department, senior staff in Councils and MP - they have no idea the value of their pensions but I am sure they would feel the pain of having to find a minimum of £10K extra tax each year. As for the property tax based on value, you can again guarantee a huge increase for anyone with a house worth more than about £250K and a resultant and significant fall in the value of houses.
There is a lot of fighting still to take place but I am already hearing whispers of people planning to sell up and move before the value of their properties is destroyed and they are taxed out of existence. There is also the rumour that the State Pension might become means tested. These policies would, in one foul sweep, result in an exodus of wealth the likes of which has only been seen in times of revolution.
As for the idea that Scotland can just join the EU again, that's madness and will come with so many conditions we would lose control of most meaningful policies.
It looks as though I will have at most 5 years left, before I have to sell up and retire. For those a good bit younger than me and with some entrepreneurial drive, it doesn't look like Scotland will be the place to try to grow a business. One of the SNP's policies at the moment is that they will reduce Corporation Tax to attract new business, a bit like Ireland. However, right now there is a consensus being established by most countries in the developed world that there will be a minimum level of Corporate tax to dissuade companies from trying to set up in low tax countries, so that avenue will shortly be cut off too.
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Post by johnc on May 10, 2021 12:41:14 GMT
..... so I think independence will come - and the long term beneficiaries will be the poorer areas of England. I was talking about the results with my Mum - a staunch LimpDem voter courtesy of Menzies Campbell and his energetic activists. This used to be a strongly Tory constituency but they pissed that away by only ever showing up at the election then disappearing for 5 years while assuming they would get back in. Basically the same mistake Labour have made with the North of England. Anyway I wonder if BoJo now has a bit of a headache on his hands. The Blue Wave is great for the party but they're now going to need to be serviced to keep them onside. Isn't that going to take a chunk of cash? I know the following is a simplistic point but London/The South East is getting Crossrail, possibly Crossrail 2, HS2 (is that actually going to bring any serious benefit to the northern parts of the UK?) and the Heathrow expansion. On current counting thats probably about £200bn of infrastructure spending. Meanwhile the Northern, er, Powerhouse region is getting what? I know there was talk of an upgrade to the Trans-Pennine rail route but hasn't that been fudged and anyway from memory the budget was a few hundred million? Looking at population densities there seems to be a bit of a mismatch and, yes, I know London is a huge generator of UK income but if the last 12 months has taught us anything it's that a lot of jobs aren't necessarily stuck in one location. So maybe the time has really come for Government, whichever party is in power in the future, to spread its wings a bit further and make the rest of the UK feel a bit more included? That's also go a long way to reversing the rise of the SNP .... I agree Tim. Apparently there was a model for determining which major projects should be funded and it included a heavy bias based on the population density. Accordingly if there was a London project in the mix, it always came out top. There needs to be major, visible and tangible investment in the North to maintain the support for the Tories and the feeling that we really are all part of the same country (although Labour are so weak and lacking in depth or decent policies that they really don't do themselves any favours). The timescale is also fairly short and two to three years from now, the electorate will already have made up their minds if anything has changed or improved.
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Post by Tim on May 10, 2021 12:52:15 GMT
The house valuation tax is ludicrous!
My house is worth more than £250, I live on a potholed single track road with no streetlights, my bins get emptied once a week in rotation and I have no children (so no schooling costs) so why should I pay more than someone with 4 kids in a house half the price simply because I've got a job that lets me afford the house (a job in which I'm paying plenty of tax already!). The tax should be based on your use of the services provided. Are they going to offset the value of my mortgage against this and the £1m millionaire's tax?
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Post by chipbutty on May 10, 2021 13:21:14 GMT
Has there been any discussion on how this would work in practise - specifically how they determine if you fall liable ?.
- Is the £1 million reflective of debt or not ? (e.g - £600k mortgage on a £1 million house) - How are assets to be valued ? - Are partner assets (marital or otherwise) included in the valuation ?. - Does the charge kick in at exactly £1 million ? - so at £999,999 you pay nothing, but at £1 million you owe £10k ?
Depending on how the above are answered, I can see a lot of people being landed with an additional £833 a month tax bill. Whilst these individuals may be comfortable, what they've got represents a lifetime of working, saving and generally being prudent (Someone who has been working 30 years, has a £450k house, a £450k pension pot and £100k savings and investments).
Who thinks this shit up ?
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Post by PG on May 10, 2021 13:24:26 GMT
Labour seem to spend all their time going on and on about either what excites them (and the BBC) in their bubble (like who paid for Boris' wall paper; that Brexit needed to be stopped /we need to rejoin; all Brexiteers are xenophobes and that all white people are racist) or on and on about the 20% who are the poorest. This gives the impression that they don't really care (or god-forbid actually like) an awful lot of the other 80%. The 80% who are generally conservative with a small "c", pay all the tax, probably aspire to expensive decorations at home and / or a bigger house, nicer stuff and aren't racist or xenophobes.
And then Labour act all surprised when that 80% don't vote for them.
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Post by Tim on May 10, 2021 13:34:21 GMT
Has there been any discussion on how this would work in practise - specifically how they determine if you fall liable ?. - Is the £1 million reflective of debt or not ? (e.g - £600k mortgage on a £1 million house) - How are assets to be valued ? - Are partner assets (marital or otherwise) included in the valuation ?. - Does the charge kick in at exactly £1 million ? - so at £999,999 you pay nothing, but at £1 million you owe £10k ? Depending on how the above are answered, I can see a lot of people being landed with an additional £833 a month tax bill. Whilst these individuals may be comfortable, what they've got represents a lifetime of working, saving and generally being prudent (Someone who has been working 30 years, has a £450k house, a £450k pension pot and £100k savings and investments). Who thinks this shit up ? It says assets in excess of £1m so at £1,000,001 you'd pay 1 pence. The annual valuation process would create a load of jobs!
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Post by michael on May 10, 2021 13:39:50 GMT
This is why I have diversified my portfolio into a hedge fund. Literally. Box hedge plants are worth a fortune and I have hundreds.
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Post by johnc on May 10, 2021 13:45:00 GMT
It says assets in excess of £1m so at £1,000,001 you'd pay 1 pence. The annual valuation process would create a load of jobs! and the average doctor has £1.1m in his pension pot alone. I presume the property valuation exercise would provide the figures on the value of property and we would all have to sign up to give full details of the providers for all our financial assets. I'm just glad the Greens have only managed to impose some completely useless cycle lanes on us so far.
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Post by michael on May 10, 2021 13:50:58 GMT
It says assets in excess of £1m so at £1,000,001 you'd pay 1 pence. The annual valuation process would create a load of jobs! and the average doctor has £1.1m in his pension pot alone. I presume the property valuation exercise would provide the figures on the value of property and we would all have to sign up to give full details of the providers for all our financial assets. I'm just glad the Greens have only managed to impose some completely useless cycle lanes on us so far. The property values would collapse in such cases so they'd loose a fortune.
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Post by Deleted on May 10, 2021 13:51:38 GMT
This is why I have diversified my portfolio into a hedge fund. Literally. Box hedge plants are worth a fortune and I have hundreds. This will only work until labour release their box hedge eating bugs, red of course with a syckle mark on its back.
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Post by Big Blue on May 10, 2021 14:08:07 GMT
The Labour party is a lost cause because as I said above it has a focus on a by gone era and bygone set of values. Among the vociferous leftie members and champagne-swilling adherents (some of whom are in my family and live in seven figure houses funded by parental assistance and then inheritance) there is no recognition that people want to actually move up the ladder. Yes everyone wants help when they're not born with a silver (or even stainless steel) spoon in their mouth but they are no longer born into households where no one in the district has an inside toilet or bathing facilities. Thus the term "relative poverty" is widely used (most often by those champagne socialists) and then when taxpaying working class people see a neighbour in "relative poverty" with a new iPhone, in the pub and watching pay TV they lose all sense of sympathy and faith in the aims of the Labour Party. They realise that they want to work and earn money and pay tax but not to give to those in "relative poverty" to spend in the pub and on iPhones.
Yes there is an issue with needy families (I suppose "needy" is a bad term these days) and that should always be addressed (and I don't see starving and rickets-ridden kids everywhere so I guess it is being addressed) but many Labour policies, statements, ideas and arguments just have a big green tinge of "why should you have that and no one else?" about them and those working class, traditional Labour area voters don't want to be given the chance to strive for more only to have the green-eyed monster take it back off of them so they change their voting.
The main issue for me (as a life-long southerner that was largely raised in a borough that was so conservative (small "c") that the local council is run by the residents to the extent that many times the local Conservative members didn't front candidates and the Labour ones lost their deposits) is that the current leadership of the Conservative party is so utterly abhorrent. An erstwhile PM went to the same state schools my daughters attend and when I walk to Waitrose the road he grew up on is on the opposite, rougher, side of the Central Road - he could talk of the need to better yourself and pull for the masses together from a right wing stand point but the likes of John Major will not be seen in the Conservative party whilst the main opposition insists on being so out of touch with the modern world of zero hours contracts, cars on PCP, online shopping and enjoying a trip to that Waitrose every so often because it makes you feel better about how you've moved your life on.
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Post by PG on May 10, 2021 14:11:22 GMT
Has there been any discussion on how this would work in practise - specifically how they determine if you fall liable ?. Who thinks this shit up ?Ah, wealth taxes. Because if you are "rich" (and let's be clear, £1 million is not rich by any stretch of the imagination, nor is £10 million either) you deserve to be shafted. After all, you only got your ill-gotten gains by standing on the broken backs of the workers according to the muppets who dream up this stuff. It is the politics of envy, nothing else.
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Post by PG on May 10, 2021 14:18:40 GMT
I dipped into the Guardian comments sections post election results. I haven't laughed so much in ages. Within a few comments out came the "it was the electorate who are too stupid and brainwashed to understand Labour's policies" closely followed by sentences involving various combinations of the words "Brexit / gammon / xenophobes / progressive / liberal / traitors / Jeremy had it right".
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Post by michael on May 10, 2021 14:26:50 GMT
I reckon Batley and Spen has a chance of being turned blue, it's less likely than Hartlepool was but it'd be marvellous to make it happen.
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Post by Stuntman on May 10, 2021 19:55:37 GMT
It says assets in excess of £1m so at £1,000,001 you'd pay 1 pence. The annual valuation process would create a load of jobs! and the average doctor has £1.1m in his pension pot alone. I presume the property valuation exercise would provide the figures on the value of property and we would all have to sign up to give full details of the providers for all our financial assets. I'm just glad the Greens have only managed to impose some completely useless cycle lanes on us so far. Do they really? If so, they will get clobbered by the lifetime allowance on any excess anyway, so if there's a wealth tax on top, that's just plain nasty.
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Post by Stuntman on May 10, 2021 20:01:06 GMT
Has there been any discussion on how this would work in practise - specifically how they determine if you fall liable ?. Who thinks this shit up ?Ah, wealth taxes. Because if you are "rich" (and let's be clear, £1 million is not rich by any stretch of the imagination, nor is £10 million either) you deserve to be shafted. After all, you only got your ill-gotten gains by standing on the broken backs of the workers according to the muppets who dream up this stuff. It is the politics of envy, nothing else. I think having assets of £1 million does make you quite rich, and having assets of £10 million definitely makes you rich in my opinion. But I agree with the general sentiment that just because you have got £1 million-plus, it doesn't mean that the state needs to take some of it away from you on an annual basis. Especially if that includes the value of your principal private residence, and your pensions.
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Post by michael on May 10, 2021 20:58:52 GMT
Wealth taxes would be impossible for things like art and antiques. Not to mention classic cars with values that fluctuate with the wind. It’s an impossible tax that would cost more to implement than return. Politics of envy as said above.
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Post by michael on May 10, 2021 20:59:56 GMT
and the average doctor has £1.1m in his pension pot alone. I presume the property valuation exercise would provide the figures on the value of property and we would all have to sign up to give full details of the providers for all our financial assets. I'm just glad the Greens have only managed to impose some completely useless cycle lanes on us so far. Do they really? If so, they will get clobbered by the lifetime allowance on any excess anyway, so if there's a wealth tax on top, that's just plain nasty. Yes they do. It’s why so many leave the profession early and don’t return for fear of tripping the threshold.
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