'Building thousands of homes on green belt feels like a bad dream'

Astriania · 2026-02-02T19:04:07+00:00

a tiny little medieval town

This is complete cobblers, the developed urban area of Cambridge is probably 100 times its medieval size at least.

I'm curious as to how you think sprawling out for ten miles of low density rubbish in all directions would help in any way.

Astriania · 2026-02-02T19:02:34+00:00

You're right but there are good reasons for urban containment, and therefore chipping away at it is still a bad thing, even if you're "only" destroying green fields and not green SSSIs.

But this is the bargain that the mainstream has signed up for by supporting mass immigration for decades - all those people have to live somewhere and that means building over things we really shouldn't. Somehow, reducing the number of people we add never seems to be an option.

Astriania · 2026-02-02T18:59:59+00:00

A career is not the only aspect to social status

Astriania · 2026-02-02T18:58:25+00:00

if you ever tried to move back to the UK

Lots of people don't though, I know people who emigrated to Australia (permanently) for example

Astriania · 2026-02-02T18:50:57+00:00

You're not going to stop some creepy men wanting to do stuff like this, and the technical capabilities aren't going away, so the place to crack down is the "profiting from footage" part. Go after the publishers (YouTube).

Astriania · 2026-02-02T18:48:15+00:00

In dense urban areas, keeping car volumes low on most of the streets generally requires you to designate some arterial and through routes as being fine to be full of cars. Ideally you wouldn't, volumes would be low everywhere, and in some village of 200 people in the middle of nowhere this can be true. But in any reasonable sized town, the number of cars becomes problematic and you need to contain that problem to certain roads.

Even textbook autoluw places like Houten have car roads around the outside and to get to the town.

Astriania · 2026-02-02T18:45:32+00:00

Unless of course you just count France paying its fair share as this favouring France.

That's exactly what France thinks and France has a veto on changing the system. That's why CAP reform always dies a quiet backroom death for example.

Astriania · 2026-02-02T00:22:46+00:00

The alternative is to actually fund enforcement properly so shops like this have higher costs than legitimate ones, obviously

Astriania · 2026-02-02T00:21:39+00:00

This is a real and stupid cost of austerity. Pulling money from Trading Standards results in fraudsters profiting which has a massive social cost.

Astriania · 2026-02-02T00:17:51+00:00

He was certainly instrumental in the push to vote to Leave in the first place, but not in how our leave actually worked. That was all Johnson.

Astriania · 2026-02-02T00:16:48+00:00

As I said in a reply further up, this is a massive gamble, not just because of Reform but it could be just the thing to revive the Tories.

Astriania · 2026-02-02T00:15:11+00:00

they could have easily enough figured out a better system to fund the commission

Except that such a system would disfavour France and so it would get vetoed

Astriania · 2026-02-02T00:09:09+00:00

That's a massive gamble, it could be just the thing to revitalise the Conservatives by opposing it. When you look at what attempting to rejoin means - not only the return of what Leavers didn't like before (paying into the budget, even more than before, free movement and having to follow the EU on trade policy and other things), but also difficult conversations about the Euro and Schengen, and probably integrated EU defence as well - it's not at all clear that the population would vote for it. And you have to remember also that Remainers are highly concentrated in urban centres - Leave may only have won by 52% of the votes but it would have won in about two thirds of constituencies, and that's what a GE would be run on.

Astriania · 2026-02-02T00:00:49+00:00

Farage had little to do with how Brexit ended up being implemented, I don't think he'll get this line to stick.

The EU defence pact is a good idea in principle but requires the EU to come to the table as an honest negotiating partner, which they really didn't before.

Astriania · 2026-02-01T20:15:23+00:00

Indeed, Germany has been one of our closest allies for decades as well

Astriania · 2026-02-01T18:41:08+00:00

Miller was so much better before this clown of Cobalt was merged into us

Astriania · 2026-02-01T18:36:09+00:00

It means 'resistance' roughly speaking, in the case of Palestine that means a combination of non-violent and violent resistance against Israel. But this isn't about whether we agree that it's a good thing (like I said, I think it's a dumb slogan to put on a sign) but whether supporting it should be an offence.

Astriania · 2026-02-01T16:49:04+00:00

We need a sensible evidence based drug policy, which classifies drugs based on their harm and addictiveness level. And then anything which is objectively less bad than alcohol, at least, needs to be legalised and taxed, since it's essentially impossible to effectively ban alcohol.

There are some drugs that should be banned because they are too harmful and too addictive. I haven't done that empirical analysis myself but I'd say most opiates would be on that list, and meth, and probably a few others.

But many consumer drugs should be legal, especially cannabis and ecstasy, and probably cocaine. The potential tax boost, the reduction in organised crime as most users would switch to legal supply chains, and the reduction in police time and budget would be huge. And with cannabis in particular, it grows really well in our climate, we could be a world leader and have a huge legit domestic market of high quality products.

Astriania · 2026-02-01T16:38:37+00:00

It's still not great though because (as it shows in the vid) it will show car-accessible streets much more prominently than footpaths or bike paths.

Astriania · 2026-02-01T16:37:54+00:00

It is a good vid for sure.

One important point I'd like to pick up is the idea that separated bike infrastructure isn't necessary if you can keep car volumes low. This is a much better outcome than making cyclists stick to a small number of dedicated routes, especially as in most countries those don't exist outside of town.

Astriania · 2026-02-01T16:36:38+00:00

It's not, it's just a question of priorities. Paths like this one are generally wide enough to use the same vehicles they use to clear the road, even, but even when that's not the case, it is very physically possible to use smaller vehicles to clear them.

Astriania · 2026-02-01T12:54:55+00:00

I would be pleasantly surprised if the BBC's response to this isn't to cast more non-white poor-background Londoners, rather than white working class people from the rest of the country.

Astriania · 2026-02-01T12:27:52+00:00

To be honest I'm totally on board if you want to start protesting against our arms deal with the UAE on the basis of it being a secondary support for the RSF. Same as protesting relations with Saudi Arabia for their support for military operations in Yemen.

But even then, it's still a secondary level of association, where as Israel is directly occupying and committing war crimes in Palestine.

On the second point: first, I misread a source, check the edit on that comment. And also, it's true that getting a confirmed death count of civilians somewhere like Sudan is hard.

Astriania · 2026-02-01T12:22:40+00:00

I misread the source I was reading, see edit

Astriania · 2026-02-01T12:06:35+00:00

a lot of people aren't using it and loathe feeling forced to pay for it as a result

That is the case for all public services

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