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The gathering crisis in the UK

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Re: The gathering crisis in the UK

#141

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

tuatoru wrote: post #133
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Tabloids have only existed for 150 years or so. Before them, most newspapers thought their role was to help voters and investors make good decisions.

Did they? I think their role was always to make money.

Newspapers have a VERY long history of being owned and operated by the rich with a healthy portion of PR / propaganda.

Re: The gathering crisis in the UK

#142

Post by Victerius »

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.

There we go again. The local fiefdom. More division.

Distance does not matter. It should not matter.

Re: The gathering crisis in the UK

#143

Post by WhyIsItGlowing »

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?

The feedback loop has got ever shorter.

The approach now is to announce a non-feasible hard-right policy in the right wing tabloids, wait for The Guardian to react the next day, denounce that, then the day after forget the whole thing (like Liz Truss' civil service paycuts)

Re: The gathering crisis in the UK

#144

Post by throwyawayyyy »

drcongo wrote: post #117
throwyawayyyy wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an alternate history in which it was David Miliband who became Labour leader, not his brother. Who knows of course, but there's a decent chance it would have prevented the disaster of Brexit (and the related disaster, for Labour and the country, of Corbyn).

He's just another diet Tory like Starmer though.

In a sense, I don't disagree. But when the only Labour politician of my lifetime to win an election is Tony Blair, you have to consider that the UK is a pretty Tory country, and you have to work with what you've got...

Re: The gathering crisis in the UK

#145

Post by kbenson »

stu2b50 wrote: post #86
UncleOxidant wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the average US consumer is a big part of the economy - if they're effected, then how is the US economy not effected?

If the US consumer is buying from US producers, then it is just money bouncing around domestically. You could argue that from a birds eye view, the US economy as a whole, at least on a national scale, is minimally affected. That being said, I can't agree with the parent post, it's not that symmetric.

Doesn't that assume that those local producers are only using local resources? It's very hard to be insulated well in this day and age. Livestock feed price is up. Fertilizer price is up. Equipment shipping costs are up, when they aren't hard to come by. (I can provide sources, but I just googled price of those over time and found charts supporting it easily enough).

Its very hard to be really insulated from higher fuel costs, even if it's produced locally. You still need to ship it to a refinery, and then ship it back out to gas stations. Unless you run a farm where you get all your inputs locally and they are also trying to use only local inputs, you're going to see these price increases. Many of the economic inputs people use for production, whether that be food or built items, have gone up, and often there's only so much they can do to insulate from that.

Re: The gathering crisis in the UK

#146

Post by tuatoru »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #141
tuatoru wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tabloids have only existed for 150 years or so. Before them, most newspapers thought their role was to help voters and investors make good decisions.

Did they? I think their role was always to make money. Newspapers have a VERY long history of being owned and operated by the rich with a healthy portion of PR / propaganda.

In those days their readership was mostly people with at least a little money. They were investors' social media. Their incentives were to report the economic facts of life.

Re: The gathering crisis in the UK

#147

Post by orwin »

damagednoob wrote: post #46
PaulHoule wrote: post #3

It's a bit like blaming the Democrats for the political crisis in the US but I have to ask "what the hell is wrong with Labor?" The Tories have dominated politics in the UK since the later 1970s except for the Blair administration, and Blair was an honorary Tory.

A couple of things: Tories have done well to court the people that show up at the polls with things like keeping the Triple-Lock pension guarantee[1]. Like the Democrats, Labour's demographics have started to shift more to the well-educated (though I suspect this will swing back massively, come the next election). This alienated their traditional working class base who care more about their own economic realities tha…

But if an euro-sceptic like Corbyn (distrust of the EEC more than the EU idea) was in power to negociate brexit, i'm pretty sure the negotiations would've gone better. I don't believe the EU technocrats would've sabotaged him, they care much more about being right than supporting their political side somehow (worked with them two years ago on a project, it was enlightening, made me appreciate technocrats much more than politicians)

Re: The gathering crisis in the UK

#149

Post by anigbrowl »

rayiner wrote: post #49
reb wrote: post #4

It’s eerie how similar the issues facing western nations are and how intractable the disagreements over solutions have become. Desperate balkanization coming for many, I think.

What’s remarkable is that everyone recognizes that “the disagreements over solutions have become” “intractable” but thinks the solution is to handle more things at the federal/EU/UN level.

Pff, the GOP centralizes power like nobody's business at the state level, it's just a collection of fiefdoms.

Re: The gathering crisis in the UK

#150

Post by anigbrowl »

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #20
reb wrote: post #4

It’s eerie how similar the issues facing western nations are and how intractable the disagreements over solutions have become. Desperate balkanization coming for many, I think.

I always wonder why balkanization is described as "desperate" or some other extremely bad thing.

The war in former Yugoslavia was pretty horrible and they're by no means over it.
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