"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
...who achieved exactly none of her goals and died in prison.
At least she didn't live in the ignominy of licking jackboot and thinking she enjoyed it, or of wearing a jackboot to stomp on other people. She was worth about minus a million Viewcodes.
We live in a strange transitional period. I wouldn't assume that the contradictions aren't going to cause major cracks, or that the fight is over, or that anyone who can make a reasonable "living" as an android in this little period must be right to assume that whatever doesn't hurt his brain too much to assume the security of actually is secure.
Oh wait, I forgot, nobody who dies for a cause can have been right. How will you recruit for your army, Viewcode? Just promise prospects they can shoot people and get paid for it?
@Dura_Ace - Have you read "Turn Illness Into A Weapon"?
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Given the state the country is in, what other choice is there? That everyone can see just what a mess it is out there gives Labour the leeway to do that - and there are some relatively quick wins around planning reform, housebuilding, infrastructure investment and closer ties to the EU that the Tories just cannot pursue. Labour has to establish a direction of travel and demonstrate that it is producing results to win a second term. I think Labour understands that. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
The quick wins you mention are mostly illusory. Planning reform and housebuilding have defeated every government for decades, there's no money for significant infrastructure investment and its benefits would take years to show up anyway, and closer ties to the EU, whatever those are, would not help much if at all for a long time either, even if the EU let us, which they show no sign of doing. And their fantasies about green growth and debts to the public sector unions etc would hit growth rather than help it.
The Conservatives have followed basically Labour policies in interfering in the economy, screwing the enterprising and productive, failed industrial policies and disastrous green crap and that's got us to where we are - no growth. Except, maybe, housebuilding, it'll be even worse under Labour.
Yes, that is the right wing line on all this. Proper Conservatism has not been tried and, as a result, we are in a spiral of unending, hopeless decline and things can only get worse. My view is different. I think a decision to no longer govern solely for the Boomer generation will open up a lot of possibilities. And Labour can make that decision because it does not rely on Boomer votes. Will it be easy or pain free? Absolutely not. Will there be a quick turnaround? No chance at all. But that does not mean there is no point in doing it. If Labour can demonstrate some progress after a five year term, memories of the absolute mess the Tories have made over the last 13 years will do the rest.
"Government by the boomer generation for the boomer generation" began with New Labour, so I think you're just putting a partisan gloss on the same observation.
You're both right though.
Yes the rot began with New Labour, but then the Conservatives have increasingly doubled-down on that.
If Labour now do decide to change things then that would be a change for the better, as much as I don't like Labour in general, they have the potential to improve things on that front.
I won't be holding my breath though. The way Labour still support the Triple Lock is not reassuring.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
...who achieved exactly none of her goals and died in prison.
At least she didn't live in the ignominy of licking jackboot and thinking she enjoyed it, or of wearing a jackboot to stomp on other people. She was worth about minus a million Viewcodes.
We live in a strange transitional period. I wouldn't assume that the contradictions aren't going to cause major cracks, or that the fight is over, or that anyone who can make a reasonable "living" as an android in this little period must be right to assume that whatever doesn't hurt his brain too much to assume the security of actually is secure.
Oh wait, I forgot, nobody who dies for a cause can have been right. How will you recruit for your army, Viewcode? Just promise prospects they can shoot people and get paid for it?
@Dura_Ace - Have you read "Turn Illness Into A Weapon"?
She was an anti semitic murderer, so how that makes her non-jackbooted in any but the most literal sense is hard to see. viewcode must be a seriously terrible man.
Dura's stance is distinctly at odds with the main strains of centrist dad, and also centre-right PB.
I'm personally not sure if they're doing themselves any more favours with this approach. There's something about stopping the general flow of everyday activities, rather than activities as specific as fracking, that doesn't seem to be working for them at the moment.
OTOH he can claim to have defended the realm at some risk to his skin, unlike most of us.
That doesn't make my views worth more than anyone else's.
I didn't do it for the realm. Very few people will risk their own life and kill other people, many times over, for the queen or the UK or Tony Blair. The psychological conditioning means you do it for your comrades. The people immediately around you.
Quite so - but it is a common gammon argument, if only by implication. Homes for Heroes sloganeering, Kipling's poem about Tommy Atkins, that sort of mentality. Never mind what the heroes themselves think.
Fan of Starship Troopers?
The Heinlein book? Looked at it long ago - didn't like it. I was much more into Haldeman's Forever War. So curious as to your point ...
Society run by military veterans. Only.
Never understand why Verhoeven wasted his time on the book - he should have made Forever War. Instead he made a bad version of "Armor" by John Steakley - several scenes are straight out of that book.
Ah, thanks.
Come to think of it: is anyone actually making Forever War as a film? There seem to have been several starts.
Do we think England picking another seamer that Stokes really isn't able to bowl? And that knee is permanently f##ked.
Yep. He's a batsman now.
Although I do object to the BBC continuously saying England are playing without a spinner, which is a bit harsh of a man with a bowling average lower than his batting average and over 50 test wickets.
Joe Root. He is definitely not a part time spinner, and that is surely part of the conversation in selection.
I watched Stokes bowling at Edgbaston from side on. He was bowling about the same speed as the fastest women bowlers in the Trent Bridge match.
No he isn't. He is still significantly quicker. He was still bowling at 80mph, with the odd quicker one, but early in his career he was more 85mph with the nearly 90mph quicker one.
Women "fast" bowlers are in the 65-70mph range.
I played semi-pro club cricket & wasn't really fast enough at high 70s (had to be on the spot) & regularly faced 80-85mph.
There are women bowlers capable of spells around and balls above 80mph so I think fast is more 70s plus now.
No, that's not true. The fastest ball ever recorded in women's cricket is 80mph & seen as amost certainly an error (in the same way as 100mph+ deliveries in mens probably were too).
As i say, 80mph is normal for Saturday mens semi-pro cricket.
That particular ball may or may not be incorrect, but Lauren Filer bowled up to 76mph in the Ashes test, Shabnim Ismail and Lea Tahuhu are regularly above 75mph.
That is the "top end" of womens cricket in the same way as saying Mark Wood at average 90mph, fast ball 95mph...that isn't typical.
70mph in men semi-pro cricket is dobber bowling.
Fast bowlers aren't supposed to be typical. I would consider Wood, Archer, prime Harmison fast bowlers but not someone like Broad. A lot of tests wont have anyone on either side who would be rated fast by Wisden/Cricinfo. Anyway it is what it is. A handful of women bowl over 75mph, and to me that makes those at 65-70 fast medium, not fast.
The original claim was the women were regularly bowling the same pace as Stokes.
The over he got the crucial wicket every ball was 80+, then the slower ball cross seamer that got the crucial wicket was 75mph. So slower ball Stokes = fastest ball in Womens Ashes.
Point of information: "boomer", "Gen Z", etc., are designations that almost certainly derive from advertising companies and it may even be known which exact companies. Cf. the identity "urban youth" that comes from Nike or whoever was handling their account. Before that, there was "teenager".
Interesting issues as to when it's vandalism and when it's a Banksy. School of Banksy job gets painted out by Glasgow council, after being confirmed as not Banksy.
But also admittedly after having been vandalised because it showed a rat in an UJ hat marching and beating a drum: very clear implications in the West Central Belt context.
Point of information: "boomer", "Gen Z", etc., are designations that almost certainly derive from advertising companies and it may even be known which exact companies. Cf. the identity "urban youth" that comes from Nike or whoever was handling their account. Before that, there was "teenager".
American, I think. Wasn't there a minor issue that their baby boom was earlier than ours?
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
...who achieved exactly none of her goals and died in prison.
At least she didn't live in the ignominy of licking jackboot and thinking she enjoyed it, or of wearing a jackboot to stomp on other people. She was worth about minus a million Viewcodes.
We live in a strange transitional period. I wouldn't assume that the contradictions aren't going to cause major cracks, or that the fight is over, or that anyone who can make a reasonable "living" as an android in this little period must be right to assume that whatever doesn't hurt his brain too much to assume the security of actually is secure.
Oh wait, I forgot, nobody who dies for a cause can have been right. How will you recruit for your army, Viewcode? Just promise prospects they can shoot people and get paid for it?
@Dura_Ace - Have you read "Turn Illness Into A Weapon"?
Dying for a cause is not the problem. There are a number of people I admire greatly for being willing to die for their cause. Murdering for a cause is another matter. That is why scum like Meinhof rotted in jail, with only a few lunatics like you and DA to carry her torch.
What happened? I was listening on the radio but they didn't really explain much, just that play was disrupted.
Just Stop Oil. Good for them. More of this sort of thing.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
Do you support all protesto-vandalism, or only for causes you agree with?
Why the fuck would I support it for causes I disagree with?
I find your position baffling. The means of change are more important in the long run than the change itself.
Dura is perhaps an end justifies the means guy ?
I can understand that approach, if not sympathise with it (hard to point to examples of happy societies where that happiness has been won through violence rather than persuasion). But in this case, the end appears to be a hardening of opinion against the eco-nutters. I mean, I'm all in favour of finding alternatives to oil. It's a not inconsiderable aspect of my job. But this lot make me want to go and use large diesel cars for pointlessly small journeys.
Quite. When examining the means, proportionality is one thing, but it's nothing without effectiveness.
Interesting issues as to when it's vandalism and when it's a Banksy. School of Banksy job gets painted out by Glasgow council, after being confirmed as not Banksy.
But also admittedly after having been vandalised because it showed a rat in an UJ hat marching and beating a drum: very clear implications in the West Central Belt context.
UJ ~ Union Jack.
I can imagine a man from the council pointing a smartphone at it with the right program installed and reading off the answer: nope, it's not art; gotta have it removed; I don't make the rules.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
...who achieved exactly none of her goals and died in prison.
At least she didn't live in the ignominy of licking jackboot and thinking she enjoyed it, or of wearing a jackboot to stomp on other people. She was worth about minus a million Viewcodes.
We live in a strange transitional period. I wouldn't assume that the contradictions aren't going to cause major cracks, or that the fight is over, or that anyone who can make a reasonable "living" as an android in this little period must be right to assume that whatever doesn't hurt his brain too much to assume the security of actually is secure.
Oh wait, I forgot, nobody who dies for a cause can have been right. How will you recruit for your army, Viewcode? Just promise prospects they can shoot people and get paid for it?
@Dura_Ace - Have you read "Turn Illness Into A Weapon"?
She was an anti semitic murderer, so how that makes her non-jackbooted in any but the most literal sense is hard to see. viewcode must be a seriously terrible man.
Interesting issues as to when it's vandalism and when it's a Banksy. School of Banksy job gets painted out by Glasgow council, after being confirmed as not Banksy.
But also admittedly after having been vandalised because it showed a rat in an UJ hat marching and beating a drum: very clear implications in the West Central Belt context.
The difference is that, if it were a genuine Banksy, they’d have cut it out of the wall and sent it to Sotheby’s or Bonhams.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
...who achieved exactly none of her goals and died in prison.
At least she didn't live in the ignominy of licking jackboot and thinking she enjoyed it, or of wearing a jackboot to stomp on other people. She was worth about minus a million Viewcodes.
We live in a strange transitional period. I wouldn't assume that the contradictions aren't going to cause major cracks, or that the fight is over, or that anyone who can make a reasonable "living" as an android in this little period must be right to assume that whatever doesn't hurt his brain too much to assume the security of actually is secure.
Oh wait, I forgot, nobody who dies for a cause can have been right. How will you recruit for your army, Viewcode? Just promise prospects they can shoot people and get paid for it?
@Dura_Ace - Have you read "Turn Illness Into A Weapon"?
She was an anti semitic murderer, so how that makes her non-jackbooted in any but the most literal sense is hard to see. viewcode must be a seriously terrible man.
The important word in "minus a million Viewcodes" is "minus". I think Westie accidentally complimented me.
What happened? I was listening on the radio but they didn't really explain much, just that play was disrupted.
Just Stop Oil. Good for them. More of this sort of thing.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
Do you support all protesto-vandalism, or only for causes you agree with?
Why the fuck would I support it for causes I disagree with?
I find your position baffling. The means of change are more important in the long run than the change itself.
Why is it baffling? Strategies are, mostly, morally neutral; the cause is the thing that places the morality. Violence is typically considered "bad", but it's fine in self defence; so violence isn't actually the bad thing, but the cause is.
Protesting is a strategy. I like it when causes that are good use it, and dislike it when causes that are bad use it. I would still protect the right to protesting, as long as counter protest and self defence in the face of violence at protests is allowed (see Honor Oak this weekend).
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
...who achieved exactly none of her goals and died in prison.
At least she didn't live in the ignominy of licking jackboot and thinking she enjoyed it, or of wearing a jackboot to stomp on other people. She was worth about minus a million Viewcodes.
We live in a strange transitional period. I wouldn't assume that the contradictions aren't going to cause major cracks, or that the fight is over, or that anyone who can make a reasonable "living" as an android in this little period must be right to assume that whatever doesn't hurt his brain too much to assume the security of actually is secure.
Oh wait, I forgot, nobody who dies for a cause can have been right. How will you recruit for your army, Viewcode? Just promise prospects they can shoot people and get paid for it?
@Dura_Ace - Have you read "Turn Illness Into A Weapon"?
She was an anti semitic murderer, so how that makes her non-jackbooted in any but the most literal sense is hard to see. viewcode must be a seriously terrible man.
But His/Her Heart Was In The Right Place.
The thing is, that every uniformed man shooting civilians in the back of the head and kicking the bodies into a trench thought (or their superiors thought) they were Doing The Right Thing.
When I edited the student rag at uni, I published an article on atrocities and swapped round the photos of NKVD and Enistrgruppen squads at work. Kinda accident on purpose. Then pointed out in the next issue that people who written in saying the NKVD were justified because….
The resulting fury was interesting - the number of people who will defend literal “ shooting civilians in the back of the head and kicking the bodies into a trench”…
Interesting issues as to when it's vandalism and when it's a Banksy. School of Banksy job gets painted out by Glasgow council, after being confirmed as not Banksy.
But also admittedly after having been vandalised because it showed a rat in an UJ hat marching and beating a drum: very clear implications in the West Central Belt context.
UJ ~ Union Jack.
I can imagine a man from the council pointing a smartphone at it with the right program installed and reading off the answer: nope, it's not art; gotta have it removed; I don't make the rules.
What happened? I was listening on the radio but they didn't really explain much, just that play was disrupted.
Just Stop Oil. Good for them. More of this sort of thing.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
Do you support all protesto-vandalism, or only for causes you agree with?
Why the fuck would I support it for causes I disagree with?
I find your position baffling. The means of change are more important in the long run than the change itself.
Why is it baffling? Strategies are, mostly, morally neutral; the cause is the thing that places the morality. Violence is typically considered "bad", but it's fine in self defence; so violence isn't actually the bad thing, but the cause is.
Protesting is a strategy. I like it when causes that are good use it, and dislike it when causes that are bad use it. I would still protect the right to protesting, as long as counter protest and self defence in the face of violence at protests is allowed (see Honor Oak this weekend).
Violence isn't morally neutral, of course.
Yes it is; it's a tool. Is it always bad to do violence? Is self defence immoral? Are police arresting people, a clearly violent act, always immoral? I would argue most violence is probably immoral, but that's typically due to the cause.
What happened? I was listening on the radio but they didn't really explain much, just that play was disrupted.
Just Stop Oil. Good for them. More of this sort of thing.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
Do you support all protesto-vandalism, or only for causes you agree with?
Why the fuck would I support it for causes I disagree with?
I find your position baffling. The means of change are more important in the long run than the change itself.
Why is it baffling? Strategies are, mostly, morally neutral; the cause is the thing that places the morality. Violence is typically considered "bad", but it's fine in self defence; so violence isn't actually the bad thing, but the cause is.
Protesting is a strategy. I like it when causes that are good use it, and dislike it when causes that are bad use it. I would still protect the right to protesting, as long as counter protest and self defence in the face of violence at protests is allowed (see Honor Oak this weekend).
Dura's stance is distinctly at odds with the main strains of centrist dad, and also centre-right PB.
I'm personally not sure if they're doing themselves any more favours with this approach. There's something about stopping the general flow of everyday activities, rather than activities as specific as fracking, that doesn't seem to be working for them at the moment.
OTOH he can claim to have defended the realm at some risk to his skin, unlike most of us.
That doesn't make my views worth more than anyone else's.
I didn't do it for the realm. Very few people will risk their own life and kill other people, many times over, for the queen or the UK or Tony Blair. The psychological conditioning means you do it for your comrades. The people immediately around you.
Quite so - but it is a common gammon argument, if only by implication. Homes for Heroes sloganeering, Kipling's poem about Tommy Atkins, that sort of mentality. Never mind what the heroes themselves think.
Fan of Starship Troopers?
The Heinlein book? Looked at it long ago - didn't like it. I was much more into Haldeman's Forever War. So curious as to your point ...
Society run by military veterans. Only.
Never understand why Verhoeven wasted his time on the book - he should have made Forever War. Instead he made a bad version of "Armor" by John Steakley - several scenes are straight out of that book.
Ah, thanks.
Come to think of it: is anyone actually making Forever War as a film? There seem to have been several starts.
What happened? I was listening on the radio but they didn't really explain much, just that play was disrupted.
Just Stop Oil. Good for them. More of this sort of thing.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
Do you support all protesto-vandalism, or only for causes you agree with?
Why the fuck would I support it for causes I disagree with?
I find your position baffling. The means of change are more important in the long run than the change itself.
Why is it baffling? Strategies are, mostly, morally neutral; the cause is the thing that places the morality. Violence is typically considered "bad", but it's fine in self defence; so violence isn't actually the bad thing, but the cause is.
Protesting is a strategy. I like it when causes that are good use it, and dislike it when causes that are bad use it. I would still protect the right to protesting, as long as counter protest and self defence in the face of violence at protests is allowed (see Honor Oak this weekend).
Violence isn't morally neutral, of course.
Yes it is; it's a tool. Is it always bad to do violence? Is self defence immoral? Are police arresting people, a clearly violent act, always immoral? I would argue most violence is probably immoral, but that's typically due to the cause.
The Ukranians will say that self-defence, in the face of massive violence from an aggressor with a large army, is perfectly reasonable.
Thankfully, a significant number of Western countries agree, and the brave Ukranians now have some of the world’s best weapons at their disposal.
Dura's stance is distinctly at odds with the main strains of centrist dad, and also centre-right PB.
I'm personally not sure if they're doing themselves any more favours with this approach. There's something about stopping the general flow of everyday activities, rather than activities as specific as fracking, that doesn't seem to be working for them at the moment.
OTOH he can claim to have defended the realm at some risk to his skin, unlike most of us.
That doesn't make my views worth more than anyone else's.
I didn't do it for the realm. Very few people will risk their own life and kill other people, many times over, for the queen or the UK or Tony Blair. The psychological conditioning means you do it for your comrades. The people immediately around you.
Quite so - but it is a common gammon argument, if only by implication. Homes for Heroes sloganeering, Kipling's poem about Tommy Atkins, that sort of mentality. Never mind what the heroes themselves think.
Fan of Starship Troopers?
The Heinlein book? Looked at it long ago - didn't like it. I was much more into Haldeman's Forever War. So curious as to your point ...
Society run by military veterans. Only.
Never understand why Verhoeven wasted his time on the book - he should have made Forever War. Instead he made a bad version of "Armor" by John Steakley - several scenes are straight out of that book.
Oh dear, someone basing their view of the book on the poor film adaptation.
It was not society run by military veterans. It was society run by those who did public service in many diffferent forms. The military was only one minor part of that and the recruiter in the book spends a lot of time trying to persuade the protagonists that they should choose another route as all are equally valid. In the book he directly references teaching and serving in the Government (in any capacity) as being routes to citizenship. It is much like the national service systems run by a number of European countries until recently where you could opt to work in care homes or some other public service instead of serving in the military.
What happened? I was listening on the radio but they didn't really explain much, just that play was disrupted.
Just Stop Oil. Good for them. More of this sort of thing.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
Do you support all protesto-vandalism, or only for causes you agree with?
Why the fuck would I support it for causes I disagree with?
I find your position baffling. The means of change are more important in the long run than the change itself.
Why is it baffling? Strategies are, mostly, morally neutral; the cause is the thing that places the morality. Violence is typically considered "bad", but it's fine in self defence; so violence isn't actually the bad thing, but the cause is.
Protesting is a strategy. I like it when causes that are good use it, and dislike it when causes that are bad use it. I would still protect the right to protesting, as long as counter protest and self defence in the face of violence at protests is allowed (see Honor Oak this weekend).
Violence isn't morally neutral, of course.
Yes it is; it's a tool. Is it always bad to do violence? Is self defence immoral? Are police arresting people, a clearly violent act, always immoral? I would argue most violence is probably immoral, but that's typically due to the cause.
No, it's not - which is why the law sets quite a low bar on the offence of assault. And why police use of violence must be proportionate to the situation. The question is whether it's utilised in preventing something morally worse, as in the examples you cite.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
...who achieved exactly none of her goals and died in prison.
At least she didn't live in the ignominy of licking jackboot and thinking she enjoyed it, or of wearing a jackboot to stomp on other people. She was worth about minus a million Viewcodes.
We live in a strange transitional period. I wouldn't assume that the contradictions aren't going to cause major cracks, or that the fight is over, or that anyone who can make a reasonable "living" as an android in this little period must be right to assume that whatever doesn't hurt his brain too much to assume the security of actually is secure.
Oh wait, I forgot, nobody who dies for a cause can have been right. How will you recruit for your army, Viewcode? Just promise prospects they can shoot people and get paid for it?
@Dura_Ace - Have you read "Turn Illness Into A Weapon"?
She was an anti semitic murderer, so how that makes her non-jackbooted in any but the most literal sense is hard to see. viewcode must be a seriously terrible man.
Yeah but she was a tankie, so the Putin sycophants love her.
Do we think England picking another seamer that Stokes really isn't able to bowl? And that knee is permanently f##ked.
Yep. He's a batsman now.
Although I do object to the BBC continuously saying England are playing without a spinner, which is a bit harsh of a man with a bowling average lower than his batting average and over 50 test wickets.
Joe Root. He is definitely not a part time spinner, and that is surely part of the conversation in selection.
I watched Stokes bowling at Edgbaston from side on. He was bowling about the same speed as the fastest women bowlers in the Trent Bridge match.
No he isn't. He is still significantly quicker. He was still bowling at 80mph, with the odd quicker one, but early in his career he was more 85mph with the nearly 90mph quicker one.
Women "fast" bowlers are in the 65-70mph range.
I played semi-pro club cricket & wasn't really fast enough at high 70s (had to be on the spot) & regularly faced 80-85mph.
There are women bowlers capable of spells around and balls above 80mph so I think fast is more 70s plus now.
No, that's not true. The fastest ball ever recorded in women's cricket is 80mph & seen as amost certainly an error (in the same way as 100mph+ deliveries in mens probably were too).
As i say, 80mph is normal for Saturday mens semi-pro cricket.
That particular ball may or may not be incorrect, but Lauren Filer bowled up to 76mph in the Ashes test, Shabnim Ismail and Lea Tahuhu are regularly above 75mph.
That is the "top end" of womens cricket in the same way as saying Mark Wood at average 90mph, fast ball 95mph...that isn't typical.
70mph in men semi-pro cricket is dobber bowling.
Fast bowlers aren't supposed to be typical. I would consider Wood, Archer, prime Harmison fast bowlers but not someone like Broad. A lot of tests wont have anyone on either side who would be rated fast by Wisden/Cricinfo. Anyway it is what it is. A handful of women bowl over 75mph, and to me that makes those at 65-70 fast medium, not fast.
The original claim was the women were regularly bowling the same pace as Stokes.
The over he got the crucial wicket every ball was 80+, then the slower ball cross seamer that got the crucial wicket was 75mph. So slower ball Stokes = fastest ball in Womens Ashes.
I did not make or support the original claim, merely plonked myself in the middle as a true centrist.
Dura's stance is distinctly at odds with the main strains of centrist dad, and also centre-right PB.
I'm personally not sure if they're doing themselves any more favours with this approach. There's something about stopping the general flow of everyday activities, rather than activities as specific as fracking, that doesn't seem to be working for them at the moment.
OTOH he can claim to have defended the realm at some risk to his skin, unlike most of us.
That doesn't make my views worth more than anyone else's.
I didn't do it for the realm. Very few people will risk their own life and kill other people, many times over, for the queen or the UK or Tony Blair. The psychological conditioning means you do it for your comrades. The people immediately around you.
Quite so - but it is a common gammon argument, if only by implication. Homes for Heroes sloganeering, Kipling's poem about Tommy Atkins, that sort of mentality. Never mind what the heroes themselves think.
Fan of Starship Troopers?
The Heinlein book? Looked at it long ago - didn't like it. I was much more into Haldeman's Forever War. So curious as to your point ...
Society run by military veterans. Only.
Never understand why Verhoeven wasted his time on the book - he should have made Forever War. Instead he made a bad version of "Armor" by John Steakley - several scenes are straight out of that book.
Oh dear, someone basing their view of the book on the poor film adaptation.
It was not society run by military veterans. It was society run by those who did public service in many diffferent forms. The military was only one minor part of that and the recruiter in the book spends a lot of time trying to persuade the protagonists that they should choose another route as all are equally valid. In the book he directly references teaching and serving in the Government (in any capacity) as being routes to citizenship. It is much like the national service systems run by a number of European countries until recently where you could opt to work in care homes or some other public service instead of serving in the military.
Heinlein did try and retro that he meant "public service veterans" later, but it was pretty clear what he was saying.
You could only *get to be* a school teacher, by being a veteran, by the way.
In Trump's M-a-L case, per @AnnaBower, def Walt Nowta will ask to postpone 7/14 CIPA hearing because Nowta atty Woodward has another trial that day. (Woodward can't file motion to postpone now because Nowta has no local counsel yet.) https://twitter.com/rparloff/status/1674017958840999937
What happened? I was listening on the radio but they didn't really explain much, just that play was disrupted.
Just Stop Oil. Good for them. More of this sort of thing.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
Do you support all protesto-vandalism, or only for causes you agree with?
Why the fuck would I support it for causes I disagree with?
I find your position baffling. The means of change are more important in the long run than the change itself.
Why is it baffling? Strategies are, mostly, morally neutral; the cause is the thing that places the morality. Violence is typically considered "bad", but it's fine in self defence; so violence isn't actually the bad thing, but the cause is.
Protesting is a strategy. I like it when causes that are good use it, and dislike it when causes that are bad use it. I would still protect the right to protesting, as long as counter protest and self defence in the face of violence at protests is allowed (see Honor Oak this weekend).
Violence isn't morally neutral, of course.
Yes it is; it's a tool. Is it always bad to do violence? Is self defence immoral? Are police arresting people, a clearly violent act, always immoral? I would argue most violence is probably immoral, but that's typically due to the cause.
No, it's not - which is why the law sets quite a low bar on the offence of assault. And why police use of violence must be proportionate to the situation. The question is whether it's utilised in preventing something morally worse, as in the examples you cite.
So self defence is immoral, but less immoral than being assaulted, and therefore is permitted? That's ridiculous. Self defence and the defence of others can be actively moral - and still involve violence.
Dura's stance is distinctly at odds with the main strains of centrist dad, and also centre-right PB.
I'm personally not sure if they're doing themselves any more favours with this approach. There's something about stopping the general flow of everyday activities, rather than activities as specific as fracking, that doesn't seem to be working for them at the moment.
OTOH he can claim to have defended the realm at some risk to his skin, unlike most of us.
That doesn't make my views worth more than anyone else's.
I didn't do it for the realm. Very few people will risk their own life and kill other people, many times over, for the queen or the UK or Tony Blair. The psychological conditioning means you do it for your comrades. The people immediately around you.
As Sir John Keegan famously quoted one cavalry officer saying: "I didn't join the army, I joined the 10th Hussars".
What happened? I was listening on the radio but they didn't really explain much, just that play was disrupted.
Just Stop Oil. Good for them. More of this sort of thing.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
Do you support all protesto-vandalism, or only for causes you agree with?
Why the fuck would I support it for causes I disagree with?
I find your position baffling. The means of change are more important in the long run than the change itself.
Why is it baffling? Strategies are, mostly, morally neutral; the cause is the thing that places the morality. Violence is typically considered "bad", but it's fine in self defence; so violence isn't actually the bad thing, but the cause is.
Protesting is a strategy. I like it when causes that are good use it, and dislike it when causes that are bad use it. I would still protect the right to protesting, as long as counter protest and self defence in the face of violence at protests is allowed (see Honor Oak this weekend).
Violence isn't morally neutral, of course.
Yes it is; it's a tool. Is it always bad to do violence? Is self defence immoral? Are police arresting people, a clearly violent act, always immoral? I would argue most violence is probably immoral, but that's typically due to the cause.
No, it's not - which is why the law sets quite a low bar on the offence of assault. And why police use of violence must be proportionate to the situation. The question is whether it's utilised in preventing something morally worse, as in the examples you cite.
So self defence is immoral, but less immoral than being assaulted, and therefore is permitted? That's ridiculous. Self defence and the defence of others can be actively moral - and still involve violence.
Moral questions generally resolve to context and instance.
What happened? I was listening on the radio but they didn't really explain much, just that play was disrupted.
Just Stop Oil. Good for them. More of this sort of thing.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
Do you support all protesto-vandalism, or only for causes you agree with?
Why the fuck would I support it for causes I disagree with?
I find your position baffling. The means of change are more important in the long run than the change itself.
Why is it baffling? Strategies are, mostly, morally neutral; the cause is the thing that places the morality. Violence is typically considered "bad", but it's fine in self defence; so violence isn't actually the bad thing, but the cause is.
Protesting is a strategy. I like it when causes that are good use it, and dislike it when causes that are bad use it. I would still protect the right to protesting, as long as counter protest and self defence in the face of violence at protests is allowed (see Honor Oak this weekend).
Violence isn't morally neutral, of course.
Yes it is; it's a tool. Is it always bad to do violence? Is self defence immoral? Are police arresting people, a clearly violent act, always immoral? I would argue most violence is probably immoral, but that's typically due to the cause.
No, it's not - which is why the law sets quite a low bar on the offence of assault. And why police use of violence must be proportionate to the situation. The question is whether it's utilised in preventing something morally worse, as in the examples you cite.
So self defence is immoral, but less immoral than being assaulted, and therefore is permitted? That's ridiculous. Self defence and the defence of others can be actively moral - and still involve violence.
Moral questions generally resolve to context and instance.
What is self defence? What is proportional?
Indeed, they do. I didn't say they were easy answers, just that it is clear that there must be some instance where violence is morally acceptable or even a moral good.
What happened? I was listening on the radio but they didn't really explain much, just that play was disrupted.
Just Stop Oil. Good for them. More of this sort of thing.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
Do you support all protesto-vandalism, or only for causes you agree with?
Why the fuck would I support it for causes I disagree with?
I find your position baffling. The means of change are more important in the long run than the change itself.
Why is it baffling? Strategies are, mostly, morally neutral; the cause is the thing that places the morality. Violence is typically considered "bad", but it's fine in self defence; so violence isn't actually the bad thing, but the cause is.
Protesting is a strategy. I like it when causes that are good use it, and dislike it when causes that are bad use it. I would still protect the right to protesting, as long as counter protest and self defence in the face of violence at protests is allowed (see Honor Oak this weekend).
Violence isn't morally neutral, of course.
Yes it is; it's a tool. Is it always bad to do violence? Is self defence immoral? Are police arresting people, a clearly violent act, always immoral? I would argue most violence is probably immoral, but that's typically due to the cause.
No, it's not - which is why the law sets quite a low bar on the offence of assault. And why police use of violence must be proportionate to the situation. The question is whether it's utilised in preventing something morally worse, as in the examples you cite.
So self defence is immoral, but less immoral than being assaulted, and therefore is permitted? That's ridiculous. Self defence and the defence of others can be actively moral - and still involve violence.
That's not what I said. Violence is a moral bad, but its use in preventing a greater moral bad is a net moral good.
It's not a hard concept - and actually how our law works, essentially. Your formulation is behind (for example) the US 'stand your ground' laws. I don't regard that as good moral calculus.
What happened? I was listening on the radio but they didn't really explain much, just that play was disrupted.
Just Stop Oil. Good for them. More of this sort of thing.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
Do you support all protesto-vandalism, or only for causes you agree with?
Why the fuck would I support it for causes I disagree with?
I find your position baffling. The means of change are more important in the long run than the change itself.
Why is it baffling? Strategies are, mostly, morally neutral; the cause is the thing that places the morality. Violence is typically considered "bad", but it's fine in self defence; so violence isn't actually the bad thing, but the cause is.
Protesting is a strategy. I like it when causes that are good use it, and dislike it when causes that are bad use it. I would still protect the right to protesting, as long as counter protest and self defence in the face of violence at protests is allowed (see Honor Oak this weekend).
Violence isn't morally neutral, of course.
Yes it is; it's a tool. Is it always bad to do violence? Is self defence immoral? Are police arresting people, a clearly violent act, always immoral? I would argue most violence is probably immoral, but that's typically due to the cause.
No, it's not - which is why the law sets quite a low bar on the offence of assault. And why police use of violence must be proportionate to the situation. The question is whether it's utilised in preventing something morally worse, as in the examples you cite.
So self defence is immoral, but less immoral than being assaulted, and therefore is permitted? That's ridiculous. Self defence and the defence of others can be actively moral - and still involve violence.
Moral questions generally resolve to context and instance.
What is self defence? What is proportional?
Indeed, they do. I didn't say they were easy answers, just that it is clear that there must be some instance where violence is morally acceptable or even a moral good.
There is but its the exception that proves the rule.
As a rule violence is morally bad.
There are exceptional circumstances whereby it can be good, eg repelling Russia's forces and liberating occupied land is morally good. Typically the exceptional circumstances are where a use of force is needed to repel or prevent a greater act of violence.
But that doesn't detract from the fact that as a rule violence is morally bad, just because there are exceptions to that rule.
Away from the Cricket, its great to see increasing reports of Ukraine liberating villages that Russia has occupied since 2014.
Although there's a long way to go yet to liberate all occupied land, that in some parts of the country Russia is already going backwards is really positive news.
Pressure needs to be maintained and support given to Ukraine to ensure they can and will liberate every inch of their occupied land.
Yes, it’s not really making the news, but the last few weeks have been good for Ukraine, with a lot of territory liberated, including as you say some villages captured in 2014.
Watching the orcs arguing with each other on Saturday was hillarious, the best day of the last 16 months. There’s an opportunity to take advantage of the chaos, and the defenders are doing a good job of it.
I smile at the trolls on MoD daily update still flogging the linethat the Ukrainian counter offensive is stalling.
As they did incessantly in the weeks before the liberation of Kherson.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Given the state the country is in, what other choice is there? That everyone can see just what a mess it is out there gives Labour the leeway to do that - and there are some relatively quick wins around planning reform, housebuilding, infrastructure investment and closer ties to the EU that the Tories just cannot pursue. Labour has to establish a direction of travel and demonstrate that it is producing results to win a second term. I think Labour understands that. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
The quick wins you mention are mostly illusory. Planning reform and housebuilding have defeated every government for decades, there's no money for significant infrastructure investment and its benefits would take years to show up anyway, and closer ties to the EU, whatever those are, would not help much if at all for a long time either, even if the EU let us, which they show no sign of doing. And their fantasies about green growth and debts to the public sector unions etc would hit growth rather than help it.
The Conservatives have followed basically Labour policies in interfering in the economy, screwing the enterprising and productive, failed industrial policies and disastrous green crap and that's got us to where we are - no growth. Except, maybe, housebuilding, it'll be even worse under Labour.
Yes, that is the right wing line on all this. Proper Conservatism has not been tried and, as a result, we are in a spiral of unending, hopeless decline and things can only get worse. My view is different. I think a decision to no longer govern solely for the Boomer generation will open up a lot of possibilities. And Labour can make that decision because it does not rely on Boomer votes. Will it be easy or pain free? Absolutely not. Will there be a quick turnaround? No chance at all. But that does not mean there is no point in doing it. If Labour can demonstrate some progress after a five year term, memories of the absolute mess the Tories have made over the last 13 years will do the rest.
"Government by the boomer generation for the boomer generation" began with New Labour, so I think you're just putting a partisan gloss on the same observation.
You're both right though.
Yes the rot began with New Labour, but then the Conservatives have increasingly doubled-down on that.
If Labour now do decide to change things then that would be a change for the better, as much as I don't like Labour in general, they have the potential to improve things on that front.
I won't be holding my breath though. The way Labour still support the Triple Lock is not reassuring.
I'd go earlier than that.
Thatcher wasn't averse to tickling the boomers, either; they were the youngest bit of generation who did well out of RTB and the 80s house price surge. And squeezing pensions to cut taxes.
Basically, they've always tended to get what they wanted because they were and are so numerous.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Given the state the country is in, what other choice is there? That everyone can see just what a mess it is out there gives Labour the leeway to do that - and there are some relatively quick wins around planning reform, housebuilding, infrastructure investment and closer ties to the EU that the Tories just cannot pursue. Labour has to establish a direction of travel and demonstrate that it is producing results to win a second term. I think Labour understands that. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
The quick wins you mention are mostly illusory. Planning reform and housebuilding have defeated every government for decades, there's no money for significant infrastructure investment and its benefits would take years to show up anyway, and closer ties to the EU, whatever those are, would not help much if at all for a long time either, even if the EU let us, which they show no sign of doing. And their fantasies about green growth and debts to the public sector unions etc would hit growth rather than help it.
The Conservatives have followed basically Labour policies in interfering in the economy, screwing the enterprising and productive, failed industrial policies and disastrous green crap and that's got us to where we are - no growth. Except, maybe, housebuilding, it'll be even worse under Labour.
Yes, that is the right wing line on all this. Proper Conservatism has not been tried and, as a result, we are in a spiral of unending, hopeless decline and things can only get worse. My view is different. I think a decision to no longer govern solely for the Boomer generation will open up a lot of possibilities. And Labour can make that decision because it does not rely on Boomer votes. Will it be easy or pain free? Absolutely not. Will there be a quick turnaround? No chance at all. But that does not mean there is no point in doing it. If Labour can demonstrate some progress after a five year term, memories of the absolute mess the Tories have made over the last 13 years will do the rest.
"Government by the boomer generation for the boomer generation" began with New Labour, so I think you're just putting a partisan gloss on the same observation.
You're both right though.
Yes the rot began with New Labour, but then the Conservatives have increasingly doubled-down on that.
If Labour now do decide to change things then that would be a change for the better, as much as I don't like Labour in general, they have the potential to improve things on that front.
I won't be holding my breath though. The way Labour still support the Triple Lock is not reassuring.
I'd go earlier than that.
Thatcher wasn't averse to tickling the boomers, either; they were the youngest bit of generation who did well out of RTB and the 80s house price surge. And squeezing pensions to cut taxes.
Basically, they've always tended to get what they wanted because they were and are so numerous.
Yes Thatcher governed for the boomers too, I nearly said that myself. Interestingly of course that was when the boomers were working, so Thatcher cut pensioners entitlements which the boomers appreciated.
But Thatcher was not herself a boomer. So while it was a government for boomers, it wasn't by boomers. Blair is when boomers themselves started governing for their own generations interests, rather than simply being pandered to by politicians seeking their votes.
Away from the Cricket, its great to see increasing reports of Ukraine liberating villages that Russia has occupied since 2014.
Although there's a long way to go yet to liberate all occupied land, that in some parts of the country Russia is already going backwards is really positive news.
Pressure needs to be maintained and support given to Ukraine to ensure they can and will liberate every inch of their occupied land.
Yes, it’s not really making the news, but the last few weeks have been good for Ukraine, with a lot of territory liberated, including as you say some villages captured in 2014.
Watching the orcs arguing with each other on Saturday was hillarious, the best day of the last 16 months. There’s an opportunity to take advantage of the chaos, and the defenders are doing a good job of it.
I smile at the trolls on MoD daily update still flogging the linethat the Ukrainian counter offensive is stalling.
As they did incessantly in the weeks before the liberation of Kherson.
I very much hope for the same pattern.
I don't know anything about this stuff, but the one think you can see from the geographic timeline data is just how stop/start the whole war has been.
Maybe it is all stuck, but it looked that way before they regained Kherson too.
Anyone actually prepared to use Revolut? Seems to be a reluctance to give them a banking licence.
Though considering what licenced banks have done, perhaps that's not a black mark.
So many new ‘fintech’ companies out there, all claiming to have re-invented the wheel because app, and mostly trying to do an end run around regulations designed to protect consumers.
Anyone actually prepared to use Revolut? Seems to be a reluctance to give them a banking licence.
Though considering what licenced banks have done, perhaps that's not a black mark.
No, better alternatives.
I have a Revolut account but it's only used for overseas payment - Mrs Eek borrowed money off someone from Cyprus recently and Revolut was by the far the easiest way of getting money into a Bank of Cyprus account.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
I keep warning people about this.
Floating voters tempted by Labour should take note.
You will have given them a mandate to do it and if you don't like what subsequently happens you will be culpable.
From the left I'm pessimistic about radical change - all my contacts with the Opposition front bench suggest a deeply cautious approach. I remain loyal and think a change of Government is essential but I'm not expecting anything except dour centrism in Labour's first term, with just one or two more interesting policies, probably on housing. To be fair, I might do the same in Starmer's position, with the economy in the current state.
That gets to the heart of the matter, I reckon.
In broad terms, a large chunk of the population are willing to accept the Centrist Dad message that hangovers aren't meant to be fun, it might be OK to have some Alka Seltzer, but basically we have to endure for a bit and not be so stupid in future. That's true of tax, spending, public services and (whisper it) our trading relations with our geographic neighbours.
If Starmer can get a mandate on that basis, he becomes very powerful indeed. Not a full on Doctor's Mandate, but something in that direction. And if things are even a little less bad in 2028, which might just be boring government without scandals, that will be to his credit.
By forcing the bar for government standards so low and still failing, the 2019-24 version of the Conservative Party has made it easier for it's successor to clear it.
I don't see how that's going to work with the union pay demands.
Why are the doctors going to accept 5% when they've been demanding 35% ?
To be fair in any negotiations when one party is being unreasonable its reasonable for the other to be equally unreasonable. If you're haggling and someone says £100 for a product you know to be worth £50 then walk away or offer £10, not £50, until serious negotiations can start and you can meet in the middle.
The Government has been trying to give double-digit pay rises to its preferred voters (triple locked pensioners) and frozen or 1% pay rises to those who work for a living.
In those circumstances why shouldn't those who work for a living demand much more than inflation, when the Government are offering much less than it? And when serious negotiations happen, maybe meet in the middle.
Those who work for a living should get a pay rise at least as high as those who do not. Which kind of makes the triple lock impossible.
I don't disagree and many of the unions have been very reasonable this year.
But what's to stop them 'trying it on' with a new Labour government and going for a big increase - justifiably so in some cases.
And there's still the doctors - why are they going to stop demanding a 35%, or very likely even more, pay rise from PM Starmer ?
And if even say a 15% pay increase was given to the doctors then that would lead to demands from the other unions that their members to get a similar increase.
A 15% increase is only a little more than what the Government are giving those who aren't working for a living, and its reasonable for those who are working for a living to ask for a little more than those who aren't.
If you want to avoid people asking for more, then stop padding out the wages of preferred voters at the expense of others.
More bigoted bollocks from you as ever. Thick enough to think every pensioner votes Tory, what a fcuknugget.
No just illiterate bullshit from you as you once again display a stunning lack of reading comprehension.
I said that the Government is preferring to favour pensioners with double-digit pay rises while wanting to give 1% pay rises to those who work, which it is, not that all pensioners vote Tory. The latter was an inference you made all by yourself and not based on any words I used.
Who has been offered a 1% pay increase by the govt ?
Certainly not those on the triple-lock.
Can't find any 1% links from Google right now, but I do recall it coming up, but the DFE wanted to give a 3% pay rise to teachers this year.
3% for teachers is a real terms pay cut of 8%, almost decimating in real terms the pay for teachers, but the triple-lock keeps those who are not working at a completely different rate.
Perhaps you can find any examples where those who are working for a living are being offered significantly more than those who are not?
Yes and 3% of $40K is 33% more money than 10% of 9K and leaves tehm 30K above a pensioner so as usual you are talking through your arse and fact that few indeed if any are getting as low as 3%.
Away from the Cricket, its great to see increasing reports of Ukraine liberating villages that Russia has occupied since 2014.
Although there's a long way to go yet to liberate all occupied land, that in some parts of the country Russia is already going backwards is really positive news.
Pressure needs to be maintained and support given to Ukraine to ensure they can and will liberate every inch of their occupied land.
Yes, it’s not really making the news, but the last few weeks have been good for Ukraine, with a lot of territory liberated, including as you say some villages captured in 2014.
Watching the orcs arguing with each other on Saturday was hillarious, the best day of the last 16 months. There’s an opportunity to take advantage of the chaos, and the defenders are doing a good job of it.
I smile at the trolls on MoD daily update still flogging the linethat the Ukrainian counter offensive is stalling.
As they did incessantly in the weeks before the liberation of Kherson.
I very much hope for the same pattern.
I don't know anything about this stuff, but the one think you can see from the geographic timeline data is just how stop/start the whole war has been.
Maybe it is all stuck, but it looked that way before they regained Kherson too.
The Ukrainians are advancing. Slowly. This seems to be due to dealing with heavy minefields in front of the Russian lines. Which are multiple. The Western supplied minefield clearing equipment seems to be used - a lot.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
I keep warning people about this.
Floating voters tempted by Labour should take note.
You will have given them a mandate to do it and if you don't like what subsequently happens you will be culpable.
From the left I'm pessimistic about radical change - all my contacts with the Opposition front bench suggest a deeply cautious approach. I remain loyal and think a change of Government is essential but I'm not expecting anything except dour centrism in Labour's first term, with just one or two more interesting policies, probably on housing. To be fair, I might do the same in Starmer's position, with the economy in the current state.
That gets to the heart of the matter, I reckon.
In broad terms, a large chunk of the population are willing to accept the Centrist Dad message that hangovers aren't meant to be fun, it might be OK to have some Alka Seltzer, but basically we have to endure for a bit and not be so stupid in future. That's true of tax, spending, public services and (whisper it) our trading relations with our geographic neighbours.
If Starmer can get a mandate on that basis, he becomes very powerful indeed. Not a full on Doctor's Mandate, but something in that direction. And if things are even a little less bad in 2028, which might just be boring government without scandals, that will be to his credit.
By forcing the bar for government standards so low and still failing, the 2019-24 version of the Conservative Party has made it easier for it's successor to clear it.
I don't see how that's going to work with the union pay demands.
Why are the doctors going to accept 5% when they've been demanding 35% ?
To be fair in any negotiations when one party is being unreasonable its reasonable for the other to be equally unreasonable. If you're haggling and someone says £100 for a product you know to be worth £50 then walk away or offer £10, not £50, until serious negotiations can start and you can meet in the middle.
The Government has been trying to give double-digit pay rises to its preferred voters (triple locked pensioners) and frozen or 1% pay rises to those who work for a living.
In those circumstances why shouldn't those who work for a living demand much more than inflation, when the Government are offering much less than it? And when serious negotiations happen, maybe meet in the middle.
Those who work for a living should get a pay rise at least as high as those who do not. Which kind of makes the triple lock impossible.
I don't disagree and many of the unions have been very reasonable this year.
But what's to stop them 'trying it on' with a new Labour government and going for a big increase - justifiably so in some cases.
And there's still the doctors - why are they going to stop demanding a 35%, or very likely even more, pay rise from PM Starmer ?
And if even say a 15% pay increase was given to the doctors then that would lead to demands from the other unions that their members to get a similar increase.
A 15% increase is only a little more than what the Government are giving those who aren't working for a living, and its reasonable for those who are working for a living to ask for a little more than those who aren't.
If you want to avoid people asking for more, then stop padding out the wages of preferred voters at the expense of others.
More bigoted bollocks from you as ever. Thick enough to think every pensioner votes Tory, what a fcuknugget.
No just illiterate bullshit from you as you once again display a stunning lack of reading comprehension.
I said that the Government is preferring to favour pensioners with double-digit pay rises while wanting to give 1% pay rises to those who work, which it is, not that all pensioners vote Tory. The latter was an inference you made all by yourself and not based on any words I used.
Who has been offered a 1% pay increase by the govt ?
Certainly not those on the triple-lock.
Can't find any 1% links from Google right now, but I do recall it coming up, but the DFE wanted to give a 3% pay rise to teachers this year.
3% for teachers is a real terms pay cut of 8%, almost decimating in real terms the pay for teachers, but the triple-lock keeps those who are not working at a completely different rate.
Perhaps you can find any examples where those who are working for a living are being offered significantly more than those who are not?
Yes and 3% of $40K is 33% more money than 10% of 9K and leaves tehm 30K above a pensioner so as usual you are talking through your arse and fact that few indeed if any are getting as low as 3%.
LOL, you don't actually believe this dribble do you?
If you do, you can't be far from people needing to wipe the dribble off your face.
The "9k" as you put it is for most pensioners on top of, not instead of, other pensions or other incomes they may have - and is not subject to National Insurance, Graduate Tax or other deductions that those working for a living have to pay.
Same old grasping Malcolm, never change. Not all pensioners are Tory, but you certainly are a Tory at their worst, the only difference is you're a Saltire Tory.
The Sky series on sporting leaders “Secrets of Success” sounds like it might be worth watching. Nasser Hussain’s interviewees include David Brailsford, Juergen Klopp, and Toto Wolff, as well as a number of cricketers.
1 - Is Daniel Korski toast yet? Not that it will make much difference to the identity of the next Major.
2 - The 40% water bill increase sounds like either industry scaremongering, or media sensationalising.
25% sounds more like it, and it is wished on us - as it will be across the UK and across Europe since we all have the same sewerage in rivers issue - by lobbies demanding umpteen billions of investment.
Since English water consumption is about 25% above the European best practice (140l pppd vs 105l in Denmark), if peeps invest in reducing their consumption (eg rainwater collection for the garden using a couple of Industrial Bulk Containers and an automatic watering system) and change habits, then bills will stay approx the same.
Personal responsibility required.
One thing I find fascinating is that Greens inm my experience are demanding that millions of tons of concrete (presumably) be used to build new reservoirs. Greens? Rather than control consumption. What happened to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle?
Why would we not build new reservoirs to cope with a vastly increased population? Scratching around for ways to stave off a hosepipe ban in Britain of all places is grotesque.
It seems sensible to me to do the easier, less expensive options first.
Why create expensive, drinking water to water your garden, when you can harvest the rain that falls on your roof? Why drown more valleys or build bunds when we lose around 17% of water from pipe leakage?
What happened? I was listening on the radio but they didn't really explain much, just that play was disrupted.
Just Stop Oil. Good for them. More of this sort of thing.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
Do you support all protesto-vandalism, or only for causes you agree with?
Why the fuck would I support it for causes I disagree with?
I find your position baffling. The means of change are more important in the long run than the change itself.
Why is it baffling? Strategies are, mostly, morally neutral; the cause is the thing that places the morality. Violence is typically considered "bad", but it's fine in self defence; so violence isn't actually the bad thing, but the cause is.
Protesting is a strategy. I like it when causes that are good use it, and dislike it when causes that are bad use it. I would still protect the right to protesting, as long as counter protest and self defence in the face of violence at protests is allowed (see Honor Oak this weekend).
Violence isn't morally neutral, of course.
Yes it is; it's a tool. Is it always bad to do violence? Is self defence immoral? Are police arresting people, a clearly violent act, always immoral? I would argue most violence is probably immoral, but that's typically due to the cause.
No, it's not - which is why the law sets quite a low bar on the offence of assault. And why police use of violence must be proportionate to the situation. The question is whether it's utilised in preventing something morally worse, as in the examples you cite.
So self defence is immoral, but less immoral than being assaulted, and therefore is permitted? That's ridiculous. Self defence and the defence of others can be actively moral - and still involve violence.
That's not what I said. Violence is a moral bad, but its use in preventing a greater moral bad is a net moral good.
It's not a hard concept - and actually how our law works, essentially. Your formulation is behind (for example) the US 'stand your ground' laws. I don't regard that as good moral calculus.
I also don't accept the law as good moral calculus - the law is often an ass.
I think it is easier to describe violence as a tool, a strategy, that in and of itself does not have a moral component. It is the reason behind the violence that inherently gives it morality. I'm not saying just CLAIMING self defence is a standard enough to make the act of violence moral, but to act with violence to defend yourself or others clearly is morally acceptable, and indeed, can be an act of moral good. So if morality is one thing or the other - something is morally good or morally bad - saying violence is a moral bad cannot be true - it therefore has to be the reason for the violence.
The same with blocking a road, or protesting, or blowing up a building. Morally neutral actions. But with reasons they can become morally justified, or obviously immoral.
What happened? I was listening on the radio but they didn't really explain much, just that play was disrupted.
Just Stop Oil. Good for them. More of this sort of thing.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
Do you support all protesto-vandalism, or only for causes you agree with?
Why the fuck would I support it for causes I disagree with?
I find your position baffling. The means of change are more important in the long run than the change itself.
Why is it baffling? Strategies are, mostly, morally neutral; the cause is the thing that places the morality. Violence is typically considered "bad", but it's fine in self defence; so violence isn't actually the bad thing, but the cause is.
Protesting is a strategy. I like it when causes that are good use it, and dislike it when causes that are bad use it. I would still protect the right to protesting, as long as counter protest and self defence in the face of violence at protests is allowed (see Honor Oak this weekend).
Violence isn't morally neutral, of course.
Yes it is; it's a tool. Is it always bad to do violence? Is self defence immoral? Are police arresting people, a clearly violent act, always immoral? I would argue most violence is probably immoral, but that's typically due to the cause.
No, it's not - which is why the law sets quite a low bar on the offence of assault. And why police use of violence must be proportionate to the situation. The question is whether it's utilised in preventing something morally worse, as in the examples you cite.
So self defence is immoral, but less immoral than being assaulted, and therefore is permitted? That's ridiculous. Self defence and the defence of others can be actively moral - and still involve violence.
Moral questions generally resolve to context and instance.
What is self defence? What is proportional?
Indeed, they do. I didn't say they were easy answers, just that it is clear that there must be some instance where violence is morally acceptable or even a moral good.
There is but its the exception that proves the rule.
As a rule violence is morally bad.
There are exceptional circumstances whereby it can be good, eg repelling Russia's forces and liberating occupied land is morally good. Typically the exceptional circumstances are where a use of force is needed to repel or prevent a greater act of violence.
But that doesn't detract from the fact that as a rule violence is morally bad, just because there are exceptions to that rule.
I mean, yes actually - having exceptions to the rule is exactly why rule based morality doesn't work and why we aren't all Kantians. "Lying is bad" - "Okay, is Anne Frank in your attic?". Rule based morality doesn't work. Actions are strategies that you have to back up with intent and reason; those are the things that provide the moral basis for an act.
1 - Is Daniel Korski toast yet? Not that it will make much difference to the identity of the next Major.
2 - The 40% water bill increase sounds like either industry scaremongering, or media sensationalising.
25% sounds more like it, and it is wished on us - as it will be across the UK and across Europe since we all have the same sewerage in rivers issue - by lobbies demanding umpteen billions of investment.
Since English water consumption is about 25% above the European best practice (140l pppd vs 105l in Denmark), if peeps invest in reducing their consumption (eg rainwater collection for the garden using a couple of Industrial Bulk Containers and an automatic watering system) and change habits, then bills will stay approx the same.
Personal responsibility required.
One thing I find fascinating is that Greens inm my experience are demanding that millions of tons of concrete (presumably) be used to build new reservoirs. Greens? Rather than control consumption. What happened to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle?
Why would we not build new reservoirs to cope with a vastly increased population? Scratching around for ways to stave off a hosepipe ban in Britain of all places is grotesque.
It seems sensible to me to do the easier, less expensive options first.
Why create expensive, treated water to water your garden, when you can harvest the rain that falls on your roof? Why drown more valleys or build bunds when we lose around 17% of water from pipe leakage?
To me that just seems bizarre.
It's not bizarre at all to fill old quarries with water, which is the sort of thing that gold-plated EU legislation has prevented us from doing. We have plentiful water in this country - it is one of the benefits of the huge rainfall we have to put up with. It takes willful stupidity not to be able to supply all our water needs and desires with ease and at little expense.
What happened? I was listening on the radio but they didn't really explain much, just that play was disrupted.
Just Stop Oil. Good for them. More of this sort of thing.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
Do you support all protesto-vandalism, or only for causes you agree with?
Why the fuck would I support it for causes I disagree with?
I find your position baffling. The means of change are more important in the long run than the change itself.
Why is it baffling? Strategies are, mostly, morally neutral; the cause is the thing that places the morality. Violence is typically considered "bad", but it's fine in self defence; so violence isn't actually the bad thing, but the cause is.
Protesting is a strategy. I like it when causes that are good use it, and dislike it when causes that are bad use it. I would still protect the right to protesting, as long as counter protest and self defence in the face of violence at protests is allowed (see Honor Oak this weekend).
Violence isn't morally neutral, of course.
Yes it is; it's a tool. Is it always bad to do violence? Is self defence immoral? Are police arresting people, a clearly violent act, always immoral? I would argue most violence is probably immoral, but that's typically due to the cause.
No, it's not - which is why the law sets quite a low bar on the offence of assault. And why police use of violence must be proportionate to the situation. The question is whether it's utilised in preventing something morally worse, as in the examples you cite.
So self defence is immoral, but less immoral than being assaulted, and therefore is permitted? That's ridiculous. Self defence and the defence of others can be actively moral - and still involve violence.
That's not what I said. Violence is a moral bad, but its use in preventing a greater moral bad is a net moral good.
It's not a hard concept - and actually how our law works, essentially. Your formulation is behind (for example) the US 'stand your ground' laws. I don't regard that as good moral calculus.
I also don't accept the law as good moral calculus - the law is often an ass.
I think it is easier to describe violence as a tool, a strategy, that in and of itself does not have a moral component. It is the reason behind the violence that inherently gives it morality. I'm not saying just CLAIMING self defence is a standard enough to make the act of violence moral, but to act with violence to defend yourself or others clearly is morally acceptable, and indeed, can be an act of moral good. So if morality is one thing or the other - something is morally good or morally bad - saying violence is a moral bad cannot be true - it therefore has to be the reason for the violence.
The same with blocking a road, or protesting, or blowing up a building. Morally neutral actions. But with reasons they can become morally justified, or obviously immoral.
No, violence is not morally neutral. It is morally bad in its own right.
There are exceptional circumstances whereby it may be necessary, and thus become morally good, but that is very much the exception not the norm.
Put it this way, if your cause is in its own right morally neutral, then you turn violent to further that neutral cause, then is the violence neutral because the cause is? No. The second you turned violent, you've gone from being morally ambivalent to morally bad.
1 - Is Daniel Korski toast yet? Not that it will make much difference to the identity of the next Major.
2 - The 40% water bill increase sounds like either industry scaremongering, or media sensationalising.
25% sounds more like it, and it is wished on us - as it will be across the UK and across Europe since we all have the same sewerage in rivers issue - by lobbies demanding umpteen billions of investment.
Since English water consumption is about 25% above the European best practice (140l pppd vs 105l in Denmark), if peeps invest in reducing their consumption (eg rainwater collection for the garden using a couple of Industrial Bulk Containers and an automatic watering system) and change habits, then bills will stay approx the same.
Personal responsibility required.
One thing I find fascinating is that Greens inm my experience are demanding that millions of tons of concrete (presumably) be used to build new reservoirs. Greens? Rather than control consumption. What happened to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle?
Why would we not build new reservoirs to cope with a vastly increased population? Scratching around for ways to stave off a hosepipe ban in Britain of all places is grotesque.
It seems sensible to me to do the easier, less expensive options first.
Why create expensive, treated water to water your garden, when you can harvest the rain that falls on your roof? Why drown more valleys or build bunds when we lose around 17% of water from pipe leakage?
To me that just seems bizarre.
It's not bizarre at all to fill old quarries with water, which is the sort of thing that gold-plated EU legislation has prevented us from doing. We have plentiful water in this country - it is one of the benefits of the huge rainfall we have to put up with. It takes willful stupidity not to be able to supply all our water needs and desires with ease and at little expense.
The old quarries have already been filled with rubbish. in fact, some quarries are currently being dug as much to create a hole for rubbish as to win mineral (in the old legal sense).
Anyone actually prepared to use Revolut? Seems to be a reluctance to give them a banking licence.
Though considering what licenced banks have done, perhaps that's not a black mark.
I would not touch Revolut personally at the moment.
There are other alternatives out there. Less risk.
No FSCS protection. "Safeguarding" apparently. Well I've seen the movie before. If the company goes el busto the "safeguarding" account tends to too... Not worth the risk for the 3.44% offered.
What happened? I was listening on the radio but they didn't really explain much, just that play was disrupted.
Just Stop Oil. Good for them. More of this sort of thing.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
Do you support all protesto-vandalism, or only for causes you agree with?
Why the fuck would I support it for causes I disagree with?
I find your position baffling. The means of change are more important in the long run than the change itself.
Why is it baffling? Strategies are, mostly, morally neutral; the cause is the thing that places the morality. Violence is typically considered "bad", but it's fine in self defence; so violence isn't actually the bad thing, but the cause is.
Protesting is a strategy. I like it when causes that are good use it, and dislike it when causes that are bad use it. I would still protect the right to protesting, as long as counter protest and self defence in the face of violence at protests is allowed (see Honor Oak this weekend).
Violence isn't morally neutral, of course.
Yes it is; it's a tool. Is it always bad to do violence? Is self defence immoral? Are police arresting people, a clearly violent act, always immoral? I would argue most violence is probably immoral, but that's typically due to the cause.
No, it's not - which is why the law sets quite a low bar on the offence of assault. And why police use of violence must be proportionate to the situation. The question is whether it's utilised in preventing something morally worse, as in the examples you cite.
So self defence is immoral, but less immoral than being assaulted, and therefore is permitted? That's ridiculous. Self defence and the defence of others can be actively moral - and still involve violence.
Moral questions generally resolve to context and instance.
What is self defence? What is proportional?
Indeed, they do. I didn't say they were easy answers, just that it is clear that there must be some instance where violence is morally acceptable or even a moral good.
There is but its the exception that proves the rule.
As a rule violence is morally bad.
There are exceptional circumstances whereby it can be good, eg repelling Russia's forces and liberating occupied land is morally good. Typically the exceptional circumstances are where a use of force is needed to repel or prevent a greater act of violence.
But that doesn't detract from the fact that as a rule violence is morally bad, just because there are exceptions to that rule.
I mean, yes actually - having exceptions to the rule is exactly why rule based morality doesn't work and why we aren't all Kantians. "Lying is bad" - "Okay, is Anne Frank in your attic?". Rule based morality doesn't work. Actions are strategies that you have to back up with intent and reason; those are the things that provide the moral basis for an act.
Rule based morality does work, but there are circumstances which are exceptions. Any rule has exceptions typically.
We are humans not machines, we can think and judge exceptions. Heck, even rudimentary machines can have exceptions built into their programming.
1 - Is Daniel Korski toast yet? Not that it will make much difference to the identity of the next Major.
2 - The 40% water bill increase sounds like either industry scaremongering, or media sensationalising.
25% sounds more like it, and it is wished on us - as it will be across the UK and across Europe since we all have the same sewerage in rivers issue - by lobbies demanding umpteen billions of investment.
Since English water consumption is about 25% above the European best practice (140l pppd vs 105l in Denmark), if peeps invest in reducing their consumption (eg rainwater collection for the garden using a couple of Industrial Bulk Containers and an automatic watering system) and change habits, then bills will stay approx the same.
Personal responsibility required.
One thing I find fascinating is that Greens inm my experience are demanding that millions of tons of concrete (presumably) be used to build new reservoirs. Greens? Rather than control consumption. What happened to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle?
Why would we not build new reservoirs to cope with a vastly increased population? Scratching around for ways to stave off a hosepipe ban in Britain of all places is grotesque.
It seems sensible to me to do the easier, less expensive options first.
Why create expensive, treated water to water your garden, when you can harvest the rain that falls on your roof? Why drown more valleys or build bunds when we lose around 17% of water from pipe leakage?
To me that just seems bizarre.
It's not bizarre at all to fill old quarries with water, which is the sort of thing that gold-plated EU legislation has prevented us from doing. We have plentiful water in this country - it is one of the benefits of the huge rainfall we have to put up with. It takes willful stupidity not to be able to supply all our water needs and desires with ease and at little expense.
The SE of the UK does not have huge rainfall - certainly no more than most of Europe.
What happened? I was listening on the radio but they didn't really explain much, just that play was disrupted.
Just Stop Oil. Good for them. More of this sort of thing.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
Do you support all protesto-vandalism, or only for causes you agree with?
Why the fuck would I support it for causes I disagree with?
I find your position baffling. The means of change are more important in the long run than the change itself.
Why is it baffling? Strategies are, mostly, morally neutral; the cause is the thing that places the morality. Violence is typically considered "bad", but it's fine in self defence; so violence isn't actually the bad thing, but the cause is.
Protesting is a strategy. I like it when causes that are good use it, and dislike it when causes that are bad use it. I would still protect the right to protesting, as long as counter protest and self defence in the face of violence at protests is allowed (see Honor Oak this weekend).
Violence isn't morally neutral, of course.
Yes it is; it's a tool. Is it always bad to do violence? Is self defence immoral? Are police arresting people, a clearly violent act, always immoral? I would argue most violence is probably immoral, but that's typically due to the cause.
No, it's not - which is why the law sets quite a low bar on the offence of assault. And why police use of violence must be proportionate to the situation. The question is whether it's utilised in preventing something morally worse, as in the examples you cite.
So self defence is immoral, but less immoral than being assaulted, and therefore is permitted? That's ridiculous. Self defence and the defence of others can be actively moral - and still involve violence.
That's not what I said. Violence is a moral bad, but its use in preventing a greater moral bad is a net moral good.
It's not a hard concept - and actually how our law works, essentially. Your formulation is behind (for example) the US 'stand your ground' laws. I don't regard that as good moral calculus.
I also don't accept the law as good moral calculus - the law is often an ass.
I think it is easier to describe violence as a tool, a strategy, that in and of itself does not have a moral component. It is the reason behind the violence that inherently gives it morality. I'm not saying just CLAIMING self defence is a standard enough to make the act of violence moral, but to act with violence to defend yourself or others clearly is morally acceptable, and indeed, can be an act of moral good. So if morality is one thing or the other - something is morally good or morally bad - saying violence is a moral bad cannot be true - it therefore has to be the reason for the violence.
The same with blocking a road, or protesting, or blowing up a building. Morally neutral actions. But with reasons they can become morally justified, or obviously immoral.
No, violence is not morally neutral. It is morally bad in its own right.
There are exceptional circumstances whereby it may be necessary, and thus become morally good, but that is very much the exception not the norm.
Put it this way, if your cause is in its own right morally neutral, then you turn violent to further that neutral cause, then is the violence neutral because the cause is? No. The second you turned violent, you've gone from being morally ambivalent to morally bad.
People seem to fail to understand moral philosophy here; maybe my studies are making me use the same words with different context to the general people.
If you say "violence is a moral bad in its own right", therefore arguing it is not about intent but the action, and then follow that up with "exceptional circumstances whereby it may be necessary, and thus become morally good", therefore arguing that an act is impacted by context and intent not the base implicit morality of the action, you have a contradiction. You cannot be a moral relativist and a rule based moralist at the same time.
If you say there are some exceptions, and that depends on the context of the violence, you are admitting that it is the context of the act that matters, not the act itself.
1 - Is Daniel Korski toast yet? Not that it will make much difference to the identity of the next Major.
2 - The 40% water bill increase sounds like either industry scaremongering, or media sensationalising.
25% sounds more like it, and it is wished on us - as it will be across the UK and across Europe since we all have the same sewerage in rivers issue - by lobbies demanding umpteen billions of investment.
Since English water consumption is about 25% above the European best practice (140l pppd vs 105l in Denmark), if peeps invest in reducing their consumption (eg rainwater collection for the garden using a couple of Industrial Bulk Containers and an automatic watering system) and change habits, then bills will stay approx the same.
Personal responsibility required.
One thing I find fascinating is that Greens inm my experience are demanding that millions of tons of concrete (presumably) be used to build new reservoirs. Greens? Rather than control consumption. What happened to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle?
Why would we not build new reservoirs to cope with a vastly increased population? Scratching around for ways to stave off a hosepipe ban in Britain of all places is grotesque.
It seems sensible to me to do the easier, less expensive options first.
Why create expensive, treated water to water your garden, when you can harvest the rain that falls on your roof? Why drown more valleys or build bunds when we lose around 17% of water from pipe leakage?
To me that just seems bizarre.
It's not bizarre at all to fill old quarries with water, which is the sort of thing that gold-plated EU legislation has prevented us from doing. We have plentiful water in this country - it is one of the benefits of the huge rainfall we have to put up with. It takes willful stupidity not to be able to supply all our water needs and desires with ease and at little expense.
The SE of the UK does not have huge rainfall - certainly no more than most of Europe.
Most of Europe has a pretty huge amount of rainfall.
What happened? I was listening on the radio but they didn't really explain much, just that play was disrupted.
Just Stop Oil. Good for them. More of this sort of thing.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
Do you support all protesto-vandalism, or only for causes you agree with?
Why the fuck would I support it for causes I disagree with?
I find your position baffling. The means of change are more important in the long run than the change itself.
Why is it baffling? Strategies are, mostly, morally neutral; the cause is the thing that places the morality. Violence is typically considered "bad", but it's fine in self defence; so violence isn't actually the bad thing, but the cause is.
Protesting is a strategy. I like it when causes that are good use it, and dislike it when causes that are bad use it. I would still protect the right to protesting, as long as counter protest and self defence in the face of violence at protests is allowed (see Honor Oak this weekend).
Violence isn't morally neutral, of course.
Yes it is; it's a tool. Is it always bad to do violence? Is self defence immoral? Are police arresting people, a clearly violent act, always immoral? I would argue most violence is probably immoral, but that's typically due to the cause.
No, it's not - which is why the law sets quite a low bar on the offence of assault. And why police use of violence must be proportionate to the situation. The question is whether it's utilised in preventing something morally worse, as in the examples you cite.
So self defence is immoral, but less immoral than being assaulted, and therefore is permitted? That's ridiculous. Self defence and the defence of others can be actively moral - and still involve violence.
Moral questions generally resolve to context and instance.
What is self defence? What is proportional?
Indeed, they do. I didn't say they were easy answers, just that it is clear that there must be some instance where violence is morally acceptable or even a moral good.
There is but its the exception that proves the rule.
As a rule violence is morally bad.
There are exceptional circumstances whereby it can be good, eg repelling Russia's forces and liberating occupied land is morally good. Typically the exceptional circumstances are where a use of force is needed to repel or prevent a greater act of violence.
But that doesn't detract from the fact that as a rule violence is morally bad, just because there are exceptions to that rule.
I mean, yes actually - having exceptions to the rule is exactly why rule based morality doesn't work and why we aren't all Kantians. "Lying is bad" - "Okay, is Anne Frank in your attic?". Rule based morality doesn't work. Actions are strategies that you have to back up with intent and reason; those are the things that provide the moral basis for an act.
Rule based morality does work, but there are circumstances which are exceptions. Any rule has exceptions typically.
We are humans not machines, we can think and judge exceptions. Heck, even rudimentary machines can have exceptions built into their programming.
The entire point of a rule based morality system is that there cannot be exceptions. That is what rule based means!
What happened? I was listening on the radio but they didn't really explain much, just that play was disrupted.
Just Stop Oil. Good for them. More of this sort of thing.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
Do you support all protesto-vandalism, or only for causes you agree with?
Why the fuck would I support it for causes I disagree with?
I find your position baffling. The means of change are more important in the long run than the change itself.
Why is it baffling? Strategies are, mostly, morally neutral; the cause is the thing that places the morality. Violence is typically considered "bad", but it's fine in self defence; so violence isn't actually the bad thing, but the cause is.
Protesting is a strategy. I like it when causes that are good use it, and dislike it when causes that are bad use it. I would still protect the right to protesting, as long as counter protest and self defence in the face of violence at protests is allowed (see Honor Oak this weekend).
Violence isn't morally neutral, of course.
Yes it is; it's a tool. Is it always bad to do violence? Is self defence immoral? Are police arresting people, a clearly violent act, always immoral? I would argue most violence is probably immoral, but that's typically due to the cause.
No, it's not - which is why the law sets quite a low bar on the offence of assault. And why police use of violence must be proportionate to the situation. The question is whether it's utilised in preventing something morally worse, as in the examples you cite.
So self defence is immoral, but less immoral than being assaulted, and therefore is permitted? That's ridiculous. Self defence and the defence of others can be actively moral - and still involve violence.
Moral questions generally resolve to context and instance.
What is self defence? What is proportional?
Indeed, they do. I didn't say they were easy answers, just that it is clear that there must be some instance where violence is morally acceptable or even a moral good.
There is but its the exception that proves the rule.
As a rule violence is morally bad.
There are exceptional circumstances whereby it can be good, eg repelling Russia's forces and liberating occupied land is morally good. Typically the exceptional circumstances are where a use of force is needed to repel or prevent a greater act of violence.
But that doesn't detract from the fact that as a rule violence is morally bad, just because there are exceptions to that rule.
I mean, yes actually - having exceptions to the rule is exactly why rule based morality doesn't work and why we aren't all Kantians. "Lying is bad" - "Okay, is Anne Frank in your attic?". Rule based morality doesn't work. Actions are strategies that you have to back up with intent and reason; those are the things that provide the moral basis for an act.
Rule based morality does work, but there are circumstances which are exceptions. Any rule has exceptions typically.
We are humans not machines, we can think and judge exceptions. Heck, even rudimentary machines can have exceptions built into their programming.
You have the moral judgement "x is bad", you have the rule "therefore do not do x", you cannot have a rule that says "x is bad, therefore do not do x, except when x isn't bad" because that isn't how rules work - you have invented moral relativism, which is how people function and is necessary - but is not a rule based moral framework.
What happened? I was listening on the radio but they didn't really explain much, just that play was disrupted.
Just Stop Oil. Good for them. More of this sort of thing.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
Do you support all protesto-vandalism, or only for causes you agree with?
Why the fuck would I support it for causes I disagree with?
I find your position baffling. The means of change are more important in the long run than the change itself.
Why is it baffling? Strategies are, mostly, morally neutral; the cause is the thing that places the morality. Violence is typically considered "bad", but it's fine in self defence; so violence isn't actually the bad thing, but the cause is.
Protesting is a strategy. I like it when causes that are good use it, and dislike it when causes that are bad use it. I would still protect the right to protesting, as long as counter protest and self defence in the face of violence at protests is allowed (see Honor Oak this weekend).
Violence isn't morally neutral, of course.
Yes it is; it's a tool. Is it always bad to do violence? Is self defence immoral? Are police arresting people, a clearly violent act, always immoral? I would argue most violence is probably immoral, but that's typically due to the cause.
No, it's not - which is why the law sets quite a low bar on the offence of assault. And why police use of violence must be proportionate to the situation. The question is whether it's utilised in preventing something morally worse, as in the examples you cite.
So self defence is immoral, but less immoral than being assaulted, and therefore is permitted? That's ridiculous. Self defence and the defence of others can be actively moral - and still involve violence.
That's not what I said. Violence is a moral bad, but its use in preventing a greater moral bad is a net moral good.
It's not a hard concept - and actually how our law works, essentially. Your formulation is behind (for example) the US 'stand your ground' laws. I don't regard that as good moral calculus.
I also don't accept the law as good moral calculus - the law is often an ass.
I think it is easier to describe violence as a tool, a strategy, that in and of itself does not have a moral component. It is the reason behind the violence that inherently gives it morality. I'm not saying just CLAIMING self defence is a standard enough to make the act of violence moral, but to act with violence to defend yourself or others clearly is morally acceptable, and indeed, can be an act of moral good. So if morality is one thing or the other - something is morally good or morally bad - saying violence is a moral bad cannot be true - it therefore has to be the reason for the violence.
The same with blocking a road, or protesting, or blowing up a building. Morally neutral actions. But with reasons they can become morally justified, or obviously immoral.
No, violence is not morally neutral. It is morally bad in its own right.
There are exceptional circumstances whereby it may be necessary, and thus become morally good, but that is very much the exception not the norm.
Put it this way, if your cause is in its own right morally neutral, then you turn violent to further that neutral cause, then is the violence neutral because the cause is? No. The second you turned violent, you've gone from being morally ambivalent to morally bad.
People seem to fail to understand moral philosophy here; maybe my studies are making me use the same words with different context to the general people.
If you say "violence is a moral bad in its own right", therefore arguing it is not about intent but the action, and then follow that up with "exceptional circumstances whereby it may be necessary, and thus become morally good", therefore arguing that an act is impacted by context and intent not the base implicit morality of the action, you have a contradiction. You cannot be a moral relativist and a rule based moralist at the same time.
If you say there are some exceptions, and that depends on the context of the violence, you are admitting that it is the context of the act that matters, not the act itself.
Of course you can.
All you need to do is to understand the meaning of the word "exception".
I don't know why you're struggling with it.
The act itself is bad in its own right, unless there is a very exceptional reason why it is justified. The fact exceptional circumstances exist, does not mean that morals as a general rule can't exist.
Lying is morally bad. Lying to save someone's life (Anne Frank example) or white lies to make someone happy (organising a surprise party, Father Christmas etc) may be justified despite that.
But if your cause is neutral and you do a bad thing, then that bad thing is still bad because it is bad, not because your cause is bad.
What happened? I was listening on the radio but they didn't really explain much, just that play was disrupted.
Just Stop Oil. Good for them. More of this sort of thing.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
Do you support all protesto-vandalism, or only for causes you agree with?
Why the fuck would I support it for causes I disagree with?
I find your position baffling. The means of change are more important in the long run than the change itself.
Why is it baffling? Strategies are, mostly, morally neutral; the cause is the thing that places the morality. Violence is typically considered "bad", but it's fine in self defence; so violence isn't actually the bad thing, but the cause is.
Protesting is a strategy. I like it when causes that are good use it, and dislike it when causes that are bad use it. I would still protect the right to protesting, as long as counter protest and self defence in the face of violence at protests is allowed (see Honor Oak this weekend).
Violence isn't morally neutral, of course.
Yes it is; it's a tool. Is it always bad to do violence? Is self defence immoral? Are police arresting people, a clearly violent act, always immoral? I would argue most violence is probably immoral, but that's typically due to the cause.
No, it's not - which is why the law sets quite a low bar on the offence of assault. And why police use of violence must be proportionate to the situation. The question is whether it's utilised in preventing something morally worse, as in the examples you cite.
So self defence is immoral, but less immoral than being assaulted, and therefore is permitted? That's ridiculous. Self defence and the defence of others can be actively moral - and still involve violence.
Moral questions generally resolve to context and instance.
What is self defence? What is proportional?
Indeed, they do. I didn't say they were easy answers, just that it is clear that there must be some instance where violence is morally acceptable or even a moral good.
There is but its the exception that proves the rule.
As a rule violence is morally bad.
There are exceptional circumstances whereby it can be good, eg repelling Russia's forces and liberating occupied land is morally good. Typically the exceptional circumstances are where a use of force is needed to repel or prevent a greater act of violence.
But that doesn't detract from the fact that as a rule violence is morally bad, just because there are exceptions to that rule.
I mean, yes actually - having exceptions to the rule is exactly why rule based morality doesn't work and why we aren't all Kantians. "Lying is bad" - "Okay, is Anne Frank in your attic?". Rule based morality doesn't work. Actions are strategies that you have to back up with intent and reason; those are the things that provide the moral basis for an act.
Rule based morality does work, but there are circumstances which are exceptions. Any rule has exceptions typically.
We are humans not machines, we can think and judge exceptions. Heck, even rudimentary machines can have exceptions built into their programming.
You have the moral judgement "x is bad", you have the rule "therefore do not do x", you cannot have a rule that says "x is bad, therefore do not do x, except when x isn't bad" because that isn't how rules work - you have invented moral relativism, which is how people function and is necessary - but is not a rule based moral framework.
1 - Is Daniel Korski toast yet? Not that it will make much difference to the identity of the next Major.
2 - The 40% water bill increase sounds like either industry scaremongering, or media sensationalising.
25% sounds more like it, and it is wished on us - as it will be across the UK and across Europe since we all have the same sewerage in rivers issue - by lobbies demanding umpteen billions of investment.
Since English water consumption is about 25% above the European best practice (140l pppd vs 105l in Denmark), if peeps invest in reducing their consumption (eg rainwater collection for the garden using a couple of Industrial Bulk Containers and an automatic watering system) and change habits, then bills will stay approx the same.
Personal responsibility required.
One thing I find fascinating is that Greens inm my experience are demanding that millions of tons of concrete (presumably) be used to build new reservoirs. Greens? Rather than control consumption. What happened to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle?
Why would we not build new reservoirs to cope with a vastly increased population? Scratching around for ways to stave off a hosepipe ban in Britain of all places is grotesque.
It seems sensible to me to do the easier, less expensive options first.
Why create expensive, treated water to water your garden, when you can harvest the rain that falls on your roof? Why drown more valleys or build bunds when we lose around 17% of water from pipe leakage?
To me that just seems bizarre.
It's not bizarre at all to fill old quarries with water, which is the sort of thing that gold-plated EU legislation has prevented us from doing. We have plentiful water in this country - it is one of the benefits of the huge rainfall we have to put up with. It takes willful stupidity not to be able to supply all our water needs and desires with ease and at little expense.
The SE of the UK does not have huge rainfall - certainly no more than most of Europe.
Most of Europe has a pretty huge amount of rainfall.
This isn't Africa.
I suspect half of Africa has more rain than Essex, even with the Sahara.
What happened? I was listening on the radio but they didn't really explain much, just that play was disrupted.
Just Stop Oil. Good for them. More of this sort of thing.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
Do you support all protesto-vandalism, or only for causes you agree with?
Why the fuck would I support it for causes I disagree with?
I find your position baffling. The means of change are more important in the long run than the change itself.
Why is it baffling? Strategies are, mostly, morally neutral; the cause is the thing that places the morality. Violence is typically considered "bad", but it's fine in self defence; so violence isn't actually the bad thing, but the cause is.
Protesting is a strategy. I like it when causes that are good use it, and dislike it when causes that are bad use it. I would still protect the right to protesting, as long as counter protest and self defence in the face of violence at protests is allowed (see Honor Oak this weekend).
Violence isn't morally neutral, of course.
Yes it is; it's a tool. Is it always bad to do violence? Is self defence immoral? Are police arresting people, a clearly violent act, always immoral? I would argue most violence is probably immoral, but that's typically due to the cause.
No, it's not - which is why the law sets quite a low bar on the offence of assault. And why police use of violence must be proportionate to the situation. The question is whether it's utilised in preventing something morally worse, as in the examples you cite.
So self defence is immoral, but less immoral than being assaulted, and therefore is permitted? That's ridiculous. Self defence and the defence of others can be actively moral - and still involve violence.
That's not what I said. Violence is a moral bad, but its use in preventing a greater moral bad is a net moral good.
It's not a hard concept - and actually how our law works, essentially. Your formulation is behind (for example) the US 'stand your ground' laws. I don't regard that as good moral calculus.
I also don't accept the law as good moral calculus - the law is often an ass.
I think it is easier to describe violence as a tool, a strategy, that in and of itself does not have a moral component. It is the reason behind the violence that inherently gives it morality. I'm not saying just CLAIMING self defence is a standard enough to make the act of violence moral, but to act with violence to defend yourself or others clearly is morally acceptable, and indeed, can be an act of moral good. So if morality is one thing or the other - something is morally good or morally bad - saying violence is a moral bad cannot be true - it therefore has to be the reason for the violence.
The same with blocking a road, or protesting, or blowing up a building. Morally neutral actions. But with reasons they can become morally justified, or obviously immoral.
No, violence is not morally neutral. It is morally bad in its own right.
There are exceptional circumstances whereby it may be necessary, and thus become morally good, but that is very much the exception not the norm.
Put it this way, if your cause is in its own right morally neutral, then you turn violent to further that neutral cause, then is the violence neutral because the cause is? No. The second you turned violent, you've gone from being morally ambivalent to morally bad.
People seem to fail to understand moral philosophy here; maybe my studies are making me use the same words with different context to the general people.
If you say "violence is a moral bad in its own right", therefore arguing it is not about intent but the action, and then follow that up with "exceptional circumstances whereby it may be necessary, and thus become morally good", therefore arguing that an act is impacted by context and intent not the base implicit morality of the action, you have a contradiction. You cannot be a moral relativist and a rule based moralist at the same time.
If you say there are some exceptions, and that depends on the context of the violence, you are admitting that it is the context of the act that matters, not the act itself.
Of course you can.
All you need to do is to understand the meaning of the word "exception".
I don't know why you're struggling with it.
The act itself is bad in its own right, unless there is a very exceptional reason why it is justified. The fact exceptional circumstances exist, does not mean that morals as a general rule can't exist.
Lying is morally bad. Lying to save someone's life (Anne Frank example) or white lies to make someone happy (organising a surprise party, Father Christmas etc) may be justified despite that.
But if your cause is neutral and you do a bad thing, then that bad thing is still bad because it is bad, not because your cause is bad.
If you have the rule, how do you fit the exceptions of the rule into the rule without looking at the reason / intent / context of the situation. You may be using "rules based morality" to say that there are general things we consider rules that we should follow, but in philosophy the idea of a rules based morality is one where you would say "x is bad, therefore you cannot do x" because there is no situation where it is possible for "x = bad" and "x = not bad" at the same time.
1 - Is Daniel Korski toast yet? Not that it will make much difference to the identity of the next Major.
2 - The 40% water bill increase sounds like either industry scaremongering, or media sensationalising.
25% sounds more like it, and it is wished on us - as it will be across the UK and across Europe since we all have the same sewerage in rivers issue - by lobbies demanding umpteen billions of investment.
Since English water consumption is about 25% above the European best practice (140l pppd vs 105l in Denmark), if peeps invest in reducing their consumption (eg rainwater collection for the garden using a couple of Industrial Bulk Containers and an automatic watering system) and change habits, then bills will stay approx the same.
Personal responsibility required.
One thing I find fascinating is that Greens inm my experience are demanding that millions of tons of concrete (presumably) be used to build new reservoirs. Greens? Rather than control consumption. What happened to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle?
Why would we not build new reservoirs to cope with a vastly increased population? Scratching around for ways to stave off a hosepipe ban in Britain of all places is grotesque.
It seems sensible to me to do the easier, less expensive options first.
Why create expensive, treated water to water your garden, when you can harvest the rain that falls on your roof? Why drown more valleys or build bunds when we lose around 17% of water from pipe leakage?
To me that just seems bizarre.
It's not bizarre at all to fill old quarries with water, which is the sort of thing that gold-plated EU legislation has prevented us from doing. We have plentiful water in this country - it is one of the benefits of the huge rainfall we have to put up with. It takes willful stupidity not to be able to supply all our water needs and desires with ease and at little expense.
Govt policy, as mentioned in the link, is already to reduce consumption to 110l pppd by 2050.
It's surprising which places get more rain than London. London isn’t even near to proclaiming itself the wettest capital in Europe by the annual amount of rain. With its 557mm of rain per year, the city holds 35th place on the list.
What happened? I was listening on the radio but they didn't really explain much, just that play was disrupted.
Just Stop Oil. Good for them. More of this sort of thing.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
Do you support all protesto-vandalism, or only for causes you agree with?
Why the fuck would I support it for causes I disagree with?
I find your position baffling. The means of change are more important in the long run than the change itself.
Why is it baffling? Strategies are, mostly, morally neutral; the cause is the thing that places the morality. Violence is typically considered "bad", but it's fine in self defence; so violence isn't actually the bad thing, but the cause is.
Protesting is a strategy. I like it when causes that are good use it, and dislike it when causes that are bad use it. I would still protect the right to protesting, as long as counter protest and self defence in the face of violence at protests is allowed (see Honor Oak this weekend).
Violence isn't morally neutral, of course.
Yes it is; it's a tool. Is it always bad to do violence? Is self defence immoral? Are police arresting people, a clearly violent act, always immoral? I would argue most violence is probably immoral, but that's typically due to the cause.
No, it's not - which is why the law sets quite a low bar on the offence of assault. And why police use of violence must be proportionate to the situation. The question is whether it's utilised in preventing something morally worse, as in the examples you cite.
So self defence is immoral, but less immoral than being assaulted, and therefore is permitted? That's ridiculous. Self defence and the defence of others can be actively moral - and still involve violence.
Moral questions generally resolve to context and instance.
What is self defence? What is proportional?
Indeed, they do. I didn't say they were easy answers, just that it is clear that there must be some instance where violence is morally acceptable or even a moral good.
There is but its the exception that proves the rule.
As a rule violence is morally bad.
There are exceptional circumstances whereby it can be good, eg repelling Russia's forces and liberating occupied land is morally good. Typically the exceptional circumstances are where a use of force is needed to repel or prevent a greater act of violence.
But that doesn't detract from the fact that as a rule violence is morally bad, just because there are exceptions to that rule.
I mean, yes actually - having exceptions to the rule is exactly why rule based morality doesn't work and why we aren't all Kantians. "Lying is bad" - "Okay, is Anne Frank in your attic?". Rule based morality doesn't work. Actions are strategies that you have to back up with intent and reason; those are the things that provide the moral basis for an act.
Rule based morality does work, but there are circumstances which are exceptions. Any rule has exceptions typically.
We are humans not machines, we can think and judge exceptions. Heck, even rudimentary machines can have exceptions built into their programming.
You have the moral judgement "x is bad", you have the rule "therefore do not do x", you cannot have a rule that says "x is bad, therefore do not do x, except when x isn't bad" because that isn't how rules work - you have invented moral relativism, which is how people function and is necessary - but is not a rule based moral framework.
Yes, you can.
Rules allow exceptions. Next.
Philosophy and law 101.
So Kant is right, as long as you allow a few exceptions now and then? That doesn't work! The entire point of rules based morality is to say it doesn't matter what the context is "x = bad, therefore don't do x". That is the whole reason rules based morality exists.
Words or deeds? OGH says -- and I have no reason to disagree with him -- that Sunak is often not as good with words as a Prime Minister needs to be.
But, has Sunak chosen policies that will please the public, before your next general election? For example, will some voters conclude that Sunak isn't much of a talker, but that they are happy that he has put more money in their bank accounts? (And I assume that must be true for at least a few UK voters.)
(For the record: I have long argued that we should judge democratic leaders more by how good they are at listening, than how good they are at talking.
Thomas, Alito futures raise stakes for 2024 election https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4070483-thomas-alito-futures-raise-stakes-for-2024-election/ Lawmakers are looking ahead to the 2024 election as a pivotal opportunity to shape the future of the Supreme Court because of the possibility that conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, 75, and Samuel Alito, 73, could retire. Democrats are worried that if Biden loses and the GOP wins the Senate majority, it could allow a GOP president to replace both men with younger conservatives who could rule far into the future...
What happened? I was listening on the radio but they didn't really explain much, just that play was disrupted.
Just Stop Oil. Good for them. More of this sort of thing.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
Do you support all protesto-vandalism, or only for causes you agree with?
Why the fuck would I support it for causes I disagree with?
I find your position baffling. The means of change are more important in the long run than the change itself.
Why is it baffling? Strategies are, mostly, morally neutral; the cause is the thing that places the morality. Violence is typically considered "bad", but it's fine in self defence; so violence isn't actually the bad thing, but the cause is.
Protesting is a strategy. I like it when causes that are good use it, and dislike it when causes that are bad use it. I would still protect the right to protesting, as long as counter protest and self defence in the face of violence at protests is allowed (see Honor Oak this weekend).
Violence isn't morally neutral, of course.
Yes it is; it's a tool. Is it always bad to do violence? Is self defence immoral? Are police arresting people, a clearly violent act, always immoral? I would argue most violence is probably immoral, but that's typically due to the cause.
No, it's not - which is why the law sets quite a low bar on the offence of assault. And why police use of violence must be proportionate to the situation. The question is whether it's utilised in preventing something morally worse, as in the examples you cite.
So self defence is immoral, but less immoral than being assaulted, and therefore is permitted? That's ridiculous. Self defence and the defence of others can be actively moral - and still involve violence.
Moral questions generally resolve to context and instance.
What is self defence? What is proportional?
Indeed, they do. I didn't say they were easy answers, just that it is clear that there must be some instance where violence is morally acceptable or even a moral good.
There is but its the exception that proves the rule.
As a rule violence is morally bad.
There are exceptional circumstances whereby it can be good, eg repelling Russia's forces and liberating occupied land is morally good. Typically the exceptional circumstances are where a use of force is needed to repel or prevent a greater act of violence.
But that doesn't detract from the fact that as a rule violence is morally bad, just because there are exceptions to that rule.
I mean, yes actually - having exceptions to the rule is exactly why rule based morality doesn't work and why we aren't all Kantians. "Lying is bad" - "Okay, is Anne Frank in your attic?". Rule based morality doesn't work. Actions are strategies that you have to back up with intent and reason; those are the things that provide the moral basis for an act.
Rule based morality does work, but there are circumstances which are exceptions. Any rule has exceptions typically.
We are humans not machines, we can think and judge exceptions. Heck, even rudimentary machines can have exceptions built into their programming.
You have the moral judgement "x is bad", you have the rule "therefore do not do x", you cannot have a rule that says "x is bad, therefore do not do x, except when x isn't bad" because that isn't how rules work - you have invented moral relativism, which is how people function and is necessary - but is not a rule based moral framework.
Yes, you can.
Rules allow exceptions. Next.
Philosophy and law 101.
How do you decide what should be granted an exception and what shouldn't? Isn't that in itself a moral judgement?
What happened? I was listening on the radio but they didn't really explain much, just that play was disrupted.
Just Stop Oil. Good for them. More of this sort of thing.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
Do you support all protesto-vandalism, or only for causes you agree with?
Why the fuck would I support it for causes I disagree with?
I find your position baffling. The means of change are more important in the long run than the change itself.
Why is it baffling? Strategies are, mostly, morally neutral; the cause is the thing that places the morality. Violence is typically considered "bad", but it's fine in self defence; so violence isn't actually the bad thing, but the cause is.
Protesting is a strategy. I like it when causes that are good use it, and dislike it when causes that are bad use it. I would still protect the right to protesting, as long as counter protest and self defence in the face of violence at protests is allowed (see Honor Oak this weekend).
Violence isn't morally neutral, of course.
Yes it is; it's a tool. Is it always bad to do violence? Is self defence immoral? Are police arresting people, a clearly violent act, always immoral? I would argue most violence is probably immoral, but that's typically due to the cause.
No, it's not - which is why the law sets quite a low bar on the offence of assault. And why police use of violence must be proportionate to the situation. The question is whether it's utilised in preventing something morally worse, as in the examples you cite.
So self defence is immoral, but less immoral than being assaulted, and therefore is permitted? That's ridiculous. Self defence and the defence of others can be actively moral - and still involve violence.
That's not what I said. Violence is a moral bad, but its use in preventing a greater moral bad is a net moral good.
It's not a hard concept - and actually how our law works, essentially. Your formulation is behind (for example) the US 'stand your ground' laws. I don't regard that as good moral calculus.
I also don't accept the law as good moral calculus - the law is often an ass.
I think it is easier to describe violence as a tool, a strategy, that in and of itself does not have a moral component. It is the reason behind the violence that inherently gives it morality. I'm not saying just CLAIMING self defence is a standard enough to make the act of violence moral, but to act with violence to defend yourself or others clearly is morally acceptable, and indeed, can be an act of moral good. So if morality is one thing or the other - something is morally good or morally bad - saying violence is a moral bad cannot be true - it therefore has to be the reason for the violence.
The same with blocking a road, or protesting, or blowing up a building. Morally neutral actions. But with reasons they can become morally justified, or obviously immoral.
No, violence is not morally neutral. It is morally bad in its own right.
There are exceptional circumstances whereby it may be necessary, and thus become morally good, but that is very much the exception not the norm.
Put it this way, if your cause is in its own right morally neutral, then you turn violent to further that neutral cause, then is the violence neutral because the cause is? No. The second you turned violent, you've gone from being morally ambivalent to morally bad.
People seem to fail to understand moral philosophy here; maybe my studies are making me use the same words with different context to the general people.
If you say "violence is a moral bad in its own right", therefore arguing it is not about intent but the action, and then follow that up with "exceptional circumstances whereby it may be necessary, and thus become morally good", therefore arguing that an act is impacted by context and intent not the base implicit morality of the action, you have a contradiction. You cannot be a moral relativist and a rule based moralist at the same time.
If you say there are some exceptions, and that depends on the context of the violence, you are admitting that it is the context of the act that matters, not the act itself.
Of course you can.
All you need to do is to understand the meaning of the word "exception".
I don't know why you're struggling with it.
The act itself is bad in its own right, unless there is a very exceptional reason why it is justified. The fact exceptional circumstances exist, does not mean that morals as a general rule can't exist.
Lying is morally bad. Lying to save someone's life (Anne Frank example) or white lies to make someone happy (organising a surprise party, Father Christmas etc) may be justified despite that.
But if your cause is neutral and you do a bad thing, then that bad thing is still bad because it is bad, not because your cause is bad.
If you have the rule, how do you fit the exceptions of the rule into the rule without looking at the reason / intent / context of the situation. You may be using "rules based morality" to say that there are general things we consider rules that we should follow, but in philosophy the idea of a rules based morality is one where you would say "x is bad, therefore you cannot do x" because there is no situation where it is possible for "x = bad" and "x = not bad" at the same time.
I don't understand what you're struggling about here.
Yes, there are situations where there are exceptions to rules, so you need to look at the context of the situation to determine if its an exception or not. But if it is not, then the rule stands.
If I decide red cars are better than blue cars then that is a neutral, personal judgment. If I decide to vandalise red blue cars because I prefer red cars, then that is bad, because the action is bad and my "cause" does not justify that action as an exception.
If there is no exception, the rule stands. That is how morals operate, and its how the law operates too.
1 - Is Daniel Korski toast yet? Not that it will make much difference to the identity of the next Major.
2 - The 40% water bill increase sounds like either industry scaremongering, or media sensationalising.
25% sounds more like it, and it is wished on us - as it will be across the UK and across Europe since we all have the same sewerage in rivers issue - by lobbies demanding umpteen billions of investment.
Since English water consumption is about 25% above the European best practice (140l pppd vs 105l in Denmark), if peeps invest in reducing their consumption (eg rainwater collection for the garden using a couple of Industrial Bulk Containers and an automatic watering system) and change habits, then bills will stay approx the same.
Personal responsibility required.
One thing I find fascinating is that Greens inm my experience are demanding that millions of tons of concrete (presumably) be used to build new reservoirs. Greens? Rather than control consumption. What happened to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle?
Why would we not build new reservoirs to cope with a vastly increased population? Scratching around for ways to stave off a hosepipe ban in Britain of all places is grotesque.
It seems sensible to me to do the easier, less expensive options first.
Why create expensive, treated water to water your garden, when you can harvest the rain that falls on your roof? Why drown more valleys or build bunds when we lose around 17% of water from pipe leakage?
To me that just seems bizarre.
It's not bizarre at all to fill old quarries with water, which is the sort of thing that gold-plated EU legislation has prevented us from doing. We have plentiful water in this country - it is one of the benefits of the huge rainfall we have to put up with. It takes willful stupidity not to be able to supply all our water needs and desires with ease and at little expense.
The SE of the UK does not have huge rainfall - certainly no more than most of Europe.
Most of Europe has a pretty huge amount of rainfall.
This isn't Africa.
Depends whereabouts in Africa or Europe you are tbh. Plenty of rainfall once you get south of the Sahara.
What happened? I was listening on the radio but they didn't really explain much, just that play was disrupted.
Just Stop Oil. Good for them. More of this sort of thing.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
Do you support all protesto-vandalism, or only for causes you agree with?
Why the fuck would I support it for causes I disagree with?
I find your position baffling. The means of change are more important in the long run than the change itself.
Why is it baffling? Strategies are, mostly, morally neutral; the cause is the thing that places the morality. Violence is typically considered "bad", but it's fine in self defence; so violence isn't actually the bad thing, but the cause is.
Protesting is a strategy. I like it when causes that are good use it, and dislike it when causes that are bad use it. I would still protect the right to protesting, as long as counter protest and self defence in the face of violence at protests is allowed (see Honor Oak this weekend).
Violence isn't morally neutral, of course.
Yes it is; it's a tool. Is it always bad to do violence? Is self defence immoral? Are police arresting people, a clearly violent act, always immoral? I would argue most violence is probably immoral, but that's typically due to the cause.
No, it's not - which is why the law sets quite a low bar on the offence of assault. And why police use of violence must be proportionate to the situation. The question is whether it's utilised in preventing something morally worse, as in the examples you cite.
So self defence is immoral, but less immoral than being assaulted, and therefore is permitted? That's ridiculous. Self defence and the defence of others can be actively moral - and still involve violence.
Moral questions generally resolve to context and instance.
What is self defence? What is proportional?
Indeed, they do. I didn't say they were easy answers, just that it is clear that there must be some instance where violence is morally acceptable or even a moral good.
There is but its the exception that proves the rule.
As a rule violence is morally bad.
There are exceptional circumstances whereby it can be good, eg repelling Russia's forces and liberating occupied land is morally good. Typically the exceptional circumstances are where a use of force is needed to repel or prevent a greater act of violence.
But that doesn't detract from the fact that as a rule violence is morally bad, just because there are exceptions to that rule.
I mean, yes actually - having exceptions to the rule is exactly why rule based morality doesn't work and why we aren't all Kantians. "Lying is bad" - "Okay, is Anne Frank in your attic?". Rule based morality doesn't work. Actions are strategies that you have to back up with intent and reason; those are the things that provide the moral basis for an act.
Rule based morality does work, but there are circumstances which are exceptions. Any rule has exceptions typically.
We are humans not machines, we can think and judge exceptions. Heck, even rudimentary machines can have exceptions built into their programming.
You have the moral judgement "x is bad", you have the rule "therefore do not do x", you cannot have a rule that says "x is bad, therefore do not do x, except when x isn't bad" because that isn't how rules work - you have invented moral relativism, which is how people function and is necessary - but is not a rule based moral framework.
Yes, you can.
Rules allow exceptions. Next.
Philosophy and law 101.
How do you decide what should be granted an exception and what shouldn't? Isn't that in itself a moral judgement?
Yes it is. As I said, we're human, we can do that.
Its also part of the reason in the law we have juries and the reasonable person test. To underpin that.
But the existence of exceptions doesn't prevent the existence of rules, it just means that exceptions to the rules do exist too.
What happened? I was listening on the radio but they didn't really explain much, just that play was disrupted.
Just Stop Oil. Good for them. More of this sort of thing.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
Do you support all protesto-vandalism, or only for causes you agree with?
Why the fuck would I support it for causes I disagree with?
I find your position baffling. The means of change are more important in the long run than the change itself.
Why is it baffling? Strategies are, mostly, morally neutral; the cause is the thing that places the morality. Violence is typically considered "bad", but it's fine in self defence; so violence isn't actually the bad thing, but the cause is.
Protesting is a strategy. I like it when causes that are good use it, and dislike it when causes that are bad use it. I would still protect the right to protesting, as long as counter protest and self defence in the face of violence at protests is allowed (see Honor Oak this weekend).
Violence isn't morally neutral, of course.
Yes it is; it's a tool. Is it always bad to do violence? Is self defence immoral? Are police arresting people, a clearly violent act, always immoral? I would argue most violence is probably immoral, but that's typically due to the cause.
No, it's not - which is why the law sets quite a low bar on the offence of assault. And why police use of violence must be proportionate to the situation. The question is whether it's utilised in preventing something morally worse, as in the examples you cite.
So self defence is immoral, but less immoral than being assaulted, and therefore is permitted? That's ridiculous. Self defence and the defence of others can be actively moral - and still involve violence.
Moral questions generally resolve to context and instance.
What is self defence? What is proportional?
Indeed, they do. I didn't say they were easy answers, just that it is clear that there must be some instance where violence is morally acceptable or even a moral good.
There is but its the exception that proves the rule.
As a rule violence is morally bad.
There are exceptional circumstances whereby it can be good, eg repelling Russia's forces and liberating occupied land is morally good. Typically the exceptional circumstances are where a use of force is needed to repel or prevent a greater act of violence.
But that doesn't detract from the fact that as a rule violence is morally bad, just because there are exceptions to that rule.
I mean, yes actually - having exceptions to the rule is exactly why rule based morality doesn't work and why we aren't all Kantians. "Lying is bad" - "Okay, is Anne Frank in your attic?". Rule based morality doesn't work. Actions are strategies that you have to back up with intent and reason; those are the things that provide the moral basis for an act.
Rule based morality does work, but there are circumstances which are exceptions. Any rule has exceptions typically.
We are humans not machines, we can think and judge exceptions. Heck, even rudimentary machines can have exceptions built into their programming.
You have the moral judgement "x is bad", you have the rule "therefore do not do x", you cannot have a rule that says "x is bad, therefore do not do x, except when x isn't bad" because that isn't how rules work - you have invented moral relativism, which is how people function and is necessary - but is not a rule based moral framework.
Yes, you can.
Rules allow exceptions. Next.
Philosophy and law 101.
So Kant is right, as long as you allow a few exceptions now and then? That doesn't work! The entire point of rules based morality is to say it doesn't matter what the context is "x = bad, therefore don't do x". That is the whole reason rules based morality exists.
Gosh, this has moved on a bit. Brilliant discussion though - moral philosophy is one of our less trodden paths. Well done to everyone.
What happened? I was listening on the radio but they didn't really explain much, just that play was disrupted.
Just Stop Oil. Good for them. More of this sort of thing.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
Do you support all protesto-vandalism, or only for causes you agree with?
Why the fuck would I support it for causes I disagree with?
I find your position baffling. The means of change are more important in the long run than the change itself.
Why is it baffling? Strategies are, mostly, morally neutral; the cause is the thing that places the morality. Violence is typically considered "bad", but it's fine in self defence; so violence isn't actually the bad thing, but the cause is.
Protesting is a strategy. I like it when causes that are good use it, and dislike it when causes that are bad use it. I would still protect the right to protesting, as long as counter protest and self defence in the face of violence at protests is allowed (see Honor Oak this weekend).
Violence isn't morally neutral, of course.
Yes it is; it's a tool. Is it always bad to do violence? Is self defence immoral? Are police arresting people, a clearly violent act, always immoral? I would argue most violence is probably immoral, but that's typically due to the cause.
No, it's not - which is why the law sets quite a low bar on the offence of assault. And why police use of violence must be proportionate to the situation. The question is whether it's utilised in preventing something morally worse, as in the examples you cite.
So self defence is immoral, but less immoral than being assaulted, and therefore is permitted? That's ridiculous. Self defence and the defence of others can be actively moral - and still involve violence.
That's not what I said. Violence is a moral bad, but its use in preventing a greater moral bad is a net moral good.
It's not a hard concept - and actually how our law works, essentially. Your formulation is behind (for example) the US 'stand your ground' laws. I don't regard that as good moral calculus.
I also don't accept the law as good moral calculus - the law is often an ass.
I think it is easier to describe violence as a tool, a strategy, that in and of itself does not have a moral component. It is the reason behind the violence that inherently gives it morality. I'm not saying just CLAIMING self defence is a standard enough to make the act of violence moral, but to act with violence to defend yourself or others clearly is morally acceptable, and indeed, can be an act of moral good. So if morality is one thing or the other - something is morally good or morally bad - saying violence is a moral bad cannot be true - it therefore has to be the reason for the violence.
The same with blocking a road, or protesting, or blowing up a building. Morally neutral actions. But with reasons they can become morally justified, or obviously immoral.
No, violence is not morally neutral. It is morally bad in its own right.
There are exceptional circumstances whereby it may be necessary, and thus become morally good, but that is very much the exception not the norm.
Put it this way, if your cause is in its own right morally neutral, then you turn violent to further that neutral cause, then is the violence neutral because the cause is? No. The second you turned violent, you've gone from being morally ambivalent to morally bad.
People seem to fail to understand moral philosophy here; maybe my studies are making me use the same words with different context to the general people.
If you say "violence is a moral bad in its own right", therefore arguing it is not about intent but the action, and then follow that up with "exceptional circumstances whereby it may be necessary, and thus become morally good", therefore arguing that an act is impacted by context and intent not the base implicit morality of the action, you have a contradiction. You cannot be a moral relativist and a rule based moralist at the same time.
If you say there are some exceptions, and that depends on the context of the violence, you are admitting that it is the context of the act that matters, not the act itself.
Of course you can.
All you need to do is to understand the meaning of the word "exception".
I don't know why you're struggling with it.
The act itself is bad in its own right, unless there is a very exceptional reason why it is justified. The fact exceptional circumstances exist, does not mean that morals as a general rule can't exist.
Lying is morally bad. Lying to save someone's life (Anne Frank example) or white lies to make someone happy (organising a surprise party, Father Christmas etc) may be justified despite that.
But if your cause is neutral and you do a bad thing, then that bad thing is still bad because it is bad, not because your cause is bad.
If you have the rule, how do you fit the exceptions of the rule into the rule without looking at the reason / intent / context of the situation. You may be using "rules based morality" to say that there are general things we consider rules that we should follow, but in philosophy the idea of a rules based morality is one where you would say "x is bad, therefore you cannot do x" because there is no situation where it is possible for "x = bad" and "x = not bad" at the same time.
I don't understand what you're struggling about here.
Yes, there are situations where there are exceptions to rules, so you need to look at the context of the situation to determine if its an exception or not. But if it is not, then the rule stands.
If I decide red cars are better than blue cars then that is a neutral, personal judgment. If I decide to vandalise red blue cars because I prefer red cars, then that is bad, because the action is bad and my "cause" does not justify that action as an exception.
If there is no exception, the rule stands. That is how morals operate, and its how the law operates too.
I am not struggling with your conclusion, I'm struggling with you still calling that a rules based morality when it is obviously not rules based and is moral relativism.
Rules based morality came about, in part, because philosophers argued that "x= always bad" and therefore "you should never do x". That is, what we call, a rule.
If you are arguing that "x = always bad" is incorrect, or that it is correct but "you can sometimes do x", you do not have a rules based morality. You have a relativist morality.
1 - Is Daniel Korski toast yet? Not that it will make much difference to the identity of the next Major.
2 - The 40% water bill increase sounds like either industry scaremongering, or media sensationalising.
25% sounds more like it, and it is wished on us - as it will be across the UK and across Europe since we all have the same sewerage in rivers issue - by lobbies demanding umpteen billions of investment.
Since English water consumption is about 25% above the European best practice (140l pppd vs 105l in Denmark), if peeps invest in reducing their consumption (eg rainwater collection for the garden using a couple of Industrial Bulk Containers and an automatic watering system) and change habits, then bills will stay approx the same.
Personal responsibility required.
One thing I find fascinating is that Greens inm my experience are demanding that millions of tons of concrete (presumably) be used to build new reservoirs. Greens? Rather than control consumption. What happened to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle?
Why would we not build new reservoirs to cope with a vastly increased population? Scratching around for ways to stave off a hosepipe ban in Britain of all places is grotesque.
It seems sensible to me to do the easier, less expensive options first.
Why create expensive, treated water to water your garden, when you can harvest the rain that falls on your roof? Why drown more valleys or build bunds when we lose around 17% of water from pipe leakage?
To me that just seems bizarre.
It's not bizarre at all to fill old quarries with water, which is the sort of thing that gold-plated EU legislation has prevented us from doing. We have plentiful water in this country - it is one of the benefits of the huge rainfall we have to put up with. It takes willful stupidity not to be able to supply all our water needs and desires with ease and at little expense.
Govt policy, as mentioned in the link, is already to reduce consumption to 110l pppd by 2050.
It's surprising which places get more rain than London. London isn’t even near to proclaiming itself the wettest capital in Europe by the annual amount of rain. With its 557mm of rain per year, the city holds 35th place on the list.
Yes, we do, and I don't find a study by B&Q or the fact that reducing peoples' water consumption is 'Government policy' to be particular convincing arguments in the opposing direction.
What happened? I was listening on the radio but they didn't really explain much, just that play was disrupted.
Just Stop Oil. Good for them. More of this sort of thing.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
Do you support all protesto-vandalism, or only for causes you agree with?
Why the fuck would I support it for causes I disagree with?
I find your position baffling. The means of change are more important in the long run than the change itself.
Why is it baffling? Strategies are, mostly, morally neutral; the cause is the thing that places the morality. Violence is typically considered "bad", but it's fine in self defence; so violence isn't actually the bad thing, but the cause is.
Protesting is a strategy. I like it when causes that are good use it, and dislike it when causes that are bad use it. I would still protect the right to protesting, as long as counter protest and self defence in the face of violence at protests is allowed (see Honor Oak this weekend).
Violence isn't morally neutral, of course.
Yes it is; it's a tool. Is it always bad to do violence? Is self defence immoral? Are police arresting people, a clearly violent act, always immoral? I would argue most violence is probably immoral, but that's typically due to the cause.
No, it's not - which is why the law sets quite a low bar on the offence of assault. And why police use of violence must be proportionate to the situation. The question is whether it's utilised in preventing something morally worse, as in the examples you cite.
So self defence is immoral, but less immoral than being assaulted, and therefore is permitted? That's ridiculous. Self defence and the defence of others can be actively moral - and still involve violence.
Moral questions generally resolve to context and instance.
What is self defence? What is proportional?
Indeed, they do. I didn't say they were easy answers, just that it is clear that there must be some instance where violence is morally acceptable or even a moral good.
There is but its the exception that proves the rule.
As a rule violence is morally bad.
There are exceptional circumstances whereby it can be good, eg repelling Russia's forces and liberating occupied land is morally good. Typically the exceptional circumstances are where a use of force is needed to repel or prevent a greater act of violence.
But that doesn't detract from the fact that as a rule violence is morally bad, just because there are exceptions to that rule.
I mean, yes actually - having exceptions to the rule is exactly why rule based morality doesn't work and why we aren't all Kantians. "Lying is bad" - "Okay, is Anne Frank in your attic?". Rule based morality doesn't work. Actions are strategies that you have to back up with intent and reason; those are the things that provide the moral basis for an act.
Rule based morality does work, but there are circumstances which are exceptions. Any rule has exceptions typically.
We are humans not machines, we can think and judge exceptions. Heck, even rudimentary machines can have exceptions built into their programming.
You have the moral judgement "x is bad", you have the rule "therefore do not do x", you cannot have a rule that says "x is bad, therefore do not do x, except when x isn't bad" because that isn't how rules work - you have invented moral relativism, which is how people function and is necessary - but is not a rule based moral framework.
Yes, you can.
Rules allow exceptions. Next.
Philosophy and law 101.
How do you decide what should be granted an exception and what shouldn't? Isn't that in itself a moral judgement?
Yes it is. As I said, we're human, we can do that.
Its also part of the reason in the law we have juries and the reasonable person test. To underpin that.
But the existence of exceptions doesn't prevent the existence of rules, it just means that exceptions to the rules do exist too.
Then that isn't a rules based morality, it is moral relativism. That is what that means. It is the definition of those things.
What happened? I was listening on the radio but they didn't really explain much, just that play was disrupted.
Just Stop Oil. Good for them. More of this sort of thing.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
Do you support all protesto-vandalism, or only for causes you agree with?
Why the fuck would I support it for causes I disagree with?
I find your position baffling. The means of change are more important in the long run than the change itself.
Why is it baffling? Strategies are, mostly, morally neutral; the cause is the thing that places the morality. Violence is typically considered "bad", but it's fine in self defence; so violence isn't actually the bad thing, but the cause is.
Protesting is a strategy. I like it when causes that are good use it, and dislike it when causes that are bad use it. I would still protect the right to protesting, as long as counter protest and self defence in the face of violence at protests is allowed (see Honor Oak this weekend).
Violence isn't morally neutral, of course.
Yes it is; it's a tool. Is it always bad to do violence? Is self defence immoral? Are police arresting people, a clearly violent act, always immoral? I would argue most violence is probably immoral, but that's typically due to the cause.
No, it's not - which is why the law sets quite a low bar on the offence of assault. And why police use of violence must be proportionate to the situation. The question is whether it's utilised in preventing something morally worse, as in the examples you cite.
So self defence is immoral, but less immoral than being assaulted, and therefore is permitted? That's ridiculous. Self defence and the defence of others can be actively moral - and still involve violence.
Moral questions generally resolve to context and instance.
What is self defence? What is proportional?
Indeed, they do. I didn't say they were easy answers, just that it is clear that there must be some instance where violence is morally acceptable or even a moral good.
There is but its the exception that proves the rule.
As a rule violence is morally bad.
There are exceptional circumstances whereby it can be good, eg repelling Russia's forces and liberating occupied land is morally good. Typically the exceptional circumstances are where a use of force is needed to repel or prevent a greater act of violence.
But that doesn't detract from the fact that as a rule violence is morally bad, just because there are exceptions to that rule.
I mean, yes actually - having exceptions to the rule is exactly why rule based morality doesn't work and why we aren't all Kantians. "Lying is bad" - "Okay, is Anne Frank in your attic?". Rule based morality doesn't work. Actions are strategies that you have to back up with intent and reason; those are the things that provide the moral basis for an act.
Rule based morality does work, but there are circumstances which are exceptions. Any rule has exceptions typically.
We are humans not machines, we can think and judge exceptions. Heck, even rudimentary machines can have exceptions built into their programming.
You have the moral judgement "x is bad", you have the rule "therefore do not do x", you cannot have a rule that says "x is bad, therefore do not do x, except when x isn't bad" because that isn't how rules work - you have invented moral relativism, which is how people function and is necessary - but is not a rule based moral framework.
Yes, you can.
Rules allow exceptions. Next.
Philosophy and law 101.
How do you decide what should be granted an exception and what shouldn't? Isn't that in itself a moral judgement?
Yes it is. As I said, we're human, we can do that.
Its also part of the reason in the law we have juries and the reasonable person test. To underpin that.
But the existence of exceptions doesn't prevent the existence of rules, it just means that exceptions to the rules do exist too.
I think you are mischaracterising exceptions. Events occur which violate the rule but a rule violation does not somehow change the rule. It is a rule. If you are saying the violations are fine and "part" of the rule then your original rule doesn't hold any more.
What happened? I was listening on the radio but they didn't really explain much, just that play was disrupted.
Just Stop Oil. Good for them. More of this sort of thing.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
Do you support all protesto-vandalism, or only for causes you agree with?
Why the fuck would I support it for causes I disagree with?
I find your position baffling. The means of change are more important in the long run than the change itself.
Why is it baffling? Strategies are, mostly, morally neutral; the cause is the thing that places the morality. Violence is typically considered "bad", but it's fine in self defence; so violence isn't actually the bad thing, but the cause is.
Protesting is a strategy. I like it when causes that are good use it, and dislike it when causes that are bad use it. I would still protect the right to protesting, as long as counter protest and self defence in the face of violence at protests is allowed (see Honor Oak this weekend).
Violence isn't morally neutral, of course.
Yes it is; it's a tool. Is it always bad to do violence? Is self defence immoral? Are police arresting people, a clearly violent act, always immoral? I would argue most violence is probably immoral, but that's typically due to the cause.
No, it's not - which is why the law sets quite a low bar on the offence of assault. And why police use of violence must be proportionate to the situation. The question is whether it's utilised in preventing something morally worse, as in the examples you cite.
So self defence is immoral, but less immoral than being assaulted, and therefore is permitted? That's ridiculous. Self defence and the defence of others can be actively moral - and still involve violence.
Moral questions generally resolve to context and instance.
What is self defence? What is proportional?
Indeed, they do. I didn't say they were easy answers, just that it is clear that there must be some instance where violence is morally acceptable or even a moral good.
There is but its the exception that proves the rule.
As a rule violence is morally bad.
There are exceptional circumstances whereby it can be good, eg repelling Russia's forces and liberating occupied land is morally good. Typically the exceptional circumstances are where a use of force is needed to repel or prevent a greater act of violence.
But that doesn't detract from the fact that as a rule violence is morally bad, just because there are exceptions to that rule.
I mean, yes actually - having exceptions to the rule is exactly why rule based morality doesn't work and why we aren't all Kantians. "Lying is bad" - "Okay, is Anne Frank in your attic?". Rule based morality doesn't work. Actions are strategies that you have to back up with intent and reason; those are the things that provide the moral basis for an act.
Rule based morality does work, but there are circumstances which are exceptions. Any rule has exceptions typically.
We are humans not machines, we can think and judge exceptions. Heck, even rudimentary machines can have exceptions built into their programming.
You have the moral judgement "x is bad", you have the rule "therefore do not do x", you cannot have a rule that says "x is bad, therefore do not do x, except when x isn't bad" because that isn't how rules work - you have invented moral relativism, which is how people function and is necessary - but is not a rule based moral framework.
Yes, you can.
Rules allow exceptions. Next.
Philosophy and law 101.
How do you decide what should be granted an exception and what shouldn't? Isn't that in itself a moral judgement?
Yes it is. As I said, we're human, we can do that.
Its also part of the reason in the law we have juries and the reasonable person test. To underpin that.
But the existence of exceptions doesn't prevent the existence of rules, it just means that exceptions to the rules do exist too.
Then that isn't a rules based morality, it is moral relativism. That is what that means. It is the definition of those things.
Unfortunately I have to go, which is a shame as this discussion is getting interesting, but most philosophers would allow the existence of both rules and relativism, and it is upto human judgement as to determine which is appropriate. "Always" as you put it, is a fool's errand, but so too is "Never".
You are acting as if pure relativism, without rules, is appropriate. That is equally as nonsensical as operating "always" in accordance with a rule.
1 - Is Daniel Korski toast yet? Not that it will make much difference to the identity of the next Major.
2 - The 40% water bill increase sounds like either industry scaremongering, or media sensationalising.
25% sounds more like it, and it is wished on us - as it will be across the UK and across Europe since we all have the same sewerage in rivers issue - by lobbies demanding umpteen billions of investment.
Since English water consumption is about 25% above the European best practice (140l pppd vs 105l in Denmark), if peeps invest in reducing their consumption (eg rainwater collection for the garden using a couple of Industrial Bulk Containers and an automatic watering system) and change habits, then bills will stay approx the same.
Personal responsibility required.
One thing I find fascinating is that Greens inm my experience are demanding that millions of tons of concrete (presumably) be used to build new reservoirs. Greens? Rather than control consumption. What happened to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle?
Why would we not build new reservoirs to cope with a vastly increased population? Scratching around for ways to stave off a hosepipe ban in Britain of all places is grotesque.
It seems sensible to me to do the easier, less expensive options first.
Why create expensive, treated water to water your garden, when you can harvest the rain that falls on your roof? Why drown more valleys or build bunds when we lose around 17% of water from pipe leakage?
To me that just seems bizarre.
It's not bizarre at all to fill old quarries with water, which is the sort of thing that gold-plated EU legislation has prevented us from doing. We have plentiful water in this country - it is one of the benefits of the huge rainfall we have to put up with. It takes willful stupidity not to be able to supply all our water needs and desires with ease and at little expense.
Govt policy, as mentioned in the link, is already to reduce consumption to 110l pppd by 2050.
It's surprising which places get more rain than London. London isn’t even near to proclaiming itself the wettest capital in Europe by the annual amount of rain. With its 557mm of rain per year, the city holds 35th place on the list.
What happened? I was listening on the radio but they didn't really explain much, just that play was disrupted.
Just Stop Oil. Good for them. More of this sort of thing.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
Do you support all protesto-vandalism, or only for causes you agree with?
Why the fuck would I support it for causes I disagree with?
I find your position baffling. The means of change are more important in the long run than the change itself.
Why is it baffling? Strategies are, mostly, morally neutral; the cause is the thing that places the morality. Violence is typically considered "bad", but it's fine in self defence; so violence isn't actually the bad thing, but the cause is.
Protesting is a strategy. I like it when causes that are good use it, and dislike it when causes that are bad use it. I would still protect the right to protesting, as long as counter protest and self defence in the face of violence at protests is allowed (see Honor Oak this weekend).
Violence isn't morally neutral, of course.
Yes it is; it's a tool. Is it always bad to do violence? Is self defence immoral? Are police arresting people, a clearly violent act, always immoral? I would argue most violence is probably immoral, but that's typically due to the cause.
No, it's not - which is why the law sets quite a low bar on the offence of assault. And why police use of violence must be proportionate to the situation. The question is whether it's utilised in preventing something morally worse, as in the examples you cite.
So self defence is immoral, but less immoral than being assaulted, and therefore is permitted? That's ridiculous. Self defence and the defence of others can be actively moral - and still involve violence.
Moral questions generally resolve to context and instance.
What is self defence? What is proportional?
Indeed, they do. I didn't say they were easy answers, just that it is clear that there must be some instance where violence is morally acceptable or even a moral good.
There is but its the exception that proves the rule.
As a rule violence is morally bad.
There are exceptional circumstances whereby it can be good, eg repelling Russia's forces and liberating occupied land is morally good. Typically the exceptional circumstances are where a use of force is needed to repel or prevent a greater act of violence.
But that doesn't detract from the fact that as a rule violence is morally bad, just because there are exceptions to that rule.
I mean, yes actually - having exceptions to the rule is exactly why rule based morality doesn't work and why we aren't all Kantians. "Lying is bad" - "Okay, is Anne Frank in your attic?". Rule based morality doesn't work. Actions are strategies that you have to back up with intent and reason; those are the things that provide the moral basis for an act.
Rule based morality does work, but there are circumstances which are exceptions. Any rule has exceptions typically.
We are humans not machines, we can think and judge exceptions. Heck, even rudimentary machines can have exceptions built into their programming.
You have the moral judgement "x is bad", you have the rule "therefore do not do x", you cannot have a rule that says "x is bad, therefore do not do x, except when x isn't bad" because that isn't how rules work - you have invented moral relativism, which is how people function and is necessary - but is not a rule based moral framework.
Yes, you can.
Rules allow exceptions. Next.
Philosophy and law 101.
How do you decide what should be granted an exception and what shouldn't? Isn't that in itself a moral judgement?
Yes it is. As I said, we're human, we can do that.
Its also part of the reason in the law we have juries and the reasonable person test. To underpin that.
But the existence of exceptions doesn't prevent the existence of rules, it just means that exceptions to the rules do exist too.
Then that isn't a rules based morality, it is moral relativism. That is what that means. It is the definition of those things.
Unfortunately I have to go, which is a shame as this discussion is getting interesting, but most philosophers would allow the existence of both rules and relativism, and it is upto human judgement as to determine which is appropriate. "Always" as you put it, is a fool's errand, but so too is "Never".
You are acting as if pure relativism, without rules, is appropriate. That is equally as nonsensical as operating "always" in accordance with a rule.
Any situation that isn't a pure rule is always pure relativism, because whilst you might have a "general rule" it is not a "rule" in the sense of rule based morality. In the colloquial sense of "rule of thumb" or "general rule" - sure, yes, fine, I accept. But when you are talking about philosophical models of ethics and morals a rule has to be a rule, or it is pointless.
To say "x = bad" therefore "don't do x" does not allow exceptions.
If you say "x = sometimes bad" you have to define when "x = sometimes good" - that is relativism. If you say "x = bad 99% of the time" you still have to define and parse when "x = good" that 1% of the time - that involves relativism. That is not rule based.
To go back to what prompted this argument, if we say "violence = bad" the always is implicit in that rule. Therefore "don't do violence". But, we know, that the statement "sometime violence = good" is true. Therefore "violence = bad" cannot be true. Therefore the rule "don't do violence" cannot be a rule. Therefore we need to define why and when "violence = sometimes bad" and why and when "violence = sometimes good" and that is the foundation of moral relativism. That is not rule morality.
What happened? I was listening on the radio but they didn't really explain much, just that play was disrupted.
Just Stop Oil. Good for them. More of this sort of thing.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
Do you support all protesto-vandalism, or only for causes you agree with?
Why the fuck would I support it for causes I disagree with?
I find your position baffling. The means of change are more important in the long run than the change itself.
Why is it baffling? Strategies are, mostly, morally neutral; the cause is the thing that places the morality. Violence is typically considered "bad", but it's fine in self defence; so violence isn't actually the bad thing, but the cause is.
Protesting is a strategy. I like it when causes that are good use it, and dislike it when causes that are bad use it. I would still protect the right to protesting, as long as counter protest and self defence in the face of violence at protests is allowed (see Honor Oak this weekend).
Violence isn't morally neutral, of course.
Yes it is; it's a tool. Is it always bad to do violence? Is self defence immoral? Are police arresting people, a clearly violent act, always immoral? I would argue most violence is probably immoral, but that's typically due to the cause.
No, it's not - which is why the law sets quite a low bar on the offence of assault. And why police use of violence must be proportionate to the situation. The question is whether it's utilised in preventing something morally worse, as in the examples you cite.
So self defence is immoral, but less immoral than being assaulted, and therefore is permitted? That's ridiculous. Self defence and the defence of others can be actively moral - and still involve violence.
That's not what I said. Violence is a moral bad, but its use in preventing a greater moral bad is a net moral good.
It's not a hard concept - and actually how our law works, essentially. Your formulation is behind (for example) the US 'stand your ground' laws. I don't regard that as good moral calculus.
I also don't accept the law as good moral calculus - the law is often an ass.
I think it is easier to describe violence as a tool, a strategy, that in and of itself does not have a moral component. It is the reason behind the violence that inherently gives it morality. I'm not saying just CLAIMING self defence is a standard enough to make the act of violence moral, but to act with violence to defend yourself or others clearly is morally acceptable, and indeed, can be an act of moral good. So if morality is one thing or the other - something is morally good or morally bad - saying violence is a moral bad cannot be true - it therefore has to be the reason for the violence.
The same with blocking a road, or protesting, or blowing up a building. Morally neutral actions. But with reasons they can become morally justified, or obviously immoral.
No, violence is not morally neutral. It is morally bad in its own right.
There are exceptional circumstances whereby it may be necessary, and thus become morally good, but that is very much the exception not the norm.
Put it this way, if your cause is in its own right morally neutral, then you turn violent to further that neutral cause, then is the violence neutral because the cause is? No. The second you turned violent, you've gone from being morally ambivalent to morally bad.
People seem to fail to understand moral philosophy here; maybe my studies are making me use the same words with different context to the general people.
If you say "violence is a moral bad in its own right", therefore arguing it is not about intent but the action, and then follow that up with "exceptional circumstances whereby it may be necessary, and thus become morally good", therefore arguing that an act is impacted by context and intent not the base implicit morality of the action, you have a contradiction. You cannot be a moral relativist and a rule based moralist at the same time.
If you say there are some exceptions, and that depends on the context of the violence, you are admitting that it is the context of the act that matters, not the act itself.
How about:
Violence is always bad. However, there are circumstances in which it can be morally justified.
What happened? I was listening on the radio but they didn't really explain much, just that play was disrupted.
Just Stop Oil. Good for them. More of this sort of thing.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
Do you support all protesto-vandalism, or only for causes you agree with?
Why the fuck would I support it for causes I disagree with?
I find your position baffling. The means of change are more important in the long run than the change itself.
Why is it baffling? Strategies are, mostly, morally neutral; the cause is the thing that places the morality. Violence is typically considered "bad", but it's fine in self defence; so violence isn't actually the bad thing, but the cause is.
Protesting is a strategy. I like it when causes that are good use it, and dislike it when causes that are bad use it. I would still protect the right to protesting, as long as counter protest and self defence in the face of violence at protests is allowed (see Honor Oak this weekend).
Violence isn't morally neutral, of course.
Yes it is; it's a tool. Is it always bad to do violence? Is self defence immoral? Are police arresting people, a clearly violent act, always immoral? I would argue most violence is probably immoral, but that's typically due to the cause.
No, it's not - which is why the law sets quite a low bar on the offence of assault. And why police use of violence must be proportionate to the situation. The question is whether it's utilised in preventing something morally worse, as in the examples you cite.
So self defence is immoral, but less immoral than being assaulted, and therefore is permitted? That's ridiculous. Self defence and the defence of others can be actively moral - and still involve violence.
Moral questions generally resolve to context and instance.
What is self defence? What is proportional?
Indeed, they do. I didn't say they were easy answers, just that it is clear that there must be some instance where violence is morally acceptable or even a moral good.
There is but its the exception that proves the rule.
As a rule violence is morally bad.
There are exceptional circumstances whereby it can be good, eg repelling Russia's forces and liberating occupied land is morally good. Typically the exceptional circumstances are where a use of force is needed to repel or prevent a greater act of violence.
But that doesn't detract from the fact that as a rule violence is morally bad, just because there are exceptions to that rule.
I mean, yes actually - having exceptions to the rule is exactly why rule based morality doesn't work and why we aren't all Kantians. "Lying is bad" - "Okay, is Anne Frank in your attic?". Rule based morality doesn't work. Actions are strategies that you have to back up with intent and reason; those are the things that provide the moral basis for an act.
Rule based morality does work, but there are circumstances which are exceptions. Any rule has exceptions typically.
We are humans not machines, we can think and judge exceptions. Heck, even rudimentary machines can have exceptions built into their programming.
You have the moral judgement "x is bad", you have the rule "therefore do not do x", you cannot have a rule that says "x is bad, therefore do not do x, except when x isn't bad" because that isn't how rules work - you have invented moral relativism, which is how people function and is necessary - but is not a rule based moral framework.
Yes, you can.
Rules allow exceptions. Next.
Philosophy and law 101.
How do you decide what should be granted an exception and what shouldn't? Isn't that in itself a moral judgement?
Yes it is. As I said, we're human, we can do that.
Its also part of the reason in the law we have juries and the reasonable person test. To underpin that.
But the existence of exceptions doesn't prevent the existence of rules, it just means that exceptions to the rules do exist too.
Then that isn't a rules based morality, it is moral relativism. That is what that means. It is the definition of those things.
Unfortunately I have to go, which is a shame as this discussion is getting interesting, but most philosophers would allow the existence of both rules and relativism, and it is upto human judgement as to determine which is appropriate. "Always" as you put it, is a fool's errand, but so too is "Never".
You are acting as if pure relativism, without rules, is appropriate. That is equally as nonsensical as operating "always" in accordance with a rule.
Any situation that isn't a pure rule is always pure relativism, because whilst you might have a "general rule" it is not a "rule" in the sense of rule based morality. In the colloquial sense of "rule of thumb" or "general rule" - sure, yes, fine, I accept. But when you are talking about philosophical models of ethics and morals a rule has to be a rule, or it is pointless.
To say "x = bad" therefore "don't do x" does not allow exceptions.
If you say "x = sometimes bad" you have to define when "x = sometimes good" - that is relativism. If you say "x = bad 99% of the time" you still have to define and parse when "x = good" that 1% of the time - that involves relativism. That is not rule based.
I think this shows that if you want a rules-based morality then it can't be based on abstractions such as 'lying is bad'; otherwise you get the absurdity of it being morally objectionable to lie about Anne Frank's whereabouts. The rules will have to be based on some measurable consequence: X is morally correct if it causes more joy in the world than not doing X etc.
Anyone actually prepared to use Revolut? Seems to be a reluctance to give them a banking licence.
Though considering what licenced banks have done, perhaps that's not a black mark.
I would not touch Revolut personally at the moment.
There are other alternatives out there. Less risk.
No FSCS protection. "Safeguarding" apparently. Well I've seen the movie before. If the company goes el busto the "safeguarding" account tends to too... Not worth the risk for the 3.44% offered.
Golly thanks for pointing that out.
I have been trialling revolut and Monzo abroad. Monzo is miles better and fscs protected. Must now run down the £200 left with revolut.
What happened? I was listening on the radio but they didn't really explain much, just that play was disrupted.
Just Stop Oil. Good for them. More of this sort of thing.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
Do you support all protesto-vandalism, or only for causes you agree with?
Why the fuck would I support it for causes I disagree with?
I find your position baffling. The means of change are more important in the long run than the change itself.
Why is it baffling? Strategies are, mostly, morally neutral; the cause is the thing that places the morality. Violence is typically considered "bad", but it's fine in self defence; so violence isn't actually the bad thing, but the cause is.
Protesting is a strategy. I like it when causes that are good use it, and dislike it when causes that are bad use it. I would still protect the right to protesting, as long as counter protest and self defence in the face of violence at protests is allowed (see Honor Oak this weekend).
Violence isn't morally neutral, of course.
Yes it is; it's a tool. Is it always bad to do violence? Is self defence immoral? Are police arresting people, a clearly violent act, always immoral? I would argue most violence is probably immoral, but that's typically due to the cause.
No, it's not - which is why the law sets quite a low bar on the offence of assault. And why police use of violence must be proportionate to the situation. The question is whether it's utilised in preventing something morally worse, as in the examples you cite.
So self defence is immoral, but less immoral than being assaulted, and therefore is permitted? That's ridiculous. Self defence and the defence of others can be actively moral - and still involve violence.
That's not what I said. Violence is a moral bad, but its use in preventing a greater moral bad is a net moral good.
It's not a hard concept - and actually how our law works, essentially. Your formulation is behind (for example) the US 'stand your ground' laws. I don't regard that as good moral calculus.
I also don't accept the law as good moral calculus - the law is often an ass.
I think it is easier to describe violence as a tool, a strategy, that in and of itself does not have a moral component. It is the reason behind the violence that inherently gives it morality. I'm not saying just CLAIMING self defence is a standard enough to make the act of violence moral, but to act with violence to defend yourself or others clearly is morally acceptable, and indeed, can be an act of moral good. So if morality is one thing or the other - something is morally good or morally bad - saying violence is a moral bad cannot be true - it therefore has to be the reason for the violence.
The same with blocking a road, or protesting, or blowing up a building. Morally neutral actions. But with reasons they can become morally justified, or obviously immoral.
No, violence is not morally neutral. It is morally bad in its own right.
There are exceptional circumstances whereby it may be necessary, and thus become morally good, but that is very much the exception not the norm.
Put it this way, if your cause is in its own right morally neutral, then you turn violent to further that neutral cause, then is the violence neutral because the cause is? No. The second you turned violent, you've gone from being morally ambivalent to morally bad.
People seem to fail to understand moral philosophy here; maybe my studies are making me use the same words with different context to the general people.
If you say "violence is a moral bad in its own right", therefore arguing it is not about intent but the action, and then follow that up with "exceptional circumstances whereby it may be necessary, and thus become morally good", therefore arguing that an act is impacted by context and intent not the base implicit morality of the action, you have a contradiction. You cannot be a moral relativist and a rule based moralist at the same time.
If you say there are some exceptions, and that depends on the context of the violence, you are admitting that it is the context of the act that matters, not the act itself.
Of course you can.
All you need to do is to understand the meaning of the word "exception".
I don't know why you're struggling with it.
The act itself is bad in its own right, unless there is a very exceptional reason why it is justified. The fact exceptional circumstances exist, does not mean that morals as a general rule can't exist.
Lying is morally bad. Lying to save someone's life (Anne Frank example) or white lies to make someone happy (organising a surprise party, Father Christmas etc) may be justified despite that.
But if your cause is neutral and you do a bad thing, then that bad thing is still bad because it is bad, not because your cause is bad.
If you have the rule, how do you fit the exceptions of the rule into the rule without looking at the reason / intent / context of the situation. You may be using "rules based morality" to say that there are general things we consider rules that we should follow, but in philosophy the idea of a rules based morality is one where you would say "x is bad, therefore you cannot do x" because there is no situation where it is possible for "x = bad" and "x = not bad" at the same time.
I don't understand what you're struggling about here.
Yes, there are situations where there are exceptions to rules, so you need to look at the context of the situation to determine if its an exception or not. But if it is not, then the rule stands.
If I decide red cars are better than blue cars then that is a neutral, personal judgment. If I decide to vandalise red blue cars because I prefer red cars, then that is bad, because the action is bad and my "cause" does not justify that action as an exception.
If there is no exception, the rule stands. That is how morals operate, and its how the law operates too.
I am not struggling with your conclusion, I'm struggling with you still calling that a rules based morality when it is obviously not rules based and is moral relativism.
Rules based morality came about, in part, because philosophers argued that "x= always bad" and therefore "you should never do x". That is, what we call, a rule.
If you are arguing that "x = always bad" is incorrect, or that it is correct but "you can sometimes do x", you do not have a rules based morality. You have a relativist morality.
That's what those terms mean.
Having exceptions is not relativism if they apply universally. It just means that you can't reduce the rules to simplistic blanket statements.
Dura's stance is distinctly at odds with the main strains of centrist dad, and also centre-right PB.
I'm personally not sure if they're doing themselves any more favours with this approach. There's something about stopping the general flow of everyday activities, rather than activities as specific as fracking, that doesn't seem to be working for them at the moment.
OTOH he can claim to have defended the realm at some risk to his skin, unlike most of us.
That doesn't make my views worth more than anyone else's.
I didn't do it for the realm. Very few people will risk their own life and kill other people, many times over, for the queen or the UK or Tony Blair. The psychological conditioning means you do it for your comrades. The people immediately around you.
Quite so - but it is a common gammon argument, if only by implication. Homes for Heroes sloganeering, Kipling's poem about Tommy Atkins, that sort of mentality. Never mind what the heroes themselves think.
Fan of Starship Troopers?
The Heinlein book? Looked at it long ago - didn't like it. I was much more into Haldeman's Forever War. So curious as to your point ...
Society run by military veterans. Only.
Never understand why Verhoeven wasted his time on the book - he should have made Forever War. Instead he made a bad version of "Armor" by John Steakley - several scenes are straight out of that book.
Oh dear, someone basing their view of the book on the poor film adaptation.
It was not society run by military veterans. It was society run by those who did public service in many diffferent forms. The military was only one minor part of that and the recruiter in the book spends a lot of time trying to persuade the protagonists that they should choose another route as all are equally valid. In the book he directly references teaching and serving in the Government (in any capacity) as being routes to citizenship. It is much like the national service systems run by a number of European countries until recently where you could opt to work in care homes or some other public service instead of serving in the military.
Heinlein did try and retro that he meant "public service veterans" later, but it was pretty clear what he was saying.
You could only *get to be* a school teacher, by being a veteran, by the way.
Nope.
To quote the man directly.
"In Starship Troopers, it is stated flatly and more than once that nineteen out of twenty veterans are not military veterans. Instead, 95% of voters are what we call today 'former members of federal civil service.'"
Comments
We live in a strange transitional period. I wouldn't assume that the contradictions aren't going to cause major cracks, or that the fight is over, or that anyone who can make a reasonable "living" as an android in this little period must be right to assume that whatever doesn't hurt his brain too much to assume the security of actually is secure.
Oh wait, I forgot, nobody who dies for a cause can have been right. How will you recruit for your army, Viewcode? Just promise prospects they can shoot people and get paid for it?
@Dura_Ace - Have you read "Turn Illness Into A Weapon"?
Yes the rot began with New Labour, but then the Conservatives have increasingly doubled-down on that.
If Labour now do decide to change things then that would be a change for the better, as much as I don't like Labour in general, they have the potential to improve things on that front.
I won't be holding my breath though. The way Labour still support the Triple Lock is not reassuring.
The over he got the crucial wicket every ball was 80+, then the slower ball cross seamer that got the crucial wicket was 75mph. So slower ball Stokes = fastest ball in Womens Ashes.
Interesting issues as to when it's vandalism and when it's a Banksy. School of Banksy job gets painted out by Glasgow council, after being confirmed as not Banksy.
But also admittedly after having been vandalised because it showed a rat in an UJ hat marching and beating a drum: very clear implications in the West Central Belt context.
Still, as others have said, let the Shareholders get nothing.
When examining the means, proportionality is one thing, but it's nothing without effectiveness.
I can imagine a man from the council pointing a smartphone at it with the right program installed and reading off the answer: nope, it's not art; gotta have it removed; I don't make the rules.
The thing is, that every uniformed man shooting civilians in the back of the head and kicking the bodies into a trench thought (or their superiors thought) they were Doing The Right Thing.
When I edited the student rag at uni, I published an article on atrocities and swapped round the photos of NKVD and Enistrgruppen squads at work. Kinda accident on purpose. Then pointed out in the next issue that people who written in saying the NKVD were justified because….
The resulting fury was interesting - the number of people who will defend literal “ shooting civilians in the back of the head and kicking the bodies into a trench”…
Thankfully, a significant number of Western countries agree, and the brave Ukranians now have some of the world’s best weapons at their disposal.
It was not society run by military veterans. It was society run by those who did public service in many diffferent forms. The military was only one minor part of that and the recruiter in the book spends a lot of time trying to persuade the protagonists that they should choose another route as all are equally valid. In the book he directly references teaching and serving in the Government (in any capacity) as being routes to citizenship. It is much like the national service systems run by a number of European countries until recently where you could opt to work in care homes or some other public service instead of serving in the military.
The question is whether it's utilised in preventing something morally worse, as in the examples you cite.
You could only *get to be* a school teacher, by being a veteran, by the way.
In Trump's M-a-L case, per
@AnnaBower, def Walt Nowta will ask to postpone 7/14 CIPA hearing because Nowta atty Woodward has another trial that day. (Woodward can't file motion to postpone now because Nowta has no local counsel yet.)
https://twitter.com/rparloff/status/1674017958840999937
What is self defence? What is proportional?
The two most successful UK startups of the past decade, Revolut and XTX, were both started by graduates of Moscow's New Economic School.
https://twitter.com/patrickc/status/1674019205925031936
Violence is a moral bad, but its use in preventing a greater moral bad is a net moral good.
It's not a hard concept - and actually how our law works, essentially.
Your formulation is behind (for example) the US 'stand your ground' laws. I don't regard that as good moral calculus.
As a rule violence is morally bad.
There are exceptional circumstances whereby it can be good, eg repelling Russia's forces and liberating occupied land is morally good. Typically the exceptional circumstances are where a use of force is needed to repel or prevent a greater act of violence.
But that doesn't detract from the fact that as a rule violence is morally bad, just because there are exceptions to that rule.
As they did incessantly in the weeks before the liberation of Kherson.
I very much hope for the same pattern.
Thatcher wasn't averse to tickling the boomers, either; they were the youngest bit of generation who did well out of RTB and the 80s house price surge. And squeezing pensions to cut taxes.
Basically, they've always tended to get what they wanted because they were and are so numerous.
Though considering what licenced banks have done, perhaps that's not a black mark.
But Thatcher was not herself a boomer. So while it was a government for boomers, it wasn't by boomers. Blair is when boomers themselves started governing for their own generations interests, rather than simply being pandered to by politicians seeking their votes.
Having multiple cards to use for foreign exchange/insulation against fraud is sensible.
I use the feature on several of the alt-banks for creating one-off, temporary, card numbers for online transactions a fair bit.
Maybe it is all stuck, but it looked that way before they regained Kherson too.
News flash: this government is hopeless, incompetent, clueless. It is a bunch of clowns led by a no mark.
People are sick of it. What exactly are they supposed to gain by retaining it?
For most things Starling are better.
There are other alternatives out there. Less risk.
See a discussion here - https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1673949202068434945
The question is how long before they reach open country.
They are now about 100km from Mariupol.
If you do, you can't be far from people needing to wipe the dribble off your face.
The "9k" as you put it is for most pensioners on top of, not instead of, other pensions or other incomes they may have - and is not subject to National Insurance, Graduate Tax or other deductions that those working for a living have to pay.
Same old grasping Malcolm, never change. Not all pensioners are Tory, but you certainly are a Tory at their worst, the only difference is you're a Saltire Tory.
Why create expensive, drinking water to water your garden, when you can harvest the rain that falls on your roof? Why drown more valleys or build bunds when we lose around 17% of water from pipe leakage?
To me that just seems bizarre.
Here is the history of the Danish experience. 7% pipe leakage. Water usage reduced by about 20% in 2-3 decades.
https://www.danva.dk/media/8746/5307102_water-in-figures-2022_web.pdf
Reservoirs - maybe, but as one of the last options.
I think it is easier to describe violence as a tool, a strategy, that in and of itself does not have a moral component. It is the reason behind the violence that inherently gives it morality. I'm not saying just CLAIMING self defence is a standard enough to make the act of violence moral, but to act with violence to defend yourself or others clearly is morally acceptable, and indeed, can be an act of moral good. So if morality is one thing or the other - something is morally good or morally bad - saying violence is a moral bad cannot be true - it therefore has to be the reason for the violence.
The same with blocking a road, or protesting, or blowing up a building. Morally neutral actions. But with reasons they can become morally justified, or obviously immoral.
There are exceptional circumstances whereby it may be necessary, and thus become morally good, but that is very much the exception not the norm.
Put it this way, if your cause is in its own right morally neutral, then you turn violent to further that neutral cause, then is the violence neutral because the cause is? No. The second you turned violent, you've gone from being morally ambivalent to morally bad.
Not worth the risk for the 3.44% offered.
We are humans not machines, we can think and judge exceptions. Heck, even rudimentary machines can have exceptions built into their programming.
If you say "violence is a moral bad in its own right", therefore arguing it is not about intent but the action, and then follow that up with "exceptional circumstances whereby it may be necessary, and thus become morally good", therefore arguing that an act is impacted by context and intent not the base implicit morality of the action, you have a contradiction. You cannot be a moral relativist and a rule based moralist at the same time.
If you say there are some exceptions, and that depends on the context of the violence, you are admitting that it is the context of the act that matters, not the act itself.
This isn't Africa.
All you need to do is to understand the meaning of the word "exception".
I don't know why you're struggling with it.
The act itself is bad in its own right, unless there is a very exceptional reason why it is justified. The fact exceptional circumstances exist, does not mean that morals as a general rule can't exist.
Lying is morally bad.
Lying to save someone's life (Anne Frank example) or white lies to make someone happy (organising a surprise party, Father Christmas etc) may be justified despite that.
But if your cause is neutral and you do a bad thing, then that bad thing is still bad because it is bad, not because your cause is bad.
Rules allow exceptions. Next.
Philosophy and law 101.
Nice.
Roughly everything South of a Bristol Channel->Wash line are, or will soon be, areas of water stress. (Plus parts of the East Midlands, minus parts of the South-West).
eg https://www.kingfisher.com/en/media/news/kingfisher-news/2023/seven-regions-in-england-will-face-severe-water-stress-by-2030-a.html
Govt policy, as mentioned in the link, is already to reduce consumption to 110l pppd by 2050.
It's surprising which places get more rain than London.
London isn’t even near to proclaiming itself the wettest capital in Europe by the annual amount of rain. With its 557mm of rain per year, the city holds 35th place on the list.
More than in London, it rains even in Barcelona (640 mm), Istanbul (805 mm) and in Rome (799mm).
https://www.parkalondon.com/the-journal/wettest-capital-europe/
But, has Sunak chosen policies that will please the public, before your next general election? For example, will some voters conclude that Sunak isn't much of a talker, but that they are happy that he has put more money in their bank accounts? (And I assume that must be true for at least a few UK voters.)
(For the record: I have long argued that we should judge democratic leaders more by how good they are at listening, than how good they are at talking.
The former is, granted, much harder to judge.)
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4070483-thomas-alito-futures-raise-stakes-for-2024-election/
Lawmakers are looking ahead to the 2024 election as a pivotal opportunity to shape the future of the Supreme Court because of the possibility that conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, 75, and Samuel Alito, 73, could retire.
Democrats are worried that if Biden loses and the GOP wins the Senate majority, it could allow a GOP president to replace both men with younger conservatives who could rule far into the future...
Yes, there are situations where there are exceptions to rules, so you need to look at the context of the situation to determine if its an exception or not. But if it is not, then the rule stands.
If I decide red cars are better than blue cars then that is a neutral, personal judgment.
If I decide to vandalise red blue cars because I prefer red cars, then that is bad, because the action is bad and my "cause" does not justify that action as an exception.
If there is no exception, the rule stands. That is how morals operate, and its how the law operates too.
Its also part of the reason in the law we have juries and the reasonable person test. To underpin that.
But the existence of exceptions doesn't prevent the existence of rules, it just means that exceptions to the rules do exist too.
Rules based morality came about, in part, because philosophers argued that "x= always bad" and therefore "you should never do x". That is, what we call, a rule.
If you are arguing that "x = always bad" is incorrect, or that it is correct but "you can sometimes do x", you do not have a rules based morality. You have a relativist morality.
That's what those terms mean.
You are acting as if pure relativism, without rules, is appropriate. That is equally as nonsensical as operating "always" in accordance with a rule.
To say "x = bad" therefore "don't do x" does not allow exceptions.
If you say "x = sometimes bad" you have to define when "x = sometimes good" - that is relativism. If you say "x = bad 99% of the time" you still have to define and parse when "x = good" that 1% of the time - that involves relativism. That is not rule based.
To go back to what prompted this argument, if we say "violence = bad" the always is implicit in that rule. Therefore "don't do violence". But, we know, that the statement "sometime violence = good" is true. Therefore "violence = bad" cannot be true. Therefore the rule "don't do violence" cannot be a rule. Therefore we need to define why and when "violence = sometimes bad" and why and when "violence = sometimes good" and that is the foundation of moral relativism. That is not rule morality.
Violence is always bad. However, there are circumstances in which it can be morally justified.
I have been trialling revolut and Monzo abroad. Monzo is miles better and fscs protected. Must now run down the £200 left with revolut.
To quote the man directly.
"In Starship Troopers, it is stated flatly and more than once that nineteen out of twenty veterans are not military veterans. Instead, 95% of voters are what we call today 'former members of federal civil service.'"