Re: Taking a Stand in the War on General-Purpose Computing

Yes, the parallels between the rise of the third reich and current UK politics are interesting, dishonest right-wing propaganda leading to stupid decisions and creating instability.

Yes it does ...

In other words, it nearly always leads to an elected dictatorship for four years.

See the links given in my reply to the The Unnatural Pillock for how the EU system of government really works.

Interesting outlook. Thanks to FPTP here in Canada, it's standard for politicians to get elected with 40% of the popular vote (i.e.

60% of voters vote against them but they exploit vote-splitting). Combine this with our typical 60% voter turnout, and you have politicians claiming "a mandate from the masses" when only one eligible voter in four actually voted for them.

I don't believe in voting for someone who will benefit us the most; he doesn't exist. I vote for the one who will hurt us the least - although in extreme cases I'll hold my nose and vote for the one most likely to stop the one who could hurt us the most.

"No matter who you vote for, the politicians always get in."

After which there's a chance to remove it, which is the point.

I saw an example of how coalitions can be bad during my (brief) stint as a parish councillor. Before 1997, Cambridgeshire County Council was run by a Lib-Lab coalition. During that time, Social Services was a mess and there were many instances of child neglect being poorly handled with some instances of death resulting. I asked the local Lib-Dem County Councillor why this was. He thought for a minute and then said that it was most likely due to the lack of clear political control of Social Services. Each of the two parties had its own appointee there, but no one was in overall charge.

With an elected dictatorship, you know where the buck stops. I detested the Blair Labour Govt, but at least you knew who was in charge and it's up to the Opposition to point out it's failings.

The EU is organised in such a way that there *is* *no* opposition. And you call *that* democratic.

We already know how it really works: an unelected dictatorship with no opposition and with the public having no opportunity to affect that.

I'll vote for that!

When are you?

Those exactly confirms what I have said, the European parliament is an 'upper' house only - it does not debate policy, merely rubber stamps it.

The council has no power to initaiate or execute policy. it is just another taklkingshop

Only the unelected commissioners initiate policy, and they do so according to whatever takes their fancy, or whoever lines their bank accounts

I am not lying. You are.

No, it doesn't.

Given the high value low mass/volume of many goods, it does most of its trade with whoever can produce the cheapest. Nearly all my non-UK clothes are made in Pakistan or the far east. nearly all my semiconductor products are made in te far east and nearly all my fuel comes either from the North sea or from arab states.

Food used to come from the EU it is true, but not any more. Given the behaviour of the EU the suppliers and customers have switched to UK produce or Africa or even South America.

Only heavy and or bulky items are source from Europe, or speciality products like wine and cheese.

and as our nearest geographical neighbours are

total bollocks. trade is but one tiny part of it and trade is global. for anyone who isn't a head in the sand dyed in the wool swivel eyed begammoned little Europeaner.

Its time to move on and leave Kindergarten. The world is bigger than Brussels.

the only

I see you are indeed a head in the sand dyed in the wool swivel eyed begammoned little Europeaner. And in total denial.

And the irony is, that the links he supplied totally confirm that!

And bravo to you.

I personally believe that you (and I am the same) are where modern democracies are going.

The old guard still think it terms of 'tribal loyalties' and voters based rigidly on class and responding to emotional narratives.

The shock here is that voters will swing massively in an instant to wherever they can achieve the most. In the last by election the achievement was to deliver a massive kick in the nuts to the party in power, and they chose a completely different party from the normal opposition, to do it.

In addition the emotional narratives are not working. People here were happy to go along with 'Net Zero' till someone asked what it would cost, and realised the government hadn't a clue, and those that did were talking numbers that made COVID 19 borrowings pale into insignificance.

Suddenly everyone is talking nuclear, instead of renewables.

Governments do not get it right all the time. In fact governments - elected and unelected - mostly muddle through prevaricating until the 'right' answer is blindingly obvious. Very often the people at the coal face understand far better than remote bureaucrats what needs to be done. Democracy is a way to remind the executive that their jobs are not for life, and there are issues they need to address.

There is a also an issue of system size and scale. societies are complex entities of considerable size, and variety, one size fits all top down legislation by decree, as is the case in the EU, is a frighteningly blunt instrument and is ponderously slow.

No one codes without block structure. You have small chunks of code that perform simple small functions, so e.g. in a car the engine management systems run the engine, the brake systems code runs the brakes the climate control runs the aircon, and the driver doesn't have to drive the car in every detail - merely to point it in the right direction and make it go faster or slower. In short what works is a federation of localised systems all working in harmony and the apex of that does not interfere in what they do - merely sets a direction of the overall unit.

Consider the potential imposition of veganism across say the EU, for alleged reasons of health and climate change.

Parts within the arctic circle cannot grow food, they rely on eating animals that can eat the existing vegetation or marine life. The same goes for other climates. Veganism is in fact an option for only temperate to tropical agricultural lands with decent rainfall .

That's the kind of insanity you get. Imposition of 'renewable energy' - solar power where there is no sun, windmills where there is no wind.

I voted to leave the EU primarily for one reason unique to me.

I wanted to stop this insane expensive gouging of the consumer to produce energy from unreliable intermittent sources. I talked to my MP, he said it is government policy, I talked to ministers, they said it was an EU directive, I talked to my MEP, and he laughed and said 'we can't stop it, we are only MEPS, we have no power to do anything, but the pay is good!' And I asked 'where does the policy come from' And they said 'Siemens lobbied the commissioners along with Vattenfall, they are making a fortune out of it, that's why the directive is not about carbon dioxide, reduction at all, it is simply promoting a technology that is very quick to make a fast profit on, and the Greens like, that means we still burn just as much oil and gas, so the oil companies are sanguine too.'

That was when I realised that the only democratic path left to a concerned UK citizens was to work tirelessly to leave the EU. People make mistakes, and if you can't sack them when they keep on making them why would they bother not to?

I posted links that explain how EU democracy actually works, that is not lying, whereas you are always spouting lies about the EU.

ALL FALSE! READ THE LINKS AND STOP LYING!

READ THE LINKS AND STOP LYING!

Trade with EU is about 50% of our total trade, both for imports and exports, the next biggest trading partner is the US, but it is less than a third of that.

[snip more lies]

It's simple logic, all we've accomplished by leaving is making 50% of our trade more expensive.

The world is far bigger than the limited mindset of right-wing bigotry.

I'm just stating the facts as they have always been and still are. Leaving has accomplished nothing except making 50% of our trade more expensive, just to please piss-head little Englanders.

No they don't read them properly and stop lying about the EU.

Only after the damage is done, which is too late, which is the point.

The real problem being that British politicians don't know how to put personal politics and ambition aside to compromise and work for the common good.

And we got embroiled in a foreign war.

No they aren't. Nuclear is by far the most expensive generating option, about double the cost of the next most expensive option, offshore wind. Additionally, we in the UK have zilch fissile resources, and for at least a decade now the nuclear industry's own organisation, the World Nuclear Association, have been predicting demand to outstrip supply. This has all been explained to you countless times before, but still you continue to lie about it.

Where is your *EVIDENCE* for this claim?

Because you are a nuclear nerd who has worked his career in that industry and cannot conceive of the the demands of changing times. Nuclear is too expensive and we haven't got the fissile material. We have to give what Nature has given us, which is fossil fuels, some hydro, some wind, so we must burn the fossil fuels and capture the carbon, nothing else makes sense for us.

You chose to believe an obviously absurd lie; it's never been the EU that has driven UK zero carbon policy, we have always been ahead of them with our policies on this, and again there's the hypocrisy about France, whom you praise for adopting nuclear, but they are part of the EU, so you blame them for being that. You're just a muddled old bugger that has lost the ability to think rationally about issues because you can't put your bloat-size bigotries aside.

How can they, when all to many got elected by:

- stick to learning English an 'the humanities' at school with special attention given to avoiding maths, science and critical thinking

- Study Politics at University, and getting elected on the Student Union

- After graduation, join the party of choice as a researcher

- get run as a no-hope candidate so the party has a candidate, etc

- eventually get given a winnable seat

As a consequence, The Lords is, IMO, the now most useful House we have in Westminster, simply because, now the hereditary peers have largely gone, most of its members have done something non-political well enough to get made a peer. In consequence there are very few professions or areas of useful knowledge which aren't represented in that House.

Of course, because so much of that Cabinet got elected by the process I described above: what else would yo expect from an MP who had done nothing outside politics?

I'd suggest that the biggest reform that any Parliamentary Democracy could make would be to introduce a rule that doesn't allow anybody to stand for election unless they've first done a non-political job for at least 10-15 years.

Imposing a limit of, say, 25 years as an elected representative would also be a good idea.

Ah, a bit like the EU then, that tried and failed in the Balkans. NATO had to come and save them.

The EU has never had a military so, by definition, NATO could not have 'come in and saved them'.

In any case, everything that went down in 1991/2 seems to have been an purely internal Yugoslavian matter. Yugoslavia was Tito's construct post WW2. It was essentially assembled post WW2 by Tito from a number of small kingdoms who historically hated each other, and didn't stop doing so during WW2.

If you want the whole story, read "Eastern Approaches" by Fitzroy Mclean, who was there during the 2nd half of WW2 and knew Tito really well. The book is a rattling good read, too: the old boy did some amazing travelling pre-war and was a founding member of the SAS during it, but I digress.

With its history, its scarcely surprising that Yugoslavia disintegrated when and how it did: Tito had died in 1980 and the Soviet Union was in the process of rapid unplanned disassembly in progress in 1991/2. I remember that very well: I was at a sporting event in Zrenjanin in summer

1991 when it all kicked off and we were VERY pleased to make it back into Hungary and, before you ask, Hungary wasn't in the EU then - it didn't join until 2004.

In fact the only part of the former Yugoslavia that ever has been an EU member is Croatia, which joined in 2013. Serbia applied to join in 2014 but still hasn't done so.

The Yugoslavia we know was Tito's yes, but it was founded in 1918. Although it didn't get the name "Kingdom of Yugoslavia" until 1929.

But you're right that they never stopped hating each other.

At school, we learnt about 19thC European history, which included the Balkans. And we learnt they'd had this mutual dislike for hundreds of years. Another teacher once asked us what we'd been learning about in History, I mentioned the Balkans, and his response was "Well, of course that discord is all finished now, it's all peace and harmony due to the wise Socialist policies of President Tito". That went well, eh?

Well quite.

and a chap I knew was a stringer for AP, in Belgrade to cover Tito's expected demise. One weekend he thought nothing was going to happen so went to Dubrovnik for the weekend. Oops! Tito pegged it and suddenly no transport back to Belgrade was available.

Don't forget Slovenia.

Slovenia joined in 2004.

Stephen