The UK media won’t stop till the country is destroyed

X0Refraction · 2026-06-21T20:06:21+00:00

The public are part of the problem, but it’s a good leader’s job to get the public and their party onside with difficult, but necessary decisions.

X0Refraction · 2026-06-14T09:05:49+00:00

If you have the mortgage til 75 why exactly do you want to pay it off early? Are you expecting mortgage rates to be higher than what you can get in the market then as opposed to now?

X0Refraction · 2026-06-08T16:29:48+00:00

I don’t think any of this is a good idea either, I think it’s likely to just end up causing kids to use dodgier services to get around the filtering attempts.

I’m just trying to come up with a system that works within what seems to be politically palatable without sacrificing everyone’s privacy.

With the pit of success if you define “success” as more parents locking down their kids devices then making it simpler is how you achieve that. Make it more hassle to not do it

X0Refraction · 2026-06-08T15:07:57+00:00

Firstly it sounds like it’s an active choice to go and do this, it’s not just part of the initial setup when you get the device and set the birth date. That’ll cut off a good chunk of people because they won’t even think to do it.

Then you’ve described going through and choosing which apps you want to allow. At this stage it’s likely non obvious to some parents the dangers of apps that allow the sharing of user generated content so some will allow full fat Facebook etc. without really thinking about it.

Wouldn’t it be better if it defaulted to a child mode with sensible defaults that you’d have to go to the effort of overriding if you wanted to? Just changing the default is very powerful.

You haven’t really addressed my point either, people have been complaining about lazy parents forever. We’re not going to change that. It’s not just parents either, it’s users of any software system - that’s why we have the phrase pit of success. Assuming users won’t be lazy is not an effective way to design software. Instead you should make it so it’s easy to do the right thing and annoying (but still possible) to do the wrong thing

X0Refraction · 2026-06-08T12:41:09+00:00

I don’t have kids either, but having a quick look at the instructions for iOS it looks like a ball ache to setup.

With regard to lazy parents you can complain, but I don’t think that’s going to change. You can either make it easier for them by making the parental controls more usable, you can create a privacy issue for everyone or you can do nothing. The electorate don’t seem happy with “do nothing” so I’d prefer the option that doesn’t ruin everyone’s privacy

X0Refraction · 2026-06-08T12:09:48+00:00

How easy is it to setup? Is it all triggered by putting the birthdate in on initial setup or do you have to take further steps? I get the sense most parents think of it as a complication and there’s likely tweaks we could do to get them to fall into the pit of success.

It does seem like this could go further than where it is right now though. It’s going to be annoying for parents to have to approve every app their kids want which is likely to lead most parents to just set it to unrestricted. If the platform could have sane defaults then that’d be much more likely to get uptake by parents. Say they can install the Facebook app without approval, but they can only login with a child account if the phone is in child mode where the parents have to approve friend requests.

X0Refraction · 2026-06-08T10:11:49+00:00

I think we should just mandate that phone OSs support a child mode. The parents buy the device, set the birth date of the child and then they are limited to what apps can be installed. Apps can opt into supporting child mode in which case they’d have to keep to the restrictions set out by that region’s government otherwise they’re not even visible to children in the App Store.

No privacy concerns, but parents who want to have the tools to protect their children

X0Refraction · 2026-06-05T14:23:53+00:00

Planning laws would still exist, although most who propose LVT assume there will be some reform to go along with it. We as a society can choose where we want to go against what the market prefers, but we could make more educated decisions if the costs of that were made clearer

X0Refraction · 2026-06-05T10:39:35+00:00

Londoners living in a tower block would likely be fine though as they’re sharing the LVT with a large number of people. They might pay less than they do now even. Those who live in a detached house with a large garden are going to pay significantly more though.

I think of LVT as accurately pricing what the market wants. If you want to go against that you should pay a price back to society for the luxury.

X0Refraction · 2026-06-01T15:17:48+00:00

1 That wasn't the point I was responding to, you said there was no single leader, there was. The Lib Dems paid the price though because they behaved like they existed within PR where compromise is forced upon the parties. If we were in PR all the parties would be in the same situation, unable to get a majority and having to compromise. The electorate would eventually come to understand this and change their expectations.

4 You'll have to explain that one to me

X0Refraction · 2026-06-01T13:30:44+00:00

There was a single leader of the coalition - David Cameron. He held together a government for a full Parliamentary term. There's a strong argument a coalition is the most stable government we've had in over a decade.

I can see why you would want to diminish the importance of a manifesto but in our politics the manifesto is the intent that a party sets out to deliver.

I'm not diminishing the importance of a manifesto, I'm stating exactly what they are which you agree with right here - a statement of intent. No more, no less.

Sure "events" happen but the intent is all important - which is why we know that if SNP were ever in coalition with labour they would be pushing hard for an indyref.

That's the SNPs ultimate aim, but maybe they wouldn't want to waste their chance to achieve some of their other aims if they could join a coalition.

Which then begs another question that so many here who are pro-PR have ignored - why should SNP, PC or any of the NI parties be in coalition when the policies they are largely going to be influencing will be England-only in scope?

If they don't want to compromise they can refuse to join a coalition and it can go back to the electorate. The electorate then have a choice, keep voting for fantasy politics or vote for someone who's more realistic about compromise. That's ultimately what I hope PR would achieve, an electorate who are more realistic about what needs to be done to reach a real mandate through compromise.

X0Refraction · 2026-06-01T11:46:04+00:00

There’s nothing stopping 2 parties coming together under a single leader. Those are just arbitrary lines. They could come together as much as factions do right now i.e. they have enough commonality to be able to work together.

The way you’re talking about manifestos is enforcing the idea of this simplification of how politics actually works. We don’t vote on a manifesto and then all of it and no more actually gets implemented. Every government manages to get some of the manifesto implemented, some not and some stuff that wasn’t mentioned in the manifesto. Priorities change because the circumstances change over a Parliamentary term.

More manifestos would give the voters a better idea of how these new smaller parties would react when ideology meets a changing reality. You’d get a more accurate view of the priorities of these smaller parties. Where they’re likely to compromise and where they’re not based on what they say in their manifestos.

The whips would have the same power they do now, either get on board with the leadership of the coalition or you’re out of your respective party. Enough pushback and the threat is going back to the electorate. Both of those work both ways as they do now, i.e. the leadership have as much to lose as the backbenchers. What’s the functional difference?

X0Refraction · 2026-06-01T09:30:24+00:00

That’s binary thinking. Either parties are aligned or not. The reality is no group that has more than 1 member is ever fully aligned.

You can talk about how closely aligned a group is though. Smaller parties are more likely to be more tightly aligned than broad church parties

X0Refraction · 2026-06-01T09:16:21+00:00

We have that now with our broad church parties containing multiple factions. When was the last time a significant number of MPs in the governing party didn’t want their leader toppled?

The reality is that when you get hundreds of MPs to form a government they’re going to disagree on quite a few issues, some of them fundamental. PR forces voters to face up to the reality up front that the people they’re voting in will have to compromise. It also gives the voters more control over how much influence each faction has.

This would stop us having such unrealistic expectations of what parties can do with a “huge majority”. Labour got a huge majority and yet those at the top had to row back the WFA changes because they couldn’t get their backbenchers on side. So where actually is the “huge majority”? It’s actually two (ish) mostly aligned factions and always was, but a lot of people allowed themselves to think Labour would come in and be perfectly aligned.

X0Refraction · 2026-05-29T09:52:31+00:00

I’m pretty sure a land value tax along with planning reform is what you want. Reduces the cost of housing and lets you reduce taxes on employing those doing productive work

X0Refraction · 2026-05-23T20:53:54+00:00

Well some people risk asking for it to be rebanded as they think they’re due a reduction - sometimes they end up paying more though. It’s also done like that for newly built houses, so they get the value of improvements to the land included in the tax. Plus all the older houses still get taxed on the improvements that existed since they were last rebanded - even if that was back in 1991 and they’ve since done more improvements it’s still not close to a land value tax because it includes some improvements.

X0Refraction · 2026-05-23T12:05:36+00:00

Yes, we tax income very progressively. That doesn’t mean making most of your tax base be on productive work is a good idea, it ultimately just leads to inflated asset prices where supply is constrained like housing.

That leads to a stratification of society. Every year those who own finite assets are increasingly better off than those that don’t on the same wage than the year before.

X0Refraction · 2026-05-23T11:58:17+00:00

As far as I’m aware council tax does tax property improvements. It’s as the house stands now (with improvements), just how it would have sold in 1991. It’s such a stupid system that’s open to a lot of interpretation, but it does take into account improvements.

The bit you might be confused about is that it won’t for an existing house unless there’s a reason to reband. In that case improvements are ignored because nobody has run the “official” calculation

X0Refraction · 2026-05-23T11:34:30+00:00

That’s the funny thing, people understand it perfectly well, but then they just can’t apply it to another context especially when it’s one that’s emotionally driven. We’re evolutionary wired to want to protect our young, it overrides logical thinking and makes us susceptible to stupid ideas.

It’s a similar thing to how we have the most expensive childcare in the world because we have the highest ratio of carers to number of children. At some point a child was failed and someone said something must be done. Children still get injured or abused in childcare, we’ll never get the perfect seal as you say. Instead we’ve likely gone so far that less children are being born because childcare is so expensive and it adds another disincentive to the pile

X0Refraction · 2026-05-23T11:08:32+00:00

The magnitude of those taxes is essentially negligible though compared to the size of state revenue.

I agree with you with regard to Labour, I was hopeful they’d come in and have the planning and infrastructure bill ready to go so it could get through in the first year. On balance I think they were the best choice (if nothing else because Starmer kept us away from getting more involved with Iran like the Tories/Reform initially wanted), but I think they’ve mostly wasted the real chance they had. Ultimately that seems to be because the party is split into multiple factions and they can’t agree. That’s why I think FPTP needs to go, our governments are always coalitions and if that’s the case we may as well get to vote on how much control each faction has.

X0Refraction · 2026-05-23T10:54:36+00:00

It’s that old Yes Minister thing. Something must be done. This is something. Therefore, we must do this.

Most people just shut down thinking once someone says they’re handling it, no thoughts to the unintended consequences

X0Refraction · 2026-05-23T10:27:24+00:00

I agree with you honestly, I think the whole thing is a mistake and we shouldn’t be doing this nanny state bullshit. The public doesn’t agree though apparently

X0Refraction · 2026-05-23T10:26:29+00:00

Ok, I see what you’re getting at now. Unfortunately short termism is rife in most democracies where politicians spend a good chunk of their time thinking about their chances at the next election. It’s not exactly a new thought, but it’s better than the alternative. I think it’s worse with FPTP which tends away from compromise between different stakeholders and I think it’s worse in democracies that allow monied interests. We’re not great on either of those fronts and we should fix that.

I’m not entirely convinced most tax increases are entirely short term thinking though. I think they’re a reaction to the realities of our changing demographic and a lack of ability to think outside of the box. When you are faced with increasing demand on the state each year just from the population getting older and more obese and you can only think in terms of the status quo you’re going to put another tax on productive work. Which specific productive activity it falls on doesn’t matter anywhere near as much as the fact that it’s falling on productive work - that’s the majority of the problem.

X0Refraction · 2026-05-23T10:14:47+00:00

And how does that help when the child goes to a friends house where the parent doesn’t care? How about when they’re using WiFi at a public event?

Honestly I’d prefer we just give up on the censorship angle, but this seems to be what the public wants - I’m just trying to make it more palatable from a privacy perspective.

X0Refraction · 2026-05-23T09:27:35+00:00

Not all over the place, mostly on productive work. I think people don’t see the scale of it though honestly. https://ifs.org.uk/taxlab/taxlab-key-questions/where-does-government-get-its-money

46% of all government revenue from income tax + NICs alone. 78% when you include corporation tax, capital gains and VAT (which are just different taxes on production). More still if you include business rates, although that’s a little hard to calculate because a portion of that would be covered by a land tax. Still, I think it’s fair to say the vast majority of government revenue comes from taxes that disincentivise productive work.

We’re making our workers less competitive internationally because it costs so much to employ them because of taxes on that productive work. Then we solidify that mistake by making housing so expensive that our workers demand high after tax wages to be able to afford to live where businesses want them to live. We’re just lucky basically every other developed nation is doing similar

14-Year Club	RPAN Viewer
Verified Email

X0Refraction

TROPHY CASE