311–320 of 659 posts
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> The UK is actually the exception to the growing hate and nationalism in Europe! Are you in the UK? I find this a rather peculiar view.
When was the last time you read about the BNP or Combat18? UKIP has gone. Where is the political party that is far right?
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> Illegal to perform DIY electrics, e.g. change a plug. ?? As someone moving to Australia in a few months, I feel like this is something I ought to know about... > International travel currently banned. This is the same in many countries, including the UK right now.
>> International travel currently banned. > This is the same in many countries, including the UK right now. It isn't really. Many countries barred non-resident non-citizens from entering but only a couple went to the extent of attempting to prohibit their own citizens from leaving . The latter restriction is far more draconian.
OK then, but the UK is currently one of those places. Without good reason it's currently prohibited.
ANd I honestly don't have a problem with it, we're in the midst of a pandemic. :shrug:
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This is the thing that pissed me off the most about the referendum. The result was touted as an overwhelming majority but in fact the percentages are well within the margin for error on a poll that wasn't very well defined from the outset (ie what "leave" meant was different for different people). The only thing the EU referendum conclusively demonstrated was how easily manipulated people are by the media they consum…
The same argument has been heard from Trump and his followers. Stolen votes, manipulated people. What we need is respect for democracy.
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The US is hardly some low regulation capitalist utopia. The US regulatory code is enormous. Plenty of self-proclaimed "Europeans" think it is, but in my experience they often know relatively little about the issues in question and are just parroting cultural talking points they picked up elsewhere. Indeed, you seem to admit that here, when you state that you got your views of what British people believe from your "ne…
>For example you think everyone else thinks the NHS is awesome, because left-wing journalists Or because 87% of Britons polled said that they are very proud of it. >you'd be shocked at how little support rail nationalisation would end up having. 56% in favor. 15% actively against. Majority support even by members of the party that was most against it. >The NHS is a socialist anachronism This is a popular view among i…
When Cameron first called the referendum Remain was in the lead. When topics are debated thoroughly in the public sphere and serious campaigns are run, people's opinions can shift pretty dramatically. That's why politicians campaign.
Nobody has ever spent time campaigning to keep railways privatised in the UK because the Conservatives have always chosen to fight elections on other issues, whilst Labour have made nationalisation a priority for years. If people were asked to make a direct decision on this and there was competent campaigning involved, I am very sure nationalisation would lose. The arguments are weak.
87% of Britons polled said that they are very proud of [the NHS]
The same poll showed even more people are "proud" of the fire brigade, although there's nothing special about the British fire service. They are also more "proud" of the post office than Oxford or Cambridge universities. All that poll says is that people tend to answer "proud" (whatever that's interpreted to mean) when asked about institutions which they frequently interact with and are rarely exposed to any criticism of.
Just like with the railways, British people are not exposed to serious debate about the NHS. The Conservatives have, for now at least, given up trying to debate it because they prefer to be a centrist party and because Labour consistently exploit people's emotions by conflating the NHS with healthcare. For instance the left will happily imply that any criticism of the NHS (a bureaucracy) means hatred of nurses and loving of cancer, or other nonsense.
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I was pretty disappointed after living three years in Singapore and witnessing the uglier underbelly of the country that the UK decided that's what it wanted to become almost as soon as I got home. Moreover, they don't want to copy any of the successes - e.g. their public housing system or strict "you WILL go to prison if you overcharge" price controls on medical care. They just want the tax haven, deregulation, an u…
On the balance, Singapore is much more free in the economical sphere than the UK, so if the UK did copy ALL of its policies, it would become more much economically competitive and see more rapid economic development. As for exploitation of workers, Singapore has seen massively more wage growth than the UK over the last 50 years, so I don't equate a free labor market with exploitation. I will add that there are import…
Singapore is massively more favorable to investors and this gets charactized as "free".
Forced savings accounts with strict rules about how you can use the money are pretty much the antithesis of economic freedom, for instance, but it won't show up in economic freedom indices. The Economist is squarely aimed at foreign investors with moolah to invest, not Singaporean toilet cleaners pissed off that they can't access their CPF.
>As for exploitation of workers, Singapore has seen massively more wage growth than the UK over the last 50 years
As for exploitation of workers, Russia has seen even more wage growth than the UK in the last 20 years (somewhwre between 60-150% I think?).
Would you like to endorse the lack of exploitation of Russian citizens or retract your statement?
>Singapore's simulation of a free market economy has been offering more practical liberty and working better at raising living standards.
Ironically it's been the deliberately anti free market stuff they've done which has boosted living standards the most. The HDB program is practically Soviet both in inspiration and nature and dragged the citizens out of shantytown kampongs and led to an exceptionally well oiled and competitive private property market that brings a huge inflows of capital.
This is in addition to the Winsemius plan.
>Ideally, the UK would maintain its pluralistic and democratic core, while adopting Singapore's economic policies.
Ideally none of that. It's their economic policies that are partly what made it such a nasty place for me to work in. I was so glad to come home.
Just my 2 cents as somebody who lived under the "investors uber alles" regime.
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Which is silly (silly on Bojo's part, I mean) to set the country on a path to economic decline and cultural irrelevance because why be a king of an impoverished country instead of being a citizen in an advanced economy? (Clarification: I'm exaggerating for rhetorical effect. The UK won't become impoverished or really stop being an advanced-economy, but it's still going to be far poorer (in a total GDP and PPP sense)…
Why is everyone so sure about your last paragraph? You could say the same for the EU block and even have more historical evidence of supranations falling apart.
Debatable. But even if the EU was - or was not - a tightly integrated federated state, I'm far more concerned about the UK withdrawing itself from the world's largest free trade bloc. I see it heading towards either economic protectionism (bad in the long-term) or getting into a race-to-the-bottom (potentially even worse).
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When was the last time you read about the BNP or Combat18? UKIP has gone. Where is the political party that is far right?
So the really hard right is diminished, but that's arguably because the pretty hard right took on its rhetoric on immigration and is currently in power.
LOL
I somewhat miss the days when the corruption was at least somewhat veiled. No-no of course we don't want to sell your data for profit, that would be ridiculous. Clearly it is just our corporate sponsors who will be doing it for us!
Money has become the main objective, and it's poisoning us. Money is a means to an end, not the end itself. The nation (any country) needs to have human goals - not economical goals for their own sake - but a better life for us, for us all.
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>For example you think everyone else thinks the NHS is awesome, because left-wing journalists Or because 87% of Britons polled said that they are very proud of it. >you'd be shocked at how little support rail nationalisation would end up having. 56% in favor. 15% actively against. Majority support even by members of the party that was most against it. >The NHS is a socialist anachronism This is a popular view among i…
56% in favor. 15% actively against. Majority support even by members of the party that was most against it. When Cameron first called the referendum Remain was in the lead. When topics are debated thoroughly in the public sphere and serious campaigns are run, people's opinions can shift pretty dramatically. That's why politicians campaign. Nobody has ever spent time campaigning to keep railways privatised in the UK b…
They're exposed to investor dogma like yours on a daily basis from most of the investor owned media (telegraph, the mail, etc.). It isn't quite as vehement as yours because they know the limits of what their audience would accept but their owners views are broadly in line with yours.
It's a bit hard to attack an institution that cured your readerships' mother's cancer, for instance, and not lose their trust. They learned this lesson the hard way.
>For instance the left will happily imply that any criticism of the NHS (a bureaucracy) means hatred of nurses
They'll state that a below inflation pay rise does that because it does. They tried to supplant it with a weekly "clap a thon" instead. Cringeworthy.
Although, it's not strictly nurses investors and the investor backed government hate it's nursing unions, among other impediments to parasitic US-style profit driven value extraction.