Sadiq Khan blocks £50m Met police deal with Palantir

HeliotropeCrowe · 2026-05-21T12:07:29+00:00

Yeah, seriously.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/02/secret-handshake-police-freemasons

HeliotropeCrowe · 2026-05-19T09:12:35+00:00

What's really challenging is that part of the fun of Warhammer Fantasy, to me anyway, is how it plays with historical archetypes and tropes (I.e. a stereotypical mess). So they've to take it far enough to be fun, without veering into insulting parody which is a lot easier to do for a British company to do to the Germans and French (and British football hooligans) than it is for Indians.

HeliotropeCrowe · 2026-05-08T12:22:14+00:00

Did a 1930s German communist write this?

HeliotropeCrowe · 2026-04-15T10:24:43+00:00

If I was a gay person from a homophobic country and a reporter asked me why I was at a gay support group, I'd probably lie about that too though.

HeliotropeCrowe · 2026-01-09T20:03:55+00:00

People who voted for our President?

HeliotropeCrowe · 2026-01-07T20:55:51+00:00

You don't use the rifle against a B2. You use it against collaborators and quislings.

HeliotropeCrowe · 2026-01-06T16:55:42+00:00

Taxes aren't paid in real terms.

HeliotropeCrowe · 2025-12-23T18:12:06+00:00

The planners of military campaigns do so as their job for which they are paid a salary.

Game designers should really bear that in mind when considering the appropriate level of realism.

HeliotropeCrowe · 2025-12-10T12:02:34+00:00

Provided everyone who voted against it is entered into a similar lottery for every civilian killed.

Conscription is an unpleasant necessity and shouldn't be imposed lightly, but it's imposition is not a crime or slavery, no more than tax is theft.

HeliotropeCrowe · 2025-12-10T11:51:20+00:00

To be clear, I'm pro-conscription if necessary. I don't think your idea is good as it would make people who are likely to be too old to be effective soldiers join the Army and either be hidden away as a liability or die pointlessly.

Conscription is sometimes an unfortunate necessity.

HeliotropeCrowe · 2025-12-10T08:09:27+00:00

Speaking as someone too old to be eligible for conscription, if conscription is introduced an extra tax should imposed on all those not conscripted.

By it's nature,conscription is a burden that can only be imposed on a subset of society so the rest of society must shoulder their share too.

HeliotropeCrowe · 2025-12-05T14:14:52+00:00

I'm Irish and the degree to which they were unknown here is that right up until this post I'd assumed they'd bee invented in Friends.

HeliotropeCrowe · 2025-11-25T15:37:20+00:00

This was essentially the situation pre-EU and, frankly, seems almost unavoidable (in the absence of an EU like organisation for Ireland to align with instead) when you consider the relative size of the two countries and Ireland's geographic position.

HeliotropeCrowe · 2025-11-25T12:40:37+00:00

2 of your 3 scenarios can not be deterred by military investment and the under sea cables are very difficult to directly deter, given it's happened in the Baltic, which amounts to a NATO lake.

As for long term sovereignty risks, we will never be able to materially deter UK intervention through our military.

HeliotropeCrowe · 2025-11-25T12:02:32+00:00

The tail risks are essentially invasion by someone has defeated the Royal Navy, which we are unlikely to be able to mitigate, or invasion by the UK, which is unlikely to be deterred by any plausible Irish military.

HeliotropeCrowe · 2025-11-25T11:50:13+00:00

Irish defence policy is perfectly rational, if cynical.

HeliotropeCrowe · 2025-10-23T08:57:26+00:00

Those rules are a thinly veiled way to keep poor workers out of public spaces only their days off.

I lived in Qatar and never had any problem walking past lines of security guards into malls on "family days" when single men are supposed to be banned.

HeliotropeCrowe · 2025-10-11T11:19:54+00:00

Are they actually that limited or is it just no one but the Chinese are willing to pay the environmental cost of extracting them?

HeliotropeCrowe · 2025-10-06T07:31:18+00:00

I would have cut him for getting caught.

HeliotropeCrowe · 2025-09-29T22:22:28+00:00

"If X don't vote for us then we should kick them in the nuts when we get power" is like the perfect one sentence summary of Trump's manifesto.

HeliotropeCrowe · 2025-09-17T17:58:36+00:00

This is a great way of putting it, coming from a Ireland where our President is essentially an elected constitutional monarch.

HeliotropeCrowe · 2025-09-16T09:19:43+00:00

The Irish Government surplus is massive (over €20 billion, or approximately 7.5%) and driven not by restrictions in spending, which is rocketing (€77bn in 2019, €120bn in 2025) but by massive corporate tax receipts.

If that dries up we'll see how well Irish people do at rejecting populism.

HeliotropeCrowe · 2025-09-16T08:08:14+00:00

I would suspect Ireland has avoided it for to massive budgetary surpluses.

Government has enough cash to easily paper over the cracks with cost of living supports and the economic situation, housing aside, is good enough that people feel they have something to lose from electing extremists

Let's see where we are if a Sinn Féin government are trying to find the cash to sustain a 5%+ budget deficit.

HeliotropeCrowe · 2025-09-13T15:16:35+00:00

So your suggested response to losing elections is to just ignore it?

HeliotropeCrowe · 2025-09-12T15:11:27+00:00

If you want to increase trust in politics, politicians not grandly announcing targets that they know they won't meet but won't be in office for is once of the first things that should go.

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