401–410 of 659 posts
I’m sure they’ll feel much better when there’s yet another set of rules and laws they’ll have to follow. Oof.
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This is an illusion, only thing that happened is that you only get access to websites if you give away your GDPR consent. I love the ignorance of people over here thinking that GDPR is nothing more than just that accept button that people click in order to get access to the websites.
The website accept button is not in the GDPR. [EDIT: it's a different law] GDPR covers way more requirements regarding data management. You need complete control over the lifecycle of sensitive data, exhaustive documentation of data transformations, you have concrete obligations regarding disclosure of incidents, data removal, limitations of for what data is used, user consent management, and the obligation to have p…
I honestly get giggles from how unprepared they are culturally for what becoming America-like will do to them. Does anyone else? American-like but with no negotiating leverage and having burned all the bridges to the other economic unions.
Why is it inevitable that the UK will become like America? There are plenty of independent Algo-States that are nothing like it. Australia, New Zealand, Canada for example. This comment seems to be borne out spite more than any kind of logic.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The website accept button is not in the GDPR. [EDIT: it's a different law] GDPR covers way more requirements regarding data management. You need complete control over the lifecycle of sensitive data, exhaustive documentation of data transformations, you have concrete obligations regarding disclosure of incidents, data removal, limitations of for what data is used, user consent management, and the obligation to have p…
It does not matter since it is a consequence of the GDPR anyway. Regulators can't just push aside negative consequences of their regulations by simply saying "that's not what we meant nor the outcome we wanted". This is why regulations fail. Regulators think they are providing incentives for good things and disincentives for bad things. In reality, they are just perverting incentives. To fix those problems more rules…
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I'm in the UK, so you got me: it seems I take a somewhat self-interested view on human rights! More seriously, though, the UK used to be a major world advocate for human rights, so UK human rights going down the pan probably isn't great for human rights worldwide. Peace takes two sides, so it's hard to argue that having your dysfunctional politicians run unchecked isn't going to lead to worse outcomes across the boar…
No, I am not joking. Our politicians running unchecked isn't great for us, but at least they are no longer disrupting and influencing the whole of the EU. If we had remained then, what would the EU have prevented them from doing so far? Would they have stopped the corruption with regards to the Covid contracts? I guess we would have to keep GDPR, but then GDPR might have been stronger in the first place without the U…
>Yes, but we aren't any more
Have you got a source for this?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not inevitable, but the current government appears to move in that direction intentionally. - The EU exit was, among other things, accused of being a way to relax regulation and legislation to degrade product standards to a US-like level. Chlorinated chicken was a big item on everyone's discussion agenda a while back. This is now evidently happening. - The government is severely underfunding the NHS, despite pay…
> "b) The privatisation of British rail has been a disaster" Privatisation has not been perfect, but only someone who does not remember the old days of British Rail in the 1980s and 1990s would consider it a disaster. It's true that fares are high, but service levels and passenger numbers are both far above the British Rail days. (UK rail passenger numbers reached an all time record in 2019) Prior to Covid, many of t…
This isn't the vindication of privatisation you seem to think it is. Passenger numbers (and fares) are hitting records, and the operators are still using the exact same rolling stock as in 'the old days of British Rail'. Privatisation has led to massive corporate profits at the taxpayers' expense, without providing the investment the railways need.
How is it that half of the UK's private operators are subsidiaries of other countries' nationalised operators? When the East Coast Mainline was renationalised (after the franchise holder claimed it was impossible to run profitably), it jumped from the most expensive line with the least customer satisfaction to the line with the highest customer satisfaction.
The 'bad old days' of British Rail were because of persistent underfunding, not the ownership structure. The UK state spends more on railways today under a privatised system than they did when the entire system was nationalised.
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OK, so the problem is that I find it basically impossible to understand how a well-informed and rational person could come to the conclusions you've come to. The EU isn't perfect, but you'll struggle to argue that it hasn't expanded peace, prosperity and human rights across the continent. This is motherhood-and-apple-pie stuff. Arguments in favour of Brexit thus tend to boil down to immigration and 'sovereignty'. The…
I voted remain but would vote leave if we were to ever have another referendum. The reason being is that it's clear to me now the direction that the EU is going in (removal of the nation state, EU army). Actually I think after seeing the vaccine rollout by the EU, many more Brits would vote to leave. It's interesting how events have turned out.
Right now we have a global pandemic so all countries world wide are affected. And unless the whole world is vaccinated we won't get past it since the chance that mutations occur that all possible immune against our vaccines increases the more people get infected.
Currently there are 4 Producing Vaccine "producing" countries/groups
USA, UK, EU, Russia and China.
From these 5 groups only the EU and China are exporting vaccines. I am unsure about russia. And the Chinese vaccine is also not that widespread outside China. But I know that the EU even supplies Canada and Mexico with vaccines, while the USA and the UK have export bans. That is one of the reasons why vaccinations are slow in the EU in addition to being slow last year with ordering.
So while they have great numbers at home concerning the amount of people vaccinated. It is morally debatable whether or not that is the correct approach for a global problem.
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Yeah we saw the mighty EU negotiation leverage with COVID vaccine... UK market is large enough to stand on it's own and EU has been grossly incompetent in public for a while now. There's going to be downsides for sure but becoming "America like" is not going to be one of them.
You're cherry picking.
It makes sense for smaller countries like mine (Croatia) because of free travel, easier access to a larger market, lower cost of doing business, and truly being too small to negotiate good terms on a global scale. It probably makes a lot less sense for UK which can negotiate it's own terms with other global powers that fit them much better.
I have no doubt there will be many negatives to Brexit, but as demonstrated by COVID situation there's a huge opportunity for UK - for example I suspect they can secure better trade deals with the US without having to worry about the protectionist interests pushed by other EU members.
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Why is it inevitable that the UK will become like America? There are plenty of independent Algo-States that are nothing like it. Australia, New Zealand, Canada for example. This comment seems to be borne out spite more than any kind of logic.
It's not inevitable, but the current government appears to move in that direction intentionally. - The EU exit was, among other things, accused of being a way to relax regulation and legislation to degrade product standards to a US-like level. Chlorinated chicken was a big item on everyone's discussion agenda a while back. This is now evidently happening. - The government is severely underfunding the NHS, despite pay…
Have you ever known any government departments that don’t howl about being underfunded? The NHS is the 4th largest employer in the world, 1.3 million employees to provide healthcare to a nation of 67 million.
The Labour Party is currently claiming that NHS spending will be cut next year... because the emergency funding for the Covid situation won’t be made a permanent part of its budget!!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is it inevitable that the UK will become like America? There are plenty of independent Algo-States that are nothing like it. Australia, New Zealand, Canada for example. This comment seems to be borne out spite more than any kind of logic.
It's not inevitable, but the current government appears to move in that direction intentionally. - The EU exit was, among other things, accused of being a way to relax regulation and legislation to degrade product standards to a US-like level. Chlorinated chicken was a big item on everyone's discussion agenda a while back. This is now evidently happening. - The government is severely underfunding the NHS, despite pay…
Train company profits count for about 2% of the total cost of the ticket, and (pre covid) the network carried more than twice as many passengers as it was under BR - nearly 2 billion journeys a year vs a steady 800m in the 70s through 90s. in terms of distance, pax-km
1970 36b 1980 35b 1990 40b 1997 42b (end of BR) 2010 64b 2018 81b
Since 1997 that's a 90% increase.
France has increased 40% since 1997, Germany by 60%.
Fares have increased, but this is a reflection of the cost shifting to the passenger and away from the taxpayer. In 2009/10, franchised train operating companies were paid £275m to run the services (and another £3b was spent on the network those trains run on)
By 2015-2016 that operating subsidy had gone, and instead the TOCs paid £1.2b/year to operate their trains (some areas like Northern and West Midlands were still subsidised, but South West trains and Southern were paying their operating dues and paying for the tracks they run on)
It doesn't make sense to justifiably complain about overcrowdning (high demand) on one hand, but complain about high prices on the other. There is competition to rail if the price was too high -- driving, coaches, flying, not traveling, but the fare is obviously at the right level to result in record levels of travel and relatively low subsidy.