leicsmac

Nah, the USSR paid the heaviest in lives, infrastructure and (relative) money. Yeah, that's then and this is now but nothing about this statement deserves any kind of praise or is based on fact. Both egotistical bastards - Trump and Putin - are exactly that.

A twit who, unfortunately, seems to have struck a chord with people in the UK in terms of policy, if today is any judge. But maybe it's just a local election bump.

As well it might, what I've read about how the world is changing and will change in the future sometimes terrifies me. But for all that, we owe it to that future to do what we can, until we cannot.

And a quick reminder about the person that Farage et al carry water for:

WRT the "small boats" that seem to have become a focal point of the local elections to the benefit of Reform, I'm not sure singularly focusing on that matter at the expense of: - the world foreign policy decisions that cause so many people to flee their countries in the first place - the matter of increasing global temperatures that will cause a refugee crisis that will make the present one look very small ...is necessarily good political decision making, but hey, power through appealing to short term self interest is much easier, right?

The only rather cold comfort I can offer is that their ideology will never conquer for even a short time, because either it will destroy itself or the Earth will not tolerate the ignorance of the laws of physics that it embodies. So, no matter what, such people cannot "win" - not for long, anyway.

It's certainly an interesting topic. ... and "interesting" isn't always "good".

No, and that's another way for the world to end up burning.

Automation is a possible solution both for older and younger people, but then that means getting rid of the whole concept of guilt-based work ethic that those with power weaponise, and I'm pretty sure that they'll see civilisation collapse before they allow that.

And that won't be accepted. What lies after that could get rather ugly.

Yes, and as also stated, it's a challenge for which there really appears to be no good solution - it's about choosing the best bad one, which of course isn't really a vote winner.

Appreciate that clarification. It's a juxtaposition for me that Trump is (with very good reason) strongly disliked in the UK but then you seemingly have a lot of people ready to vote for policies he would himself implement.

Can you please elaborate here?

You're making the mistake of assuming a lot of people act logically or rationally.

Exactly. Everyone knows what Trump stands for and it would be both easy and (IMO) effective to link him directly to Farage and Reform. I can't think of a good reason why Labour and the Lib Dems aren't doing so.

It's darkly ironic that at the same time Canada is (thankfully) rejecting Trumpian politics wholeheartedly, some in the UK are bound and determined to embrace it. Perhaps Trump should directly threaten the UK's sovereignty, too? If it's being done as a "protest vote" or not has zero effect on the consequences of such choices for everyone and doesn't mean much imo.

If we can do without fission power as a species, then we should, for all the reasons given. However, I'm yet to be convinced that we can everywhere while maintaining and developing quality of life.

Appreciate the insight from that angle. Sounds like a problem with inequality of cost based on location meaning that it's worth building in one location and not in another, then?

Yep. It's not about merit. It's about loyalty to the Dear Leader. And then the folks backing him have the hypocritical temerity to go on about communist dictatorships as if that particular factor is any different at all.

The grossly overinflated housing market in the UK. Responsible for at least a fair bit of the stratification of society that those near the top of it are so keen on.

There's a reason that there is separate spheres of criminal and civil liability. Being found to not be criminally liable doesn't always guarantee no civil liability. It's a difficult circle to square, to be sure. Either you accept the increased risk to law enforcement in the time it takes them to be absolutely sure someone poses an immediate capital threat to them, or you accept that judgement calls will be wrong, and people who do not pose the above threat and have been through no due process will be killed. Whichever of those is more acceptable is clearly up to the beholder. And given everything we know about our species and about the power of life and death when held by a member of it over others, trust and faith without the kind of exacting oversight necessary when dealing with matters of life and death is asking for abuse of that power. Trust, but verify, I think.

Part and parcel of a pretty fundamental human weakness, unfortunately; that it is very hard to consider problematic situations beyond the individual line of sight and the empathy needed to solve them as other than abstract and therefore unimportant. The path of short term self interest, ever at the cost of long term destruction, misery and even annihilation, is much easier.

Fair enough. The only thing I'll add is that WRT the bolded, I'm glad that there is a robust system to look at such incidents in the UK, because otherwise it would be (and a lot of historical precedent shows) very easy to shoot first and make up something about threat to life later. IMO no one person should have that power of life or death over another human being without someone watching and judging, because that kind of absolute power very, very easily corrupts.

Allow me to clarify: the officer made a split second decision that the man represented a immediate (italicised for emphasis) capital threat to him and his colleagues, thus justifying the use of lethal force, and evidently his colleagues thought similarly. Subsequent investigation has shown that the conclusion he drew was wrong, and a human being that didn't present an immediate capital threat was killed. As per above, usually in situations where a human life has been taken without that justification being proven, there has to be some accountability rather than writing off a human life - criminal as it was - as "collateral damage" or somesuch. So, to answer, no, I don't think he did the wrong thing given the information at the time and I don't think he should be punished, but at the same time I'm not entirely at home with the idea of the unaccountable death of a person who had not committed a capital crime or had been proven to present an immediate capital threat to law enforcement. That's not a nice road to go down.

Totally agree. But being an idiot and resisting arrest were, the last time I checked, not summary capital offences and when a guy dies at the hands of officers without having posed a direct capital threat to them, it's tricky to then say that no one is at fault but the perp. It's an incredibly difficult situation. I wouldn't want to be making any kind of call on it.