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.
It would be democratic, the Congress is still elected and indeed in many countries the legislature appoints the Head of State.
It may be unfair and it would make presidential elections redundant but it would not be undemocratic as say a military coup Third World style would be
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
You Conservatives are such a cheerful lot.
We're supposed to be the miserable ones, condemned to be ruled by your bunch of idiots.
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.
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.
Thank you
Actually we have finally managed to get the medics to wean him off benzodiazepines after years of daily use and he is now on antidepressants and we are just seeing a glamour of hope
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.
It would be democratic, the Congress is still elected and indeed in many countries the legislature appoints the Head of State.
It may be unfair and it would make presidential elections redundant but it would not be undemocratic as say a military coup Third World style would be
Its not democratic if you have an election and the winner of the election is overturned.
If voters voted for Congress knowing that their choice in Congress determined the next President then that is democratic, but if voters vote for Congress thinking there's separation of powers and vote separately for the President only to see the Congress disregard their votes and inaugurate the loser as President instead . . . that is anything but democratic.
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.
Thank you
Actually we have finally managed to get the medics to wean him off benzodiazepines after years of daily use and he is now on antidepressants and we are just seeing a glamour of hope
Good to hear. It's also good to hear of family supporting changes in treatment. When working in the field I sometimes heard of families where a member had been stabilised on something which was now antiquated, but would not hear of their relative being given anything new.
Getting patients off benzodiazepines could be difficult.
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.
Maybe he lives in a different province, but our family's GP in BC left with ill health and he has not been replaced
I would just say that my wife and I do have yearly health checks here in Wales
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
Yes but religions will be increasingly ostracised and weird as a result.
Globally the share of atheism, agnosticism and moderate religions combined is rising not falling. If religion gets left to the fruitcakes, nutjobs and loons to coin a phrase then so be it.
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.
Maybe he lives in a different province, but our family's GP in BC left with ill health and he has not been replaced
I would just say that my wife and I do have yearly health checks here in Wales
We're SUPPOSED to have them here in England. Don't always happen though!
The optimist in me thinks that perhaps the Capitol rioters did US democracy a favour because they brought the danger strongly into view. It means - I hope - that everyone including mainstream republicans will be on the look out for any ant-democratic shenanigans from Trump and his henchmen in 2024. Indeed Trump's personal style may have helped a bit too. He didn't have the several years of gradual erosion of checks and balances that more nuanced politicians like Putin, Erdogan, Lukashenka or Orban managed by seeming "reasonable" to start with.
On the other hand the hyper-partisanship of the states means there is probably greater popular support for anti-democratic actions by "our side" than in other countries.
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.
Maybe he lives in a different province, but our family's GP in BC left with ill health and he has not been replaced
I would just say that my wife and I do have yearly health checks here in Wales
We're SUPPOSED to have them here in England. Don't always happen though!
I cannot speak for England but to be fair we are well looked after by our practice here in Wales
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 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).
That's a fair point.
The railways used to be genuinely private, though. They were built with private money, and some people made fortunes, while others (and there were definitely more others) lost fortunes.
I think the big issue is, who would want to to invest in building HS2 as an entirely private venture when:
(a) You are competing with government supported lines, who can use subsidies to undercut you (b) You are reliant on a government body (Network Rail) for stations and for interchange with other services (c) There is a risk that the next government takes it away from you
The optimist in me thinks that perhaps the Capitol rioters did US democracy a favour because they brought the danger strongly into view. It means - I hope - that everyone including mainstream republicans will be on the look out for any ant-democratic shenanigans from Trump and his henchmen in 2024. Indeed Trump's personal style may have helped a bit too. He didn't have the several years of gradual erosion of checks and balances that more nuanced politicians like Putin, Erdogan, Lukashenka or Orban managed by seeming "reasonable" to start with.
On the other hand the hyper-partisanship of the states means there is probably greater popular support for anti-democratic actions by "our side" than in other countries.
It's perhaps a sign of hope that we've been having reports of swings to Republican candidates who seem to have distanced themselves from Trump. And to Democrats who are more 'middle of the road' than AOC and Bernie Sanders.
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.
It would be democratic, the Congress is still elected and indeed in many countries the legislature appoints the Head of State.
It may be unfair and it would make presidential elections redundant but it would not be undemocratic as say a military coup Third World style would be
Would it be democratic if the elected members of Congress and the President voted to strip African Americans of the vote?
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
Yes but religions will be increasingly ostracised and weird as a result.
Globally the share of atheism, agnosticism and moderate religions combined is rising not falling. If religion gets left to the fruitcakes, nutjobs and loons to coin a phrase then so be it.
I think it's a bit like the political culture war: one of the reasons it seems we are surrounded by extremists now is that views that were mainstream in the past are now considered fringe. So the people who espouse them used to be mainstream and are now extreme by comparison to norms.
Take evangelical Christian or conservative Muslim attitudes to women or sexuality. Things that "pillars of the community" would have been openly saying and thinking even 50 years ago are now the preserve of fundamentalists.
I don't believe religion is becoming more extreme. It's more like a process of weathering and erosion which leaves the hardest rocks exposed once everything else has washed away. What was a big mountain range with a deep core of granite covered by layers of sedimentary rock is now an eroded series of granite outcrops with some argilaceous lower slopes planted with vineyards.
Great header, Mr Dancer! My answer to your final question is; I hope they don't faff about and they dispatch the incompetent oaf to spend more time with his families (I have used that one before but must use it again!), but sadly I suspect faffing will be the order of the day as he is still much loved by the swivel-eyed-not-so-bright activists that now dominate local Tory constituency parties.
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.
Maybe he lives in a different province, but our family's GP in BC left with ill health and he has not been replaced
I would just say that my wife and I do have yearly health checks here in Wales
We're SUPPOSED to have them here in England. Don't always happen though!
I cannot speak for England but to be fair we are well looked after by our practice here in Wales
I cannot, and would not, speak for England, but one of the big issues in assessing health provision is that, as was pointed pout upthread, we all have our own experiences. The local GP practice is generally felt to be good, but one does hear complaints. Further, I once worked as pharmacist advisor in a practice which I felt to be good, and where patient experience bore that out. Now long retired, as are the GP's with whom, I worked, I'm told by friends who are registered with that practice, that it's 'awful'. It is though, the only one in the small town.
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
Yes but religions will be increasingly ostracised and weird as a result.
Globally the share of atheism, agnosticism and moderate religions combined is rising not falling. If religion gets left to the fruitcakes, nutjobs and loons to coin a phrase then so be it.
Except they won't.
As I have already posted globally Christians and Muslims have a higher birthrate than the religiously unaffiliated, just Muslims have the highest birthrate of all.
The world will therefore become more religious than it is now in 50 years time but more Muslim too with Christianity increasingly made up by a bigger proportion of its evangelical wing
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.
Thank you
Actually we have finally managed to get the medics to wean him off benzodiazepines after years of daily use and he is now on antidepressants and we are just seeing a glamour of hope
That sounds like the glimmer of good news. All the best to your son.
Out of interest was he put on benzos in BC? They are much more widely used in the States than in UK (where NHS has been really really down on them for years now) but I have no idea about Canada.
As to the ECT, my understanding is that NHS not keen because of lack of efficiency, which would fit with your son's experience sadly. There is some interesting work going on with magnetic 'pulses' though at some NHS research places and teaching hospitals. Might be worth looking into as to what's happening with that in Canada?
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.
Yes. Your children are your security for old age in a third world country and you have to have enough to ensure you have survivors with a high child mortality rate.
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.
It would be democratic, the Congress is still elected and indeed in many countries the legislature appoints the Head of State.
It may be unfair and it would make presidential elections redundant but it would not be undemocratic as say a military coup Third World style would be
Would it be democratic if the elected members of Congress and the President voted to strip African Americans of the vote?
No but African Americans can vote for the Congress as well as the President
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
Yes but religions will be increasingly ostracised and weird as a result.
Globally the share of atheism, agnosticism and moderate religions combined is rising not falling. If religion gets left to the fruitcakes, nutjobs and loons to coin a phrase then so be it.
Except they won't.
As I have already posted globally Christians and Muslims have a higher birthrate than the religiously unaffiliated, just Muslims have the highest birthrate of all.
The world will therefore become more religious than it is now in 50 years time but more Muslim too with Christianity increasingly made up by a bigger proportion of its evangelical wing
That assumes the children are as religious as their parents.
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
Yes but religions will be increasingly ostracised and weird as a result.
Globally the share of atheism, agnosticism and moderate religions combined is rising not falling. If religion gets left to the fruitcakes, nutjobs and loons to coin a phrase then so be it.
Except they won't.
As I have already posted globally Christians and Muslims have a higher birthrate than the religiously unaffiliated, just Muslims have the highest birthrate of all.
The world will therefore become more religious than it is now in 50 years time but more Muslim too with Christianity increasingly made up by a bigger proportion of its evangelical wing
Birthrate isn't all that matters though as many, many people have already responded to you. Religion is not genetic.
Educated people are far more likely to go from religious parents to unreligious themselves than vice-versa. So no, the world is becoming less religious than it was and that is backed up by all data.
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
Yes but religions will be increasingly ostracised and weird as a result.
Globally the share of atheism, agnosticism and moderate religions combined is rising not falling. If religion gets left to the fruitcakes, nutjobs and loons to coin a phrase then so be it.
Except they won't.
As I have already posted globally Christians and Muslims have a higher birthrate than the religiously unaffiliated, just Muslims have the highest birthrate of all.
The world will therefore become more religious than it is now in 50 years time but more Muslim too with Christianity increasingly made up by a bigger proportion of its evangelical wing
Birthrate isn't all that matters though as many, many people have already responded to you. Religion is not genetic.
Educated people are far more likely to go from religious parents to unreligious themselves than vice-versa. So no, the world is becoming less religious than it was and that is backed up by all data.
To an extent birthrate does. It is the largely secular west (outside the US and Italy) and Far East largely seeing population decline with a few exceptions like France.
It is religious Africa seeing the fastest population growth followed by South Asia and Latin America, also religious areas, that will inevitably make the world more religious than it is now if those trends continue.
Most people globally are not educated either, globally graduates are only a minority of the population, indeed in much of the developing world a large proportion do not even finish school
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
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.
There is an interesting episode in Michael Portillo's series on iPlayer "Things We Forgot to Remember" about the 1688 Glorious Revolution which points out the many myths we have about it. It was not particularly glorious or peaceful and was largely done by William to win his battles with France.
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
Yes but religions will be increasingly ostracised and weird as a result.
Globally the share of atheism, agnosticism and moderate religions combined is rising not falling. If religion gets left to the fruitcakes, nutjobs and loons to coin a phrase then so be it.
Except they won't.
As I have already posted globally Christians and Muslims have a higher birthrate than the religiously unaffiliated, just Muslims have the highest birthrate of all.
The world will therefore become more religious than it is now in 50 years time but more Muslim too with Christianity increasingly made up by a bigger proportion of its evangelical wing
I read yesterday there would be a billion Pentecostalists by 2050. Don't extrapolate as a J curve. With human behaviour, it is almost always an S.
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.
Thank you
Actually we have finally managed to get the medics to wean him off benzodiazepines after years of daily use and he is now on antidepressants and we are just seeing a glamour of hope
My sympathies once gain on your son's challenges BigG. However your faith in "Our" NHS is misplaced. Canada spends considerably more per capita than the UK on health in general and on mental health the NHS has a deplorable record, so please correct me if I am wrong and you have data to the contrary, but I would be surprised if the NHS would compare well with Canada on this .
The optimist in me thinks that perhaps the Capitol rioters did US democracy a favour because they brought the danger strongly into view. It means - I hope - that everyone including mainstream republicans will be on the look out for any ant-democratic shenanigans from Trump and his henchmen in 2024. Indeed Trump's personal style may have helped a bit too. He didn't have the several years of gradual erosion of checks and balances that more nuanced politicians like Putin, Erdogan, Lukashenka or Orban managed by seeming "reasonable" to start with.
On the other hand the hyper-partisanship of the states means there is probably greater popular support for anti-democratic actions by "our side" than in other countries.
That is my hope too. If it didn't happen in year where conditions were more favourable (ie an executive actually disputing the outcome, with a violent insurrection aimed at annulling the result or replacing it with their interpretation of the 'correct' one), then hopefully it won't happen in 2024.
The worm of doubt is that this thinking gave us WWI. As each successive crisis between powers was solved more or less amicably, it incentivised nations to push that bit harder next time. Then, when no one backed down, there was catastrophe. The strength of US institutions saved it last time, meaning Republicans, in their quest for narrow partisan gains, can lean on them a little bit harder next time, confident that the actual law will protect American democracy from the lies they tell their base. If they survive without reckoning, they can lean even harder the time after...
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
Yes but religions will be increasingly ostracised and weird as a result.
Globally the share of atheism, agnosticism and moderate religions combined is rising not falling. If religion gets left to the fruitcakes, nutjobs and loons to coin a phrase then so be it.
I've liked because I hope it is true, but is it? I do believe that as populations become more educated, have better health and social systems (ie move from 3rd to 1st world status) then they become more moderate in their religion or dispose of religion altogether.
But we do have examples of 1st world countries which have significant fruitcakes, nutjobs and loons as you put it. Admittedly I am only looking at this from a distance but the fundamentalist christians in the USA look large and scary and the islam based home grown terrorist haven't been swayed by our western ways.
I hope this is just a minority of people who are easily brainwashed, but it worries me that the vast majority of followers of a religion are not converts (although they may be the most dangerous) but just inherited thier faith from the society they were born into. As Warren Mitchell once said (paraphrased) isn't funny that christians have christian parents and jews have jewish parents, etc.
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.
Indeed - but up until fairly recently progress was in the democratise direction. Over the last decade, that has been reversed.
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.
Thank you
Actually we have finally managed to get the medics to wean him off benzodiazepines after years of daily use and he is now on antidepressants and we are just seeing a glamour of hope
My sympathies once gain on your son's challenges BigG. However your faith in "Our" NHS is misplaced. Canada spends considerably more per capita than the UK on health in general and on mental health the NHS has a deplorable record, so please correct me if I am wrong and you have data to the contrary, but I would be surprised if the NHS would compare well with Canada on this .
Doesn't the US also spend considerably more per capita on health? That doesn't alone make it a good thing, unless i've missed the scramble for the UK to adopt the US system.
Javier Blas @JavierBlas · 20m 🚨🚨BREAKING 🚨🚨 Germany "temporarily" suspends certification process for Nord Stream 2 pipeline. European natural gas benchmark (Dutch TTF) surges >10% on the news
The optimist in me thinks that perhaps the Capitol rioters did US democracy a favour because they brought the danger strongly into view. It means - I hope - that everyone including mainstream republicans will be on the look out for any ant-democratic shenanigans from Trump and his henchmen in 2024. Indeed Trump's personal style may have helped a bit too. He didn't have the several years of gradual erosion of checks and balances that more nuanced politicians like Putin, Erdogan, Lukashenka or Orban managed by seeming "reasonable" to start with.
On the other hand the hyper-partisanship of the states means there is probably greater popular support for anti-democratic actions by "our side" than in other countries.
That is my hope too. If it didn't happen in year where conditions were more favourable (ie an executive actually disputing the outcome, with a violent insurrection aimed at annulling the result or replacing it with their interpretation of the 'correct' one), then hopefully it won't happen in 2024.
The worm of doubt is that this thinking gave us WWI. As each successive crisis between powers was solved more or less amicably, it incentivised nations to push that bit harder next time. Then, when no one backed down, there was catastrophe. The strength of US institutions saved it last time, meaning Republicans, in their quest for narrow partisan gains, can lean on them a little bit harder next time, confident that the actual law will protect American democracy from the lies they tell their base. If they survive without reckoning, they can lean even harder the time after...
Of course in 2020 a majority of Republican Senators voted not to object to the EC results in key states, even if a majority of Republican House Representatives did back Trump in voting to object to the EC results.
If the GOP win the House and Senate in the midterms next year what GOP Senators decide in 2024 would therefore be pivotal regardless of the EC results
Javier Blas @JavierBlas · 20m 🚨🚨BREAKING 🚨🚨 Germany "temporarily" suspends certification process for Nord Stream 2 pipeline. European natural gas benchmark (Dutch TTF) surges >10% on the news
Christian Odendahl @COdendahl The most German justification for postponing a decision: you haven't filled out the correct forms. (Basically.) #Nordstream2
(BNetzA also says: if you bring right forms, we will still be able to come to a decision within the 4 months period that the law has set us.)
Breaking - Dutch government 'unpleasantly surprised' and 'deeply regrets' announcement by Shell of plans to move tax residence and CEO to UK and drop the 'Royal Dutch' from the name - @AFP. This is a big deal here in the Netherlands
I do wonder at what point regulation starts to impact on headquarters, but also even market participation.
What will the impact of fines well over 10 billion Euro on Google in a very few years from the EuCo be? Not enough yet to be substantial, but they are building up.
Interesting that Shell are not the first big Dutch company to do this in recent years. According to Sky this follows RELX (formally Reed and Elsevier) in 2017 and Unilever in 2018. Good for the UK tax revenue if nothing else.
Picking this up from the other day.
It seems that the Netherlands is in a bit of a pickle with some aspects of its corporate tax system. Some are trying to introduce a corporate "Exit Tax" - potentially very expensive. No wonder they are leaving before it arrives, if it does. https://www.taxation.co.uk/articles/exit-taxes-on-corporate-relocation
Very different approaches between Mark Rutte's lot, and eg the Greens.
Also clearly there's going to be some fallout from the minimum rate of corporation tax discussed politically last year. I have no idea where the fallout from that will fall.
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
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.
There is an interesting episode in Michael Portillo's series on iPlayer "Things We Forgot to Remember" about the 1688 Glorious Revolution which points out the many myths we have about it. It was not particularly glorious or peaceful and was largely done by William to win his battles with France.
Rather better than the Civil War earlier that century, though. Which might b why the epithet stuck ?
James O'Brien now discussing the VIP lane. Obvious questions like why is "Skinnydip Ltd" was an obvious choice to be past-tracked through the VIP to win PPE contracts without tender as opposed to say actual companies who actually work in the sector who got nowt.
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.
Thank you
Actually we have finally managed to get the medics to wean him off benzodiazepines after years of daily use and he is now on antidepressants and we are just seeing a glamour of hope
That sounds like the glimmer of good news. All the best to your son.
Out of interest was he put on benzos in BC? They are much more widely used in the States than in UK (where NHS has been really really down on them for years now) but I have no idea about Canada.
As to the ECT, my understanding is that NHS not keen because of lack of efficiency, which would fit with your son's experience sadly. There is some interesting work going on with magnetic 'pulses' though at some NHS research places and teaching hospitals. Might be worth looking into as to what's happening with that in Canada?
He was prescribed them in BC and has been on continuous use for 2 plus years, which of course would not happen in the UK as they are only seen as suitable for very short term use
This use of benzos and the utter failure of ECT has left us with a jaundiced attitude to his health service as well as the loss of access to a GP
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
Perhaps he went for commercial renting.
Higher rate tax payer plus leverage plus personal ownership of normal residential rented property is a bit of a mug's game these days.
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.
This is somewhat simplistic analysis. The challenge with US healthcare is that it is essentially a system that is has evolved to heavily subsidise their home healthcare industry, both in terms of device and pharmaceutical companies and healthcare providers (hospitals and medics etc.). This in turn provides huge innovation and massive employment. The big draw back is that it creates huge health inequity which is bad. If you are moderately well off and employed with good health insurance you will get very good healthcare. If you are poor you are fooked.
There are no perfect healthcare systems. "Our NHS" (the only true religion in the UK) is a system that like all nationalised industries is more interested in the needs of its employees than it is in its customer. It is very flawed, and its fundamental flaw is that most people have nothing to compare it to that might cause them to insist that it could be better.
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.
Thank you
Actually we have finally managed to get the medics to wean him off benzodiazepines after years of daily use and he is now on antidepressants and we are just seeing a glamour of hope
My sympathies once gain on your son's challenges BigG. However your faith in "Our" NHS is misplaced. Canada spends considerably more per capita than the UK on health in general and on mental health the NHS has a deplorable record, so please correct me if I am wrong and you have data to the contrary, but I would be surprised if the NHS would compare well with Canada on this .
Doesn't the US also spend considerably more per capita on health? That doesn't alone make it a good thing, unless i've missed the scramble for the UK to adopt the US system.
I think money spent is a poor indicator, one of the things people laud about the NHS is how little money it spends compared to other systems and how efficient it is. It's true that the NHS is very efficient at what it does but the problem is that no one really takes a look at whether it's doing the right things or has the right priorities. It's completely unreformable because of the sentiments of Big_G and others "our NHS". It is an article of faith for more than half the country and the last two years have made it impervious to any criticism.
Across Europe healthcare systems are in far, far better shape but most of them have significant private sector involvement and fees. Healthcare outcomes for the poor are better across Europe than here, yet we steadfastly stick to the extremely outdated principles of the NHS that everyone gets the same healthcare and yet we know that healthcare needs are pretty variable.
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.
Thank you
Actually we have finally managed to get the medics to wean him off benzodiazepines after years of daily use and he is now on antidepressants and we are just seeing a glamour of hope
My sympathies once gain on your son's challenges BigG. However your faith in "Our" NHS is misplaced. Canada spends considerably more per capita than the UK on health in general and on mental health the NHS has a deplorable record, so please correct me if I am wrong and you have data to the contrary, but I would be surprised if the NHS would compare well with Canada on this .
To be honest we have considerable experience of our own mental health services over decades, though I do not want to detail it
When comparing the two I would have preferred our son to be treated here rather than in BC, not least as we do not permit anything but short-term use of benzos
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.
Thank you
Actually we have finally managed to get the medics to wean him off benzodiazepines after years of daily use and he is now on antidepressants and we are just seeing a glamour of hope
My sympathies once gain on your son's challenges BigG. However your faith in "Our" NHS is misplaced. Canada spends considerably more per capita than the UK on health in general and on mental health the NHS has a deplorable record, so please correct me if I am wrong and you have data to the contrary, but I would be surprised if the NHS would compare well with Canada on this .
Doesn't the US also spend considerably more per capita on health? That doesn't alone make it a good thing, unless i've missed the scramble for the UK to adopt the US system.
“Rooty is a good man, he’s never engaged in racist language,” says Rafiq. “I found [his comments] hurtful. He was Gary’s flatmate. He was involved in social nights out during which I was called a Paki. He might not remember [the incidents of racism] but it shows how normal it was that even a good man like him doesn’t see it for what it is.”
A close relative of mine, with serious health issues, lived in Canada for many years
Seeing his experience, I can confirm BigG’s claim that Canada’s health service has major problems. I’m not sure it’s significantly *worse* than the NHS (especially now) but it’s not obviously superior
“Rooty is a good man, he’s never engaged in racist language,” says Rafiq. “I found [his comments] hurtful. He was Gary’s flatmate. He was involved in social nights out during which I was called a Paki. He might not remember [the incidents of racism] but it shows how normal it was that even a good man like him doesn’t see it for what it is.”
Does Root keep the England captaincy?
I think he keeps it because of the good man caveat.
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.
It would be democratic, the Congress is still elected and indeed in many countries the legislature appoints the Head of State.
It may be unfair and it would make presidential elections redundant but it would not be undemocratic as say a military coup Third World style would be
Would it be democratic if the elected members of Congress and the President voted to strip African Americans of the vote?
No but African Americans can vote for the Congress as well as the President
What relevance has the 'but' got?
You have stated one act by congress to be democratic and another not to be democratic. How do they differ? Your initial argument implies the latter is also democratic and that therefore anything congress decides is democratic.
If the latter is not democratic, and we also know that congress can democratically decide things, then that statement confirms there are things that congress can do and things it can not do. That therefore implies that it is not obvious that if congress overrule the EC vote that that is democratic. Logically you have not shown it is democratic nor undemocratic.
James O'Brien now discussing the VIP lane. Obvious questions like why is "Skinnydip Ltd" was an obvious choice to be past-tracked through the VIP to win PPE contracts without tender as opposed to say actual companies who actually work in the sector who got nowt.
The requirement is for a windfall tax on businesses which:
1) Were not previously operating in the sector 2) Did not manufacture any of the PPE supplied
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.
Thank you
Actually we have finally managed to get the medics to wean him off benzodiazepines after years of daily use and he is now on antidepressants and we are just seeing a glamour of hope
That sounds like the glimmer of good news. All the best to your son.
Out of interest was he put on benzos in BC? They are much more widely used in the States than in UK (where NHS has been really really down on them for years now) but I have no idea about Canada.
As to the ECT, my understanding is that NHS not keen because of lack of efficiency, which would fit with your son's experience sadly. There is some interesting work going on with magnetic 'pulses' though at some NHS research places and teaching hospitals. Might be worth looking into as to what's happening with that in Canada?
He was prescribed them in BC and has been on continuous use for 2 plus years, which of course would not happen in the UK as they are only seen as suitable for very short term use
This use of benzos and the utter failure of ECT has left us with a jaundiced attitude to his health service as well as the loss of access to a GP
Benzodiazepines were only cut back to short term use in UK some considerable time after they were first introduced. I often saw them prescribed long term over the years and it was only (IIRC) about the time I retired that they were really being frowned upon.
“Rooty is a good man, he’s never engaged in racist language,” says Rafiq. “I found [his comments] hurtful. He was Gary’s flatmate. He was involved in social nights out during which I was called a Paki. He might not remember [the incidents of racism] but it shows how normal it was that even a good man like him doesn’t see it for what it is.”
Does Root keep the England captaincy?
One of my white friends always wonders why with so much Indian cricketing talent in England and Wales so few Indian players go professional and here we have the answer. I feel sorry for all of the Pakistani people who have forged this path.
Somewhat against my better judgement, we went to a house party on Saturday night - not huge numbers of people, everyone double vaxed and testing regularly, but indoors without masks, talking and dancing, we had a great time and came home around 3am. I'm sure you can guess where this is heading. Turns out one of the guests later tested positive for Covid, and this morning I woke up with a sore throat and now have a positive lateral flow test too...
Breaking - Dutch government 'unpleasantly surprised' and 'deeply regrets' announcement by Shell of plans to move tax residence and CEO to UK and drop the 'Royal Dutch' from the name - @AFP. This is a big deal here in the Netherlands
I do wonder at what point regulation starts to impact on headquarters, but also even market participation.
What will the impact of fines well over 10 billion Euro on Google in a very few years from the EuCo be? Not enough yet to be substantial, but they are building up.
Interesting that Shell are not the first big Dutch company to do this in recent years. According to Sky this follows RELX (formally Reed and Elsevier) in 2017 and Unilever in 2018. Good for the UK tax revenue if nothing else.
Picking this up from the other day.
It seems that the Netherlands is in a bit of a pickle with some aspects of its corporate tax system. Some are trying to introduce a corporate "Exit Tax" - potentially very expensive. No wonder they are leaving before it arrives, if it does. https://www.taxation.co.uk/articles/exit-taxes-on-corporate-relocation
Very different approaches between Mark Rutte's lot, and eg the Greens.
Also clearly there's going to be some fallout from the minimum rate of corporation tax discussed politically last year. I have no idea where the fallout from that will fall.
You can only imagine my disappointment when I opened that last link to discover that it was nothing to do with the People's Daily, The Morning Star. I was expecting a defenestration of Shell's dirty capitalism, but got something completely different.
James O'Brien now discussing the VIP lane. Obvious questions like why is "Skinnydip Ltd" was an obvious choice to be past-tracked through the VIP to win PPE contracts without tender as opposed to say actual companies who actually work in the sector who got nowt.
Just look at their website - it's obvious why Skinnydip got lucrative PPE contracts. Or not.
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.
This is somewhat simplistic analysis. The challenge with US healthcare is that it is essentially a system that is has evolved to heavily subsidise their home healthcare industry, both in terms of device and pharmaceutical companies and healthcare providers (hospitals and medics etc.). This in turn provides huge innovation and massive employment. The big draw back is that it creates huge health inequity which is bad. If you are moderately well off and employed with good health insurance you will get very good healthcare. If you are poor you are fooked.
There are no perfect healthcare systems. "Our NHS" (the only true religion in the UK) is a system that like all nationalised industries is more interested in the needs of its employees than it is in its customer. It is very flawed, and its fundamental flaw is that most people have nothing to compare it to that might cause them to insist that it could be better.
The NHS is very good on a value for money basis, but poor to middling (at best) when it comes to outcomes. We could have better outcomes, but we’d have to spend more, regardless of how said healthcare was delivered.
Every large system contains waste, graft & iniquity within it somewhere. Probably everywhere to some degree. Criticising a current system because it is imperfect is worse than pointless - it’s doing the dirty PR work of the US healthcare companies that would love to extract profits from the NHS for them.
(There’s nothing wrong with profit making companies delivering healthcare - the French manage fairly well using a private delivery, mostly state funded system - but doing so on the private company’s terms is asking for an extremely expensive disaster that we may never be able to extricate outselves from - see the USA for a prime example of this end state.)
US healthcare is a disaster area when it comes to costs & iniquity. A huge proportion of healthcare spending in the US goes on deadweight costs - all the staff required to assign blame & cost between healthcare providers and insurers. Salaries are sky high because insiders manipulate the system to prevent competition (healthcare in the US is explicitly exempt from anti-trust laws IIRC). & on & on & on. The US is /almost/ the worst of all possible national healthcare systems, given the amount they spend on it.
Morning all, nice header by @Morris_Dancer. I'll have to take his word for it regarding those ancient happenings but the central point is absolutely right, sometimes an event occurs that seems minor in the grand scheme of things but with hindsight proves to have been momentous in what it leads to.
So, will the Paterson debacle bring down Johnson? Of course I hope so but imo the only realistic chance of this happening before the GE is if the polls consistently show (i) a solid Labour lead and (ii) that Johnson has become a clear electoral liability cf an alternative eg Sunak. In this event perhaps the party will ditch him. I make it quite long odds sadly.
“Rooty is a good man, he’s never engaged in racist language,” says Rafiq. “I found [his comments] hurtful. He was Gary’s flatmate. He was involved in social nights out during which I was called a Paki. He might not remember [the incidents of racism] but it shows how normal it was that even a good man like him doesn’t see it for what it is.”
Does Root keep the England captaincy?
One of my white friends always wonders why with so much Indian cricketing talent in England and Wales so few Indian players go professional and here we have the answer. I feel sorry for all of the Pakistani people who have forged this path.
I heard a paper reviewer say how shocked they were that this sort of thing was going on in cricket. I'm not. Cricket has a dick-ish culture in it that can make it not a particularly pleasant environment to be.
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
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.
There is an interesting episode in Michael Portillo's series on iPlayer "Things We Forgot to Remember" about the 1688 Glorious Revolution which points out the many myths we have about it. It was not particularly glorious or peaceful and was largely done by William to win his battles with France.
Rather better than the Civil War earlier that century, though. Which might b why the epithet stuck ?
Depends on your perspective. It led to ca. 70 years of Jacobite rebellions in Scotland and, as for Ireland, what happened there was neither peaceful nor glorious but violent, oppressive and went on for far longer than the Civil War. It was only peaceful if you were a Protestant Englishman. And there are people other than them living on these islands, something which they have tended to forget - repeatedly.
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.
Thank you
Actually we have finally managed to get the medics to wean him off benzodiazepines after years of daily use and he is now on antidepressants and we are just seeing a glamour of hope
That sounds like the glimmer of good news. All the best to your son.
Out of interest was he put on benzos in BC? They are much more widely used in the States than in UK (where NHS has been really really down on them for years now) but I have no idea about Canada.
As to the ECT, my understanding is that NHS not keen because of lack of efficiency, which would fit with your son's experience sadly. There is some interesting work going on with magnetic 'pulses' though at some NHS research places and teaching hospitals. Might be worth looking into as to what's happening with that in Canada?
He was prescribed them in BC and has been on continuous use for 2 plus years, which of course would not happen in the UK as they are only seen as suitable for very short term use
This use of benzos and the utter failure of ECT has left us with a jaundiced attitude to his health service as well as the loss of access to a GP
Benzodiazepines were only cut back to short term use in UK some considerable time after they were first introduced. I often saw them prescribed long term over the years and it was only (IIRC) about the time I retired that they were really being frowned upon.
It seems they become addictive and in time increase anxiety causing the opposite of the desired effect
Here in Wales our GP will only prescribe 14 days supply after which a full review follows with alternative treatments considered
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.
Thank you
Actually we have finally managed to get the medics to wean him off benzodiazepines after years of daily use and he is now on antidepressants and we are just seeing a glamour of hope
That sounds like the glimmer of good news. All the best to your son.
Out of interest was he put on benzos in BC? They are much more widely used in the States than in UK (where NHS has been really really down on them for years now) but I have no idea about Canada.
As to the ECT, my understanding is that NHS not keen because of lack of efficiency, which would fit with your son's experience sadly. There is some interesting work going on with magnetic 'pulses' though at some NHS research places and teaching hospitals. Might be worth looking into as to what's happening with that in Canada?
He was prescribed them in BC and has been on continuous use for 2 plus years, which of course would not happen in the UK as they are only seen as suitable for very short term use
This use of benzos and the utter failure of ECT has left us with a jaundiced attitude to his health service as well as the loss of access to a GP
It might happen in UK (the benzos) but not from a GP. A specialist can under NICE guidelines prescribe long term benzos if other routes had all demonstrably failed for very severe and life crushing anxiety. They would try use therapy, anti-depressants, pregabalin, low dose quietipine etc first though.
Certainly in US they just reach for the benzos and indeed no messing around often go for super strength Xanax, which is all but banned in NHS.
Sadly, I know way too much about this issue myself.
A close relative of mine, with serious health issues, lived in Canada for many years
Seeing his experience, I can confirm BigG’s claim that Canada’s health service has major problems. I’m not sure it’s significantly *worse* than the NHS (especially now) but it’s not obviously superior
I wasn't saying it was superior to the NHS. But it is superior to the US - and all the data proves this.
The optimist in me thinks that perhaps the Capitol rioters did US democracy a favour because they brought the danger strongly into view. It means - I hope - that everyone including mainstream republicans will be on the look out for any ant-democratic shenanigans from Trump and his henchmen in 2024. Indeed Trump's personal style may have helped a bit too. He didn't have the several years of gradual erosion of checks and balances that more nuanced politicians like Putin, Erdogan, Lukashenka or Orban managed by seeming "reasonable" to start with.
On the other hand the hyper-partisanship of the states means there is probably greater popular support for anti-democratic actions by "our side" than in other countries.
That is my hope too. If it didn't happen in year where conditions were more favourable (ie an executive actually disputing the outcome, with a violent insurrection aimed at annulling the result or replacing it with their interpretation of the 'correct' one), then hopefully it won't happen in 2024.
The worm of doubt is that this thinking gave us WWI. As each successive crisis between powers was solved more or less amicably, it incentivised nations to push that bit harder next time. Then, when no one backed down, there was catastrophe. The strength of US institutions saved it last time, meaning Republicans, in their quest for narrow partisan gains, can lean on them a little bit harder next time, confident that the actual law will protect American democracy from the lies they tell their base. If they survive without reckoning, they can lean even harder the time after...
Of course in 2020 a majority of Republican Senators voted not to object to the EC results in key states, even if a majority of Republican House Representatives did back Trump in voting to object to the EC results.
If the GOP win the House and Senate in the midterms next year what GOP Senators decide in 2024 would therefore be pivotal regardless of the EC results
Indeed, the big flaw in my optimism is the assumption that conditions were more favourable to an undemocratic coup in 2020 than they will be in 2024. Not an entirely safe assumption.
From reading Master of the Senate, I've come to have a kind of... Respect is not the right word, but maybe understanding(?) of the Senate, and it's potential as a cooling chamber on the hysterics of the popular will. In the 50s and 60s, famously, Southern Democrats were able to marshal opposition in the Senate against civil rights and got senators from dispassionate or even liberal states to vote against the wishes of their constituents. Dispicable though the ends were, it gives me hope that most GOP senators in the face of the base will hold back from the brink. But the Senate is not immune from the popular will, and they will lean against the institutions when if they feel it is safe to do so. More and more near misses will make them feel safer and safer to do so and they won't realise the danger of the path they're on until it's too late.
Maybe I'm too generous, and they simply won't care about all that.
Somewhat against my better judgement, we went to a house party on Saturday night - not huge numbers of people, everyone double vaxed and testing regularly, but indoors without masks, talking and dancing, we had a great time and came home around 3am. I'm sure you can guess where this is heading. Turns out one of the guests later tested positive for Covid, and this morning I woke up with a sore throat and now have a positive lateral flow test too...
You were too impatient just to wait for your booster?
Seriously, I hope you recover quickly and with nothing worse than cold symptoms.
45 years ago, Johnson expressed his wish to be world king. 15 years ago, he was a rightwing commentator and sometime TV personality, amusing to many. 10 years ago, he was Mayor of London. He broke promises he made on rough sleeping and on policing, and he spent London taxpayers’ money on useless water canons and other projects too numerous to cite, using £126,000 in order to woo Jennifer Arcuri. 3 years ago, he was a careless, useless Foreign Secretary, following which he broke the Ministerial Code by failing to OK his lucrative Daily Telegraph contract with the Appointments Committee. The modified contract enabled his writing for that newspaper to provoke a very significant increase in Islamophobic incidents. In the last 3 years, evidence has accrued of Johnson’s willingness to use his power to his selfish ends, and of his dishonesty, incompetence and lack of integrity and accountability. Could it be that a tipping point has been reached?
Breaking - Dutch government 'unpleasantly surprised' and 'deeply regrets' announcement by Shell of plans to move tax residence and CEO to UK and drop the 'Royal Dutch' from the name - @AFP. This is a big deal here in the Netherlands
I do wonder at what point regulation starts to impact on headquarters, but also even market participation.
What will the impact of fines well over 10 billion Euro on Google in a very few years from the EuCo be? Not enough yet to be substantial, but they are building up.
Interesting that Shell are not the first big Dutch company to do this in recent years. According to Sky this follows RELX (formally Reed and Elsevier) in 2017 and Unilever in 2018. Good for the UK tax revenue if nothing else.
Picking this up from the other day.
It seems that the Netherlands is in a bit of a pickle with some aspects of its corporate tax system. Some are trying to introduce a corporate "Exit Tax" - potentially very expensive. No wonder they are leaving before it arrives, if it does. https://www.taxation.co.uk/articles/exit-taxes-on-corporate-relocation
Very different approaches between Mark Rutte's lot, and eg the Greens.
Also clearly there's going to be some fallout from the minimum rate of corporation tax discussed politically last year. I have no idea where the fallout from that will fall.
The Netherlands is one of the countries, alongside the UK, that has been moving upwards towards the great race to the middle that we are seeing in corporate tax across the developed world.
It's one of the most remarkable trends over the last 3 or 4 years and one that not only waters down any meaningful tax rate arbitrage between countries but also potentially renders government use of tax incentives for investment toothless.
The NL has for a few years had a mainstream rate of around 25% (25.5% until recently), but was able to make use of a number of tools to give MNCs lower effective rates. With the exception of the innovation box pretty much all of these are no longer available due to BEPS, EU state aid challenges and a general change in the ethos of the government.
The UK as we know is raising its main CT rate from 19% to 25%. The patent box was one of our principal innovation incentives, alongside R&D credits. The qualification rules changed following BEPS and really kicked in this year, making it harder to access.
Meanwhile the rest of Europe is cutting rates. France will be at 25% from next year (plus a few small surcharges). Italy is now at 24% plus their IRAP which takes the rate to around 25-26%. Spain is now 25%. Belgium is now 25%. Korea is 25%. And, most remarkably after the falling through of much of the original Biden tax plan, the US is likely to remain at 21% + state taxes i.e. an effective rate of....25%. Only Germany (c.29-31% depending on location) and Japan (30.62%) remain outliers.
And BEPS 2.0 will put a floor under even the low tax countries including the SIS (Switzerland, Ireland and Singapore). It introduces a global minimum tax from 2023 and Ireland, for example, has already undertaken to increase its mainstream rate from 12.5% to 15%. Singapore will withdraw its current tax incentive rates. Switzerland has already reformed corporate tax to give rates from the low to high teens.
What does this mean for government use of tax to incentivise FDI? It will change massively, and already has done to some extent. There is little rate arbitrage left, and you can't go below 15%. So we are seeing governments focusing instead on direct subsidy, regulatory incentives (e.g. planning exemptions) and non-CT tax incentives on payroll tax or indirect taxes - see Switzerland's recent announcement it will drop all customs duties on industrial products.
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
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)
Will take quite a while.
From the ONS, latest figures, religion in GB from 2011-2018:
James O'Brien now discussing the VIP lane. Obvious questions like why is "Skinnydip Ltd" was an obvious choice to be past-tracked through the VIP to win PPE contracts without tender as opposed to say actual companies who actually work in the sector who got nowt.
Just look at their website - it's obvious why Skinnydip got lucrative PPE contracts. Or not.
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....
It'll be hard to see how Sinn Fein will completely locked out of government if they are on 60+ seats after the next Irish election. Some of that might be cannibalising the other 'left' parties' seats particularly in the greater Dublin area and I can see a partial recovery for FG after Varadkar reassumes the Taoiseach position but it is utterly fascinating. It only seems a matter of time until there's some kind of SF led gvt eventually even if it is not a true 'left' gvt.
Comments
It may be unfair and it would make presidential elections redundant but it would not be undemocratic as say a military coup Third World style would be
We're supposed to be the miserable ones, condemned to be ruled by your bunch of idiots.
Actually we have finally managed to get the medics to wean him off benzodiazepines after years of daily use and he is now on antidepressants and we are just seeing a glamour of hope
If voters voted for Congress knowing that their choice in Congress determined the next President then that is democratic, but if voters vote for Congress thinking there's separation of powers and vote separately for the President only to see the Congress disregard their votes and inaugurate the loser as President instead . . . that is anything but democratic.
Getting patients off benzodiazepines could be difficult.
I would just say that my wife and I do have yearly health checks here in Wales
Globally the share of atheism, agnosticism and moderate religions combined is rising not falling. If religion gets left to the fruitcakes, nutjobs and loons to coin a phrase then so be it.
On the other hand the hyper-partisanship of the states means there is probably greater popular support for anti-democratic actions by "our side" than in other countries.
The railways used to be genuinely private, though. They were built with private money, and some people made fortunes, while others (and there were definitely more others) lost fortunes.
I think the big issue is, who would want to to invest in building HS2 as an entirely private venture when:
(a) You are competing with government supported lines, who can use subsidies to undercut you
(b) You are reliant on a government body (Network Rail) for stations and for interchange with other services
(c) There is a risk that the next government takes it away from you
And to Democrats who are more 'middle of the road' than AOC and Bernie Sanders.
I realised I may be clutching at straws, though!
I find it so unsettling and it needs addressing
Take evangelical Christian or conservative Muslim attitudes to women or sexuality. Things that "pillars of the community" would have been openly saying and thinking even 50 years ago are now the preserve of fundamentalists.
I don't believe religion is becoming more extreme. It's more like a process of weathering and erosion which leaves the hardest rocks exposed once everything else has washed away. What was a big mountain range with a deep core of granite covered by layers of sedimentary rock is now an eroded series of granite outcrops with some argilaceous lower slopes planted with vineyards.
Now long retired, as are the GP's with whom, I worked, I'm told by friends who are registered with that practice, that it's 'awful'. It is though, the only one in the small town.
Meanwhile:
https://www.websitecarbon.com/
As I have already posted globally Christians and Muslims have a higher birthrate than the religiously unaffiliated, just Muslims have the highest birthrate of all.
The world will therefore become more religious than it is now in 50 years time but more Muslim too with Christianity increasingly made up by a bigger proportion of its evangelical wing
https://twitter.com/tagesschau/status/1460545277316710405
Out of interest was he put on benzos in BC? They are much more widely used in the States than in UK (where NHS has been really really down on them for years now) but I have no idea about Canada.
As to the ECT, my understanding is that NHS not keen because of lack of efficiency, which would fit with your son's experience sadly. There is some interesting work going on with magnetic 'pulses' though at some NHS research places and teaching hospitals. Might be worth looking into as to what's happening with that in Canada?
Educated people are far more likely to go from religious parents to unreligious themselves than vice-versa. So no, the world is becoming less religious than it was and that is backed up by all data.
It is religious Africa seeing the fastest population growth followed by South Asia and Latin America, also religious areas, that will inevitably make the world more religious than it is now if those trends continue.
Most people globally are not educated either, globally graduates are only a minority of the population, indeed in much of the developing world a large proportion do not even finish school
Don't extrapolate as a J curve. With human behaviour, it is almost always an S.
The worm of doubt is that this thinking gave us WWI. As each successive crisis between powers was solved more or less amicably, it incentivised nations to push that bit harder next time. Then, when no one backed down, there was catastrophe. The strength of US institutions saved it last time, meaning Republicans, in their quest for narrow partisan gains, can lean on them a little bit harder next time, confident that the actual law will protect American democracy from the lies they tell their base. If they survive without reckoning, they can lean even harder the time after...
But we do have examples of 1st world countries which have significant fruitcakes, nutjobs and loons as you put it. Admittedly I am only looking at this from a distance but the fundamentalist christians in the USA look large and scary and the islam based home grown terrorist haven't been swayed by our western ways.
I hope this is just a minority of people who are easily brainwashed, but it worries me that the vast majority of followers of a religion are not converts (although they may be the most dangerous) but just inherited thier faith from the society they were born into. As Warren Mitchell once said (paraphrased) isn't funny that christians have christian parents and jews have jewish parents, etc.
@JavierBlas
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20m
🚨🚨BREAKING 🚨🚨 Germany "temporarily" suspends certification process for Nord Stream 2 pipeline. European natural gas benchmark (Dutch TTF) surges >10% on the news
If the GOP win the House and Senate in the midterms next year what GOP Senators decide in 2024 would therefore be pivotal regardless of the EC results
Christian Odendahl
@COdendahl
The most German justification for postponing a decision: you haven't filled out the correct forms. (Basically.) #Nordstream2
(BNetzA also says: if you bring right forms, we will still be able to come to a decision within the 4 months period that the law has set us.)
It seems that the Netherlands is in a bit of a pickle with some aspects of its corporate tax system. Some are trying to introduce a corporate "Exit Tax" - potentially very expensive. No wonder they are leaving before it arrives, if it does.
https://www.taxation.co.uk/articles/exit-taxes-on-corporate-relocation
Very different approaches between Mark Rutte's lot, and eg the Greens.
Also clearly there's going to be some fallout from the minimum rate of corporation tax discussed politically last year. I have no idea where the fallout from that will fall.
https://www.morningstar.co.uk/uk/news/AN_1637011085465503200/update-dutch-government-attempts-to-keep-shell-from-uk-relocation.aspx
Which might b why the epithet stuck ?
This use of benzos and the utter failure of ECT has left us with a jaundiced attitude to his health service as well as the loss of access to a GP
Higher rate tax payer plus leverage plus personal ownership of normal residential rented property is a bit of a mug's game these days.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/59298238
There are no perfect healthcare systems. "Our NHS" (the only true religion in the UK) is a system that like all nationalised industries is more interested in the needs of its employees than it is in its customer. It is very flawed, and its fundamental flaw is that most people have nothing to compare it to that might cause them to insist that it could be better.
Across Europe healthcare systems are in far, far better shape but most of them have significant private sector involvement and fees. Healthcare outcomes for the poor are better across Europe than here, yet we steadfastly stick to the extremely outdated principles of the NHS that everyone gets the same healthcare and yet we know that healthcare needs are pretty variable.
When comparing the two I would have preferred our son to be treated here rather than in BC, not least as we do not permit anything but short-term use of benzos
“Rooty is a good man, he’s never engaged in racist language,” says Rafiq. “I found [his comments] hurtful. He was Gary’s flatmate. He was involved in social nights out during which I was called a Paki. He might not remember [the incidents of racism] but it shows how normal it was that even a good man like him doesn’t see it for what it is.”
Does Root keep the England captaincy?
Seeing his experience, I can confirm BigG’s claim
that Canada’s health service has major problems. I’m not sure it’s significantly *worse* than the NHS (especially now) but it’s not obviously superior
24 hours!
The advice, if you’re going, is to take food, drinks, change, blankets, pillows, headphones, power packs, baby wipes. New clothes
My brother broke his arm in the USA.
Treatment was similar.
The price wasn't.
You have stated one act by congress to be democratic and another not to be democratic. How do they differ? Your initial argument implies the latter is also democratic and that therefore anything congress decides is democratic.
If the latter is not democratic, and we also know that congress can democratically decide things, then that statement confirms there are things that congress can do and things it can not do. That therefore implies that it is not obvious that if congress overrule the EC vote that that is democratic. Logically you have not shown it is democratic nor undemocratic.
1) Were not previously operating in the sector
2) Did not manufacture any of the PPE supplied
https://twitter.com/Straz_Graniczna/status/1460545627729928194
Second in F2 suggests he should at least be reasonable.
https://www.skinnydiplondon.com/
Every large system contains waste, graft & iniquity within it somewhere. Probably everywhere to some degree. Criticising a current system because it is imperfect is worse than pointless - it’s doing the dirty PR work of the US healthcare companies that would love to extract profits from the NHS for them.
(There’s nothing wrong with profit making companies delivering healthcare - the French manage fairly well using a private delivery, mostly state funded system - but doing so on the private company’s terms is asking for an extremely expensive disaster that we may never be able to extricate outselves from - see the USA for a prime example of this end state.)
US healthcare is a disaster area when it comes to costs & iniquity. A huge proportion of healthcare spending in the US goes on deadweight costs - all the staff required to assign blame & cost between healthcare providers and insurers. Salaries are sky high because insiders manipulate the system to prevent competition (healthcare in the US is explicitly exempt from anti-trust laws IIRC). & on & on & on. The US is /almost/ the worst of all possible national healthcare systems, given the amount they spend on it.
So, will the Paterson debacle bring down Johnson? Of course I hope so but imo the only realistic chance of this happening before the GE is if the polls consistently show (i) a solid Labour lead and (ii) that Johnson has become a clear electoral liability cf an alternative eg Sunak. In this event perhaps the party will ditch him. I make it quite long odds sadly.
Here in Wales our GP will only prescribe 14 days supply after which a full review follows with alternative treatments considered
Certainly in US they just reach for the benzos and indeed no messing around often go for super strength Xanax, which is all but banned in NHS.
Sadly, I know way too much about this issue myself.
NEW THREAD
Perhaps that'll teach him to stop being Johnson's nodding dog in future.
From reading Master of the Senate, I've come to have a kind of... Respect is not the right word, but maybe understanding(?) of the Senate, and it's potential as a cooling chamber on the hysterics of the popular will. In the 50s and 60s, famously, Southern Democrats were able to marshal opposition in the Senate against civil rights and got senators from dispassionate or even liberal states to vote against the wishes of their constituents. Dispicable though the ends were, it gives me hope that most GOP senators in the face of the base will hold back from the brink. But the Senate is not immune from the popular will, and they will lean against the institutions when if they feel it is safe to do so. More and more near misses will make them feel safer and safer to do so and they won't realise the danger of the path they're on until it's too late.
Maybe I'm too generous, and they simply won't care about all that.
Given that Germany does not have a Government, this is presumably the bureeaucracy.
Unless the previous one stays in power in a few respects?
Watch that gas supply.
Seriously, I hope you recover quickly and with nothing worse than cold symptoms.
15 years ago, he was a rightwing commentator and sometime TV personality, amusing to many.
10 years ago, he was Mayor of London. He broke promises he made on rough sleeping and on policing, and he spent London taxpayers’ money on useless water canons and other projects too numerous to cite, using £126,000 in order to woo Jennifer Arcuri.
3 years ago, he was a careless, useless Foreign Secretary, following which he broke the Ministerial Code by failing to OK his lucrative Daily Telegraph contract with the Appointments Committee. The modified contract enabled his writing for that newspaper to provoke a very significant increase in Islamophobic incidents.
In the last 3 years, evidence has accrued of Johnson’s willingness to use his power to his selfish ends, and of his dishonesty, incompetence and lack of integrity and accountability.
Could it be that a tipping point has been reached?
The Netherlands is one of the countries, alongside the UK, that has been moving upwards towards the great race to the middle that we are seeing in corporate tax across the developed world.
It's one of the most remarkable trends over the last 3 or 4 years and one that not only waters down any meaningful tax rate arbitrage between countries but also potentially renders government use of tax incentives for investment toothless.
The NL has for a few years had a mainstream rate of around 25% (25.5% until recently), but was able to make use of a number of tools to give MNCs lower effective rates. With the exception of the innovation box pretty much all of these are no longer available due to BEPS, EU state aid challenges and a general change in the ethos of the government.
The UK as we know is raising its main CT rate from 19% to 25%. The patent box was one of our principal innovation incentives, alongside R&D credits. The qualification rules changed following BEPS and really kicked in this year, making it harder to access.
Meanwhile the rest of Europe is cutting rates. France will be at 25% from next year (plus a few small surcharges). Italy is now at 24% plus their IRAP which takes the rate to around 25-26%. Spain is now 25%. Belgium is now 25%. Korea is 25%. And, most remarkably after the falling through of much of the original Biden tax plan, the US is likely to remain at 21% + state taxes i.e. an effective rate of....25%. Only Germany (c.29-31% depending on location) and Japan (30.62%) remain outliers.
And BEPS 2.0 will put a floor under even the low tax countries including the SIS (Switzerland, Ireland and Singapore). It introduces a global minimum tax from 2023 and Ireland, for example, has already undertaken to increase its mainstream rate from 12.5% to 15%. Singapore will withdraw its current tax incentive rates. Switzerland has already reformed corporate tax to give rates from the low to high teens.
What does this mean for government use of tax to incentivise FDI? It will change massively, and already has done to some extent. There is little rate arbitrage left, and you can't go below 15%. So we are seeing governments focusing instead on direct subsidy, regulatory incentives (e.g. planning exemptions) and non-CT tax incentives on payroll tax or indirect taxes - see Switzerland's recent announcement it will drop all customs duties on industrial products.
From the ONS, latest figures, religion in GB from 2011-2018: