I believe that the current Israel regime's objective is to destroy Palestine. Just as Hamas's objective is to destroy Israel.
Initially one could argue - and I did sincerely believe - that Israel's objective was to destroy Hamas but their actions have proven to me that is no longer (or never was) the case.
I certainly believe it is Israel's plan to destroy all the infrastructure in Gaza, including anything that Hamas may use (tunnels, other buildings etc). Do they plan to rebuild it too? Under Israeli control? Possibly. I don't believe that they intend to destroy Palestine as such. I think its pertinent to recall what was going on before Oct 7th 2023 - definite rapprochement of Israel and many of its neighbours. I think Israel wants peace and sees Hamas in Gaza as the biggest issue.
How can you look at anything Israel has done as evidence this is the case? This is truly baffling to me,
People who support Israel seem to have an endless capacity for self deception.
Aren't you a Russian troll though? I am not interested in what Putin thinks.
@paulwaugh Labour MPs (who are in the Urgent Question in big numbers) make clear how appalled they are as Suella Braverman says it's right that Israel "finishes the job".
"Disgusting" heckles one MP.
Where Suella may be making her mistake, is on what job it is that many within the Israeli Government want to do. If their job were the defeat, or even the extermination, of all armed Hamas combatants, with proportionate (it could never be zero) destruction and civilian casualties, she would have a very strong argument. It would be crazy to stop before it were done - as crazy as stopping a course of medication before an infection is dealt with.
However, it looks to me (and I'm open to being shown to be wrong) that the job isn't defeating Hamas with proportionate destruction and civilian casualities, it is destruction and civilian casualties, with proportionate defeat of Hamas. Perhaps I'm wrong, and Israel and Suella are correct.
I think what you're trying to do is to make a conclusion about someone's motivation, and that's very hard to do.
What I think we can do is to judge Israel's actions against what we think a reasonable campaign to destroy Hamas, without disproportionate civilian casualties, would look like. I think you can judge that Israel is falling short of its duty to minimise civilian casualties and to provide for civilians in areas where it has defeated Hamas.
Since Israel appears unwilling or unable to take remedial action for these failings, then I think the question of whether it is Israel's intent to cause this suffering is moot. I was willing to cut Israel a lot of slack on the assumption that, as a democracy, they would hold themselves to higher standards as they took reasonable steps to defend themselves.
I was clearly mistaken in the confidence I placed in Israel and its institutions.
So wat do you think a reasonable campaign to destroy Hamas, without disproportionate civilian casualties, would look like ?
One obvious and simple difference would be Israel providing adequate levels of humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians in areas of Gaza where Hamas have been defeated. That Israel have failed at even that obvious task, means it is not necessary to spend too much time discussing the nuances of targeting decisions.
Agree. Like all the aid convoys that we sent into Dresden and Remagen.
I believe that the current Israel regime's objective is to destroy Palestine. Just as Hamas's objective is to destroy Israel.
Initially one could argue - and I did sincerely believe - that Israel's objective was to destroy Hamas but their actions have proven to me that is no longer (or never was) the case.
I certainly believe it is Israel's plan to destroy all the infrastructure in Gaza, including anything that Hamas may use (tunnels, other buildings etc). Do they plan to rebuild it too? Under Israeli control? Possibly. I don't believe that they intend to destroy Palestine as such. I think its pertinent to recall what was going on before Oct 7th 2023 - definite rapprochement of Israel and many of its neighbours. I think Israel wants peace and sees Hamas in Gaza as the biggest issue.
I wish that were true, but the evidence from the West Bank has been the creeping annexation of Palestinian land and the replacement with Israel Settlers. It's a slow moving invasion, bit it's an invasion nonetheless.
The only sane response to this awful and sordid spectacle is to look away. I sometimes wonder what might happen if everyone did ignore them
If we manage to complete the energy transition away from fossil fuels then we might well find out. The Middle East would mean no more to most of the rest of the world than remote corners of Africa do now.
There's an excellent article in the NYT today about how cheap battery storage is transforming California's grid.
California's incredibly lucky with solar availability which makes storage, even with current battery tech, a no-brainer. They only need something like 3-4 more years of building out storage capacity at the current rate before they can eliminate routine fossil fuel use altogether.
I don't think it's particularly lucky - it's selecting the obvious renewable horse to back.
California has loads of reliable sunshine, so they've selected solar.
Britain has masses of reliable tidal ranges, and intermittent and not particular blistering sunshine so we've selected... Solar. And wind.
I haven't invented a 'where there's muck there's brass' aphorism for it, but basically, when something in public policy could be called out by an 8 year old as not making sense, it means someone's making an awful lot of money.
Solar and wind are turning out to be inversely correlated to a surprisingly strong degree in the UK - doubling the amount of both would get us to the point of ending routine gas & biomass generation. That's probably good enough for our requirements.
I don't see large-scale tidal working out - we're just not good enough at building infrastructure at that scale. Maybe it'll have more of a role when/if battery storage becomes cheap enough to solve the intermittency issue without needing giant lagoons.
I think you're in danger of underpricing our capabilities in a way that's as illogical as thinking we're still a nation of Brunels. We can put rocks on top of other rocks. These projects are a good deal less complex afaics then HS2, and don't go through anyone's back garden, or through any mountains. I also hapen to think the lagoons are great. I can see them connecting us with the sea in really positive ways. Some may even have some defence applications.
This is one of those articles that just had me WTF !!!!!
Monkey torture videos. I am genuinely lost for words
"The investigation exposed a global monkey torture network involving a private online group paying people in Indonesia to kill and torture baby monkeys on video.
The BBC reported that LeGresley used the username “The Immolator” and ran a poll for members of the group on which method of torture should be inflicted upon an infant monkey."
A certain minority of every population are complete scum. That's where you get people like Beria and Dirlewanger from.
What a grotesque story. Maybe it’s good humanity is dying out
It is? Not obviously so yet.
Birthrates are collapsing worldwide. Quite astonishingly fast in some places
Which is not the same as saying humanity is dying out. The western lifestyle and the general need and desire for women to have careers, and thus delay or choose not to have children is clearly an issue. But the best thing for the planet is fewer humans, so its not all bad. If population decline became a global thing and became an issue you can imagine that society would adapt - it would pay people to have more children (unlike the UK situation now).
Lots of countries have tried paying people to have more children, and I don't think any have succeeded in increasing the birth rate above the replacement level.
Yes, and it’s not just because of “women wising up”. There is a whole host of reasons. Young people abandoning sex, the incel phenomenon, declining sperm counts + declining testosterone, the problem of unaffordable housing - on and on
I’m in Italy where people famously love and indulge their children. Except, of course, they don’t. If they did they’d have more. Instead:
“Births in Italy dropped 3.6 per cent last year to an all-time low, highlighting the uphill battle facing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni as she seeks to reverse the rapid ageing of the Italian population.
Just 379,000 babies were born in Italy in 2023, down from the previous year’s record low of 393,000 — which Istat, the national statistical agency, had then noted was the fewest births since Italy’s unification in 1861.”
FT
Italy is dying out. And you can see it. Lots of old people, not so many young couples with kids
RefUK underperformed because they didn't run a lot of candidates.
At the GE they will have a full slate of candidates At the GE they will have Nigel Farage
It is hopium is the Tories think they can simply project last week's result forward
I think Farage is going to sit the UK election out. Being in the US for the Presidential election and its aftermath is going to be much more fun for him.
The only sane response to this awful and sordid spectacle is to look away. I sometimes wonder what might happen if everyone did ignore them
If we manage to complete the energy transition away from fossil fuels then we might well find out. The Middle East would mean no more to most of the rest of the world than remote corners of Africa do now.
There's an excellent article in the NYT today about how cheap battery storage is transforming California's grid.
California's incredibly lucky with solar availability which makes storage, even with current battery tech, a no-brainer. They only need something like 3-4 more years of building out storage capacity at the current rate before they can eliminate routine fossil fuel use altogether.
I don't think it's particularly lucky - it's selecting the obvious renewable horse to back.
California has loads of reliable sunshine, so they've selected solar.
Britain has masses of reliable tidal ranges, and intermittent and not particular blistering sunshine so we've selected... Solar. And wind.
I haven't invented a 'where there's muck there's brass' aphorism for it, but basically, when something in public policy could be called out by an 8 year old as not making sense, it means someone's making an awful lot of money.
Solar and wind are turning out to be inversely correlated to a surprisingly strong degree in the UK - doubling the amount of both would get us to the point of ending routine gas & biomass generation. That's probably good enough for our requirements.
I don't see large-scale tidal working out - we're just not good enough at building infrastructure at that scale. Maybe it'll have more of a role when/if battery storage becomes cheap enough to solve the intermittency issue without needing giant lagoons.
I think you're in danger of underpricing our capabilities in a way that's as illogical as thinking we're still a nation of Brunels. We can put rocks on top of other rocks. These projects are a good deal less complex afaics then HS2, and don't go through anyone's back garden, or through any mountains. I also hapen to think the lagoons are great. I can see them connecting us with the sea in really positive ways. Some may even have some defence applications.
As for your first para - 'Winter' would seem a fairly satisfactory one word riposte.
I'd take issue with saying the 'history never repeats' - I though the saying was that "history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce".
See the middle east right now. History repeating on an endless loop of intolerance and bloodshed.
If only it was a farce. Its so bleak I can’t bear to think about it
The best way of summarising the Israel/arab thing is Larkin’s line: man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf
It’s like the Holocaust inflicted such terrible trauma on the jews of Israel they are subconsciously forced to reiterate it endlessly, cf victims of abuse who often become abusers - or extremely kinky (which is much healthier)
Meanwhile the Palestinians are locked in their own psychohistorical nightmare, somehow and sometimes revelling in their own martyrdom, masochistically - in between bursts of brutal violence against the Jews
The only sane response to this awful and sordid spectacle is to look away. I sometimes wonder what might happen if everyone did ignore them
There is a metaphysical argument that it is their fear of the holocaust that is leading them to a situation where another one could take place.
I and the public know, what every schoolboy learns: those to whom evil is done, do evil in return.
RefUK underperformed because they didn't run a lot of candidates.
At the GE they will have a full slate of candidates At the GE they will have Nigel Farage
It is hopium is the Tories think they can simply project last week's result forward
I think Farage is going to sit the UK election out. Being in the US for the Presidential election and its aftermath is going to be much more fun for him.
He said as much in the Telegraph. If he's coming back it will be if Reform surge in 24 to 29
@paulwaugh Labour MPs (who are in the Urgent Question in big numbers) make clear how appalled they are as Suella Braverman says it's right that Israel "finishes the job".
"Disgusting" heckles one MP.
Where Suella may be making her mistake, is on what job it is that many within the Israeli Government want to do. If their job were the defeat, or even the extermination, of all armed Hamas combatants, with proportionate (it could never be zero) destruction and civilian casualties, she would have a very strong argument. It would be crazy to stop before it were done - as crazy as stopping a course of medication before an infection is dealt with.
However, it looks to me (and I'm open to being shown to be wrong) that the job isn't defeating Hamas with proportionate destruction and civilian casualities, it is destruction and civilian casualties, with proportionate defeat of Hamas. Perhaps I'm wrong, and Israel and Suella are correct.
I think what you're trying to do is to make a conclusion about someone's motivation, and that's very hard to do.
What I think we can do is to judge Israel's actions against what we think a reasonable campaign to destroy Hamas, without disproportionate civilian casualties, would look like. I think you can judge that Israel is falling short of its duty to minimise civilian casualties and to provide for civilians in areas where it has defeated Hamas.
Since Israel appears unwilling or unable to take remedial action for these failings, then I think the question of whether it is Israel's intent to cause this suffering is moot. I was willing to cut Israel a lot of slack on the assumption that, as a democracy, they would hold themselves to higher standards as they took reasonable steps to defend themselves.
I was clearly mistaken in the confidence I placed in Israel and its institutions.
So wat do you think a reasonable campaign to destroy Hamas, without disproportionate civilian casualties, would look like ?
One obvious and simple difference would be Israel providing adequate levels of humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians in areas of Gaza where Hamas have been defeated. That Israel have failed at even that obvious task, means it is not necessary to spend too much time discussing the nuances of targeting decisions.
Agree. Like all the aid convoys that we sent into Dresden and Remagen.
My grandfather was a member of the Friends Ambulance Unit who followed up quite closely behind the Allied advance on the Western Front to provide humanitarian support.
I believe that the current Israel regime's objective is to destroy Palestine. Just as Hamas's objective is to destroy Israel.
Initially one could argue - and I did sincerely believe - that Israel's objective was to destroy Hamas but their actions have proven to me that is no longer (or never was) the case.
I certainly believe it is Israel's plan to destroy all the infrastructure in Gaza, including anything that Hamas may use (tunnels, other buildings etc). Do they plan to rebuild it too? Under Israeli control? Possibly. I don't believe that they intend to destroy Palestine as such. I think its pertinent to recall what was going on before Oct 7th 2023 - definite rapprochement of Israel and many of its neighbours. I think Israel wants peace and sees Hamas in Gaza as the biggest issue.
I wish that were true, but the evidence from the West Bank has been the creeping annexation of Palestinian land and the replacement with Israel Settlers. It's a slow moving invasion, bit it's an invasion nonetheless.
Yes I agree. In fact I’d say the process is speeding up - Israel’s clear intention is to make life so intolerable in Gaza (snd maybe the West Bank too) that eventually all the Palestinians will leave
Israel wants defensible borders - with Egypt to the south (no Gaza Strip) and the Jordan to the east. The golan heights protect them from Syria and they can cope with one hostile border facing Lebanon
It makes strategic sense. It also means ethnic cleansing of 3m people
It will all, however, be academic if Iran gets a bomb they can drop on tel aviv and the motivation to do so
I'd take issue with saying the 'history never repeats' - I though the saying was that "history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce".
See the middle east right now. History repeating on an endless loop of intolerance and bloodshed.
If only it was a farce. Its so bleak I can’t bear to think about it
The best way of summarising the Israel/arab thing is Larkin’s line: man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf
It’s like the Holocaust inflicted such terrible trauma on the jews of Israel they are subconsciously forced to reiterate it endlessly, cf victims of abuse who often become abusers - or extremely kinky (which is much healthier)
Meanwhile the Palestinians are locked in their own psychohistorical nightmare, somehow and sometimes revelling in their own martyrdom, masochistically - in between bursts of brutal violence against the Jews
The only sane response to this awful and sordid spectacle is to look away. I sometimes wonder what might happen if everyone did ignore them
There is a metaphysical argument that it is their fear of the holocaust that is leading them to a situation where another one could take place.
You mean another holcaust levelled upon them or one inflicted on the Palestinians? Naomi Klein (who I realise is on PB's extensive shitlist but who I think is pretty sound) believes many Israeli Jews subconsciously or even consciously feel that they're owed a holocaust.
There's an argument to be made that the creation of the state of Israel is the second worst thing to happen to Jews. Something set up as a refuge with idealism and hope has become a militarised nationalistic ethno state that is hated by its neighbours, that tyrannises and kills their co-habitees of the land in the name of security and apes their Nazi tormentors. It's not going well to put it mildly.
Interesting prog on radio 4 now about Tory ramping the London Mayoral relection. An ex Sun editor (whose name escapes me) said it's something only Tories are able to do.
I believe that the current Israel regime's objective is to destroy Palestine. Just as Hamas's objective is to destroy Israel.
Initially one could argue - and I did sincerely believe - that Israel's objective was to destroy Hamas but their actions have proven to me that is no longer (or never was) the case.
I certainly believe it is Israel's plan to destroy all the infrastructure in Gaza, including anything that Hamas may use (tunnels, other buildings etc). Do they plan to rebuild it too? Under Israeli control? Possibly. I don't believe that they intend to destroy Palestine as such. I think its pertinent to recall what was going on before Oct 7th 2023 - definite rapprochement of Israel and many of its neighbours. I think Israel wants peace and sees Hamas in Gaza as the biggest issue.
How can you look at anything Israel has done as evidence this is the case? This is truly baffling to me,
How did the Allies secure peace in 1945? They are trying to defeat Hamas. Be thankful that you are not the ones to have to make the decisions. I am no supporter of what Israel has done, but I don't know what they should have done in response to Oct 7th either.
Do you deny that Israel were seeking Rapprochment in the region before the attacks? Why do you think Hamas did what it did?
RefUK underperformed because they didn't run a lot of candidates.
At the GE they will have a full slate of candidates At the GE they will have Nigel Farage
It is hopium is the Tories think they can simply project last week's result forward
I think Farage is going to sit the UK election out. Being in the US for the Presidential election and its aftermath is going to be much more fun for him.
He said as much in the Telegraph. If he's coming back it will be if Reform surge in 24 to 29
Right. And that's a poser for kinabalu. What if he has Trump to thank for sparing him from Farage?
@paulwaugh Labour MPs (who are in the Urgent Question in big numbers) make clear how appalled they are as Suella Braverman says it's right that Israel "finishes the job".
"Disgusting" heckles one MP.
Where Suella may be making her mistake, is on what job it is that many within the Israeli Government want to do. If their job were the defeat, or even the extermination, of all armed Hamas combatants, with proportionate (it could never be zero) destruction and civilian casualties, she would have a very strong argument. It would be crazy to stop before it were done - as crazy as stopping a course of medication before an infection is dealt with.
However, it looks to me (and I'm open to being shown to be wrong) that the job isn't defeating Hamas with proportionate destruction and civilian casualities, it is destruction and civilian casualties, with proportionate defeat of Hamas. Perhaps I'm wrong, and Israel and Suella are correct.
I think what you're trying to do is to make a conclusion about someone's motivation, and that's very hard to do.
What I think we can do is to judge Israel's actions against what we think a reasonable campaign to destroy Hamas, without disproportionate civilian casualties, would look like. I think you can judge that Israel is falling short of its duty to minimise civilian casualties and to provide for civilians in areas where it has defeated Hamas.
Since Israel appears unwilling or unable to take remedial action for these failings, then I think the question of whether it is Israel's intent to cause this suffering is moot. I was willing to cut Israel a lot of slack on the assumption that, as a democracy, they would hold themselves to higher standards as they took reasonable steps to defend themselves.
I was clearly mistaken in the confidence I placed in Israel and its institutions.
So wat do you think a reasonable campaign to destroy Hamas, without disproportionate civilian casualties, would look like ?
One obvious and simple difference would be Israel providing adequate levels of humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians in areas of Gaza where Hamas have been defeated. That Israel have failed at even that obvious task, means it is not necessary to spend too much time discussing the nuances of targeting decisions.
Agree. Like all the aid convoys that we sent into Dresden and Remagen.
My grandfather was a member of the Friends Ambulance Unit who followed up quite closely behind the Allied advance on the Western Front to provide humanitarian support.
Notably he wasn't bombed by the RAF or USAF.
That's fantastic and well done him. Similar to MSF. It wasn't Haig or Asquith sending them in, though, was it.
I'd take issue with saying the 'history never repeats' - I though the saying was that "history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce".
See the middle east right now. History repeating on an endless loop of intolerance and bloodshed.
If only it was a farce. Its so bleak I can’t bear to think about it
The best way of summarising the Israel/arab thing is Larkin’s line: man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf
It’s like the Holocaust inflicted such terrible trauma on the jews of Israel they are subconsciously forced to reiterate it endlessly, cf victims of abuse who often become abusers - or extremely kinky (which is much healthier)
Meanwhile the Palestinians are locked in their own psychohistorical nightmare, somehow and sometimes revelling in their own martyrdom, masochistically - in between bursts of brutal violence against the Jews
The only sane response to this awful and sordid spectacle is to look away. I sometimes wonder what might happen if everyone did ignore them
There is a metaphysical argument that it is their fear of the holocaust that is leading them to a situation where another one could take place.
I and the public know, what every schoolboy learns: those to whom evil is done, do evil in return.
Auden's was just a bit better:
I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.
This is one of those articles that just had me WTF !!!!!
Monkey torture videos. I am genuinely lost for words
"The investigation exposed a global monkey torture network involving a private online group paying people in Indonesia to kill and torture baby monkeys on video.
The BBC reported that LeGresley used the username “The Immolator” and ran a poll for members of the group on which method of torture should be inflicted upon an infant monkey."
A certain minority of every population are complete scum. That's where you get people like Beria and Dirlewanger from.
What a grotesque story. Maybe it’s good humanity is dying out
It is? Not obviously so yet.
Birthrates are collapsing worldwide. Quite astonishingly fast in some places
Which is not the same as saying humanity is dying out. The western lifestyle and the general need and desire for women to have careers, and thus delay or choose not to have children is clearly an issue. But the best thing for the planet is fewer humans, so its not all bad. If population decline became a global thing and became an issue you can imagine that society would adapt - it would pay people to have more children (unlike the UK situation now).
Lots of countries have tried paying people to have more children, and I don't think any have succeeded in increasing the birth rate above the replacement level.
Yes, and it’s not just because of “women wising up”. There is a whole host of reasons. Young people abandoning sex, the incel phenomenon, declining sperm counts + declining testosterone, the problem of unaffordable housing - on and on
I’m in Italy where people famously love and indulge their children. Except, of course, they don’t. If they did they’d have more. Instead:
“Births in Italy dropped 3.6 per cent last year to an all-time low, highlighting the uphill battle facing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni as she seeks to reverse the rapid ageing of the Italian population.
Just 379,000 babies were born in Italy in 2023, down from the previous year’s record low of 393,000 — which Istat, the national statistical agency, had then noted was the fewest births since Italy’s unification in 1861.”
FT
Italy is dying out. And you can see it. Lots of old people, not so many young couples with kids
380k doesn't seem that bad for a population of 60m.
Japan and Korea have a bigger issue with this. (Maybe soon an issue in China)
@paulwaugh Labour MPs (who are in the Urgent Question in big numbers) make clear how appalled they are as Suella Braverman says it's right that Israel "finishes the job".
"Disgusting" heckles one MP.
Where Suella may be making her mistake, is on what job it is that many within the Israeli Government want to do. If their job were the defeat, or even the extermination, of all armed Hamas combatants, with proportionate (it could never be zero) destruction and civilian casualties, she would have a very strong argument. It would be crazy to stop before it were done - as crazy as stopping a course of medication before an infection is dealt with.
However, it looks to me (and I'm open to being shown to be wrong) that the job isn't defeating Hamas with proportionate destruction and civilian casualities, it is destruction and civilian casualties, with proportionate defeat of Hamas. Perhaps I'm wrong, and Israel and Suella are correct.
I think what you're trying to do is to make a conclusion about someone's motivation, and that's very hard to do.
What I think we can do is to judge Israel's actions against what we think a reasonable campaign to destroy Hamas, without disproportionate civilian casualties, would look like. I think you can judge that Israel is falling short of its duty to minimise civilian casualties and to provide for civilians in areas where it has defeated Hamas.
Since Israel appears unwilling or unable to take remedial action for these failings, then I think the question of whether it is Israel's intent to cause this suffering is moot. I was willing to cut Israel a lot of slack on the assumption that, as a democracy, they would hold themselves to higher standards as they took reasonable steps to defend themselves.
I was clearly mistaken in the confidence I placed in Israel and its institutions.
So wat do you think a reasonable campaign to destroy Hamas, without disproportionate civilian casualties, would look like ?
One obvious and simple difference would be Israel providing adequate levels of humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians in areas of Gaza where Hamas have been defeated. That Israel have failed at even that obvious task, means it is not necessary to spend too much time discussing the nuances of targeting decisions.
Agree. Like all the aid convoys that we sent into Dresden and Remagen.
My grandfather was a member of the Friends Ambulance Unit who followed up quite closely behind the Allied advance on the Western Front to provide humanitarian support.
Notably he wasn't bombed by the RAF or USAF.
That's fantastic and well done him. Similar to MSF. It wasn't Haig or Asquith sending them in, though, was it.
I'd take issue with saying the 'history never repeats' - I though the saying was that "history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce".
See the middle east right now. History repeating on an endless loop of intolerance and bloodshed.
If only it was a farce. Its so bleak I can’t bear to think about it
The best way of summarising the Israel/arab thing is Larkin’s line: man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf
It’s like the Holocaust inflicted such terrible trauma on the jews of Israel they are subconsciously forced to reiterate it endlessly, cf victims of abuse who often become abusers - or extremely kinky (which is much healthier)
Meanwhile the Palestinians are locked in their own psychohistorical nightmare, somehow and sometimes revelling in their own martyrdom, masochistically - in between bursts of brutal violence against the Jews
The only sane response to this awful and sordid spectacle is to look away. I sometimes wonder what might happen if everyone did ignore them
There is a metaphysical argument that it is their fear of the holocaust that is leading them to a situation where another one could take place.
You mean another holcaust levelled upon them or one inflicted on the Palestinians? Naomi Klein (who I realise is on PB's extensive shitlist but who I think is pretty sound) believes many Israeli Jews subconsciously or even consciously feel that they're owed a holocaust.
There's an argument to be made that the creation of the state of Israel is the second worst thing to happen to Jews. Something set up as a refuge with idealism and hope has become a militarised nationalistic ethno state that is hated by its neighbours, that tyrannises and kills their co-habitees of the land in the name of security and apes their Nazi tormentors. It's not going well to put it mildly.
I mean inflicted upon them. The logical outworking of it being - fear the holocaust - prioritise survival at all costs - in doing so, inflict such great affronts as to place oneself in danger - it happens again. But how it would work logically isn't the metaphysical argment -the metaphysical argument is, pay a lot of attention to something and you inevitably invite that thing. The logical outworking is just me colouring it in.
BBC site current headline is "Stormy Daniels describes meeting Trump at golf tournament". It crossed my mind whether this was one of the many golf tournaments where Trump got a hole in one.
If ReFUK aren't a threat, then there is no need for Sunak to keep chasing their non-voters. So no need for performative cruelty. So no need to half of the crap they keep thinking makes good policy.
But they will keep chasing the ReFUK voter. Even though there aren't any apparently.
This is one of those articles that just had me WTF !!!!!
Monkey torture videos. I am genuinely lost for words
"The investigation exposed a global monkey torture network involving a private online group paying people in Indonesia to kill and torture baby monkeys on video.
The BBC reported that LeGresley used the username “The Immolator” and ran a poll for members of the group on which method of torture should be inflicted upon an infant monkey."
A certain minority of every population are complete scum. That's where you get people like Beria and Dirlewanger from.
What a grotesque story. Maybe it’s good humanity is dying out
It is? Not obviously so yet.
Birthrates are collapsing worldwide. Quite astonishingly fast in some places
Which is not the same as saying humanity is dying out. The western lifestyle and the general need and desire for women to have careers, and thus delay or choose not to have children is clearly an issue. But the best thing for the planet is fewer humans, so its not all bad. If population decline became a global thing and became an issue you can imagine that society would adapt - it would pay people to have more children (unlike the UK situation now).
Lots of countries have tried paying people to have more children, and I don't think any have succeeded in increasing the birth rate above the replacement level.
Yes, and it’s not just because of “women wising up”. There is a whole host of reasons. Young people abandoning sex, the incel phenomenon, declining sperm counts + declining testosterone, the problem of unaffordable housing - on and on
I’m in Italy where people famously love and indulge their children. Except, of course, they don’t. If they did they’d have more. Instead:
“Births in Italy dropped 3.6 per cent last year to an all-time low, highlighting the uphill battle facing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni as she seeks to reverse the rapid ageing of the Italian population.
Just 379,000 babies were born in Italy in 2023, down from the previous year’s record low of 393,000 — which Istat, the national statistical agency, had then noted was the fewest births since Italy’s unification in 1861.”
FT
Italy is dying out. And you can see it. Lots of old people, not so many young couples with kids
380k doesn't seem that bad for a population of 60m.
Japan and Korea have a bigger issue with this. (Maybe soon an issue in China)
Average life expectancy of 80 gives you a population of only 30m with that many births. Only with half the population you then have half the births.
This is one of those articles that just had me WTF !!!!!
Monkey torture videos. I am genuinely lost for words
"The investigation exposed a global monkey torture network involving a private online group paying people in Indonesia to kill and torture baby monkeys on video.
The BBC reported that LeGresley used the username “The Immolator” and ran a poll for members of the group on which method of torture should be inflicted upon an infant monkey."
A certain minority of every population are complete scum. That's where you get people like Beria and Dirlewanger from.
What a grotesque story. Maybe it’s good humanity is dying out
It is? Not obviously so yet.
Birthrates are collapsing worldwide. Quite astonishingly fast in some places
Which is not the same as saying humanity is dying out. The western lifestyle and the general need and desire for women to have careers, and thus delay or choose not to have children is clearly an issue. But the best thing for the planet is fewer humans, so its not all bad. If population decline became a global thing and became an issue you can imagine that society would adapt - it would pay people to have more children (unlike the UK situation now).
Lots of countries have tried paying people to have more children, and I don't think any have succeeded in increasing the birth rate above the replacement level.
Yes, and it’s not just because of “women wising up”. There is a whole host of reasons. Young people abandoning sex, the incel phenomenon, declining sperm counts + declining testosterone, the problem of unaffordable housing - on and on
I’m in Italy where people famously love and indulge their children. Except, of course, they don’t. If they did they’d have more. Instead:
“Births in Italy dropped 3.6 per cent last year to an all-time low, highlighting the uphill battle facing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni as she seeks to reverse the rapid ageing of the Italian population.
Just 379,000 babies were born in Italy in 2023, down from the previous year’s record low of 393,000 — which Istat, the national statistical agency, had then noted was the fewest births since Italy’s unification in 1861.”
FT
Italy is dying out. And you can see it. Lots of old people, not so many young couples with kids
380k doesn't seem that bad for a population of 60m.
Japan and Korea have a bigger issue with this. (Maybe soon an issue in China)
What? Italy has one of the lowest birthrates in the world and the collapse is accelerating. At the peak of the baby boom in the 60s they had 1m babies born in a year. So it’s now a third of that
Nor can they blame unaffordable housing. The country is depopulating so fast there is plenty of housing to be found for pennies if you are prepared to do it up
It seems to be more of a cultural malaise. A good spectator article on it here (not by my infernal stalker)
Interesting prog on radio 4 now about Tory ramping the London Mayoral relection. An ex Sun editor (whose name escapes me) said it's something only Tories are able to do.
I'd take issue with saying the 'history never repeats' - I though the saying was that "history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce".
See the middle east right now. History repeating on an endless loop of intolerance and bloodshed.
If only it was a farce. Its so bleak I can’t bear to think about it
The best way of summarising the Israel/arab thing is Larkin’s line: man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf
It’s like the Holocaust inflicted such terrible trauma on the jews of Israel they are subconsciously forced to reiterate it endlessly, cf victims of abuse who often become abusers - or extremely kinky (which is much healthier)
Meanwhile the Palestinians are locked in their own psychohistorical nightmare, somehow and sometimes revelling in their own martyrdom, masochistically - in between bursts of brutal violence against the Jews
The only sane response to this awful and sordid spectacle is to look away. I sometimes wonder what might happen if everyone did ignore them
There is a metaphysical argument that it is their fear of the holocaust that is leading them to a situation where another one could take place.
You mean another holcaust levelled upon them or one inflicted on the Palestinians? Naomi Klein (who I realise is on PB's extensive shitlist but who I think is pretty sound) believes many Israeli Jews subconsciously or even consciously feel that they're owed a holocaust.
There's an argument to be made that the creation of the state of Israel is the second worst thing to happen to Jews. Something set up as a refuge with idealism and hope has become a militarised nationalistic ethno state that is hated by its neighbours, that tyrannises and kills their co-habitees of the land in the name of security and apes their Nazi tormentors. It's not going well to put it mildly.
The counter-factual is what would have happened if in 1947-48 everyone had accepted the UN deal rather than the Arab nations invaded.
Who knows. But it is reasonable to think that the so-called "militarised nationalistic ethno state that is hated by its neighbours, that tyrannises and kills their co-habitees of the land" would not have emerged.
Or look more recently at, oh I don't know, Gaza. They handed it "back" to the Palestinians. And began to work with the government there. Until some democracy-loving peaceniks took over and, as I recounted earlier today, threw their erstwhile interlocutors off buildings and towed them behind landies.
Now, if you think that the creation of Israel was an egregious act and the Arabs were entitled to try to exterminate it then fair enough. As for "ethno state" it doesn't sound great on paper but as we see with Pakistan, it isn't the only such state. Why some even think that the UK is an ethno state, while certainly accommodating those who don't believe in JC.
@paulwaugh Labour MPs (who are in the Urgent Question in big numbers) make clear how appalled they are as Suella Braverman says it's right that Israel "finishes the job".
"Disgusting" heckles one MP.
Where Suella may be making her mistake, is on what job it is that many within the Israeli Government want to do. If their job were the defeat, or even the extermination, of all armed Hamas combatants, with proportionate (it could never be zero) destruction and civilian casualties, she would have a very strong argument. It would be crazy to stop before it were done - as crazy as stopping a course of medication before an infection is dealt with.
However, it looks to me (and I'm open to being shown to be wrong) that the job isn't defeating Hamas with proportionate destruction and civilian casualities, it is destruction and civilian casualties, with proportionate defeat of Hamas. Perhaps I'm wrong, and Israel and Suella are correct.
I think what you're trying to do is to make a conclusion about someone's motivation, and that's very hard to do.
What I think we can do is to judge Israel's actions against what we think a reasonable campaign to destroy Hamas, without disproportionate civilian casualties, would look like. I think you can judge that Israel is falling short of its duty to minimise civilian casualties and to provide for civilians in areas where it has defeated Hamas.
Since Israel appears unwilling or unable to take remedial action for these failings, then I think the question of whether it is Israel's intent to cause this suffering is moot. I was willing to cut Israel a lot of slack on the assumption that, as a democracy, they would hold themselves to higher standards as they took reasonable steps to defend themselves.
I was clearly mistaken in the confidence I placed in Israel and its institutions.
So wat do you think a reasonable campaign to destroy Hamas, without disproportionate civilian casualties, would look like ?
One obvious and simple difference would be Israel providing adequate levels of humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians in areas of Gaza where Hamas have been defeated. That Israel have failed at even that obvious task, means it is not necessary to spend too much time discussing the nuances of targeting decisions.
Agree. Like all the aid convoys that we sent into Dresden and Remagen.
My grandfather was a member of the Friends Ambulance Unit who followed up quite closely behind the Allied advance on the Western Front to provide humanitarian support.
Notably he wasn't bombed by the RAF or USAF.
That's fantastic and well done him. Similar to MSF. It wasn't Haig or Asquith sending them in, though, was it.
@paulwaugh Labour MPs (who are in the Urgent Question in big numbers) make clear how appalled they are as Suella Braverman says it's right that Israel "finishes the job".
"Disgusting" heckles one MP.
Where Suella may be making her mistake, is on what job it is that many within the Israeli Government want to do. If their job were the defeat, or even the extermination, of all armed Hamas combatants, with proportionate (it could never be zero) destruction and civilian casualties, she would have a very strong argument. It would be crazy to stop before it were done - as crazy as stopping a course of medication before an infection is dealt with.
However, it looks to me (and I'm open to being shown to be wrong) that the job isn't defeating Hamas with proportionate destruction and civilian casualities, it is destruction and civilian casualties, with proportionate defeat of Hamas. Perhaps I'm wrong, and Israel and Suella are correct.
I think what you're trying to do is to make a conclusion about someone's motivation, and that's very hard to do.
What I think we can do is to judge Israel's actions against what we think a reasonable campaign to destroy Hamas, without disproportionate civilian casualties, would look like. I think you can judge that Israel is falling short of its duty to minimise civilian casualties and to provide for civilians in areas where it has defeated Hamas.
Since Israel appears unwilling or unable to take remedial action for these failings, then I think the question of whether it is Israel's intent to cause this suffering is moot. I was willing to cut Israel a lot of slack on the assumption that, as a democracy, they would hold themselves to higher standards as they took reasonable steps to defend themselves.
I was clearly mistaken in the confidence I placed in Israel and its institutions.
So wat do you think a reasonable campaign to destroy Hamas, without disproportionate civilian casualties, would look like ?
One obvious and simple difference would be Israel providing adequate levels of humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians in areas of Gaza where Hamas have been defeated. That Israel have failed at even that obvious task, means it is not necessary to spend too much time discussing the nuances of targeting decisions.
That's good thanks, but it leads to a question that interests and worries me: are Hamas actually being defeated in these areas? Or like insurgents in all sorts of wars, do they pop back in once the Israeli forces mostly move on?
@paulwaugh Labour MPs (who are in the Urgent Question in big numbers) make clear how appalled they are as Suella Braverman says it's right that Israel "finishes the job".
"Disgusting" heckles one MP.
Where Suella may be making her mistake, is on what job it is that many within the Israeli Government want to do. If their job were the defeat, or even the extermination, of all armed Hamas combatants, with proportionate (it could never be zero) destruction and civilian casualties, she would have a very strong argument. It would be crazy to stop before it were done - as crazy as stopping a course of medication before an infection is dealt with.
However, it looks to me (and I'm open to being shown to be wrong) that the job isn't defeating Hamas with proportionate destruction and civilian casualities, it is destruction and civilian casualties, with proportionate defeat of Hamas. Perhaps I'm wrong, and Israel and Suella are correct.
I think what you're trying to do is to make a conclusion about someone's motivation, and that's very hard to do.
What I think we can do is to judge Israel's actions against what we think a reasonable campaign to destroy Hamas, without disproportionate civilian casualties, would look like. I think you can judge that Israel is falling short of its duty to minimise civilian casualties and to provide for civilians in areas where it has defeated Hamas.
Since Israel appears unwilling or unable to take remedial action for these failings, then I think the question of whether it is Israel's intent to cause this suffering is moot. I was willing to cut Israel a lot of slack on the assumption that, as a democracy, they would hold themselves to higher standards as they took reasonable steps to defend themselves.
I was clearly mistaken in the confidence I placed in Israel and its institutions.
So wat do you think a reasonable campaign to destroy Hamas, without disproportionate civilian casualties, would look like ?
One obvious and simple difference would be Israel providing adequate levels of humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians in areas of Gaza where Hamas have been defeated. That Israel have failed at even that obvious task, means it is not necessary to spend too much time discussing the nuances of targeting decisions.
Agree. Like all the aid convoys that we sent into Dresden and Remagen.
My grandfather was a member of the Friends Ambulance Unit who followed up quite closely behind the Allied advance on the Western Front to provide humanitarian support.
Notably he wasn't bombed by the RAF or USAF.
That's fantastic and well done him. Similar to MSF. It wasn't Haig or Asquith sending them in, though, was it.
Wrong war pal. I'm not that old.
LOL well was it Churchill who sent your gallant grandfather in to help?
Edit: I suppose peoples' views of "gallant" may differ as google tells me it was staffed by conchies.
BBC site current headline is "Stormy Daniels describes meeting Trump at golf tournament". It crossed my mind whether this was one of the many golf tournaments where Trump got a hole in one.
The production company Daniels was working for at the time "sponsored a hole"...
If ReFUK aren't a threat, then there is no need for Sunak to keep chasing their non-voters. So no need for performative cruelty. So no need to half of the crap they keep thinking makes good policy.
But they will keep chasing the ReFUK voter. Even though there aren't any apparently.
Boris Johnson won a landslide by appealling to ex-Labour voters, whose gateway drug had been the Brexit party. The Brexit Party convinced them to stop voting Labour, who had used them as voting fodder and enacted policies, particularly but not solely on immigration that had been against their interests. It is about a coalition of voter types, not how many points the current iteration of ReFUK has or hasn't convinced to vote for them.
I think @Stark_Dawning's assessment of what is happening in the Middle East (Hamas - mission accomplished) will remain the most acute on the whole situation, whatever happens now.
Meanwhile, the boss of P&O is appearing before the Business and Trade Committee. Remember they sacked 786 workers a while back to re-employ them on lower wages, to much public and political outrage. They now earn as little as £4.87 an hour, but it's not so bad as the average wage is £5.20 an hour. Hebblethwaite earned over £500k last year. Glad the government sorted that one out. https://www.bbc.co.uk/articles/ceq3pw038g8o
If ReFUK aren't a threat, then there is no need for Sunak to keep chasing their non-voters. So no need for performative cruelty. So no need to half of the crap they keep thinking makes good policy.
But they will keep chasing the ReFUK voter. Even though there aren't any apparently.
Boris Johnson won a landslide by appealling to ex-Labour voters, whose gateway drug had been the Brexit party. The Brexit Party convinced them to stop voting Labour, who had used them as voting fodder and enacted policies, particularly but not solely on immigration that had been against their interests. It is about a coalition of voter types, not how many points the current iteration of ReFUK has or hasn't convinced to vote for them.
Bless. Being lectured on how Red Wall Labour politics works.
The problem with Pip's ptherwise very convincing analysis is that it doesn't allow for the possibility of Farage jumping in, which IMO would transform the position, though quite how is not yet clear.
Farage wants to jump in when jumping in might see success. He knows Reform are on for a row of ducks this time round.
I don't see how the stars are ever going to align as well as they will this year for Farage.
The Conservatives, from where he draws most of his support (for whatever vehicle he's heading at the time), are toast.
Neither Sunak nor Starmer have any charisma. A Farage-led campaign would monopolise the headlines, day in, day out.
His beloved Brexit has been betrayed™. "Woke nonsense" is in the ascendant.
And, put bluntly, there'll be fewer of his target demographic around to vote in four years' time.
If Farage wants any semblance of a political comeback then GE2024 is absolutely the time to do it. But maybe he doesn't. He might be plenty happy enough trousering the cheques from GB News, the Telegraph and whatever Trumpian acolytes will book him as a speaker.
This is one of those articles that just had me WTF !!!!!
Monkey torture videos. I am genuinely lost for words
"The investigation exposed a global monkey torture network involving a private online group paying people in Indonesia to kill and torture baby monkeys on video.
The BBC reported that LeGresley used the username “The Immolator” and ran a poll for members of the group on which method of torture should be inflicted upon an infant monkey."
A certain minority of every population are complete scum. That's where you get people like Beria and Dirlewanger from.
What a grotesque story. Maybe it’s good humanity is dying out
It is? Not obviously so yet.
Birthrates are collapsing worldwide. Quite astonishingly fast in some places
Which is not the same as saying humanity is dying out. The western lifestyle and the general need and desire for women to have careers, and thus delay or choose not to have children is clearly an issue. But the best thing for the planet is fewer humans, so its not all bad. If population decline became a global thing and became an issue you can imagine that society would adapt - it would pay people to have more children (unlike the UK situation now).
Lots of countries have tried paying people to have more children, and I don't think any have succeeded in increasing the birth rate above the replacement level.
Yes, and it’s not just because of “women wising up”. There is a whole host of reasons. Young people abandoning sex, the incel phenomenon, declining sperm counts + declining testosterone, the problem of unaffordable housing - on and on
I’m in Italy where people famously love and indulge their children. Except, of course, they don’t. If they did they’d have more. Instead:
“Births in Italy dropped 3.6 per cent last year to an all-time low, highlighting the uphill battle facing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni as she seeks to reverse the rapid ageing of the Italian population.
Just 379,000 babies were born in Italy in 2023, down from the previous year’s record low of 393,000 — which Istat, the national statistical agency, had then noted was the fewest births since Italy’s unification in 1861.”
FT
Italy is dying out. And you can see it. Lots of old people, not so many young couples with kids
Theres an argument the govt shouldnt go in so hard in areas like sexual assault and "date rape". These laws whilst undoubtably well intentioned dont help when you want to increase the birth rate.
I'd take issue with saying the 'history never repeats' - I though the saying was that "history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce".
See the middle east right now. History repeating on an endless loop of intolerance and bloodshed.
If only it was a farce. Its so bleak I can’t bear to think about it
The best way of summarising the Israel/arab thing is Larkin’s line: man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf
It’s like the Holocaust inflicted such terrible trauma on the jews of Israel they are subconsciously forced to reiterate it endlessly, cf victims of abuse who often become abusers - or extremely kinky (which is much healthier)
Meanwhile the Palestinians are locked in their own psychohistorical nightmare, somehow and sometimes revelling in their own martyrdom, masochistically - in between bursts of brutal violence against the Jews
The only sane response to this awful and sordid spectacle is to look away. I sometimes wonder what might happen if everyone did ignore them
The holocaust is 80 years ago now. For most young people its ancient history. Many dont even believe it happened. Powerful words here. Rafah is completely blocked, israel won’t allow anything to enter, no humanitarian aid, no doctors, no help. Yet the idf are bombing us right now. THERE IS NOTHING WE CAN DO 💔NOWHERE WE CAN GO 💔
It doesn’t seem relevant perhaps, but I wonder how many votes Israel’s entry in the Eurovision Song Contest will get.
The Israeli entry is very strong musically and it's not really possible to vote against an entry in the Song Contest so I feel like somewhere it'll comfortably qualify for the final and then finish between 6th and 10th place. Maybe if the IPBC had sent the same singer with a song of reconciliation like 2009 it might have even won.
BBC site current headline is "Stormy Daniels describes meeting Trump at golf tournament". It crossed my mind whether this was one of the many golf tournaments where Trump got a hole in one.
Beiing a veteran of the adult film industry, Stormy was dutiful but privately unimpressed with Trump's mashie niblick.
This is one of those articles that just had me WTF !!!!!
Monkey torture videos. I am genuinely lost for words
"The investigation exposed a global monkey torture network involving a private online group paying people in Indonesia to kill and torture baby monkeys on video.
The BBC reported that LeGresley used the username “The Immolator” and ran a poll for members of the group on which method of torture should be inflicted upon an infant monkey."
A certain minority of every population are complete scum. That's where you get people like Beria and Dirlewanger from.
What a grotesque story. Maybe it’s good humanity is dying out
It is? Not obviously so yet.
Birthrates are collapsing worldwide. Quite astonishingly fast in some places
Which is not the same as saying humanity is dying out. The western lifestyle and the general need and desire for women to have careers, and thus delay or choose not to have children is clearly an issue. But the best thing for the planet is fewer humans, so its not all bad. If population decline became a global thing and became an issue you can imagine that society would adapt - it would pay people to have more children (unlike the UK situation now).
Lots of countries have tried paying people to have more children, and I don't think any have succeeded in increasing the birth rate above the replacement level.
Yes, and it’s not just because of “women wising up”. There is a whole host of reasons. Young people abandoning sex, the incel phenomenon, declining sperm counts + declining testosterone, the problem of unaffordable housing - on and on
I’m in Italy where people famously love and indulge their children. Except, of course, they don’t. If they did they’d have more. Instead:
“Births in Italy dropped 3.6 per cent last year to an all-time low, highlighting the uphill battle facing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni as she seeks to reverse the rapid ageing of the Italian population.
Just 379,000 babies were born in Italy in 2023, down from the previous year’s record low of 393,000 — which Istat, the national statistical agency, had then noted was the fewest births since Italy’s unification in 1861.”
FT
Italy is dying out. And you can see it. Lots of old people, not so many young couples with kids
Theres an argument the govt shouldnt go in so hard in areas like sexual assault and "date rape". These laws whilst undoubtably well intentioned dont help when you want to increase the birth rate.
If ReFUK aren't a threat, then there is no need for Sunak to keep chasing their non-voters. So no need for performative cruelty. So no need to half of the crap they keep thinking makes good policy.
But they will keep chasing the ReFUK voter. Even though there aren't any apparently.
Boris Johnson won a landslide by appealling to ex-Labour voters, whose gateway drug had been the Brexit party. The Brexit Party convinced them to stop voting Labour, who had used them as voting fodder and enacted policies, particularly but not solely on immigration that had been against their interests. It is about a coalition of voter types, not how many points the current iteration of ReFUK has or hasn't convinced to vote for them.
Bless. Being lectured on how Red Wall Labour politics works.
On the plus side, I did edit the post to remove 'You can't really be this thick' as the first sentence.
This is one of those articles that just had me WTF !!!!!
Monkey torture videos. I am genuinely lost for words
"The investigation exposed a global monkey torture network involving a private online group paying people in Indonesia to kill and torture baby monkeys on video.
The BBC reported that LeGresley used the username “The Immolator” and ran a poll for members of the group on which method of torture should be inflicted upon an infant monkey."
A certain minority of every population are complete scum. That's where you get people like Beria and Dirlewanger from.
What a grotesque story. Maybe it’s good humanity is dying out
It is? Not obviously so yet.
Birthrates are collapsing worldwide. Quite astonishingly fast in some places
Which is not the same as saying humanity is dying out. The western lifestyle and the general need and desire for women to have careers, and thus delay or choose not to have children is clearly an issue. But the best thing for the planet is fewer humans, so its not all bad. If population decline became a global thing and became an issue you can imagine that society would adapt - it would pay people to have more children (unlike the UK situation now).
Lots of countries have tried paying people to have more children, and I don't think any have succeeded in increasing the birth rate above the replacement level.
Yes, and it’s not just because of “women wising up”. There is a whole host of reasons. Young people abandoning sex, the incel phenomenon, declining sperm counts + declining testosterone, the problem of unaffordable housing - on and on
I’m in Italy where people famously love and indulge their children. Except, of course, they don’t. If they did they’d have more. Instead:
“Births in Italy dropped 3.6 per cent last year to an all-time low, highlighting the uphill battle facing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni as she seeks to reverse the rapid ageing of the Italian population.
Just 379,000 babies were born in Italy in 2023, down from the previous year’s record low of 393,000 — which Istat, the national statistical agency, had then noted was the fewest births since Italy’s unification in 1861.”
FT
Italy is dying out. And you can see it. Lots of old people, not so many young couples with kids
380k doesn't seem that bad for a population of 60m.
Japan and Korea have a bigger issue with this. (Maybe soon an issue in China)
Average life expectancy of 80 gives you a population of only 30m with that many births. Only with half the population you then have half the births.
@paulwaugh Labour MPs (who are in the Urgent Question in big numbers) make clear how appalled they are as Suella Braverman says it's right that Israel "finishes the job".
"Disgusting" heckles one MP.
Where Suella may be making her mistake, is on what job it is that many within the Israeli Government want to do. If their job were the defeat, or even the extermination, of all armed Hamas combatants, with proportionate (it could never be zero) destruction and civilian casualties, she would have a very strong argument. It would be crazy to stop before it were done - as crazy as stopping a course of medication before an infection is dealt with.
However, it looks to me (and I'm open to being shown to be wrong) that the job isn't defeating Hamas with proportionate destruction and civilian casualities, it is destruction and civilian casualties, with proportionate defeat of Hamas. Perhaps I'm wrong, and Israel and Suella are correct.
I think what you're trying to do is to make a conclusion about someone's motivation, and that's very hard to do.
What I think we can do is to judge Israel's actions against what we think a reasonable campaign to destroy Hamas, without disproportionate civilian casualties, would look like. I think you can judge that Israel is falling short of its duty to minimise civilian casualties and to provide for civilians in areas where it has defeated Hamas.
Since Israel appears unwilling or unable to take remedial action for these failings, then I think the question of whether it is Israel's intent to cause this suffering is moot. I was willing to cut Israel a lot of slack on the assumption that, as a democracy, they would hold themselves to higher standards as they took reasonable steps to defend themselves.
I was clearly mistaken in the confidence I placed in Israel and its institutions.
So wat do you think a reasonable campaign to destroy Hamas, without disproportionate civilian casualties, would look like ?
One obvious and simple difference would be Israel providing adequate levels of humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians in areas of Gaza where Hamas have been defeated. That Israel have failed at even that obvious task, means it is not necessary to spend too much time discussing the nuances of targeting decisions.
Agree. Like all the aid convoys that we sent into Dresden and Remagen.
My grandfather was a member of the Friends Ambulance Unit who followed up quite closely behind the Allied advance on the Western Front to provide humanitarian support.
Notably he wasn't bombed by the RAF or USAF.
That's fantastic and well done him. Similar to MSF. It wasn't Haig or Asquith sending them in, though, was it.
Wrong war pal. I'm not that old.
Neither is the RAF or USAF!
Crab Air started on 1 April 1918, tbf. Though the USAAF (as the USAA Service) was a little later, it was also before the armistice.
The anti-genocide protest movement is admirable but it's terribly vague in its demands. Never mind "Stop the war crimes", "Stop the genocide", "Ceasefire now", or "Free Palestine". The slogan should be "Sanction Israel Now" or similar.
That is a clear demand, made in a clear way to the authorities of whichever country the protest is taking place in. Some countries are already sanctioning Israel. Join them.
Stop weapons trade. Stop all trade. Expel ambassadors. Shut embassies. Sever diplomatic relations. Freeze bank accounts. Freeze or seize assets. Etc. Sanction them to try to stop them committing the crimes they're committing and intend to commit more of.
Never mind taking a moral stand or bearing witness. They won't listen. They'll think what a bunch of pussies. You might as well pass a resolution saying this house deplores mass murder. Bully for this house.
Do I have to take over the protest movement and give it some strategic direction or what?
This is one of those articles that just had me WTF !!!!!
Monkey torture videos. I am genuinely lost for words
"The investigation exposed a global monkey torture network involving a private online group paying people in Indonesia to kill and torture baby monkeys on video.
The BBC reported that LeGresley used the username “The Immolator” and ran a poll for members of the group on which method of torture should be inflicted upon an infant monkey."
A certain minority of every population are complete scum. That's where you get people like Beria and Dirlewanger from.
What a grotesque story. Maybe it’s good humanity is dying out
It is? Not obviously so yet.
Birthrates are collapsing worldwide. Quite astonishingly fast in some places
Which is not the same as saying humanity is dying out. The western lifestyle and the general need and desire for women to have careers, and thus delay or choose not to have children is clearly an issue. But the best thing for the planet is fewer humans, so its not all bad. If population decline became a global thing and became an issue you can imagine that society would adapt - it would pay people to have more children (unlike the UK situation now).
Lots of countries have tried paying people to have more children, and I don't think any have succeeded in increasing the birth rate above the replacement level.
Yes, and it’s not just because of “women wising up”. There is a whole host of reasons. Young people abandoning sex, the incel phenomenon, declining sperm counts + declining testosterone, the problem of unaffordable housing - on and on
I’m in Italy where people famously love and indulge their children. Except, of course, they don’t. If they did they’d have more. Instead:
“Births in Italy dropped 3.6 per cent last year to an all-time low, highlighting the uphill battle facing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni as she seeks to reverse the rapid ageing of the Italian population.
Just 379,000 babies were born in Italy in 2023, down from the previous year’s record low of 393,000 — which Istat, the national statistical agency, had then noted was the fewest births since Italy’s unification in 1861.”
FT
Italy is dying out. And you can see it. Lots of old people, not so many young couples with kids
Theres an argument the govt shouldnt go in so hard in areas like sexual assault and "date rape". These laws whilst undoubtably well intentioned dont help when you want to increase the birth rate.
What a particularly unpleasant comment. If the government wants to encourage higher fertility rate, they can do so through the tax system.
Fair to say Sian Berry has made the job of holding on to Lucas' seat rather trickier. Her little stunt has gone down like she'd come into your house at Christmas and taken a dump on the turkey. Easiest Labour campaign ever. 'If you elect Sian Berry, are you confident she'll make it a week before quitting?'
@paulwaugh Labour MPs (who are in the Urgent Question in big numbers) make clear how appalled they are as Suella Braverman says it's right that Israel "finishes the job".
"Disgusting" heckles one MP.
Where Suella may be making her mistake, is on what job it is that many within the Israeli Government want to do. If their job were the defeat, or even the extermination, of all armed Hamas combatants, with proportionate (it could never be zero) destruction and civilian casualties, she would have a very strong argument. It would be crazy to stop before it were done - as crazy as stopping a course of medication before an infection is dealt with.
However, it looks to me (and I'm open to being shown to be wrong) that the job isn't defeating Hamas with proportionate destruction and civilian casualities, it is destruction and civilian casualties, with proportionate defeat of Hamas. Perhaps I'm wrong, and Israel and Suella are correct.
I think what you're trying to do is to make a conclusion about someone's motivation, and that's very hard to do.
What I think we can do is to judge Israel's actions against what we think a reasonable campaign to destroy Hamas, without disproportionate civilian casualties, would look like. I think you can judge that Israel is falling short of its duty to minimise civilian casualties and to provide for civilians in areas where it has defeated Hamas.
Since Israel appears unwilling or unable to take remedial action for these failings, then I think the question of whether it is Israel's intent to cause this suffering is moot. I was willing to cut Israel a lot of slack on the assumption that, as a democracy, they would hold themselves to higher standards as they took reasonable steps to defend themselves.
I was clearly mistaken in the confidence I placed in Israel and its institutions.
So wat do you think a reasonable campaign to destroy Hamas, without disproportionate civilian casualties, would look like ?
One obvious and simple difference would be Israel providing adequate levels of humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians in areas of Gaza where Hamas have been defeated. That Israel have failed at even that obvious task, means it is not necessary to spend too much time discussing the nuances of targeting decisions.
"Destroying Hamas" and "defeating Hamas" are shit talk. What would you do if you were Palestinian? "Well I'm a [Liberal Democrat|One-Nation Tory|Moderate Socialist] actually"? "I'm rather keen on the D'Hondt Method, but I went to Cambridge and I'm really pragmatic and therefore not so keen on expecting too much from it"?
Who will defend the Palestinians in Gaza if Hamas doesn't? Missionaries protected by western ex-special forces? Lawyers embedded with the Israel Aggression Forces maybe?
Fair to say Sian Berry has made the job of holding on to Lucas' seat rather trickier. Her little stunt has gone down like she'd come into your house at Christmas and taken a dump on the turkey. Easiest Labour campaign ever. 'If you elect Sian Berry, are you confident she'll make it a week before quitting?'
It's bizarre. There was no good reason to have her on the London list at all, how many voters swing based on the names of the list candidates?
The anti-genocide protest movement is admirable but it's terribly vague in its demands. Never mind "Stop the war crimes", "Stop the genocide", "Ceasefire now", or "Free Palestine". The slogan should be "Sanction Israel Now" or similar.
That is a clear demand, made in a clear way to the authorities of whichever country the protest is taking place in. Some countries are already sanctioning Israel. Join them.
Stop weapons trade. Stop all trade. Expel ambassadors. Shut embassies. Sever diplomatic relations. Freeze bank accounts. Freeze or seize assets. Etc. Sanction them to try to stop them committing the crimes they're committing and intend to commit more of.
Never mind taking a moral stand or bearing witness. They won't listen. They'll think what a bunch of pussies. You might as well pass a resolution saying this house deplores mass murder. Bully for this house.
Do I have to take over the protest movement and give it some strategic direction or what?
"The slogan should be "Sanction Israel Now" or similar."
That won't work; as many of the same people have been saying for years that sanctions don't work.
Fair to say Sian Berry has made the job of holding on to Lucas' seat rather trickier. Her little stunt has gone down like she'd come into your house at Christmas and taken a dump on the turkey. Easiest Labour campaign ever. 'If you elect Sian Berry, are you confident she'll make it a week before quitting?'
It's bizarre. There was no good reason to have her on the London list at all, how many voters swing based on the names of the list candidates?
She was also the Brighton candidate before she went on the list. Not a serious party.
Fair to say Sian Berry has made the job of holding on to Lucas' seat rather trickier. Her little stunt has gone down like she'd come into your house at Christmas and taken a dump on the turkey. Easiest Labour campaign ever. 'If you elect Sian Berry, are you confident she'll make it a week before quitting?'
It's bizarre. There was no good reason to have her on the London list at all, how many voters swing based on the names of the list candidates?
She was also the Brighton candidate before she went on the list. Not a serious party.
@paulwaugh Labour MPs (who are in the Urgent Question in big numbers) make clear how appalled they are as Suella Braverman says it's right that Israel "finishes the job".
"Disgusting" heckles one MP.
Where Suella may be making her mistake, is on what job it is that many within the Israeli Government want to do. If their job were the defeat, or even the extermination, of all armed Hamas combatants, with proportionate (it could never be zero) destruction and civilian casualties, she would have a very strong argument. It would be crazy to stop before it were done - as crazy as stopping a course of medication before an infection is dealt with.
However, it looks to me (and I'm open to being shown to be wrong) that the job isn't defeating Hamas with proportionate destruction and civilian casualities, it is destruction and civilian casualties, with proportionate defeat of Hamas. Perhaps I'm wrong, and Israel and Suella are correct.
I think what you're trying to do is to make a conclusion about someone's motivation, and that's very hard to do.
What I think we can do is to judge Israel's actions against what we think a reasonable campaign to destroy Hamas, without disproportionate civilian casualties, would look like. I think you can judge that Israel is falling short of its duty to minimise civilian casualties and to provide for civilians in areas where it has defeated Hamas.
Since Israel appears unwilling or unable to take remedial action for these failings, then I think the question of whether it is Israel's intent to cause this suffering is moot. I was willing to cut Israel a lot of slack on the assumption that, as a democracy, they would hold themselves to higher standards as they took reasonable steps to defend themselves.
I was clearly mistaken in the confidence I placed in Israel and its institutions.
So wat do you think a reasonable campaign to destroy Hamas, without disproportionate civilian casualties, would look like ?
One obvious and simple difference would be Israel providing adequate levels of humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians in areas of Gaza where Hamas have been defeated. That Israel have failed at even that obvious task, means it is not necessary to spend too much time discussing the nuances of targeting decisions.
Agree. Like all the aid convoys that we sent into Dresden and Remagen.
My grandfather was a member of the Friends Ambulance Unit who followed up quite closely behind the Allied advance on the Western Front to provide humanitarian support.
Notably he wasn't bombed by the RAF or USAF.
That's fantastic and well done him. Similar to MSF. It wasn't Haig or Asquith sending them in, though, was it.
Wrong war pal. I'm not that old.
Neither is the RAF or USAF!
Crab Air started on 1 April 1918, tbf. Though the USAAF (as the USAA Service) was a little later, it was also before the armistice.
Fair enough! It all started going downhill when they stopped wearing jodhpurs and khaki.
@paulwaugh Labour MPs (who are in the Urgent Question in big numbers) make clear how appalled they are as Suella Braverman says it's right that Israel "finishes the job".
"Disgusting" heckles one MP.
Where Suella may be making her mistake, is on what job it is that many within the Israeli Government want to do. If their job were the defeat, or even the extermination, of all armed Hamas combatants, with proportionate (it could never be zero) destruction and civilian casualties, she would have a very strong argument. It would be crazy to stop before it were done - as crazy as stopping a course of medication before an infection is dealt with.
However, it looks to me (and I'm open to being shown to be wrong) that the job isn't defeating Hamas with proportionate destruction and civilian casualities, it is destruction and civilian casualties, with proportionate defeat of Hamas. Perhaps I'm wrong, and Israel and Suella are correct.
I think what you're trying to do is to make a conclusion about someone's motivation, and that's very hard to do.
What I think we can do is to judge Israel's actions against what we think a reasonable campaign to destroy Hamas, without disproportionate civilian casualties, would look like. I think you can judge that Israel is falling short of its duty to minimise civilian casualties and to provide for civilians in areas where it has defeated Hamas.
Since Israel appears unwilling or unable to take remedial action for these failings, then I think the question of whether it is Israel's intent to cause this suffering is moot. I was willing to cut Israel a lot of slack on the assumption that, as a democracy, they would hold themselves to higher standards as they took reasonable steps to defend themselves.
I was clearly mistaken in the confidence I placed in Israel and its institutions.
So wat do you think a reasonable campaign to destroy Hamas, without disproportionate civilian casualties, would look like ?
One obvious and simple difference would be Israel providing adequate levels of humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians in areas of Gaza where Hamas have been defeated. That Israel have failed at even that obvious task, means it is not necessary to spend too much time discussing the nuances of targeting decisions.
Agree. Like all the aid convoys that we sent into Dresden and Remagen.
My grandfather was a member of the Friends Ambulance Unit who followed up quite closely behind the Allied advance on the Western Front to provide humanitarian support.
Notably he wasn't bombed by the RAF or USAF.
That's fantastic and well done him. Similar to MSF. It wasn't Haig or Asquith sending them in, though, was it.
Wrong war pal. I'm not that old.
Neither is the RAF or USAF!
Crab Air started on 1 April 1918, tbf. Though the USAAF (as the USAA Service) was a little later, it was also before the armistice.
Fair enough! It all started going downhill when they stopped wearing jodhpurs and khaki.
LostPassword said: "Lots of countries have tried paying people to have more children, and I don't think any have succeeded in increasing the birth rate above the replacement level."
Was this because the US was "paying" people to have children? Some tax changes brought in by the George W. Bush administration were "family friendly". (Incidentaly, they made the income tax code somewhat more progressive, too.)
But I think that the temporary increase in national morale had more to do with it. (Compare Germany and France after the Franco-Prussian War for a more powerful example ofthe importance of morale.)
@paulwaugh Labour MPs (who are in the Urgent Question in big numbers) make clear how appalled they are as Suella Braverman says it's right that Israel "finishes the job".
"Disgusting" heckles one MP.
Where Suella may be making her mistake, is on what job it is that many within the Israeli Government want to do. If their job were the defeat, or even the extermination, of all armed Hamas combatants, with proportionate (it could never be zero) destruction and civilian casualties, she would have a very strong argument. It would be crazy to stop before it were done - as crazy as stopping a course of medication before an infection is dealt with.
However, it looks to me (and I'm open to being shown to be wrong) that the job isn't defeating Hamas with proportionate destruction and civilian casualities, it is destruction and civilian casualties, with proportionate defeat of Hamas. Perhaps I'm wrong, and Israel and Suella are correct.
I think what you're trying to do is to make a conclusion about someone's motivation, and that's very hard to do.
What I think we can do is to judge Israel's actions against what we think a reasonable campaign to destroy Hamas, without disproportionate civilian casualties, would look like. I think you can judge that Israel is falling short of its duty to minimise civilian casualties and to provide for civilians in areas where it has defeated Hamas.
Since Israel appears unwilling or unable to take remedial action for these failings, then I think the question of whether it is Israel's intent to cause this suffering is moot. I was willing to cut Israel a lot of slack on the assumption that, as a democracy, they would hold themselves to higher standards as they took reasonable steps to defend themselves.
I was clearly mistaken in the confidence I placed in Israel and its institutions.
So wat do you think a reasonable campaign to destroy Hamas, without disproportionate civilian casualties, would look like ?
One obvious and simple difference would be Israel providing adequate levels of humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians in areas of Gaza where Hamas have been defeated. That Israel have failed at even that obvious task, means it is not necessary to spend too much time discussing the nuances of targeting decisions.
Agree. Like all the aid convoys that we sent into Dresden and Remagen.
My grandfather was a member of the Friends Ambulance Unit who followed up quite closely behind the Allied advance on the Western Front to provide humanitarian support.
Notably he wasn't bombed by the RAF or USAF.
That's fantastic and well done him. Similar to MSF. It wasn't Haig or Asquith sending them in, though, was it.
Wrong war pal. I'm not that old.
LOL well was it Churchill who sent your gallant grandfather in to help?
Edit: I suppose peoples' views of "gallant" may differ as google tells me it was staffed by conchies.
Would this conscientious objector qualify as "gallant" in your opinion?
Desmond Thomas Doss (February 7, 1919 – March 23, 2006)[1] was an American United States Army corporal who served as a combat medic with an infantry company in World War II. Due to his Christian beliefs, he refused to carry a weapon.
He was twice awarded the Bronze Star Medal for actions on Guam and in the Philippines. Doss further distinguished himself in the Battle of Okinawa by saving an estimated 75 men, acting on his own, becoming the first of only three conscientious objectors to receive the Medal of Honor for this and other actions.
His life has been the subject of books, the 2004 documentary The Conscientious Objector, and the 2016 Oscar-winning film Hacksaw Ridge, in which he was portrayed by Andrew Garfield.
This is one of those articles that just had me WTF !!!!!
Monkey torture videos. I am genuinely lost for words
"The investigation exposed a global monkey torture network involving a private online group paying people in Indonesia to kill and torture baby monkeys on video.
The BBC reported that LeGresley used the username “The Immolator” and ran a poll for members of the group on which method of torture should be inflicted upon an infant monkey."
A certain minority of every population are complete scum. That's where you get people like Beria and Dirlewanger from.
What a grotesque story. Maybe it’s good humanity is dying out
It is? Not obviously so yet.
Birthrates are collapsing worldwide. Quite astonishingly fast in some places
Which is not the same as saying humanity is dying out. The western lifestyle and the general need and desire for women to have careers, and thus delay or choose not to have children is clearly an issue. But the best thing for the planet is fewer humans, so its not all bad. If population decline became a global thing and became an issue you can imagine that society would adapt - it would pay people to have more children (unlike the UK situation now).
Lots of countries have tried paying people to have more children, and I don't think any have succeeded in increasing the birth rate above the replacement level.
Yes, and it’s not just because of “women wising up”. There is a whole host of reasons. Young people abandoning sex, the incel phenomenon, declining sperm counts + declining testosterone, the problem of unaffordable housing - on and on
I’m in Italy where people famously love and indulge their children. Except, of course, they don’t. If they did they’d have more. Instead:
“Births in Italy dropped 3.6 per cent last year to an all-time low, highlighting the uphill battle facing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni as she seeks to reverse the rapid ageing of the Italian population.
Just 379,000 babies were born in Italy in 2023, down from the previous year’s record low of 393,000 — which Istat, the national statistical agency, had then noted was the fewest births since Italy’s unification in 1861.”
FT
Italy is dying out. And you can see it. Lots of old people, not so many young couples with kids
Theres an argument the govt shouldnt go in so hard in areas like sexual assault and "date rape". These laws whilst undoubtably well intentioned dont help when you want to increase the birth rate.
Losing the flower of one's youth by mounting an invasion of one's near neighbour isn't a terribly helpful policy either, one might argue.
@paulwaugh Labour MPs (who are in the Urgent Question in big numbers) make clear how appalled they are as Suella Braverman says it's right that Israel "finishes the job".
"Disgusting" heckles one MP.
Where Suella may be making her mistake, is on what job it is that many within the Israeli Government want to do. If their job were the defeat, or even the extermination, of all armed Hamas combatants, with proportionate (it could never be zero) destruction and civilian casualties, she would have a very strong argument. It would be crazy to stop before it were done - as crazy as stopping a course of medication before an infection is dealt with.
However, it looks to me (and I'm open to being shown to be wrong) that the job isn't defeating Hamas with proportionate destruction and civilian casualities, it is destruction and civilian casualties, with proportionate defeat of Hamas. Perhaps I'm wrong, and Israel and Suella are correct.
I think what you're trying to do is to make a conclusion about someone's motivation, and that's very hard to do.
What I think we can do is to judge Israel's actions against what we think a reasonable campaign to destroy Hamas, without disproportionate civilian casualties, would look like. I think you can judge that Israel is falling short of its duty to minimise civilian casualties and to provide for civilians in areas where it has defeated Hamas.
Since Israel appears unwilling or unable to take remedial action for these failings, then I think the question of whether it is Israel's intent to cause this suffering is moot. I was willing to cut Israel a lot of slack on the assumption that, as a democracy, they would hold themselves to higher standards as they took reasonable steps to defend themselves.
I was clearly mistaken in the confidence I placed in Israel and its institutions.
So wat do you think a reasonable campaign to destroy Hamas, without disproportionate civilian casualties, would look like ?
One obvious and simple difference would be Israel providing adequate levels of humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians in areas of Gaza where Hamas have been defeated. That Israel have failed at even that obvious task, means it is not necessary to spend too much time discussing the nuances of targeting decisions.
Agree. Like all the aid convoys that we sent into Dresden and Remagen.
My grandfather was a member of the Friends Ambulance Unit who followed up quite closely behind the Allied advance on the Western Front to provide humanitarian support.
Notably he wasn't bombed by the RAF or USAF.
That's fantastic and well done him. Similar to MSF. It wasn't Haig or Asquith sending them in, though, was it.
Wrong war pal. I'm not that old.
LOL well was it Churchill who sent your gallant grandfather in to help?
Edit: I suppose peoples' views of "gallant" may differ as google tells me it was staffed by conchies.
Would this conscientious objector qualify as "gallant" in your opinion?
Desmond Thomas Doss (February 7, 1919 – March 23, 2006)[1] was an American United States Army corporal who served as a combat medic with an infantry company in World War II. Due to his Christian beliefs, he refused to carry a weapon.
He was twice awarded the Bronze Star Medal for actions on Guam and in the Philippines. Doss further distinguished himself in the Battle of Okinawa by saving an estimated 75 men, acting on his own, becoming the first of only three conscientious objectors to receive the Medal of Honor for this and other actions.
His life has been the subject of books, the 2004 documentary The Conscientious Objector, and the 2016 Oscar-winning film Hacksaw Ridge, in which he was portrayed by Andrew Garfield.
This is one of those articles that just had me WTF !!!!!
Monkey torture videos. I am genuinely lost for words
"The investigation exposed a global monkey torture network involving a private online group paying people in Indonesia to kill and torture baby monkeys on video.
The BBC reported that LeGresley used the username “The Immolator” and ran a poll for members of the group on which method of torture should be inflicted upon an infant monkey."
A certain minority of every population are complete scum. That's where you get people like Beria and Dirlewanger from.
What a grotesque story. Maybe it’s good humanity is dying out
It is? Not obviously so yet.
Birthrates are collapsing worldwide. Quite astonishingly fast in some places
Which is not the same as saying humanity is dying out. The western lifestyle and the general need and desire for women to have careers, and thus delay or choose not to have children is clearly an issue. But the best thing for the planet is fewer humans, so its not all bad. If population decline became a global thing and became an issue you can imagine that society would adapt - it would pay people to have more children (unlike the UK situation now).
Lots of countries have tried paying people to have more children, and I don't think any have succeeded in increasing the birth rate above the replacement level.
Yes, and it’s not just because of “women wising up”. There is a whole host of reasons. Young people abandoning sex, the incel phenomenon, declining sperm counts + declining testosterone, the problem of unaffordable housing - on and on
I’m in Italy where people famously love and indulge their children. Except, of course, they don’t. If they did they’d have more. Instead:
“Births in Italy dropped 3.6 per cent last year to an all-time low, highlighting the uphill battle facing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni as she seeks to reverse the rapid ageing of the Italian population.
Just 379,000 babies were born in Italy in 2023, down from the previous year’s record low of 393,000 — which Istat, the national statistical agency, had then noted was the fewest births since Italy’s unification in 1861.”
FT
Italy is dying out. And you can see it. Lots of old people, not so many young couples with kids
380k doesn't seem that bad for a population of 60m.
Japan and Korea have a bigger issue with this. (Maybe soon an issue in China)
What? Italy has one of the lowest birthrates in the world and the collapse is accelerating. At the peak of the baby boom in the 60s they had 1m babies born in a year. So it’s now a third of that
Nor can they blame unaffordable housing. The country is depopulating so fast there is plenty of housing to be found for pennies if you are prepared to do it up
It seems to be more of a cultural malaise. A good spectator article on it here (not by my infernal stalker)
To be fair, the houses for pennies is more to do with geography - younger people don’t want to live in some medieval house in some hill village five miles up a winding mountain road - than shortage of people per se. The Italian model has always been, family owns a significant property that stays in the family and eventually gets handed down to the next generation; better off families have a smaller second home somewhere by the coast or mountains, available for the wider family and friends to use, which also gets handed down; then the younger members rent flats in cities where the jobs are, where they probably live Monday-Friday and return to the family home at weekends (with their washing), or they commute to the city from the family home.
The social change in Italy has been the shock expressed when any family has a second child. It’s seen as risky, in a society that is only a generation or two away from subsistence farming and is chronically risk averse.
BBC site current headline is "Stormy Daniels describes meeting Trump at golf tournament". It crossed my mind whether this was one of the many golf tournaments where Trump got a hole in one.
Beiing a veteran of the adult film industry, Stormy was dutiful but privately unimpressed with Trump's mashie niblick.
@paulwaugh Labour MPs (who are in the Urgent Question in big numbers) make clear how appalled they are as Suella Braverman says it's right that Israel "finishes the job".
"Disgusting" heckles one MP.
Where Suella may be making her mistake, is on what job it is that many within the Israeli Government want to do. If their job were the defeat, or even the extermination, of all armed Hamas combatants, with proportionate (it could never be zero) destruction and civilian casualties, she would have a very strong argument. It would be crazy to stop before it were done - as crazy as stopping a course of medication before an infection is dealt with.
However, it looks to me (and I'm open to being shown to be wrong) that the job isn't defeating Hamas with proportionate destruction and civilian casualities, it is destruction and civilian casualties, with proportionate defeat of Hamas. Perhaps I'm wrong, and Israel and Suella are correct.
I think what you're trying to do is to make a conclusion about someone's motivation, and that's very hard to do.
What I think we can do is to judge Israel's actions against what we think a reasonable campaign to destroy Hamas, without disproportionate civilian casualties, would look like. I think you can judge that Israel is falling short of its duty to minimise civilian casualties and to provide for civilians in areas where it has defeated Hamas.
Since Israel appears unwilling or unable to take remedial action for these failings, then I think the question of whether it is Israel's intent to cause this suffering is moot. I was willing to cut Israel a lot of slack on the assumption that, as a democracy, they would hold themselves to higher standards as they took reasonable steps to defend themselves.
I was clearly mistaken in the confidence I placed in Israel and its institutions.
So wat do you think a reasonable campaign to destroy Hamas, without disproportionate civilian casualties, would look like ?
One obvious and simple difference would be Israel providing adequate levels of humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians in areas of Gaza where Hamas have been defeated. That Israel have failed at even that obvious task, means it is not necessary to spend too much time discussing the nuances of targeting decisions.
Agree. Like all the aid convoys that we sent into Dresden and Remagen.
My grandfather was a member of the Friends Ambulance Unit who followed up quite closely behind the Allied advance on the Western Front to provide humanitarian support.
Notably he wasn't bombed by the RAF or USAF.
That's fantastic and well done him. Similar to MSF. It wasn't Haig or Asquith sending them in, though, was it.
Wrong war pal. I'm not that old.
LOL well was it Churchill who sent your gallant grandfather in to help?
Edit: I suppose peoples' views of "gallant" may differ as google tells me it was staffed by conchies.
Yes, Friends = Quakers in this context. Older PBers will remember a BBC documentary about the Home Guard in which WW1 conscientious objector Private Godfrey is discovered to have won the Military Medal for bravery.
LostPassword said: "Lots of countries have tried paying people to have more children, and I don't think any have succeeded in increasing the birth rate above the replacement level."
Was this because the US was "paying" people to have children? Some tax changes brought in by the George W. Bush administration were "family friendly". (Incidentaly, they made the income tax code somewhat more progressive, too.)
But I think that the temporary increase in national morale had more to do with it. (Compare Germany and France after the Franco-Prussian War for a more powerful example ofthe importance of morale.)
How would you explain Singapore? That's typically about as high on national morale measures as you can get; people are wealthy; the economy is growing; there are lots of pro-natal policies.
BBC site current headline is "Stormy Daniels describes meeting Trump at golf tournament". It crossed my mind whether this was one of the many golf tournaments where Trump got a hole in one.
Beiing a veteran of the adult film industry, Stormy was dutiful but privately unimpressed with Trump's mashie niblick.
Fair to say Sian Berry has made the job of holding on to Lucas' seat rather trickier. Her little stunt has gone down like she'd come into your house at Christmas and taken a dump on the turkey. Easiest Labour campaign ever. 'If you elect Sian Berry, are you confident she'll make it a week before quitting?'
It's bizarre. There was no good reason to have her on the London list at all, how many voters swing based on the names of the list candidates?
She was also the Brighton candidate before she went on the list. Not a serious party.
BBC site current headline is "Stormy Daniels describes meeting Trump at golf tournament". It crossed my mind whether this was one of the many golf tournaments where Trump got a hole in one.
Beiing a veteran of the adult film industry, Stormy was dutiful but privately unimpressed with Trump's mashie niblick.
Fair to say Sian Berry has made the job of holding on to Lucas' seat rather trickier. Her little stunt has gone down like she'd come into your house at Christmas and taken a dump on the turkey. Easiest Labour campaign ever. 'If you elect Sian Berry, are you confident she'll make it a week before quitting?'
It's bizarre. There was no good reason to have her on the London list at all, how many voters swing based on the names of the list candidates?
She was also the Brighton candidate before she went on the list. Not a serious party.
The anti-genocide protest movement is admirable but it's terribly vague in its demands. Never mind "Stop the war crimes", "Stop the genocide", "Ceasefire now", or "Free Palestine". The slogan should be "Sanction Israel Now" or similar.
That is a clear demand, made in a clear way to the authorities of whichever country the protest is taking place in. Some countries are already sanctioning Israel. Join them.
Stop weapons trade. Stop all trade. Expel ambassadors. Shut embassies. Sever diplomatic relations. Freeze bank accounts. Freeze or seize assets. Etc. Sanction them to try to stop them committing the crimes they're committing and intend to commit more of.
Never mind taking a moral stand or bearing witness. They won't listen. They'll think what a bunch of pussies. You might as well pass a resolution saying this house deplores mass murder. Bully for this house.
Do I have to take over the protest movement and give it some strategic direction or what?
"The slogan should be "Sanction Israel Now" or similar."
That won't work; as many of the same people have been saying for years that sanctions don't work.
If for example all Israeli state assets in the City and elsewhere in Britain were frozen or seized, as were all the assets of rich Israeli citizens such as Roman Abramovich and Alexander Mashkevitch, and Israeli diplomats were declared persona non grata and escorted to an airport within 24 hours, that would be a blow.
It would be far more of a blow than saying they will be very naughty boys and girls if they conquer Rafah.
I don't know about all of the "same people", but I think many of them will be aware that sanctions against Iran HAVE had an effect - and Israel has a much more internationalised economy than Iran.
Pro-Israeli organisations have put a lot of work into opposing the BDS movement. They have also put a lot of work into pumping up the "our enemies are terrorists" meme - for more than 50 years. They haven't been wasting their resources. If that work goes up in smoke, they take a hit.
I don't even particularly like Hamas. But I do respect young men and women who take up arms to defend their communities against fascist aggressors. Hamas are absolutely not a "death cult". Daesh are.
I believe that the current Israel regime's objective is to destroy Palestine. Just as Hamas's objective is to destroy Israel.
Initially one could argue - and I did sincerely believe - that Israel's objective was to destroy Hamas but their actions have proven to me that is no longer (or never was) the case.
I certainly believe it is Israel's plan to destroy all the infrastructure in Gaza, including anything that Hamas may use (tunnels, other buildings etc). Do they plan to rebuild it too? Under Israeli control? Possibly. I don't believe that they intend to destroy Palestine as such. I think its pertinent to recall what was going on before Oct 7th 2023 - definite rapprochement of Israel and many of its neighbours. I think Israel wants peace and sees Hamas in Gaza as the biggest issue.
I wish that were true, but the evidence from the West Bank has been the creeping annexation of Palestinian land and the replacement with Israel Settlers. It's a slow moving invasion, bit it's an invasion nonetheless.
Yes I agree. In fact I’d say the process is speeding up - Israel’s clear intention is to make life so intolerable in Gaza (snd maybe the West Bank too) that eventually all the Palestinians will leave
Israel wants defensible borders - with Egypt to the south (no Gaza Strip) and the Jordan to the east. The golan heights protect them from Syria and they can cope with one hostile border facing Lebanon
It makes strategic sense. It also means ethnic cleansing of 3m people
It will all, however, be academic if Iran gets a bomb they can drop on tel aviv and the motivation to do so
There are 14 million people between the river and the sea, and they split almost equally between Jews and Muslims.
How do we ensure that everyone in that are - Muslim or Jew - gets to live a life without fear of being invaded and raped, their land confiscated, or to have rockets falling upon them.
And I think it's simplistic to say "oh, we just need to defeat Hamas". The West Bank hasn't been run by Hamas. And it didn't stop Israel's slow motion invasion.
If Israel does expel the vast majority of Muslims to Egypt, to Jordan and to Syria, then millions will become homeless, and hundreds of thousands will die.
That won't eliminate anti-Jewish feeling, it will destabilize states like Egypt that have - by and large - tried to work with Israel. If those governments fall, they won't be replaced by pro-Israel, pro-Western ones. On the contrary, they will be full of people with burning hatred of Israel, and a feeling that "how could it be any worse".
@Luckyguy1983 got it right. Israel's desire to avoid another holocaust is making one ever more likely.
Yes it was an underperformance by Reform in the locals, both overall in voteshare relative to their national polling now and in seats, gaining fewer councillors than UKIP got in 2014. They also came a poor 5th in the London Mayoral election and failed to gain any London Assembly constituencies although they got 1 in on the list.
The Tories will also gain comfort from the fact they managed to beat Reform in the Blackpool South by election, despite Blackpool being almost 70% Leave. With Reform now having lost momentum in the last big electoral tests before polling day, Rishi will hope to squeeze them back before the general election
@paulwaugh Labour MPs (who are in the Urgent Question in big numbers) make clear how appalled they are as Suella Braverman says it's right that Israel "finishes the job".
"Disgusting" heckles one MP.
Where Suella may be making her mistake, is on what job it is that many within the Israeli Government want to do. If their job were the defeat, or even the extermination, of all armed Hamas combatants, with proportionate (it could never be zero) destruction and civilian casualties, she would have a very strong argument. It would be crazy to stop before it were done - as crazy as stopping a course of medication before an infection is dealt with.
However, it looks to me (and I'm open to being shown to be wrong) that the job isn't defeating Hamas with proportionate destruction and civilian casualities, it is destruction and civilian casualties, with proportionate defeat of Hamas. Perhaps I'm wrong, and Israel and Suella are correct.
I think what you're trying to do is to make a conclusion about someone's motivation, and that's very hard to do.
What I think we can do is to judge Israel's actions against what we think a reasonable campaign to destroy Hamas, without disproportionate civilian casualties, would look like. I think you can judge that Israel is falling short of its duty to minimise civilian casualties and to provide for civilians in areas where it has defeated Hamas.
Since Israel appears unwilling or unable to take remedial action for these failings, then I think the question of whether it is Israel's intent to cause this suffering is moot. I was willing to cut Israel a lot of slack on the assumption that, as a democracy, they would hold themselves to higher standards as they took reasonable steps to defend themselves.
I was clearly mistaken in the confidence I placed in Israel and its institutions.
So wat do you think a reasonable campaign to destroy Hamas, without disproportionate civilian casualties, would look like ?
One obvious and simple difference would be Israel providing adequate levels of humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians in areas of Gaza where Hamas have been defeated. That Israel have failed at even that obvious task, means it is not necessary to spend too much time discussing the nuances of targeting decisions.
Agree. Like all the aid convoys that we sent into Dresden and Remagen.
My grandfather was a member of the Friends Ambulance Unit who followed up quite closely behind the Allied advance on the Western Front to provide humanitarian support.
Notably he wasn't bombed by the RAF or USAF.
That's fantastic and well done him. Similar to MSF. It wasn't Haig or Asquith sending them in, though, was it.
Wrong war pal. I'm not that old.
LOL well was it Churchill who sent your gallant grandfather in to help?
Edit: I suppose peoples' views of "gallant" may differ as google tells me it was staffed by conchies.
Yes, Friends = Quakers in this context. Older PBers will remember a BBC documentary about the Home Guard in which WW1 conscientious objector Private Godfrey is discovered to have won the Military Medal for bravery.
The Society of Friends by its nature had quite a few objectors, though many who served as per normal.
The impression I've got from reading through several Quaker memoirs of the WW2 years (for other reasons) was that the SoF were pretty clued up in terms of doing things like field ambulance units, and therefore in keeping a degree of credibility with the Government when it came to speaking for their members at CO tribunals.
Quite a lot of COs volunteered for bomb disposal units during the air raids on the UK, too. Very useful addition to the stretched manpower at the time.
This is one of those articles that just had me WTF !!!!!
Monkey torture videos. I am genuinely lost for words
"The investigation exposed a global monkey torture network involving a private online group paying people in Indonesia to kill and torture baby monkeys on video.
The BBC reported that LeGresley used the username “The Immolator” and ran a poll for members of the group on which method of torture should be inflicted upon an infant monkey."
A certain minority of every population are complete scum. That's where you get people like Beria and Dirlewanger from.
What a grotesque story. Maybe it’s good humanity is dying out
It is? Not obviously so yet.
Birthrates are collapsing worldwide. Quite astonishingly fast in some places
Which is not the same as saying humanity is dying out. The western lifestyle and the general need and desire for women to have careers, and thus delay or choose not to have children is clearly an issue. But the best thing for the planet is fewer humans, so its not all bad. If population decline became a global thing and became an issue you can imagine that society would adapt - it would pay people to have more children (unlike the UK situation now).
Lots of countries have tried paying people to have more children, and I don't think any have succeeded in increasing the birth rate above the replacement level.
Yes, and it’s not just because of “women wising up”. There is a whole host of reasons. Young people abandoning sex, the incel phenomenon, declining sperm counts + declining testosterone, the problem of unaffordable housing - on and on
I’m in Italy where people famously love and indulge their children. Except, of course, they don’t. If they did they’d have more. Instead:
“Births in Italy dropped 3.6 per cent last year to an all-time low, highlighting the uphill battle facing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni as she seeks to reverse the rapid ageing of the Italian population.
Just 379,000 babies were born in Italy in 2023, down from the previous year’s record low of 393,000 — which Istat, the national statistical agency, had then noted was the fewest births since Italy’s unification in 1861.”
FT
Italy is dying out. And you can see it. Lots of old people, not so many young couples with kids
380k doesn't seem that bad for a population of 60m.
Japan and Korea have a bigger issue with this. (Maybe soon an issue in China)
What? Italy has one of the lowest birthrates in the world and the collapse is accelerating. At the peak of the baby boom in the 60s they had 1m babies born in a year. So it’s now a third of that
Nor can they blame unaffordable housing. The country is depopulating so fast there is plenty of housing to be found for pennies if you are prepared to do it up
It seems to be more of a cultural malaise. A good spectator article on it here (not by my infernal stalker)
To be fair, the houses for pennies is more to do with geography - younger people don’t want to live in some medieval house in some hill village five miles up a winding mountain road - than shortage of people per se. The Italian model has always been, family owns a significant property that stays in the family and eventually gets handed down to the next generation; better off families have a smaller second home somewhere by the coast or mountains, available for the wider family and friends to use, which also gets handed down; then the younger members rent flats in cities where the jobs are, where they probably live Monday-Friday and return to the family home at weekends (with their washing), or they commute to the city from the family home.
The social change in Italy has been the shock expressed when any family has a second child. It’s seen as risky, in a society that is only a generation or two away from subsistence farming and is chronically risk averse.
Interesting. I’m reading David Gilmour’s “The Pursuit of Italy” while I’m here. So far it’s good not great but it does make some compelling observations even so
Eg the whole introduction explains that Italy is actually and essentially a poor country in terms of fertility and topography. So many mountains. Rivers non navigable. Mediocre soils. Prone to earthquakes. Dangerous volcanoes. And a position that makes it easy to invade by sea from all sides
It was the “accident” of Rome that made Italy appear naturally important and wealthy
On the other hand I am sitting here in a square in Vieste watching the passeggiata and it is still very charming (albeit old). It will be a damn shame if it disappears
I'd take issue with saying the 'history never repeats' - I though the saying was that "history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce".
See the middle east right now. History repeating on an endless loop of intolerance and bloodshed.
Fair point. I was thinking of the 'History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes' line.
History never repeats itself but historians do, endlessly. One for @ydoethur ...
Yes it was an underperformance by Reform in the locals, both overall in voteshare relative to their national polling now and in seats, gaining fewer councillors than UKIP got in 2014. They also came a poor 5th in the London Mayoral election and failed to gain any London Assembly constituencies although they got 1 in on the list.
The Tories will also gain comfort from the fact they managed to beat Reform in the Blackpool South by election, despite Blackpool being almost 70% Leave. With Reform now having lost momentum in the last big electoral tests before polling day, Rishi will hope to squeeze them back before the general election
Good evening
Blackpool was within a whisker of Reform beating the conservatives but in view of Farage's stated interest in the US election I just do not see him becoming pro active for them at the election and I doubt they will gain more than 5 % - 6% of the vote
My guess would be that reform resonates a bit less than ukip because we already had Brexit... I also think the branding is off. Reform is a think-tank/technocratic kind of word... they should have called themselves something else imo.
rcs1000 asked: "How would you explain Singapore? That's typically about as high on national morale measures as you can get; people are wealthy; the economy is growing; there are lots of pro-natal policies.
And yet the TFR is 1.1."
Fair question. And one to which Lee Kuan Yew never found an answer, as smart as he was. Two thoughts and a cartoon for you, and then I have to get back to doing my chores: In the US fertility rates are higher in rural areas than suburbs, and higher in suburbs than in central cities. In Japan, the highest fertility rate is found in the Okinawa prefecture, the most, or one of the most, rural.
The cartoon: A young woman is saying to a young man that she too wants to have children, "just not in this apartment".
This is one of those articles that just had me WTF !!!!!
Monkey torture videos. I am genuinely lost for words
"The investigation exposed a global monkey torture network involving a private online group paying people in Indonesia to kill and torture baby monkeys on video.
The BBC reported that LeGresley used the username “The Immolator” and ran a poll for members of the group on which method of torture should be inflicted upon an infant monkey."
A certain minority of every population are complete scum. That's where you get people like Beria and Dirlewanger from.
What a grotesque story. Maybe it’s good humanity is dying out
It is? Not obviously so yet.
Birthrates are collapsing worldwide. Quite astonishingly fast in some places
Which is not the same as saying humanity is dying out. The western lifestyle and the general need and desire for women to have careers, and thus delay or choose not to have children is clearly an issue. But the best thing for the planet is fewer humans, so its not all bad. If population decline became a global thing and became an issue you can imagine that society would adapt - it would pay people to have more children (unlike the UK situation now).
Lots of countries have tried paying people to have more children, and I don't think any have succeeded in increasing the birth rate above the replacement level.
Yes, and it’s not just because of “women wising up”. There is a whole host of reasons. Young people abandoning sex, the incel phenomenon, declining sperm counts + declining testosterone, the problem of unaffordable housing - on and on
I’m in Italy where people famously love and indulge their children. Except, of course, they don’t. If they did they’d have more. Instead:
“Births in Italy dropped 3.6 per cent last year to an all-time low, highlighting the uphill battle facing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni as she seeks to reverse the rapid ageing of the Italian population.
Just 379,000 babies were born in Italy in 2023, down from the previous year’s record low of 393,000 — which Istat, the national statistical agency, had then noted was the fewest births since Italy’s unification in 1861.”
FT
Italy is dying out. And you can see it. Lots of old people, not so many young couples with kids
380k doesn't seem that bad for a population of 60m.
Japan and Korea have a bigger issue with this. (Maybe soon an issue in China)
What? Italy has one of the lowest birthrates in the world and the collapse is accelerating. At the peak of the baby boom in the 60s they had 1m babies born in a year. So it’s now a third of that
Nor can they blame unaffordable housing. The country is depopulating so fast there is plenty of housing to be found for pennies if you are prepared to do it up
It seems to be more of a cultural malaise. A good spectator article on it here (not by my infernal stalker)
To be fair, the houses for pennies is more to do with geography - younger people don’t want to live in some medieval house in some hill village five miles up a winding mountain road - than shortage of people per se. The Italian model has always been, family owns a significant property that stays in the family and eventually gets handed down to the next generation; better off families have a smaller second home somewhere by the coast or mountains, available for the wider family and friends to use, which also gets handed down; then the younger members rent flats in cities where the jobs are, where they probably live Monday-Friday and return to the family home at weekends (with their washing), or they commute to the city from the family home.
The social change in Italy has been the shock expressed when any family has a second child. It’s seen as risky, in a society that is only a generation or two away from subsistence farming and is chronically risk averse.
Interesting. I’m reading David Gilmour’s “The Pursuit of Italy” while I’m here. So far it’s good not great but it does make some compelling observations even so
Eg the whole introduction explains that Italy is actually and essentially a poor country in terms of fertility and topography. So many mountains. Rivers non navigable. Mediocre soils. Prone to earthquakes. Dangerous volcanoes. And a position that makes it easy to invade by sea from all sides
It was the “accident” of Rome that made Italy appear naturally important and wealthy
On the other hand I am sitting here in a square in Vieste watching the passeggiata and it is still very charming (albeit old). It will be a damn shame if it disappears
Many of the ideas that have shaped societal development, whether artistic, political or philosophical, originated in Italy. Even today, discourse and the media are focused on the theoretical rather than the practical, to a degree that would frustrate Brits and infuriate Americans. Just a few days ago I was standing outside the office of the social democratic candidate for Spello, campaigning for re-election for his third term, and his five-point prospectus under the heading “together for Spello” was all entirely theoretical; there wasn’t a single item that a British or American voter would recognise as a concrete promise that something specific might come about if he is re-elected. Most of us would dismiss this as simply vacuous waffle. One assumes that Italian voters like that kind of stuff.
According to the official, there are four aspects of the proposal that Hamas has agreed to which Israel takes issue with:
The document refers to the end of the war, described as a permanent ceasefire, according to the official
They believe it would see female soldiers released too late in the process
They say the document references a contingency that if 33 living hostages cannot be found for the first phase, then bodies can be substituted instead, which the Israeli official said is unacceptable
Israel believes it would obliged to release an agreed number of prisoners from a list that Hamas will provide, with no power of veto for any individual case
"They say the document references a contingency that if 33 living hostages cannot be found for the first phase, then bodies can be substituted instead, which the Israeli official said is unacceptable" is rather worrying. Do Hamas not know if they are dead or alive? Or are they intending to kill them as a last gasp of revenge, sanctioned by the option of providing bodies?
They ar enutjobs, Israel should tell them to do one.
rcs1000 asked: "How would you explain Singapore? That's typically about as high on national morale measures as you can get; people are wealthy; the economy is growing; there are lots of pro-natal policies.
And yet the TFR is 1.1."
Fair question. And one to which Lee Kuan Yew never found an answer, as smart as he was. Two thoughts and a cartoon for you, and then I have to get back to doing my chores: In the US fertility rates are higher in rural areas than suburbs, and higher in suburbs than in central cities. In Japan, the highest fertility rate is found in the Okinawa prefecture, the most, or one of the most, rural.
The cartoon: A young woman is saying to a young man that she too wants to have children, "just not in this apartment".
I'm sure that's part of it.
But then again, that would suggest that countries with higher proportions of people living in houses would be more likely to have children. It would also suggest that rural areas would have more population growth than urban areas.
In Japan, the opposite is happening. The countryside is depopulating, while Tokyo - one of the world's largest cities - continues to grow.
And the Singaporean government is not unaware of this problem. Their Housing Development Board has made a huge effort to provide affordable housing for parents: have a kid, and a whole bunch of subsidized housing opens up to you.
I would also point out that France's TFR is well above the US, Germany and the UK. It's the only place in the world where college educated women have TFRs above replacement level. So they must be doing something right. (Not M Macron himself of course, but that's another story.)
My guess would be that reform resonates a bit less than ukip because we already had Brexit... I also think the branding is off. Reform is a think-tank/technocratic kind of word... they should have called themselves something else imo.
On the other hand. If you're pissed off about how your Party is governing what better word to describe what you want? It also leaves the question of what kind of reform open.
My guess would be that reform resonates a bit less than ukip because we already had Brexit... I also think the branding is off. Reform is a think-tank/technocratic kind of word... they should have called themselves something else imo.
On the other hand. If you're pissed off about how your Party is governing what better word to describe what you want? It also leaves the question of what kind of reform open.
I would have said "change" or the "people's party" would be better. People don't say they want reform, they say they want change.
My guess would be that reform resonates a bit less than ukip because we already had Brexit... I also think the branding is off. Reform is a think-tank/technocratic kind of word... they should have called themselves something else imo.
Hainault sword killing: Daniel Anjorin was attacked from behind, court hears ... Judge Mark Lucraft KC set a timetable for the case with a plea hearing on 23 July and a provisional three-week trial at the Old Bailey from 3 February. ... ... then allegedly attacked Daniel from behind, slashing his neck and stabbing him in the chest as he lay on the ground.
That's a delay of nine months for an open-and-shut murder case with the Broadmoor-bound defendant already in custody. If only the PM were a former DPP who could sort out the criminal justice system.
My guess would be that reform resonates a bit less than ukip because we already had Brexit... I also think the branding is off. Reform is a think-tank/technocratic kind of word... they should have called themselves something else imo.
Is it a deliberate echo of the Canadian Reform party that was responsible for wiping out the Conservatives in 1993?
rcs1000 asked: "How would you explain Singapore? That's typically about as high on national morale measures as you can get; people are wealthy; the economy is growing; there are lots of pro-natal policies.
And yet the TFR is 1.1."
Fair question. And one to which Lee Kuan Yew never found an answer, as smart as he was. Two thoughts and a cartoon for you, and then I have to get back to doing my chores: In the US fertility rates are higher in rural areas than suburbs, and higher in suburbs than in central cities. In Japan, the highest fertility rate is found in the Okinawa prefecture, the most, or one of the most, rural.
The cartoon: A young woman is saying to a young man that she too wants to have children, "just not in this apartment".
I'm sure that's part of it.
But then again, that would suggest that countries with higher proportions of people living in houses would be more likely to have children. It would also suggest that rural areas would have more population growth than urban areas.
In Japan, the opposite is happening. The countryside is depopulating, while Tokyo - one of the world's largest cities - continues to grow.
And the Singaporean government is not unaware of this problem. Their Housing Development Board has made a huge effort to provide affordable housing for parents: have a kid, and a whole bunch of subsidized housing opens up to you.
I would also point out that France's TFR is well above the US, Germany and the UK. It's the only place in the world where college educated women have TFRs above replacement level. So they must be doing something right. (Not M Macron himself of course, but that's another story.)
France provides substantial tax breaks for people with families, IIRC.
🚨New Voting Intention🚨 Labour lead narrows to seventeen points in our latest results. Con 26% (+2) Lab 43% (-1) Lib Dem 10% (+2) Reform 10% (-2) SNP 3% (-) Green 5% (-) Other 2% (-1) Fieldwork: 3rd-7th May 2024
rcs1000 asked: "How would you explain Singapore? That's typically about as high on national morale measures as you can get; people are wealthy; the economy is growing; there are lots of pro-natal policies.
And yet the TFR is 1.1."
Fair question. And one to which Lee Kuan Yew never found an answer, as smart as he was. Two thoughts and a cartoon for you, and then I have to get back to doing my chores: In the US fertility rates are higher in rural areas than suburbs, and higher in suburbs than in central cities. In Japan, the highest fertility rate is found in the Okinawa prefecture, the most, or one of the most, rural.
The cartoon: A young woman is saying to a young man that she too wants to have children, "just not in this apartment".
I'm sure that's part of it.
But then again, that would suggest that countries with higher proportions of people living in houses would be more likely to have children. It would also suggest that rural areas would have more population growth than urban areas.
In Japan, the opposite is happening. The countryside is depopulating, while Tokyo - one of the world's largest cities - continues to grow.
And the Singaporean government is not unaware of this problem. Their Housing Development Board has made a huge effort to provide affordable housing for parents: have a kid, and a whole bunch of subsidized housing opens up to you.
I would also point out that France's TFR is well above the US, Germany and the UK. It's the only place in the world where college educated women have TFRs above replacement level. So they must be doing something right. (Not M Macron himself of course, but that's another story.)
France provides substantial tax breaks for people with families, IIRC.
Aiui France allows families to pool their tax allowances, whereas here if your daughter-and-heir stays in bed all day wetting her nappy, her £12,570 allowance is unused.
@paulwaugh Labour MPs (who are in the Urgent Question in big numbers) make clear how appalled they are as Suella Braverman says it's right that Israel "finishes the job".
"Disgusting" heckles one MP.
Where Suella may be making her mistake, is on what job it is that many within the Israeli Government want to do. If their job were the defeat, or even the extermination, of all armed Hamas combatants, with proportionate (it could never be zero) destruction and civilian casualties, she would have a very strong argument. It would be crazy to stop before it were done - as crazy as stopping a course of medication before an infection is dealt with.
However, it looks to me (and I'm open to being shown to be wrong) that the job isn't defeating Hamas with proportionate destruction and civilian casualities, it is destruction and civilian casualties, with proportionate defeat of Hamas. Perhaps I'm wrong, and Israel and Suella are correct.
I think what you're trying to do is to make a conclusion about someone's motivation, and that's very hard to do.
What I think we can do is to judge Israel's actions against what we think a reasonable campaign to destroy Hamas, without disproportionate civilian casualties, would look like. I think you can judge that Israel is falling short of its duty to minimise civilian casualties and to provide for civilians in areas where it has defeated Hamas.
Since Israel appears unwilling or unable to take remedial action for these failings, then I think the question of whether it is Israel's intent to cause this suffering is moot. I was willing to cut Israel a lot of slack on the assumption that, as a democracy, they would hold themselves to higher standards as they took reasonable steps to defend themselves.
I was clearly mistaken in the confidence I placed in Israel and its institutions.
So wat do you think a reasonable campaign to destroy Hamas, without disproportionate civilian casualties, would look like ?
One obvious and simple difference would be Israel providing adequate levels of humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians in areas of Gaza where Hamas have been defeated. That Israel have failed at even that obvious task, means it is not necessary to spend too much time discussing the nuances of targeting decisions.
Agree. Like all the aid convoys that we sent into Dresden and Remagen.
My grandfather was a member of the Friends Ambulance Unit who followed up quite closely behind the Allied advance on the Western Front to provide humanitarian support.
Notably he wasn't bombed by the RAF or USAF.
That's fantastic and well done him. Similar to MSF. It wasn't Haig or Asquith sending them in, though, was it.
Wrong war pal. I'm not that old.
LOL well was it Churchill who sent your gallant grandfather in to help?
Edit: I suppose peoples' views of "gallant" may differ as google tells me it was staffed by conchies.
Yes, Friends = Quakers in this context. Older PBers will remember a BBC documentary about the Home Guard in which WW1 conscientious objector Private Godfrey is discovered to have won the Military Medal for bravery.
The Society of Friends by its nature had quite a few objectors, though many who served as per normal.
The impression I've got from reading through several Quaker memoirs of the WW2 years (for other reasons) was that the SoF were pretty clued up in terms of doing things like field ambulance units, and therefore in keeping a degree of credibility with the Government when it came to speaking for their members at CO tribunals.
Quite a lot of COs volunteered for bomb disposal units during the air raids on the UK, too. Very useful addition to the stretched manpower at the time.
Dropping bombs, no way. Disarming them? Fine and dandy.
rcs1000 asked: "How would you explain Singapore? That's typically about as high on national morale measures as you can get; people are wealthy; the economy is growing; there are lots of pro-natal policies.
And yet the TFR is 1.1."
Fair question. And one to which Lee Kuan Yew never found an answer, as smart as he was. Two thoughts and a cartoon for you, and then I have to get back to doing my chores: In the US fertility rates are higher in rural areas than suburbs, and higher in suburbs than in central cities. In Japan, the highest fertility rate is found in the Okinawa prefecture, the most, or one of the most, rural.
The cartoon: A young woman is saying to a young man that she too wants to have children, "just not in this apartment".
I'm sure that's part of it.
But then again, that would suggest that countries with higher proportions of people living in houses would be more likely to have children. It would also suggest that rural areas would have more population growth than urban areas.
In Japan, the opposite is happening. The countryside is depopulating, while Tokyo - one of the world's largest cities - continues to grow.
And the Singaporean government is not unaware of this problem. Their Housing Development Board has made a huge effort to provide affordable housing for parents: have a kid, and a whole bunch of subsidized housing opens up to you.
I would also point out that France's TFR is well above the US, Germany and the UK. It's the only place in the world where college educated women have TFRs above replacement level. So they must be doing something right. (Not M Macron himself of course, but that's another story.)
France provides substantial tax breaks for people with families, IIRC.
Yep the allowance goes
Single person 1 allowance Married 2 allowances first child +0.5 second child +0.5 then +1 for every additional child above 2.
rcs1000 asked: "How would you explain Singapore? That's typically about as high on national morale measures as you can get; people are wealthy; the economy is growing; there are lots of pro-natal policies.
And yet the TFR is 1.1."
Fair question. And one to which Lee Kuan Yew never found an answer, as smart as he was. Two thoughts and a cartoon for you, and then I have to get back to doing my chores: In the US fertility rates are higher in rural areas than suburbs, and higher in suburbs than in central cities. In Japan, the highest fertility rate is found in the Okinawa prefecture, the most, or one of the most, rural.
The cartoon: A young woman is saying to a young man that she too wants to have children, "just not in this apartment".
I'm sure that's part of it.
But then again, that would suggest that countries with higher proportions of people living in houses would be more likely to have children. It would also suggest that rural areas would have more population growth than urban areas.
In Japan, the opposite is happening. The countryside is depopulating, while Tokyo - one of the world's largest cities - continues to grow.
And the Singaporean government is not unaware of this problem. Their Housing Development Board has made a huge effort to provide affordable housing for parents: have a kid, and a whole bunch of subsidized housing opens up to you.
I would also point out that France's TFR is well above the US, Germany and the UK. It's the only place in the world where college educated women have TFRs above replacement level. So they must be doing something right. (Not M Macron himself of course, but that's another story.)
France provides substantial tax breaks for people with families, IIRC.
Yes, I fully approve of the French tax system (although it is less generous to high earners with kids than it used to be). Specifically, it means that someone earning EUR60,000 a year with a stay at home wife, and two kids, essentially pays zero tax. By comparison, a single man with no kids, will have handed over about EUR24,000 in taxes. It makes parenting dramatically more affordable than it would otherwise be.
The issue is that it's very hard* to implement such a measure if it doesn't already exist, because it creates an enormous number of losers.
My guess would be that reform resonates a bit less than ukip because we already had Brexit... I also think the branding is off. Reform is a think-tank/technocratic kind of word... they should have called themselves something else imo.
On the other hand. If you're pissed off about how your Party is governing what better word to describe what you want? It also leaves the question of what kind of reform open.
I would have said "change" or the "people's party" would be better. People don't say they want reform, they say they want change.
Reforms biggest problem is that they have no unifying idea, like Brexit. I am not convinced that Farage coming back would boost them much, though possibly he would outpoll a man dressed as a dolphin this time around.
My guess would be that reform resonates a bit less than ukip because we already had Brexit... I also think the branding is off. Reform is a think-tank/technocratic kind of word... they should have called themselves something else imo.
On the other hand. If you're pissed off about how your Party is governing what better word to describe what you want? It also leaves the question of what kind of reform open.
I would have said "change" or the "people's party" would be better. People don't say they want reform, they say they want change.
ChangeUK was already taken, of course. RIP to their political careers.
On a sidenote this reminds me of an interesting bit of Farage trivia. He, along with Alan Sked and the other founders of UKIP, didn't really like the name 'UKIP' since they thought the full 'United Kingdom Independence Party' was too wordy. They had wanted to name themselves 'The British Independence Party', or 'BIP', but (wisely) decided against it on the grounds it was too similar to the BNP.
@paulwaugh Labour MPs (who are in the Urgent Question in big numbers) make clear how appalled they are as Suella Braverman says it's right that Israel "finishes the job".
"Disgusting" heckles one MP.
Where Suella may be making her mistake, is on what job it is that many within the Israeli Government want to do. If their job were the defeat, or even the extermination, of all armed Hamas combatants, with proportionate (it could never be zero) destruction and civilian casualties, she would have a very strong argument. It would be crazy to stop before it were done - as crazy as stopping a course of medication before an infection is dealt with.
However, it looks to me (and I'm open to being shown to be wrong) that the job isn't defeating Hamas with proportionate destruction and civilian casualities, it is destruction and civilian casualties, with proportionate defeat of Hamas. Perhaps I'm wrong, and Israel and Suella are correct.
I think what you're trying to do is to make a conclusion about someone's motivation, and that's very hard to do.
What I think we can do is to judge Israel's actions against what we think a reasonable campaign to destroy Hamas, without disproportionate civilian casualties, would look like. I think you can judge that Israel is falling short of its duty to minimise civilian casualties and to provide for civilians in areas where it has defeated Hamas.
Since Israel appears unwilling or unable to take remedial action for these failings, then I think the question of whether it is Israel's intent to cause this suffering is moot. I was willing to cut Israel a lot of slack on the assumption that, as a democracy, they would hold themselves to higher standards as they took reasonable steps to defend themselves.
I was clearly mistaken in the confidence I placed in Israel and its institutions.
So wat do you think a reasonable campaign to destroy Hamas, without disproportionate civilian casualties, would look like ?
One obvious and simple difference would be Israel providing adequate levels of humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians in areas of Gaza where Hamas have been defeated. That Israel have failed at even that obvious task, means it is not necessary to spend too much time discussing the nuances of targeting decisions.
Agree. Like all the aid convoys that we sent into Dresden and Remagen.
My grandfather was a member of the Friends Ambulance Unit who followed up quite closely behind the Allied advance on the Western Front to provide humanitarian support.
Notably he wasn't bombed by the RAF or USAF.
That's fantastic and well done him. Similar to MSF. It wasn't Haig or Asquith sending them in, though, was it.
Wrong war pal. I'm not that old.
LOL well was it Churchill who sent your gallant grandfather in to help?
Edit: I suppose peoples' views of "gallant" may differ as google tells me it was staffed by conchies.
Yes, Friends = Quakers in this context. Older PBers will remember a BBC documentary about the Home Guard in which WW1 conscientious objector Private Godfrey is discovered to have won the Military Medal for bravery.
The Society of Friends by its nature had quite a few objectors, though many who served as per normal.
The impression I've got from reading through several Quaker memoirs of the WW2 years (for other reasons) was that the SoF were pretty clued up in terms of doing things like field ambulance units, and therefore in keeping a degree of credibility with the Government when it came to speaking for their members at CO tribunals.
Quite a lot of COs volunteered for bomb disposal units during the air raids on the UK, too. Very useful addition to the stretched manpower at the time.
My wife's uncle was a CO in WWII, for religious reasons. He worked in the field ambulances. He used to say which was braver, landing on a beach with, or without, a gun? Spent a lot of the war giving last cigarettes to fatally-wounded young men. Got no medals, just (unrecognised then) PTSD.
Comments
I’m in Italy where people famously love and indulge their children. Except, of course, they don’t. If they did they’d have more. Instead:
“Births in Italy dropped 3.6 per cent last year to an all-time low, highlighting the uphill battle facing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni as she seeks to reverse the rapid ageing of the Italian population.
Just 379,000 babies were born in Italy in 2023, down from the previous year’s record low of 393,000 — which Istat, the national statistical agency, had then noted was the fewest births since Italy’s unification in 1861.”
FT
Italy is dying out. And you can see it. Lots of old people, not so many young couples with kids
Notably he wasn't bombed by the RAF or USAF.
Israel wants defensible borders - with Egypt to the south (no Gaza Strip) and the Jordan to the east. The golan heights protect them from Syria and they can cope with one hostile border facing Lebanon
It makes strategic sense. It also means ethnic cleansing of 3m people
It will all, however, be academic if Iran gets a bomb they can drop on tel aviv and the motivation to do so
There's an argument to be made that the creation of the state of Israel is the second worst thing to happen to Jews. Something set up as a refuge with idealism and hope has become a militarised nationalistic ethno state that is hated by its neighbours, that tyrannises and kills their co-habitees of the land in the name of security and apes their Nazi tormentors. It's not going well to put it mildly.
Do you deny that Israel were seeking Rapprochment in the region before the attacks? Why do you think Hamas did what it did?
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
Japan and Korea have a bigger issue with this. (Maybe soon an issue in China)
It crossed my mind whether this was one of the many golf tournaments where Trump got a hole in one.
But they will keep chasing the ReFUK voter. Even though there aren't any apparently.
Until Italy is empty.
Nor can they blame unaffordable housing. The country is depopulating so fast there is plenty of housing to be found for pennies if you are prepared to do it up
It seems to be more of a cultural malaise. A good spectator article on it here (not by my infernal stalker)
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/low-birth-rates-are-a-threat-to-humanity/
Who knows. But it is reasonable to think that the so-called "militarised nationalistic ethno state that is hated by its neighbours, that tyrannises and kills their co-habitees of the land" would not have emerged.
Or look more recently at, oh I don't know, Gaza. They handed it "back" to the Palestinians. And began to work with the government there. Until some democracy-loving peaceniks took over and, as I recounted earlier today, threw their erstwhile interlocutors off buildings and towed them behind landies.
Now, if you think that the creation of Israel was an egregious act and the Arabs were entitled to try to exterminate it then fair enough. As for "ethno state" it doesn't sound great on paper but as we see with Pakistan, it isn't the only such state. Why some even think that the UK is an ethno state, while certainly accommodating those who don't believe in JC.
Edit: I suppose peoples' views of "gallant" may differ as google tells me it was staffed by conchies.
Glad the government sorted that one out.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/articles/ceq3pw038g8o
The Conservatives, from where he draws most of his support (for whatever vehicle he's heading at the time), are toast.
Neither Sunak nor Starmer have any charisma. A Farage-led campaign would monopolise the headlines, day in, day out.
His beloved Brexit has been betrayed™. "Woke nonsense" is in the ascendant.
And, put bluntly, there'll be fewer of his target demographic around to vote in four years' time.
If Farage wants any semblance of a political comeback then GE2024 is absolutely the time to do it. But maybe he doesn't. He might be plenty happy enough trousering the cheques from GB News, the Telegraph and whatever Trumpian acolytes will book him as a speaker.
Never mind "Stop the war crimes", "Stop the genocide", "Ceasefire now", or "Free Palestine".
The slogan should be "Sanction Israel Now" or similar.
That is a clear demand, made in a clear way to the authorities of whichever country the protest is taking place in. Some countries are already sanctioning Israel. Join them.
Stop weapons trade. Stop all trade. Expel ambassadors. Shut embassies. Sever diplomatic relations. Freeze bank accounts. Freeze or seize assets. Etc. Sanction them to try to stop them committing the crimes they're committing and intend to commit more of.
Never mind taking a moral stand or bearing witness. They won't listen. They'll think what a bunch of pussies. You might as well pass a resolution saying this house deplores mass murder. Bully for this house.
Do I have to take over the protest movement and give it some strategic direction or what?
Easiest Labour campaign ever. 'If you elect Sian Berry, are you confident she'll make it a week before quitting?'
What would you do if you were Palestinian? "Well I'm a [Liberal Democrat|One-Nation Tory|Moderate Socialist] actually"? "I'm rather keen on the D'Hondt Method, but I went to Cambridge and I'm really pragmatic and therefore not so keen on expecting too much from it"?
Who will defend the Palestinians in Gaza if Hamas doesn't? Missionaries protected by western ex-special forces? Lawyers embedded with the Israel Aggression Forces maybe?
That won't work; as many of the same people have been saying for years that sanctions don't work.
In 2006 and 2007, the United States had birth rates above TFR, barely https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States
This was the first time that had happened since 1971, though some of the intervening years were close.
Was this because the US was "paying" people to have children? Some tax changes brought in by the George W. Bush administration were "family friendly". (Incidentaly, they made the income tax code somewhat more progressive, too.)
But I think that the temporary increase in national morale had more to do with it. (Compare Germany and France after the Franco-Prussian War for a more powerful example ofthe importance of morale.)
Desmond Thomas Doss (February 7, 1919 – March 23, 2006)[1] was an American United States Army corporal who served as a combat medic with an infantry company in World War II. Due to his Christian beliefs, he refused to carry a weapon.
He was twice awarded the Bronze Star Medal for actions on Guam and in the Philippines. Doss further distinguished himself in the Battle of Okinawa by saving an estimated 75 men, acting on his own, becoming the first of only three conscientious objectors to receive the Medal of Honor for this and other actions.
His life has been the subject of books, the 2004 documentary The Conscientious Objector, and the 2016 Oscar-winning film Hacksaw Ridge, in which he was portrayed by Andrew Garfield.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Doss
The social change in Italy has been the shock expressed when any family has a second child. It’s seen as risky, in a society that is only a generation or two away from subsistence farming and is chronically risk averse.
And yet the TFR is 1.1.
https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/4773990#Comment_4773990
It would be far more of a blow than saying they will be very naughty boys and girls if they conquer Rafah.
I don't know about all of the "same people", but I think many of them will be aware that sanctions against Iran HAVE had an effect - and Israel has a much more internationalised economy than Iran.
Pro-Israeli organisations have put a lot of work into opposing the BDS movement.
They have also put a lot of work into pumping up the "our enemies are terrorists" meme - for more than 50 years.
They haven't been wasting their resources.
If that work goes up in smoke, they take a hit.
I don't even particularly like Hamas. But I do respect young men and women who take up arms to defend their communities against fascist aggressors. Hamas are absolutely not a "death cult". Daesh are.
Lots of details, phone logs, pictures to support her story. Trump isn't sleeping through this bit.
There are 14 million people between the river and the sea, and they split almost equally between Jews and Muslims.
How do we ensure that everyone in that are - Muslim or Jew - gets to live a life without fear of being invaded and raped, their land confiscated, or to have rockets falling upon them.
And I think it's simplistic to say "oh, we just need to defeat Hamas". The West Bank hasn't been run by Hamas. And it didn't stop Israel's slow motion invasion.
If Israel does expel the vast majority of Muslims to Egypt, to Jordan and to Syria, then millions will become homeless, and hundreds of thousands will die.
That won't eliminate anti-Jewish feeling, it will destabilize states like Egypt that have - by and large - tried to work with Israel. If those governments fall, they won't be replaced by pro-Israel, pro-Western ones. On the contrary, they will be full of people with burning hatred of Israel, and a feeling that "how could it be any worse".
@Luckyguy1983 got it right. Israel's desire to avoid another holocaust is making one ever more likely.
The Tories will also gain comfort from the fact they managed to beat Reform in the Blackpool South by election, despite Blackpool being almost 70% Leave. With Reform now having lost momentum in the last big electoral tests before polling day, Rishi will hope to squeeze them back before the general election
The impression I've got from reading through several Quaker memoirs of the WW2 years (for other reasons) was that the SoF were pretty clued up in terms of doing things like field ambulance units, and therefore in keeping a degree of credibility with the Government when it came to speaking for their members at CO tribunals.
Quite a lot of COs volunteered for bomb disposal units during the air raids on the UK, too. Very useful addition to the stretched manpower at the time.
Eg the whole introduction explains that Italy is actually and essentially a poor country in terms of fertility and topography. So many mountains. Rivers non navigable. Mediocre soils. Prone to earthquakes. Dangerous volcanoes. And a position that makes it easy to invade by sea from all sides
It was the “accident” of Rome that made Italy appear naturally important and wealthy
On the other hand I am sitting here in a square in Vieste watching the passeggiata and it is still very charming (albeit old). It will be a damn shame if it disappears
Blackpool was within a whisker of Reform beating the conservatives but in view of Farage's stated interest in the US election I just do not see him becoming pro active for them at the election and I doubt they will gain more than 5 % - 6% of the vote
And yet the TFR is 1.1."
Fair question. And one to which Lee Kuan Yew never found an answer, as smart as he was. Two thoughts and a cartoon for you, and then I have to get back to doing my chores: In the US fertility rates are higher in rural areas than suburbs, and higher in suburbs than in central cities. In Japan, the highest fertility rate is found in the Okinawa prefecture, the most, or one of the most, rural.
The cartoon: A young woman is saying to a young man that she too wants to have children, "just not in this apartment".
Hackers access payroll information of serving members, reservists and veterans during attack on system operated by external contractor
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/07/service-personnel-hit-china-mod-hack/
Grant Shapps is due to make a statement to the Commons.
But then again, that would suggest that countries with higher proportions of people living in houses would be more likely to have children. It would also suggest that rural areas would have more population growth than urban areas.
In Japan, the opposite is happening. The countryside is depopulating, while Tokyo - one of the world's largest cities - continues to grow.
And the Singaporean government is not unaware of this problem. Their Housing Development Board has made a huge effort to provide affordable housing for parents: have a kid, and a whole bunch of subsidized housing opens up to you.
I would also point out that France's TFR is well above the US, Germany and the UK. It's the only place in the world where college educated women have TFRs above replacement level. So they must be doing something right. (Not M Macron himself of course, but that's another story.)
If you're pissed off about how your Party is governing what better word to describe what you want?
It also leaves the question of what kind of reform open.
...
Judge Mark Lucraft KC set a timetable for the case with a plea hearing on 23 July and a provisional three-week trial at the Old Bailey from 3 February.
...
... then allegedly attacked Daniel from behind, slashing his neck and stabbing him in the chest as he lay on the ground.
Prosecution barrister Tom Little KC told the court that Daniel was "largely decapitated" in the attack.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-68968817
That's a delay of nine months for an open-and-shut murder case with the Broadmoor-bound defendant already in custody. If only the PM were a former DPP who could sort out the criminal justice system.
Net approval for the Prime Minister @RishiSunak falls by one point, while net approval for @Keir_Starmer is up by four points.
🚨New Voting Intention🚨
Labour lead narrows to seventeen points in our latest results.
Con 26% (+2)
Lab 43% (-1)
Lib Dem 10% (+2)
Reform 10% (-2)
SNP 3% (-)
Green 5% (-)
Other 2% (-1)
Fieldwork: 3rd-7th May 2024
Their biggest disappointment is that the NY trial isn’t being televised .
Single person 1 allowance
Married 2 allowances
first child +0.5
second child +0.5
then +1 for every additional child above 2.
The issue is that it's very hard* to implement such a measure if it doesn't already exist, because it creates an enormous number of losers.
* Actually, it is essentially impossible.
On a sidenote this reminds me of an interesting bit of Farage trivia. He, along with Alan Sked and the other founders of UKIP, didn't really like the name 'UKIP' since they thought the full 'United Kingdom Independence Party' was too wordy. They had wanted to name themselves 'The British Independence Party', or 'BIP', but (wisely) decided against it on the grounds it was too similar to the BNP.
He used to say which was braver, landing on a beach with, or without, a gun?
Spent a lot of the war giving last cigarettes to fatally-wounded young men. Got no medals, just (unrecognised then) PTSD.