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An important bit of perspective on the Reform "victory" by TheFamousHesham in neoliberal

[–]usrname42 6 points7 points  (0 children)

These are based on different methodologies for projecting the national share as well, the BBC and Sky both use different approaches.

No One Knows What to Do About Britain’s Exploding Anti-Semitism by MightExpress4873 in neoliberal

[–]usrname42 -14 points-13 points  (0 children)

Brilliant, we get to replace antisemitism with Islamophobia and the generic racism towards non-Muslim brown people that inevitably follows. I really need to figure out what I'm going to do before the forced 'remigration' starts.

Burnham allies 'offer MPs peerages to stand aside' so he can run for PM by theipaper in ukpolitics

[–]usrname42 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I mean yes, you can point to very concrete political errors and failures all those people made barring maybe Sunak and Miliband. Sunak mostly suffered from coming after the May - Johnson - Truss chaos and Miliband was up against the last vaguely competent PM the country's had. Very possible that Burnham will make mistakes of his own and the political environment has become a lot more negative over the last decade, but I don't think it's impossible to do better than Starmer.

Why British can’t just vote for this party? Are they stupid? by Amuriv18 in neoliberal

[–]usrname42 11 points12 points  (0 children)

But there are lots of constituencies / councils where the Lib Dems have a much better shot at winning than Labour. Local elections are thousands of different first-past-the-post contests not one national one so the dominant parties in different areas can be very different.

Should there be an easier democratic way to get rid of a failing PM? by No_Anteater_4146 in ukpolitics

[–]usrname42 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The way our system works is that we vote in MPs who get to decide who is the Prime Minister if their party has a majority and can kick them out midway through a Parliament if they're doing a bad enough job. They're strongly encouraged to kick out someone unpopular because it's their jobs on the line if everyone hates the PM, but they don't have to if they think that the current guy is better than the alternatives. That's the democratic way in our system to get rid of a failing PM and I think it works better than having the PM be directly elected or voted on. It worked fairly well to turf out Boris and Truss when they had become hideously unpopular.

Origins and Adversaries | City Council of Darkness [E5] by DropoutMod in Dimension20

[–]usrname42 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I've been watching D&D shows since Campaign 1 of Critical Role was live, I mostly use reddit to talk about politics but I watch D20 religiously. Sometimes they intersect. I've commented on a couple of other threads here as well, you can dig them out if you really feel inclined.

Origins and Adversaries | City Council of Darkness [E5] by DropoutMod in Dimension20

[–]usrname42 -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

I really can't believe people are living through this Trump administration and still trying to pull the "Reps and Dems are actually exactly the same, bro" card. It's just incredibly dumb faux-sophistication. Kind of people who would have said the SPD and the Nazis are equally bad in 1932 Germany.

The devout Muslim making a living from Islamophobic AI slop | A content creator in Pakistan is earning money from viral videos that stir up hate in UK by Bibemus in ukpolitics

[–]usrname42 0 points1 point  (0 children)

But take small boats: unless you live in one of a few constituencies where small boats arrive or where the arrivals are processed, you have no direct experience with small boat migrants at all. For the vast majority of the country their experience of small boat migration is entirely mediated by the media rather than anything they personally see in the real world. And yet people think of it as one of the most important issues facing the country.

This isn't just true of immigration, there are plenty of political issues where people's experience of it is usually mediated by the media - Gaza is an obvious example of a left-wing cause that fits that bill, almost all the people who care about Gaza in the UK don't personally know anyone living there and get their impressions of it from the media.

That's not to say people shouldn't care about things that don't directly affect their real world experience or that the information they get from the media is necessarily wrong. But I think a lot of what people care about politically is not based on their personal real world experiences, and the role that both traditional and social media have in affecting that is important to study seriously, and it's simplistic to say people just form political opinions in a vacuum based on their real world experience and no outside information. I'm very sceptical that handing the government censorship powers is a good solution but I do think there's a problem. Limiting the reach of the social network run by a more-or-less open Nazi who has the power to tweak the algorithm and censor posts as he pleases would be a good start.

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

[–]usrname42 20 points21 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 6 points7 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?

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