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theinspectorst

@[email protected]

Liberal, Briton, FBPE. Co-mod of m/neoliberal

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theinspectorst ,
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It's a corrupt convention but it wasn't always the case. An important reform by the 2010-15 coalition government was the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, which took this incredibly important decision out of the prime minister's partisan hands and have elections on a predictable 5 year cycle (barring the government falling or a supermajority for early elections).

After Boris Johnson won the 2019 election though, he set about dismantling checks and balances such as this. He also changed the electoral system for mayoral elections to First Past the Post (with no consultation or referendum - which the Tories have always insisted was needed to change the electoral system away from FPTP...) because FPTP tends to favour Tories.

theinspectorst OP ,
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I love whoever decided to drown out Sunak's speech (which was inexplicably done outdoors, on a rainy day) with 'Things Can Only Get Better' on loudspeakers from nearby.

I wonder if it was the same person who played the Benny Hill theme over Boris Johnson's resignation.

theinspectorst ,
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Shall we tax corn while we're at it?

theinspectorst ,
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Because the Palestinian children had nothing to do with the killing of Israeli children? What you're describing and explicitly trying to justify here is collective punishment of all of the two million Palestinians in Gaza (more than half of whom are children) for the crimes of (by Israel's estimates) about 3,000 Hamas terrorists on 7 October.

What you're articulating constitutes a war crime under the Geneva Convention and that's exactly why the ICC is getting involved.

Let me try putting this another way. The population of the US state of Nebraska is about two million. Every year, there are about 6,000 violent crimes committed by Nebraskans. Should every Nebraskan be collectively punished for the crimes of those few thousand Nebraskans?

theinspectorst ,
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The president isn't unimportant though. A sad fact about Iranian politics is that the two times they elected a reformist president - Khatami in 1997 and Rouhani in 2013 - it was followed by the election of a Republican president in the US who spat in the face of attempted conciliation.

Bush grouping Shia Iran into his 'axis of evil' and trying to link them with Sunni Al-Qaeda, and then Trump's binning of Obama's carefully negotiated nuclear agreement, has done an enormous amount to undermine the reformists as ineffective and to strengthen the hardliners around Khamanei. It doesn't get talked about enough: there's a weird sort of codependency going on between Khamanei's crew and the US Republicans.

theinspectorst ,
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I hope Biden wins by a landslide, but his protectionist instincts are such an ugly trait.

theinspectorst OP ,
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“It is a total outrage that there are people who are attacking and looting these convoys coming from Jordan, going to Gaza to deliver humanitarian assistance,” US national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters.

"We are looking at the tools that we have to respond to this,” he added. “We are also raising our concerns at the highest level of the Israeli government and it’s something that we make no bones about – this is completely and utterly unacceptable behaviour.”

theinspectorst OP ,
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I find the far-right fear-mongering over 15 minute cities is such a bizarre battle for them to choose to fight.

To the average voter, if you tell them that urban planners want to ensure more of the key amenities people need - GPs, schools, shops, parks, etc - are within walking distance of their home, they would tell you that's a great idea. Why on earth would anyone pick that as a thing to oppose, unless they're a moron or they're paid for by carmakers?

theinspectorst OP ,
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Non-paywall link: https://archive.ph/nAP27

theinspectorst OP ,
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Good. Down with Nazis.

theinspectorst OP ,
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Non-paywall link: https://archive.ph/BfXD2

theinspectorst OP ,
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Non-paywall link: https://archive.ph/gfSkR

Human-rights lawyers hope to close some gaps in international law, whether by new agreements (some call for a special tribunal to prosecute Russia for aggression) or by existing courts extending their remit. They also want new curbs on ai and autonomous weapons. But they cannot hold back states bent on violence. Arrest warrants limit leaders’ international travel. But don’t expect to see Mr Putin in the dock.

So what is the point of the court battles? Lawyers offer three answers: to impose a reputational and perhaps economic cost on those who spill blood wantonly; to strengthen the negotiating hand of their victims in future diplomatic talks; and, at a minimum, to establish a credible historical record of atrocities. Confronted with an “epidemic of inhumanity”, Mr Khan has argued, the world must “cling to the law” more tightly. The unspoken danger is that, should he and others fail to curb the horrors, the law will collapse and there will be little left to hold onto.

theinspectorst OP ,
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Whilst my first preference is to see the Tories fade into obscurity, I do think that moderates like Street reclaiming their party (something that is probably almost impossible at this stage) would do enormous good for the quality of political debate and long-term policymaking in Britain.

theinspectorst ,
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The UK is a society where violent crime is pretty uncommon. The homicide rate in the UK was 1.0 per 100,000 population in 2023. That has been broadly trending downwards in recent decades, after rising during the late 20th century and hitting a peak at c1.8 per 100,000 in 2003. The US is a much more violent society: their homicide rate is around 6.4 per 100,000 population.

Killers are always going to find weapons - if you ban guns they'll find knives, if you ban knives they'll kill with something else. One difference is that a killer on a knife rampage is going to kill a lot fewer people before they're stopped than a killer with a gun. I guess killing with a knife is a more 'involved' act than just pointing a gun and clicking the trigger, so the bar for someone stabbing with a knife is probably a bit higher than killing from several metres away with a gun.

But part of it is a societal thing - my hunch is that (in relative terms) society in the UK and most other rich Western liberal democracies just instills in people an instinctively higher value on human life. You see it in US exceptionalism in use of the death penalty, the frequency of police killings, etc. I don't want to exaggerate the difference - the US still has far fewer murders than Colombia or South Africa or Brazil - but there are other Western countries like Canada or Finland where guns are still pretty widely owned (albeit not quite to the extent of the US) that don't have the same problem of violence as the US.

theinspectorst ,
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The homicide rate in the US is about 6-7 times that in the UK per 100,000 population. I'd take our situation any day of the week.

Last time I looked into this properly, knife crime in the US was actually roughly the same frequency as that in the UK. The difference is that knife-based murders stand out in the UK, whereas in the US nobody pays attention because the problem is dwarfed by the much greater problem of rampant gun crime.

theinspectorst ,
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Silly MTG, she should have just used her Swords to Ploughshares card against Johnson...

theinspectorst OP ,
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Non-paywall link: https://archive.ph/gEcaQ

Global South fine dining on every corner.

theinspectorst OP ,
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2024 local election results:

  • Labour: 1,158 councillors elected and control of 51 councils
  • Lib Dems: 522 councillors and 12 councils
  • Conservatives: 515 councillors and 6 councils
  • Greens: 181 councillors and 0 councils
  • Reform: 2 councillors and 0 councils

The way council elections work is that they're staggered over a four-year cycle. The places that voted this year were only in parts of England, hence no SNP or PC numbers. By my count, the total split of councils controlled by each party is now roughly:

  • Labour 116 (almost back to 2015 levels - Corbyn's leadership did a real number on Labour...)
  • Conservatives 58 (down from a recent peak of 197 in 2017)
  • Lib Dems 39 (up from 6 in 2015 and the now highest number they've controlled since the late 90s)
  • Greens 1
  • Reform 0
  • The rest are mostly No Overall Control (no party has a majority) or a few run by independents.

Somehow, from this, far-right Tories like Braverman have reached the bizarre conclusion that Reform are the electoral threat they need to worry most about...

theinspectorst OP ,
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Non-paywall link: https://archive.ph/iXefw

What we like to hear:

Global trade growth is set to more than double this year as inflation eases and a booming US economy helps to drive activity, according to international bodies.

But protectionist dangers ahead:

The OECD, IMF and WTO have warned about the risks to trade caused by geopolitical tensions, regional conflicts and economic uncertainty, as governments focus on national security, self-reliance and support for domestic companies.

According to the WTO, trade flows between blocs of geopolitically aligned countries have been growing 4 per cent more slowly than trade within those blocs since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Shearing said the US election added to the list of uncertainties about global trade in the coming year. Donald Trump, the former president and presumptive Republican nominee, has pledged to impose a 10 percentage point tariff increase on all the US’s trading partners if he gets re-elected, hinting at even more severe penalties on Chinese imports.

theinspectorst OP ,
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Non-paywall link: https://archive.ph/jfFxN

The real losers are the low-income economies that must contend with the worst of both the old world and the new. Lacking middle-income countries’ domestic savings rates, capital markets and foreign-exchange reserves, they are simultaneously reliant on foreign capital flows for investment and less insulated from their sudden reversals. Lacking economic heft, they are more vulnerable to being forced to choose a geopolitical side, restricting their access to funding. The dilemma has become familiar to such countries, and nowhere more than in the next arena of change for the global financial system: payments.

Alarming.

theinspectorst ,
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Forth, and fear no darkness.

theinspectorst OP , (edited )
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This law was a naked attempt at voter suppression, but it's nice to see that its idiot architect is one of the voters who's being suppressed...

theinspectorst ,
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But ... I thought the 2009 film was an origin story?

It was literally the story of how the Kelvinverse came to exist and it followed Kirk, Spock, McCoy and co from their Academy days.

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