Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. Sign in or register to get started.

What Price Shoes? – politicalbetting.com

13

Comments

  • Thread on documenting the detention camps in China:

    https://twitter.com/alisonkilling/status/1460243389060952074?s=21
  • Andy_JS said:

    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant, depressing article.

    THE BAD GUYS ARE WINNING
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
    If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.

    The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
    If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,780

    Andy_JS said:

    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant, depressing article.

    THE BAD GUYS ARE WINNING
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
    If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.

    The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
    If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
    Indeed, the risks are real. The next time Trump supporters or the like seek to invade democratic institutions it will not be a joke which "only" killed 3 people. The failure to hold those responsible for that to account is deeply ominous.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,165
    edited November 2021

    tlg86 said:

    Regarding direct connections from the North to Paris etc - it doesn't work. You can't run trains from London to the wider continent because of our passport check requirements. As an example the aforementioned Amsterdam - London service. Where you have to get off in Brussels and go through passport control and then get back on.

    Old news:

    https://www.afar.com/magazine/theres-now-a-direct-high-speed-train-from-amsterdam-to-london/amp

    Eurostar has launched a new direct connection between the capital cities of the Netherlands and the United Kingdom that starts from £40 (US$50) each way. The train also stops in the Dutch city of Rotterdam (which is a three-and-a-half-hour journey to London) and Brussels (two hours to London) along the way.

    Prior to the introduction of this new Amsterdam-London route, rail passengers had to take a high-speed Thalys train from Amsterdam to Brussels and then transfer to a Eurostar train from Brussels to London. There is no longer any need to transfer. A direct Eurostar train from London to Amsterdam has been available since 2018—this is the first time the direct Eurostar service is available in the direction of Amsterdam to London.
    I didn't say transfer! A quick regoogle and they have changed the process. The train still stops in Brussels for passport control, but you stay on the train, locked in for half an hour whilst Border Force check everyone's paperwork.

    My point stands. Its a through train, but with a very long stop to check passports. Don't forget that thanks to our new deal with the EU we need to be stamped out of their country as well as in to ours, so any services will need to be routed via a Border Control Post set up for such an operation.

    Germany looked at it - would have used Brussels like Amsterdam and decided not to. Supposedly Renfe want to run through from Spain - how they manage the border issue is unknown. Long distance rail is never going to be as easy as it is where you have freedom of movement.

    By freedom of movement what you mean is no borders (as opposed to the single market freedom of movement).

    We were never in Schengen (though, with the current state of the English Channel, we might as well be). We could still be in the EU and the check by the British border force at Brussels would still be necessary. I guess it's not worth having our people at Amsterdam as it's (EDIT: two) trains a day. A 25 minute stop isn't the end of the world and clearly Eurostar think it's worthwhile to run the train.

    https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:C02556/2021-11-16/detailed
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,776

    Andy_JS said:

    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant, depressing article.

    THE BAD GUYS ARE WINNING
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
    If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.

    The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
    If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
    I did write an alt.history dystopia, in which the leaders of the USA, Russia, Belarus, Saudi Arabia, and the UK (following a coup in which the King and most MPs are killed) form a mutual alliance committed to repressing democracy worldwide, and one commentator remarked she couldn't enjoy it because it sounded so plausible.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950

    Thread on documenting the detention camps in China:

    https://twitter.com/alisonkilling/status/1460243389060952074?s=21

    fpt from me:

    For me the most depressing and curious one is China. After the Deng Xiaoping reforms while not the end of history it did seem as though there was little chance of regression. What Xi has done, both on the mainland and in Hong Kong is simply dreadful and as the article notes, a huge regressive step. And largely unnecessary, given the wealth that a reforming China was delivering to its citizens.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,775

    King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.

    What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.

    I think there's enough dramatic material for at least an average of a series per monarch in a retelling of England's story from the beginning.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,776
    DavidL said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant, depressing article.

    THE BAD GUYS ARE WINNING
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
    If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.

    The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
    If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
    Indeed, the risks are real. The next time Trump supporters or the like seek to invade democratic institutions it will not be a joke which "only" killed 3 people. The failure to hold those responsible for that to account is deeply ominous.
    The US has got itself to a very bad place in which each half of the population regards the other as subhuman.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    Rishi probably regretting not turning off furlough at the end of July. No appreciable damage to the jobs market from getting rid of it. Could have saved us ~£3.5bn and eased the labour shortage two months sooner. It's not just anecdote either, the number of vacancies seems to be stabilising so it's definitely not just my imagination seeing restaurants and cafés take down help wanted signs.

    Furlough was a good policy but the government clung on for too long and Rishi unwisely extended it too far out from the end date. That it was just two months is probably a good thing, there's places in the world that have still got job support schemes running, probably unnecessarily.

    Overall October looks like it's coming in very hot, hopefully it sets up a really solid Q4.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,776
    edited November 2021
    TOPPING said:

    Thread on documenting the detention camps in China:

    https://twitter.com/alisonkilling/status/1460243389060952074?s=21

    fpt from me:

    For me the most depressing and curious one is China. After the Deng Xiaoping reforms while not the end of history it did seem as though there was little chance of regression. What Xi has done, both on the mainland and in Hong Kong is simply dreadful and as the article notes, a huge regressive step. And largely unnecessary, given the wealth that a reforming China was delivering to its citizens.
    I think her article delivers the answer. This breed of dictator doesn't acutally care about the betterment of their people and everything is about holding on to wealth and power at any cost.
  • darkagedarkage Posts: 4,748
    edited November 2021
    Deleted posted by mistake
  • Sean_F said:

    DavidL said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant, depressing article.

    THE BAD GUYS ARE WINNING
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
    If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.

    The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
    If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
    Indeed, the risks are real. The next time Trump supporters or the like seek to invade democratic institutions it will not be a joke which "only" killed 3 people. The failure to hold those responsible for that to account is deeply ominous.
    The US has got itself to a very bad place in which each half of the population regards the other as subhuman.
    And yet it keeps being held up as this shining beacon of civilisation. It really isn't.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,719
    TOPPING said:

    Thread on documenting the detention camps in China:

    https://twitter.com/alisonkilling/status/1460243389060952074?s=21

    fpt from me:

    For me the most depressing and curious one is China. After the Deng Xiaoping reforms while not the end of history it did seem as though there was little chance of regression. What Xi has done, both on the mainland and in Hong Kong is simply dreadful and as the article notes, a huge regressive step. And largely unnecessary, given the wealth that a reforming China was delivering to its citizens.
    Xi is a Maoist nationalist
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,719

    Andy_JS said:

    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant, depressing article.

    THE BAD GUYS ARE WINNING
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
    If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.

    The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
    If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
    Trump actually won the election in 2016 even if you dislike him and he lost and was removed in 2020, democracy still worked both times.
  • RogerRoger Posts: 18,891

    Sean_F said:

    DavidL said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant, depressing article.

    THE BAD GUYS ARE WINNING
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
    If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.

    The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
    If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
    Indeed, the risks are real. The next time Trump supporters or the like seek to invade democratic institutions it will not be a joke which "only" killed 3 people. The failure to hold those responsible for that to account is deeply ominous.
    The US has got itself to a very bad place in which each half of the population regards the other as subhuman.
    And yet it keeps being held up as this shining beacon of civilisation. It really isn't.
    That's the problem with self assessment
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,776

    Sean_F said:

    DavidL said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant, depressing article.

    THE BAD GUYS ARE WINNING
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
    If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.

    The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
    If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
    Indeed, the risks are real. The next time Trump supporters or the like seek to invade democratic institutions it will not be a joke which "only" killed 3 people. The failure to hold those responsible for that to account is deeply ominous.
    The US has got itself to a very bad place in which each half of the population regards the other as subhuman.
    And yet it keeps being held up as this shining beacon of civilisation. It really isn't.
    No, but it's better than the alternatives.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    edited November 2021
    TOPPING said:

    Thread on documenting the detention camps in China:

    https://twitter.com/alisonkilling/status/1460243389060952074?s=21

    fpt from me:

    For me the most depressing and curious one is China. After the Deng Xiaoping reforms while not the end of history it did seem as though there was little chance of regression. What Xi has done, both on the mainland and in Hong Kong is simply dreadful and as the article notes, a huge regressive step. And largely unnecessary, given the wealth that a reforming China was delivering to its citizens.
    It rather depends on one's perspective. If you're a western democracy loving liberal then sure, Deng and Hu made China a much better place to live and do business. If you're the Chinese Communist Party it started the process of having to give up power to a democratically elected government. Unnecessary? Not really, it was an expected push back from the Chinese party elites staring their own obsolescence in the face. That we in the west were deluded enough to think that hope really lies in the Chinese lumpen proles is our fault.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,981
    edited November 2021
    Ooooh, but this the the FIA, they'll probably end up giving Lewis Hamilton a two race ban for being alive.

    Mercedes are considering using their right to review over the incident in which Red Bull’s Max Verstappen appeared to push Lewis Hamilton off the track in Brazil on Sunday.

    During the grand prix in São Paulo, the title rivals were fighting for the lead when, on lap 48, Hamilton got close enough to Verstappen to make a move.

    The Mercedes driver went around the outside into turn four, but Verstappen aggressively defended his lead, pushing Hamilton wide and going off the track himself. Verstappen stayed in front and it was not until there were only 12 laps remaining that Hamilton, 36, finally got past his rival, on his third attempt, to claim victory. The result cut Verstappen’s lead at the top of the drivers’ rankings to 14 points, with three races remaining.

    The stewards noted the incident during the race but decided not to investigate the issue further. It later transpired that Michael Masi, the FIA race director, was missing a key video when he made the call not to investigate during the race.

    Masi and his team only had access to what was broadcast at the time and did not have the onboard footage from Verstappen’s car, which is crucial, as it can show the intent of the driver — for instance, whether they tried to steer away to avoid the incident or carried on more than is reasonable.

    Asked if the onboard from Verstappen, 24, could be a smoking gun in a case against the driver, Masi said: “Could be, absolutely. Possibly.” Once the FIA has looked at the footage, it can decide whether to take retrospective action.

    It is understood that Mercedes will consider all their options once they have seen the footage and will decide then whether to request a review before this weekend’s race in Qatar. If successful, the FIA would reopen the investigation into Verstappen, who could receive a penalty if deemed at fault. For the request to review to be successful, Mercedes must present new evidence, which could include the onboard footage, given that it was not available at the time of the initial decision.


    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/formula-one-mercedes-await-onboard-footage-for-potential-max-verstappen-penalty-g6wcptl9n
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,719
    IanB2 said:

    Foxy said:

    IanB2 said:

    Foxy said:

    King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.

    What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.

    "The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.

    The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
    Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around? ;)
    The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
    Yes, it was a joke.

    Abandoning Christianity is known as progress ;)
    Abandoning Christianity will not lead to secular, highly educated atheists dominating, indeed atheists globally have a lower birthrate than the religious. If Christianity declines it will be Islam that largely fills the gap, especially in Europe
  • Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    DavidL said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant, depressing article.

    THE BAD GUYS ARE WINNING
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
    If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.

    The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
    If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
    Indeed, the risks are real. The next time Trump supporters or the like seek to invade democratic institutions it will not be a joke which "only" killed 3 people. The failure to hold those responsible for that to account is deeply ominous.
    The US has got itself to a very bad place in which each half of the population regards the other as subhuman.
    And yet it keeps being held up as this shining beacon of civilisation. It really isn't.
    No, but it's better than the alternatives.
    Than Canada? Germany? South Korea? I can think of a stack of countries that aren't as insane and warmongery as America yet have better healthcare, education etc etc
  • Good morning, everyone.

    Thanks for the kind comments.

    Mr. Gate, that's not true. We can build things that are in or proximate to London.

    HS2 going to Manchester (that's still on, right?) is almost as bad as the whole southern bit getting completed but Yorkshire missing out.

    I wonder if anyone's compared the sums spent on track and trace failure with this leg of HS2.

    I think what has happened is people saw the shoes headline and the wonderful classical history analogy and concluded I wrote this thread.

    As for HS2, I'm forming the Northern First Party, fighting Boris the Bastard's Harrying of the North.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,719
    edited November 2021
    Pro_Rata said:

    Foxy said:

    Sinn Fein VI at 37% in the Republic of Ireland: a record high.

    SF also leading VI in Northern Ireland. Irish politics in both north and south are undergoing dramatic change.

    There's a seachange happening in N Ireland's political landscape that as usual is not being discussed or understood in the rest of UK....
    One problem is that the Good Friday Agreement fossilised things in a sectarian divide.
    Were Irish unification ever achieved, perhaps the ossification of the GFA might be the most useful tool in preventing Antrim becoming the place of resistance of HYUFD's imagination.
    The DUP never supported the GFA anyway, certainly in 1998 and the DUP and the TUV (a DUP breakaway even harder line) dominate Antrim still
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,719
    edited November 2021

    Sinn Fein VI at 37% in the Republic of Ireland: a record high.

    SF also leading VI in Northern Ireland. Irish politics in both north and south are undergoing dramatic change.

    Completely ignoring the fact the governing FF and FG combined are on 41% in the latest Irish poll still comfortably ahead of SF.

    Completely ignoring too the latest NI poll actually gives a 3% swing from SF to the DUP and Unionist parties combined still comfortably with a higher voteshare than Nationalist parties
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,780
    HYUFD said:

    Sinn Fein VI at 37% in the Republic of Ireland: a record high.

    SF also leading VI in Northern Ireland. Irish politics in both north and south are undergoing dramatic change.

    Completely ignoring the fact FF and FG combined are on 41% in the latest Irish poll still comfortably ahead of SF.

    Completely ignoring too the latest NI poll actually gives a 3% swing from SF to the DUP and Unionist parties combined still comfortably with a higher voteshare than Nationalist parties
    I'm not sure 41 vs 37 is a particularly comfortable lead.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,165
    On rents...

    https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/nov/16/uk-rents-rising-zoopla

    Excluding London, rents across the UK were up by 6% annually, a figure that Zoopla said was a 14-year high.

    Rents in London are also starting to climb as people return to offices, with annual price growth of 1.6% recorded in the latest report, compared with falls of nearly 10% at the start of the year.


    It looks to me as though we're seeing the start of a permanent change. Almost as though the country is "levelling up".
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,776

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    DavidL said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant, depressing article.

    THE BAD GUYS ARE WINNING
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
    If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.

    The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
    If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
    Indeed, the risks are real. The next time Trump supporters or the like seek to invade democratic institutions it will not be a joke which "only" killed 3 people. The failure to hold those responsible for that to account is deeply ominous.
    The US has got itself to a very bad place in which each half of the population regards the other as subhuman.
    And yet it keeps being held up as this shining beacon of civilisation. It really isn't.
    No, but it's better than the alternatives.
    Than Canada? Germany? South Korea? I can think of a stack of countries that aren't as insane and warmongery as America yet have better healthcare, education etc etc
    But, they all depend upon US military muscle, for their survival. The end of of US hegemony would not mean a world in which nice liberal countries flourished, but rather a world in which more countries became like the ones described in Anne Appelbaum's article. The alternative to the US is not Canada, but rather places like China, Russia, Iran, North Korea etc.
  • tlg86 said:

    On rents...

    https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/nov/16/uk-rents-rising-zoopla

    Excluding London, rents across the UK were up by 6% annually, a figure that Zoopla said was a 14-year high.

    Rents in London are also starting to climb as people return to offices, with annual price growth of 1.6% recorded in the latest report, compared with falls of nearly 10% at the start of the year.


    It looks to me as though we're seeing the start of a permanent change. Almost as though the country is "levelling up".

    I picked the right time to become a landlord.
  • theProletheProle Posts: 948
    rcs1000 said:

    tlg86 said:

    So rents are rising at fastest pace in 13 years, petrol has never been so expensive in my entire adult life, we’ve decided not to make rail travel potentially cheaper - how long until Rishi messes with student loans as trailed to top it all off?

    You honestly think tickets for HS2 trains will be...cheaper?
    Mobile phone prices didn't rise despite the phone operators splurging untold billions on 3G licenses.
    The key differences include:

    1) Phones had like for like competition which drove contract prices down to little more than the margimal costs, railways don't. This is why I get unlimited everything except data, and lots of that for £7.50 a month, and that's without having bothered to shop around much.

    2) A major market for high speed rail (but not really for phones) is people travelling on expense accounts, who couldn't care less what they are spending as its not their cash.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,780
    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    Foxy said:

    IanB2 said:

    Foxy said:

    King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.

    What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.

    "The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.

    The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
    Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around? ;)
    The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
    Yes, it was a joke.

    Abandoning Christianity is known as progress ;)
    Abandoning Christianity will not lead to secular, highly educated atheists dominating, indeed atheists globally have a lower birthrate than the religious. If Christianity declines it will be Islam that largely fills the gap, especially in Europe
    I'm not sure that's true: the fastest growing portion of the US population is the ungodly.

    But it is interesting: in religious belief, as in so many areas, we are seeing real bifurcation and the hardening of extremes. There are more atheists than ever before, and also more religious fundamentalists. A body like the Church of England seems rather outdated.
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,072
    tlg86 said:

    On rents...

    https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/nov/16/uk-rents-rising-zoopla

    Excluding London, rents across the UK were up by 6% annually, a figure that Zoopla said was a 14-year high.

    Rents in London are also starting to climb as people return to offices, with annual price growth of 1.6% recorded in the latest report, compared with falls of nearly 10% at the start of the year.


    It looks to me as though we're seeing the start of a permanent change. Almost as though the country is "levelling up".

    Higher rents is a good thing?
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,603
    .
    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant, depressing article.

    THE BAD GUYS ARE WINNING
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
    If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.

    The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
    If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
    Trump actually won the election in 2016 even if you dislike him and he lost and was removed in 2020, democracy still worked both times.
    It is faulty democracy when the "winner" garnered 2 million fewer votes than the "loser"
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,724

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    DavidL said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant, depressing article.

    THE BAD GUYS ARE WINNING
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
    If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.

    The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
    If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
    Indeed, the risks are real. The next time Trump supporters or the like seek to invade democratic institutions it will not be a joke which "only" killed 3 people. The failure to hold those responsible for that to account is deeply ominous.
    The US has got itself to a very bad place in which each half of the population regards the other as subhuman.
    And yet it keeps being held up as this shining beacon of civilisation. It really isn't.
    No, but it's better than the alternatives.
    Than Canada? Germany? South Korea? I can think of a stack of countries that aren't as insane and warmongery as America yet have better healthcare, education etc etc
    Both Germany and S.Korea have had their (ahem) ‘less democratic’ moments. Quite recently, too.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,981
    edited November 2021
    rcs1000 said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    Foxy said:

    IanB2 said:

    Foxy said:

    King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.

    What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.

    "The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.

    The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
    Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around? ;)
    The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
    Yes, it was a joke.

    Abandoning Christianity is known as progress ;)
    Abandoning Christianity will not lead to secular, highly educated atheists dominating, indeed atheists globally have a lower birthrate than the religious. If Christianity declines it will be Islam that largely fills the gap, especially in Europe
    I'm not sure that's true: the fastest growing portion of the US population is the ungodly.

    But it is interesting: in religious belief, as in so many areas, we are seeing real bifurcation and the hardening of extremes. There are more atheists than ever before, and also more religious fundamentalists. A body like the Church of England seems rather outdated.
    There was an article in The Sunday Times which is very interesting.

    How Pentecostalism took over the world

    Boosted by the support of Premier League stars, the faith is predicted to have a billion believers by 2050. Elle Hardy has been following the faithful

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-pentecostalism-took-over-the-world-h6rj66lsk
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,780
    MaxPB said:

    Rishi probably regretting not turning off furlough at the end of July. No appreciable damage to the jobs market from getting rid of it. Could have saved us ~£3.5bn and eased the labour shortage two months sooner. It's not just anecdote either, the number of vacancies seems to be stabilising so it's definitely not just my imagination seeing restaurants and cafés take down help wanted signs.

    Furlough was a good policy but the government clung on for too long and Rishi unwisely extended it too far out from the end date. That it was just two months is probably a good thing, there's places in the world that have still got job support schemes running, probably unnecessarily.

    Overall October looks like it's coming in very hot, hopefully it sets up a really solid Q4.

    160k new jobs in September announced this morning is pretty remarkable. But so were the manufacturing figures discussed in David Smith's column this weekend. I am a bit concerned that so much of the growth in jobs is coming in fairly low value, low profit, low wage sectors. We need more capital investment.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,719
    edited November 2021

    .

    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant, depressing article.

    THE BAD GUYS ARE WINNING
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
    If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.

    The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
    If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
    Trump actually won the election in 2016 even if you dislike him and he lost and was removed in 2020, democracy still worked both times.
    It is faulty democracy when the "winner" garnered 2 million fewer votes than the "loser"
    No it is still a democracy, just not one decided by the popular vote.

    Otherwise on your logic Harold Wilson's win in February 1974, Trudeau's win in September or Churchill's win in 1951 were also undemocratic because they won most seats despite losing the popular vote
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,165

    tlg86 said:

    On rents...

    https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/nov/16/uk-rents-rising-zoopla

    Excluding London, rents across the UK were up by 6% annually, a figure that Zoopla said was a 14-year high.

    Rents in London are also starting to climb as people return to offices, with annual price growth of 1.6% recorded in the latest report, compared with falls of nearly 10% at the start of the year.


    It looks to me as though we're seeing the start of a permanent change. Almost as though the country is "levelling up".

    Higher rents is a good thing?
    Not if you already lived outside London, I guess. But then I always think people oop north should be opposed to levelling up as it means more London types coming their way.
  • StockyStocky Posts: 9,653
    @Roger

    On yesterday's subject of best ever adverts, I really liked this one (I saw it at the cinema I think, not sure it was ever aired on TV):

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63dI_lIPM7k
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603

    rcs1000 said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    Foxy said:

    IanB2 said:

    Foxy said:

    King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.

    What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.

    "The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.

    The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
    Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around? ;)
    The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
    Yes, it was a joke.

    Abandoning Christianity is known as progress ;)
    Abandoning Christianity will not lead to secular, highly educated atheists dominating, indeed atheists globally have a lower birthrate than the religious. If Christianity declines it will be Islam that largely fills the gap, especially in Europe
    I'm not sure that's true: the fastest growing portion of the US population is the ungodly.

    But it is interesting: in religious belief, as in so many areas, we are seeing real bifurcation and the hardening of extremes. There are more atheists than ever before, and also more religious fundamentalists. A body like the Church of England seems rather outdated.
    There was an article in The Sunday Times which is was very interesting.

    How Pentecostalism took over the world

    Boosted by the support of Premier League stars, the faith is predicted to have a billion believers by 2050. Elle Hardy has been following the faithful

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-pentecostalism-took-over-the-world-h6rj66lsk
    It was a really interesting article. Feeds into the other one as well when you think about how Trump exploited the evangelical vote in 2016.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    rcs1000 said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    Foxy said:

    IanB2 said:

    Foxy said:

    King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.

    What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.

    "The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.

    The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
    Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around? ;)
    The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
    Yes, it was a joke.

    Abandoning Christianity is known as progress ;)
    Abandoning Christianity will not lead to secular, highly educated atheists dominating, indeed atheists globally have a lower birthrate than the religious. If Christianity declines it will be Islam that largely fills the gap, especially in Europe
    I'm not sure that's true: the fastest growing portion of the US population is the ungodly.

    But it is interesting: in religious belief, as in so many areas, we are seeing real bifurcation and the hardening of extremes. There are more atheists than ever before, and also more religious fundamentalists. A body like the Church of England seems rather outdated.
    If you're trying to say that atheism is akin to religious fundamentalism or in any way "extreme", you're are totally and laughably wrong.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    edited November 2021
    HYUFD said:

    .

    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant, depressing article.

    THE BAD GUYS ARE WINNING
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
    If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.

    The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
    If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
    Trump actually won the election in 2016 even if you dislike him and he lost and was removed in 2020, democracy still worked both times.
    It is faulty democracy when the "winner" garnered 2 million fewer votes than the "loser"
    No it is still a democracy, just not one decided by the popular vote.

    Otherwise on your logic Harold Wilson's win in February 1974, Trudeau's win in September or Churchill's win in 1951 were also undemocratic because they won most seats despite losing the popular vote
    "Faulty democracy" is not the same as "undemocratic"
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,780
    DavidL said:

    MaxPB said:

    Rishi probably regretting not turning off furlough at the end of July. No appreciable damage to the jobs market from getting rid of it. Could have saved us ~£3.5bn and eased the labour shortage two months sooner. It's not just anecdote either, the number of vacancies seems to be stabilising so it's definitely not just my imagination seeing restaurants and cafés take down help wanted signs.

    Furlough was a good policy but the government clung on for too long and Rishi unwisely extended it too far out from the end date. That it was just two months is probably a good thing, there's places in the world that have still got job support schemes running, probably unnecessarily.

    Overall October looks like it's coming in very hot, hopefully it sets up a really solid Q4.

    160k new jobs in September announced this morning is pretty remarkable. But so were the manufacturing figures discussed in David Smith's column this weekend. I am a bit concerned that so much of the growth in jobs is coming in fairly low value, low profit, low wage sectors. We need more capital investment.
    Firms are going to be very cautious about big capital equipment plans until they have more certainty about the future. People can be let go, but the interest payments on a new factory are forever.
  • Brilliant thread piece, Morris. Made my morning.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,719
    edited November 2021
    rcs1000 said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    Foxy said:

    IanB2 said:

    Foxy said:

    King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.

    What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.

    "The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.

    The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
    Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around? ;)
    The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
    Yes, it was a joke.

    Abandoning Christianity is known as progress ;)
    Abandoning Christianity will not lead to secular, highly educated atheists dominating, indeed atheists globally have a lower birthrate than the religious. If Christianity declines it will be Islam that largely fills the gap, especially in Europe
    I'm not sure that's true: the fastest growing portion of the US population is the ungodly.

    But it is interesting: in religious belief, as in so many areas, we are seeing real bifurcation and the hardening of extremes. There are more atheists than ever before, and also more religious fundamentalists. A body like the Church of England seems rather outdated.
    Globally it very much is true. In 2105 33% of global births were to Christians, 31% to Muslims and 10% to the religiously unaffiliated (including atheists and agnostics).

    By 2060 on current trends 36% of global births will be to Muslims, 35% to Christians and just 9% to the religiously unaffiliated

    https://www.pewforum.org/2017/04/05/the-changing-global-religious-landscape/.

    I do agree on your second paragraph, the fastest growth in religion globally is amongst evangelical Christians and Sunni Islam.

    The relatively liberal Church of England suits the largely secular UK but even there is in decline, the fastest growth in the Anglican church globally is in Africa where even the Anglican church is more evangelical, in the more liberal Anglican wing in the UK, Canada, the US, Australia and New Zealand there is decline. Although there is an evangelical wing of the Church of England it is smaller than the liberal wing now with a handful of Anglo Catholics too
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    Thread on documenting the detention camps in China:

    https://twitter.com/alisonkilling/status/1460243389060952074?s=21

    fpt from me:

    For me the most depressing and curious one is China. After the Deng Xiaoping reforms while not the end of history it did seem as though there was little chance of regression. What Xi has done, both on the mainland and in Hong Kong is simply dreadful and as the article notes, a huge regressive step. And largely unnecessary, given the wealth that a reforming China was delivering to its citizens.
    It rather depends on one's perspective. If you're a western democracy loving liberal then sure, Deng and Hu made China a much better place to live and do business. If you're the Chinese Communist Party it started the process of having to give up power to a democratically elected government. Unnecessary? Not really, it was an expected push back from the Chinese party elites staring their own obsolescence in the face. That we in the west were deluded enough to think that hope really lies in the Chinese lumpen proles is our fault.
    Yes well that is true. I suppose with sufficient repressive measures such a state can continue indefinitely.
  • rcs1000 said:

    DavidL said:

    MaxPB said:

    Rishi probably regretting not turning off furlough at the end of July. No appreciable damage to the jobs market from getting rid of it. Could have saved us ~£3.5bn and eased the labour shortage two months sooner. It's not just anecdote either, the number of vacancies seems to be stabilising so it's definitely not just my imagination seeing restaurants and cafés take down help wanted signs.

    Furlough was a good policy but the government clung on for too long and Rishi unwisely extended it too far out from the end date. That it was just two months is probably a good thing, there's places in the world that have still got job support schemes running, probably unnecessarily.

    Overall October looks like it's coming in very hot, hopefully it sets up a really solid Q4.

    160k new jobs in September announced this morning is pretty remarkable. But so were the manufacturing figures discussed in David Smith's column this weekend. I am a bit concerned that so much of the growth in jobs is coming in fairly low value, low profit, low wage sectors. We need more capital investment.
    Firms are going to be very cautious about big capital equipment plans until they have more certainty about the future. People can be let go, but the interest payments on a new factory are forever.
    Aren't the tax investment allowances for capital equipment now 130%?

  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    rcs1000 said:

    DavidL said:

    MaxPB said:

    Rishi probably regretting not turning off furlough at the end of July. No appreciable damage to the jobs market from getting rid of it. Could have saved us ~£3.5bn and eased the labour shortage two months sooner. It's not just anecdote either, the number of vacancies seems to be stabilising so it's definitely not just my imagination seeing restaurants and cafés take down help wanted signs.

    Furlough was a good policy but the government clung on for too long and Rishi unwisely extended it too far out from the end date. That it was just two months is probably a good thing, there's places in the world that have still got job support schemes running, probably unnecessarily.

    Overall October looks like it's coming in very hot, hopefully it sets up a really solid Q4.

    160k new jobs in September announced this morning is pretty remarkable. But so were the manufacturing figures discussed in David Smith's column this weekend. I am a bit concerned that so much of the growth in jobs is coming in fairly low value, low profit, low wage sectors. We need more capital investment.
    Firms are going to be very cautious about big capital equipment plans until they have more certainty about the future. People can be let go, but the interest payments on a new factory are forever.
    I suspect that the EU teetering on the edge of new lockdowns is going drag quite badly on our growth in Q1. Q4 looks like it will come in much higher than Q3, the real time measures are almost all above pre-pandemic levels. Only flight traffic and tourism is still down.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,724
    HYUFD said:

    .

    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant, depressing article.

    THE BAD GUYS ARE WINNING
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
    If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.

    The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
    If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
    Trump actually won the election in 2016 even if you dislike him and he lost and was removed in 2020, democracy still worked both times.
    It is faulty democracy when the "winner" garnered 2 million fewer votes than the "loser"
    No it is still a democracy, just not one decided by the popular vote.

    Otherwise on your logic Harold Wilson's win in February 1974, Trudeau's win in September or Churchill's win in 1951 were also undemocratic because they won most seats despite losing the popular vote
    Are you saying the UK is a ‘perfect’ democracy? Because many, including me, would say that it isn’t. We have a workable system, but it’s by no means ‘perfect’. Local government is frequently particularly undemocratic.
  • CiceroCicero Posts: 2,182
    HYUFD said:

    .

    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant, depressing article.

    THE BAD GUYS ARE WINNING
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
    If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.

    The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
    If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
    Trump actually won the election in 2016 even if you dislike him and he lost and was removed in 2020, democracy still worked both times.
    It is faulty democracy when the "winner" garnered 2 million fewer votes than the "loser"
    No it is still a democracy, just not one decided by the popular vote.

    Otherwise on your logic Harold Wilson's win in February 1974, Trudeau's win in September or Churchill's win in 1951 were also undemocratic because they won most seats despite losing the popular vote
    Well yes. A democracy that does not accurately express the popular will is not particularly democratic, it may be still be liberal, but it is not a functioning democracy if the clearly expressed will of the voters is ignored, which is what keeps happening. Then you act all surprised when the voters get a bit ticked off.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    TOPPING said:

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    Thread on documenting the detention camps in China:

    https://twitter.com/alisonkilling/status/1460243389060952074?s=21

    fpt from me:

    For me the most depressing and curious one is China. After the Deng Xiaoping reforms while not the end of history it did seem as though there was little chance of regression. What Xi has done, both on the mainland and in Hong Kong is simply dreadful and as the article notes, a huge regressive step. And largely unnecessary, given the wealth that a reforming China was delivering to its citizens.
    It rather depends on one's perspective. If you're a western democracy loving liberal then sure, Deng and Hu made China a much better place to live and do business. If you're the Chinese Communist Party it started the process of having to give up power to a democratically elected government. Unnecessary? Not really, it was an expected push back from the Chinese party elites staring their own obsolescence in the face. That we in the west were deluded enough to think that hope really lies in the Chinese lumpen proles is our fault.
    Yes well that is true. I suppose with sufficient repressive measures such a state can continue indefinitely.
    And so it has come to pass. It's a sad reality of what the world is and what we in the west will tolerate for cheap goods.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,603
    HYUFD said:

    .

    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant, depressing article.

    THE BAD GUYS ARE WINNING
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
    If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.

    The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
    If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
    Trump actually won the election in 2016 even if you dislike him and he lost and was removed in 2020, democracy still worked both times.
    It is faulty democracy when the "winner" garnered 2 million fewer votes than the "loser"
    No it is still a democracy, just not one decided by the popular vote.

    Otherwise on your logic Harold Wilson's win in February 1974, Trudeau's win in September or Churchill's win in 1951 were also undemocratic because they won most seats despite losing the popular vote
    Your first statement is an oxymoron.

    Your system works when parties comply. Imagine.the furore had Trump won the popular vote but lost the EC.

    Back to your post before last You are often an impressive poster, but you do seem shackled to the badge politicians wear. Trump is fine because he wears a Republican pin. It doesn't matter that he almost took down the Constitution and will try again in 2024. On that basis if Nick Griffin were to campaign for the Tories would that make him a good guy?
  • Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    DavidL said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant, depressing article.

    THE BAD GUYS ARE WINNING
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
    If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.

    The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
    If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
    Indeed, the risks are real. The next time Trump supporters or the like seek to invade democratic institutions it will not be a joke which "only" killed 3 people. The failure to hold those responsible for that to account is deeply ominous.
    The US has got itself to a very bad place in which each half of the population regards the other as subhuman.
    And yet it keeps being held up as this shining beacon of civilisation. It really isn't.
    No, but it's better than the alternatives.
    Than Canada? Germany? South Korea? I can think of a stack of countries that aren't as insane and warmongery as America yet have better healthcare, education etc etc
    Good morning

    I have experience of Canada's health care and it is very poor and not a patch on our NHS
  • kjhkjh Posts: 10,469
    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    Foxy said:

    IanB2 said:

    Foxy said:

    King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.

    What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.

    "The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.

    The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
    Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around? ;)
    The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
    Yes, it was a joke.

    Abandoning Christianity is known as progress ;)
    Abandoning Christianity will not lead to secular, highly educated atheists dominating, indeed atheists globally have a lower birthrate than the religious. If Christianity declines it will be Islam that largely fills the gap, especially in Europe
    I'm not sure that follows. Catholics used to have high birth rates, but don't now in 1st world countries. Generally I think the birth rate is more determined by how developed a country is. A reason amongst others why we should help 3rd world countries.
  • DavidL said:

    MaxPB said:

    Rishi probably regretting not turning off furlough at the end of July. No appreciable damage to the jobs market from getting rid of it. Could have saved us ~£3.5bn and eased the labour shortage two months sooner. It's not just anecdote either, the number of vacancies seems to be stabilising so it's definitely not just my imagination seeing restaurants and cafés take down help wanted signs.

    Furlough was a good policy but the government clung on for too long and Rishi unwisely extended it too far out from the end date. That it was just two months is probably a good thing, there's places in the world that have still got job support schemes running, probably unnecessarily.

    Overall October looks like it's coming in very hot, hopefully it sets up a really solid Q4.

    160k new jobs in September announced this morning is pretty remarkable. But so were the manufacturing figures discussed in David Smith's column this weekend. I am a bit concerned that so much of the growth in jobs is coming in fairly low value, low profit, low wage sectors. We need more capital investment.
    To be fair to Rishi next door there is a wonky shopping trolley who was deciding whether to continue lockdown restrictions or not back in May/June/July, under intense pressure from both sides (open up backbenchers and zero covid lockdown maniacs on each wing). No wonder he just extended the scheme until the autumn.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,780
    theProle said:

    rcs1000 said:

    tlg86 said:

    So rents are rising at fastest pace in 13 years, petrol has never been so expensive in my entire adult life, we’ve decided not to make rail travel potentially cheaper - how long until Rishi messes with student loans as trailed to top it all off?

    You honestly think tickets for HS2 trains will be...cheaper?
    Mobile phone prices didn't rise despite the phone operators splurging untold billions on 3G licenses.
    The key differences include:

    1) Phones had like for like competition which drove contract prices down to little more than the margimal costs, railways don't. This is why I get unlimited everything except data, and lots of that for £7.50 a month, and that's without having bothered to shop around much.

    2) A major market for high speed rail (but not really for phones) is people travelling on expense accounts, who couldn't care less what they are spending as its not their cash.
    I'm not sure (2) isn't true of mobile companies - Vodafone and EE have huge corporate teams, and that is very high margin business.

    My point is more this: mobile phones and rail are similar in that the marginal cost of delivery is close to zero. Once you have capacity, a passenger on a train or a phone call cost the operator nothing (or thereabouts).

    They should therefore both be in the revenue maximization business.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,719
    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    .

    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant, depressing article.

    THE BAD GUYS ARE WINNING
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
    If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.

    The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
    If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
    Trump actually won the election in 2016 even if you dislike him and he lost and was removed in 2020, democracy still worked both times.
    It is faulty democracy when the "winner" garnered 2 million fewer votes than the "loser"
    No it is still a democracy, just not one decided by the popular vote.

    Otherwise on your logic Harold Wilson's win in February 1974, Trudeau's win in September or Churchill's win in 1951 were also undemocratic because they won most seats despite losing the popular vote
    "Faulty democracy" is not the same as "undemocratic"
    Indeed, so Trump's win in 2016 was not undemocratic then
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    DavidL said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant, depressing article.

    THE BAD GUYS ARE WINNING
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
    If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.

    The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
    If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
    Indeed, the risks are real. The next time Trump supporters or the like seek to invade democratic institutions it will not be a joke which "only" killed 3 people. The failure to hold those responsible for that to account is deeply ominous.
    The US has got itself to a very bad place in which each half of the population regards the other as subhuman.
    And yet it keeps being held up as this shining beacon of civilisation. It really isn't.
    No, but it's better than the alternatives.
    Than Canada? Germany? South Korea? I can think of a stack of countries that aren't as insane and warmongery as America yet have better healthcare, education etc etc
    Good morning

    I have experience of Canada's health care and it is very poor and not a patch on our NHS
    Do you have some kind of metrics to back that up, or are you basing your very broad conclusion on your necessarily very limited personal experience?
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,719
    rcs1000 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Sinn Fein VI at 37% in the Republic of Ireland: a record high.

    SF also leading VI in Northern Ireland. Irish politics in both north and south are undergoing dramatic change.

    Completely ignoring the fact FF and FG combined are on 41% in the latest Irish poll still comfortably ahead of SF.

    Completely ignoring too the latest NI poll actually gives a 3% swing from SF to the DUP and Unionist parties combined still comfortably with a higher voteshare than Nationalist parties
    I'm not sure 41 vs 37 is a particularly comfortable lead.
    For a FF and FG government in midterm with SF the main opposition party it is
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,780
    MaxPB said:

    rcs1000 said:

    DavidL said:

    MaxPB said:

    Rishi probably regretting not turning off furlough at the end of July. No appreciable damage to the jobs market from getting rid of it. Could have saved us ~£3.5bn and eased the labour shortage two months sooner. It's not just anecdote either, the number of vacancies seems to be stabilising so it's definitely not just my imagination seeing restaurants and cafés take down help wanted signs.

    Furlough was a good policy but the government clung on for too long and Rishi unwisely extended it too far out from the end date. That it was just two months is probably a good thing, there's places in the world that have still got job support schemes running, probably unnecessarily.

    Overall October looks like it's coming in very hot, hopefully it sets up a really solid Q4.

    160k new jobs in September announced this morning is pretty remarkable. But so were the manufacturing figures discussed in David Smith's column this weekend. I am a bit concerned that so much of the growth in jobs is coming in fairly low value, low profit, low wage sectors. We need more capital investment.
    Firms are going to be very cautious about big capital equipment plans until they have more certainty about the future. People can be let go, but the interest payments on a new factory are forever.
    I suspect that the EU teetering on the edge of new lockdowns is going drag quite badly on our growth in Q1. Q4 looks like it will come in much higher than Q3, the real time measures are almost all above pre-pandemic levels. Only flight traffic and tourism is still down.
    Most of the growth in the UK (and the US) is the result of domestic demand returning, so I'm not sure that it will have that big an impact.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    HYUFD said:

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    .

    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant, depressing article.

    THE BAD GUYS ARE WINNING
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
    If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.

    The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
    If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
    Trump actually won the election in 2016 even if you dislike him and he lost and was removed in 2020, democracy still worked both times.
    It is faulty democracy when the "winner" garnered 2 million fewer votes than the "loser"
    No it is still a democracy, just not one decided by the popular vote.

    Otherwise on your logic Harold Wilson's win in February 1974, Trudeau's win in September or Churchill's win in 1951 were also undemocratic because they won most seats despite losing the popular vote
    "Faulty democracy" is not the same as "undemocratic"
    Indeed, so Trump's win in 2016 was not undemocratic then
    Your point is, what? You're the one that introduced the word "undemocratic" into proceedings. Straw man slayed, well done, you've added nothing.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,884
    HYUFD said:

    Sinn Fein VI at 37% in the Republic of Ireland: a record high.

    SF also leading VI in Northern Ireland. Irish politics in both north and south are undergoing dramatic change.

    Completely ignoring the fact the governing FF and FG combined are on 41% in the latest Irish poll still comfortably ahead of SF.

    Michael Martin has said he's open to a FF/SF coalition after the next election. He probably regrets not doing it after the last one.
  • Farooq said:

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    DavidL said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant, depressing article.

    THE BAD GUYS ARE WINNING
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
    If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.

    The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
    If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
    Indeed, the risks are real. The next time Trump supporters or the like seek to invade democratic institutions it will not be a joke which "only" killed 3 people. The failure to hold those responsible for that to account is deeply ominous.
    The US has got itself to a very bad place in which each half of the population regards the other as subhuman.
    And yet it keeps being held up as this shining beacon of civilisation. It really isn't.
    No, but it's better than the alternatives.
    Than Canada? Germany? South Korea? I can think of a stack of countries that aren't as insane and warmongery as America yet have better healthcare, education etc etc
    Good morning

    I have experience of Canada's health care and it is very poor and not a patch on our NHS
    Do you have some kind of metrics to back that up, or are you basing your very broad conclusion on your necessarily very limited personal experience?
    "The failure to hold those responsible for that to account is deeply ominous."

    Indeed. Historians will marvel at how on earth US democracy did not defend itself at this crucial juncture and save the system before it was too late.

    The clock is now very much ticking. Either they stop Trump or he will stop the republic.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,724
    HYUFD said:

    rcs1000 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Sinn Fein VI at 37% in the Republic of Ireland: a record high.

    SF also leading VI in Northern Ireland. Irish politics in both north and south are undergoing dramatic change.

    Completely ignoring the fact FF and FG combined are on 41% in the latest Irish poll still comfortably ahead of SF.

    Completely ignoring too the latest NI poll actually gives a 3% swing from SF to the DUP and Unionist parties combined still comfortably with a higher voteshare than Nationalist parties
    I'm not sure 41 vs 37 is a particularly comfortable lead.
    For a FF and FG government in midterm with SF the main opposition party it is
    It wasn’t long ago that the idea of a FF/FG Coalition would have been laughed out of court.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,165
    rcs1000 said:

    theProle said:

    rcs1000 said:

    tlg86 said:

    So rents are rising at fastest pace in 13 years, petrol has never been so expensive in my entire adult life, we’ve decided not to make rail travel potentially cheaper - how long until Rishi messes with student loans as trailed to top it all off?

    You honestly think tickets for HS2 trains will be...cheaper?
    Mobile phone prices didn't rise despite the phone operators splurging untold billions on 3G licenses.
    The key differences include:

    1) Phones had like for like competition which drove contract prices down to little more than the margimal costs, railways don't. This is why I get unlimited everything except data, and lots of that for £7.50 a month, and that's without having bothered to shop around much.

    2) A major market for high speed rail (but not really for phones) is people travelling on expense accounts, who couldn't care less what they are spending as its not their cash.
    I'm not sure (2) isn't true of mobile companies - Vodafone and EE have huge corporate teams, and that is very high margin business.

    My point is more this: mobile phones and rail are similar in that the marginal cost of delivery is close to zero. Once you have capacity, a passenger on a train or a phone call cost the operator nothing (or thereabouts).

    They should therefore both be in the revenue maximization business.
    I'm not an economist, but I reckon the OPEX to CAPEX ratio (is that a thing?) is rather larger for railways than for mobile phone networks. My point is, the mobile phone companies probably spent a fortune on the CAPEX as it probably doesn't need much ongoing spending. But that isn't true with railways. They need looking after and that costs a lot of money.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,780
    HYUFD said:

    rcs1000 said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    Foxy said:

    IanB2 said:

    Foxy said:

    King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.

    What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.

    "The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.

    The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
    Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around? ;)
    The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
    Yes, it was a joke.

    Abandoning Christianity is known as progress ;)
    Abandoning Christianity will not lead to secular, highly educated atheists dominating, indeed atheists globally have a lower birthrate than the religious. If Christianity declines it will be Islam that largely fills the gap, especially in Europe
    I'm not sure that's true: the fastest growing portion of the US population is the ungodly.

    But it is interesting: in religious belief, as in so many areas, we are seeing real bifurcation and the hardening of extremes. There are more atheists than ever before, and also more religious fundamentalists. A body like the Church of England seems rather outdated.
    Globally it very much is true. In 2105 33% of global births were to Christians, 31% to Muslims and 10% to the religiously unaffiliated (including atheists and agnostics).

    By 2060 on current trends 36% of global births will be to Muslims, 35% to Christians and just 9% to the religiously unaffiliated

    https://www.pewforum.org/2017/04/05/the-changing-global-religious-landscape/.

    I do agree on your second paragraph, the fastest growth in religion globally is amongst evangelical Christians and Sunni Islam.

    The relatively liberal Church of England suits the largely secular UK but even there is in decline, the fastest growth in the Anglican church globally is in Africa where even the Anglican church is more evangelical, in the more liberal Anglican wing in the UK, Canada, the US, Australia and New Zealand there is decline. Although there is an evangelical wing of the Church of England it is smaller than the liberal wing now with a handful of Anglo Catholics too
    But @HYUFD - in the 1960s, atheism was much less common in the UK than it is today. Therefore almost everyone was born to religious parents.

    And yet the proportion of atheists has continued to rise.

  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    tlg86 said:

    On rents...

    https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/nov/16/uk-rents-rising-zoopla

    Excluding London, rents across the UK were up by 6% annually, a figure that Zoopla said was a 14-year high.

    Rents in London are also starting to climb as people return to offices, with annual price growth of 1.6% recorded in the latest report, compared with falls of nearly 10% at the start of the year.


    It looks to me as though we're seeing the start of a permanent change. Almost as though the country is "levelling up".

    I picked the right time to become a landlord.
    I hope you fixed your mortgage
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 60,004
    edited November 2021
    Farooq said:

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    DavidL said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant, depressing article.

    THE BAD GUYS ARE WINNING
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
    If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.

    The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
    If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
    Indeed, the risks are real. The next time Trump supporters or the like seek to invade democratic institutions it will not be a joke which "only" killed 3 people. The failure to hold those responsible for that to account is deeply ominous.
    The US has got itself to a very bad place in which each half of the population regards the other as subhuman.
    And yet it keeps being held up as this shining beacon of civilisation. It really isn't.
    No, but it's better than the alternatives.
    Than Canada? Germany? South Korea? I can think of a stack of countries that aren't as insane and warmongery as America yet have better healthcare, education etc etc
    Good morning

    I have experience of Canada's health care and it is very poor and not a patch on our NHS
    Do you have some kind of metrics to back that up, or are you basing your very broad conclusion on your necessarily very limited personal experience?
    My son has suffered serious mental health disorder over the last three years in BC and I have almost daily contact with him, his wife and family and his treatments including 16 sessions of ECT

    He hasn't even got a GP, and believe me I am not cataloguing our interactions over these last few years with the BC health service on this forum to respond to your sniping comment

    It is too distressing
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    rcs1000 said:

    MaxPB said:

    rcs1000 said:

    DavidL said:

    MaxPB said:

    Rishi probably regretting not turning off furlough at the end of July. No appreciable damage to the jobs market from getting rid of it. Could have saved us ~£3.5bn and eased the labour shortage two months sooner. It's not just anecdote either, the number of vacancies seems to be stabilising so it's definitely not just my imagination seeing restaurants and cafés take down help wanted signs.

    Furlough was a good policy but the government clung on for too long and Rishi unwisely extended it too far out from the end date. That it was just two months is probably a good thing, there's places in the world that have still got job support schemes running, probably unnecessarily.

    Overall October looks like it's coming in very hot, hopefully it sets up a really solid Q4.

    160k new jobs in September announced this morning is pretty remarkable. But so were the manufacturing figures discussed in David Smith's column this weekend. I am a bit concerned that so much of the growth in jobs is coming in fairly low value, low profit, low wage sectors. We need more capital investment.
    Firms are going to be very cautious about big capital equipment plans until they have more certainty about the future. People can be let go, but the interest payments on a new factory are forever.
    I suspect that the EU teetering on the edge of new lockdowns is going drag quite badly on our growth in Q1. Q4 looks like it will come in much higher than Q3, the real time measures are almost all above pre-pandemic levels. Only flight traffic and tourism is still down.
    Most of the growth in the UK (and the US) is the result of domestic demand returning, so I'm not sure that it will have that big an impact.
    Yes which is why I think Q4 will be fine but Q1 will be tough. The catch up element to our GDP will need external demand and countries in lockdown don't tend to have a lot of it.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    Farooq said:

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    DavidL said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant, depressing article.

    THE BAD GUYS ARE WINNING
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
    If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.

    The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
    If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
    Indeed, the risks are real. The next time Trump supporters or the like seek to invade democratic institutions it will not be a joke which "only" killed 3 people. The failure to hold those responsible for that to account is deeply ominous.
    The US has got itself to a very bad place in which each half of the population regards the other as subhuman.
    And yet it keeps being held up as this shining beacon of civilisation. It really isn't.
    No, but it's better than the alternatives.
    Than Canada? Germany? South Korea? I can think of a stack of countries that aren't as insane and warmongery as America yet have better healthcare, education etc etc
    Good morning

    I have experience of Canada's health care and it is very poor and not a patch on our NHS
    Do you have some kind of metrics to back that up, or are you basing your very broad conclusion on your necessarily very limited personal experience?
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5826705/

    it's complicated
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,059
    MaxPB said:

    rcs1000 said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    Foxy said:

    IanB2 said:

    Foxy said:

    King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.

    What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.

    "The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.

    The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
    Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around? ;)
    The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
    Yes, it was a joke.

    Abandoning Christianity is known as progress ;)
    Abandoning Christianity will not lead to secular, highly educated atheists dominating, indeed atheists globally have a lower birthrate than the religious. If Christianity declines it will be Islam that largely fills the gap, especially in Europe
    I'm not sure that's true: the fastest growing portion of the US population is the ungodly.

    But it is interesting: in religious belief, as in so many areas, we are seeing real bifurcation and the hardening of extremes. There are more atheists than ever before, and also more religious fundamentalists. A body like the Church of England seems rather outdated.
    There was an article in The Sunday Times which is was very interesting.

    How Pentecostalism took over the world

    Boosted by the support of Premier League stars, the faith is predicted to have a billion believers by 2050. Elle Hardy has been following the faithful

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-pentecostalism-took-over-the-world-h6rj66lsk
    It was a really interesting article. Feeds into the other one as well when you think about how Trump exploited the evangelical vote in 2016.
    Following on from my post last night about my MA, much of what I wrote in my assignment on the historiography of English Reformation iconoclasm concentrated on the whiggish (and indeed Marxist) teleological concept of history as “progress”. Until the 1970s the English Reformation was considered a “good thing” - a welcomed rapid introduction of modernity that dragged England out of medieval superstition. More recent revisionists (Scarisbrick, Haigh, Duffy et al) have taken a bottom up approach, convincingly (in my view) showing that the Reformation was a slowly accepted political project foisted by a “metropolitan elite” on an unwilling population who deeply resented giving up a popular and vibrant faith. Both sides in the Brexit debate can push their favoured metaphor on the event - we were taken *out* of Europe by the Metropolitan Elite. Go figure.

    The wider issue is that anyone who speaks of another “being on the wrong side of history” is talking out of their behind. History doesn’t take sides, it just happens. As MD pointed out in the header it takes massive detours to unexpected places. Without the rise of Islam essentially separating the northern side of the Med from the southern we would not have a Europe as we know it. The Mediterranean Sea would still be at the centre of our world (clue’s in the name) rather than a border. No one saw that coming at the time.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,719
    rcs1000 said:

    HYUFD said:

    rcs1000 said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    Foxy said:

    IanB2 said:

    Foxy said:

    King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.

    What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.

    "The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.

    The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
    Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around? ;)
    The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
    Yes, it was a joke.

    Abandoning Christianity is known as progress ;)
    Abandoning Christianity will not lead to secular, highly educated atheists dominating, indeed atheists globally have a lower birthrate than the religious. If Christianity declines it will be Islam that largely fills the gap, especially in Europe
    I'm not sure that's true: the fastest growing portion of the US population is the ungodly.

    But it is interesting: in religious belief, as in so many areas, we are seeing real bifurcation and the hardening of extremes. There are more atheists than ever before, and also more religious fundamentalists. A body like the Church of England seems rather outdated.
    Globally it very much is true. In 2105 33% of global births were to Christians, 31% to Muslims and 10% to the religiously unaffiliated (including atheists and agnostics).

    By 2060 on current trends 36% of global births will be to Muslims, 35% to Christians and just 9% to the religiously unaffiliated

    https://www.pewforum.org/2017/04/05/the-changing-global-religious-landscape/.

    I do agree on your second paragraph, the fastest growth in religion globally is amongst evangelical Christians and Sunni Islam.

    The relatively liberal Church of England suits the largely secular UK but even there is in decline, the fastest growth in the Anglican church globally is in Africa where even the Anglican church is more evangelical, in the more liberal Anglican wing in the UK, Canada, the US, Australia and New Zealand there is decline. Although there is an evangelical wing of the Church of England it is smaller than the liberal wing now with a handful of Anglo Catholics too
    But @HYUFD - in the 1960s, atheism was much less common in the UK than it is today. Therefore almost everyone was born to religious parents.

    And yet the proportion of atheists has continued to rise.

    That is not entirely true, there were a fair number of atheists and agnostics in the UK in the 1960s. However churchgoing has declined significantly.

    However more significant still is the decline in the UK birthrate, now below replacement level and that means that the agnostic majority currently in the UK could actually decline percentage wise by 2050 as evangelical Christians and Muslims both already in the population and those who arrive as immigrants have significantly more children per head.

    Indeed the less white the UK becomes generally the more religious it will be (with the exception of Orientals)
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,884

    Either they stop Trump or he will stop the republic.

    There's no legal route to stopping him and enough morons with goatees and Oakleys are going to vote for him

    Barring an actuarial unlikelihood, it's over.
  • HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant, depressing article.

    THE BAD GUYS ARE WINNING
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
    If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.

    The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
    If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
    Trump actually won the election in 2016 even if you dislike him and he lost and was removed in 2020, democracy still worked both times.
    Trump did win the election in 2016 and he was inaugurated. The Democrat in the White House didn't try to incite a riot to prevent it and there was a peaceful transfer of power in 2017.

    It didn't work in 2020, there was no peaceful transfer of power in 2021. Power still got transferred, but it wasn't peaceful.

    Now GOP apparatchiks are attempting to subvert democracy in the future in a way Trump attempted to do in 2021. That needs calling out unapologetically and without prevarication for the evil that it is.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,780
    tlg86 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    theProle said:

    rcs1000 said:

    tlg86 said:

    So rents are rising at fastest pace in 13 years, petrol has never been so expensive in my entire adult life, we’ve decided not to make rail travel potentially cheaper - how long until Rishi messes with student loans as trailed to top it all off?

    You honestly think tickets for HS2 trains will be...cheaper?
    Mobile phone prices didn't rise despite the phone operators splurging untold billions on 3G licenses.
    The key differences include:

    1) Phones had like for like competition which drove contract prices down to little more than the margimal costs, railways don't. This is why I get unlimited everything except data, and lots of that for £7.50 a month, and that's without having bothered to shop around much.

    2) A major market for high speed rail (but not really for phones) is people travelling on expense accounts, who couldn't care less what they are spending as its not their cash.
    I'm not sure (2) isn't true of mobile companies - Vodafone and EE have huge corporate teams, and that is very high margin business.

    My point is more this: mobile phones and rail are similar in that the marginal cost of delivery is close to zero. Once you have capacity, a passenger on a train or a phone call cost the operator nothing (or thereabouts).

    They should therefore both be in the revenue maximization business.
    I'm not an economist, but I reckon the OPEX to CAPEX ratio (is that a thing?) is rather larger for railways than for mobile phone networks. My point is, the mobile phone companies probably spent a fortune on the CAPEX as it probably doesn't need much ongoing spending. But that isn't true with railways. They need looking after and that costs a lot of money.
    Mobile phone companies spend fortunes on advertising, so I'm not sure that's entirely true.

    More seriously, yes mobile phone networks may have lower marginal costs. But both industries are highly capital intensive (much more so than average).
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    Farooq said:

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    DavidL said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant, depressing article.

    THE BAD GUYS ARE WINNING
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
    If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.

    The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
    If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
    Indeed, the risks are real. The next time Trump supporters or the like seek to invade democratic institutions it will not be a joke which "only" killed 3 people. The failure to hold those responsible for that to account is deeply ominous.
    The US has got itself to a very bad place in which each half of the population regards the other as subhuman.
    And yet it keeps being held up as this shining beacon of civilisation. It really isn't.
    No, but it's better than the alternatives.
    Than Canada? Germany? South Korea? I can think of a stack of countries that aren't as insane and warmongery as America yet have better healthcare, education etc etc
    Good morning

    I have experience of Canada's health care and it is very poor and not a patch on our NHS
    Do you have some kind of metrics to back that up, or are you basing your very broad conclusion on your necessarily very limited personal experience?
    My son has suffered serious mental health disorder over the last three years in BC and I have almost daily contact with him, his wife and family and his treatments including 16 sessions of ECT

    He hasn't even got a GP, and believe me I am not cataloguing our interactions over these last few years with the BC health service on this forum to respond to your sniping comment

    It is too distressing
    Sorry to hear it. But if ECT is what he needs he may be better off there than here. Bloody difficult to get on the NHS
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    edited November 2021
    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    Foxy said:

    IanB2 said:

    Foxy said:

    King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.

    What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.

    "The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.

    The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
    Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around? ;)
    The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
    Yes, it was a joke.

    Abandoning Christianity is known as progress ;)
    Abandoning Christianity will not lead to secular, highly educated atheists dominating, indeed atheists globally have a lower birthrate than the religious. If Christianity declines it will be Islam that largely fills the gap, especially in Europe
    I'm not sure that follows. Catholics used to have high birth rates, but don't now in 1st world countries. Generally I think the birth rate is more determined by how developed a country is. A reason amongst others why we should help 3rd world countries.
    From memory birth rate has a lot to do the probability of children surviving childhood followed by contraception
    and education.

    The problem for Africa is that there is a 30 year or so window during which child mortality rates drop but parents continue to have large families based on the old, far higher, mortality rates. Only after 1 or 2 generations of low child mortality rates does things then change.
  • Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    DavidL said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant, depressing article.

    THE BAD GUYS ARE WINNING
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
    If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.

    The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
    If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
    Indeed, the risks are real. The next time Trump supporters or the like seek to invade democratic institutions it will not be a joke which "only" killed 3 people. The failure to hold those responsible for that to account is deeply ominous.
    The US has got itself to a very bad place in which each half of the population regards the other as subhuman.
    And yet it keeps being held up as this shining beacon of civilisation. It really isn't.
    No, but it's better than the alternatives.
    No, it isn't.

    It may have been once, but the USA's democracy is inferior to almost any nation in western Europe, to Canada, to Australia, New Zealand, Japan etc

    The USA is now very much in the second-rung of inadequate democracies.
  • IshmaelZ said:

    Farooq said:

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    DavidL said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant, depressing article.

    THE BAD GUYS ARE WINNING
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
    If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.

    The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
    If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
    Indeed, the risks are real. The next time Trump supporters or the like seek to invade democratic institutions it will not be a joke which "only" killed 3 people. The failure to hold those responsible for that to account is deeply ominous.
    The US has got itself to a very bad place in which each half of the population regards the other as subhuman.
    And yet it keeps being held up as this shining beacon of civilisation. It really isn't.
    No, but it's better than the alternatives.
    Than Canada? Germany? South Korea? I can think of a stack of countries that aren't as insane and warmongery as America yet have better healthcare, education etc etc
    Good morning

    I have experience of Canada's health care and it is very poor and not a patch on our NHS
    Do you have some kind of metrics to back that up, or are you basing your very broad conclusion on your necessarily very limited personal experience?
    My son has suffered serious mental health disorder over the last three years in BC and I have almost daily contact with him, his wife and family and his treatments including 16 sessions of ECT

    He hasn't even got a GP, and believe me I am not cataloguing our interactions over these last few years with the BC health service on this forum to respond to your sniping comment

    It is too distressing
    Sorry to hear it. But if ECT is what he needs he may be better off there than here. Bloody difficult to get on the NHS
    It was an utter failure and has not helped him at all, notwithstanding the agonies of going through it
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,719
    edited November 2021

    HYUFD said:

    rcs1000 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Sinn Fein VI at 37% in the Republic of Ireland: a record high.

    SF also leading VI in Northern Ireland. Irish politics in both north and south are undergoing dramatic change.

    Completely ignoring the fact FF and FG combined are on 41% in the latest Irish poll still comfortably ahead of SF.

    Completely ignoring too the latest NI poll actually gives a 3% swing from SF to the DUP and Unionist parties combined still comfortably with a higher voteshare than Nationalist parties
    I'm not sure 41 vs 37 is a particularly comfortable lead.
    For a FF and FG government in midterm with SF the main opposition party it is
    It wasn’t long ago that the idea of a FF/FG Coalition would have been laughed out of court.
    FF and FG are the main parties of the centre right in Ireland, just FG a bit more economically conservative and FF a bit more socially conservative (and both of course if you knew your history actually emerged from SF anyway, SF is older than both, just FG's predecessor party broke away from SF over the Anglo Irish Treaty with De Valera breaking from SF shortly after to form FF).

  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    IshmaelZ said:

    Farooq said:

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    DavidL said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant, depressing article.

    THE BAD GUYS ARE WINNING
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
    If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.

    The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
    If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
    Indeed, the risks are real. The next time Trump supporters or the like seek to invade democratic institutions it will not be a joke which "only" killed 3 people. The failure to hold those responsible for that to account is deeply ominous.
    The US has got itself to a very bad place in which each half of the population regards the other as subhuman.
    And yet it keeps being held up as this shining beacon of civilisation. It really isn't.
    No, but it's better than the alternatives.
    Than Canada? Germany? South Korea? I can think of a stack of countries that aren't as insane and warmongery as America yet have better healthcare, education etc etc
    Good morning

    I have experience of Canada's health care and it is very poor and not a patch on our NHS
    Do you have some kind of metrics to back that up, or are you basing your very broad conclusion on your necessarily very limited personal experience?
    My son has suffered serious mental health disorder over the last three years in BC and I have almost daily contact with him, his wife and family and his treatments including 16 sessions of ECT

    He hasn't even got a GP, and believe me I am not cataloguing our interactions over these last few years with the BC health service on this forum to respond to your sniping comment

    It is too distressing
    Sorry to hear it. But if ECT is what he needs he may be better off there than here. Bloody difficult to get on the NHS
    It was an utter failure and has not helped him at all, notwithstanding the agonies of going through it
    Shit. Really sorry to hear that. Tremendous sympathy.
  • The winner of the by-election to the House of Lords was Lord Hacking. He originally entered the House of Lords in 1972 as a conservative but defected to Labour in 1998 over the European and law and order policies of William Hague.

    https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/lords-communications/by-elections/hereditary-peers-by-election-result-simon.pdf

  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,719
    Dura_Ace said:

    HYUFD said:

    Sinn Fein VI at 37% in the Republic of Ireland: a record high.

    SF also leading VI in Northern Ireland. Irish politics in both north and south are undergoing dramatic change.

    Completely ignoring the fact the governing FF and FG combined are on 41% in the latest Irish poll still comfortably ahead of SF.

    Michael Martin has said he's open to a FF/SF coalition after the next election. He probably regrets not doing it after the last one.
    He also said “That said, at the moment, I think Sinn Féin’s policy platform on a range of issues would make it very difficult for us to coalesce with them.”

    https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/ff-tds-would-not-exclude-sinn-féin-coalition-after-next-election-1.4478483
  • Stocky said:

    @Roger

    On yesterday's subject of best ever adverts, I really liked this one (I saw it at the cinema I think, not sure it was ever aired on TV):

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63dI_lIPM7k

    It's a pretty ad, but the branding is weak.

    This one still makes me chuckle a quarter of a century on:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMRy8bjdohs
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,165
    rcs1000 said:

    tlg86 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    theProle said:

    rcs1000 said:

    tlg86 said:

    So rents are rising at fastest pace in 13 years, petrol has never been so expensive in my entire adult life, we’ve decided not to make rail travel potentially cheaper - how long until Rishi messes with student loans as trailed to top it all off?

    You honestly think tickets for HS2 trains will be...cheaper?
    Mobile phone prices didn't rise despite the phone operators splurging untold billions on 3G licenses.
    The key differences include:

    1) Phones had like for like competition which drove contract prices down to little more than the margimal costs, railways don't. This is why I get unlimited everything except data, and lots of that for £7.50 a month, and that's without having bothered to shop around much.

    2) A major market for high speed rail (but not really for phones) is people travelling on expense accounts, who couldn't care less what they are spending as its not their cash.
    I'm not sure (2) isn't true of mobile companies - Vodafone and EE have huge corporate teams, and that is very high margin business.

    My point is more this: mobile phones and rail are similar in that the marginal cost of delivery is close to zero. Once you have capacity, a passenger on a train or a phone call cost the operator nothing (or thereabouts).

    They should therefore both be in the revenue maximization business.
    I'm not an economist, but I reckon the OPEX to CAPEX ratio (is that a thing?) is rather larger for railways than for mobile phone networks. My point is, the mobile phone companies probably spent a fortune on the CAPEX as it probably doesn't need much ongoing spending. But that isn't true with railways. They need looking after and that costs a lot of money.
    Mobile phone companies spend fortunes on advertising, so I'm not sure that's entirely true.

    More seriously, yes mobile phone networks may have lower marginal costs. But both industries are highly capital intensive (much more so than average).
    Thing is, if railways are so great, why couldn't the private sector have done HS2? Why does the tax payer have to pay? Why not do a competition to let a private firm manage the whole thing from raising money on the private finance market, to getting the contractors to build it, to setting the fares when its built?

    People get very passionate about railways and their public/private status. But the reality is, after the disaster that was Railtrack, they are a public sector thing. Sure, we get private companies to run them, but that's outsourcing not privatisation.

    The only genuinely private railway in the UK (aside from the heritage lines) is HS1. And there's a good reason for that. It's genuinely profitable (or at least it was pre-COVID).
  • Farooq said:

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    DavidL said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant, depressing article.

    THE BAD GUYS ARE WINNING
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
    If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.

    The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
    If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
    Indeed, the risks are real. The next time Trump supporters or the like seek to invade democratic institutions it will not be a joke which "only" killed 3 people. The failure to hold those responsible for that to account is deeply ominous.
    The US has got itself to a very bad place in which each half of the population regards the other as subhuman.
    And yet it keeps being held up as this shining beacon of civilisation. It really isn't.
    No, but it's better than the alternatives.
    Than Canada? Germany? South Korea? I can think of a stack of countries that aren't as insane and warmongery as America yet have better healthcare, education etc etc
    Good morning

    I have experience of Canada's health care and it is very poor and not a patch on our NHS
    Do you have some kind of metrics to back that up, or are you basing your very broad conclusion on your necessarily very limited personal experience?
    My son has suffered serious mental health disorder over the last three years in BC and I have almost daily contact with him, his wife and family and his treatments including 16 sessions of ECT

    He hasn't even got a GP, and believe me I am not cataloguing our interactions over these last few years with the BC health service on this forum to respond to your sniping comment

    It is too distressing
    That's interesting to hear. Not to deny your experience in the least but my Canadian husband is always going on about how much better he found the health system there. He always says that he had a family doctor that he's been seeing for years and that they give him regular health check ups which the NHS here doesn't do. His family aren't that well off so I'd be really interested to know why his experience is so different from yours.
  • Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    DavidL said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant, depressing article.

    THE BAD GUYS ARE WINNING
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
    If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.

    The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
    If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
    Indeed, the risks are real. The next time Trump supporters or the like seek to invade democratic institutions it will not be a joke which "only" killed 3 people. The failure to hold those responsible for that to account is deeply ominous.
    The US has got itself to a very bad place in which each half of the population regards the other as subhuman.
    And yet it keeps being held up as this shining beacon of civilisation. It really isn't.
    No, but it's better than the alternatives.
    Than Canada? Germany? South Korea? I can think of a stack of countries that aren't as insane and warmongery as America yet have better healthcare, education etc etc
    Good morning

    I have experience of Canada's health care and it is very poor and not a patch on our NHS
    Sure, you can have a bad experience in any system. My point is that the US spends far more than anyone else for healthcare and gets worse outcomes on pretty much every metric.

    https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/quality-u-s-healthcare-system-compare-countries/
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,780
    rcs1000 said:

    DavidL said:

    MaxPB said:

    Rishi probably regretting not turning off furlough at the end of July. No appreciable damage to the jobs market from getting rid of it. Could have saved us ~£3.5bn and eased the labour shortage two months sooner. It's not just anecdote either, the number of vacancies seems to be stabilising so it's definitely not just my imagination seeing restaurants and cafés take down help wanted signs.

    Furlough was a good policy but the government clung on for too long and Rishi unwisely extended it too far out from the end date. That it was just two months is probably a good thing, there's places in the world that have still got job support schemes running, probably unnecessarily.

    Overall October looks like it's coming in very hot, hopefully it sets up a really solid Q4.

    160k new jobs in September announced this morning is pretty remarkable. But so were the manufacturing figures discussed in David Smith's column this weekend. I am a bit concerned that so much of the growth in jobs is coming in fairly low value, low profit, low wage sectors. We need more capital investment.
    Firms are going to be very cautious about big capital equipment plans until they have more certainty about the future. People can be let go, but the interest payments on a new factory are forever.
    But the drive to onshoring and indeed net zero should be creating opportunities for investment. It is troubling that these are not being picked up.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,719

    HYUFD said:

    .

    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant, depressing article.

    THE BAD GUYS ARE WINNING
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
    If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.

    The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
    If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
    Trump actually won the election in 2016 even if you dislike him and he lost and was removed in 2020, democracy still worked both times.
    It is faulty democracy when the "winner" garnered 2 million fewer votes than the "loser"
    No it is still a democracy, just not one decided by the popular vote.

    Otherwise on your logic Harold Wilson's win in February 1974, Trudeau's win in September or Churchill's win in 1951 were also undemocratic because they won most seats despite losing the popular vote
    Your first statement is an oxymoron.

    Your system works when parties comply. Imagine.the furore had Trump won the popular vote but lost the EC.

    Back to your post before last You are often an impressive poster, but you do seem shackled to the badge politicians wear. Trump is fine because he wears a Republican pin. It doesn't matter that he almost took down the Constitution and will try again in 2024. On that basis if Nick Griffin were to campaign for the Tories would that make him a good guy?
    No but I am not a liberal leftwinger either, indeed they are my political enemy, if that makes me unpopular sometimes on here so be it
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,724
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    rcs1000 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Sinn Fein VI at 37% in the Republic of Ireland: a record high.

    SF also leading VI in Northern Ireland. Irish politics in both north and south are undergoing dramatic change.

    Completely ignoring the fact FF and FG combined are on 41% in the latest Irish poll still comfortably ahead of SF.

    Completely ignoring too the latest NI poll actually gives a 3% swing from SF to the DUP and Unionist parties combined still comfortably with a higher voteshare than Nationalist parties
    I'm not sure 41 vs 37 is a particularly comfortable lead.
    For a FF and FG government in midterm with SF the main opposition party it is
    It wasn’t long ago that the idea of a FF/FG Coalition would have been laughed out of court.
    FF and FG are the main parties of the centre right in Ireland, just FG a bit more economically conservative and FF a bit more socially conservative (and both of course if you knew your history actually emerged from SF anyway, SF is older than both, just FG's predecessor party broke away from SF over the Anglo Irish Treaty with De Valera breaking from SF shortly after to form FF).

    Quite right. And at one stage they were shooting at each other! Hence my comment.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,096
    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    Foxy said:

    IanB2 said:

    Foxy said:

    King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.

    What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.

    "The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.

    The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
    Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around? ;)
    The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
    Yes, it was a joke.

    Abandoning Christianity is known as progress ;)
    Abandoning Christianity will not lead to secular, highly educated atheists dominating, indeed atheists globally have a lower birthrate than the religious. If Christianity declines it will be Islam that largely fills the gap, especially in Europe
    Yes, but the rising generation will bring a different version of Islam with them from their parents, which has reached an accommodation with the western society in which they have grown up and been schooled. All the time I spent with Muslim sixth formers when a councillor in East London left me optimistic about the long-term trend towards more moderate religion, even if the road may be a bumpy one.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775

    Farooq said:

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    DavidL said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant, depressing article.

    THE BAD GUYS ARE WINNING
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
    If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.

    The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
    If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
    Indeed, the risks are real. The next time Trump supporters or the like seek to invade democratic institutions it will not be a joke which "only" killed 3 people. The failure to hold those responsible for that to account is deeply ominous.
    The US has got itself to a very bad place in which each half of the population regards the other as subhuman.
    And yet it keeps being held up as this shining beacon of civilisation. It really isn't.
    No, but it's better than the alternatives.
    Than Canada? Germany? South Korea? I can think of a stack of countries that aren't as insane and warmongery as America yet have better healthcare, education etc etc
    Good morning

    I have experience of Canada's health care and it is very poor and not a patch on our NHS
    Do you have some kind of metrics to back that up, or are you basing your very broad conclusion on your necessarily very limited personal experience?
    My son has suffered serious mental health disorder over the last three years in BC and I have almost daily contact with him, his wife and family and his treatments including 16 sessions of ECT

    He hasn't even got a GP, and believe me I am not cataloguing our interactions over these last few years with the BC health service on this forum to respond to your sniping comment

    It is too distressing
    It's not a sniping comment. It's a perfectly valid thing to say that your (families') personal experience, however troubling, is no basis on which to judge entire country's health system. Your experience is valid and real, but you can't extrapolate from that. People fall through the gaps in good systems. Or the system might be bad.
    It was a serious question. As far as I know Canada might have a horrible healthcare system. But if I wanted to come to a reliable conclusion, does it make sense for me to listen to just one experience of it?
  • How have the 2 billion doses of the #AstraZeneca #Oxford #covidvaccine made? Our new paper tells the story. It outlines the process, early results that enabled it, and our approach to distributed manufacturing to combat vaccine inequality.
    https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bit.27945


    https://twitter.com/adamjohnritchie/status/1460532283920814082?s=20
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    edited November 2021

    .

    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant, depressing article.

    THE BAD GUYS ARE WINNING
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
    If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.

    The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
    If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
    Trump actually won the election in 2016 even if you dislike him and he lost and was removed in 2020, democracy still worked both times.
    It is faulty democracy when the "winner" garnered 2 million fewer votes than the "loser"
    No, it isn't.

    The rules of the game were predetermined and followed well in advance. The President of the United States by design isn't the winner of the popular vote, he (or eventually she) is chosen by the States. That's a part of being a federation of States and not a single united entity.

    Piling up votes in California past the point of winning California is utterly redundant and that is not faulty. California democratically voted for Hillary and that'd be the same even if her margin of victory was just half a million instead of four million.

    Outside of California Trump won the election by two million. He won the swing states. That is democratic. The Democrats knew the rules of the game and they still chose to aim at Californian voters, Hillary still spent time campaigning in California instead of the Midwest.

    As much as I wanted Hillary to win in 2016, it quite frankly is Clinton and the Democrats own damned fault that they lost in 2016.

    Its worth noting that Biden quite deliberately campaigned in the Midwest states in 2020 - and he won them! By percentage points his margin of victory over Trump in 2020 in California was smaller than Hillary's was - Trump actually had a tiny swing to him in California - but that's OK because Biden still carried California by a landslide but he also carried the Midwest too. That's federal democracy working as intended.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,719

    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant, depressing article.

    THE BAD GUYS ARE WINNING
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
    If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.

    The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
    If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
    Trump actually won the election in 2016 even if you dislike him and he lost and was removed in 2020, democracy still worked both times.
    Trump did win the election in 2016 and he was inaugurated. The Democrat in the White House didn't try to incite a riot to prevent it and there was a peaceful transfer of power in 2017.

    It didn't work in 2020, there was no peaceful transfer of power in 2021. Power still got transferred, but it wasn't peaceful.

    Now GOP apparatchiks are attempting to subvert democracy in the future in a way Trump attempted to do in 2021. That needs calling out unapologetically and without prevarication for the evil that it is.
    Technically if the GOP won Congress ie both the House and Senate in the midterms next year, they could object to the EC results in 2024.

    That may be unpalatable but it would not be undemocratic or illegal under the US system, just the elected Congress would in effect elect the Head of State.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,719
    edited November 2021

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    rcs1000 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Sinn Fein VI at 37% in the Republic of Ireland: a record high.

    SF also leading VI in Northern Ireland. Irish politics in both north and south are undergoing dramatic change.

    Completely ignoring the fact FF and FG combined are on 41% in the latest Irish poll still comfortably ahead of SF.

    Completely ignoring too the latest NI poll actually gives a 3% swing from SF to the DUP and Unionist parties combined still comfortably with a higher voteshare than Nationalist parties
    I'm not sure 41 vs 37 is a particularly comfortable lead.
    For a FF and FG government in midterm with SF the main opposition party it is
    It wasn’t long ago that the idea of a FF/FG Coalition would have been laughed out of court.
    FF and FG are the main parties of the centre right in Ireland, just FG a bit more economically conservative and FF a bit more socially conservative (and both of course if you knew your history actually emerged from SF anyway, SF is older than both, just FG's predecessor party broke away from SF over the Anglo Irish Treaty with De Valera breaking from SF shortly after to form FF).

    Quite right. And at one stage they were shooting at each other! Hence my comment.
    And of course at one stage FF and FG's ancestors within SF were all shooting against the British in the Irish War of Independence.

    To be quite frank they all want a united Ireland ultimately so it makes no difference to us which of them wins in the Republic, as long as Unionists win more votes than Nationalists in NI alone that is all that matters from our perspective
  • RogerRoger Posts: 18,891
    edited November 2021
    Stocky said:

    @Roger

    On yesterday's subject of best ever adverts, I really liked this one (I saw it at the cinema I think, not sure it was ever aired on TV):

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63dI_lIPM7k

    What a strange ad! It seems to fail on almost every metric used to judge commercials other than memorability. Particularly odd for a cinema ad where an anti diesel ad is as likely as a pro one.

    Advertisers often used cinema ads to try to win awards. The cost of showing in one cinema being negligable and ITVA approvals being unnecessary . Fortunately they've now changed the rules. I was once asked to do one with two men standing in a urinal 'apparently' discussing each other's watches
  • HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant, depressing article.

    THE BAD GUYS ARE WINNING
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
    If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.

    The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
    If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
    Trump actually won the election in 2016 even if you dislike him and he lost and was removed in 2020, democracy still worked both times.
    Trump did win the election in 2016 and he was inaugurated. The Democrat in the White House didn't try to incite a riot to prevent it and there was a peaceful transfer of power in 2017.

    It didn't work in 2020, there was no peaceful transfer of power in 2021. Power still got transferred, but it wasn't peaceful.

    Now GOP apparatchiks are attempting to subvert democracy in the future in a way Trump attempted to do in 2021. That needs calling out unapologetically and without prevarication for the evil that it is.
    Technically if the GOP won Congress ie both the House and Senate in the midterms next year, they could object to the EC results in 2024.

    That may be unpalatable but it would not be undemocratic or illegal under the US system, just the elected Congress would in effect elect the Head of State.
    It may not be illegal under the US system but it would be undemocratic. 🤦‍♂️

    Just because an abuse of power is legal doesn't make it democratic.
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,265
    Doing an Opinium political survey (on a Tuesday? Odd.) and really struck by the ferocity of their checks whether you'll vote. Are you on the register? Yes. What region? What seat? Are you eligible to vote? Yes. What's your likehood to vote? 10 out of 10. Are you sure you'll vote? Yes. Did you vote last time? Yes, Did you vote the time before? Yes.

    I appreciate the need to check, but it goes quite a bit further than some of its competitors.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,724
    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Farooq said:

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    DavidL said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant, depressing article.

    THE BAD GUYS ARE WINNING
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
    If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.

    The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
    If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
    Indeed, the risks are real. The next time Trump supporters or the like seek to invade democratic institutions it will not be a joke which "only" killed 3 people. The failure to hold those responsible for that to account is deeply ominous.
    The US has got itself to a very bad place in which each half of the population regards the other as subhuman.
    And yet it keeps being held up as this shining beacon of civilisation. It really isn't.
    No, but it's better than the alternatives.
    Than Canada? Germany? South Korea? I can think of a stack of countries that aren't as insane and warmongery as America yet have better healthcare, education etc etc
    Good morning

    I have experience of Canada's health care and it is very poor and not a patch on our NHS
    Do you have some kind of metrics to back that up, or are you basing your very broad conclusion on your necessarily very limited personal experience?
    My son has suffered serious mental health disorder over the last three years in BC and I have almost daily contact with him, his wife and family and his treatments including 16 sessions of ECT

    He hasn't even got a GP, and believe me I am not cataloguing our interactions over these last few years with the BC health service on this forum to respond to your sniping comment

    It is too distressing
    Sorry to hear it. But if ECT is what he needs he may be better off there than here. Bloody difficult to get on the NHS
    It was an utter failure and has not helped him at all, notwithstanding the agonies of going through it
    Shit. Really sorry to hear that. Tremendous sympathy.
    Quite agree. Dreadful. However, I have to say that our Canadian, indeed BC, relatives seem to have few complaints.
    Mental health services, though, are a Cinderella in many countries and patients are far too often mistreated. That may be due to underfunding, or simply to the difficulty of testing the individual patients. The human brain is an exceedingly complex organ.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,719
    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    Foxy said:

    IanB2 said:

    Foxy said:

    King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.

    What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.

    "The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.

    The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
    Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around? ;)
    The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
    Yes, it was a joke.

    Abandoning Christianity is known as progress ;)
    Abandoning Christianity will not lead to secular, highly educated atheists dominating, indeed atheists globally have a lower birthrate than the religious. If Christianity declines it will be Islam that largely fills the gap, especially in Europe
    Yes, but the rising generation will bring a different version of Islam with them from their parents, which has reached an accommodation with the western society in which they have grown up and been schooled. All the time I spent with Muslim sixth formers when a councillor in East London left me optimistic about the long-term trend towards more moderate religion, even if the road may be a bumpy one.
    That is not what current trends are showing at all.

    If globally the most liberal and educated abandon religion and become agnostics and atheists then it is the more extreme elements that will take over religions.

    Hence globally it is radical Sunni Islam, even jihadism and evangelical Christianity showing the fastest growth and it is those radical younger Muslims who will make up a higher percentage of newly arrived immigrants too
This discussion has been closed.