UK Benefits Claimants Must Use Windows XP, IE6 230
First time accepted submitter carlypage3 writes "Benefits claimants in the UK are being forced to use Microsoft's now obsolete Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6 software. The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) states that its online forms are not compatible with Internet Explorer 7, 8, 9 and 10, Safari, Google Chrome or Firefox. As if that wasn't unnerving enough, the Gov.UK website says that users cannot submit claims using Mac OS X or Linux operating systems, either."
(Note: as we noted not long ago, it's not just the DWP that's stuck using IE6.)
Actually this is a good thing (Score:5, Funny)
This actually makes perfect sense. On a modern PC it will involve the user learning about virtualisation (to run XP) and then also learning how to configure windows (to not run updates). This is great way of preparing dole claimants for an IT job so by the time you have gained enough skills to claim any dole money you have enough skills to go straight into a job as and IT support worker for the dole office and their crappy old IT systems.
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Or, if they just need XP and IE6 they could just like, you know, go to
Re: Actually this is a good thing (Score:5, Informative)
All the grandmas I know have switched to tablets
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That's probably supposed to be funny, but it's insightfull...
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That's probably supposed to be funny, but it's insightfull...
If the set of grandmas he knows happens to be empty, his statement can be irrelevant while not being incorrect at the same time.
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I don't care if she's got pillz, I'll just settle for the beer. Hopefully she still has some.
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Hey, Pils ain't that bad.
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All the grandmas I know have switched to tablets
Really? Suppositories didn't work out?
Re: Actually this is a good thing (Score:5, Informative)
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I'm a granny ... Mac user now
It's OK if you're a granny, let's not be too harsh.
Re: Actually this is a good thing (Score:5, Insightful)
I understand you take exception to this generalization because of your experience. Do you think you are representative of the granny population? Or are you an exception to the generalization?
Any blanket statement will have outliers, including this one, and I find it odd to find replies like these modded up - I'd rather see actual stats on how many grannies are tech savvy rather than a single anecdote with 3 people who also have mod points agreeing.
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I take your point, but I'd rather speak with the woman with 20 years of practical computer savvy and a successful business. Should she also be someone's special little princess (AC below), good for her.
Beats hell out of contemplating the stupidity of the DWP.
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Let's go to the Old Folk's home!
We can get doped up and then all get stoned.
Let's go to the Old Folk's home!
I'd have been there more if only I'd known!
Re:Actually this is a good thing (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know how their system works but years ago when sites demanded xp and ie for use I would tell my browser to lie to them. I set my user agent string to XP and IE although I was actually running linux with konqueror and 8 times out of 10 the site worked fine. Some I had to do from work since they actually used something specific to the systems they demanded.
Re:Actually this is a good thing (Score:5, Interesting)
Where it doesn't work, some greasemonkey magic is all you need. Sometimes that magic is substantial (1000s of lines), but I've got sites that are IE-only by design and rely on IE APIs to work on both Safari and Firefox. I've even re-implemented some ActiveX controls using plain old javascript. Given the amount of effort (a couple weeks in the evenings) by someone who doesn't do such a thing very often, I think that the site developers should be publicly shamed. As in rotten tomatoes or eggs thrown at them in the middle of the city square, or something like that.
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What to configure? Microsoft provides you with Windows XP Mode which i
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You're not paranoid if they really are out to get you.
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Yeah, and you can claim to be a MSCE (Score:2)
Which is not going to stand you in good stead.
What if you only have an iPhone or an Android phone?
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They are on the dole. They could not afford to pay for it if it was available.
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No they aren't (Score:3, Informative)
This is just something they have put online, the old method of claiming by post or going to the office like always is still there.
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I was already wondering... because it sure sounded like a catch 22, where you need a computer with internet access to apply for money 'cause you can't afford your living expenses, let alone a computer with internet access...
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Every library around these parts has computers with Internet access, available for free. You don't need to own a comuter to use one.
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But are the libraries running Windows XP?
This chart seems to suggest that XP's toehold in the UK is only at 16%.
http://gs.statcounter.com/#os-GB-yearly-2012-2013-bar [statcounter.com]
Re:No they aren't (Score:5, Insightful)
...or someone who has modern machines in their local public library.
A system that requries IE6 in 2013 is a disgrace. It doesn't matter who is supposed to use it, or where, or how few people are actually expected to use it.
Your snark ignores the fact that this isn't just about Mac users. It's about ANY ONE that has a modern Windows configuration.
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I honestly don't understand why.... (Score:5, Insightful)
...we even still have this problem. Seriously, stop being short sighted fuckwits. Stop using vendor specific code. Start using shit that passes the W3C validator. Problem fucking solved. Imagine that! There is absolutely no excuse for any webpage out there to require a specific browser or browser version, short of being able to meet current web standards.
Re:I honestly don't understand why.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually according to TFA it works with a few other browsers from the 2004 era, but only on Windows. The real summary here is "We haven't done anything to upgrade this system in the last 10 years" and the world moved on, which will happen from time to time. If it was 1990 it would be totally reasonable to ask for documents to be submitted in WordPerfect format, in 2013 it's not. If your maintenance budget is $0, this is eventually going to happen regardless.
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If your maintenance budget is $0, this is eventually going to happen regardless.
They do have a maintenance budget, but any penny spent doing actual maintenance is a penny your cronies can't pocket.
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But do not worry, all of their problems will be solved with a move to the cloud. Yes, with the cloud, the websites will upgrade themselves, so they will continue to save money. The magical cloud which becomes whatever your local sales team tell you it is.
On a more serious note, I'd love to know who these people are that have nuked their own maintenance / internal upgrade paths. The costs for writing new stuff (inevitable?) might be rather..punitive, compared to just paying the bill.
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You have a budget one year to buy new fangled computer systems. Then you go 20 years without any more extras in the budget.
It's like getting a tattoo when you're a kid, then not being rich enough to have it removed when it's time to go job hunting.
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If it was 1990 it would be totally reasonable to ask for documents to be submitted in WordPerfect format
Eh? No, it wouldn't.
Re:I honestly don't understand why.... (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, in 1990 it would be reasonable. There weren't any acceptable open standards. (On Linux I ended up doing my word processing in HTML with a text editor. Truely lousy.) These days there are several reasonable choices, but rtf is probably the most widely available. Most end users don't like to use markup languages, and few documents are worth the effort of Tex.
I suppose you could say that in 1990 it would be better to just ask for text documents...but that wasn't very good either, if you needed special characters. And formatting text documents can be a real drag.
(FWIW, I'm still not satisfied with OpenOffice indexing. I haven't checked the LibreOffice indexing recently, but from a glance it looked about the same. From my point of view the best word processor, except for a few major flaws, was MSWord 5.1a for the Macintosh. Everything since then has been inferior. This is largely because I really liked the markup I could use for indexing in that system, and it fixed a huge number of problems from earlier versions. Probably, of course, I've forgotten numerous bad features, but I really like being able to turn-on visible markup chars and add them in or edit them by hand, and then turn them off to see how it will appear.)
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Linux? 1990? Which distro?
(and modded informative?)
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If the site had been programmed to published standards instead of vendor-specific kluges, it would still work fine today.
This is solely a consequence of poor vendor selection or project definition.
Re:I honestly don't understand why.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Simple. It's because of how things run in public services.
They decided they need that kind of software. So someone, most likely someone with limited IT knowledge but a lot of knowledge of the process involved, sat down and wrote the specs. You may rest assured that it included everything this bureaucratic process needed, but lacked everything from the IT point of view, like compatibility with different browsers or the ability to upgrade and update to keep current with technical development.
The whole mess got into a public bidding and unless something important stood in the way (like, say, the nephew of someone important needing a job), the cheapest offer got called.
Now, these specs come with a catch: You can't simply amend them when you realize "Oh, gee, we should have...", no such luck. You open yourself to lawsuits from those that didn't get the contract, and since changes later invariably will increase the bill, their claim would be that they could have delivered for that price (especially if their offer was lower/better in some way). So even if you notice that something is missing, you DO NOT change those specs. EVER.
It's also near certain that they neither have the source code nor an agreement that the company doing the job agrees to hand over the details if someone else should get to update the system.
Re:I honestly don't understand why.... (Score:5, Interesting)
> Simple. It's because of how things run in public services.
Yes and no. Some of it is just that old Demon Money(tm) and the fact that we were in a protracted recession.
We were using a certain company for ad insertion on our Web streams. (Three radio stations total.) We were having trouble getting the software to work, so we contacted their help/support team. They used VNC to look at our system and said, "we only support Windows XP."
I sent them a rather nastily-worded letter. They claimed to be cutting edge, with the ability to sort and insert commercial content intelligently, and all other sorts of bells and whistles. And yet, I said, "you will only support a 10-year old operating system?"
They replied and allowed (as someone granting a great concession) that they would work with us, but could make no guarantees. We canceled the contract and went with another company.
In this case, it's simple: they hired someone to write the package several years ago, and wanted to re-sell the same package again and again. They didn't want to pay to update the software. So, they lost a lot of business. Assuming they're not bankrupt now, I hope they learned an important lesson. :)
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That's partly OP's point.
With private businesses, you have to accommodate the customer or you go out of business.
With public services, your customers have to accommodate you or they won't get the service yo
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Re:I honestly don't understand why.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Works in my shitty EU member country why wouldn't it work for the brits too.
Because, in British government, corruption of this type is pretty rare. I have worked with the UK government as a supplier on many IT contracts and I have never seen corruption like that. What I have seen is gross incompetence leading to wastage of tax payers' money on an almost unimaginable scale.
My guess is (it is only a guess, I wasn't involved) that, in this case, the supplier told them it would cost more money to support the other browser (back in 2000 there was mostly IE and some Netscape and then just a tiny handful of weirdos running stuff like Mozilla) and it would have been pointed out that even the people with other browsers could fire up IE if they needed to, so I'm sure they just went with IE for cost reasons.
having narrowed the supported platform down to IE, the chosen supplier would not have felt constrained to use only standards compliant features and that would have locked the DWP in to the one technology.
Then there would be no money available to fix the UI because "everybody uses IE 6" until the point where the falsehood of that statement could not be denied and then the DWP would already be thinking about the shiny new system that ail be replacing that old system, so there would still be no money available. But the shiny new system was probably slated to arrive about now but has slipped by a couple of years due to incompetent management and so on.
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Fine. Who's paying to rewrite it all? You?
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Why was this comment modded to -1? It's true. The company hires a competent designer to make shit using web standards, and the company passes the cost on to the customer, just like they do with anything else.
Christ, this place can be just like Reddit. "I don't like what you said so fuck you!" *downvote* *downvote* *downvote* :rolleyes:
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This works well when the customers have a choice. When you have niche software with high barriers to entry--usually because it's stuff that has to work the first time, so nobody wants to take a chance on anything that's not already in wide use--you often pretty stuck. Of if it's say, a *government website* where you naturally have no choice to go elsewhere. Like in this case.
Re:I honestly don't understand why.... (Score:5, Informative)
It's because they all use 32-bit ActiveX controls and even if you're running a 32-bit version of Windows 7 (hardly anybody is) the permission system doesn't let you install them without a huge amount of esoteric messing around.
Remember back in the 1990's when we told Microsoft that ActiveX was a bad idea...? Yeah, about that.
PS: We have the exact same problem here in Spain. All the accountants, etc., pretty much have to use Windows XP if they want to get any work done.
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But in the 1990s when we told everyone that ActiveX was a bad idea they just called us a bunch of luddites.
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What does making people use Windows XP/IE6 have to do with web standards?
Denmark used to have that issue as well (Score:5, Insightful)
Even with the banks you had to use IE(some version), otherwise you just couldn't pay your bills.
I'd say they did us a favor, because it taught a lot of people to get "off the system" instead of being dependent on it.
The narrower your choice as a citizen becomes, the more need for freedom you'll have (Geez, I might want to hold back on the booze, starting to sound like Yoda here)...;)
Makes sense. (Score:3, Funny)
Clearly if you can afford a new computer or have the skills to run Linux, you should be able to fend for yourself.
Hardly anyone affected by this (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, it's crap that applying for these benefits requires ancient browser tech, but note that this is for three specific benefits which will affect hardly anyone. The most common of these benefits, Disability Living Allowance, is closed to new applicants because it has been replaced by Personal Independence Payments. And Attendance Allowance was long ago replaced by DLA, now replaced by PIP except for those over 65.
Re:Hardly anyone affected by this (Score:5, Informative)
Attendance Allowance has not been replaced by DLA. AA is available to over 65's who need support in their daily living owing to illness or disability. It's a key benefit for elderly care. That said, the application process is lengthy and often requires supporting medical evidence so people tend to rely on charities such as Age UK to do it for them - I can't really believe that anyone would *want* to do this online.
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Yes, that is what the "except for those over 65" bit at the end of my sentence was about.
Re: Hardly anyone affected by this (Score:3)
Also note that if you're blind, you may be applying for DLA via a website that, yes you guessed it, isn't accessible...
Fewer Claimants with DOS (Score:2)
That way your payments you dole out will really drop fast.
Claim it! (Score:2)
Can I claim the license for MS OS for me to be able to submit my claims ? I sure as hell wouldn't be able to afford to buy a new OS if I were visiting the benefits claim site ...!
Use Firefox 1.0.3 (Score:2, Informative)
From the article, these are the following supported browsers:
Microsoft Windows XP: Internet Explorer 6.0, Netscape 7.2, Firefox 1.0.3, Mozilla 1.7.7."
Firefox is still available (Windows link [oldversion.com]) and is fairly independent from the underlying OS, so it would probably work on Vista+/Mac/Linux too (If you can find Mac/Linux links).
Still a pain to have to pick and choose browsers. It is easier for the average person to use the offline version.
Even easier for the hacker to compromise such an outdated website and inp
Re:Use Firefox 1.0.3 (Score:5, Informative)
oldversion.com
If you're going to download old Mozilla software, at least download it from Mozilla's FTP site where all versions are archived.
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/ [mozilla.org]
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I think newer versions will work, it is just not officially supported
As usual, total nonsense. (Score:5, Informative)
Antique website (Score:4, Interesting)
One give-away is that the site uses ASP (rather than ASP.NET). I doubt any new site has been written using ASP for over ten years! (ASP.NET came out in 2002).
So there we have it, an antique, a living fossil. Enjoy it while it is still up.
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If they do replace it all, I bet they opt for the top end HTML5 driven solution - resulting in a problem for those who don't have computers modern enough to run an HTML5 browser :P
Just make your fucking websites using bog standard HTML forms, zero javascript and everyone can be happy except the designers who were hoping to charge extra for all the unnecessary bling enabled by javascript.
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If they'd written HTML instead of IE6,
RTFA - site was developed for, and supports, a range of browsers, not just IE, not just Windows.
All the browser versions supported are ancient - but then so is the site. It's effectively a deprecated site only used for some benefits that are being phased out anyway - so why throw money away on updating it ?
Another case of "Lets put it on the web! Duuuh" (Score:2)
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 is only just now obsolete? No, it has been obsolete since sometime around 2003 when Microsoft let it stagnate.
This is what happens when you put something "on the web" that doesn't need to be on it. It sounds like the user base for this is now small enough the people who need this should just contact them in person, or by telephone, or perhaps just good old pencil and paper.
But no, it has got to be "on the
Not forced to use XP (Score:3)
There is still the option to send the forms by mail.
Windows XP Mode (Score:2)
Windows XP Mode for Windows 7 purposefully comes with IE6 so you can use it for situations just like this if you need to. You can of course upgrade it to IE7/8 if you want to.
Also, All IEs after 6 can switch to 6's rendering engine using the IIE Dev Tools (IE7 requires them to be installed, IE8 and up bundles them) which may be sufficient to use the site.
Virtualization service (Score:2)
Somebody should open an online virtualization service. It emulators XP/IE6 for you.
I'd put entire IT department (Score:2)
It's Seibel E-systems (Score:5, Informative)
The whole site is built on Siebel E-Systems, an old CRM system, which generates the pages. Seibel is more or less defunct, having been acquired by Oracle.
The code is spectacularly version-specific. The error messages in Javascript code on the site indicate how tightly coupled this code is to very specific quirks of older software:
Security (Score:2)
In the current stage of pushed cyberwar, to use and force to use such insecure systems (that even Microsoft recognizes it should give a hint) is so cute, just asking everyone to be part of something bigger ...like a botnet. That it be in a government site on which depends (and must visit) a lot of people makes it a nice target.
Doing it in a country where you can be sued for running a proxy [slashdot.org] adds a little spice.
How bad can your skills be? (Score:2)
The Inquirer steals from reddit. (Score:2)
Smart move (Score:2)
This should cut down on claims payouts.
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Hanlon's Razor begs to differ.
or the other way (Score:3, Insightful)
The corollary to Hanlon's razor is that stupidity and malice are indistinguishable -that's real life.
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Perhaps they just want to make sure that you are actually poor before you can receive any dole payments. In other words, somebody with a more modern system is more likely to be able to afford to cover their own living expenses.
Crude, but what if it works?
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and therefore probably correct.
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Compatibility Mode only swaps out the user agent string and the rendering engine. It doesn't change anything else, such as browser security settings. For example, if the site is using SSL 2.0 only, then no modern browser will allow a connection to it (2.0 being rather broken). However, an old enough browser might still allow 2.0, which is a setting independent of the rendering engine.
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Yes, because everyone who's poor and doesn't have a job needs to be dinged for a new PC that has an up to date browser that is as html5 compatible as possible.
From frying pan and into the fire.
Re:The contractor should be fired and billed (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, because you know, the people who are in need of benefits are known to be geeks, and love to learn new IT systems.
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It would be easy and cheap for the website to provide links to one or more compact and easy to use live distros as a service to people running legacy systems. And I'm betting damned near everyone in the UK has access to a $0.10 blank CD and a computer with internet access and a CD burner - at a library, cafe, or friend's house if not at home.
As for learning a new system, what's to learn? Insert disc, boot computer, get something not terribly different than what you're used to. Plenty of distros mimic wind
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I'm honestly not certain if you're trolling or really that ignorant of reality.
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I'm quite certain that the one that should be fried is the person writing the specs. It's almost certain the contractor wrote to spec, and if they don't include something akin to "must run on all browsers", why should he bother doing it?
Remember: When you're working for the government, deliver what is specified and NOTHING ELSE!
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I'm quite certain that the one that should be fried is the person writing the specs.
I know the system is crap, but that's a bit draconian... :-)
Anyway, in all seriousness, this story is (intentionally) trying to make a mountain out of a molehill, as it relates to a small (and obsolescent) number of benefits and the fact that an old system hasn't been properly updated for the better part of a decade.
Yes, it's utterly shite that the systems were written to be so specific to IE6 (and earlier versions') foibles that they don't even work with the half-decent later versions of IE, let alone
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Best suggestion I've seen today. (out of mod points)
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These systems are obsolete, the benefits in question have been replaced by others. This is just a feeble attempt to drum up ad views.
Fixed that for you.
Re:I agree, totally wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
The short sighted conservative has spoken.
Allow me to ask you a question: What do you think would happen if we do what you suggest? You then have a lot of people who don't have a job, have no chance to get one, have no money and need it for food and shelter, or they die.
You have money.
Take a wild guess what happens next.
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Allow me to ask you a question: What do you think would happen if we do what you suggest?
You're pretty much have the same situation as in Pakistan. Low taxes, everyone owns firearms, religion plays a strong role in society, drugs are legal, high military spending as a percentage of the GDP, etc. The question is how many Libertarians want to emigrate to Pakistan?
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We tried it their way once. It was called "feudalism".
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Producing is pointless if there is nobody to consume. Only with consumption a market is created for only then the produced goods have to be replaced by new goods. If you produce a ton of cheap cars it's useless if there is nobody to buy your car. The cars don't create a profit for you, quite the opposite, you have a lot of unsold cars that cost you money for production, for storage and of course for other expenses like protecting them, while there is NO profit from them. Until someone comes in and BUYS them
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Re:Its okay ... (Score:5, Informative)
If you can afford a Mac, or a computer newer than XP, you don't need to be sucking off the public teat.
That, my friend, is total nonsense. This site is for people getting benefits for disabilities etc. For example, I have a well-paying job. With some bad luck, I might get some illness that makes it impossible for me to drive a car. If I can't drive to work, I can't drive to work and lose my job. The UK benefits system would (possibly) pay to have me driven to work. Which is a lot, lot cheaper because of the taxes that I would continue paying than paying me unemployment benefits. In other words, people with disabilities might be in good jobs and have plenty of money while still receiving benefits.
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It is called "maintaining your living standard". Two taxi rides every day can amount to 3-4 thousand euros per year or more, depending on the distance. Which, given a "standard" well-paying job, amounts to a month's net salary (give or take). Losing a month's pay on transportation only is a lot, even if you are grossing 75k yearly, and your living standard is at stake. Which could mean a psychologist's bill in the long run (even more so, if you factor in your disability as well). So that small help from the
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Bollox, in the UK it perfectly legal to film anything or anyone in a public place.
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Bollox, in the UK it perfectly legal to film anything or anyone in a public place.
Indeed, however the mere fact that it is legal has not prevented the Police from arresting people for doing so, at least where filming the Police is concerned...
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Yup, pretty much, it's a Britishism. Bollocks = balls. I'd the notion soon after seeing the usage that it rather referred to bull's balls - a way of saying bullshit, if you will, and just as crude. Oddly enough, "dog's bollocks" means about the opposite - in line with cat's pajamas (Br.: pyjamas), cat's whiskers, bee's knees....
Somedays it seems /. includes an episode of "Fun with Language" however unintentional. Trés amusant, nest pass?
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"Hey, asshole with Glass! I'm gonna beat the shit out of you!"
"Glass, record a video!"
Go ahead and assault someone wearing a head-mounted cloud-synced camera.
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the UK has republicans?
Yes. They're a variation of craziness, largely on the left of politics, that feels the most important thing is changing the way the head of state is selected. (You know, instead of getting the economy moving properly again, things like that.)
There's also the equivalent of US Republicans; they're called Conservatives, and they're feeling rather worried by a minor party called UKIP right now (who could be likened to the Tea Party I suppose, but they're not the same; the details of politics really vary a lot b