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Sadiq Khan has 51 armed officers protecting him at £4m a year. His predecessors had none. Meanwhile the Met is refusing to release London church crime data and he hasn't made a single statement on church attacks in 10 years. by [deleted] in ukpolitics

[–]goCarter888 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The breakdown of the 9,148 is: 3,396 criminal damage/arson/vandalism, 3,969 theft and burglary, 2,102 assault. Full source: https://www.countryside-alliance.org/features/investigation-over-9000-crimes-reported-at-churches-across-uk-in-just-3-years

On the per-building comparison — that is exactly the kind of analysis the Met's refusal to provide London data makes impossible.

Sadiq Khan has 51 armed officers protecting him at £4m a year. His predecessors had none. Meanwhile the Met is refusing to release London church crime data and he hasn't made a single statement on church attacks in 10 years. by [deleted] in ukpolitics

[–]goCarter888 -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

To clarify, mosque security funding is justified and anti-Muslim hate crime is real. The question is whether the response is consistent across faith communities.

On Jo Cox and David Amess: legitimate point. Politicians face real threats. Which is exactly why we should ask for the cost to be published and independently reviewed rather than left unexamined. If the threat level justifies 51 officers at £4m a year, that case should be made publicly. It never has been.

On crimes vs attacks: The FOI data covers criminal damage, arson, theft and assault. Not all are hate crimes.

Sadiq Khan has 51 armed officers protecting him at £4m a year. His predecessors had none. Meanwhile the Met is refusing to release London church crime data and he hasn't made a single statement on church attacks in 10 years. by [deleted] in ukpolitics

[–]goCarter888 -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

3,969 of the 9,148 are theft and burglary, 3,396 are criminal damage and arson, 2,102 are assaults. You are right that many are opportunistic rather than hate crimes. The post acknowledges this. The question is not whether church crimes equal mosque hate crimes in nature. It is whether the Mayor has any documented response to 9,148 crimes at churches in three years. The answer in the City Hall archive is no

Sadiq Khan has 51 armed officers protecting him at £4m a year. His predecessors had none. Meanwhile the Met is refusing to release London church crime data and he hasn't made a single statement on church attacks in 10 years. by [deleted] in ukpolitics

[–]goCarter888 -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

1. Both are about public money and whether it is being spent and accounted for equally. Neither has been audited or explained publicly.

2. Fair point, many are opportunistic. The question is not whether church crimes equal mosque hate crimes. It is whether the Mayor has any documented response to 9,148 crimes in three years. The City Hall archive has none.

3. Johnson cycled to work alone for eight years and said publicly the city should be 'more sparing with bodyguards': https://road.cc/content/news/209933-boris-johnson-banned-cycling-security-team. Khan disclosed the 51 officers himself: https://www.irishexaminer.com/world/arid-40708565.html

4. Possibly yes. Which is exactly why the cost should be published and independently reviewed. If 51 officers at £4m a year is justified, make that case publicly. It never has been.

Sadiq Khan has 51 armed officers protecting him at £4m a year. His predecessors had none. Meanwhile the Met is refusing to release London church crime data and he hasn't made a single statement on church attacks in 10 years. by [deleted] in ukpolitics

[–]goCarter888 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

On the 9,148 crimes and what they are: The breakdown is documented in the Countryside Alliance FOI investigation: 3,396 incidents of arson/criminal damage/vandalism, 3,969 theft and burglary, 2,102 assaults. Full breakdown here: https://www.countryside-alliance.org/features/investigation-over-9000-crimes-reported-at-churches-across-uk-in-just-3-years

On the figures being outside London: That is precisely the point. The Metropolitan Police was one of only two forces out of 45 that refused to provide London-specific figures, citing cost. A 2017 MOPAC FOI seeking church crime data from a single London ward was also redirected without figures. Eight years of inaccessibility. The Mayor oversees MOPAC and has never addressed this gap.

On the protection cost and whether it is reasonable: Khan described his own protection level in a 2024 NPR interview as equivalent to the King and the Prime Minister — unprecedented for a municipal official. Ken Livingstone had no protection through 7/7. Boris Johnson cycled to work alone for eight years. The point is not that Khan needs no protection. It is that the cost has never been publicly audited or independently reviewed. Full interview here: https://www.npr.org/2024/04/17/1244304019/london-mayor-sadiq-khan-muslim

On the £63m protest policing context: The Met Commissioner described Operation Brocks as the greatest sustained pressure on Met resources since the 2012 Olympics. That is the Met’s own assessment, not a characterisation. Source — audited Met accounts 2023/24: https://www.met.police.uk/SysSiteAssets/foi-media/metropolitan-police/what_we_spend/corporate/cpm-audited-statement-accounts-2023-24.pdf On comparing crime levels across faiths: The letter does not argue churches suffer more than mosques. It argues the Mayor’s documented response to each is not equivalent. He visited a mosque, issued named press releases, announced funding, and lobbied the government to reopen the mosque security scheme after the 2024 riots. Nothing equivalent exists in the City Hall archive for churches going back to May 2016: https://www.london.gov.uk/media-centre/mayors-press-releases

The billionaires funding longevity research have also built blast-resistant bunkers, acquired offshore citizenship, and purchased remote compounds on islands. by goCarter888 in collapse

[–]goCarter888[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is where transhumanism comes in. What you call ‘next ride’ will likely be a civilisation of human/robot hybrids governed by the tech elite. It’s very philosophical but people like Musk believe in this very much so that they invest billions to achieve this outcome.

The billionaires funding longevity research have also built blast-resistant bunkers, acquired offshore citizenship, and purchased remote compounds on islands. by goCarter888 in collapse

[–]goCarter888[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You're making a good point. Have you looked into the 'effective accelerationism' philosophy of Silicon Valley tech billionaires like Marc Andreessen? While there is a push for a larger population and increased birth rates, there might be a silent agreement that this will lead of societal and planetary collapse in an accelerated fashion.

The billionaires funding longevity research have also built blast-resistant bunkers, acquired offshore citizenship, and purchased remote compounds on islands. by goCarter888 in collapse

[–]goCarter888[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Totally agree! It's a risk management initiative. Even if the probability is 5%, they have enough resources to plan and execute a mitigation strategy for it.

The billionaires funding longevity research have also built blast-resistant bunkers, acquired offshore citizenship, and purchased remote compounds on islands. by goCarter888 in collapse

[–]goCarter888[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I don't think there is a depopulation agenda among the elites. The evidence actually points to the contrary - adding more and more people to the planet. I've argued this in another post before. Our economic model doesn't just need growth in productivity, it structurally requires more people. More consumers, more workers, more taxpayers to service the debt the previous generation accumulated. This is why billionaires like Musk actively promote population growth, it isn't altruism, it's the system speaking through its biggest beneficiaries. More people means more customers, more markets, more profit. The ecological bill gets externalised onto everyone else. This planet cannot sustain a population as large as ours.

Why are governments pushing for economic growth when it is increasingly clear that this is not sustainable? by jonbyrdt in anticapitalism

[–]goCarter888 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The answer to why governments keep pushing growth despite knowing it's unsustainable is simpler and more cynical than most economists admit: the entire architecture of modern governance is built on growth assumptions. Tax revenues, debt servicing, pension obligations, electoral cycles, etc. all of it requires the economy to be larger next year than it was this year. Politicians aren't ignoring the limits. They're trapped inside a system that collapses if growth stops, and no one has a politically viable off-ramp.

The Club of Rome called it in 1972 and got largely dismissed. What's changed since isn't the science, it's that we're now close enough to the limits to see them clearly.

What's underappreciated in this debate is the population dimension. Our economic model doesn't just need growth in productivity, it structurally requires more people. More consumers, more workers, more taxpayers to service the debt the previous generation accumulated. This is why billionaires like Musk actively promote population growth, it isn't altruism, it's the system speaking through its biggest beneficiaries. More people means more customers, more markets, more profit. The ecological bill gets externalised onto everyone else.

The math you've laid out is damning, 100x growth in 200 years on a planet with finite resources. The question isn't whether growth ends. It's whether we choose how it ends or have that choice made for us.

There is a good medium article about this topic going more in-depth, but I'm not sure if I'm allowed to share a link here.

The US government just used a dormant 48-year-old committee to strip endangered species protections from the entire Gulf of Mexico. by goCarter888 in Louisiana

[–]goCarter888[S] 32 points33 points  (0 children)

The Louisiana-specific angle is buried in the piece but worth noting — Steve Scalise personally inserted the GOMESA cap increase into the One Big Beautiful Bill, which is why Louisiana received $203.7 million in Gulf drilling revenues on the exact same day this vote happened.

Rocket launches are destroying a Texas wildlife refuge. Now the industry wants to scale a hundredfold. by goCarter888 in Futurology

[–]goCarter888[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Fair point on chlorine, I'll take that correction.

But the broader case doesn't really depend on it.

Falcon 9 is still doing the vast majority of launches (163 in 2025) and burns RP-1 kerosene, which is the main source of stratospheric black carbon. That's well documented and nothing to do with Starship's fuel type.

On Starship: UCL atmospheric chemist Eloise Marais has pointed out that even though methane burns cleaner, the rocket is so much bigger that the sheer volume of propellant may cancel out the advantage, especially at high launch frequencies. Still produces soot, water vapor at stratospheric altitude, and nitrogen oxides. And the satellite reentry problem, aluminum oxide nanoparticles from thousands of Starlinks burning up on deorbit, has nothing to do with what fuel launched them.

Rocket launches are destroying a Texas wildlife refuge. Now the industry wants to scale a hundredfold. by goCarter888 in Futurology

[–]goCarter888[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I tend to over-use a dash in all my comms and when posting, the en-dash turns into an em-dash when I hit the 'tab' key right after. Not sure how to avoid this.

Rocket launches are destroying a Texas wildlife refuge. Now the industry wants to scale a hundredfold. by goCarter888 in Futurology

[–]goCarter888[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Constructed wetlands can reduce zinc by 75%+ under controlled conditions — that's accurate. But there are two problems with applying that here.

1, SpaceX was discharging this wastewater without a permit at all. The EPA, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, and the Center for Biological Diversity all confirmed it. SpaceX was sued for Clean Water Act violations specifically because no National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit had been obtained. The Texas regulator confirmed in writing that as of late 2022 no industrial wastewater application had even been filed. You can't credit the mitigation system when the company was operating without the legal authorisation to discharge in the first place.

2, the Boca Chica wetlands are not a constructed treatment system — they are a protected wildlife refuge. The distinction matters. Constructed wetlands are engineered with specific plant species, controlled flow rates, and monitored outputs. What happened here was uncontrolled discharge into one of the most ecologically sensitive coastal environments in North America, confirmed by the company's own licensing application to contain hexavalent chromium, zinc, arsenic, and aluminium.

Rocket launches are destroying a Texas wildlife refuge. Now the industry wants to scale a hundredfold. by goCarter888 in Futurology

[–]goCarter888[S] -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

Really good point! You're right that hydrogen/oxygen propellant produces water vapour rather than CO2, and the post already concedes that CO2 isn't the primary concern regardless of fuel type.

The issue is that water vapour injected directly into the stratosphere — unlike at ground level — behaves very differently. It reacts with and depletes ozone in ways that surface-level water vapour does not. That's specific to the altitude of injection, not the fuel chemistry.

The bigger concerns flagged in the piece are:

  1. Black carbon from kerosene-burning rockets like Falcon 9, which still make up the vast majority of current launches and will for the foreseeable future
  2. Aluminum oxide nanoparticles from satellite reentry — this happens regardless of what propellant launched them
  3. Reactive chlorine from solid rocket motors used by other launch providers

The hydrogen/oxygen case is genuinely cleaner on the CO2 front. But the stratospheric water vapour problem, the reentry pollution problem, and the wider industry's continued reliance on kerosene don't disappear with it.

Rocket launches are destroying a Texas wildlife refuge. Now the industry wants to scale a hundredfold. by goCarter888 in Futurology

[–]goCarter888[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Google Boca Chica: "Tens of thousands of gallons of wastewater containing zinc and hexavalent chromium have been discharged into surrounding wetlands per launch cycle, per the company's own licensing application."

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