Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister • Hacker News Board

Re: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister

#641

Post by SideburnsOfDoom » Fri, Oct 21, 2022, 4:04 PM UTC

AzzieElbab wrote: post #532

cjrp wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If wokeness is the biggest problem a politician sees at the moment (which is the implication if that's the platform they're running on), then no - they are not serious.

Of cause wokeness is the biggest issue because it causes paralysis of governance. No one can get anything done when non-issues or issues with no solutions are prioritised

In context of the parent article, UK politics and the Tory party that's been in power for a while now: Would you say that "wokeness causing paralysis of governance" is their biggest problem to tackle right now?

Because, on the face of it, that viewpoint seems to be simply deranged.

Re: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister

#642

Post by usefulcat » Fri, Oct 21, 2022, 5:31 PM UTC

iwillbenice wrote: post #293

usefulcat wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> She did this by launching a series of unfunded tax cuts Another interesting difference between the US and UK. Republicans do this routinely in the US, and have done for many decades now. The last Republican president who didn't do this was George Bush (the first one). After promising "no new taxes" during his campaign, he later agreed to do the fiscally responsible thing and raise taxes in order to offset spending…

> After promising "no new taxes" during his campaign, he later agreed to do the fiscally responsible thing and raise taxes in order to offset spending increases. That is an extremely charitable parsing of the events. The more accurate (realpolitik) version is Bush said the no new taxes quip, and Democrats subsequently laser-focused on making him (slightly) raise taxes, showing he is a "liar". My take away is to learn…

> The more accurate (realpolitik) version is Bush said the no new taxes quip, and Democrats subsequently laser-focused on making him (slightly) raise taxes, showing he is a "liar".

These days I think a Republican president in the same position would be a lot more likely to refuse to sign it, even it if meant shutting down the government. But politicians (and voters) really were much less divided back then compared to today.

> My take away is to learn not to promise overly optimistic outcomes when your political rivals have a significant stake in seeing you either be a success or a failure.

Over-promising is the bread and butter of campaign rhetoric; candidates do it all the time (certainly in US presidential elections at least). If it was really that much of a problem in practice, you'd see more election winners who hadn't previously promised all kinds of things they have no chance of delivering.

Re: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister

#643

Post by lamontcg » Fri, Oct 21, 2022, 5:47 PM UTC

leereeves wrote: post #577

lamontcg wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah so it was essentially satire. You'd think that in a community of "hackers" that should value actual skepticism and subversion that people wouldn't fall so easily for obvious propaganda.

Defending their performance by arguing that it was rebellion or satire is pretty much admitting that the debate style (fast debating, AKA spreading [1]) is ridiculous and deserves rebellion or satire. And if this was an intentionally extreme example meant to demonstrate problems with the format, then sharing it and citing it here seems entirely appropriate and even expected. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spreading…

You know that wasn't why it was shared here, and it was deliberately edited to push people towards a completely different conclusion.

Re: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister

#644

Post by random314 » Fri, Oct 21, 2022, 5:52 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #616

random314 wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There’s no “wedge issues.” The electorate cares about what it cares about. Aka, propaganda doesn't actually exist. At the very least, my team doesn't do it.

Thinking your political opponents are duped by propaganda just means you lack the ability to think outside your bubble and understand people who have different values and priorities. Certainly abortion views are not the result of GOP propaganda, seeing as how it’s illegal in two dozen countries across Europe, Asia, and Africa, and the subject of careful compromises in all but a few liberal democracies. (Views on immi…

Thanks for elaborating my point in detail. For reference, my post

"There are no wedge issues - propaganda doesn't actually exist. At the very least, my team doesn't do it."

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Abortion_Laws.svg

Re: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister

#645

Post by SilasX » Fri, Oct 21, 2022, 5:59 PM UTC

frereubu wrote: post #581

SilasX wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I edited the comment — “celebrity” might be the wrong word, but I was thinking that they might care more about having a noble’s kid attend than the 45k, and, like you just implied, they’d reject nouveau-riches even if they had the money, especially if the riches came from a source that’s frowned upon. So it’s not a very good joke, as it implies that there aren’t any other filters, despite their intense concern for re…

If you're looking for jokes to be factually accurate, comedy must be rather unsatisfying for you.

They need to have enough truth/insight to be funny. When your premise is that Eton only looks at cash-in-hand for admissions -- pretty much the opposite of the truth -- that doesn't qualify.

The joke would only work for schools that famously looked the other way on pretty egregious stuff if you paid them enough -- not on a school that makes a point of heavily filtering beyond the official tuition. (Sorry, "sticker price".)

Side note: It's also kinda funny how the parent expects 45k to be some kind of jaw-dropping, outrageous number, when Americans routinely pay that much for college.

Re: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister

#646

Post by rayiner » Fri, Oct 21, 2022, 7:00 PM UTC

random314 wrote: post #644

rayiner wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinking your political opponents are duped by propaganda just means you lack the ability to think outside your bubble and understand people who have different values and priorities. Certainly abortion views are not the result of GOP propaganda, seeing as how it’s illegal in two dozen countries across Europe, Asia, and Africa, and the subject of careful compromises in all but a few liberal democracies. (Views on immi…

Thanks for elaborating my point in detail. For reference, my post "There are no wedge issues - propaganda doesn't actually exist. At the very least, my team doesn't do it." https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Abortion_Laws.svg

I don’t understand your response. Are you saying all those other people in other countries are duped by GOP propaganda as well?

Re: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister

#647

Post by bb123 » Sat, Oct 22, 2022, 1:43 PM UTC

karmajunkie wrote: post #310

bb123 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He doesn't have any authority, in practice. It has been that way since 1414. The second the monarchy tried to exert control over politics would be the second it was abolished.

did you perhaps mean 1914? i’m not a historian but i DID watch Hamilton a few times and it really seemed like King George had quite a lot of power and authority…

It is hard to put an exact date on it - but 1414 is the first time the King acquiesced that parliament had to give approval for new laws.

Re: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister

#648

Post by Gordonjcp » Sat, Oct 22, 2022, 6:32 PM UTC

tomp wrote: post #483

smcl wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All arguments from leftists are just "we want to win" The argument is that the party is being eviscerated in opinion polling, they’ve lost the support of the public and that since they're effectively doomed they're free to do what we know they love to do - attempt to secure themselves a role in the private sector for after the election. Given that this it the Conservative party, it's not exactly a secret that they'…

The idea of "election every 4/5 years" is that in the meantime, politicians can do momentarily unpopular things.

They're not doing "momentarily unpopular things", they are deliberately destroying the country to make themselves a bit of cash.

Conservatives are all - without exception - junkies. Addicts. Criminal junkie addicts, who will steal all they can to sell off for a bit of cash for their fix, although in this case the fix is the cash.

Re: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister

#649

Post by easytiger » Sun, Oct 23, 2022, 12:03 AM UTC

raesene9 wrote: post #578

easytiger wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's arguable that the minibudget overreaction wasn't remotely rational reporting or accurate as the cause of the gilt coupon drop. Certainly that day a load of people made money on them as it was very obvious they'd be fine. But in the cloud of noise that followed, with even the nations top economic journalists regurgitating nonsense... i doubt 0.5% of the adult population could even tell you what happened t…

I'd say that all economics at a national level is about confidence. If the markets have confidence in what you're doing they don't react badly, if they don't have confidence in what you're doing, they react badly. By not laying the ground properly for their "mini-budget" they (Truss and Kwarteng) caused the markets to lose confidence in them, causing the problems that occurred. It doesn't really matter what most peop…

I think you are quite accurate in everything you say.

I worked on an FX LP desk for nearly a decade. A happy place to be in times of turmoil. The more turmoil, the wider the spread, the more money we made. The mini gilt crisis made millions for my mates in fixed income. Confidence collapse is brilliant when you know others don't understand the markets. You sense the fantasy

Re: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister

#650

Post by ShredKazoo » Sun, Oct 23, 2022, 7:11 AM UTC

pnt12 wrote: post #633

nequo wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Part of the idea here is to harness the predictive power of markets to target desirable metrics that are not corporate profits, e.g. low inequality.