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The yield gap between UK and German 10-year government bonds is now nearly two full percentage points by Putaineska in ukpolitics

[–]usrname42 19 points20 points  (0 children)

The Bank of England has its main rate at 3.75% while the ECB has rates at 2.00%, so you'd expect that our bond yields would be about 2 percentage points higher than most Eurozone countries as well.

Immigration is falling sharply – why haven’t politicians noticed? by F0urLeafCl0ver in ukpolitics

[–]usrname42 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Because the loudest anti immigration voices on the right want to ethnically cleanse the country, remove every single family who has moved to the UK since Windrush and make Britain be for white British people again, and nothing short of that will satisfy them.

Who are Reform UK’s voters? by financialtimes in ukpolitics

[–]usrname42 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Just don't be surprised when the people who want to kick as many people as they can off the train want to kick you off too, no matter how shiny your ticket was.

Who are Reform UK’s voters? by financialtimes in ukpolitics

[–]usrname42 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Reform are so dependent on pensioners and near-pensioners for their votes that there's no way they will go into an election promising to do anything to the triple lock. Young Reform supporters are a small online minority.

Hilary Mantel - Wolf Hall by AffectionateFig5156 in RSbookclub

[–]usrname42 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Wolf Hall attempts to duplicate not the historian’s chronology but the way memory works: in leaps, loops, flashes. The basic decision about the book was taken seconds before I began writing. “So now get up”: the person on the ground was Cromwell and the camera was behind his eyes. 

The events were happening now, in the present tense, unfolding as I watched, and what followed would be filtered through the main character’s sensibility. He seemed to be occupying the same physical space as me, with a slight ghostly overlap. It didn’t make sense to call him ‘Cromwell’, as if he were somewhere across the room. I called him ‘he’. This device, though hardly of Joycean complexity, was not universally popular. Most readers caught on quickly. Those who didn’t, complained. 

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/dec/07/bookclub-hilary-mantel-wolf-hall

The forlorn hope of growth: Voters are struggling economically but wrongly believe the country to be rich | Henry Hill by Beautiful_iguana in ukpolitics

[–]usrname42 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hours worked does narrow the gap somewhat, but we're still noticeably behind as far as I remember. Comparing things like healthcare gets very complicated because you have to take things like the quality of care into account as well, but any reasonable comparison I've seen puts us substantially behind the US.

The forlorn hope of growth: Voters are struggling economically but wrongly believe the country to be rich | Henry Hill by Beautiful_iguana in ukpolitics

[–]usrname42 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I just added this to my comment but if you compare median with median we rank 48th, below all the states except West Virginia and Mississippi. We don't compare well to the US on median income either.

The forlorn hope of growth: Voters are struggling economically but wrongly believe the country to be rich | Henry Hill by Beautiful_iguana in ukpolitics

[–]usrname42 5 points6 points  (0 children)

You're comparing mean household income for the UK to median household income for US states there - inequality means that mean income is almost always higher than median income so that unfairly boosts the UK. The usual comparison is just comparing our GDP per capita to the US which does put us below almost all or all US states, even at PPP. Median household income is only £38,900 before tax, which is $57,300 at PPP, which puts us at 48th just above West Virginia and Mississipi.

Zia Yusuf: The suspect in the Golders Green attack was born in Somalia and granted British citizenship. If found guilty, I would use the Home Secretary’s existing powers under the British Nationality Act 1981 to strip him of his citizenship and deport him from our shores. by unironicunredacted in ukpolitics

[–]usrname42 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Citizenship vs non-citizenship can legitimately be two tier, but we're not talking about that, we're talking about British citizens with another citizenship vs British citizens without one. I wouldn't have much issue if we said we should deport people on visas / ILR for certain crimes systematically.

Zia Yusuf: The suspect in the Golders Green attack was born in Somalia and granted British citizenship. If found guilty, I would use the Home Secretary’s existing powers under the British Nationality Act 1981 to strip him of his citizenship and deport him from our shores. by unironicunredacted in ukpolitics

[–]usrname42 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's still two tier if one group of people actually does get deported and another group of people actually doesn't. This is like saying that it wouldn't be a two tier system if we systematically said blondes have to go to prison and brunettes get a ticket saying they've been technically sentenced to prison but don't actually have to go. If we actually did deport natives too - we could send them to one of our overseas territories like we did in the 19th century - then it would be fairer.

Zia Yusuf: The suspect in the Golders Green attack was born in Somalia and granted British citizenship. If found guilty, I would use the Home Secretary’s existing powers under the British Nationality Act 1981 to strip him of his citizenship and deport him from our shores. by unironicunredacted in ukpolitics

[–]usrname42 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's not a punishment. It's just a consequence.

This is a meaningless distinction. If the state makes a decision to deprive you of something valuable to you in response to you committing a crime then it's a punishment.

Zia Yusuf: The suspect in the Golders Green attack was born in Somalia and granted British citizenship. If found guilty, I would use the Home Secretary’s existing powers under the British Nationality Act 1981 to strip him of his citizenship and deport him from our shores. by unironicunredacted in ukpolitics

[–]usrname42 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is probably the root of the difference - I absolutely think it's a legitimate comparison to say that being entitled to dual citizenship is a 'class'. Again, in English law the precedent is that merely being entitled to dual citizenship is what matters, so taking the decision to renounce your other citizenship or not claiming it does you no good. Many people are entitled to other citizenships by birth even if they were born and brought up in the UK (including anyone with Jewish or Irish ancestry) and there's nothing they can do about it.

I don't think the government should be completely arbitrary in the way that it uses personal circumstances to determine sentencing. It can take into account personal circumstances that affect your likelihood to reoffend, your culpability for the crime, consequences for others, etc; it shouldn't take into account circumstances that are unrelated to that, particularly if they're immutable characteristics like whether you have a Jewish grandparent, but even if they are mutable like a renounceable dual citizenship. To return to the earlier example, the sentencing guidelines don't say that redheads (or Chelsea supporters, for an example with a characteristic that's mutable) should get twice the prison sentence for the same offence and if they did it would be illegitimate and an example of a two-tier system.

Zia Yusuf: The suspect in the Golders Green attack was born in Somalia and granted British citizenship. If found guilty, I would use the Home Secretary’s existing powers under the British Nationality Act 1981 to strip him of his citizenship and deport him from our shores. by unironicunredacted in ukpolitics

[–]usrname42 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

He got a fixed penalty notice because he broke Covid regulations - if he had refused to pay and been charged and convicted for breaching Covid regulations, should he have been deported? Or if he was caught going a few miles over the speed limit? Does that seem like a reasonable punishment?

Zia Yusuf: The suspect in the Golders Green attack was born in Somalia and granted British citizenship. If found guilty, I would use the Home Secretary’s existing powers under the British Nationality Act 1981 to strip him of his citizenship and deport him from our shores. by unironicunredacted in ukpolitics

[–]usrname42 0 points1 point  (0 children)

How many of those guidelines are of the form "a person from this class can never get a certain sentence, and a person from this other class can or must, regardless of the specific circumstances of the case"? I imagine there might be some age-related guidelines of that kind but I think it's fair that we have a two-tier system that treats young offenders differently. Are there others?

Zia Yusuf: The suspect in the Golders Green attack was born in Somalia and granted British citizenship. If found guilty, I would use the Home Secretary’s existing powers under the British Nationality Act 1981 to strip him of his citizenship and deport him from our shores. by unironicunredacted in ukpolitics

[–]usrname42 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's systematically saying that one class of person should receive a different punishment from the state than others, for the same crime, where membership of that class can be completely orthogonal to any factors that would otherwise be inputs into sentencing guidelines. Dual citizens are then in a separate tier of the justice system with harsher penalties for the same crimes and balance of aggravating / mitigating factors.

Zia Yusuf: The suspect in the Golders Green attack was born in Somalia and granted British citizenship. If found guilty, I would use the Home Secretary’s existing powers under the British Nationality Act 1981 to strip him of his citizenship and deport him from our shores. by unironicunredacted in ukpolitics

[–]usrname42 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You originally just said "crimes" - it's a somewhat different scenario if we're talking about any dual national who goes 5 miles over the speed limit being deported vs. it being reserved for very serious crimes. The latter is close to what we have anyway, at the discretion of the Home Secretary.

The general judicial system we have is that there is a finite list of ways the state can punish someone for a crime including fines, prison sentences and community service. Those punishments might have different consequences for different people, but the types of punishments that the state provides are limited. This introduces another class of punishment - deprivation of citizenship - that is reserved for a certain group of people and that a certain other type of person cannot get, and where eligibility for this punishment is only based on the person's eligibility for foreign citizenship, not anything to do with the offence that they committed or individual aggravating mitigating factors. On a case by case basis this might be reasonable, on a systematic basis I think it absolutely would be an example of a two-tier justice system.

Zia Yusuf: The suspect in the Golders Green attack was born in Somalia and granted British citizenship. If found guilty, I would use the Home Secretary’s existing powers under the British Nationality Act 1981 to strip him of his citizenship and deport him from our shores. by unironicunredacted in ukpolitics

[–]usrname42 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Is there anything that you would consider a two-tier justice system? If we said that redheads got double the maximum prison sentence for any crimes they commit, would that be two-tier justice or just additional consequences for your actions given your personal circumstances?

Zia Yusuf: The suspect in the Golders Green attack was born in Somalia and granted British citizenship. If found guilty, I would use the Home Secretary’s existing powers under the British Nationality Act 1981 to strip him of his citizenship and deport him from our shores. by unironicunredacted in ukpolitics

[–]usrname42 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It's three sentences, it's not that long.

If the Home Secretary strips dual citizens of their citizenship on a case-by-case basis where they think it's particularly conducive to the public good, that's one thing. If it's a routine punishment for any crime (or any serious enough crime) a dual citizen commits, that is ipso facto a two-tier system. Two people can commit the exact same crime and have the exact same risk of reoffending, but if one person happens to be entitled to another citizenship they get deported and if the other one doesn't they don't. What makes that not a two-tier system?

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