Excellent stuff.
slimboyfat
JoinedPosts by slimboyfat
-
20
Faith to Faithless XJW event London, UK
by Fe2O3Girl indescription.
we often come across jehovah's witnesses near station entrances and at our front doors, but we never hear about what happens when they leave.
if you're near london, uk, faith to faithless are doing their first ever event at kings college london, and their first ex jw panel!.
-
-
-
7
The Polish Effect on JW Europe statics
by Viva la Vida inaccording to the 2017 yearbook there was an important reduction of publishers in poland (over 2,000) and small increases in countries like uk, ireland, germany and norway.
i thought that there might be something more than just people leaving jw in eastern europe and joining in western europe, so i checked in jw.org the number of polish language congregations outside of poland.
as you can see below germany, the uk, ireland and norway have a lot of polish congregations.
-
-
slimboyfat
Yeah there's deinfitely a bit of that. But growth in Poland has been poor for nearly 20 years now, before they started emigrating in great numbers. Plus JWs are declining in most of Eastern Europe, Poland is just the most extreme example.
What amazes me is that despite millions of immigrants to Germany the number of publishers has completely flatlined and the number of congregations has gone down. It looks like the beginning of real decline to me.
-
-
-
slimboyfat
The £60m figure seems high if you think In terms of regular contributions from people of working age. But does the figure include money left to the Watchtower Society by JWs who die? That's probably the single biggest area of growth for JW revenue. If a few wealthy JWs leave most of their money to the Watchtower each year including property that must be a good earner. It's also a perverse incentive for the Watchtower to alienate elderly JWs from their children as others have observed.
-
-
-
slimboyfat
UK, for the time being. Ha!
Actually I don't mind being in the UK, I just think Scotland should rule itself, get rid of nuclear weapons and not participate in wars. Not hung up about names or flags or songs.
When Scotland becomes independent we will still be part of Britain. And there will still be union of crowns and so on,
-
26
Every Country and Land... Except Oman
by ILoveTTATT2 inso the other day someone asked me what use was it to make the list of countries in which there have been reports.... well... to know that, as far as i can tell, there has never been preaching done in oman.. it has never appeared in any report, and the reports go back to 1926!.
all other countries and lands have appeared, but not oman.. so there... first useful fact about the watchtower that we can get from 90 years of data..
-
-
slimboyfat
Yeah the politics of JW "lands" is an interesting study in itself. Categorising Northern Ireland as Ireland, and putting Taiwan under the Japan column it looks like in the photo above. Palestine listed sometimes too, separating Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico, then adding them to US, but not Puerto Rico. Falklands as a separate land. In trying to be "neutral" they sometimes make the most surprising political choices. I think it demonstrates there can be no such thing as complete neutrality in what constitutes a "land" and what name to give it. I wonder when they switched from using colonial names for African countries, exactly when they changed, or when they became independent, if that's when they changed, or sooner or later. I wonder when they stopped listing Tibet or if they ever listed East Timor, Gaza Strip or West Bank. Do they list Cyprus as one land? I think they do. Maybe it's a special policy for islands they think should be united. Or maybe it's an slight anti-British bias in the case of both Ireland and Cyprus. Falklands I don't know. It would be interesting to know how it's listed in the Spanish yearbook.
-
61
Is this a normal JW practice? Warning, this will be a bit graphic.
by Sequoia inthis post may be disturbing and i apologize, but i'm just trying to find out if this is a practice the jw teaches.
i was taken advantage of by a guy claiming to be a jw preacher.
he took me to his house supposedly so i could give his daughter piano lessons, and then he basically forced himself on me while telling me he was in love with me and wanted to marry me.
-
-
slimboyfat
The problem with JWs is they can be so concerned about sex being a "sin" they forget the more important issues of respect and consent. He probably still thinks about the event in terms of sin rather than criminality. Hopefully the police and authorities will clear up the difference in his mind when they catch up with him. -
26
Every Country and Land... Except Oman
by ILoveTTATT2 inso the other day someone asked me what use was it to make the list of countries in which there have been reports.... well... to know that, as far as i can tell, there has never been preaching done in oman.. it has never appeared in any report, and the reports go back to 1926!.
all other countries and lands have appeared, but not oman.. so there... first useful fact about the watchtower that we can get from 90 years of data..
-
-
slimboyfat
Sorry if my question "what are you going to do with the data" sounded like "what use is it?" I didn't mean that at all. I think it's a great idea. In fact I did something similar myself years ago, but by hand, with 70+ physical yearbooks and an excel spreadsheet. For me one of the most interesting things I found was the dramatic differences from country to country surrounding 1975. For some countries such as the Phillipines the impact was dramatic and for other countries such as Italy there was no impact whatever.
Sounds like a good idea. I wish I knew how to do it.
Alaska and Hawaii in or out US, South Sudan, Rhodesia, Zambia, mixing changing names all over the place. Complicated stuff. Good luck.
What are you going to do with all the data? -
67
John Lewis: Trump isn't a legitimate president
by Brokeback Watchtower inhttp://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/john-lewis-trump-isnt-a-legitimate-president/ar-aalqsqs?li=bbmkt5r&ocid=spartanntp.
-
-
slimboyfat
How can we spend time arguing about these details when we are facing the Trumpocalypse!
-
30
Oi Cofty
by Landy innew series of timc started monday.. one of the episodes is on evolution - should be good knowing cox's antipathy towards religion.. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b088f2vv.
sorry you colonials - it's on the bbc so you won't be able to get it.
serves yourself right for voting for trump!
-
-
slimboyfat
What makes you say Scotland would have been worse off independent? In the 1970s the UK government commissioned a report that concluded Scotland would be a very wealthy independent country. The report was kept secret. In the meantime Norway did become a very wealthy country, while UK revenue from the North Sea was used to fund 1980s privatisation and tax cuts, and none put aside for the future. The UK also spent a fortune on wars and weapons of mass destruction. How has any of that improved Scotland's position? Scotland has been a net contributor to the UK for most of the last 40 years. Only in the last couple of years has this reversed slightly. The Independent - hardly an snp paper.
Given that history how on earth can you say Scotland has been better off in the UK?
The table at the bottom of this page shows that Scotland raised slightly less revenue per person than the rest of the UK for the last two years, compared with years when revenue from Scotland was much higher than the rest of the UK.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-37167975
There is no doubt that the last two years have been tough for Scotland because of the low price of oil. But that's within the context of years and decades of net contribution to the UK. And if Scotland was independent it could have put money aside as Norway did. If Scotland is independent in the future it can make better decisions about its economy than the UK has made.
It's as if unionists think staying in the UK actually constitutes an economic plan. Scotland needs to adapt whether it is independent or not. The Barnett formula won't last forever whether we are independent or not. Or is it really the plan to rely on subsidy from now on indefinitely? Good luck with that economic plan.
-
30
Oi Cofty
by Landy innew series of timc started monday.. one of the episodes is on evolution - should be good knowing cox's antipathy towards religion.. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b088f2vv.
sorry you colonials - it's on the bbc so you won't be able to get it.
serves yourself right for voting for trump!
-
-
slimboyfat
A few observations about that:
1. If the UK is such a great thing for Scotland how come we've ended up in that position?
2. And if being in the UK got us into that situation, how is remaining part of the UK ever going to improve things?
3. What is the unionist plan to fix the situation? Beg money from the rest of the UK forever? Do you think the rest of the UK would stand for that? Would it even be desirable from a Scottish standpoint?
Apart from all of which you seem to have swallowed unionist propaganda about Scotland having a huge deficit. The truth is most countries have deficits (not Norway because they controlled their own oil revenue). And for most of the last 40 years Scotland has had a smaller deficit than the rest of the UK and been a net contributor to the UK. In fact 2012/13 was the first year in decades when Scotland's deficit was larger than the UK and it was only slightly larger. Even the BBC report this truthfully on occasion. See the graph half way down this page.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-28879267
Whether Scotland prospers in the future depends on whether we can make the right choices about our future here in Scotland. Relying on handouts is not a good plan, sells ourselves short and doesn't show respect for rest of the UK.