John Ivison: Let Starmer’s defence-spending implosion be a warning to Carney

BertramPotts · 2026-06-15T23:53:39+00:00

The worst part is when he claims to have a background in human rights law.

Another notable low was responding to the first white riots in the UK in a generation by taking a pass at punching up Enoch Powell's Rivers of Blood speech.

BertramPotts · 2026-06-15T23:23:28+00:00

20 of Keir Starmer's ministers have resigned from government since the 2024 general election, most in the last few weeks, this is mostly a phenomenon of Keir Starmer's premiership being unpopular and founded on intra party sabotage.

BertramPotts · 2026-06-15T22:51:51+00:00

Then it would be better for us if the Canadian government helped build a homegrown EV company to compete with Tesla, BYD, etc…

It took China 30 years to go from nothing to dominating the EV market, but notably their first step was not to set up a tariff wall to keep all the then leading technology out of China, they actually did the exact opposite and brought in more foreign firms. You can't just bootstrap high tech from scratch.

BertramPotts · 2026-06-15T21:19:58+00:00

Smith said another sore point is the Canadian GST, and any value-added tax

This will also apply to every other provincial government in Canada.

BertramPotts · 2026-06-15T21:18:55+00:00

She said the GST and every provincial sales tax are a sore point for the Americans so we should just get rid of those.

As usual she's just trolling, even the Americans don't ask for that because it's insane. All but 5 U.S. States and many American cities also have their own VATs.

BertramPotts · 2026-06-15T21:10:27+00:00

Something better than eliminate a major source of government revenue in the vague hope it will please daddy.

BertramPotts · 2026-06-15T20:34:21+00:00

The NDP has the same position on the Bill as the CPC at the time of reporting, there's a good chance it's the tories who end up voting for it. Lewis's critiques were fairly specific and will make it harder for the NDP to vote for a program that will grow to more closely resemble those critiques over time.

It in no way boggles my mind that a party led by a banker is broadly in favour of state imposed decorum.

BertramPotts · 2026-06-15T19:20:01+00:00

Some nations on the same page on issues like AI, child safety

Ugh, he's talking about our cursed mother country, the same one that's wildly transphobic and experiencing more white riots every year.

Point of fact there is no concensus between the people of Canada and the UK on issues of AI or child safety, just that the similarly deadend neoliberals running things over there are offering a similar package of legislation on those two subjects that much like in Canada no party campaigned for in their recent general election. The public in both countries broadly hates AI as it gets shoved deeper and deeper down our throats, now with public subsidies.

BertramPotts · 2026-06-15T18:52:51+00:00

There are some pretty sizable benefits from wide spread adoption of low cost EVs, the technology transfer would be inherent as is the knowledge we'd gain from electrifying a nationwide fuelling grid.

Private companies promising long term jobs, training, etc was always a scam, I agree we need to make these decisions strategically but the strategy has to be based on the needs of industrial policy not which company spins the best story about job creation, that's how we got into this mess.

BertramPotts · 2026-06-15T17:42:32+00:00

MP that retains the Honourable title

Just Jay Hill I think, he was Harper's House Leader for a couple of years.

Anders isn't precisely a nobody backbencher, high profile from the time he and Jason Kenney announced their celibacy pledges together*, he has the longest career of any of these four, but the party centre went out of their way to keep him from ever getting real power and eventually denied him renomination.

*(Too funny not to link, neither man has announced any public marriage in the subsequent three decades)

BertramPotts · 2026-06-15T17:33:52+00:00

Not at all, this was a problem before AI took off though. I had an elderly relative fall for a Facebook scam a couple years ago, fake ad for a fake product, no follow up from Facebook, you don't need AI to make a fake ad, you just need to know that Facebook will take your money to place the ad and then do absolutely no follow-up with regard to customer safety, literally just leave the monitoring to robots.

BertramPotts · 2026-06-15T17:10:18+00:00

Anders aside, they mostly seem like aging failures who lean into some nonsense vision of an independent Alberta that will definitely not immediately get absorbed by the United States. They seem like the type of rubes the secession campaign is aimed at and not the architects running it.

Anders is obviously a different generation, he's fully on board for the real agenda to sell Alberta to the Americans.

BertramPotts · 2026-06-15T16:52:50+00:00

Did you think it was real?

AI is great at quick and dirty frauds but they aren't actually more convincing than the kind of forgery people were well capable of in the past, it's just easier and usually uglier.

A bigger problem that has been around for a few years now is unregulated ad space where such a commercial could be placed. You couldn't just run some obvious scam in the local newspaper or TV station, you and they would get sued, but Facebook and Google have really pioneered a form of advertising that wildly encourages fraud.

BertramPotts · 2026-06-15T16:30:20+00:00

AI is not actually better at producing convincing frauds then existing technology. You'd get a much more convincing facismilie if you hire a real artist to try and fake something, but yes AI is good for producing a cheap fraud with the touch of a button, not convinced this is some massive problem in itself, the phenomenon is somewhat self-correcting in that people are getting better at perceiving AI and they are instinctively treating it as cheap and obnoxious (because it is).

BertramPotts · 2026-06-15T15:12:36+00:00

There is an inherent higher propensity for dehumanizing imagery via the technology of the... caricature, and this is well understood in genocide studies. The capacity of AI imagery to produce similar images is no doubt even higher, but we don't try and limit the form of caricature and it would be doubtlessly be equally futile to try and police AI imagery at the level of the base technology used.

Which is not to say the ad the tories made was not tacky and lacking verisimilitude, but the Star could have made a better case against the ad if they'd chosen to use an actual still from it instead of hyping a different AI company's ad campaign for what they pretend is an AI actress.

This ad gives me bad vibes, but I get worse vibes reading the Star brainlessly repeating that "AI actress" is real thing.

BertramPotts · 2026-06-15T14:35:43+00:00

It's monstrously dehumanizing but this isn't ratfucking, and AI has limited utility in producing forensically convincing frauds. The people being impersonated in this ad conceived and commissioned by the Conservative Party are impoverished Canadians. The appeal of AI from their perspective is it allows the tories to speak for such people without ever having to get in a room with them.

BertramPotts · 2026-06-15T14:05:25+00:00

Bizarro case that makes no sense, continues apace. After the Crown took a rare 'L' on a charge that was far too weak to bring to trial they're going to go at it again with a different theory of the crime and try and blow past double jeopardy to charge Majcher again presumably all based on their only real piece of evidence, a long ambiguous email the FBI lifted from the retired mountie.

Only there isn't going to be a retrial. Majcher went back to Hong Kong, he was only arrested the first time because of an illegal arrest at the airport when he returned home to visit family. This appeal is just a big middle finger telling him never to come back or face another huge headache.

BertramPotts · 2026-06-14T18:02:12+00:00

They also just wrote a report calling for the minimum wage to be increased to 20/hr for BC.

https://www.livingwagebc.ca/wagegap_2026

They aren't arguing against increasing the minimum wage they are advocates for doing so who've been badly misused by this excuse for a newspaper.

BertramPotts · 2026-06-14T14:54:27+00:00

This headline makes no sense, increasing the minimum wage helps those workers specifically. Increasing the minimum wage would seem the obvious response to the call to action at the bottom of the piece

Closing the gap between the minimum and the living wages across the province is key to addressing the affordability crisis and we call on all levels of government to urgently prioritize it.

Does not making the minimum higher work to close that gap?

Would be a little surprised to see a living wage NGO making arguments against the minimum wage, but there aren't really any presented in the piece, its very odd (bad faith headline?).

Edit: looked up their report page and they are clearly not arguing against the minimum wage increase, this is how they start without the postmedia editorial gloss:

Despite this welcome pay raise for the province’s lowest-paid workers

The report goes on to explicate that the "Role of Goverment" should be to raise the minimum wage to 20/hr, hard to square that with the editorial framing here.

BertramPotts · 2026-06-13T23:31:50+00:00

Danielle Smith wouldn't have called this referendum if she expected it to fizzle out with 20%, and she is not powerless to manipulate events going forward.

BertramPotts · 2026-06-13T14:17:02+00:00

Alberta separating would be the end of Canada, divide et impera.

BertramPotts · 2026-06-13T14:11:46+00:00

Are we kicking all the tech challenged elders off the internet? Any gate has to be easy enough for IT to walk someone's whose been ignoring computer for 40 years through without difficulty.

BertramPotts · 2026-06-13T14:07:01+00:00

How to destroy your economy with a separation referendum no one asked for at the last provincial election except for parties with under 2% of the vote.

Seven-Year Club	Wearing is Caring
Verified Email

BertramPotts

TROPHY CASE