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

David Cameron announces resignation

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 345 posts

Re: David Cameron announces resignation

#281

Post by munin »

CM30 wrote: post #156
geff82 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are absolutely right, while I am, too. Of course there are progressive, far thinking elderly people and I enjoy being around them. I recently talked to a 71 year old who is into fractal programming and wants to get into Linux, soon (all while being politically liberal). But the elections and polls show always the same picture: the older people get, the more conservative/right wing they vote, which is often not wh…

Well, it'd help if the younger generation actually bothered for things instead of complaining about them on social media. Less online petitions, more going down to the ballot box. If they were represented in the vote, more politicians would listen to them. But they currently don't because the older generations actually show up on voting day.

the older generations can show up on voting day because they don't have to work

Re: David Cameron announces resignation

#282

Post by adventured »

Shivetya wrote: post #164
CommanderData wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This government is for austerity and cutting public services and expenditure. He is no less a reflection of his party. Next PM's in line: Theresa May: Pro snoopers (spying) charter. I don't like the term police state but her actions are worryingly in line. Boris Johnson? A very charismatic idiot. His selling point being the golden coloured hairy creature that has permanently occupied his scalp. Yes. We have a great l…

Still trying to understand how austerity can still mean increasing spending. Looking at their expenditures they peaked in 2009 at 51.5% and dropped to lower forties but much of that has been because the economy finally started recovering faster than the government could spend money mostly because of pressure on politicians not to. However the key here is, they never spent less than the year before, simply reduced the…

Simply put, there never was austerity in most of Europe. That's a propaganda line to simultaneously cover the lack of economic growth for nearly a decade, and to use as an excuse to acquire a larger State through even greater spending.

You can go line by line down the list of European countries and their government expenditures. Only a few of them reduced spending, most have increased spending. In actual fact, only two or three nations experienced any real austerity, but they all pretend to have.

What they're really experiencing, is the total suffocation of economic growth by extreme debt. The exact same thing Japan has been enjoying for a quarter century.

Re: David Cameron announces resignation

#283

Post by DonaldFisk »

vacri wrote: post #264
namaemuta wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would wait a bit to see how things go for UK because Spain current situation isn't that good either.

Spain will try to block Scotland entering the EU, to fend off Catalonian separatism.

If the Scottish independence referendum had resulted in Scotland gaining independence from the UK (like Spain, then a EU country) and then applied to join, there might be a reason for Spain to worry, as that roughly mirrors the situation with Catalonia.

If there's another Scottish independence referendum, Scotland would gain independence from a NON-EU country (UK) and then apply to join. This is similar to the situation with Slovenia, which gained independence from Yugoslavia and then joined the EU. Spain didn't veto that.

Re: David Cameron announces resignation

#284

Post by limeyx »

geff82 wrote: post #42

He'll go down in history as one of the worst leaders the UK ever had. Which he already was before yesterday. By the way, if he let the people decide on such a super topic as leave/remain in the EU, why does he not let his people vote on whether they want total surveillance or not? If they want a police state? Why can't they decide on stuff that affects their daily lives in a potential negative way? Or will they ignor…

Yeah he's a nasty weasly only likely marginally better than Bliar. I still think this is going to be a bad move. Yes Europe is very very broken but I think better to try to fix it than go it alone

Re: David Cameron announces resignation

#285

Post by SEJeff »

qdog wrote: post #273
oldmanjay wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be fair here. Liberal bias requires people to either believe anyone with conservative leanings MUST be stupid or the received wisdom that liberal philosophies are naturally correct must be incomplete. There's no real choice here, every single person on earth will assume everyone else is stupid before assuming they may be wrong.

That's the exact opposite of liberal, "open to new behavior or opinions and willing to discard traditional values." There are plenty of intelligent people in all parties, disagreeing with them doesn't make them idiots. Greenspan comes to mind, I think his basic market beliefs are wrong, but don't think he's an idiot, I have read his book. GW is a lot closer to idiot level because of his demeanor AND his actions, but…

But I don't actually think GW was an idiot by the sheer fact that he surrounded himself with some of the most brilliant conservatives of the time. Cheney is evil incarnate, but few would call him an idiot. The same can be said about his secretary of defense, donald rumsfield. Rumsfield is the shining example of "doing it right" and being a hard charger.That being said, the two of them colluded and it caused badness.

Knowing you're outclassed isn't the mark of an idiot, but of a brilliant mind. Trump thinking he has an excellent memory and is the best in everything is the mark of a true idiot.

Re: David Cameron announces resignation

#286

Post by SEJeff »

anonymousDan wrote: post #227
cylinder wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are your thoughts on this thread? Some really negative anecdotes about Dublin living: https://www.reddit.com/r/IWantOut/comments/4p9r9l/dublins_sk...

My god there is some serious whingey nonsense on that thread. Most of the arguments boil down to accommodation being expensive for students in the centre of a relatively wealthy European capital. Well no shit, as if it's not any worse in most other cities. As a software professional you'd be well able to afford it. I do agree there is a shortage of accommodation at the moment, but that's almost certainly a temporary…

Compare it to say Berlin though, where living is extremely cheap. It seems to help with tech startups quite a bit, and not because of generous tax breaks.

Re: David Cameron announces resignation

#287

Post by dragonwriter »

kale wrote: post #262
vijayr wrote: post #259

Can someone explain what happens next? Will UK really leave the EU? If yes, how long will it take? Will EU ask them to leave or just wait for UK to initiate the process?

Cameron steps down in October. A new Prime Minister will then initiate leaving the EU (per Treaty of Lisbon I think). This will take at least two years, possibly longer. The market volatility isn't because they're out of the EU or will be that soon, rather everyone planning on a 2018-2019 exit.

> The market volatility isn't because they're out of the EU or will be that soon, rather everyone planning on a 2018-2019 exit.

Well, not just that. There's also other things, like and the resulting lack of certainty of the near-term future for the government of the UK -- and the leadership of its major parties -- which creates plenty of uncertainty on policy and prospects in a much shorter term than the exit itself, as well as the fact that the exit vote, as I understand, kills the agreement that had been negotiated that provided what was described as a "new settlement" on Britain's special relationship within the EU, which was contingent on a "Remain" result in the referendum: that would have taken effect (and, thus, its being cancelled has effects) sooner than the exit now will take effect.

Re: David Cameron announces resignation

#288

Post by dragonwriter »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #244
crdoconnor wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>His persona is that of a charismatic bumbling idiot, but idiot he is not. Underneath this persona lies a highly intelligent, disingenuous, manipulative and calculating operator. People used to say that about George Bush too. The fact he played off his ridiculous gaffes and wasn't always illucid doesn't mean he wasn't an idiot. Bojo is conniving and he's managed to acquire a good number of strategic allies but he's s…

I've always said you don't become the president by being an idiot. Being rich (or your father being rich) only gets you so far.

> Being rich (or your father being rich) only gets you so far.

Your family being rich and extremely well connected politically, both domestically and internationally, gets you much further than your family merely being rich, and you being useful figurehead for people who are quite smart -- and smart enough to realize that you are more useful than them as the public face of leadership -- piled on top of that, gets you even farther.

Re: David Cameron announces resignation

#289

Post by vijayr »

dragonwriter wrote: post #280
vijayr wrote: post #259

Can someone explain what happens next? Will UK really leave the EU? If yes, how long will it take? Will EU ask them to leave or just wait for UK to initiate the process?

> Can someone explain what happens next? People can guess, but there's a lot of uncertainty on some points. > Will UK really leave the EU? Most likely, as I understand it, the next British government will formally start the (at least) two year process of exiting the EU. In the short term, they are still in the EU. > Will EU ask them to leave or just wait for UK to initiate the process? As I understand, under the appl…

Cameron has since said that he plans to leave that to the next PM.

So he leaves a big mess to his successor?

Re: David Cameron announces resignation

#290

Post by dragonwriter »

fnord123 wrote: post #158
gadders wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A referendum was held on proportional representation (one method, at least) and was rejected.

Alternate Voting is not a method of proportional representation. It is another voting scheme. The Liberal Democrats wanted a vote for Proportional Representation and the Conservatives agreed to a referendum, but on the rubbish AV scheme instead. Many many people voted against AV because it wasn't as good as PR and didn't want to change multiple times. PR is superior to AV and FPTP and should be implemented. It should…

> Alternate Voting is not a method of proportional representation

Alternative Voting (AV) is a single member district voting system that produces results where the representations of policy views in the elected parliament are more proportional to the views in the electorate than first past the post, and thus is a method of enhancing the proportionality of the election system for a parliament when the status quo is FPTP.

It do so less than Single Transferrable Vote (STV) in multimember districts (AV -- known more often to US audiences as Instant Runoff Voting [IRV] -- is just the single-member-district case of STV, which supports any district size).

Its relationship to other PR schemes where not all candidates are directly elected by-name by general election voters (the most frequent being Party-List Proportional and Mixed-Member Proportional) is complicated -- those schemes optimize for proportionality of partisan composition of the legislature, but provide weaker accountability of individual politicians to the general electorate.

But PR itself isn't a system, its a (continuous valued, not even binary) feature of an electoral system. You can't "implement PR", you can adopt a system that increases (or decreases) the degree to which you have PR.

Post reply on HN