British Politics
Been on holiday for a few weeks, surprised to find no general discussion of British politics so though I'd kick one off.
Tory leadership contest is quickly turning into farce. Trump has backed Boris, which should be reason enough for anyone with half a brain to exclude him.
Of the other candidates Rory Stewart looks the best of the outsiders. Surprised to see Cleverly and Javid not further up the betting, but not sure the Tory membership are ready for a brown PM.
https://www.oddschecker.com/politics/bri...
Regarding the LD leadership contest, Jo Swinson is miles ahead of any other candidate (and indeed any of the Tory lot). Should be a shoe in.
Finally, it's Groundhog Day in Labour - the more serious the anti-Semitism claims get, the more Corbyn's cronies write their own obituary by blaming it on outlandish conspiracy theories - this week, it's apparently the Jewish Embassy's fault...
I'm also btw against ott punishment of some on the other side. Those actually being done for just saying stuff should be kept out of prison wherever possible imo.
Yeah, once the judge sends the white guy down for 12 months for saying stuff, then he has nowhere to go with the Muslim guy saying stuff + throwing missiles.
Btw can we all agree that being vehemently against alcohol consumption means you cannot integrate with British culture at all ? Or we want to pretend there is long term compatibility? And that alone is an absolutely rational reason to oppose immigration of anyone, who for any reason, religious or otherwise, is super against alcohol consumption in any country where alcohol consumption is a cultural norm?
You serious?
I don't know if this is like a backdoor attempt to police opinions or trolling or whatever, but is the UK government saying that mysoginy is similar among islamists and far right people in the UK, or is this some kind of joke/manipulation attempt by BBC?
The review will look at the rise of Islamist and far-right extremism in the UK, as well as wider ideological trends, including extreme misogyny or beliefs which fit into broader categories, such as violence.
Btw can we all agree that being vehemently against alcohol consumption means you cannot integrate with British culture at all ? Or we want to pretend there is long term compatibility? And that alone is an absolutely rational reason to oppose immigration of anyone, who for any reason, religious or otherwise, is super against alcohol consumption in any country where alcohol consumption is a cultural norm?
I am trying to ask if we agree that ideas that radically go against a host nation culture don't allow for integration, evidently you disagree
Two things. Alcohol is a really dangerous drug that destroys lives - this is not a controversial statement, but a statement of fact. Being vehemently against alcohol consumption is a fairly rational position.
Secondly, the freedom to chose to drink alcohol is a fundamental principle of our society. The freedom to point out the dangers of alcohol is also a fundamental principle of our society. The moment you start curtaining these freedoms, is the moment we lose our freedom.
Sugar and salt are really dangerous substances that destroy lives - this is not a controversial statement, but a statement of fact. See your own data, sugar & salt are above alcohol (nevermind the validity of the source, which i contest, but if you use it for something i can use it for something else).
From this it doesn't follow that being vehemently against all sugar and salt consumption is a fairly rational position. AT ALL.
Second, freedom to choose to drink and do many other things is a fundamental principle (for us, not for most other cultures in human history, it's one of our unicities actually), agreed. Which means that cultures that LEGALLY BAN, that collectively decide to punish violently, behaviours we want to keep free, where they are dominant, are very dangerous. A direct threat to our freedom.
The moment you take in people from cultures that hate freedom in aspects of life we don't, you either have a plan to fundamentally change that culture attacking it explicitly as incompatible with ours in all the aspects where it bans behaviour that we want to keep free, or you are creating deep problems in society.
Certainly, a person can come from such a culture without sharing those incompatible cultural preferences. But that should be checked before letting those people in. Because culture is inheritable in a lamarckian sense, so things don't get necessarily fixed with subsequent generations.
Unclear why you fail to realize the fact that people who have a preference to make it illegal to do X are a threat, if you want to be able to keep X legal.
Given in the same article, for the same offense, a presumably white person got 30 months, no
Ryan Bailey, 41, was given 30 months for throwing missiles at the anti-fascist counter-protest and was heard shouting “immigrants not welcome here”.
Stop this selectively editing nonsense. Previous is taken into account, and some of these people had a lot of it.
Jalfrezi pretty sure that part wasn't in the article i read.
Anyway here another door opens, why the actual hell are people who were found guilty of 29 crimes (or 39? not sure i understand the distinction) still able to participate in society at all? what kind of a joke is that?
In your world instead of an already unnecessarily bloated prison population of 100,000 you'd have millions in prison at huge personal cost to their children and families and financial cost to the state.
What do you suggest?
Wait how can you claim that the current prison population is "bloated", if people like that are around and keep doing crimes?
And i am not sure i understand your take, you think children of serial criminals are better off with the criminal parent around???? other relatives as well?
You think there are millions of people in the UK who committed 20-30-40 crimes and aren't in jail ??? and that's better than them being in prison?
Because too many people are in prison for non-violent crimes.
Some non violent crimes are really bad actions that devastate society. Like massive fraud, and a lot of white collar crime in general.
Maybe you mean you disagree with drug consumption, sale, production being a crime, that i agree with.
Still nothing to do with people that committed violent crimes, repeatedly, + theft and a lot of other stuff (like this guy who got 30 months) being around
What I said: too many people are in prison for non-violent crimes.
What I didn't say: no non-violent crimes should be punishable by prison.
What I said: too many people are in prison for non-violent crimes.
What I didn't say: no non-violent crimes should be punishable by prison.
Define "too many", which current non-violent crimes, excluding those around drugs, do you think shouldn't be crime and/or shouldnt put people in prison?
massive tax evasion? identiy theft? fraud in commerce?
Post a list of aggregated prison numbers by types of crime and I'll tell you which I don't think should be custodial for a first offence.
But this is completely wrong
When you incarcerate someone very often you're punishing their children too and it can have a highly detrimental affect on the children's development.
Suspended sentences for trivial offences were brought in by Home Secretary Churchill in 1910 (his short time in office saw a drastic reduction in the prison population because of this, together with reduced sentences for offenders under 21 and the new requirement for the courts to give people time to pay fines), but suspension has been mandated in most cases for sentences of six months or less since the Criminal Justice Act 1967.
There are four main types of sentence: discharges, fines, community sentences and custodial (or prison) sentences.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentencing...
Probably the majority of prisoners are repeat offenders, who have wound up in prison after lesser sentences haven't deterred them. What is going on now in some cases is unjust, unless making an example of people and treating them differently to others can, in exceptional circumstances, be considered as justice.
Btw can we all agree that being vehemently against alcohol consumption means you cannot integrate with British culture at all ? Or we want to pretend there is long term compatibility? And that alone is an absolutely rational reason to oppose immigration of anyone, who for any reason, religious or otherwise, is super against alcohol consumption in any country where alcohol consumption is a cultural norm?
Since I brought up Churchill, I'll mention that he lost his Parliamentary seat in Dundee, in 1922, to the local temperance (i.e. Prohibition) candidate Ned Scrymgeour, who held the seat for the next nine years, fortunately without ever getting the Prohibition bill he wanted (because look how that worked out, or rather didn't, in the US). That kind of thing has tended to be commoner in Scotland and Northern Ireland than England, due to the Presbyterian religion I suppose, but it's hardly alien to these shores.
Man, having a sickie from school, and Crown Court being on would be a bonus. You guys know what I'm talking about.
Since I brought up Churchill, I'll mention that he lost his Parliamentary seat in Dundee, in 1922, to the local temperance (i.e. Prohibition) candidate Ned Scrymgeour, who held the seat for the next nine years, fortunately without ever getting the Prohibition bill he wanted (because look how that worked out, or rather didn't, in the US). That kind of thing has tended to be commoner in Scotland and Northern Ireland than England, due to the Presbyterian religion I suppose, but it's hardly alien to
Yes the west had to fight hard against domestic prohibition a long time ago, and won.
And we eradicated that very big problem.
One more reason to be extremely skeptical of anyone who didn't one century later, as we know how messy it is to deal with prohibitionists, how damaging they are to society, and how hard is it to eradicate those ideas.
One more reason to filter immigration on that topic
Sugar and salt are really dangerous substances that destroy lives - this is not a controversial statement, but a statement of fact. See your own data, sugar & salt are above alcohol (nevermind the validity of the source, which i contest, but if you use it for something i can use it for something else).
What is it about the source you contest, and what alternative source do you think better represents the data? IHME is supported by The Lancet, which I believe is the highest ranked medical journal in the world.
The Lancet: Global Burden of Disease
I would support a tax on sugar and salt in our diets, in other words on fast food. That doesn't mean that I do not support people's right to chose to buy and consume those products. I just happen to think that considering how much these foods cost the NHS, that the people buying them should either reduce intake or pay more towards their long-term care.
What is it about the source you contest, and what alternative source do you think better represents the data? IHME is supported by The Lancet, which I believe is the highest ranked medical journal in the world.
The Lancet: Global Burden of Disease
I would support a tax on sugar and salt in our diets, in other words on fast food. That doesn't mean that I do not support people's right to chose to buy and consume those products. I just happen to think that considering how much these foods cost the N
I contest the counterfactual in general when attributing death to behavioral long term issues. My claim about the source isn't about whomever compiled the table, it's about how "science" comes up with those numbers.
Claiming a person could have existed doing everything else the same but without smoking/drinking/overating salt or sugar, and claiming all the gap in life expectancy is due to the smoking/drinking/etc is blatantly absurd.
For ex smokers that quit gain weight on average, so you can't check non smokers vs smokers life expectancy and claim all the gap is due to smoking.
And it's very likely that if you can't abuse something which you could abuse you end up abuse something else, more generally. because you need some valve to stem off in a sense.
If someone has the urge to drink a lot, it's not like if he quits he becomes like a person who never had the urge to drink.
Whatever inside him caused him to drink still exists, and will wreak havoc in other ways (which then "science" will claim are killing him lol).
Then there is double counting clearly, some of those obesity/smoking/sugar/salt etc deaths are the same death counted twice or more often.
Then there is the fact that for some of those behaviors, the damage isn't random nor is the same for all. Some people suffer insane damage from smoking, many suffer much less.
And it isn't random, it's genetical predisposition (and/or other illnesses become worse).
Avg damage is there but some people could consume with minimal damage, and you want to punish them because others shouldn't consume at all. It's exactly like banning gambling because some people are problem gamblers.
As for the NHS, you have it all reversed.
Some behaviors reduce life expectancy on average , yes. And that's obviously good for the taxpayer when it happens (!!!!).
One of the fiscal problems these days is that "healthy living" convinced enough people to reduce those behaviors, and people reach older ages (in distrastrous states anyway) costing a ton more to public healthcare systems.
Because you end up in long term care anyway with Alzheimer's or whatever else most of the times anyway, and if you didn't smoke or abuse food and so on, you go there longer lol, and that costs a lot more to taxpayers. And in general even if you arrive at 90 "healthy" taxpayers paid a ton of procedures to you anyway for eyes, articulations and so on.
Then they paid you a pension for more years lol.
The optimal time of death of a person, for taxpayers, is the day after he retires, or if he does a lot of childcare for his grandchildren, they day he stops doing that.
Ofc this doesn't mean we should kill old people or anything.
It just means any regulation predicated on the existence of a healthcare public system and the logic of "I can tell you how to behave because otherwise taxpayers subsidize you" is simply false, for behaviors that reduce life expectancy.
If anything we should subsidize behavior that reduces life expectancy in old age.
