World's unluckiest burglars' arrested after calling police by accident: Staffordshire police arrest two men on suspicion of burglary after one sits on phone and dials 999
Did they subsequently stand on some micro machines and fall down the stairs, before being hit on the head by a paint can on a rope released by a small boy?
There is a funny discussion in the TV series Ted Lasso about why 999, instead of 911, is a silly idea, based around the idea that 999, being a single digit repeated, is easier to dial by accident.
Even worse downunder the emergency number is 000 - which led to a problem in the 1990s when thousands of vending machines etc following a power cut started dialling the emergency services. If the machines lost the number they were supposed to dial to say they're running low of stock the number was getting reset to a string of 0's - which then led to them calling the emergency services line instead.
I wonder what Plato would be posting if she was still with us?
I think she would have followed James Delingpole into bonkerslands.
I know James. I believe he still makes a very decent living (and is a likeable guy, believe it or not).
The trouble is, once you are alienated from the major social media platforms, or even expelled, the economic pressure is then to become even MORE extreme, to make every single column the ultimate clickbait, so you generate traffic for your newspaper/online media/podcast, who then make you higher profile,so you get even more clicks, and so on
The internet literally incentivises insane and extreme opinions. This is true of Left or Right. That is why it is so corrosive of western liberal democracy as we know it.
Trump was made by Twitter
Twitter just has a higher percentage of extreme opinions on it as normal people do not have the time or interest to spend hours posting political views on twitter.
Hence why Trump lost last year and Corbyn was trounced in 2019 despite their large number of supporters on Twitter.
Biden apparently effectively imposed a social media ban on his team and just focused on middle income, middle aged swing voters in the swing states and was rewarded with winning the election.
Cameron famously said 'too many tweets makes a twat' in 2015 but still won an overall majority anyway
I wonder what Plato would be posting if she was still with us?
I fear she would have flown over to join the stop the steal protest....
Yup, I remember some of the tweets she posted that led to her ban from PB were similar to the ones posted by Ashli Babbit.
Airforce vet Trump rioter, 35, who was shot dead by cops while storming Capitol had charges of reckless endangerment, malicious destruction of property and tampering with a car on her rap sheet
Well she was climbing through a window into the Congress chamber at the time. I suspect the copper shot her for that, rather than Google her history.
Obviously, though one might argue a simple arrest might have been more appropriate.
Probably not. When you're defending democracy against an insurrection, and you're surrounded and outnumbered, stopping to ensure the safety of the attacker might mean death for you and the institutions you're trying to defend.
This isn't five cops arresting a lone person in the street, it's stopping a mob swarming down corridors at you.
LOL an insurrection or a coup require planning I think you overestimate the Donalds organisational abilities.
As for policing the UK police regularly watch central London get trashed nd recently Bristol. They just pick up the suspects later at home when theyre not in a mob and charge them. Nobody dead.
World's unluckiest burglars' arrested after calling police by accident: Staffordshire police arrest two men on suspicion of burglary after one sits on phone and dials 999
Did they subsequently stand on some micro machines and fall down the stairs, before being hit on the head by a paint can on a rope released by a small boy?
There is a funny discussion in the TV series Ted Lasso about why 999, instead of 911, is a silly idea, based around the idea that 999, being a single digit repeated, is easier to dial by accident.
That...actually does make some sense.
999 always seemed dumb back in the day when you had to stick your finger in a dial and turn it to the maximum then watch it rotate slowly back to the starting position, then repeat three times. While your heart is packing up. Given what old phones were like, 911, or even 111, would be better.
Seems like it was driven by the mechanical design of the phone, to enable free calls for numbers starting with either 0 or 9.
World's unluckiest burglars' arrested after calling police by accident: Staffordshire police arrest two men on suspicion of burglary after one sits on phone and dials 999
Did they subsequently stand on some micro machines and fall down the stairs, before being hit on the head by a paint can on a rope released by a small boy?
There is a funny discussion in the TV series Ted Lasso about why 999, instead of 911, is a silly idea, based around the idea that 999, being a single digit repeated, is easier to dial by accident.
That...actually does make some sense.
999 always seemed dumb back in the day when you had to stick your finger in a dial and turn it to the maximum then watch it rotate slowly back to the starting position, then repeat three times. While your heart is packing up. Given what old phones were like, 911, or even 111, would be better.
If you were Trump and the Family, you have to now be finalising your thinking about where to go once you leave office.
As the chance of arrest is increasing from a number of fronts, perhaps the speculated flounce to Turnberry is a sane option. If the Americans want him back they'd have to secure his extradition - would they push it that far and would a UK court grant it?
Why would any sane UK government permit Trumpsky to enter the country? He incited a mob to attack democracy, with the result that four people are dead. Thus ample grounds to deny him entry as a dangerous, racist, violent, anti-democratic (small d) extremist.
As a private citizen? Sure. But as President of the United States?
With one day left. To "play golf". During COVID.
Talk to Biden, talk to the ambassador, square it as best you can but, sure, deny him entry.
It would make for the most marvellous scandallous stand-off. The UK refusing entry to the President of the United States. Who is citing diplomatic immunity to flee the likely charges that face him the following day...
If you were Trump and the Family, you have to now be finalising your thinking about where to go once you leave office.
As the chance of arrest is increasing from a number of fronts, perhaps the speculated flounce to Turnberry is a sane option. If the Americans want him back they'd have to secure his extradition - would they push it that far and would a UK court grant it?
Why would any sane UK government permit Trumpsky to enter the country? He incited a mob to attack democracy, with the result that four people are dead. Thus ample grounds to deny him entry as a dangerous, racist, violent, anti-democratic (small d) extremist.
You mean hes a normal American. We let millions of them come over here why discriminate ?
A crypto product that lets you trade "Fan Tokens", which gives you voting rights in fan polls over decisions at real professional sports clubs.....over important decisions like the the team bus design. And well known clubs have signed up to this nonsense.
While I condemn utterly the storming of the capitol in no uncertain terms I can't help thinking a lot here are wiffling when they huff and puff about it interrupting legal things.
All revolutions by their nature are illegal. Even the one that toppled Ceacescau and I think most would be applauding that one.
We condemn the capitol because we see it as democracy under threat ad that is currently how we govern ourselves therefore we see it as good. We applaud Ceacescu because it was a dictatorship and we see it as bad because thats not how we do things.
I do wonder though whether we are at the nether end of the representative democratic age, societies seem to polarised now and whoever is elected about half the country feels unrepresented. Look at america with republicans and democrats, brexit with remainers and leavers, the Johnson government where people claiming 53% of people voted against it. Macron and LePen though being french they seem to be more of the mind they don't really care who gets voted in as long as they don't try and implement any of the manifesto they got voted in for.
Is that to say democracy is dead? No but I think representative democracy is perhaps on life support in many places
Democracy needs renewal in a participatory direction, probably a radically participatory one. Its flaws at the moment, in countries like the US and Britain, aren't just social and economic, but representational too.
Its flaws are that representative democracy is no longer fit for purpose it is a system based on the fact travel took weeks. I have never voted for a party that got into government where I didn't despise at least 40% of what they did yet they claim my support for that 40%.
I agree with all of that except for climate change.
Covid has shown us both that we need to take scientific emergencies seriously and that it is possible to tackle them when we put our minds to it. It has also led to a decades of advances in remote communications etc in one year as an alternative to travel for the same thing.
Covid has made it easier and more credible to tackle climate change.
I've come out of this ever more convinced there's little or nothing human ingenuity cannot resolve if it puts its mind to it. We have created a number of vaccines in barely a year and while it's too late for far too many, the hope for the majority for the future is there.
Applying innovation and ingenuity (and supporting it wherever possible) offers far and away the best prospect of mitigating the impacts of climate change. It's preferable to eco-authoritarianism in so many ways.
Indeed, I'd go further and say it's quite likely that in resolving the issues of climate change, technology and innovation will come up with ways not only of promoting sustainability but improving the lives of millions if not billions.
Not sure about that. A can do, upbeat attitude is always admirable, but some problems are intractable. You can embark on a plan to demolish the Great Pyramid with a teaspoon in a "where there's a will there's a way" kind of spirit, but it won't get you anywhere.
Note also that global warming and indeed covid 19 are merely symptoms of extreme planet overload, and it's no good thinking fix those two things and it's sunlit uplands ahoy. There's all sorts of other stuff - soil depletion, resource depletion, plastic, waste disposal, sheer weight of numbers, new and improved viruses - queueing up to take their place.
If you were Trump and the Family, you have to now be finalising your thinking about where to go once you leave office.
As the chance of arrest is increasing from a number of fronts, perhaps the speculated flounce to Turnberry is a sane option. If the Americans want him back they'd have to secure his extradition - would they push it that far and would a UK court grant it?
Why would any sane UK government permit Trumpsky to enter the country? He incited a mob to attack democracy, with the result that four people are dead. Thus ample grounds to deny him entry as a dangerous, racist, violent, anti-democratic (small d) extremist.
You mean hes a normal American. We let millions of them come over here why discriminate ?
GO FUCK YOURSELF, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE.
And thanks for showing us your true stripes.
LOL, good to see a well reasoned argument
Ignore its just a random colonial trying to dictate our immigration policies
World's unluckiest burglars' arrested after calling police by accident: Staffordshire police arrest two men on suspicion of burglary after one sits on phone and dials 999
Did they subsequently stand on some micro machines and fall down the stairs, before being hit on the head by a paint can on a rope released by a small boy?
There is a funny discussion in the TV series Ted Lasso about why 999, instead of 911, is a silly idea, based around the idea that 999, being a single digit repeated, is easier to dial by accident.
That...actually does make some sense.
999 always seemed dumb back in the day when you had to stick your finger in a dial and turn it to the maximum then watch it rotate slowly back to the starting position, then repeat three times. While your heart is packing up. Given what old phones were like, 911, or even 111, would be better.
wasn't that deliberate - less chance of a misdial?
I wonder what Plato would be posting if she was still with us?
I fear she would have flown over to join the stop the steal protest....
Yup, I remember some of the tweets she posted that led to her ban from PB were similar to the ones posted by Ashli Babbit.
Airforce vet Trump rioter, 35, who was shot dead by cops while storming Capitol had charges of reckless endangerment, malicious destruction of property and tampering with a car on her rap sheet
I remember a couple of years ago I was YouTube looking at some trailers and after I watched one YouTube suggested some Sandy Hook was a hoax videos.
As a general rule, the algorithms on social media follow the Rod Crosby Law. Within a few links they are suggesting a little bit of Nazism was no bad thing.
I even get Nazis suggested on TikTok now...
Aren't you a bit old to be on TikTok?
I only went on it when Trump started trying to ban it. It is rather fun...
While I condemn utterly the storming of the capitol in no uncertain terms I can't help thinking a lot here are wiffling when they huff and puff about it interrupting legal things.
All revolutions by their nature are illegal. Even the one that toppled Ceacescau and I think most would be applauding that one.
Yes all revolutions are technically illegal, but that doesn't make it wiffling when people huff and puff about in interrupting legal things, as it is interrupting legal things in a seocity which is not an oppressive dictatorship. Some things can reasonably be left unsaid.
I think you are right to raise issues around whether representative democracy is in trouble, it is often noted that people on left and right quite like some aspects of strongman government for example, but I think your comment is a bit fatuous in implying that raising of outrage over the events of yesterday is somehow diminished because of the technical point that obviously most people are not, in theory, opposed to similar action against repressive regimes.
This wasn't commenting in theory, it was applicable to a particular event where it was perfectly relevant not to equivocate about theoretical scenarios.
If you were Trump and the Family, you have to now be finalising your thinking about where to go once you leave office.
As the chance of arrest is increasing from a number of fronts, perhaps the speculated flounce to Turnberry is a sane option. If the Americans want him back they'd have to secure his extradition - would they push it that far and would a UK court grant it?
Why would any sane UK government permit Trumpsky to enter the country? He incited a mob to attack democracy, with the result that four people are dead. Thus ample grounds to deny him entry as a dangerous, racist, violent, anti-democratic (small d) extremist.
You mean hes a normal American. We let millions of them come over here why discriminate ?
GO FUCK YOURSELF, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE.
And thanks for showing us your true stripes.
LOL, good to see a well reasoned argument
Sticky your fat head back up your fat ass.
You have the gall to call yourself "Alanbrooke" the real deal would regard you as a pathetic turd, after all HE was one of the people who helped create the Special Relationship.
Wheras you are one of the people who is working overtime to tear it down.
Anyone who would mock my country like you just did, especially after a day like yesterday is BENEATH MY CONTEMPT. Do NOT expect me to bandy words with such scum as you.
If you were Trump and the Family, you have to now be finalising your thinking about where to go once you leave office.
As the chance of arrest is increasing from a number of fronts, perhaps the speculated flounce to Turnberry is a sane option. If the Americans want him back they'd have to secure his extradition - would they push it that far and would a UK court grant it?
Why would any sane UK government permit Trumpsky to enter the country? He incited a mob to attack democracy, with the result that four people are dead. Thus ample grounds to deny him entry as a dangerous, racist, violent, anti-democratic (small d) extremist.
As a private citizen? Sure. But as President of the United States?
With one day left. To "play golf". During COVID.
Talk to Biden, talk to the ambassador, square it as best you can but, sure, deny him entry.
It would make for the most marvellous scandallous stand-off. The UK refusing entry to the President of the United States. Who is citing diplomatic immunity to flee the likely charges that face him the following day...
Plus the Scottish Gmt enforcing the covid laws - to make sure that Mr T does not set a disastrous example comparable to his Brexiter allies in Whitehall, especially those who need eye tests in Co. Durham.
While I condemn utterly the storming of the capitol in no uncertain terms I can't help thinking a lot here are wiffling when they huff and puff about it interrupting legal things.
All revolutions by their nature are illegal. Even the one that toppled Ceacescau and I think most would be applauding that one.
We condemn the capitol because we see it as democracy under threat ad that is currently how we govern ourselves therefore we see it as good. We applaud Ceacescu because it was a dictatorship and we see it as bad because thats not how we do things.
I do wonder though whether we are at the nether end of the representative democratic age, societies seem to polarised now and whoever is elected about half the country feels unrepresented. Look at america with republicans and democrats, brexit with remainers and leavers, the Johnson government where people claiming 53% of people voted against it. Macron and LePen though being french they seem to be more of the mind they don't really care who gets voted in as long as they don't try and implement any of the manifesto they got voted in for.
Is that to say democracy is dead? No but I think representative democracy is perhaps on life support in many places
Democracy needs renewal in a participatory direction, probably a radically participatory one. Its flaws at the moment, in countries like the US and Britain, aren't just social and economic, but representational too.
Its flaws are that representative democracy is no longer fit for purpose it is a system based on the fact travel took weeks. I have never voted for a party that got into government where I didn't despise at least 40% of what they did yet they claim my support for that 40%.
On that front, Britain and the US probably need some form of PR, for a start. There are many more challenges wider than that, though.
Brexiteers are "lucky". The destruction of Brexit is going to look trivial compared to Coronavirus. And by the time the major Brexit damage is done it will all be overshadowed by ongoing struggles with the virus.
Not really.
Covid and Brexit will kill different parts of the economy in different ways so it will always be possible to attribute
Nah, sorry. Covid is a global trauma on a par with a World War. That's how bad it is is (already) and it could get worse. Brexit is a painful but comparatively trivial rejigging of our trading arrangements. And it may, over time (and I think it will) allow us more freedom which might make us richer, or at least more contented.
BUT ANYHOW IT IS IRRELEVANT. No one gives a TINY fuck any more. So we can't get Brie. So some bankers are poorer. So London is dented. MILLIONS HAVE DIED.
I know you are obsessed with Brexit, but emotionally speaking it now, already, history. The virus is is so dreadful and so global - tangentially causing near civil war in America - everything else shrinks into the shadows.
Of course some nutters will continue to obsess. I accept this includes you
I predict another victim will be climate change. As an item on the vital agenda. It will remain very important but it will no longer feel like an emergency. Covid has shown us what a REAL emergency looks like
I agree with all of that except for climate change.
Covid has shown us both that we need to take scientific emergencies seriously and that it is possible to tackle them when we put our minds to it. It has also led to a decades of advances in remote communications etc in one year as an alternative to travel for the same thing.
Covid has made it easier and more credible to tackle climate change.
A fair analysis. But I disagree, I think mass poverty and global crisis (which will ensue from Covid) will make people deprioritize climate change, quite emphatically. Lip service will be paid, but less will be done. We will be dealing with this bug and its consequences for a decade.
On the upside (for those worried about climate change) I reckon global travel will be reduced for many years. Which is good the for the environment.
Yes, advanced economies in the West and Asia might reach herd immunity through vaccines in a year or two (God willing) but the rest of the world won't play catch-up til 2023 or 2024. Moreover, travel will now be saddled with covid tests and masking and the rest for a long time. And people will just be reluctant to go abroad.
Travel as we knew it is over for the foreseeable future. Emissions will be DOWN.
While I condemn utterly the storming of the capitol in no uncertain terms I can't help thinking a lot here are wiffling when they huff and puff about it interrupting legal things.
All revolutions by their nature are illegal. Even the one that toppled Ceacescau and I think most would be applauding that one.
We condemn the capitol because we see it as democracy under threat ad that is currently how we govern ourselves therefore we see it as good. We applaud Ceacescu because it was a dictatorship and we see it as bad because thats not how we do things.
I do wonder though whether we are at the nether end of the representative democratic age, societies seem to polarised now and whoever is elected about half the country feels unrepresented. Look at america with republicans and democrats, brexit with remainers and leavers, the Johnson government where people claiming 53% of people voted against it. Macron and LePen though being french they seem to be more of the mind they don't really care who gets voted in as long as they don't try and implement any of the manifesto they got voted in for.
Is that to say democracy is dead? No but I think representative democracy is perhaps on life support in many places
Democracy needs renewal in a participatory direction, probably a radically participatory one. It's worth defending and preserving, but its flaws at the moment, in countries like the US and Britain, aren't just social and economic, but representational too.
It doesn't have flaws, it is working as intended.
The Americans just got rid of Trump and the Brits avoided his left wing mirror image last year. Two wins for democracy.
Any alternative system a Trump gets into power and he stays in power. Trump is on his way out now thanks to democracy working as it is supposed to do so.
I agree with all of that except for climate change.
Covid has shown us both that we need to take scientific emergencies seriously and that it is possible to tackle them when we put our minds to it. It has also led to a decades of advances in remote communications etc in one year as an alternative to travel for the same thing.
Covid has made it easier and more credible to tackle climate change.
I've come out of this ever more convinced there's little or nothing human ingenuity cannot resolve if it puts its mind to it.
While I condemn utterly the storming of the capitol in no uncertain terms I can't help thinking a lot here are wiffling when they huff and puff about it interrupting legal things.
All revolutions by their nature are illegal. Even the one that toppled Ceacescau and I think most would be applauding that one.
If you were Trump and the Family, you have to now be finalising your thinking about where to go once you leave office.
As the chance of arrest is increasing from a number of fronts, perhaps the speculated flounce to Turnberry is a sane option. If the Americans want him back they'd have to secure his extradition - would they push it that far and would a UK court grant it?
Why would any sane UK government permit Trumpsky to enter the country? He incited a mob to attack democracy, with the result that four people are dead. Thus ample grounds to deny him entry as a dangerous, racist, violent, anti-democratic (small d) extremist.
As a private citizen? Sure. But as President of the United States?
With one day left. To "play golf". During COVID.
Talk to Biden, talk to the ambassador, square it as best you can but, sure, deny him entry.
It would make for the most marvellous scandallous stand-off. The UK refusing entry to the President of the United States. Who is citing diplomatic immunity to flee the likely charges that face him the following day...
Indeed, a bit like series 6 of House of Cards where it has all gotten so bizarre you cant watch it any further.
Interesting thread from Peter Foster of the FT. An increasing list of businesses and business sectors that simply don't work under the new arrangements. Having spent yonks pointing to the reality of how things work vs government rhetoric they had assumed that some common sense would now be applied.
so now were not all eating grass the, world hasnt fallen apart and we're not at war with Europe the FT have decided to keep sulking and print yet more bollocks
ignore
You will want to ignore it. But it is a cogent analysis backed up by actual quotations from firms.
Oh FFS the BBC were running a headline on European firms refusing to supply the UK post Brexit. It was bike shop in Holland. The FT are still sulking and feeding their jusquaboutiste readership some click bait.
If there are interruptions markets fix themselves, supply chains change every day and the world moves on.
And companies go bust and markets are lost and economies are trashed to keep people like you happy.
If you were Trump and the Family, you have to now be finalising your thinking about where to go once you leave office.
As the chance of arrest is increasing from a number of fronts, perhaps the speculated flounce to Turnberry is a sane option. If the Americans want him back they'd have to secure his extradition - would they push it that far and would a UK court grant it?
Why would any sane UK government permit Trumpsky to enter the country? He incited a mob to attack democracy, with the result that four people are dead. Thus ample grounds to deny him entry as a dangerous, racist, violent, anti-democratic (small d) extremist.
You mean hes a normal American. We let millions of them come over here why discriminate ?
GO FUCK YOURSELF, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE.
And thanks for showing us your true stripes.
LOL, good to see a well reasoned argument
Sticky your fat head back up your fat ass.
You have the gall to call yourself "Alanbrooke" the real deal would regard you as a pathetic turd, after all HE was one of the people who helped create the Special Relationship.
Wheras you are one of the people who is working overtime to tear it down.
Anyone who would mock my country like you just did, especially after a day like yesterday is BENEATH MY CONTEMPT. Do NOT expect me to bandy words with such scum as you.
"Do NOT expect me to bandy words with such scum as you."
I wonder what Plato would be posting if she was still with us?
I think she would have followed James Delingpole into bonkerslands.
I know James. I believe he still makes a very decent living (and is a likeable guy, believe it or not).
The trouble is, once you are alienated from the major social media platforms, or even expelled, the economic pressure is then to become even MORE extreme, to make every single column the ultimate clickbait, so you generate traffic for your newspaper/online media/podcast, who then make you higher profile,so you get even more clicks, and so on
The internet literally incentivises insane and extreme opinions. This is true of Left or Right. That is why it is so corrosive of western liberal democracy as we know it.
Trump was made by Twitter
Twitter just has a higher percentage of extreme opinions on it as normal people do not have the time or interest to spend hours posting political views on twitter.
Hence why Trump lost last year and Corbyn was trounced in 2019 despite their large number of supporters on Twitter.
Biden apparently effectively imposed a social media ban on his team and just focused on middle income, middle aged swing voters in the swing states and was rewarded with winning the election.
Cameron famously said 'too many tweets makes a twat' in 2015 but still won an overall majority anyway
The YouGov poll you posted earlier is dodgy for a related reason. YouGov itself monitors the amount of time people take to respond to surveys, and has said that it knows that people who respond quickly - who comprise a lot of Internet warriors and others with relatively empty lives - tend toward more firmly held and extreme opinions than those who are busy with jobs and children and chores and tend not to get round to doing their YouGov survey for a day or two. So a poll rushed out during last night’s carry on is almost certain to overweight nutjobs of all flavours.
I wonder what Plato would be posting if she was still with us?
I fear she would have flown over to join the stop the steal protest....
Yup, I remember some of the tweets she posted that led to her ban from PB were similar to the ones posted by Ashli Babbit.
Airforce vet Trump rioter, 35, who was shot dead by cops while storming Capitol had charges of reckless endangerment, malicious destruction of property and tampering with a car on her rap sheet
Well she was climbing through a window into the Congress chamber at the time. I suspect the copper shot her for that, rather than Google her history.
Obviously, though one might argue a simple arrest might have been more appropriate.
Probably not. When you're defending democracy against an insurrection, and you're surrounded and outnumbered, stopping to ensure the safety of the attacker might mean death for you and the institutions you're trying to defend.
This isn't five cops arresting a lone person in the street, it's stopping a mob swarming down corridors at you.
LOL an insurrection or a coup require planning I think you overestimate the Donalds organisational abilities.
As for policing the UK police regularly watch central London get trashed nd recently Bristol. They just pick up the suspects later at home when theyre not in a mob and charge them. Nobody dead.
Folks, we are witnessing a new dawn in the theory and practise of protecting democracy from terrorist insurrections: "just pick up the suspects later at home when theyre not in a mob"
When you come to think of it that way, you needed have police protecting our parliaments at all. Think of the cost savings. Genius-level contribution, thank you for opening my eyes.
I agree with all of that except for climate change.
Covid has shown us both that we need to take scientific emergencies seriously and that it is possible to tackle them when we put our minds to it. It has also led to a decades of advances in remote communications etc in one year as an alternative to travel for the same thing.
Covid has made it easier and more credible to tackle climate change.
I've come out of this ever more convinced there's little or nothing human ingenuity cannot resolve if it puts its mind to it. We have created a number of vaccines in barely a year and while it's too late for far too many, the hope for the majority for the future is there.
Applying innovation and ingenuity (and supporting it wherever possible) offers far and away the best prospect of mitigating the impacts of climate change. It's preferable to eco-authoritarianism in so many ways.
Indeed, I'd go further and say it's quite likely that in resolving the issues of climate change, technology and innovation will come up with ways not only of promoting sustainability but improving the lives of millions if not billions.
100% agreed.
The solution to climate change is not and never has been eco-authoritarianism. It is science and technology.
"It was ever thus" I fear. Clearly from OGH's previous thread, the Brits can be taken in by confident shysters. And here's an example from old Rome of serious aggro over small minded tribalism. Mankind is a dangerous species with a touch of genius. There are probably thousands of others.
An update to the reported case graphs, with London as special guest, because that's where we'll first see whether the lockdown is enough to contain the new strain.
Looking hopeful, but as @Malmesbury points out, the flattening off could turn out to be a mirage due to delayed testing after Christmas, which caused a drop before exaggerated growth.
I'm not that convinced by the argument that the flattening off is a mirage resulting from comparisons with a delayed post Christmas surge.
Looking at the 7 day UK average, today is 7th Jan so today's published cases (52k) are replacing those of 31st December (55k). The surge from a post Christmas low on 27th Dec (30k) is very apparent up to 29th Dec (53k) but after that daily increases have been quite small. So I'm inclined to think that 31st Dec is past the point where figures have been artificially inflated by Christmas testing or reporting delays.
Regardless, today has seen the first fall for a month in what was until then a rapidly rising 7 day case average. It might be a mirage, or a blip, but taken with the modest daily increases in 2021 so far I'm more inclined to the view that it's indicative of at least a general slowing of the increase in case numbers.
The big spike in cases by specimen date was the 29th though, which would have been reported up to 1 Jan or so, hence I think the comparison with inflated values is still a concern for another day or two.
I wonder what Plato would be posting if she was still with us?
I think she would have followed James Delingpole into bonkerslands.
I know James. I believe he still makes a very decent living (and is a likeable guy, believe it or not).
The trouble is, once you are alienated from the major social media platforms, or even expelled, the economic pressure is then to become even MORE extreme, to make every single column the ultimate clickbait, so you generate traffic for your newspaper/online media/podcast, who then make you higher profile,so you get even more clicks, and so on
The internet literally incentivises insane and extreme opinions. This is true of Left or Right. That is why it is so corrosive of western liberal democracy as we know it.
Trump was made by Twitter
Does that also explain Toby Young who a previous poster knew and thought was a likeable guy?
What happened to writing well and interestingly as an incentive?
If you were Trump and the Family, you have to now be finalising your thinking about where to go once you leave office.
As the chance of arrest is increasing from a number of fronts, perhaps the speculated flounce to Turnberry is a sane option. If the Americans want him back they'd have to secure his extradition - would they push it that far and would a UK court grant it?
Why would any sane UK government permit Trumpsky to enter the country? He incited a mob to attack democracy, with the result that four people are dead. Thus ample grounds to deny him entry as a dangerous, racist, violent, anti-democratic (small d) extremist.
You mean hes a normal American. We let millions of them come over here why discriminate ?
GO FUCK YOURSELF, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE.
And thanks for showing us your true stripes.
LOL, good to see a well reasoned argument
Sticky your fat head back up your fat ass.
You have the gall to call yourself "Alanbrooke" the real deal would regard you as a pathetic turd, after all HE was one of the people who helped create the Special Relationship.
Wheras you are one of the people who is working overtime to tear it down.
Anyone who would mock my country like you just did, especially after a day like yesterday is BENEATH MY CONTEMPT. Do NOT expect me to bandy words with such scum as you.
"Do NOT expect me to bandy words with such scum as you."
ROFL, it appears you are.
Am calling you out. Different thing, Anti-Alanbrooke. You've outed yourself as a first-class no-goodnik. And a Putinist in your foul heart.
I wonder what Plato would be posting if she was still with us?
I think she would have followed James Delingpole into bonkerslands.
I know James. I believe he still makes a very decent living (and is a likeable guy, believe it or not).
The trouble is, once you are alienated from the major social media platforms, or even expelled, the economic pressure is then to become even MORE extreme, to make every single column the ultimate clickbait, so you generate traffic for your newspaper/online media/podcast, who then make you higher profile,so you get even more clicks, and so on
The internet literally incentivises insane and extreme opinions. This is true of Left or Right. That is why it is so corrosive of western liberal democracy as we know it.
Trump was made by Twitter
Twitter just has a higher percentage of extreme opinions on it as normal people do not have the time or interest to spend hours posting political views on twitter.
Hence why Trump lost last year and Corbyn was trounced in 2019 despite their large number of supporters on Twitter.
Biden apparently effectively imposed a social media ban on his team and just focused on middle income, middle aged swing voters in the swing states and was rewarded with winning the election.
Cameron famously said 'too many tweets makes a twat' in 2015 but still won an overall majority anyway
The YouGov poll you posted earlier is dodgy for a related reason. YouGov itself monitors the amount of time people take to respond to surveys, and has said that it knows that people who respond quickly - who comprise a lot of Internet warriors and others with relatively empty lives - tend toward more firmly held and extreme opinions than those who are busy with jobs and children and chores and tend not to get round to doing their YouGov survey for a day or two. So a poll rushed out during last night’s carry on is almost certain to overweight nutjobs of all flavours.
Though Yougov normally weighs its sample quite well and given 46.9% of US voters still voted for Trump even last year I don't think they are too big a stretch
While I condemn utterly the storming of the capitol in no uncertain terms I can't help thinking a lot here are wiffling when they huff and puff about it interrupting legal things.
All revolutions by their nature are illegal. Even the one that toppled Ceacescau and I think most would be applauding that one.
Yes all revolutions are technically illegal, but that doesn't make it wiffling when people huff and puff about in interrupting legal things, as it is interrupting legal things in a seocity which is not an oppressive dictatorship. Some things can reasonably be left unsaid.
I think you are right to raise issues around whether representative democracy is in trouble, it is often noted that people on left and right quite like some aspects of strongman government for example, but I think your comment is a bit fatuous in implying that raising of outrage over the events of yesterday is somehow diminished because of the technical point that obviously most people are not, in theory, opposed to similar action against repressive regimes.
This wasn't commenting in theory, it was applicable to a particular event where it was perfectly relevant not to equivocate about theoretical scenarios.
I remain of the view that America is not a democracy in anything but name
Its police behave like an organised crime syndicate, cf civil forfeiture, qualified immunity, etc
Its firms buy politicians to pass laws that are little more than protection rackets cf companies like comcast getting laws passed to stop communities creating their own internet infrastructure as example and the regulatory capture of such federal bodies as the fcc
The gerrymandering and voter exclusion that has gone on.
Sorry America is an oligarchy and has been for years not a democracy anymore than russia is. Allowing people to vote does not make you a democracy when whichever side gets in continues with the corrupt practices
While I condemn utterly the storming of the capitol in no uncertain terms I can't help thinking a lot here are wiffling when they huff and puff about it interrupting legal things.
All revolutions by their nature are illegal. Even the one that toppled Ceacescau and I think most would be applauding that one.
We condemn the capitol because we see it as democracy under threat ad that is currently how we govern ourselves therefore we see it as good. We applaud Ceacescu because it was a dictatorship and we see it as bad because thats not how we do things.
I do wonder though whether we are at the nether end of the representative democratic age, societies seem to polarised now and whoever is elected about half the country feels unrepresented. Look at america with republicans and democrats, brexit with remainers and leavers, the Johnson government where people claiming 53% of people voted against it. Macron and LePen though being french they seem to be more of the mind they don't really care who gets voted in as long as they don't try and implement any of the manifesto they got voted in for.
Is that to say democracy is dead? No but I think representative democracy is perhaps on life support in many places
Democracy needs renewal in a participatory direction, probably a radically participatory one. It's worth defending and preserving, but its flaws at the moment, in countries like the US and Britain, aren't just social and economic, but representational too.
It doesn't have flaws, it is working as intended.
The Americans just got rid of Trump and the Brits avoided his left wing mirror image last year. Two wins for democracy.
Any alternative system a Trump gets into power and he stays in power. Trump is on his way out now thanks to democracy working as it is supposed to do so.
As discussed last week, vast buy-in to conspiracy theories - even today 35-40% of Americans still apparently believe the election was in some way stolen - and the entirety of the Trump phenomenon itself suggest very significant democratic trouble.
I have this crazy idea....why not just stop all travel, but for the absolute essential reasons (and that doesn't include making content for your Instagram account).
While I condemn utterly the storming of the capitol in no uncertain terms I can't help thinking a lot here are wiffling when they huff and puff about it interrupting legal things.
All revolutions by their nature are illegal. Even the one that toppled Ceacescau and I think most would be applauding that one.
We condemn the capitol because we see it as democracy under threat ad that is currently how we govern ourselves therefore we see it as good. We applaud Ceacescu because it was a dictatorship and we see it as bad because thats not how we do things.
I do wonder though whether we are at the nether end of the representative democratic age, societies seem to polarised now and whoever is elected about half the country feels unrepresented. Look at america with republicans and democrats, brexit with remainers and leavers, the Johnson government where people claiming 53% of people voted against it. Macron and LePen though being french they seem to be more of the mind they don't really care who gets voted in as long as they don't try and implement any of the manifesto they got voted in for.
Is that to say democracy is dead? No but I think representative democracy is perhaps on life support in many places
Democracy needs renewal in a participatory direction, probably a radically participatory one. Its flaws at the moment, in countries like the US and Britain, aren't just social and economic, but representational too.
Its flaws are that representative democracy is no longer fit for purpose it is a system based on the fact travel took weeks. I have never voted for a party that got into government where I didn't despise at least 40% of what they did yet they claim my support for that 40%.
On that front, Britain and the US probably need some form of PR, for a start. There are many more challenges wider than that, though.
No we absolutely don't want PR. If we had PR I will never vote again as that just hands politicians even more power. They get our vote then get to decide after that what we voted for.
Remove politicians from governance and go with a more swiss model
If you were Trump and the Family, you have to now be finalising your thinking about where to go once you leave office.
As the chance of arrest is increasing from a number of fronts, perhaps the speculated flounce to Turnberry is a sane option. If the Americans want him back they'd have to secure his extradition - would they push it that far and would a UK court grant it?
Why would any sane UK government permit Trumpsky to enter the country? He incited a mob to attack democracy, with the result that four people are dead. Thus ample grounds to deny him entry as a dangerous, racist, violent, anti-democratic (small d) extremist.
As a private citizen? Sure. But as President of the United States?
With one day left. To "play golf". During COVID.
Talk to Biden, talk to the ambassador, square it as best you can but, sure, deny him entry.
It would make for the most marvellous scandallous stand-off. The UK refusing entry to the President of the United States. Who is citing diplomatic immunity to flee the likely charges that face him the following day...
Indeed, a bit like series 6 of House of Cards where it has all gotten so bizarre you cant watch it any further.
I only got round to watching the US one during first lockdown, as I didn’t have much faith in a US remake and didn’t want to spoil the original. But the first season was impressively well made and worked through the broad plot of the UK version with lots of US side plots that were interesting, despite stretching the UK’s four episodes into thirteen (and with the guy only winning his first promotion right at the end of first season).
Season two began equally strongly but by the end was, I thought, starting to lose its way. By the second half I was beginning to tire of it, and I think I made it through season three before losing interest altogether. You did very well to get through to the sixth.
I wonder what Plato would be posting if she was still with us?
I fear she would have flown over to join the stop the steal protest....
Yup, I remember some of the tweets she posted that led to her ban from PB were similar to the ones posted by Ashli Babbit.
Airforce vet Trump rioter, 35, who was shot dead by cops while storming Capitol had charges of reckless endangerment, malicious destruction of property and tampering with a car on her rap sheet
Where did I say that, or even imply it. TSE mentioned the lady who was shot and I posted a link that shows unfortunately she has a very troubled past since coming out of the military.
We were talking about Plato heading down a very scary path from sensible poster (who won POTY) to somebody who by the end was flooding the forum with links to crazy conspiracy stuff.
The former air force officer died because she was shot but surely the other three deaths from other causes is suspiciously high in a crowd of just a couple of hundred people.
I thought at least one was falling off something they were climbing?
If you were Trump and the Family, you have to now be finalising your thinking about where to go once you leave office.
As the chance of arrest is increasing from a number of fronts, perhaps the speculated flounce to Turnberry is a sane option. If the Americans want him back they'd have to secure his extradition - would they push it that far and would a UK court grant it?
Why would any sane UK government permit Trumpsky to enter the country? He incited a mob to attack democracy, with the result that four people are dead. Thus ample grounds to deny him entry as a dangerous, racist, violent, anti-democratic (small d) extremist.
You mean hes a normal American. We let millions of them come over here why discriminate ?
GO FUCK YOURSELF, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE.
And thanks for showing us your true stripes.
LOL, good to see a well reasoned argument
Sticky your fat head back up your fat ass.
You have the gall to call yourself "Alanbrooke" the real deal would regard you as a pathetic turd, after all HE was one of the people who helped create the Special Relationship.
Wheras you are one of the people who is working overtime to tear it down.
Anyone who would mock my country like you just did, especially after a day like yesterday is BENEATH MY CONTEMPT. Do NOT expect me to bandy words with such scum as you.
"Do NOT expect me to bandy words with such scum as you."
ROFL, it appears you are.
Am calling you out. Different thing, Anti-Alanbrooke. You've outed yourself as a first-class no-goodnik. And a Putinist in your foul heart.
I don’t think it’s new news that Alanbrooke’s schtick is to flirt with alt-right trolling on here. I would not let him twist your knickers, SeaShanty.
I wonder what Plato would be posting if she was still with us?
I think she would have followed James Delingpole into bonkerslands.
I know James. I believe he still makes a very decent living (and is a likeable guy, believe it or not).
The trouble is, once you are alienated from the major social media platforms, or even expelled, the economic pressure is then to become even MORE extreme, to make every single column the ultimate clickbait, so you generate traffic for your newspaper/online media/podcast, who then make you higher profile,so you get even more clicks, and so on
The internet literally incentivises insane and extreme opinions. This is true of Left or Right. That is why it is so corrosive of western liberal democracy as we know it.
Trump was made by Twitter
Does that also explain Toby Young who a previous poster knew and thought was a likeable guy?
What happened to writing well and interestingly as an incentive?
I am but a humble sex toy flint knapper, at present chipping away at a bespoke Suffolk-artisanal clit-stimulator for a well known Love Island star. I know nothing of these things,
On the upside, I can say one of my bespoke flint dildos made $35k the other day, which has cheered me up no end. A year's salary in an hour. Nice. I wish such good luck on all my fellow PB-ers
Whoa. Did Boris Johnson actually just condemn Donald Trump for subverting democracy?
He did. Shocked he was so candid, but it was needed.
I think he broke my jaw. There was a sharp pain as it hit the floor.
You’re right he needed to, but I never thought he’d do it.
Trump is a nobody now. A dangerous nobody, but a nobody. I think he knows perfectly well how people only respected him because he was the President, but will still be shocked when people start condemning him. People who disliked him still having to kiss his arse seems like the primary perk of the job for a man like him.
Dangerously naive. The polling above seems like the perfect recipe for a civil war, to me. Many MILLIONS of Americans - generally white, highly armed - agree with the attempted storming of the Capitol
Millions of Brits supported the riots that led to the defacing of the Cenotaph.
Civil wars usually require (a) an actual attack on the rights of a minority of the populations, and (b) a charismatic an organised leader.
I don't think we're there yet in the US, although that might change.
One of the biggest challenges the West has over the next 50 years IMHO is moving peacefully to societies where Whites are no longer the majority.
Professor Eric Kaufman has written convincingly about this in his book Whiteshift.
Basically, right now many Whites feel threatened by that - and we're in a transition period where we have a large minority of minorities but still a clear white majority - but with little mixing.
We will get to a majority mixed race population by 2100, with whites at c.10-15% only of the population, and the key there is for that population to successfully inherit the cultural and political traditions of the national story *notwithstanding* its racial heritage.
This is a very delicate subject but it's one we don't talk enough about.
The key is to decouple political and cultural identity from race, so national unity can be maintained throughout any change in racial composition, together with clear racial equality so all feel secure and reassured at all times.
Want to know why I get so frustrated by Woke?
It's because I fear some fanatics are trying to reintroduce aspects of racialisation into our politics and culture when we should be trying to eliminate it.
I agree in principle. But in practice, it would help to eliminate "racialisation" in our politics and culture if we could firstly eliminate, or at least reduce further, economic, health, and many other inequalities between people of different ethnic backgrounds that persist in Western Europe and the USA (and elsewhere as well, of course). If you remove the cause of grievance, you remove the grievance.
If you were Trump and the Family, you have to now be finalising your thinking about where to go once you leave office.
As the chance of arrest is increasing from a number of fronts, perhaps the speculated flounce to Turnberry is a sane option. If the Americans want him back they'd have to secure his extradition - would they push it that far and would a UK court grant it?
Why would any sane UK government permit Trumpsky to enter the country? He incited a mob to attack democracy, with the result that four people are dead. Thus ample grounds to deny him entry as a dangerous, racist, violent, anti-democratic (small d) extremist.
You mean hes a normal American. We let millions of them come over here why discriminate ?
GO FUCK YOURSELF, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE.
And thanks for showing us your true stripes.
LOL, good to see a well reasoned argument
Sticky your fat head back up your fat ass.
You have the gall to call yourself "Alanbrooke" the real deal would regard you as a pathetic turd, after all HE was one of the people who helped create the Special Relationship.
Wheras you are one of the people who is working overtime to tear it down.
Anyone who would mock my country like you just did, especially after a day like yesterday is BENEATH MY CONTEMPT. Do NOT expect me to bandy words with such scum as you.
"Do NOT expect me to bandy words with such scum as you."
ROFL, it appears you are.
Am calling you out. Different thing, Anti-Alanbrooke. You've outed yourself as a first-class no-goodnik. And a Putinist in your foul heart.
While I condemn utterly the storming of the capitol in no uncertain terms I can't help thinking a lot here are wiffling when they huff and puff about it interrupting legal things.
All revolutions by their nature are illegal. Even the one that toppled Ceacescau and I think most would be applauding that one.
We condemn the capitol because we see it as democracy under threat ad that is currently how we govern ourselves therefore we see it as good. We applaud Ceacescu because it was a dictatorship and we see it as bad because thats not how we do things.
I do wonder though whether we are at the nether end of the representative democratic age, societies seem to polarised now and whoever is elected about half the country feels unrepresented. Look at america with republicans and democrats, brexit with remainers and leavers, the Johnson government where people claiming 53% of people voted against it. Macron and LePen though being french they seem to be more of the mind they don't really care who gets voted in as long as they don't try and implement any of the manifesto they got voted in for.
Is that to say democracy is dead? No but I think representative democracy is perhaps on life support in many places
Democracy needs renewal in a participatory direction, probably a radically participatory one. Its flaws at the moment, in countries like the US and Britain, aren't just social and economic, but representational too.
Its flaws are that representative democracy is no longer fit for purpose it is a system based on the fact travel took weeks. I have never voted for a party that got into government where I didn't despise at least 40% of what they did yet they claim my support for that 40%.
On that front, Britain and the US probably need some form of PR, for a start. There are many more challenges wider than that, though.
No we absolutely don't want PR. If we had PR I will never vote again as that just hands politicians even more power. They get our vote then get to decide after that what we voted for.
Remove politicians from governance and go with a more swiss model
While I condemn utterly the storming of the capitol in no uncertain terms I can't help thinking a lot here are wiffling when they huff and puff about it interrupting legal things.
All revolutions by their nature are illegal. Even the one that toppled Ceacescau and I think most would be applauding that one.
Only from the PB Trumptons.
Only on PB.
I have never posted anything pro trump I despise the guy and how you equate "I condemn utterly the storming of the capitol in no uncertain terms" and not saying anything positive in the least about it as being pro trump just reminds me of what a lefty idiot you are
While I condemn utterly the storming of the capitol in no uncertain terms I can't help thinking a lot here are wiffling when they huff and puff about it interrupting legal things.
All revolutions by their nature are illegal. Even the one that toppled Ceacescau and I think most would be applauding that one.
We condemn the capitol because we see it as democracy under threat ad that is currently how we govern ourselves therefore we see it as good. We applaud Ceacescu because it was a dictatorship and we see it as bad because thats not how we do things.
I do wonder though whether we are at the nether end of the representative democratic age, societies seem to polarised now and whoever is elected about half the country feels unrepresented. Look at america with republicans and democrats, brexit with remainers and leavers, the Johnson government where people claiming 53% of people voted against it. Macron and LePen though being french they seem to be more of the mind they don't really care who gets voted in as long as they don't try and implement any of the manifesto they got voted in for.
Is that to say democracy is dead? No but I think representative democracy is perhaps on life support in many places
Democracy needs renewal in a participatory direction, probably a radically participatory one. It's worth defending and preserving, but its flaws at the moment, in countries like the US and Britain, aren't just social and economic, but representational too.
It doesn't have flaws, it is working as intended.
The Americans just got rid of Trump and the Brits avoided his left wing mirror image last year. Two wins for democracy.
Any alternative system a Trump gets into power and he stays in power. Trump is on his way out now thanks to democracy working as it is supposed to do so.
As discussed last week, vast buy-in to conspiracy theories - even today 35-40% of Americans still apparently believe the election was in some way stolen - and the entirety of the Trump phenomenon itself suggest very significant democratic trouble.
Thank goodness they don't have PR and can be outvoted by the sane ones then.
While I condemn utterly the storming of the capitol in no uncertain terms I can't help thinking a lot here are wiffling when they huff and puff about it interrupting legal things.
All revolutions by their nature are illegal. Even the one that toppled Ceacescau and I think most would be applauding that one.
Yes all revolutions are technically illegal, but that doesn't make it wiffling when people huff and puff about in interrupting legal things, as it is interrupting legal things in a seocity which is not an oppressive dictatorship. Some things can reasonably be left unsaid.
I think you are right to raise issues around whether representative democracy is in trouble, it is often noted that people on left and right quite like some aspects of strongman government for example, but I think your comment is a bit fatuous in implying that raising of outrage over the events of yesterday is somehow diminished because of the technical point that obviously most people are not, in theory, opposed to similar action against repressive regimes.
This wasn't commenting in theory, it was applicable to a particular event where it was perfectly relevant not to equivocate about theoretical scenarios.
I remain of the view that America is not a democracy in anything but name
Its police behave like an organised crime syndicate, cf civil forfeiture, qualified immunity, etc
Its firms buy politicians to pass laws that are little more than protection rackets cf companies like comcast getting laws passed to stop communities creating their own internet infrastructure as example and the regulatory capture of such federal bodies as the fcc
The gerrymandering and voter exclusion that has gone on.
Sorry America is an oligarchy and has been for years not a democracy anymore than russia is. Allowing people to vote does not make you a democracy when whichever side gets in continues with the corrupt practices
I don't think anyone here would suggest america is perfect, and some will even go as far as you in being critical of a great many elements. The actions of some of its own representatives make comparisons to other failed or failing democracies harder to push back on than should be the case.
But I still don't think USA is at the level where people condemning violent insurrection of its institutions is undermined because they would support the toppling of Ceacescau.
Whoa. Did Boris Johnson actually just condemn Donald Trump for subverting democracy?
He did. Shocked he was so candid, but it was needed.
I think he broke my jaw. There was a sharp pain as it hit the floor.
You’re right he needed to, but I never thought he’d do it.
Trump is a nobody now. A dangerous nobody, but a nobody. I think he knows perfectly well how people only respected him because he was the President, but will still be shocked when people start condemning him. People who disliked him still having to kiss his arse seems like the primary perk of the job for a man like him.
Dangerously naive. The polling above seems like the perfect recipe for a civil war, to me. Many MILLIONS of Americans - generally white, highly armed - agree with the attempted storming of the Capitol
Millions of Brits supported the riots that led to the defacing of the Cenotaph.
Civil wars usually require (a) an actual attack on the rights of a minority of the populations, and (b) a charismatic an organised leader.
I don't think we're there yet in the US, although that might change.
One of the biggest challenges the West has over the next 50 years IMHO is moving peacefully to societies where Whites are no longer the majority.
Professor Eric Kaufman has written convincingly about this in his book Whiteshift.
Basically, right now many Whites feel threatened by that - and we're in a transition period where we have a large minority of minorities but still a clear white majority - but with little mixing.
We will get to a majority mixed race population by 2100, with whites at c.10-15% only of the population, and the key there is for that population to successfully inherit the cultural and political traditions of the national story *notwithstanding* its racial heritage.
This is a very delicate subject but it's one we don't talk enough about.
Even if most of the West eventually moves to a situation where whites are a minority we are unlikely to get to a situation where they represent only 10-15% of the population.
For example even by 2045 non Hispanic whites are still forecast to constitute 49.7% of the US population and 70% of the UK population.
It is though possible that by 2100 we could end up with a situation where the only white majority populations are in Russia and Eastern Europe which have barely any immigration from Asia, Africa and Latin America in comparison to western Europe, the US and Canada and Australia and New Zealand.
Yes, it depends greatly on immigration rates and replication rates.
I think Amish and Orthodox Jews are growing rapidly simply because they have 4-6 children rather than 2 - it compounds over 2-3 generations.
I agree with all of that except for climate change.
Covid has shown us both that we need to take scientific emergencies seriously and that it is possible to tackle them when we put our minds to it. It has also led to a decades of advances in remote communications etc in one year as an alternative to travel for the same thing.
Covid has made it easier and more credible to tackle climate change.
I've come out of this ever more convinced there's little or nothing human ingenuity cannot resolve if it puts its mind to it. We have created a number of vaccines in barely a year and while it's too late for far too many, the hope for the majority for the future is there.
Applying innovation and ingenuity (and supporting it wherever possible) offers far and away the best prospect of mitigating the impacts of climate change. It's preferable to eco-authoritarianism in so many ways.
Indeed, I'd go further and say it's quite likely that in resolving the issues of climate change, technology and innovation will come up with ways not only of promoting sustainability but improving the lives of millions if not billions.
100% agreed.
The solution to climate change is not and never has been eco-authoritarianism. It is science and technology.
Less XR and more Tesla.
More synthetic biology so we can produce more food on less land and reduce pressures on wildlife habitat and water resources.
If you were Trump and the Family, you have to now be finalising your thinking about where to go once you leave office.
As the chance of arrest is increasing from a number of fronts, perhaps the speculated flounce to Turnberry is a sane option. If the Americans want him back they'd have to secure his extradition - would they push it that far and would a UK court grant it?
Why would any sane UK government permit Trumpsky to enter the country? He incited a mob to attack democracy, with the result that four people are dead. Thus ample grounds to deny him entry as a dangerous, racist, violent, anti-democratic (small d) extremist.
You mean hes a normal American. We let millions of them come over here why discriminate ?
GO FUCK YOURSELF, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE.
And thanks for showing us your true stripes.
LOL, good to see a well reasoned argument
Sticky your fat head back up your fat ass.
You have the gall to call yourself "Alanbrooke" the real deal would regard you as a pathetic turd, after all HE was one of the people who helped create the Special Relationship.
Wheras you are one of the people who is working overtime to tear it down.
Anyone who would mock my country like you just did, especially after a day like yesterday is BENEATH MY CONTEMPT. Do NOT expect me to bandy words with such scum as you.
Good to see a handful of Brexiters finally concede it is economically damaging, albeit not worth worrying about because Covid.
Frustratingly, they (Alanbrooke, Leon) are also quite elderly and so unlikely to have to really experience the shitty mess they voted to deliver.
SeanT's kids will though
Who is this SeanT? I see him much talked about. He appears to loom large in your mind, like a kind of much younger, more virile, more handsome Trump, who is also f*cking your wife
If you were Trump and the Family, you have to now be finalising your thinking about where to go once you leave office.
As the chance of arrest is increasing from a number of fronts, perhaps the speculated flounce to Turnberry is a sane option. If the Americans want him back they'd have to secure his extradition - would they push it that far and would a UK court grant it?
Why would any sane UK government permit Trumpsky to enter the country? He incited a mob to attack democracy, with the result that four people are dead. Thus ample grounds to deny him entry as a dangerous, racist, violent, anti-democratic (small d) extremist.
As a private citizen? Sure. But as President of the United States?
With one day left. To "play golf". During COVID.
Talk to Biden, talk to the ambassador, square it as best you can but, sure, deny him entry.
It would make for the most marvellous scandallous stand-off. The UK refusing entry to the President of the United States. Who is citing diplomatic immunity to flee the likely charges that face him the following day...
Plus the Scottish Gmt enforcing the covid laws - to make sure that Mr T does not set a disastrous example comparable to his Brexiter allies in Whitehall, especially those who need eye tests in Co. Durham.
If the plane leaves, we could always concoct a security incident, or a deep haar, and divert him to Shannon.
I wonder what Plato would be posting if she was still with us?
I think she would have followed James Delingpole into bonkerslands.
I know James. I believe he still makes a very decent living (and is a likeable guy, believe it or not).
The trouble is, once you are alienated from the major social media platforms, or even expelled, the economic pressure is then to become even MORE extreme, to make every single column the ultimate clickbait, so you generate traffic for your newspaper/online media/podcast, who then make you higher profile,so you get even more clicks, and so on
The internet literally incentivises insane and extreme opinions. This is true of Left or Right. That is why it is so corrosive of western liberal democracy as we know it.
Trump was made by Twitter
Twitter just has a higher percentage of extreme opinions on it as normal people do not have the time or interest to spend hours posting political views on twitter.
Hence why Trump lost last year and Corbyn was trounced in 2019 despite their large number of supporters on Twitter.
Biden apparently effectively imposed a social media ban on his team and just focused on middle income, middle aged swing voters in the swing states and was rewarded with winning the election.
Cameron famously said 'too many tweets makes a twat' in 2015 but still won an overall majority anyway
The YouGov poll you posted earlier is dodgy for a related reason. YouGov itself monitors the amount of time people take to respond to surveys, and has said that it knows that people who respond quickly - who comprise a lot of Internet warriors and others with relatively empty lives - tend toward more firmly held and extreme opinions than those who are busy with jobs and children and chores and tend not to get round to doing their YouGov survey for a day or two. So a poll rushed out during last night’s carry on is almost certain to overweight nutjobs of all flavours.
Though Yougov normally weighs its sample quite well and given 46.9% of US voters still voted for Trump even last year I don't think they are too big a stretch
Quite obviously, if you do a poll while an event is breaking news and publish it the very next morning, you aren’t weighting for those who don’t respond to online polls right away.
If you were Trump and the Family, you have to now be finalising your thinking about where to go once you leave office.
As the chance of arrest is increasing from a number of fronts, perhaps the speculated flounce to Turnberry is a sane option. If the Americans want him back they'd have to secure his extradition - would they push it that far and would a UK court grant it?
Why would any sane UK government permit Trumpsky to enter the country? He incited a mob to attack democracy, with the result that four people are dead. Thus ample grounds to deny him entry as a dangerous, racist, violent, anti-democratic (small d) extremist.
You mean hes a normal American. We let millions of them come over here why discriminate ?
GO FUCK YOURSELF, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE.
And thanks for showing us your true stripes.
LOL, good to see a well reasoned argument
Sticky your fat head back up your fat ass.
You have the gall to call yourself "Alanbrooke" the real deal would regard you as a pathetic turd, after all HE was one of the people who helped create the Special Relationship.
Wheras you are one of the people who is working overtime to tear it down.
Anyone who would mock my country like you just did, especially after a day like yesterday is BENEATH MY CONTEMPT. Do NOT expect me to bandy words with such scum as you.
Steady on.
Hear, hear. SeaShanty, have a nice cup of tea to cool off. We'd much rather have you on here.
While I condemn utterly the storming of the capitol in no uncertain terms I can't help thinking a lot here are wiffling when they huff and puff about it interrupting legal things.
All revolutions by their nature are illegal. Even the one that toppled Ceacescau and I think most would be applauding that one.
We condemn the capitol because we see it as democracy under threat ad that is currently how we govern ourselves therefore we see it as good. We applaud Ceacescu because it was a dictatorship and we see it as bad because thats not how we do things.
I do wonder though whether we are at the nether end of the representative democratic age, societies seem to polarised now and whoever is elected about half the country feels unrepresented. Look at america with republicans and democrats, brexit with remainers and leavers, the Johnson government where people claiming 53% of people voted against it. Macron and LePen though being french they seem to be more of the mind they don't really care who gets voted in as long as they don't try and implement any of the manifesto they got voted in for.
Is that to say democracy is dead? No but I think representative democracy is perhaps on life support in many places
Democracy needs renewal in a participatory direction, probably a radically participatory one. It's worth defending and preserving, but its flaws at the moment, in countries like the US and Britain, aren't just social and economic, but representational too.
It doesn't have flaws, it is working as intended.
The Americans just got rid of Trump and the Brits avoided his left wing mirror image last year. Two wins for democracy.
Any alternative system a Trump gets into power and he stays in power. Trump is on his way out now thanks to democracy working as it is supposed to do so.
As discussed last week, vast buy-in to conspiracy theories - even today 35-40% of Americans still apparently believe the election was in some way stolen - and the entirety of the Trump phenomenon itself suggest very significant democratic trouble.
Thank goodness they don't have PR and can be outvoted by the sane ones then.
The reasons are a lot more systemic and go back a lot further than that, though. In a two-party duopoly, any more traditionally-minded Americans, for instance, have had to vote for ultra-free market ideology too to have any realistic chance of representation for 40 years.
World's unluckiest burglars' arrested after calling police by accident: Staffordshire police arrest two men on suspicion of burglary after one sits on phone and dials 999
Did they subsequently stand on some micro machines and fall down the stairs, before being hit on the head by a paint can on a rope released by a small boy?
There is a funny discussion in the TV series Ted Lasso about why 999, instead of 911, is a silly idea, based around the idea that 999, being a single digit repeated, is easier to dial by accident.
The number was picked when numbers were dialled using a rotary phone dial. It made a lot more sense then (I remember being taught how to find the "9" in the dark if needed), and by the time dialling meant using buttons, let alone a screen, it was too late to change it.
If you were Trump and the Family, you have to now be finalising your thinking about where to go once you leave office.
As the chance of arrest is increasing from a number of fronts, perhaps the speculated flounce to Turnberry is a sane option. If the Americans want him back they'd have to secure his extradition - would they push it that far and would a UK court grant it?
Why would any sane UK government permit Trumpsky to enter the country? He incited a mob to attack democracy, with the result that four people are dead. Thus ample grounds to deny him entry as a dangerous, racist, violent, anti-democratic (small d) extremist.
As a private citizen? Sure. But as President of the United States?
With one day left. To "play golf". During COVID.
Talk to Biden, talk to the ambassador, square it as best you can but, sure, deny him entry.
It would make for the most marvellous scandallous stand-off. The UK refusing entry to the President of the United States. Who is citing diplomatic immunity to flee the likely charges that face him the following day...
Plus the Scottish Gmt enforcing the covid laws - to make sure that Mr T does not set a disastrous example comparable to his Brexiter allies in Whitehall, especially those who need eye tests in Co. Durham.
If the plane leaves, we could always concoct a security incident, or a deep haar, and divert him to Shannon.
Also, the airport itself is, interestingly, owned by the SG. But as it is illegal to move in Scotland anyway at that sort of level ... unless he is 'moving house', but how can he prove that sans the legal authorization to reside in the longer term, which passes the problem to Messrs/Mdmes Johnson, Raab, Braverman and Patel.
I'm sorry, there's no healing this. These traitors need to be defeated, not coddled.
Biden has a chance to heal the centre and put common sense back in to US policy, but he's fluffed it. Pelosi needed to go for a clean break and to give him a chance, He decided on business as usual.
The President has no role in appointing the House leader.
World's unluckiest burglars' arrested after calling police by accident: Staffordshire police arrest two men on suspicion of burglary after one sits on phone and dials 999
Did they subsequently stand on some micro machines and fall down the stairs, before being hit on the head by a paint can on a rope released by a small boy?
There is a funny discussion in the TV series Ted Lasso about why 999, instead of 911, is a silly idea, based around the idea that 999, being a single digit repeated, is easier to dial by accident.
The number was picked when numbers were dialled using a rotary phone dial. It made a lot more sense then (I remember being taught how to find the "9" in the dark if needed), and by the time dialling meant using buttons, let alone a screen, it was too late to change it.
NZ was (still is) 111. I guess we decided when it was an emergency it was not worth waiting the extra seconds for the dial to “rotarise”.
If you were Trump and the Family, you have to now be finalising your thinking about where to go once you leave office.
As the chance of arrest is increasing from a number of fronts, perhaps the speculated flounce to Turnberry is a sane option. If the Americans want him back they'd have to secure his extradition - would they push it that far and would a UK court grant it?
Why would any sane UK government permit Trumpsky to enter the country? He incited a mob to attack democracy, with the result that four people are dead. Thus ample grounds to deny him entry as a dangerous, racist, violent, anti-democratic (small d) extremist.
You mean hes a normal American. We let millions of them come over here why discriminate ?
GO FUCK YOURSELF, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE.
And thanks for showing us your true stripes.
LOL, good to see a well reasoned argument
Sticky your fat head back up your fat ass.
You have the gall to call yourself "Alanbrooke" the real deal would regard you as a pathetic turd, after all HE was one of the people who helped create the Special Relationship.
Wheras you are one of the people who is working overtime to tear it down.
Anyone who would mock my country like you just did, especially after a day like yesterday is BENEATH MY CONTEMPT. Do NOT expect me to bandy words with such scum as you.
Steady on.
Hear, hear. SeaShanty, have a nice cup of tea to cool off. We'd much rather have you on here.
Agreed, but justifiable to get angry at Alanbrooke's snide anti-American barb. Pretty nasty stuff.
If you were Trump and the Family, you have to now be finalising your thinking about where to go once you leave office.
As the chance of arrest is increasing from a number of fronts, perhaps the speculated flounce to Turnberry is a sane option. If the Americans want him back they'd have to secure his extradition - would they push it that far and would a UK court grant it?
Why would any sane UK government permit Trumpsky to enter the country? He incited a mob to attack democracy, with the result that four people are dead. Thus ample grounds to deny him entry as a dangerous, racist, violent, anti-democratic (small d) extremist.
You mean hes a normal American. We let millions of them come over here why discriminate ?
GO FUCK YOURSELF, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE.
And thanks for showing us your true stripes.
LOL, good to see a well reasoned argument
Sticky your fat head back up your fat ass.
You have the gall to call yourself "Alanbrooke" the real deal would regard you as a pathetic turd, after all HE was one of the people who helped create the Special Relationship.
Wheras you are one of the people who is working overtime to tear it down.
Anyone who would mock my country like you just did, especially after a day like yesterday is BENEATH MY CONTEMPT. Do NOT expect me to bandy words with such scum as you.
Steady on.
Hear, hear. SeaShanty, have a nice cup of tea to cool off. We'd much rather have you on here.
Believe I am now well within bounds, if not the Mod will surely let me know.
But know this - yours truly WILL react when ANYONE attacks my country. I do NOT say, my country right or wrong. But I do say, it IS my country and I will defend & uphold it to the best of my feeble ability.
If I was in a bar room with Anti-Alanbrooke, would have punched him in the nose just now. And gladly taken the consequences.
I wonder what Plato would be posting if she was still with us?
I think she would have followed James Delingpole into bonkerslands.
I know James. I believe he still makes a very decent living (and is a likeable guy, believe it or not).
The trouble is, once you are alienated from the major social media platforms, or even expelled, the economic pressure is then to become even MORE extreme, to make every single column the ultimate clickbait, so you generate traffic for your newspaper/online media/podcast, who then make you higher profile,so you get even more clicks, and so on
The internet literally incentivises insane and extreme opinions. This is true of Left or Right. That is why it is so corrosive of western liberal democracy as we know it.
Trump was made by Twitter
Does that also explain Toby Young who a previous poster knew and thought was a likeable guy?
What happened to writing well and interestingly as an incentive?
I am but a humble sex toy flint knapper, at present chipping away at a bespoke Suffolk-artisanal clit-stimulator for a well known Love Island star. I know nothing of these things,
On the upside, I can say one of my bespoke flint dildos made $35k the other day, which has cheered me up no end. A year's salary in an hour. Nice. I wish such good luck on all my fellow PB-ers
And making people happy, ecstatic even, who could ask for more?
While I condemn utterly the storming of the capitol in no uncertain terms I can't help thinking a lot here are wiffling when they huff and puff about it interrupting legal things.
All revolutions by their nature are illegal. Even the one that toppled Ceacescau and I think most would be applauding that one.
Only from the PB Trumptons.
Only on PB.
I have never posted anything pro trump I despise the guy and how you equate "I condemn utterly the storming of the capitol in no uncertain terms" and not saying anything positive in the least about it as being pro trump just reminds me of what a lefty idiot you are
If you were Trump and the Family, you have to now be finalising your thinking about where to go once you leave office.
As the chance of arrest is increasing from a number of fronts, perhaps the speculated flounce to Turnberry is a sane option. If the Americans want him back they'd have to secure his extradition - would they push it that far and would a UK court grant it?
Why would any sane UK government permit Trumpsky to enter the country? He incited a mob to attack democracy, with the result that four people are dead. Thus ample grounds to deny him entry as a dangerous, racist, violent, anti-democratic (small d) extremist.
You mean hes a normal American. We let millions of them come over here why discriminate ?
GO FUCK YOURSELF, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE.
And thanks for showing us your true stripes.
LOL, good to see a well reasoned argument
Sticky your fat head back up your fat ass.
You have the gall to call yourself "Alanbrooke" the real deal would regard you as a pathetic turd, after all HE was one of the people who helped create the Special Relationship.
Wheras you are one of the people who is working overtime to tear it down.
Anyone who would mock my country like you just did, especially after a day like yesterday is BENEATH MY CONTEMPT. Do NOT expect me to bandy words with such scum as you.
Steady on.
Hear, hear. SeaShanty, have a nice cup of tea to cool off. We'd much rather have you on here.
Believe I am now well within bounds, if not the Mod will surely let me know.
But know this - yours truly WILL react when ANYONE attacks my country. I do NOT say, my country right or wrong. But I do say, it IS my country and I will defend & uphold it to the best of my feeble ability.
If I was in a bar room with Anti-Alanbrooke, would have punched him in the nose just now. And gladly taken the consequences.
I'm sorry, there's no healing this. These traitors need to be defeated, not coddled.
Biden has a chance to heal the centre and put common sense back in to US policy, but he's fluffed it. Pelosi needed to go for a clean break and to give him a chance, He decided on business as usual.
The President has no role in appointing the House leader.
Comments
Hence why Trump lost last year and Corbyn was trounced in 2019 despite their large number of supporters on Twitter.
Biden apparently effectively imposed a social media ban on his team and just focused on middle income, middle aged swing voters in the swing states and was rewarded with winning the election.
Cameron famously said 'too many tweets makes a twat' in 2015 but still won an overall majority anyway
As for policing the UK police regularly watch central London get trashed nd recently Bristol. They just pick up the suspects later at home when theyre not in a mob and charge them. Nobody dead.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/999_(emergency_telephone_number)#History
marvellousscandallous stand-off. The UK refusing entry to the President of the United States. Who is citing diplomatic immunity to flee the likely charges that face him the following day...https://www.chiliz.net/
https://www.socios.com/
A crypto product that lets you trade "Fan Tokens", which gives you voting rights in fan polls over decisions at real professional sports clubs.....over important decisions like the the team bus design. And well known clubs have signed up to this nonsense.
Note also that global warming and indeed covid 19 are merely symptoms of extreme planet overload, and it's no good thinking fix those two things and it's sunlit uplands ahoy. There's all sorts of other stuff - soil depletion, resource depletion, plastic, waste disposal, sheer weight of numbers, new and improved viruses - queueing up to take their place.
I think you are right to raise issues around whether representative democracy is in trouble, it is often noted that people on left and right quite like some aspects of strongman government for example, but I think your comment is a bit fatuous in implying that raising of outrage over the events of yesterday is somehow diminished because of the technical point that obviously most people are not, in theory, opposed to similar action against repressive regimes.
This wasn't commenting in theory, it was applicable to a particular event where it was perfectly relevant not to equivocate about theoretical scenarios.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55576567
You have the gall to call yourself "Alanbrooke" the real deal would regard you as a pathetic turd, after all HE was one of the people who helped create the Special Relationship.
Wheras you are one of the people who is working overtime to tear it down.
Anyone who would mock my country like you just did, especially after a day like yesterday is BENEATH MY CONTEMPT. Do NOT expect me to bandy words with such scum as you.
On the upside (for those worried about climate change) I reckon global travel will be reduced for many years. Which is good the for the environment.
Yes, advanced economies in the West and Asia might reach herd immunity through vaccines in a year or two (God willing) but the rest of the world won't play catch-up til 2023 or 2024. Moreover, travel will now be saddled with covid tests and masking and the rest for a long time. And people will just be reluctant to go abroad.
Travel as we knew it is over for the foreseeable future. Emissions will be DOWN.
And if we get new mutations than Feck Knows
The Americans just got rid of Trump and the Brits avoided his left wing mirror image last year. Two wins for democracy.
Any alternative system a Trump gets into power and he stays in power. Trump is on his way out now thanks to democracy working as it is supposed to do so.
But your optimism is infectious.
Only on PB.
ROFL, it appears you are.
"just pick up the suspects later at home when theyre not in a mob"
When you come to think of it that way, you needed have police protecting our parliaments at all. Think of the cost savings.
Genius-level contribution, thank you for opening my eyes.
I was an intellectual pygmy who craved attention, then I was the most powerful man in the world.
Born in New York. Made on Twitter.
The solution to climate change is not and never has been eco-authoritarianism. It is science and technology.
Less XR and more Tesla.
And here's an example from old Rome of serious aggro over small minded tribalism.
Mankind is a dangerous species with a touch of genius. There are probably thousands of others.
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/gladiators/pompeii.html
Frustratingly, they (Alanbrooke, Leon) are also quite elderly and so unlikely to have to really experience the shitty mess they voted to deliver.
What happened to writing well and interestingly as an incentive?
Its police behave like an organised crime syndicate, cf civil forfeiture, qualified immunity, etc
Its firms buy politicians to pass laws that are little more than protection rackets cf companies like comcast getting laws passed to stop communities creating their own internet infrastructure as example and the regulatory capture of such federal bodies as the fcc
The gerrymandering and voter exclusion that has gone on.
Sorry America is an oligarchy and has been for years not a democracy anymore than russia is. Allowing people to vote does not make you a democracy when whichever side gets in continues with the corrupt practices
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-55579682
I have this crazy idea....why not just stop all travel, but for the absolute essential reasons (and that doesn't include making content for your Instagram account).
Remove politicians from governance and go with a more swiss model
Season two began equally strongly but by the end was, I thought, starting to lose its way. By the second half I was beginning to tire of it, and I think I made it through season three before losing interest altogether. You did very well to get through to the sixth.
I would not let him twist your knickers, SeaShanty.
https://twitter.com/FoxNews/status/1347274064335933443
On the upside, I can say one of my bespoke flint dildos made $35k the other day, which has cheered me up no end. A year's salary in an hour. Nice. I wish such good luck on all my fellow PB-ers
please stick around. We need your insights.
But I still don't think USA is at the level where people condemning violent insurrection of its institutions is undermined because they would support the toppling of Ceacescau.
I think Amish and Orthodox Jews are growing rapidly simply because they have 4-6 children rather than 2 - it compounds over 2-3 generations.
Leon a tad younger at 98 but looks more sprightly due to bathing in the blood of warm Thai virgins.
One we don't do with our head of states of course.
He ran away, unable to compete intellectually
Take a wild guess Dan.
https://twitter.com/ChineseEmbinUS/status/1347247602094534658?s=19
I guess we decided when it was an emergency it was not worth waiting the extra seconds for the dial to “rotarise”.
But know this - yours truly WILL react when ANYONE attacks my country. I do NOT say, my country right or wrong. But I do say, it IS my country and I will defend & uphold it to the best of my feeble ability.
If I was in a bar room with Anti-Alanbrooke, would have punched him in the nose just now. And gladly taken the consequences.
Denying this is futile.
Ten years for rioting, but fewer than seven for attempted murder? Plus any time on remand, I guess.
Ironic if they are sentenced under Trump’s own Exec order aimed at BLM