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Pretty cool! Happy belated birthday, man.

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Very nice! A favourite film of yours?

Absolutely love it. I think it was Ken Levine who mentioned it was also one of his favourites, mostly due to the fact that - although it's a Christmas film - it's actually really goddamn dark.

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although it's a Christmas film - it's actually really goddamn dark.

Like Die Hard!

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Yesterday was actually Die Hard Day on AMC. I watched Die Hard once, Die Hard 2 twice, and Die Hard With A Vengeance once. It was a pretty great day. I've always been disappointed they did away with the Christmas theme of 1 and 2. Also that you have Alan Rickman and Jeremy Irons as villains, and then Richard Atherton. I mean, really? Atherton? Bleh.

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Richard Atherton.

You mean William Atherton? He's not the real baddy, the amazing Bill Sadler is. Although Atherton is not to be sniffed at, he's generally great. Die Hard 2 is pretty bad, though.

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Like Die Hard!

Die Hard and It's A Wonderful Life are my two favourite Christmas films actually.

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Well fuck this. The UK parliament have been pushing through an extremely controversial health care bill. Yesterday, its passage in the Lords was basically the last chance for it to be stopped, but it wasn't. There's an emergency debate on it today, but it's basically jumped every hurdle it needed to, without any of the objections to it really being answered.

The National Health Service has an important and egalitarian institution for the past 65 years in the U.K. We've had publicly funded medical care for that time, and it's been brilliant. Not perfect, but brilliant. The few times I or people I know have hurt themselves or had medical conditions, they've been able to go to a hospital and not worry about insurance or bills. All funded by our taxes instead. The current UK government have just opened up the way to privatise all medical care.

This has been done, despite:

  • Evidence that countries with government funded health care have better health than those with private/insurer based medical care.
  • No evidence presented in support of privatisation, just theory.
  • Even the medical organisations they expected to suport the bill vehemently opposing it instead.
  • The Information Commissioner ruling twice that the Government should publish a study they had done looking into the risks of privatisation and this bill. They've steadfastly refused.
  • Private medical insurers refusing to treat pre-existing conditions, yet the way now being open for them to take over facilities and procedures to care for these conditions in future. It's completely unclear what's going to happen to a lot of people now, but at the moment they appear to be utterly fucked.
  • This mind boggling list of the current government's vested interests in private healthcare providers, from campaign funding to directorships.

It's been pushed ahead on the theory that competition will lead to improvements in services. There is no actual evidence for this, it's just conservative ideological theory. Forced through in the wake of several years in which the invisible hand has thoroughly pounded most people in the ass; years in which those responsible and who dogmatically espouse free market ideology have begged for the very kind of handouts they usually condemn as corruption of markets.

Private Medical care here is good, but it's not an everyday thing for people and it can be expensive. The conservatives seem to think they're taking a horse to water and it won't drink, but when those private healthcare bodies are having to care for the whole population rather than a privileged minority of them, and they have to put into place scaling and efficiencies they don't have right now, it's not going to be the same at all, and very unlikely to end up any better than the NHS.

This means that instead of going to A&E and getting tax funded emergency treatment, the future for people in the UK is also going to include being on the phone arguing with your insurer because "no you don't need that procedure hey why not just spend the rest of your life with a limp and pain instead?"

Oh, the same government are also planning a tax cut for the rich and privatisation of major roads. They tried to sell all of our forests too, and stop the phone hacking thing from blowing up.

Edited by Nachimir

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^Genuinely pretty worried about this. I've seen almost no good come from any of the policy changes since the last election, and at this point I just wish the rest of the politicians were doing damage control until the government can be changed again.

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Sounds a lot of what is slowly happening to the health care in Canada. Which blows.

***

Hate to update in this thread anytime I have news about myself, I do lurk to see what every one is up to from time to time. But, I'm no longer in Canada! I just moved to San Francisco and took a job with 2K Marin!

Apparently wanting to be a painter and frequenting pubs wasn't a good career choice so after a brief stint working on a uninteresting game in the summer I got the opportunity to get a work visa and get, what might turn out to be my dream job in an awesome city.

Also, I can take my passing hobby of online stalking Jake Rodkin into the more professional sense of actually stalking Jake Rodkin.

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He said he was out of dust. ;(

On the bright side, he did screech his portion of the Autotune song at me through a megaphone. I think most people in the street thought he was singing a song about me be being gay.

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Hi.

I moved to Mexico with my girlfriend, who was not allowed to stay in Canada, almost a month ago now. We're chilling here until we figure out what to do. And yesterday we had a 7.4 quake, though thankfully 300 km away. Shit still swayed like a mother fucker though. It's a far cry from the more timid hazards of Canada, that's for sure. I miss my Xbox and Playstation for now, but in the meantime I've converted my gf over with Machinarium, Monkey Island, Trainyard, and even English Country Tune. Fuck I'm so happy now.

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Can you go back to Canada with her if you get married?

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Shit still swayed like a mother fucker though. It's a far cry from the more timid hazards of Canada, that's for sure.

I don't know... mooses. You city folk probably never ran into them, I'll take an earth quake over a moose encounter any day.

Also, congrats!

****

Unfortunately Canadian law is wildly strange when it comes to immigration, we practically let anyone in, which is a good thing, until you get married to them, in which case it's a toss up. My friend from highschool married an American and after a six months trying to get her proper documentation he ended up having to leave Canada to the US... took him about a month, or something, to get his American citizenship.

So, yeah, we probably should fix that, but we have a few other larger concerns at the moment...

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