Comments by "Curious Crow" (@CuriousCrow-mp4cx) on "Professor Tim Wilson"
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With the greatest respect you are mistaken. Back in the 2010s solicitors were given rights of audience in the courts on the same level as barristers. But, the difficulty is that barrister do not do the first level casework, as their job is to plead the case. So very few solicitors plead cases. This change was meant to reduce costs and increase the number of lawyers available to take cases to the higher courts. It didn't work out that way because solicitors do the on call work for the criminal cases, and then call on barristers if the case goes to crown court or above. But, legal aid suffered from repeated erosion, and if you remember, barristers are self-employed, and legal aid has been gradually restricted. And if you realise that Cherie Blair made a lot of money as a QC doing legal aid cases, and that was the norm amongst the top rank of barristers, it's not surprising that Legal Aid would be targeted for cuts, because of the costs and because our Tory governments didn't like the poors getting justice. It's a mess, and that it was so bad that barristers went on strike, for the first time in my lifetime says it all really. It suits a certain cadre in our elites to reduce access to the law, and so significants injustices are ever present, because claimants can't pay for representation.
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Professor, are you familiar with Vlad Vexler? Vlad asserts that what Putin is trying to do is to make Western countries ungovernable, and to run the narrative that Democracy - especially the Anglo-saxon model is fake. Although Vlad has not to my knowledge talked about NF etc.,he was keen to point out that Western leaders have to do do as you argue. Not only the real economic causes of the Far Right rioters extremism must be addressed in meaningful and credible ways, but the threat from Russia destabilisation project is that not it can truly damage us, but it will overshadow the very real discontent amongst the working class, who have taken the brunt of the wealth transfer that has taken place since 2008. Much like a 3-handed team of oxen, both thesegoals have to be addressed together in ways that are responsive, effective, and credible. But now that Wagner operatives are operating in the UK, as well as turning their disinformation programme on Europe up a notch. By fomenting discontent and destabilising us, he wants us to stop support Ukraine. We cannot do that either. Yes, it has been ineptly to the extent that we were almost playing hokey-jokey. But perhaps it's time to realise that we need to work attentively and seriously on several fronts. We're being tested, and we need to face that reality.
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In my experience, the skills involved in writing a personal statement weren't really taught to me in school, or in further education. I got no help or direction in even formulating what was to be said. I think it should have been the norm that pupils and students should maintain a private daily self-reflective journal during their education, where they can explore their progress and their goals. A 10 minute quick entry isn't onerous, and the habit gives benefits far beyond just keeping track. Not only can refer back to it as a record, but it's a wonderful way to learn relatively painlessly to write succinctly and clearly. Moreover, it's really good for one's mental health throughout one's life. If that had been the case, then the UCAS statement might have been worthwhile to some degree. But modern education is more like a sausage factory, where the efficiency and homogeneity of the process interferes with the quality of the output. That reflects the struggle between seeing education as mostly preparation for work, or as in forming capable, creative, and critically thinking people. That fight is still ongoing.
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If only money was the problem. Europe could step up their defence production in the short term within a year. But...
- Hungary and Italy are chummy with Putin;
not all Europe countries are as committed to perceiving Putin as much as an existential threat as those on Russia's door step;
- the role of NATO vs the EU's is not a settle matter, as the EU has no distinct defence policy, and some favour NATO taking the lead rather than the EU;
- there are political hurdles to overcome because the difficulty of not sacrificing social spending for defence spending, as well as liberal democratic parties being anti-war.
The only way to tie all these threads together into a usable rope is for Europe to quickly develop a vision for Ukraine's future which also has to offer some security guarantees to Ukraine. Why? Putin doesn't really want to negotiate, and will use any ceasefire to refresh and reset his forces, to get the rest later. So, there must be credible consequences to Putin's regime if he attacks again. Wagging a finger won't cut it.
And Europe has to accept that:
- there can be no rapprochement with Russia, but must completely transition away from Russian oil and gas, and develop alternative sources of energy generation.
- Europe must also start a fully fledged defence industry, not just to supply arms and offensive vehicles, and air craft but also start a up a defensive cyber industry of its own.
- Finally, it must strengthen it's own and Ukraine's democracy, and assist in its reconstruction, and industrial and agricultural policy, because the prospect of losing control of Eastern Ukraine will damage agricultural production, and alternative supply chain routes for Ukrainian exports must be found through other routes by land, rail and sea. Failure to do will impact World prices for wheat and cooking oil, and other commodities Ukraine supplies, and Putin wants.
All this cannot be done next week. A lot of serious thinking has to be done, and faily quickly. Money is not the problem. It's the perception of the threat which is not shared, and which in the context of an epidemic of economic contraction, and the subsequent rise of populism, plays into Putin's hand. He doesn't believe in ideology. He's a might makes right guy. But we in the West are very idealistic and perhaps too ideological and technocratic about things. Our current leaders have zero experience of how the 20th century was destined to be an hiatus rather than a paradigm shift, and they think they can talk Putin down and they can go back to getting rich. Not anymore. Welcome to the end if an empire, whose passing leaves gaps that must be filled, or something most undesirable will take their place
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Finding between £6000 to over £9000 upfront to complete an offshore spousal visa application is a policy decision that won't impact non-dom. That's for sure. He has his own family to prioritise, and with his qualifications, and honed language skills, he could find work in the Private Security or intergovernmental field as an analyst in Italy. Good luck to him. Until the UK faces upto some home truths, immigration is going to be an itch that turns into an abscess, ably assisted by political entrepreneurs. You want to stop immigration? Then get real about what that means to an aging workforce who expect to get a state pension and a sustainable income in retirement. What will that mean for the birth rate in the UK, that's below replacement level now? Partially as a result of policies - economic, political, and cultural that surpress the desire and ability to have children, who would grow up to pay the taxes to support you in retirement? What happens because of the shortfall? A declining population, higher labour costs to business which will pass them onto the consumer. Yes, they will be some innovation, but a declining population means a shrinking market for goods and services. So profits will fall. Add to that increasing wealth inequality, immigration is the only response to deeply embedded short-sighted and short-termist policies, based on Ideological and logical fallacies that bring undesirable consequences like a falling birth rate. And we're not helping ourselves by clinging on to them. That's why our junior doctors were leaving the NHS and migrating aboard. In total, since 2021, over 500,000 British people have migrated from the UK. And the real debate is why? Why are they leaving? We need them, especially now, as the consequences if the failed experiments of the last 5 decades come home to roost. Why don't people want to start families? What is it about our country that makes living here an effective contraceptive for workers of child-bearing age. What are we doing wrong? And until we're willing to look hard at our priorities regarding family life in Britain, we won't stop immigration.
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I'm sorry, but if you actually understood the scientific method, you would realise that this statement doesn't reflect it in full. The scientific method relies on proof - not hearsay - but tested hypotheses. Common sense relies on allegedly tested hypothesis, and probabilities to boot. The scientific method therefore has no truck with rumours, hearsay, or gossip. It relies on testing hypotheses. Those that fail are not true. And even what more ironic you citing some unknown sage, is that science has identified what you are doing as confirmation bias and a call to authority - both are logical fallacies. You are trying to bolster your opinion, instead of keeping to the known facts. But if you did keep to the known facts, you would have so much to say, would you? Perhaps if we all kept to the known facts, and stayed away from assumptions, the people of Southport might not feel it necessary to say certain public figures are not welcome to visit them. Using the facts you have, when they are untested and invalidated is folly. The universe can be more defined by what we don't know rather than what we do. Why? The very way our brains evolved. We have the same brain as our early ancestors, but the world is no longer full of sabre-toothed tigers, but the eldest parts of our brain don't deal with intellect or analysis. They deal with fear and desire. These helped us evade the sabre-toothed tigers, but when faced with a world full of data, and the lack of knowledge and sometimes wisdom, to sift the dross from the gold. That's why the professor argues that we need to be trained to use social media and the Internet from an early age. And he's right. The guys making a living using the Internet know how it can be abused, and the search engines unwittingly programmed to mislead. So no, one cannot blithely use the facts one has got if you don't know that they are actually facts. You have to prove what they assert is true or discard them. Why? It's very easy to provoke people into violence, especially if they have been primed by exposure to content that stimulates the fear and desire centres of their brain. And people are making money just doing that. So, unless you know for sure what is true, you stop and check your facts. And that means not relying solely on social media, or sany random on the Internet. But the temptation was too great for those thugs in Southport. I'm sure they thought they were heroes, but they're not. The only good thing to come from their actions is that the people of Southport, of all creeds are united more than ever before against those people who hijacked their time of mourning. There's Christians and Muslims helping each other, and working together to clear up and repair the damage. And I say, that's the real England right there.
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I hear you professor, and you are right in all what you say. It's nothing unsurprising that both the BBC and Barclay's might not respond well in a crisis. Both organisations are cost-focussed, and accordingly have shed manpower to the bone to save money. Accordingly, they may not access to staff to respond in a time of crisis. Not only are the management out of touch, but neither organisation has a coherent crisis management plan, which is surprising, as Barclay's should have designated officers and a action plan to cope with It failires. If this is a Cyber Atrack, according to Data Protection rules, they should be making efforts to protect their customers' data as well as their own business reputation. They should have ensured that they were communicating frequently with the public and providing accurate information when they do. But, I think the hollowing out of manpower in the Banking Sector might mean that they may have shed first and reorganised responsibilities later. Same with the BBC. Fact checking things before you publish is Journalism 101. Now both organisations both lose public confidence as a result of poor organisation. It's just not good enough. And Barclay's share price might fall, and the BBC has yet another own goal.
Is there anything good in the situation? Well, you've got us to commiserate with you and show you some solidarity.
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This speech was mostly directed toward Veep Vance's base, and therefore does not accurately reflect nor serve the interests and the welfare of anyone else. However, despite Vance's hypocrisy, we must accept that Democracy can only die not from the actions of external actors alone, but with the complicity and neglect of those within. That means it has to be actively maintained as events happen in and around democratic communities. And each community must decide for itself what are the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats it must adapt to, and how. Values have to evolve to meet the challenges change always presents, but the decision cannot be forced in one direction or another. It must be consented to, and that consent must be proactive. It cannot rely on passive consent or apathy for legitimacy. And it cannot be forced by flooding the zone, and obscuring reality either, as that is exploitation.
Veep Vance has a huge burden, as his speech shows. Carrying around that huge beam in his eye is bound to cower his stature toward complicity with the corporate exploitation of his base. And our elites too cannot stand straight exactly either. Both sides of the Atlantic are suffering from myopia, as their elites struggle to square eroding the social contract with the people for personal and political gain. In this, the beams in their eyes bang into each other, creaking like great trees bending in the wind as corporations and plutocrats push to assert their will on the people. That is the pressure democracy is under most, from those who neglect democracy because it's hard to be patient and responsive when it's inconvenient and you're impatient. So, let us strive to remove the beams in our eyes, and clean our own Augean Stables. There's plenty of work to go round. The work never stops in a place that is home.
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The same ones pulling Rishi's and Nigel's. No time of space to go into detail, but the British establishment'S priorities got them into the mess they are in. And until they take a long hard look at those priorities, the more likely things are to stagnate, and elude their envisaged "Managed decline/renaissance"? Instead, it will be a death spiral economically and socially. It didn't have to be this way, and if they do change course, it will still take years to repair the damage of the last 50 years or so. We need to stop producing people like Liz Truss and the other BSCs, and giving them power. We're too easily impressed by bored boors like Boris Johnson, et al., and bored wannabes like Sunak, who haven't got a clue. They've never existed outside in the real world for 5 minutes, but they think they're qualified to lead a country, they couldn't a dog down the road sucessfully. Lord help us.
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And that has nothing to do with it really. It's whether that opinion is informed or not. No wonder Louis CK said, "opinions are like assholes: everyone's got one and few are worth looking into unless one is a vet or a proctologist." The only ones worthwhile are informed ones. Not the disinformation merchants, or the the professionals flying outside their specific skill set. "Geopolitics is a poker game where everybody's lying about the cards they're holding." And much in life is the same. People lie all the time. Employers are delugued with CV's full of lies. British comedy in the 1990s was characterised by "Does my bum look good in this?" type running jokes. And when you want a favour from your boss, you'll smile at them until you get it. Socially-mediated lying is the norm, as trust cannot be given out willy-nilly. Most people, including yourself are liars, and truth is not merely an opinion, even in its most subjective variety. It's got to be evidence based, and whether you trust Starmer or not, is neither here nor there. It whether his lies harm you or not. And when you look into British political history, people were happy to vote for proven liars, so...opinions aren't truth alone, and neither is our judgment perfect either. Plato knew that when he used his Allegory of The Cave to illustrate our sometimes tenuous relationship as a species with reality. Nothing much as changed since.
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Timothy Snyder noted in his substack post that the way things played out in Munich, there were only 3 options:
- First, the Americans sincerely want peace but are just stunningly incompetent.
- Second, the incompetence is by design; the game is rigged to generate an agreement between Russia and the U.S. that is unacceptable to Ukraine.
- Third, Putin and Trump have already worked out common plans for the colonial domination of Ukraine, and the talks just provide cover.
Well, Littlefinger's most memorable quote in Game of Thrones was "Chaos is A Ladder", but I would add one had better watch out for the grease on the rungs. I mean JR in Dallas was a much more entertaining and often effective transactional villain than Trump. It's as almost as if somebody's pulling his strings, because the way things have been set up there can be no peace deal. And we then must proceed to wonder what are the real motivations of Trump? What's driving this car crash? Greed, Folly, or something else? Perhaps we'll find out soon. But, all Ukraine can do is just keep fighting for now, and the Europeans can supply them the best they can. Like a carbuncle, the festering will pop, and the truth will emerge.
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Prof Wilson is right. Entrepreneurs are making money and gaining power from outrage that they deliberately provoke in groups susceptible to being manipulated. It's not stupidity or a lack of intelligence that makes them susceptible. Everyone has a trigger, because the oldest and most automatic parts of our brain are those that focus on fear, anxiety, and safety. That where the biases come from, and they can override the intellect through emotion. Put people under pressure, and their defence mechanisms kick-in far more easily, which override and dominate their intellect. It's not about intelligence, or who is "smart" or "stupid". It's the way our brains have evolved. Everyone is susceptible to falling back on their biases, when put under pressure. When emotions like anxiety, fear, greed, or desire flow in, thought and reason tend to be pushed out. And we react, and act out based on those emotions rather than reason
It's an age old problem, because we evolved to be like this in a time when sabre-toothed tigers roamed the earth. Those reactions made it more likely we could identify dangers and escape, but this tendency has become more problematic the larger and more complex our environment has become. We don't come equipped with the knowledge and skills to deal with media or people wanting to provoke us and capture our attention for money or power on an industrial scale. We may not know when we are being led by our nose. So, perhaps we need to think more before we react. Perhaps we need to ask Cicero's question of "Qui bono?" "Who benefits? " when we read, watch, or listen to media that seems designed to evoke strongly negative emotions in us? That isn't something easy to do, but we need to question more before we commit to investing on, or identifying with any particular point of view based on information you aren't personally familiar with. The professor is right, and the Internet companies know he's right too, because there are teams outside this ckuntry competing to manipulate you. If you have the time, look up online articles about media literacy. There's also free resources for children and adults, about how to use the Internet safely. Finland do this in schools because they have been the target of certain political ambitions. We need to do that here too. And we need to give every one access to the knowledge and tools how to use the Internet safely.
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That wasn't from the middle. There are always outliers in any group. That's why the Bell Curve is shaped like a bell. The majority is in the centre, and not to the extremes. If it was, the plutocrats funding this effort wouldn't have to spend so much money trying to create the conditions where they can take over power. In fact, this is nothing knew. The same thing happened when Liberal economics failed in the first half of the 20th century. And we realised then, as we will pretty soon realise again in the near future, that being skilled at making money, doesn't mean you are qualified to run a community or a nation. And we will not turn to extremists at either end to clean up the mess, but very much closer to the centre. When you govern a nation, you have to represent everyone. If you don't, and sow hate and division, you won't hold on to power for very long.
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Nigel Farage is a symptom, not the cause. He's a representative of a class of people that want to install a compliant government who are opportunistically exploiting the valid concerns of UK voters. He proves most of all that anger, fear, and resentment can neuter commonsense if ignored and allowed to fester and grow over decades, as it has been.
Richard J. Murphy argues much as Professor does that Top-down technocrats are divorced from the realities of the citizens at the bottom. And unless they can meet together in the middle - by the top down relinquishing their isolation, detachment, arrogance, and listening to and learning from, and acting on the valid issues of people the bottom - then they are making room for the Farages of the world and their powerful donors to take this country over and hollow it out even more. The "growth" desired by the well-meaning is being needed out by the long disease of nothing working effectively or efficiently for people at the bottom. Not only are they impoverished and sometimes hungry and homeless, they are verging on the desperate in many cases as they struggle to get the real help they need. The people in control of this country are clueless to the extent they know a lot of information, but don't know or have the wisdom understand when they are failing everyone else but themselves. And their complacency then shifts into incompetence. That why Farage is steamrolling the two main parties. He is filling the credibility gap left by the unimaginative, the incurious, and the complacent. "Growth" is not what ordinary people are talking about at their kitchen tables. "Growth" doesn't pay their bills, or stops them from spending hours in A+E, or having someone to care for a relative while they have to work, or deal with impenetrable bureaucracy. By insisting on "growth" as being the issue you are not actively listening to the people at the bottom, or addressing their immediate concerns, and they know it. They are not being heard or treated with respect. They are being talked down to. They are being stereotyped, scapegoated, and being policed, but not being dealt with as people. And if you think Nigel Farage is bad, you haven't seen the people behind him, and who will come after. If you don't fill in that credibility gap, they will come and hollow out this country even further than it is already.
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You obviously know nothing about politics and finance anywhere, neither now or in the past. Perhaps if certain people had watched Britain's Second Empire, they might be better informed. We know why certain interests chose London, and I suggest that if you truly understood the emergence of the Eurocurrency Market in the 20th century, the turning away of everyone's eyes was politically and financially convenient. That is no longer the case as greed and corruption has led to turf wars between the greedy and corrupt, involving innocent people. You see it in the failure of certain interests to resist the need for discretion, and succumb to their own paranoid and fragile delusions of grandeur and grandiosity. And ultimately, they control nothing but a growing pile of bones. They're only human after all. They only live once, and truly own nothing but their bones, until nature takes her course,and they too are forgotten. The History of Finance tells us money and power are intimately connected. And authentic history is honest and open about that. To imagine that isn't the case is disingenuous or less informed than they think. But what maintains the functioning political state cannot be so easily bought from so few, when it impacts so many. Not everything is for sale.
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Dear Professor Tim, I think the Labour Party's advisors are leading them astray, as they are ignoring the immediate concerns of the electorate as a whole. I don't think they have a coherent understanding of how different economic factors are interlinked, and how focusing on the cart - growth - rather than the horse pulling it - an anorexic economy, starved of underinvestment - means they will struggle to convince anyone that Rachel Reeves has a firm grip on the reins of the economy. Their perceived conservatism in economic policies gives a perception of the wrong people having the ear of the Chancellor, and a Prime Minister, who as First Lord of The Treasury could order Ms Reeves to get a grip, or put her out to pasture, is more resistant to facing up to the missteps made, that getting things right. It's time Ms Reeves had a serious performance appraisal interview, because the perception she is giving is of being the wrong person for the job.
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You're absolutely correct Professor. As the private sector can't or won't address the failings of the Housing Market, there is only the State left that can marshal the resources needed to tackle the root cause, which is lack of supply. But unfortunately, the choice to act only as a powerless referee on the sidelines is creating more problems on the sidelines. It's as if they are totally ignoring the power they have. If that had been done at the end of World War II, the economy would have never recovered. As long as you need people to be economically active to grow the economy, they're basic needs must be met. And housing is a basic need for people. The nations we defeated after WWII, had little time or patience with market failures, and created public housing and a housing rental regime that worked both for tenants and landlords in economies hollowed out by war and repatriations. But our economy has money far in excess of that, and our governments fudge the issue, and nothing improves. The State has power for a reason, and should use it in all it's dimensions, or it will sign its own democratic death warrant. This is an intolerable state of affairs. People must be housed or this economy will never grow in any meaningful sense. I know Angela Rayner wanted to make a positive difference, but this legislation is only rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic.
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The commodificatiin of education has created a tendentious link between economic value and the subjects studied. Only if you believe that the dominant ideology of the wealthy and powerful should determine everything, including how to understand reality, would you take this seriously. If you want to do that, you should critically examine the academic disciplines that the asset owners favour, and then consider the reality that the world that they have consciously create is one where no-one is guaranteed a job, or a. livelihood. There's a channel called "How Money Works" and they uploaded a video on "Manufactured Uncertainty" that discusses that point. Moreover, it's ironic also that these same people are interested in academic disciplines that claim to understand why and how society produces too many educated people, which in turn creates problems in society... I can't remember the name of this niche area of study, but it's big amongst the Big Wigs in the US, so that thinking will in time trickle down to the wannabes in the UK... Oh yes, that's why this nonsense has popped up now on the agenda... Culture Wars... Thank God for my time in the Social Sciences, because it's made it easier to see where such the diversion of the politics of envy is leading us, and it's into another manufactured moral panic, which is quickly becoming irrelevant if the Big Wigs get their way. They've already shifted the goal posts, because they can, and it's not for our benefit. One could repackaged education and training as the Germans did, where vocational education and academic education were given equivalence far, far earlier in the United Kingdom, to the extent one could take vocational education and study it upto undergraduate levels and beyond. It was less socially divisive. And probably explains why their productivity has far better than ours. We're still trying to pigeonhole people and control them, instead of building on their potential. And in the attempt creating more disappointment and alienation in the process.
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Farage is the poundshop entrepreneurial politician, from whom truth is not the stock in trade that he's trying to sell. He's not a statesman, he's a petty peddlar Who will most likely wreak havoc, but then one day, will bugger off into the sunset leaving bitterness and disappointment behind him. Why? Some people can only learn from experience, because they lack the imagination to do otherwise. That's not a lack of intelligence, or cupidity. It just they are a product of a lack of enrichment and stimulation. And sadly, they want everyone else to enjoy their meagre outlook. That is unsustainable, because if you restrict yourself in that way, you miss out on the richness and depth of what life has to offer. It's like living on Grosvenor Pie. You can live on it for a while, but thriving on it is unlikely. So why choose it?
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How can you have absolute truth in an existence where the only constant is change, and we, poor hairless apes, are limited in scope and what tools we can employ? Thus, the constant inconstancy tests us, a species who evolved a drive to pigeohole everything, and who gets stressed when we can't. In this light, the production of knowledge is an ongoing pursuit, and we must learn to live with uncertainty. Accordingly, the idea that we must hold onto our ideas lightly, and be prepared to discard them as soon as new evidence comes in, is our struggle. We don't like uncertainty, so a truth cannot be absolute as our desire to discern absolute truth is an illusion. This is why doubt is so useful. It stops us being so arrogant to presume we know everything, when we do not. Imagine, according to my astronomical calendar a twin star a gas giant and a small red star are moving around each other, with the small star pulling the hydrogen gas off the gas giant, and when that reaches a critical mass, it will explode, and all we will see is a flash. How long has that been happening without our ability to see it? It didn't exist until we developed the tools to see it. So what is absolute truth?
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Professor, I like Taoist philosophy because it accepts that nothing that is dynamic is purely one thing. It always has the seeds of its opposite within it and vice versa. Accordingly, frustration with bureaucracy is symptomatic of something else, and to judge Felon Musk's efforts as purely one thing or another is unhelpful. I would say, judge it by it's fruits. Likewise, when dealing with private or public bureaucracy, our fetishisation of efficiency is itself inefficient, because often outsourcing essential services to the private sector, is driven by cost cutting, which in turn often doesn't the total costs that come from cost cutting. Needs and wants don't disappear, they just get deprioritised in order to seem do more with less. But the results tell a different story. CEOs and buresucrats just do enough to meet the targets they are given. If they can't do it, they will try to survive, or leave. So I would say that despite nearly a century of organisational theory, organisations still cannot change their cultures easily or quickly. And that's down to human nature. And I bet even in Musk's own fleet of enterprises there are latencies, because he is one himself. So, unless we really start to take the human element seriously in the world of work, nothing will change. Motivations are key, and unless those are tackled, there will be no real change happening. What we have now is Political Theatre, where we can't see what's happening backstage. Enjoy the show, because it is theatre, and wait and see.
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If Trump does that, Taiwan is next, and that means the next proposed engine American dominance is dead in the water. What you and he with your limited and over specific focus ignore is, that if that happens, the USA is done as global hegemon. If China invades Taiwan and wins, it's over for you.
Ukraine is the testing ground for you. Fail the test, and there will be consequences, that end up on your door step.
It's a game of chicken, and you're in danger of faking out. That's the unsavoury truth. You need technology and you rely on the rare earths and you don't have an indendepent supply, nor a complete lock on the technology. That's the truth, and throw away the key, and you throw away your future gains. It's that simple. Just man up, or put up.
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Really? You do know that the list of personalities in the Panama Papers is online? That people can check the veracity of what you say? I mean, look how many Russians were on the list:
- Yuri Kovalchuk, Russian shareholder in Bank Rossiya[85]
- Victor Fedotov, Russian oil tycoon
- Semyon Vainshtok, CEO of Transneft[108]
- Mikhail Gutseriev, Russian oligarch
- Suleyman Kerimov, Russian oligarch
- Lubov Chernukhin, Russian-born British banker and major donor to the British Conservative Party
- Petr Kolbin, businessman and close friend of President Vladimir Putin
- Gennady Timchenko, billionaire Russian oligarch and close friend of President Vladimir Putin
- Svetlana Krivonogikh, associate and alleged former lover of Russian president Vladimir Putin
- Konstantin Ernst, CEO of Channel One Russia
- Vitaly Zhogin, former board member of Interprombank
There were only 2 Ukrainians on it - a lot lot less than the Brits or the Russians btw
And guess what? Zelenskyy wasn't on the list.
Your grade: F
Sorry, but no cigar.
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Right now I think that History, especially Economic History in this age, are disciplines that are *not Mickey Mouse degrees. The ability to research and analyse evidence, and communicate one's findings verbally or in writing are essential life skills. Notwithstanding the difficulties with evidence, and the temptation to retell history according to agendas, when done honestly and thoroughly, there is nothing else that can help up from repeating the errors of the past. Intergenerational forgetting is something all communities and societies tend to do, and it's the reason why history doesn't repeat but it does rhyme. Where we are now as a nation, corresponds very closely to other critical times in the 20th century and earlier. And if we looked closely at the factors that triggered those crises, we might really identify what we might understand better why we're here where we are now. History is a discipline we should cherish, not just to celebrate our successes, but to tell the truth about ourselves. Sometimes that will be comfortable, but sometime it won't. But altogether, it will be more rewarding and useful to know who we really are, instead of the image we want to present. Unless we truly accept that, we will lead ourselves astray.
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I think you are bring too generous. The truth is always somewhere in the middle. Royal Mail was for tears a cash cow for successive governments, and relative to private logistic firms, it suffered from under investment. But even when investment was made available, it wasn't always successful. Royal Mail, if it had had the management that wanted to it to successfully transition from a largely letter driven driven business to one focused on parcel delivery it would not have been burdened with subsidising it's competition. Don't forget, Royal Mail was a natural monopoly, and expect to easily complete it's transformation whilst basically losing income to its parachuted in rivals while RM delivered their letters was absurd. And the model they proposed for this transformation was to turn its workforce into an extension of the Gig economy. Now, if you're an ex postie, you would have realised that was a bad idea. Yes, processing of letters was virtually mechanised, but still needed manual sortation of small and large packets. And even large letters and magazines require manual sortation, because RM customers can't always send mails that can be mechanically sorted or aren't addressed in UPO format. But the private sector didn't want to touch those low-margin mails did they? They only wanted the nice, standardised corporate mailshots, for which they paid RM less than the economic value to deliver. So as you can probably guess where I'm coming from by now. Royal Mail did not create its structural problems, or it's uneven management. Neither did they create it's customer-focused, deliver at all costs, community ethos either, despite relatively low basic pay and physically demanding workloads and long hours. The organisation wasn't allow to adapt early enough to the changing world around it. This laid up problems for the future, which we are experiencing. For RM to fully succeed in making it's transition seamlesslessly, and truly compete on its own terms with the private sector, it would have had to have different management and different political masters, who truly wanted it to succeed. But the process was more ideological rather than pragmatic, and we get what we have now. A company with a lot of potential, but with a lot of barriers to success. Yes, things could be done differently, but RM was never like DHL etc., who could build state of the art almost fully automated parcel processing plants and have processes that could move work in and out seamlessly. DHL would never have to potentially deliver and pick up mail from 31 million addresses, and handle mails that couldn't be mechanised. But RM has to, and giving that away I feel is a mistake. Allowing it to be sold into foreign ownership just doesn't feel right.
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Legitimacy and wealth are not one and the same. Legitimacy opens far more doors than wealth alone. That's why Musk had to buy legitimacy, but there is no money back guarantee on such a deal, because that legitimacy isn't in the hands of the market. It's in the minds of the people that makes up the market. Rich or poor, they can still think as they like, and show their displeasure by spending their money elsewhere. Hayek would be pleased, (even though his dream of the market replacing democracy is flawed for many, many reasons.) And Musk's sense of entitlement is one of those reasons incarnate. Any political economy which ignores greed is doomed to failure. And it's the failures of neoliberalism that Musk, Trump, and those riding their coattails embody. The cult of the wealthy as wealth for wealth's sake, must die, because money is not wealth. It's just a token. It is what good it is put to that makes it wealth. Indeed, the self Indulgence of middle aged teenagers like Musk, can only impoverish figuratively and literally them and everyone impacted by them in the long run.
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Not really. Universities are not just factories for stuffing facts into people's heads, it's also a network. University makes finding talent more efficient, because it locates what is needed all in one place, and provides relatively easy access to it. How any subject is taught in universities is efficient, including the contacts you make going into the field. And sadly, fame and talent aren't always together. Talent is a fuzzy concept at the best of times, because especially in the creative arts, talent might not be recognised until after you're dead. Even worse, those called talented and get recognised as such while alive may fall out of fashion. So talent is fine, but university is more about keeping the practice of creative expression alive and functioning within a capitalist society. Capitalism destroys what it considers useless. So quality isn't a driving motivation under capitalism, but what return one can get. That's precarious for something that is more about creative quality than quantity of wealth it produces. Talent doesn't guarantee a living sadly. Luck does play a part. I mean, the talents of someone like Pablo Escobar and Al Capone didn't need university to flourish, but imagine if they hadn't really needed to embark on a life of crime to get access to wealth, power, and influence? These people were talented, but their talents were misplaced. (In fact, the idea that evil is a force, energy, and expression misplaced is one that has intrigued me. The existence talented people doing bad things is very human.) in human societies a lot of things float to the top. Whether those things are good or bad, is a matter of their legacy, and impact in their field. I mean, poop floats to the top, but gold does not. Who's really to say?
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@Sam-sv4yy Look, Geopolitics is like a poker game - everybody is lying about the hand they are playing. Mother Teresa never got into Geopolitics and even she was not 100% wholesome. So the Germans want to extract maximum benefit? Everyone at the table does. Even Ukraine does, because their stakes are the highest. So, let's get real. Resource diplomacy is the strongest weapon in Zelenskyy's arsenal, and he'll be offering all the Western nations, or more acutely, anyone willing to secure Ukraine's future, time limited extraction and processing rights for Rare Earths and Raw Materials. And that's the language they all understand. So for the next 20 to 25 years Ukraine can repair, refresh, and strengthen themselves against all comers. The Ukrainians have proved they are no pushovers, and God Willing they can survive and protect themselves, against all economic imperialists, from which ever direction.
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But it hasn't been determined to be safe, has it? It's not even a half-truth, it's absolute BS. And it's no wonder people stopped taking us seriously. Britain will quietly kiss that money goodbye, because it was a BS scheme. Why?
If you wanted to run a scheme like that, you could have arranged a 99 year lease of land, built the facilities, and run them. Instead, the British tax payer has just inflated the Rwandan Housing Bubble, for zero return.
At this rate, if we hadn't got rid of the Tories, the Moron Premium would become a permanent line in the UK National Accounts.
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All that need be said is that you are people as well, and are prone to error as anyone else. And your comment demonstrates errors that are easily fixed. So, in not fixing them, and reaching for the whole truth, you prove to be as reliable as those you critique. Sovereignty is a word that only those familiar with international law can define it comprehensively so that it's context and nuances, in other words, the truth about it, is not sacrificed to an agenda. You know less than you think you know. And that is not a criticism, it's an observation. Your premise is flawed, because you are comparing chalk and cheese. And it's disappointing you have gone into battle with a blunt weapon. Careful, you've cut yourself, by your own narrative. You are the weakest link. Goodbye.
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With the greatest of respect, the operators taking the calls have very little control over the process. They are human beings tied to KPIs such as call length, and the limited knowledge and control over a multinational conglomerate bank. They don't make the rules and neither do they draft them. There are companies that provide sterling customer service because they think holistically and think of excellent customer service as the key to making and keeping customers. So they train they representatives properly, and ensure quality control by monitoring performance. They also let them do other things rather than just sit on the phone, having calls force fed to them one after another. The industry has a high turnover of staff, because too many companies get the formula wrong. And that, and job cuts, stress, unsocial hours, and relatively low pay. Now HSBC is recruiting in the UK for call centre staff, but the scope of the job is no longer being a telephonist, as you must take an accredited banking customer service qualification to complete your probation. So, things are changing. Probably as the Call Centre staff will have an expanded role including more admin, so they will have to know about regulations and how things are done, because they are replacing branch staff as point of contacts for customers, so they will have to be trained correctly and have far more sophisticated training and tools/software to use. Good luck to them.
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After watching Conclave, I am finally convinced of the transformative power of Art. It's exploration of matters of faith, in the forms of certainty and doubt, was a relevation in understanding the mystery that is central to faith, but also a challenge to it because it challenges us. The human tendency to tidy things into pigeonholes, to stereotype, and to order things is a human defence mechanism but on an existential scale. Not because it needs to be ordered, but because it's how our brain evolved to work. Anything outside some framework or hierarchy demand more processing time and resources, so we resort to heuristics as shortcuts to more efficiently and effectively manage the flow of data through our senses and into our brains. We live through models. But, I am minded that as a famous British statistician said, that all models are wrong but, some are useful. That is the case because we as humans are limited in our capacities, so certainty can never be abdolute, and there is always mystery, uncertainty, and doubt. A person of faith knows this. To be a person of faith, is to have it tested by the sheer experience of living in an existence where the only constant is change. Like the muscles in your legs are challenged, but grow stronger, and contribute more to your overall health, one's faith must be stress-tested and be dynamic and responsive to grow stronger. Otherwise, our faith, captured in a prison of certainty, atrophies, weakens, and withers away. We should not succumb to fear. We should not fear doubt, because that shows that our faith is a living faith, that is geared to being open to the lessons that can be learned by living fully, and contemplate the mysteries of being human. Yes, the Church's policy is to hasten slowly, and to leave the door open to new knowledge. Thus, there will be eager debate between the shepherds and the managers, between the spiritual and the worldly within the Church. What is definitely certain is, that the Church will find its own way, in its own time, as everyone must, to find a useful model to shape its way forward.
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Professor, the UK Home Office’s inefficiencies stem from deep-rooted administrative, bureaucratic, and policy failures. Realistically, meaningful reform would require structural, procedural, and cultural changes. But, it seems there is little political will to grasp the nettle. Not even now. So, unless our politicians wake up to the long term damage to the financial and political costs, along with the loss of trust in government, the public will be the loser in the long run.
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Professor, I think any school should be meeting both the personal and professional goals of their pupils, and to be fair neither state maintained or Academy Schools have a consistent record of meeting either. And further complicating the position is the opinions of stakeholders, some who have more influence and money to influence outcomes. Perhaps again, the answer is somewhere in the middle, because neither model of itself is perfect. All the problems and failings in the state sector happen in academies too, because they are reflections of the problems in our society. Pretending that isn't the case serves no child well. Money, if course, is a large factor, with underinvestment in education for decades leading to poor outcomes for children of all abilities. But, if the academy sector wants money from the state it must be prepared to accept some level of oversight from the State, as there have been problems funds being misappropriated. But there are things that alone should not have access to, and that is involvement with, if not direct sponsorship from, universities and the private sector. This can help pupils by improving their professional knowledge and experience in the world of work through opportunities such internships and schemes. It would also help employers to enhance their recruitment, as well as build up meaningful relationships with the communities they serve, as well as providing input on curriculum development. However, the debate barely tickles at the edges of an even greater one, which is what is education for. What do we want our children to have once they have finished their education? Until we have a real and honest debate about that, the state vs academy debate is a sideshow.
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You need to check your facts. The Horizon Scandal began *before privatisation which separated Post Office Ltd from Royal Mail plc. nobody wanted to buy POL, because it was operating at a huge loss, and the subpostmaster contracts were, and still are onerous, and City insiders probably heard on the grapevine about the Horizon problems. That's why POL is still in public ownership since privatisation of Royal Mail in 2012. So the taxpayer will foot the bill. Privatisation was never meant to be a panacea for enterprises with structural problems. Why should it be? Private enterprises fail or are badly run as much as government enterprises are. And for the same very human reasons. So... Privatisation has failed in its goals, because we pay much more for services that are definitely not world beating or on par with the best in the world. If they really wanted to make Royal Mail fit for the 21st century they should have sold it to their workers. Why? Because they know the ins and out of the business better than the management and directors. But the British Establishmrnt believe in managerialism, but don't train them well, and still rely on cronyism. That's the main reason British productivity has behind it's peers. And these numpties still don't understand why countries that they bombed to smithereens in World War II rose like phoenixes and outproduce Britain industrially. That lack of faith in their workers is central to our problems, and the idea that AI won't decimate them is absurd. Even more problems are building up because financiers know about finance, but not much else. All their efforts over nearly 50 years, have resulted in no more intelligent answer to industrial and economic policy than "privatise it." And we are where we are. No wonder people are, at best skeptical, and at worst either apathetic or resentful and cynical. And sadly, they didn't begin to cotton on until the damage started to park up on the lawn of the middle classes. A house divided against itself cannot stand. It is crumbling, like our infrastructure. And the damage is extensive to the extent we are less fit for the 21st century than before.
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With the greatest of respect, nothing last forever, and the folly of nostalgia is that one cannot look forward, when one's always facing backwards. Indeed, we should be grateful for the past. But we should not fail to appreciate what we have in the present, and live there with gratitude, because it's all we every really have or need. I lived through the passing of Camp Comedy, and nostalgia obscures why that humour was so powerful. It was powerful because it was traversing boundaries with wit and intelligence born out of dealing with a harsh world in a life affirming way. And it catered to the prejudices of its audience, who more naive and less well-informed and accepting than they are now. Take the best of it, and leave rest in the past where it belongs. Failure to do that is now why in every age those who wallow in nostalgia are missing the point. What is useful in any age will survive as long as it is a positive. And debating what is of value in the present in an honest and empathetic way is healthy. And we should embrace change if it is a positive for those who will follow us. We are only caretakers, not owners. And we should be discerning about what we keep as well as what we let go of. And to make that decision one needs empathy. And remember that only the truly strong can be gentle. Have a good day.
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No, it doesnt. It never has worked well in two party systems. People cannot be corralled into two choices. If individualism has any worth at all, then corralling people into a binary choice is actually anti-democratic. And, you not realising that is very weird. Doing that denies choice. And democracy is about having a meaningful choice about what happens in your community. Majoritarian politics is a convention, and a binary choice leaves many people politically alienated. That's the irony. So much propaganda about parliamentary democracy being the only solution is itself incompatible with individual choice. And we don't talk about that enough. We don't talk about the issues with party politics. We don't talk about the problem of the power hungry incompetent gaining power. There's a lot we don't talk about. Modern life is itself a compromise on behalf of maintaining the status quo. It's not a natural thing. It is an artifice. And as long it met the need of the people, it was OK. But, now that the Age of AI plans to destroy the economic order, our compromises are wearing thin. And the chancers and crackpots both rich and poor, are striving to climb to the top of the greasy pole. Neoliberal economics is failing us, and so, everything is beginning to be questioned. Our delegated democracy form of politics is being questioned because whom we delegated it to are failing to deliver. I mean, in the 21st century, we've had a long time to fix poverty, to prevent economic hardship and apartheid arising. But those in charge were too busy enriching themselves. Oops. Human nature put a spanner in the works. Who would have thought that so much BS was the glue holding things together. Hence the attraction of Behavioural Science and Misinformation to manipulate the plebs. Now the BS is failing, things are being questioned,and the efforts to patch up the leaking ship are becoming more extreme. And opportunist will take advantage of that. If you want to scotch that tendency, it would mean actually giving power to the people, instead of delegating to rich and powerful chancers and crackpots who are totally in ignorance of and cut off from how the ordinary masses live in the system they control. And the Pandemic was a magnifying lens that concentrated the heat to show how unsatisfying things really were. How dumb ideas permeated our world to our detriment. We haven't yet evolved to dismantle the rot. Future generations may do it, but for now, it's all melting, like wax under a flame, as the impossibility of the current economic system succeeding for anyone but the very asset wealthy minority is being laid bare.
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This reminds me of those sad villains who need to be acknowledged as such. No self-awareness of the fact that he was an utterly bad judge of character to choose a windbag spiv like Johnson whose shortcomings were so obvious to undermine any hope of political longevity or stability as most time was spent putting out the fires he so casually kept lighting, instead of being focussed even on his and Cummings' supposed shared goals. It was a clown show where Cummings was the straight guy. But unlike Morecambe and Wise, or any other great double acts, there was no shared sense of duty. Just ambition and self-indulgence. And as for his dream of revolutionising government, we'll a broken clock can be right twice a day, but be useless otherwise. Cummings intelligence is like a crevasse - a very deep niche body of knowledge in a very narrow area, that becomes hazardous for others to negotiate because it has no regard for anything but itself. A nerdy teenager without restraints, and a too narrow focus create hubris. He could have done some good if he had aligned himself with good. But he didn't. And surprised pickachu face, he failed. Whether you are an eminence gris puppet master in the shadows or a great man wannabe leader, your your competence is determined by your knowledge of human nature and your judgment about people. Why? No ruler rules alone. To get anything important in life done you have to do it with the help of other people. And you have to pick the right people for the job. Unless you can do that, your hopes and dreams will collapse like a house of cards. Cummings is naive, and not in a good way, because his ambition far outweighs his strategic capacity, and patience to find the right people to work with, so he could build a legacy worth building. Instead, what has he got? More "consulting" for people who want to run countries like businesses, with them as the CEOs. Clueless, inflexible, unempathetic, and unethical people, who best achievement is to underline the risks we run tolerating capitalism, and how important it is for democracy to be strengthened, and government needing stronger guiderails to neuter rich people with too much time on their hands.
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But, all humans have incentives. If you don't want people with incentives, you'd have to employ robots, except those who programme them would have incentives too. Incentives are part of human emotion. Like the ones that get you out of bed to go to work. To eat when you're hungry, and drink when you are thirsty. Knowing that I'd part of emotional intelligence, and knowing one's own incentives is a cornerstone of wisdom. So, with that out of the way, motivations as incentives are either helpful or unhelpful, and often that depends more on context than some shady conspiracy. Office politics is driven by motivations, and yet for good or ill, the organisational culture is far more deterministic of outcomes. And governments are organisations who need good leadership. And because of their own motivations, often the electorate choose who governs us more in hope than knowledge of whom will be good at leading the country. And no-one is immune from folly. And believing that stuff that goes wrong is down purely to unhelpful motivations is unhelpful in itself. Yes, trust has to be earned, and politics is messy, but we chose the people who mess up. Perhaps then we the voters need to become better leaders ourselves, and develop wisdom ourselves, because in this sense, we do get the politicians we deserve.
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The whole of life is here in these comments... To not commit atrocities against yourself or others, you have to stop believing absurdities. You don't have to drink the Kool Aid, or even like that it exists. You just have to accept what is. Give up blame and embrace accountability for doing the best you can. Nothing stays the same forever, and you might not be around when it does change. But that's OK. In the meantime, the present, the only time you really ever have, decide what *your priorities are are, and aim for them. Not the priorities of others but what you really need to be content, and accept that will bring it's own problems and challeges too, but you won't mind those if those priorities are truly yours, and not just what someone says you should prioritise. The only path you can follow is the path you walk. And you don't know what opportunities you might find on it, especially if it's a road less travelled. Forget about the American Dream, and dream your own dream. Then use your imagination and be observant. Opportunities exist if you're willing to look for for them. Fortune not only favours the brave, but the observant too. Enjoy your journey.
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FPTP is a voting method that doesn't rely on the popular vote for legitimacy. It relies on the belief that the method is fair. It never has been strictly fair, because every vote does not count. It never has. History shows this. And the off centre parties are now bleating about it, because they think they can gain power under some form of PR. But, the truth is that if we really wanted to be fair, we would use Sortition instead, and discard both PR and FPTP. That would kill the influence of party politics stone dead. Is that likely to happen? Not in my lifetime, if ever. Why? It would neuter completely the influence of political entrepreneurs, who rely on manipulating and control of the masses. But, it's the only truly democratic method. Every citizen has a chance to get into power, and exercise it to serve the interest of their community even for a brief time. But human nature has not yet evolved to be that courageous. Imagine everyone gets a chance to serve as an MP for a year. For Sortition to work. We would need a wider and more delegated exercise of power in politics. Such a short term service means the end of the parliamentary system, and the introduction of delegated power to the communities, being as important and as powerful a central parliament. Politics would then become a form of National Service, and the party system would be powerless. Something for ordinary people to think about. Political Scientists have been thinking about it for sure.
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The style and personality of the teaching plays a huge part in how well what you been exposed to sticks. Communication is a skill, and to combine that with pedagogy, is an assault course for the instructor too, because your students are an audience too. They often are there because they have to be, but the best instructors can make them want to be there, and want to learn deeply, and not just pass the exam. For example, I remember my Equity and Trusts lecturer with a smile, because Law is a very dry, fact-driven subject, but she bought the stories behind the legal principles to life by dint of her personality. She was enthusiastic, and I respond well to that. And I remember her decades later. How something is taught is as important as what is taught IMO.
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Please do read some British economic history. It will teach you far better than reading some silly newspaper. Deficits are breathing spaces so that government doesn't have to raid your bank account when it needs money. It's not a mortgage, it's an overdraft. And not that big. What matters is Debt to GDP ratio, the commonsense of your lenders, and the ability for your economy to grow.
We can't take anything for granted, but neither should be pursue policies that destroy our capacity to grow the economy. Which, most developed countries are worrying about, because what they persuaded themselves was true wasn't. You can't get growth out of a consumption-dependent economy if the income and wealth of your consumers is shrinking in real terms. But those who have been benefitting from this regrettable assumption still believe that they can persuade heavily indebted and skint consumers to spend more by borrowing more. Why? Because the loons who own the debt want more debt to make their wealth grow... Madness! But until they own upto their mistake, we have the shambles of a government unwilling to slap some sense into these fools.
The government is under the illusion that everyone wants them to succeed. Not true. "Chaos is a ladder," and when the people who want to replace you are the ones holding it, you're not going to get a helping hand. And it's terribly naive to believe otherwise. Just understanding how power and finance are intertwined in Britain, makes things so much clearer. But unfortunately, the First Lord of the Treasury and the Chancellor of the Exchequer are in the dark, and voluntarily so. There are conversations to be had between government and the interested parties. Negotiations if you will, and perhaps those need to begin. After all, our fat cat lenders don't want a bankrupted borrower who might have to stop paying things like the £221.37 billion by 2033, in interest to banks for just parking their reserves at the Bank of England would they? So, there's room to negotiate, and call off the client media dogs too.
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I think Lord Rose is invested in Commercial Property, which like everywhere is upto its neck in debt because of how the mortgages for the buildings are structured. And the businesses that are dependent on the commuting workers are losing trade. And I get it, but is commuting 90 minutes each way, 5 days a week, without pay, setting up workers to succeed in the office? Of course not. One size does not suit everyone. And with labour shortages, and women with families needed to create "growth" - at least statistically - employers need to up their game to attract and retain talent. I have to agree with the professor, because I too have done the commuting and working in offices, and it's overrated frankly, for productivity, and for quality of life. Employers need to start thinking outside the box, and value the contribution and productivity of remote workers. We have a productivity crisis of decades long in the UK. So possibly, office work may not be all it's cracked up to be. Why? Underinvestment in skills and technology, and office cultures that actually impede productive working. And the statistics don't lie. France and other European countries work less hours but are more productive and better paid than Britain. Perhaps British employers need to take that on board too.
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That simply is not the case. There is no such thing as can't. No Parliament can be bound by it's predecessor. And if a future government is given the mandate to become a full member of the EU in the future, so be it. And frankly, it's more likely than not, because WTO lite, which we have now is not working for us. And there are sound, realistic reasons why it isn't. If you think that Brexit would give us control in the sense you mean, you are sorely mistaken. Of it was all about control, ask yourself this question: why was Johnson's negotiation with the United States for a trade deal made a state secret? That is, the Public were excluded from knowing the details. Why? How can we the public have control over something we are prevented from knowing about? Because we could only find out after it was signed and a done deal where we would have had no say at all. You talk of control, but you don't understand the realities of control. Size and economic gravity, as being able to influence the economies we do deals with matters. Call it clout. And who do you think has more clout between the EU, the US, and the UK? It certainly isn't us, simply because our economy is smaller, and we are, by necessity, a net importer of goods. So who needs who more? Why were we having to send people to Washington to ask for a trade deal? Why did Boris bury the terms he was offering to the US, and what they wanted? Because the reality of control versus the rhetoric means we are not in the driving seat. The US could walk away, and did because they didn't get what they wanted. And you can bet your bottom dollar it was the NHS privatised completely, and an alternative dispute adjudication court manned by adjudicators chosen by the Americans, and in secret. How I know? Look up the terms of the trade deals the US has done with Mexico and Canada. Ask yourself why they backed out of the Asia Pacific Trade Partnership. The Americans take no prisoners. So, in that context, where is the control you're looking for? That's why Kemi Badenoch can't dig a trade deal worth it's name that isn't a cut and paste job from the deals done while we were in the EU. That's the sad irony. We literally have less control, less influence, and less credibility because of Brexit as a trade partner. It wasn't the EU's fault that we deindustrialised and were frankly inept at replacing those jobs with ones worth the name. And whole communities were left to wither on the vine. It's not the EU's fault that our governments were ideologues who believed stupid things like Austerity could grown an economy. Or that a pandemic was the perfect opportunity to raid the public purse, and let the taxpayer foot the bill. Etc, etc. Or that everything the EU did, the UK was at the table and influencing them to do it. Read Phillip Hammond's entry into the Brexit Witness Archive where he described how Teresa May talked herself into a corner, because there was no consensus about what Brexit meant or what it should look like. But she talked to the wrong people and threw away any chance of a rational Brexit by pushing ahead when she should have held a royal commission or a public inquiry to inform and identify what the best form of Brexit could be. We could have then debated it, and put that to another referendum. But she lacked imagination, and followed her ambition instead. And it blew up in her face, in Boris' face, in Truss' face, and in Sunak's face. Why? Because what they promised could not be delivered, and they did not own up to that. And if Farage ever came near to leading this country, it would blow up in his face too, because reality is a harsh mistress when you don't pay attention to her. And our establishment hasn't for quite some while. The truth is uncomfortable, but necessary. So, it will be future generations which will decide. Not us. We've blown it. All we can do is clean up the mess. That's the least we can do, but we have to deal with reality, and that nothing to do with our worth, or who we think we are. Good politics is the art of the possible, and if our current and future leaders do tell us what is really possible, we going to stay in the Slough of Despond we've dug ourselves into.
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Is this comment helping? Not really? It's really missing the issue that Vlad Vexker and other academics have noticed, which is that the economic and social experimentation the UK has been subjected to over the last few decades has unforeseen consequences. Britain is not alone in that. Any country subscribing to neoliberal economics and politics have gone through the same issues. And it is rooted in a struggle to cope with the failures, that have impacted the world. In developed countries like are own, we subscribed to beliefs that facilitated those experiments, but provided no safety margins. And the consequences have been a massive transfer of asset wealth away from both the masses and the state to corporations, banks and plutocrats. And they don't want to pay their fair share of the clean up costs. Indeed, they are so wealthy that they can capture governments, but funding politicians. Because they are now influenced by wealthy plutocrats, they have stopped listening to the people. That's why authors like Mark Blyth describes the rise of populism as basically being Angrynomics. The masses have been the losers, and the winners don't want to give up their games. What the problem really is that neither the populists nor the plutocrats have any real plan what to do about it. The decisions taken decades ago, cannot be fixed quickly, but neither can the populist avoid being bought by the plutocrats. Hence the lurch into outrage politics, and the influx of political entrepreneurs who wish to take advantage of the crisis to get the opportunity to sell out their followers to the plutocrats in return for getting very wealthy after they leave politics. The traditional parties are being neutered as opposition to the plutocrats, and the plutocrats are spending money to distract us from turning against them. Hence social media toxic influence. The masses honestly don't know the depth and extent of the mess they are in, and frustrated and resentful they are falling for the wrong solutions. They want the clock turned back, but you can't step into the same river twice. What to do? 1) Hold your hands up and admit to the the problems, 2) and then address the wealth gap between workers and capital; 3) decentralise political power by increased devolution. 4) modernise the practices in democracy. 5) Nationalise politics to remove private money from the process, including regulating media. 6) Ensure government at all levels is more responsive to the public. 7) Train our leaders differently.
But make no mistake, it will take as long as it did to create the problems to repair them. We need to return to mixed economies, we need to tackle corruption and we need to be honest about how we make our wealth. You see, imperial colonisation was replaced with economic colonisation after World War II. And that is not healthy. Exploitation of the poorer countries and peoples of the world can't be the foundation of our prosperity anymore. That dirty little secret has to confronted. It's not about destroying capitalism l, but making it work to fairly distribute it's gains in a sustainable and effective way. If we don't, we will suffer for fudging the realities we face.
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You assume that they are commemorating, instead of indoctrinating. You assume the past in some sense defines who we are. And that's about true as the earth is flat. Should we commemorate that belief? It's the indoctrination bit, without the critical thinking alongside, that equates to hero worship. And it's easier for a rich person to donate funds for a statue, rather that teach people to question what they are being told to accept is true. And we need much more of the latter than the former. Scepticism saves us from cynicism as the fallout out from the inevitable disillusionment that real knowledge provides. It's a kind of healthy acknowledgement that more often than not that the righteous and the victorious, are not always clearly defined, and often not one and the same. Discovering who and why they get designated as one or the other is where history really earns its keep. History should be a handmaiden of justice and truth, but it's not always the case. We like simple narratives, but truth is far more stranger, and often disturbing than fiction. I mean, in reality, there were some nasty pieces of work from our present day perspective, whom we would not celebrate now. But their statues are fitted around our spaces. Or they are lionised for some agenda today. Should that factor be ignored? No; but we need not be so precious about them either. I think characters like Oliver Cromwell's alleged entreaty to be shown in his portrait, with warts and all, is what's missing from our commemoralising, which is often co-opted into politics. That tendency itself is a logical fallacy, as it is an appeal to history as authority in the present. That shift from the descriptive to the prescriptive in the present is smoothed over by indoctrination by the powerful. Talk of pride and being a proud nation, unleavened without drawing on the continuing injustices and failings left in the wake of such narratives, is a loaded discourse, leveraged by those who want power, but not the responsibility that goes with it. Leadership in any context at its core is duty and service to a cause larger than oneself. And political leadership is even more so. Pride was seen by the Christian faith as one of the deadly sins, with good reason, because pride and confidence, or strength. are not the same. "Only the truly strong can afford to be gentle." And when the flag shagging type of self-serving brand patriotism becomes fashionable, it is when we are not confident or strong enough to resist it. Yes, celebrate our wins, but let's address our failings too. The work never ends because we in the present are stewards fir those we bring into the world and those who will follow us. And by understanding the complete legacy our ancestors left to us, warts and all, we can then win by our efforts and application meaningful victories in the present. Only those will be a firm foundation for our people in the future.
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If History was a "way of forgetting things" , how come you use it to remember? History is a tool, how it is used is down to people, who come and go. Often power defines who gets to try and set their own agenda by using history in every age. And the prevailing narrative is anything but set in stone. Often it is incomplete or even biased. And there are many examples of the History being shifted to reflect values of a later age. A prime example is the historical context of Oliver Cromwell. He now has a statue near Houses of Parliament, but his prior status was to be expunged from history, and to be punished for his rebellion. His body, and those of the members of Parliament who signed the Death Warrant of Charles I, was on the return of the monarchy under his son Charles II, were dug up and their remains were publicly desecrated. But the Victorians erected a statue to Cromwell. What is the truth? Well, it's complicated, to the extent that Cromwell is no hero, but neither is Charles I. Depending on your perspective, you could see that whole period as a glorious revolution or a coup, by early English capitalists who used religion as a pretext to remove a stubbornly annoying king who was getting in the way of economic progress as they saw it. And useful history would reveal that both can be true at the same time, because history provides context which fleshes out the meaning of events and better explains the motivations of those involved. It doesn't tell us who we are in the present. That is truly our decision in the present. We can take or leave what we will. we are not bound by the past, unless we choose to be. And it should be understood that this is not a consequence free choice. And often whether the consequences of our choices are positive, are not certain. Yes, we evolved in certain ways to ensure our survival, but we must remember we did not evolve perfectly or evenly. We often make mistakes, and must debate what should be kept and what should be left behind. There should be no sacred cows, but reminders of how others dealt with similar issues, and what we can learn from their actions.
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Governments don't have to borrow to have money. It's a choice, a virtuous one, as the people that own that debt are almost all British. So government debt is our savings. The problem is that those savings are too concentrated in the hands of people and institutions that don't spend the money they make back into the economy, by buying goods or making capital investments. They hoard their wealth instead, and just buy more assets. That's not helping the economy. And because Rachel Reeves is taking advice from the Wealth Hoarders, instead of people who understand that wealth hoarding is a problem that only can be addressed by reducing the incentive to hoard, by either taxing it, or increasing incentives to invest productively in capital projects that create jobs and things people need or want, we're in economic stagnation. That stagnation is being exacerbated by external factors too, such as the artificial hike in energy prices because of Geopolitics, deliberate policies by OPEC with price gouging, plus the long-run consequences of Covid 19 disrupting supply chains, and labour supply, altogether making the global economy flaccid. And let's not forget Brexit. So Reeves doesn't understand how to negotiate all this factors objectively. She doesn't understand how to use the power of the state to restructure the government deficit, and stop feeding the fat cats at the expense of everyone else. And may I remind you that after World War II, the UK's debt-to-GDP ratio peaked at approximately 240% in 1947. This was one of the highest levels in British history, reflecting massive wartime borrowing to fund military efforts and post-war rebuilding. We finally repaid that in the 2000s. As of December 2024, the UK's public sector net debt (PSND) was approximately 97.2% of GDP, according to the latest data from the House of Commons Library. This represents a slight increase from 96.9% at the end of December 2023. So we actually are nowhere near as worse off, as we once were. But we did not repay our WW2 debt by undertaxing and oversubsidising the wealthy, as we're doing now. That's why there's no growth.
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Egoism and narcissism are human traits not exclusive to one gender or the other. Indeed, despite feminism, females with this tendency still lag their male peers in accessing the opportunity to indulge themselves. However, that's irrelevant in dealing with the power-hungry. They mad, bad, and dangerous to tolerate. These aren't politicians out of any conviction to help their country. As has been demonstrated over 14 years, they actually despise anyone who isn't like them, including their fellow countrymen. That's the irony of working class Conservatives voting for people who wouldn't give them the time of day if they didn't need to. Boris Johnson during his time at the Bullingdon Club reportedly tore up a £50 mote in front of a tramp. Liz Truss and the other authors of Brittania Unchanined, wrote about how British workers were lazy good for nothings. Kemi Badenoch claimed that Nigeria was better than the UK. Need I go on? The British public needs to remember that when people show you who they really are, believe them. How these blowhards treat people they think don't matter, is how they will treat you. They don't respect you, or what you have given them in any meaningful way. As some say on the street, "they wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire."That's why they lie to you easier than silk rubbing on your skin. They are deeply cynical, and dangerous people. And we shouldn't turn to them out of fear for the future. Instead, we should face the future head on, and work together to rebuild and repair our country. We should leave no-one, or nowhere behind. We need to stop and reverse poverty and ill health, as you can't pull up your socks if you don't have any. And most importantly, we need to be more sceptical of quick and easy answers to complex problems and those that offer them, whether they are wealthy or posh. Really. We need to get over our issues with class. And we need to trust ourselves more. Instead of listening to crackpots, we need to use evidence. Real evidence to helps us decide. And stop listening to crackpots, chancers, and rabblerousers. And we need courage too, because what decision we make, there are always consequences. We want the best, and we might just get it, if we don't succumb to fear. Good Luck everybody.
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Prevention is better than cure. I've just been taking a peek at how 1 factor will impact the UK's future - access to rare earths that are needed for our future technological trajectory. They're needed not only for defence, but for Healthcare, and other critical infrastructures. And guess what? We don't have any, and most of the resources are abroad. And yes, we can send some functionary to knock on the door and say, "Hello, would you mind selling us some of your rare earths? But there's nothing much to stop then treating you like a double glazing salesman, and slamming the door in your face. After all, we're also competing with the US and China for the sane resources. So how to we manage to get in with people who aren't short of other suitors? The International Aid budget funds our soft power, which translates, if done correctly, to building connections, making contacts, and opening doors. It moves relationships from the polite but distant, to friendly and smooths the path to further and more mutually beneficial relationships. And it can open doors to influential people. It's a pay to play world now, and that tiny budget is sure to not to cover everywhere it's going to be needed in the following decades. And it will be needed, because we're just another country on our own. We have to try harder to make an impact, or get elbowed aside. I mean, we can supposedly afford to subsidise UK banks by almost £40 billion a year, but we can't fund global outreach? Our priorities are perhaps skewed? Badly? And if you want to check that figure, check out the journal Foreign Affairs, the April 2024 edition, and an article entitled "Don't Bet On A British Revival" byMatthias Matthijs and Mark Blyth, that discusses the UK fiscal space, or "wriggle room", if you will. Very interesting reading.
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I found a very good a analysis by Paul Warburg on YT, and Trump is on the ropes. He's desperate for some victory of some kind to throw at the feet of his base, and he's actually out of his depth. He's lost leverage over Zelensky and Putin, and has got nothing. Zelensky if he can start breaking the Russian lines, and begin to reclaim territory in the East, then Zelensky can start negotiations to swap time limited licences for extraction and processing of CREs and CRM in Ukraine for security guarantees from Europe, Japan, and the US on his terms. Such resource diplomacy agreements are already in place for states like Saudi Arabia. And then Trump can get in the queue like anyone else. That's what the lazy kind of thinker Trump is, because he did not consider that at all. As subtle as a brick, and just as dense. His intelligence is another crevasse. Narrow across but deep, and usually more of an obstacle to be avoided, or bridged carefully. If Zelenskyy holds out, Putin is out of the fridge and lying in state due to a short illness soon after.
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Unfortunately, justice takes a long time, because the LIBOR Scandal was found not to be a scandal, and those prosecuted have been found innocent on appeal. What goes on in the global financial system is, since global financialization, reflects geopolitical shenanigans as much as financial support for globalisation. In other words, there's a lot that goes on that isn't made public, and reflects the politics of a globalised world that is opaque but powerful. The LIBOR Rate Setting arrangement was just one part of an offshore, unregulated banking system which first emerged in the middle of the 20th century to get around US capital controls, which created a demand for USD. To meet that demand private banks lent out USD reserves to governments, multinationals and other private banks. It was so profitable that it became a private association of banks lending and trading foreign currencies in an unregulated market, that even now mostly trades in USD, but overtime moved to trading and lending other in demand currencies and sovereign debt. And even though other countries complained, London was the major centre for this unregulated trade. And successive uk governments absolved any responsibility for it. Indeed, American top rank investment banks discovered the market, and joined. And even Uncle Sam used it to placate OPEC and provide petrodollars. As an offshore market it's activities began to impact the global financial system, and it may have been in part responsible for the inflation of the 1970's by its irresponsible lending. London's LIBOR rate was the interest rate charged for financing in this unregulated market. And became a benchmark for interest rates in contracts. All whilst being unregulated. And it's activities financed the folly and greed of the 2008 GFC. And the history of the Market is based on deceit and secrecy. Ask anyone what the Eurocurrency Market is, most would not know it even existed. But that's what London's role in the postwar financial system was - secretive, hidden, and deceitful. So, in that light, the rise of Londingrad was inevitable once we decided to worship the Golden Calf of the Financial Sector under Thatcher. Humanity is just hairless apes on two legs after all, so folly is inherent in the human condition, and by extention the other vices too. Fear and Greed is amongst us as much as Love and Charity. It's just that Prudence keeps getting kicked around as someone else's problem or an inconvenience, until her big brother Reality puts his boots on and gives everyone bruises.
A final thought - the biggest donors to the Conservatives was the Financial Services sector. The Corporation of the City of London is the only private institution to have a seat in the House of Commons without having to be an MP. It's behind the Speaker's Chair. The Lord Mayor of the City of London has his calendar managed by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and not even King Charles or his agents can enter the Square Mile without permission of the Lord Mayor of the Corporation of the City of London. The Financial Sector is a power to itself. Been so for centuries here, but now it's a problem everywhere, because it's become too big, too powerful. It wants to run everything. But it can't even run itself.
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We finished paying off our world War II debt in 2004. If that's recent, I'll be elected Pope at the next Conclave.
Our relationship with the Americans is not predicated on debt, but on shared interests, and where there none, we should be cautious. The Special Relationship mularkey is just PR. The British and Americans are frenemies, because they both love money. Examples? Suez and the development of the Eurocurrency Market in London at the end of the 1950s, where private banks in London broke US capital controls to supply London with US Dollars, and UK governments pretended they knew nothing about it, and couldn't do anything about it, and if that little cabal of private bank had not let American Bilge Bracket banks in on the business, there would have been another diplomatic crisis between Washington and London. Don't be fooled. It's always been a marriage of convenience, and falling for the blabdishments of American billionaires helped to bring about Brexit, and Bojo desperate for a US-UK trade deal, and guess what? The Americans asked for terms so onerous, that Johnson has to give up on the idea of a trade deal. Nothing personal, but American governments were and are robber Barons as much as British governments were pirates. Trump is only distinguished by his lack of pretence, and British conservatives and centrists by their naivety and complacency. Zelenskyy and his people are no fools. They know the score because they have studied history, and they know why the war happened, and probably why they were helped in the first place. Everybody wants Rare Earth Minerals because the clock is ticking in climate change, and the destruction of the oil energy markets, and the Minerals in Ukraine are needed for the next revolution and that is Green Energy, because in reality there is nowhere to go if Earth's climate turns against us. And the develop of new computer chips relies on the same tech. That's why Russia invaded nothing more; nothing less. Ask the Russian speaking minorities in Ukraine, who Putin took their men of fighting age, and put them into the meat grinder. And let's not talk about Germany, because they're not to be trusted fully either to act in the best interests of Ukraine either. I pray Zelenskyy holds on, and Ukraine gets its freedom and sovereignty back. Fair exchange is no robbery, after all.
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I think you are less informed than you think. The EU has on its agenda reshaping the models of association with the EU. At the present the model is a string inner court of full members - rule makersand a hodge podge of differing associations as an outer court of rule takers. With Brexit, Ukraine and possibly other states interested in joining, and the issues with Greece has motivated the EU to consider creating a probationary form of associate membership. And that has been agreed and passed to the EU Commission and the EU Parliament to set that up. The exact terms and conditions have not been yet established, but that is a project in progress. You can't step into the same river twice, and so whenever and however our future relationship evolves with the EU is not guaranteed by what went before. We are not the same country or economy as we were before, and neither is the EU. So we can't turn the clock back, but we can reset our relationship to one that is functionally and practically useful for both, rather than exist in purgatory. Only time will tell whether we can repair the damage done to make us ready for it sooner or later, because right now we're not ready. Our oligarchs gambled they could defy economic gravity, and spent money convincing us up was down. So no wonder our politics is in disarray and our economy and quality of life are in decline. Forget about GDP. Brexit is literally killing people, both in fast and slow ways. Brexit was a lesson in the limits of human decision-making, and how that can be exploited through lack of awareness and monied ruthlessness and callousness. And until we redesign our systems of governance to better counter such folly we are prone to, we will keep on having lost decades where we keep on screwing things up. We need to remember that wealthy people are good at making and keeping wealth, but might not be good at everything, or even care to be good at anything else. We need more devolution in England and less power held by Westminster. We need PR, and we need to confront our prejudices. In short, we need to engage with reality a lot more, and we need to cope better with change. Or we will be left behind as a country. We need to develop flexibility, and critical thinking, and we need to handle conflict more constructively. It's time to grow up.
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You can say what you like. It doesn't mean that it's true or accurate. When you have a house fire, do you call the fire brigade? Or call the local sofa warehouse to check if they've got one you would like to replace the one on fire? The VIP Lane was the the latter. This was not ineptitude, or even a lack of common sense. This was rank neglect, because NHS approved supplier details are on the Internet. You can find them by googling it. And you can find the manufacturers there too. Now, if a nobody from nowhere can do that off the top of my head with mobile phone Internet, what do you think anyone in the Department of Health, with the NHS Supplier Database at hand could have done if ordered to do so? So why weren't they?
Your generosity, whilst admirable is misplaced. Mone and the others have lawyers to argue mitigation, once they been charged, tried, and found guilty. They can argue based on evidence, and reason. Not misplaced sentiment. People in the NHS died whilst treating patients because of the lack of appropriate PPE. Think of their relatives left behind.
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Only by those rules, including the ECJ acting as Court of Arbitration, being integrated into UK law by Acts of the UK Parliament. On the same legal basis as WTO rules, and the Law of the Sea, things that Brexiteers accept, and rightly so because Parliament is Sovereign within the British Constitution... So what are you complaining about? The ECHR is part of the same body of law where Parliament has granted legitimacy and Jusridiction to extrasupranational bodies and Courts by Acts of Parliament. This gap in understanding that allows the less well-informed to get their knickers in a twist without realising that the ECHR, the ECJ, and every other supranatiinal court is legal under the UK Constitution. So the problem isn't their legality, but the current administration's unerring ability to misrepresent reality, and to make promises they can't keep, and arguably don't really want to either. There's nothing stopping the UK Government, especially as then spend a lot of public money to be in the UN, to start a campaign to update and reform the Refugee Convention. Why haven't they? Instead, we get this pantomime of cruelty and crassness, that just diminishes our standing on the world stage, instead of addressing the problem directly. But having sold their country's honour and security to fill their pockets, they can't fix anything.
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Professor, I think there's no-one alive now who dealt with such matters during the Cold War. So, the experience is missing. There are experts, but because of the current climate, we might have to go outside the usual channels to find the expertise we need. It's time to get real about to the danger to our democracy and our way of life. I think we should turn to the example of the Scandinavian countries who because of their proximity, were subject to many attempts such as these to weaken their own states. The idea that we are in the midst of a different kind of war should be discussed openly, and the public knowledge and awareness of how this Cold Cyber War should be fostered. Fighting disinformation, and protecting ourselves from cyberwarfare is something that everyone needs to know about, and pay attention to. Much like the mental distortions it's meant to create, it's wounds can run to more than a mere bruise. We are busy building our society around the internet without the knowledge to protect oursekves. To me, it is now cowardice to può a helmet if ordinance is raining down. But we're behaving like words and distrust don't kill as much as bombs. We need protect oursekves. And the government needs to lead the effort to do so.
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The idea that Ukraine is the problem is proof positive that this American administration is planning not only to force Ukraine to lose the war, but for the US to lose the peace. Why the US to lose the peace? They're proving Kruschev right, that the US will surrender themselves to Russian domination without a shot being fired.
Just because one is wealthy, it doesn't mean you are immune to folly. And Musk, Trump, and all of these out-of-touch billionaires and millionaires in the US drooling over Putin's Russia is just proving the truth of that. Bored, mindless obsession with wanting to escape the complexities of real governing, and give into performative rule, will help no-one.
Why do you think that Russia lost millions of its brightest minds as soon as this "special operation" was announced? They lost them because Putin is isolated and too narcissistic, not to indulge in a mystical fantasy of Making Putin/ Russia Great Again, whilst simultaneously wrecking its chances of being so.
Putin doesn't even want Ukraine for anything practical. It's just an egoistic flex against Trump. The more Trump asks him to stop, the more he will go on flexing his power, while bankrupting the Russian economy. This is not making Russia greater. It's destroying it and it's people. And Putin won't stop until he's bet the house and lost.
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Lol. How can it be ruled by a majority who do not fulfil the duties of a ruler? Who do not realise that their power is blunted by self-interest divorced from communal concerns? You want the majority to rule? Then it needs to stop being completely divorced from the responsibilities of being a community, bound by meaningful concern for each other, rather than just shouting slogans. You want power, then take the responsibility that comes with it. Stop voting for parties that divides people, that creates economic apartheid, that won't a decent standard of living to everyone, who tells you to tolerate suffering of others in your midst. In other words, be the change you want to see in the world. If you want to rule, then take up your burden and be responsible for what you do, and have done. And then strive to do better. You get the government you deserve if you do not. Why? If you wish to be a sovereign citizen, you need to behave like one. Not just shouting slogans on social media. You need to do what a sovereign should do.
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