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theinspectorst

@ theinspectorst @kbin.social

Posts

40
Comments

357
Joined

3 yr. ago

Liberal, Briton, FBPE. Co-mod of m/neoliberal

2y ago

Thames Water urgent 'do not drink' warning to hundreds of Surrey homes
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theinspectorst @kbin.social 2y ago
Politically, this is magnificent. The Lib Dems have target seats throughout Surrey where they're typically the main challenger, they've been campaigning hard locally on water quality through most of this parliament (hasn't always got national attention but they worked out a while ago it's a very resonant issue in their target seats) and then just in time for the election Thames Water start warning people the water isn't drinkable...

2y ago

Israel War Cabinet member Benny Gantz files motion to dissolve parliament

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theinspectorst @kbin.social 2y ago

Yes, having an election is a normal thing in a democracy.

2y ago

Only seven EU countries require parties to reveal identity of all private donors

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theinspectorst @kbin.social 2y ago

Well of course - publishing the identity of all private donors would be madness.

Small donors should be allowed to donate freely without their name appearing on the internet for all their friends, neighbours, employers, journalists, rabble-rousers, etc to see. Someone donating a few tens or hundred of euros to their local candidate doesn't create a risk of influencing (or appearing to influence) the candidate's political platform; and we should be positively encouraging small donors, as I'd much prefer a political system where politicians relied on many small donations to one where they relied on a handful of millionaire donors.

It's big money donors - the ones stumping up enough money to potentially influence the candidate - that parties should be required to disclose.

2y ago

That's COMMANDER This Dude to you, Ensign.

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theinspectorst @kbin.social 2y ago

Now do it with the Discovery bridge crew.

2y ago

UK’s Sunak promises mandatory national service for 18-year-olds if elected [26 May 2024 | Al Jazeera]

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theinspectorst @kbin.social 2y ago

If you’re not doing great, wouldn’t it make more sense to try and weather the storm and work to make things sunnier before the next election rather than call for an election amidst the storm?

The latest possible date the election could have been is January 2025, but that was practically very unlikely as i) there is an extremely sharp generational divide in voting intentions (far sharper than in most Western democracies) and January would have meant the Tories having to get their elderly core voters to the polls in the middle of winter, and ii) a January vote would have meant a campaign running over Christmas, and everyone would have punished Sunak for that. The widespread expectation was for an autumn election.

It's unclear why Sunak jumped earlier but likely a combination of various factors:

them being worried the economy will not get better by the autumn (so avoids going to the polls after a summer of bad economic news);
going early means their main opponents on the right (Reform) don't have time to get their act together and select candidates in all seats (which they would have done by the autumn);
their flagship immigration policy is controversial and expensive, yet likely to have an underwhelming impact on illegal immigration levels, and they'll look like complete idiots for centring an autumn election on a 'stop the boats' slogan if there's another summer of small boat arrivals in the meantime; and
Sunak personally is fed up - he's very much a political child of the far-right (an avowed Brexiter long before Boris Johnson or Liz Truss converted to the cause) yet the far-right of the Tory Party don't see him as one of their own and have been constant thorns in his side throughout his leadership - he may just want out at this stage.

2y ago

Vincent Kompany agrees deal to become Bayern Munich head coach

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theinspectorst @kbin.social 2y ago

He did a great job with Burnley getting promoted from the Championship. But then they got immediately relegated from the Premier League, finishing 19th out of 20 (in a season where two of their relegation rivals took points deductions) and looking pretty out of their league most of the season. He's falling upwards.

2y ago

Corbyn confirms he will stand against Labour

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theinspectorst @kbin.social 2y ago

Reminder that the Equality and Human Rights Commission is not 'the media'. It's a non-governmental public body created by a Labour government in 2006 to promote and enforce equality legislation introduced by said Labour government.

2y ago

Corbyn confirms he will stand against Labour

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theinspectorst @kbin.social 2y ago

I mean, is it? Under his leadership the Labour Party broke the law in relation to racism within the party - that was the finding of the independent Equalities and Human Rights Commission investigation. It found that on Corbyn's watch, the culture of the Labour Party 'at best, did not do enough to prevent anti-Semitism and, at worst, could be seen to accept it'. He was the leader, he is accountable. That was his doing.

He then chose to put out a statement rejecting this and dismissing the evidence of racism suffered by Labour members as exaggerated - as a result of which he was suspended. That statement was his doing too.

And now he has chosen to stand against the Labour candidate in an election - this choice was also his doing.

So which part of this is 'their doing'?

2y ago

Rishi Sunak announces UK general election for Thursday 4 July

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theinspectorst @kbin.social 2y ago

All of our constitutional law takes the form of Acts of Parliament that can be amended or repealed with a 50%+1 vote in Parliament - unlike most countries where the constitution sits above the parliament and changing it requires a supermajority and/or a referendum. Boris had a majority so he could change the constitution. It's a totally messed up system.

One reason British liberals as so passionate about internationalism and the European Union is that international treaties and EU law are some of the few mechanisms we have had for constraining executive overreach, since they sit outside and above Parliament's remit. For example, even if Parliament were to repeal the Human Rights Act, Britain remains a party to the European Convention on Human Rights (which is why some Tories now talk about withdrawing from this too). Without international safeguards external to the UK, in theory all that stands between Britain and despotism is a simple majority vote in Parliament.

2y ago

Rishi Sunak announces UK general election for Thursday 4 July

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theinspectorst @kbin.social 2y ago

It's a corrupt convention but it wasn't always the case. An important reform by the 2010-15 coalition government was the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, which took this incredibly important decision out of the prime minister's partisan hands and have elections on a predictable 5 year cycle (barring the government falling or a supermajority for early elections).

After Boris Johnson won the 2019 election though, he set about dismantling checks and balances such as this. He also changed the electoral system for mayoral elections to First Past the Post (with no consultation or referendum - which the Tories have always insisted was needed to change the electoral system away from FPTP...) because FPTP tends to favour Tories.

2y ago

Netanyahu angrily rejects move to seek his arrest, lambasts the ICC saying it has compared Israel to "mass murderers"

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theinspectorst @kbin.social 2y ago

Because the Palestinian children had nothing to do with the killing of Israeli children? What you're describing and explicitly trying to justify here is collective punishment of all of the two million Palestinians in Gaza (more than half of whom are children) for the crimes of (by Israel's estimates) about 3,000 Hamas terrorists on 7 October.

What you're articulating constitutes a war crime under the Geneva Convention and that's exactly why the ICC is getting involved.

Let me try putting this another way. The population of the US state of Nebraska is about two million. Every year, there are about 6,000 violent crimes committed by Nebraskans. Should every Nebraskan be collectively punished for the crimes of those few thousand Nebraskans?

2y ago

Three councillors resign over Labour's ‘lily-livered stand’ on Gaza

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theinspectorst @kbin.social 2y ago

lily-livered

Hoist the mainsail and shiver me timbers, are they joining the Pirate Party?

2y ago

Rise in UK knife attacks leads to a crackdown and stokes public anxiety

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theinspectorst @kbin.social 2y ago

The homicide rate in the US is about 6-7 times that in the UK per 100,000 population. I'd take our situation any day of the week.

Last time I looked into this properly, knife crime in the US was actually roughly the same frequency as that in the UK. The difference is that knife-based murders stand out in the UK, whereas in the US nobody pays attention because the problem is dwarfed by the much greater problem of rampant gun crime.

2y ago

Rise in UK knife attacks leads to a crackdown and stokes public anxiety

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theinspectorst @kbin.social 2y ago

The UK is a society where violent crime is pretty uncommon. The homicide rate in the UK was 1.0 per 100,000 population in 2023. That has been broadly trending downwards in recent decades, after rising during the late 20th century and hitting a peak at c1.8 per 100,000 in 2003. The US is a much more violent society: their homicide rate is around 6.4 per 100,000 population.

Killers are always going to find weapons - if you ban guns they'll find knives, if you ban knives they'll kill with something else. One difference is that a killer on a knife rampage is going to kill a lot fewer people before they're stopped than a killer with a gun. I guess killing with a knife is a more 'involved' act than just pointing a gun and clicking the trigger, so the bar for someone stabbing with a knife is probably a bit higher than killing from several metres away with a gun.

But part of it is a societal thing - my hunch is that (in relative terms) society in the UK and most other rich Western liberal democracies just instills in people an instinctively higher value on human life. You see it in US exceptionalism in use of the death penalty, the frequency of police killings, etc. I don't want to exaggerate the difference - the US still has far fewer murders than Colombia or South Africa or Brazil - but there are other Western countries like Canada or Finland where guns are still pretty widely owned (albeit not quite to the extent of the US) that don't have the same problem of violence as the US.

2y ago

Weird, right?

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theinspectorst @kbin.social 2y ago

They wouldn't need hundreds of hours of voice recordings to replicate somebody's voice in the 24th century. We don't even really need that today.

2y ago

Rishi Sunak admits Tories may not win general election | ITV News

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theinspectorst @kbin.social 2y ago

I don't think Starmer is stupid but I think Labour's large polling lead has - paradoxically - encouraged him to be very politically timid, to the detriment of his party and the country.

Broadly speaking the Labour leadership seems to be acting as if, if literally nothing changes between now and election day, then Labour will win a landslide. That means no genuine big new policy announcements, because any policy change is seen as a roll of the dice that could change the polling status quo. Rejoining the single market whilst staying outside the EU could be a popular policy - polling shows that even Labour Leave voters support it by a 53% to 31% margin - and would give an incoming Labour government an actual policy option to help turn around the economy, but Starmer's caution means forgoing this in favour of saying literally nothing novel. The Labour leadership think any change is a risk, and why take a risk when you're already sitting on a polling lead.

In general I'm favourable towards Starmer, and certainly in comparison to what came immediately before him. But on several issues - Europe, electoral reform, Gaza/Israel - he's adopting bad cautious positions to protect the enormous polling lead over the Tories he's stumbled into. These are going to end up doing him more harm than good in the long run.

2y ago

Rishi Sunak admits Tories may not win general election | ITV News

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theinspectorst @kbin.social 2y ago

I was replying to you (you were saying Starmer is staying quiet because he needs Brexit voters in the North).

I'm saying that if that's the case, he's thinking of the Brexit voters of 2016, not what these people think about things in 2024.

2y ago

Rishi Sunak admits Tories may not win general election | ITV News

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theinspectorst @kbin.social 2y ago

The world has moved on from the divisions of 2016. The idea that Brexit was a bad idea is now pretty common outside the political bubble. Even among Leave voters, few think Brexit has been a success.

The economic reality of what Britain outside the EU looks like and the global geopolitical realignment that has happened since that day in 2016 - Russia's warmongering in our European neighbourhood and the very real prospect of a future Republican president (if not Trump this November, then someone else 4 or 8 years later) abandoning NATO - obviously should lead (and is leading) to people who voted for Brexit rethinking Britain's relationship with the EU.