Comments by "Curious Crow" (@CuriousCrow-mp4cx) on "Professor Tim Wilson"
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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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