leicsmac

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.

Think that applies to the whole situation tbh. The officer had to make a split second decision that the guy presented an immediate capital threat to him or someone else and he made that call, as such officers have to. In this case, however, it turned out to not be the right decision in that the guy didn't pose an immediate capital threat, and he died because of that incorrect decision. I'm not sure that can just be written off as "fog of war" and someone should always answer for the taking of a life that isn't in direct and proven (after the fact) self defence, but at the same time, who would it be whilst remaining fair? Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

That good, huh?

A bit of this and that today: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpvrwyp0jx3o Mr Blair, ever the political pragmatist. He should be listened to in terms of actually working a problem... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgpey03pnno ... but I'm not sure it's "alarmist" for people to present the facts as they are and to say the UK, among other places, is both laughably unprepared and not doing enough to face the future that will be coming if decisive action isn't taken.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c98gv43pjjno So... what's everyone's take on the first 100 days, then?

I would hope it would end up being Europe and quite a few of the Commonwealth nations together, to be honest. The values he's trying to push have no place in modern civilisation and the other developed nations should be doing all they can to make that abundantly clear. The contest is ideological, it is happening in a lot of places, and it is real. And the stakes could not be higher.

So was I (economic pressure played a big part in bringing down the apartheid regime), and I'm not sure how long that difference spoken of here (in social terms anyway) will last, figuratively if not practically. Pardon me for being a mite leery of applying realpolitik to the biggest bully in the playground when he's being extra loathsome, even though he's the biggest bully and the path of least resistance would be to do so.

Better to not do it at all than do it and then flake out immediately, yes. And I wonder how many terrible regimes would still be ruling their countries if other countries followed the bolded axiom to the letter? Apartheid South Africa? Pinochet's Chile? Even worse ones than those two?

I certainly don't disagree about both the cost and time elements of fission power. That being said, I'm struggling to think of a better option that will fill a gap in large and intensive that perhaps renewables aren't able to fill yet in various parts of the world.

There's definitely something in that. To be honest, in the suite of solutions necessary to guarantee the future, the best fit for me has for a long time, been independent off-grid renewables on small scale for towns and villages, and Gen III/IV fission etc for large scale infrastructure.

Unfortunately renewables are like any other generation system in that if there is a single point of failure, they are as vulnerable to that failure as anything else. Including any kind of fossil fuel generation that someone might suggest instead.

As if a government organisation created for the safeguarding of the environment would post this as a good idea. Sickening.

Right. If the US really wanted to conquer Canada, it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to stop them. That being said, history shows that the US, for all its might, has been bested in asymmetrical guerilla warfare more than once before.

And congratulations, Mr Carney. Hopefully a safe pair of hands in a truly difficult situation.

They were, but there's a difference between being tired of a leader and then another leader right next to you with the power to do so actively and enthusiastically talking about your debellatio. That might be the priority discussion.

"In an urban society, everything connects. Each person's needs are fed by the skills of many others. Our lives are woven together in a fabric. But the connections that make society strong also make it vulnerable." The infrastructure that makes up society is too complex and people are too lazy and/or money-grubbing to go beyond single points of failure for more critical systems than we dare think about. And yes, the Earth will happily provide more than enough tests of those critical systems without humans making up more of them along themselves.

Indeed, which is why I mentioned preview of future results, as opposed to causes.

Or rather a preview of what will happen in a great many places if the powers that be don't achieve that mark in time, thanks to increasing extremes of weather destroying infrastructure.

Definite star-is-born vibes about the lad.

American-Chinese killsat melee gets out of control, one or both of them detonate an EMP device as a last blast while both are over the Iberian peninsula. /tinfoilhat