mattiloy

I am fluent in Swedish. I just read less of their news because there is no bbc news and the better news sites are behind paywalls. The issue is that the onus is on the citizen to endlessly read (often commercial) news to understand what is happening with their laws. Why is that acceptable with government but with no other industry? If we change the Ts and Cs (the contract law that governs our relationship with our customers) we have to inform them and the onus is on us to do so. Which is right. But why for the govt does that responsibility lie with the voter to consume all the info via usually partisan sources. Isnt that a bit f**ked?

One thing that has struck me living in Sweden is that I’m just not as invested or engaged in the politics news cycle over here as I was in the uk politics/news cycle - I’ve got sort of 3/4 of a foot in the uk and 1/4 of a foot in Sweden in terms of engagement. Today by chance I heard about a change in a law proposed by the right wing govt to reform the strandskydd law (shoreline protection law) which prevents new building within a few hundred metres of the shoreline. Since this is something that I am really strongly against, and how I only heard about it by chance, it dawned on my how out of touch with it all I am here. And then it dawned on me how now I’m like an average Joe out of touch guy in the uk but here, if you catch my drift. Basically, I am just grasping how difficult it is to reach most of the population. Most things wont cut through. I’m a busy dad of a 2 year old and a foreigner so I dont keep abreast of everything but I am nonetheless very interested and want to be as informed as possible. And yet important things can pass me by. So I thought about my own job in the bank. Whenever we change our rates or terms and conditions we are obliged to directly inform our customers. Often it is at great expense as we have to send physical letters out to most. Why should governments be any different? Why should we have to consume basically all the news, scroll endlessly through twitter, to find out whats changing with the laws in our countries? I think if each outgoing government had to produce a physical document describing all the changes they’d made to laws and deliver that into the postboxes of every citizen in the country well ahead of election day they wouldnt get away with half of much shite as they do.

miss! missss!

https://x.com/damocrat/status/1733624799056761020?s=46 Disgraceful. The inevitable conclusion of a country where even the nominally ’centre Left’ party leans into the mean spiritedness towards those who are down on their chips to pander to the fascist press. Little wonder then when a new labour guy pops up in the comments with something like this:

Well, genetic studies show that much of the dna of european jews is european. And much of the rest is almost indiscernible from palestinians. So…

And then they kissed 💋

Isnt that whats gonna happen anyway when he rejoins to Tory party? First past the post encourages extremism by making people feel like they have no voice. I’d rather have farage as PM leading a far right party on 20% with his wings clipped by a coalition than farage as PM with a tory majority and carte blanche to do what he likes. The Sverige Democrats propping up the Swedish govt here is preferable to a Trump, Bolsonaro, Milei situation. What I hear is that the far right is on the rise, liberals arent so enamoured with democracy anymore. I heard some centrist podcast praising the French system lately basically because Macron was able to win and has a lot of executive power. But what happens when Le Pen wins next time and has the same executive power? Rigging democracy to give you the result you want only works for so long. So short sighted.

Maybe Starmer really is playing 4D chess. Maybe he really wants PR and is deliberately trying to squeeze the Labour vote to ensure a hung parliament. A bit conspiratorial but what else can explain how sh*t he is?

Not long until we’re in hung parliament territory 😁

https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/the-fiscal-impact-of-immigration-in-the-uk/ Actually it depends. Here meta studies are generally showing that migration from outside of Europe has a net fiscal cost. I know that there is also a lot of diversity in net fiscal contribution between groups here in Sweden too. And thats part of the integration challenge - in particular for certain groups of people of overseas origin for whom females never enter the workforce and they have lots of kids- in that case the average welfare spend is relatively high and the average tax receipt is relatively low. Then again, if those kids are successfully integrated themselves then over several generations I guess the initial decision to accept their parents as migrants eventually pays dividends. But then there is also evidence that high immigration to a locality leads to higher property prices in that locality. Then there is also evidence that rising property prices suppresses birth rates (because people are priced out of growing their families). Point being - the economics of migration is complex.

In other words - fix the sh*tty legacy of Thatcher/Blair/Cameron and definitely don’t do it all over again.

Yes, there was light at the end of the tunnel for those communities. 30 years later they were to become hollowed out commuter towns whose utility is measured in how close they are to the motorway. Brilliant. Thanks Maggie! I wonder if Olaf Scholtz mentioned how much meaningful change the fella with the moustache made ahead of his election campaign.

Australia also with a lower median age and much less income and wealth inequality. A large and increasing share of the NHS budget goes on managing chronic illnesses that are often basically caused by poverty. You cant solve the NHS’ problems without solving the social problems that blight the uk, and the best way to do that is by reducing inequality.

Except that it doesnt. Nuclear still comes with scheduled refuelling outages and occasional unplanned outages usually due to technical/safety issues. Here some data on unplanned outages in the US by year to 2018. There is nothing ’wishful’ about the literature- its pretty simple stuff- the problem of irregular generation from renewables is solveable with existing technologies. It basically just requires greater coverage and variety in both type and geography and a great leap forward in improving efficiencies in terms of consumption and in the infrastructure- the national grid and electricity storage (batteries). Nuclear wasnt on the agenda as a solution to climate change for most western countries until very recently. Then Ukraine happened and now we’re here. And it’s nothing to do with solving the oil price shock. These things take decades to build and the oil shock from Ukraine is already over. It’s because China controls something like 70% of the world’s trade in rare earths and the US doesn’t like China and tells the rest of the west to forget about renewables- nuclear is back baby

There is now a wealth of literature suggesting that renewables combined with greater efficiency would be sufficient alone. The real problem is that rare metals required for the green transition are located mainly in countries that are competitors to the west, whilst uranium reserves are located in either friendly or at least malleable countries. Thats why the venn diagram between people horny for nuclear power and people horny for NATO is a circle. The issues with nuclear are the cost and time before putting it into production and the cost and hazards of decommissioning. Its just kicking a great big barrel of nuclear waste into the long grass. You invite limited liability companies to come in and generate electricity and maximise their profits on the promise that they’ll clean up after themselves, they pinky promise, make a stack of cash, pay it out in dividends and then when the partys over they go out of business and the govt is left with the bill for tidying it up. The Sellafield decommissioning has already cost the taxpayer over 100bn. Meanwhile its also had various incidents leaking tens of thousands of gallons of radioactive waste water into the irish sea.

Was just reading about this guy. Sounds like an absolute nutcase. Besides the insane politics he also claims he has spoken to God in visions, is a tantric sex teacher and cloned his dog. Argentina has long been a basket case. I guess the natural reaction to that must be to elect the oddest person you can find? It will be interesting anyway. If he implements the sort of pure austrian economics he claims to believe in then when that fails then maybe we can at least point to that as being an example of how all and any attempts at free market economics dont work in the way that folk on the right use the extreme and irrelevant example of the soviet union as to why even moderate democratic socialism cant work.

Thats one way to view it. The other way to view it is that the SNP just want a ceasefire in gaza and that Starmer made a miscalculation in both his assessment of where popular opinion lies within the labour base and in his ability to whip his MPs to go against that. We have come to expect a cold rationality to Starmer’s positions but the bandwidth that politicians have to effect change is ultimately afforded to them by public confidence. If you aren’t also sensitive to the emotional aspect of public opinion then you will end up alienating your voters.

Only anecdotal but.. my family has always voted Labour, parents and my siblings, but they are generally more centre to centre left than myself and have generally been pretty supportive of Starmer to varying degrees (a bit unhappy with his conservative approach to NHS pay disputes and unimpressed with Streeting as shadow health as they all work in the NHS, but besides that, generally seeing his underwhelming performance from a progressive standpoint as being ’for the greater good’). Anyway, without any comment from me, the family whatsapp has been going off this afternoon/evening with my sisters and mum in particular raging at the lack of support for a ceasefire and expressing their anguish at the fate of the kids in gaza in particular. Obviously its only a few people but it has surprised me a bit. The penetration of the issue to people with quite differing levels of political engagement and the strength of feeling towards it. One of my sisters has even said she’ll vote green rather than for their local MP who abstained. So I’m wondering with this handful of datapoints whether it could be a bigger moment than its hitherto been credited as. Tempered a bit by the lack of an alternative mainstream non genocidal party for the alienated to vote for and the fact that we’re still a way to go until an election. But it could be that Starmer has miscalculated the roll emotions play for many voters and that this is so emotive, and that perception is that an abstention on the ceasefire amendment is perceived as tacit approval of continued bombing.

Or Russia. Or Syria. Many conflicts get a lot of coverage. Many dont. Sphere of influence, geopolitical importance, having journos and that on the ground.

Inflation figures lower than expected, getting spanked in PMQs and then a hefty rebellion. A tough day at the office for Sir Spam Head.

Maybe its a bit snobby of me and there is no evidence to suggest that MPs are smarter than anybody else, in fact all evidence points to the contrary, but I find it amost incredible how poor her written English is.

Sweden was very chill officially - bars were open as normal throughout the first wave - but I remember they were much quieter at first. It was pretty weird. It all felt a bit slap dash. My work made us work through almost the whole first wave and then eventually switched to a system whereby half the staff were in for one week then half the next for a few months. Masks were never widespread but the bars eventually had to have plastic screens between tables and table service only. But normal open hours for much of it. In the second wave the bars were only open til 10pm and then in the worst couple of weeks until 4pm. People would just go out and get rat arsed super early. I remember during one of the waves going to a bar which was not so strict on the rules and singing karaoke in the basement until the early hours, drinking with gay abandon, sharing the mic with strangers. All the while family and friends were all getting dogs just to justify going outside for a walk in the uk. What Sweden did much better I think is in protecting hospitals and care homes. Not universally, but on the whole better. And i think thats why the stats are fairly okay.

I usually camp up at lime kiln, sometimes on the hill. Maybe your hill is steeper but I just tend to pitch my tent so that its facing down the slope and so that i’m positioned with my head at the higher part so its as if i were sleeping in a big reclining chair or a hospital bed.

Here you go: ’Palestinians have got a habit of starting civil wars wherever they are due to their extremist religious beliefs.’ Besides being idiotic (palestinians refugees presumably exist in most countries in the world by this point and I guess largely without starting a ’civil war’), it didn’t say Hamas, or extremist Palestinians, but just Palestinians. Including presumably Christian Palestinians. On the face of it its a fairly cut and dry bit of casual racism. It might just not have been very thought through or something but I dont remember any subsequent attempt to reword or clarify. Its exactly the kind of comment your pissed up nobhead down your local would make if a group of travellers moved into your town. ’Ooh we dont want any travellers, they cause trouble wherever they go’. I dont like it myself, but fine if you do.

Bad stuff. Besides Ash Sarkar, I never had much time for novara. Especially Michael Walker who I think at best just regurgitates leftist positions that he doesnt properly understand, and at worst does stuff like that. Its unfortunate that he has the platform he and others like him have the platform they do so that those who wish to turn tragedies like this into another exercise at kicking the left, instead of just expressing their grief at the tragedy, or thinking about what is the best way to precent further tragedy, have all the ammunition they need. In his defense he doesn’t say he disbelieves it but just writing that in this climate is idiotic. And from Rivkah, its hard to say anything in defense of that. It seems fairly obvious to me that Hamas committed war crimes when they went into Israel. Because the normal thing to do should be to believe the survivors. And then because no matter what the order was, ultimately its a group of radicalised young men who have grown up despising and dehumanising their targets in their mind, being sent to carry those orders out. So to think they just went in and killed combatants and took hostages is be deliberately ignorant to the grim logic of war. As I’ve mentioned before, the attribution of the hospital strike specifically doesnt matter. I mean, its still not clear. If you want to believe the IDF and the Associated Press’ analysis of video clips then you will do, if you want to believe the other side’s evidence, netanyahu’s aide’s early tweet and the UoL research group’s analysis, you will do. Neither is objective, neither is a thorough independent report based on info from the ground. Thats not possible. But there are a lot of people who have evidently become so braindead by knee jerking to ’Miss! Miss! the Left said/did this’, that thats their reaction to all this sh*t instead of just sparing a thought for the poor f**king people, especially the kids, on both sides of the conflict, who are suffering. So much for empathy- that was so last century.