leicsmac

Disappointing.

https://phys.org/news/2025-12-uk-sunniest-year.html The lengthy periods of clear skies contributed towards Britain experiencing its hottest summer on record this year. The Met Office said in September that the mean temperature in the summer months was 16.10C, surpassing the previous record of 15.76C set in 2018. Scientists have warned persistently that human-driven climate change is resulting in more frequent and intense weather events worldwide. "Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do."

Party politics is causing too much damage to the progress of long term scientific infrastructure projects based on entirely valid research that should in no way be party political. In the UK and other places, too. I'm not sure exactly how (perhaps some kind of bipartisan organisation), but the process by which such projects are done needs to change so that they can be started and completed as planned, rather than becoming white elephants to the detriment of everyone.

Just keep her away from holy symbols, running water and sunlight, mate.

Well, that is in fact true. .... it's just slower than they're saying.

Apparently the Berlin Wall never fell. Seems like the US really want their "business friendly" Pinochet-style guy.

I don't think that something different is simply desirable. I think that something different is a matter of necessity given the challenges we face in the future. There's more and more evidence practically every week showing why this is the case. That's an insult to respectable creatures, tbh. At least they have the decency to not know any better.

Agree with all of this. We'll only know how good it is once England have batted on it. I will say though that at least a few of the Aus wickets look like they're playing shots that would get them pelters if they were English.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdxwglkpdw7o Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said a group of US lawmakers will be shown the full, unedited video of a controversial September boat strike in the Caribbean. Hegseth told reporters after a classified briefing for Senators on Tuesday that appropriate congressional committees would be allowed to see it, but not the general public. If you have to deny an action that you took, then it was likely a shitty action in the first place.

And both of these anecdotes show that the current system doesn't always, or even mostly, benefit working people or serve the purpose of reducing inequality. Goodness only knows how it will cope with some real pressure from the natural world, rather than the shot across the bows that Covid was (as damaging as it was).

Believe me, if I were writing headlines for them, concerning current matters the first one would be "Trump directly incited coup against the result of free and fair election, evidence shows", and I'd stand by it no matter what instead of pussyfooting around as they have. But I do appreciate the impromptu economics info (sincerely) and this discourse has certainly given me food for thought, seeing as I have a rather dim view of that particular "science".

Well, we do agree on the infrastructure projects. Let's consider for a moment that the government 2010-2024 was lavish in terms of its spending on public services, as you suggest. If that didn't help much and so isn't the way to go, then how will the also suggested reduced taxation? Funding infrastructure projects is the right thing to do, but that's not going to mean much to the critically sick guy waiting 12 hours for a hospital bed or the SEN kid who can't get to school anymore because the transport option is no longer available. Honestly, I would consider such a working model if one was demonstrably shown to actually exist.

Up until Covid practically forced them to do otherwise in critical areas. Wasn't that what "austerity" cuts were about? But in any case, rather than that single area of focus, I'm still wondering how low taxation and quality public services can coexist anywhere and at any time, and if there are examples, it would be interesting. Actually, now that I think about it, South Korea in recent times seemed to make that balance reasonably (for a given value of that word) better than most, so...

Then that will be a failure of execution, not intent, if failure is indeed the result. Pardon me, but I just had (and have) trouble getting my head around the concept of someone thinking of lassez-faire economics and valued public services coexisting. If there is a current or even past example of this, I'd be happy to hear it.

Then given this expression of respect for such services, I'm not sure both where the expectation for such things to get better in such an unreasonable timeframe and advocating for an ideology that is practically guaranteed to make them worse, at the expense of everyone, comes from. Pardon me, but that all sounds a little cognitively dissonant.

That's because they want their kind of middle aged white men (eg. Self interested sociopaths) controlling media output.

Presumably because you had never to rely on a public service of any kind for any length of time? The laissez faire, low tax and "business incentivising" economic model was very much in vogue in the 1980s and the Gilded Age. What it did (or didn't do) for those who actually needed help the most is reasonably clear.

Possibly so, but I'm not sure how much of a precedent there is in the UK for such a sentence for any crimes where (thankfully) no lives were taken.

Think that's about right tbh.

It's just unfortunately that the decisions he makes cause issues that harm almost (if not) everyone, so there's not really much room for fence sitting.

If anyone wants more info on the specifics of this and why we know what we know, feel free to ask on the dedicated thread BTW.

I understand the frustration. But this is a dichotomy with next to no nuance, and that is because the parties directly involved in it think only in those terms. I don't like it either because usually there is complexities to such things, but I'm not going to lie about that, either. If you want someone to blame, I would suggest blaming those who have been so reductive in the first place, rather than those who simply recognise the reduction. I emphatically agree that we're being lied to, by a variety of sources and that's not acceptable. But nor is it acceptable to not consider an unintended but predictable consequence of trying to stop those lies will be a world with more of those lies in, not less.

And as if the Earth doesn't pose a much larger and actually meaningful threat that the UK (and everyone else) needs to mobilise and industrialise for anyway. Which just goes to show how far democratic systems can be subverted by careful application of media manipulation. Edit: or there is a real problem with short term self interest with far too many people that really needs addressing quickly.

I'm sure there are legit indirect threats (such as cyber attacks on infrastructure), but directly? No, agreed. I've heard this argument before, and my response remains the same. Be all of this as it may, if someone is advocating for the Beeb to face crippling consequences for this, they are also, directly by association, advocating for a situation where the only news anyone hears is what people like Trump want folks to hear. There's no middle ground here - again, people like Trump have seen to that. I'll let anyone consider what situation they'd rather have.