Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

631–640 of 651 posts

Re: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister

#631

Post by boruto »

akudha wrote: post #45
nemo44x wrote: post #7

Imagine rising to the ranks of prime minister of one of the most influential countries ever and for your legacy to be a head of lettuce out-survived your reign. That the Queen literally died the day after meeting you. Unbelievable.

Britain, Brazil, Australia, Philippines, India, Turkey, U.S … it is mind numbing that of all the good, talented people these countries have, only the dumbest, worst of the worst end up in positions of power. Depressing. At this point, we can just randomly pick a citizen to be President or PM. We might have better chances that way

> India

> > dumbest ..worst of the worst

Modi maybe worst, but dumb he is not.

He didn't have a college degree, but from nobody to becoming a pm with a full mandate for two terms in a country of billion is not something a dumb person can achieve.

Re: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister

#632

Post by rayiner »

viridian wrote: post #629
PaulHoule wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abortion and guns are different. Many rural voters own guns and personally feel a loss from gun control. The average rural voter has a basically libertarian bent and would probably be pretty happy with a truce that they are left alone about guns and women are left alone about abortion. Like it or not the electoral map favors rural voters, Democrats can recruit more urban voters and it will make no difference for winn…

Depends on how those votes are distributed, in both directions, but I doubt either would make a huge difference. One thing to remember is that rural areas are less red than cities are blue. A 75/35 split seems to be the most common rural distribution, whereas many city districts are 90% dem with the GOP struggling to outperform the greens or libertarians. The GOP stands to gain nothing in the urban cores outside of a…

New York City was 80/20, with Trump making significant gains in heavily immigrant neighborhoods: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/20/us/politics/e.... Trump won 26% in LA County. He ran within 7% of Biden in Miami-Dade County. The GOP absolutely has room to grow among working class Hispanics and Asians in cities.

Re: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister

#633

Post by pnt12 »

nequo wrote: post #297
ShredKazoo wrote: post #275

This might sound crazy... but if the UK is already de facto ruled by financial markets, in the sense that the PM has to step down if the markets don't like what they're doing, maybe it's time to try prediction market-based governance for real? What would've happened if instead of simply announcing the proposal, Truss had described the proposal and the government had sponsored a conditional prediction market on the ec…

This is an interesting idea. Although if anyone has enough money to single-handedly move the market price, it devolves into a dictatorship of that person.

Often the market is at odds with the public, preferring short term profits over all else. It seems to serve itself.

I fear applying it to governments would accelerate us into an hyper-capitalist dystopia much faster than we're already heading for.

Re: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister

#634

Post by roflyear »

rsynnott wrote: post #628
roflyear wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it matter? It will never happen again in the US.

... Wait, what? The US will never get a bad president who should be removed before their term ends again? That seems... optimistic.

That's not what I said. I said they never will be removed. Politics in the US have crossed a point into some kind of dogma.

Re: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister

#635

Post by p0pcult »

spoils19 wrote: post #592
amusedcyclist wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Her policies were terrible. Gutting the tax base, subsidizing energy demand in an inflationary environment. Almost all conservative policies are terrible but these ones were so bad that there was a run on the pound. I'm glad you're not running the country i live in

> Almost all conservative policies are terrible This seems hyperbolic and doesn't really fit with the HN guidelines. As most HN commenters lean conservative, I recommend reading the room first. In addition, every leader on the world stage enact primarily conservative policy because it's effective. While there are some outliers, it's easy to see just from reading the news and listening to independent thinkers what the…

No post body was provided.

Re: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister

#636

Post by the_only_law »

amusedcyclist wrote: post #611
spoils19 wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Almost all conservative policies are terrible This seems hyperbolic and doesn't really fit with the HN guidelines. As most HN commenters lean conservative, I recommend reading the room first. In addition, every leader on the world stage enact primarily conservative policy because it's effective. While there are some outliers, it's easy to see just from reading the news and listening to independent thinkers what the…

HN does lean conservative, I don't. Are you telling me I shouldn't express my views on here because people would disagree with me ? "In addition, every leader on the world stage enact primarily conservative policy because it's effective". Do you have any sort of proof for this claim ? Who are the supposed "independent thinkers" you listen to ?

> Who are the supposed "independent thinkers”

People who say what I want to hear of course!

Re: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister

#637

Post by MichaelZuo »

mcv wrote: post #620
MichaelZuo wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Parliaments obviously cannot represent every group within any given country. For example, non-residents, tourists, diplomats, etc..

You're right. Parliament represents only the entire electorate. And only really those opinions that are shared by enough people to be worth an entire seat. Still, it's far better representation than you get in a district system, where only local majorities of the electorate in each district are represented.

So then in a country with a weak executive, who collectively represents the interests of non-residents, tourists, diplomats, etc.?

Because each group certainly has some real interests in common.

Re: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister

#638

Post by tekknik »

csours wrote: post #559
rhodorhoades wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don’t have any intentions of defending your beliefs, why do you put them out there? It’s like throwing a punch with no intention of getting in a fight. You’re just bound to get your ass kicked. Not only is the UK not a republic but Republicanism isn’t about needing a grown up, it’s about time. Understanding the implications and reading through a 150 page proposal on the bill is not possible for the majority of…

> If you don’t have any intentions of defending your beliefs, why do you put them out there? The internet has lost it's privileges in this regard. I was talking about US Republicans.

Well then you’re still wrong. US republicans believe in small government, so they don’t think they should even be there.

Re: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister

#639

Post by tekknik »

rsynnott wrote: post #304
Symmetry wrote: post #238

1) I really like that in the UK system if the leader is crazy the party can just kick them to the curb rather than basically having to support them even when they do terrible things. 2) The US system of open primaries where anybody can vote that we adopted in the 70s seems like a mistake in retrospect and there's a good reason no other country does things this way. The UK Conservative party's system, adopted in the 2…

US parties _can_ do that, too (and notably did with Nixon). The refusal to do it with Trump was a moral failing of the Republican leadership, not an inherent systemic limitation.

There’s also a large quantity of people that feel he did nothing wrong. It’s generally the left, some independents and a few republicans that think he’s horrible.

Re: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister

#640

Post by SilverBirch »

ploppyploppy wrote: post #590
SilverBirch wrote: post #365

The chaos is just beginning. I know that what Liz Truss did - by blowing up the finances with a massive uncosted cut to taxes was the main cause of this, but one massive problem that the Tory party is going to have to face in the next few weeks is the Suella Braveman problem. Suella is on the right of the party, she wants immigration down to the 10s of thousands, and she's correct in saying that was actually a manife…

> she wants immigration down to the 10s of thousands The country has voted several times on this promise and it's never been delivered.

Yes, this is basically because it's undeliverable without doing some absolutely unbelievably stupid stuff. It'd skewer any idea of a trade deal with India (as Truss demonstrated), it would collapse our higher education sector which is heavily subsidized by international students, and it would cause massive worker shortages in both the City of London and the NHS.

It's one of those "people want lower taxes" - "Ok, which public services do you want to cut?" things. They want immigration down to the 10,000s, but no one actually wants to prevent any individual migrant.

Post reply on HN