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The gathering crisis in the UK

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Re: The gathering crisis in the UK

#121

Post by TremendousJudge »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #72
mjevans wrote: post #10

Some of England's problems are unique to them, but I think the reason those who voted for Brexit did so is that they felt the current deal wasn't working for them. Already, way back then, they weren't on a path to a bright future where there was a house of their own to live in, a job that was a good fit for them and society, a future to believe in. I believe the same things that fueled Brexit persist as malaise today…

This might sound like cheap shots, but I say it with love for my friends in the Uk... If you look at Britain historically...coal is dead. Wool is dead. The island itself is fairly small for much agriculture. There aren't a whole lot of natural resources. They had power and resources through their empire, but that is gone. Their one shot, so to speak, was like many developed nations - services, including financial. Bu…

Sounds like the country is regressing to the mean then. Thanks to the empire they are used to being on top of the world, but all their advantages are gone now except for the tax havens and an old cultural narrative that the British are inherently better than everybody else.

Re: The gathering crisis in the UK

#122

Post by klelatti »

dragontamer wrote: post #108
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because you demonstrated some long-term thinking in the future does not mean the US government was not short-sighted in the past. I don't know if it it was or not, but a few counter-points is not proof. I am sure you could find millions of counter-points that the US and the UK are currently long-term thinking (even though I think most of us can agree that isn't the subjective truth).

> I don't know if it it was or not, but a few counter-points is not proof. Literally no one in politics thinks about purely short term issues actually. I *disagree* with my political opponents, but that's because my vision of the next 30 years is grossly different than their vision of the next 30 years. ----- This isn't about "counter-examples". This is about you failing to provide even the first example of short-ter…

Maybe some of the Brexit crowd was thinking about the long term but Johnson certainly wasn’t: he was thinking about his chances of getting into No 10.

Re: The gathering crisis in the UK

#123

Post by jodrellblank »

mgoldstein5 wrote: post #48
Victerius wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or an opportunity for a powerful figure to take power by force and rule over all. I'm not for dictatorships, but we already have too many countries in the world. And provinces and states within these countries. Too many little fiefdoms. Too many wannabe lords. Too many presidents, premiers, prime ministers, governors, chancellors, kings, emperors. Too many parliaments, congresses, too many senators, deputies, represe…

There’s nothing wrong with local autonomy, why should I be ruled by people who don’t share my values thousands of miles away.

If people share your values and are ruling in your interest then it doesn't matter if they are far away. If someone is ruling against your interest and doesn't share your values, it's no benefit if they're local.

And what does "local" mean? London to Brussels is only 200 miles direct, that's closer than Belfast, Edinburgh, or St Davids which are all places more or less ruled by London as "local" to the UK.

Re: The gathering crisis in the UK

#124

Post by stickfigure »

jacquesm wrote: post #91
stickfigure wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was this translated from original Russian? Honestly, it really does sound like you're for dictatorships. I think all that diversity - sure, even competing bases on the Moon - is the sign of a healthy society. Monoculture is much more perilous. Centralization gives you NASA, market chaos gives you SpaceX.

Without NASA there would not be a SpaceX.

You cannot know that. NASA flew shuttle payloads for decades at a substantial loss. Who knows what aerospace companies might have filled that void.

Re: The gathering crisis in the UK

#125

Post by wizofaus »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #55
klelatti wrote: post #45

I think Brexit has allowed a sort of nihilism to creep into U.K. politics. If you can live with a policy that has such a demonstrable adverse effect on the economy and so many other things then why worry about the impact of other policies. The standard approach for the government now seems to be to look for short term wins in the tabloids and ignore the long term. And this is on top of the huge distraction that Brexi…

> The standard approach for the government now seems to be to look for short term wins in the tabloids and ignore the long term. Was this ever not the case?

Governments are surely exactly the place most super-long-term projects have to happen (and typically have happened). It's pretty hard for a corporation to convince shareholders to invest in something that won't pay dividends for 15-20 years. Religious organizations building cathedrals is probably a rare example of it happening below the state-level (it's hard to imagine without belief in higher powers or an afterlife etc. why many people would thoroughly commit themselves to a project they won't see completed in their lifetimes).

Re: The gathering crisis in the UK

#127

Post by pasabagi »

WaxProlix wrote: post #120
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then they lost 60 seats under Corbyn in 2019. Winning 202, the lowest number of seats since 1935.

That was the result of the aforementioned internal torpedoing of Corbyn though, right? Cutting off the nose to spite the face or something.

I think that's a part of it, but I think a bigger deal part that, when the media and political establishment saw he was electable, they also saw him as a real threat, and so they made a much more concerted effort to damage him before the next election.

That's why you got stuff like his face getting greenscreened onto a clip of voldemort on the BBC.

One thing that people underestimate is just how far to the right of the general population the media and political class is. They tend to be private school dominated, overwhelmingly drawn from southern england, and personally wealthy.

Re: The gathering crisis in the UK

#128

Post by willyt »

pphysch wrote: post #89
willyt wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't one of the main leave campaign organisations (Leave.EU?) funded by Aaron Banks who recently lost a libel action against a newspaper that accused him of receiving funds to pay for this from the KGB? EDIT: found a source https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-61782578

This is exactly the poor standard of tangential & circumstantial evidence I'm talking about. Read the decision carefully.

I expect it would be quite hard to prove beyond reasonable doubt without the security services getting involved in giving evidence but the fact that he lost means that on the balance of probabilities the story is true. Maybe Cadwallr should have burgled his house to find the suitcases full of roubles!

Re: The gathering crisis in the UK

#129

Post by 8note »

javajosh wrote: post #53
abeppu wrote: post #16

> This is the sort of crisis that brings down nations. What does "bring down nations" mean though? Replacing a government? Violent overthrow and then writing an actual constitution? Because a bunch of the challenges being faced would still be issues under any regime right? A different government isn't going to magically get more potatoes this year, or significantly more energy from strained European countries this wi…

A nation is, technically speaking, it's rulers and the rules they impose (on others and themselves). So bringing down a nation would imply a sea-change in rulers & rules. Considering that authoritarianism is humanities Default form of Government, it stands to reason that "bringing down" a democracy means reverting to that default. This will happen with the alternative is worse. (The situation in Somalia is arguably w…

I'd consider the nation to be the people with a common cultural background.

The state is the rulers and rules?

Re: The gathering crisis in the UK

#130

Post by vaylian »

eisa01 wrote: post #66

This is not limited to the UK Europe has been in an energy war with Russia for the past year, we have a drought affecting hydro power and the French nuclear fleet is just out of service The government action up to now has been almost nothing, basically amounting to announcing a few LNG import projects and updated 2030 targets. Nearly nothing has been done to the demand side nearly six months into this crisis What nee…

I know you mean well, but

> * Restart of all possible coal plants (only two have announced restart in Germany!)

> * Removal of any restrictions limiting oil and diesel fired gensets from operating

are really bad ideas. The current crisis is nothing compared to the looming climate crisis. What we need is a hard sustained break in energy consumption. We can have a good quality of life with a lot less energy, if we stop wasting so many resources on things that don't matter or are not required. We should buy (and produce) less non-essentials and travel should be limited to things that really require physical presence. Home office should be offered whenever possible.

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