• Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Wow! Do you ever make custom furniture?
    Yes, mostly fitted furniture these days, but occasionally I get a commission for a nice piece of furniture.

    In your summary of climate change, I think you missed out the consequence of the mass extinction event we're presiding over. As an example, trees are struggling these days, there are lots of exotic diseases being imported from other parts of the world. We are currently watching all our Ash trees die of Ash Die Back disease, along with Horse Chestnuts trying to survive a voracious leaf minor. There are worrying reports of Oak trees being in trouble next, which will be devastating, as the Uk is populated with a large population of ancient oak trees.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    What do you think is alarming? Or is it the scale of the reformist ambition, rather than individual policies?
    I'm happy with it, so not alarmed. But a universal basic income would turn off the majority of voters in the UK. And yes the scale of the reform and what is implied in its implementation would be scary for many. Definitely moving to socialism more quickly than Corbyn's plans.

    I would say though, that I am referring mainly to older voters, the politics of the younger voter is probably far greener.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Labour under Corbyn did an okay job against Theresa May. Next to Corbyn, the Green Party are centrists.
    I suggest you take a look at a UK Green Party manifesto, I'm a Green voter, so I'm happy with it, myself.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    I'll give you the one about Venus, I don't get exposed to notions like that were I live.
    It's to early for the fall here as of now, we've just had a week of rain, we get battered by the cyclones coming in off the Atlantic at this time of year. I'm looking forward to a nice autumn in front of a log fire. My qualification at the University was on how to make things out of trees, I'm a cabinetmaker.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    After all, if the majority thought that climate change was a priority problem, cynical politicians would adopt climate change policy just to get elected and be judged by their effectiveness on that platform.
    The problem in the UK is that to vote for rapid and effective action against climate change the electorate would have to vote Green. But a majority of the electorate will not vote Green because their policies, other than their green policies, are radical left policies, real socialism. The UK electorate is not ready to vote for socialism, so they can't vote for effective action on climate change, hence little change.
    Fortunately industry is starting to make the necessary changes, which is a step in the right direction, but it does need political change if we are going to move quickly enough.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    I said its better to avoid spreading misinformation. You disagree?
    I don't disagree, but I see it more as exaggeration than misinformation. Do you have an example in mind?

    They do controlled burns for the fuel in the ground. Trump was apparently briefed but didnt understand everything that was said. If you think the forest fires are caused entirely by climate change, you're as wrong as Trump.
    The controlled burns would only ever be effective over a tiny fraction of the area concerned. To use the complacency in carrying out these controlled burns as the cause of the extensive wild fires of the last few years is a form of miss information. Anyway, I don't want to get into a detailed discussion of ecological crises, that is for the climate change thread.

    My point was that a leader in a position of power through ignorance is spreading misinformation about climate change and worse still has pulled out of the Paris accord and stopped funding the WHO, for petty personal reasons. In the meantime the Co2 emissions are still accelerating.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    I understand. More misinformation just leaves people not trusting anyone or over reacting. Better to not shout at all than shout untruths.
    This not the case on climate change, the vast majority do trust the scientific message. My point about humanity not cutting fossil fuel use is blaming the policy makers and governments, not the public at large. A case in point, the leader of the free world, Trump, says that the reason there are these large forest fires on the west coast of America, is because the leaves haven't been swept up. Implying that the solution to the climate and ecological crisis of that part of the world is for someone to come along and sweep up the leaves. Over an area of thousands of square miles presumably. Is it any wonder folk hear that and sigh, saying we really are doomed.
  • Coronavirus
    So why adhere to such irrational principles?
    A wage slave perhaps. In the UK there are people who live from one wage payment to the next and they have to work come what may. Although lockdown does prevent most of this, leaving these people reliant on benefits and vulnerable to eviction and loan sharks etc.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)

    Ive started to realize that the people who broadcast preductions that no climate scientist supports will continue to do so because they don't care about the truth. That's true on both sides of the issue.
    The issue is that humanity is not correcting the problem, the fossil fuel emissions are still going up. This may be why some folk start shouting about it.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    A bacteria evolved in Japan that eats plastic. It was found at a plastic bottle recycling plant.
    Yes, I heard, really interesting.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Civilization may be doomed to collapse (though we truly don't know if it will). Humanity isn't doomed.
    This time will be different, we will leave a lot of pollution, a destabilised climate and a mass extinction event.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Are we doomed to experience turmoil? Yes. If that's how you read "doomed," fine.
    Yes, I would go a little further, I would define it as a significant collapse in civilisation, a return to a dark age.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    The reason we should drop talk of "doom" is that it isn't based on science. When that's the primary message coming from climate change acceptors, it undermines their cause. The climate is changing. We will change with it.
    There isn't a cause which needs accepting any more wer're past that point. It is scientifically accepted that we have, or will shortly trigger a number of irreversible tipping points which will release large (or fail in sinking it) quantities of Greenhouse gases. Or will precipitate mass extinction of species.

    People like Trump and his supporters who deny this reality are the new flat earthers.

    Doom is appropriate because it is also scientifically accepted how easily humanity descends into anarchy and war when the pips squeak.

    I don't want to veer off into climate change here, but if you remember this was discussed at length a couple of years ago in a climate change thread.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Trump has just been taken into hospital, a precautionary measure apparently. Although, the White House has a full medical facility.
  • Coronavirus
    Interesting report today in the UK (02/10/2020). 770 students have just been found to have Covid in a university dormitory. But only about 70 of them have any symptoms. Meaning only about 1 in 11 people of that demographic exhibit any symptoms at all. Meanwhile only people with symptoms are tested in the UK. So we really have little idea who is infected and certainly aren't doing any kind of effective test and trace. The R number is estimated to be between 1.3 and 1.6even though at least a third of the population is locked down at the moment ( lockdown in the UK is only a partial lockdown). The prognosis is not good.

    P.S. Trump has just been taken into hospital.
  • Brexit
    Yes, it will be heard at the ECJ and Britain has agreed to abide by any decision of the court until 31st of December 2020 and for fours years thereafter. I couldn't say if it will be a judge who decides, but I expect so, as it it a court.
  • Brexit
    I've heard that the EU is seeking to prosecute the UK, for their intention to breach the contract of the withdrawal agreement, as a signal to the rest of the world that they stand by their commitments and expect their neighbour's who they do business with to do the same. That it is not making much difference in the negotiations, apart from indicating who threatened to renage on the commitments in the agreement and acted in a disingenuous manner, incase the talks breakdown and a blame game begins. The EU has noticed that the UK government has been spreading claims and rumours that the EU is behaving unreasonably, which is actually incorrect. So they are preparing for the blame game
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Wonder if the other debates will be cancelled.
    Yes, it's the only way he could pull out of them. With a better format, or a mute button, Trump would have been crucified by Biden. Now he will be after the sympathy vote, again stealing the limelight.
  • The Social Dilemma
    Yuval Noah Hariri has written a good book on the issue.

    21 Lessons for the 21st Century.

    https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ar44DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT7&source=kp_read_button&redir_esc=y
  • Brexit
    Yesterday the EU rejected the UK request for cars with less than 50% of the parts in them being made in the UK, or the EU, to be classed as made in the UK, therefore being tariff free potentially when exported to the EU. Because the UK could become an offshore assembly hub for non EU parts, with open access to the EU markets. This is probably the death nail of the UK car industry (most of the parts involved are made in Japan, which has just agreed a trade deal with the EU).

    Also today Ursula Von der Layen, formally announced that the EU is taking the UK to court for legislating to break the withdrawal agreement.

    Happy daze.
  • Brexit
    People will start calculating if it's really profitable to work in a crappy job and have less free time, yet have exactly basically same amount of money to spend. Fruit picking is a traditional example of this.

    Yes, I see the problem there. In the UK though social security is so low that it won't have that effect. The problem is more likely going to be due the people just refusing to do a lot of these job, because they think it is beneath them, or they can't do a day's physical work.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    According to polling, almost twice as many Biden supporters as Trump supporters say they’ll vote by mail this year. Over 500,000 mail-in votes have been rejected this year, far outpacing 2016. Perhaps this is why Democrats have pivoted away from championing mail-in voting.
    Sounds like there must be some QAnon (Trump) operatives infiltrating the department that sends out the ballots. It's the only way Trump can contest the election, if he has some evidence to cast doubt on its working properly. Just infiltrate the database which sends them out, find some sacks of dodgy ballots in a dumpster, or something, it's so easy.

    Again contempt for the electoral system, contempt for society, a rat in the Oval Office
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Trump's comments about voter fraud showed desperation. No one could take that seriously, also it shows contempt laid bare for the electoral process.
  • Brexit
    I see today Boris has marked out our lack of brickies, welders and butchers; and there are calls for the govt to lower the immigration restrictions for these occupations post-Brexit.
    Yes and there are approx 120,000 vacancies in the social care sector and about 40,000 nursing vacancies, not to mention all the crops which need harvesting. Boris should be encouraging the million or three who are going to become unemployed to fill these roles. Plus they don't require a lot of training (with the exception of nurses).

    Brexit is going to provide sufficient vacancies for all the unemployed we will have from Covid, genius!
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    It means that the 2016 election in the US, the EU referendum in the UK, in the same year, gave false results. UK Channel 4 broke the story on Cambridge Analytica in 2017 and exposed the covert manipulation of these elections via Facebook, before most people had realised what was going on.
  • Brexit
    Add there the quite rapid population growth and economic growth being concentrated on few larger cities.
    Yes, this population growth is predominantly from the EU, while there is very little housing being built to house them, no provision of healthcare resources and schools in the areas where they move to. So the local population perceives them as depleting their resources (I wrote at length about this in this thread about 18 months ago). Also, some towns, a number near where I live, now resemble Polish towns. Again the local population is not happy about the way their towns have changed and they feel like they live in a foreign country. It is these demographic forces which have resulted in many of the voters who leant their vote to the Conservatives, voting that way. This is largely why we have Brexit. I notice that now Switzerland has had a vote, due to people wanting to end freedom of movement. The vote was lost, but would have been very disruptive if it had been won.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Everything about Trump is turning out to be fake, hollow, smoke and mirrors.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Nonetheless, one cannot deter someone from voting, or suppress a vote, by showing anti-Clinton ads on Facebook.
    You can, a black guy in Milwaukee admits that he was deterred from voting by a fake anti Clinton add in the report.

    Now we know where the real fake news was.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Excellent investigative journalism by Channel 4 UK tonight revealing voter profiling by the Trump campaign prior to the 2016 election. Targeting 3.5 million Black voters across the US through profiling aided by Cambridge Analytica and Facebook. Each voter identified was targeted to deter them from voting by the use of false and decisive Facebook posts. Racial voter suppression on a mass scale.

    https://www.channel4.com/news/revealed-trump-campaign-strategy-to-deter-millions-of-black-americans-from-voting-in-2016

    Oops, Maw beat me to it.
  • Brexit
    Michael Gove is meeting Barnier today, let's see if he manages to sweet talk him. I suspect he will be laughed at.
  • Brexit
    And yes, it goes through party lines too this class divide. You could see this from Boris Johnson that he acknowledged humbly in his election victory that the conservatives had gotten "labor" votes from labor areas. Usually no politicians would make this kind of remark.
    Yes, but they leant him their support (the majority of them) on condition that he would get Brexit done. They will swing back behind a moderate Labour Party at the next election. So it was not for conservative policies (other than Brexit) that they voted that way, they held their noses when they voted.

    This asset inflation is typical in many countries and a result of the economic and monetary policies implemented after the financial crisis all over the world.
    In the UK it is particularly acute, the housing crisis has been developing for 40 years now with an end to any provision of social housing over this whole period. Not only prices being unaffordable, we have no kerbs on rental fees, which are strangling the young with debt. While many large properties have one or two old people living there. The young are really in a bad place financially and they are wary of trusting the Conservatives when they promise to solve the problem. Because they caused and presided over it for the 40 years.

    I think environmentalism broke through in the 1980's in other countries with Green parties. With tory and labor governments this might not have been so apparent in the UK.
    It was not mainstream in the UK until Greta came along and Sir David Attenborough started speaking out more directly. Now it is widespread and there is little confidence that the Conservatives will make any progress in this direction.

    This might be the real bungle up in British politics. Indeed, it likely would have been a moment for the conservatives to lick their wounds after a long time as the ruling party go to the opposition after everything, but the labor party itself get carried away.
    Yes, there is a deep split in the Labour Party between the moderates and the radicals, which keeps coming to the fore and prevents them getting into office. They need a strong leader to break this curse, Blair did it and many people hope that Kier Starmer can pull it off now. God knows it's needed now.
  • Coronavirus
    Lol, one of my favourites!

    Just what I needed over in the Brexit thread.
  • Brexit
    Uh...the World economy has been in trouble since the financial crisis of 2008, even if China and India have put respectable growth numbers.
    Yes, that doesn't diminish my point though. As always in my comments in the Brexit thread, my focus is on the UK politics from the perspective of an insider who has followed UK politics for a generation. My perspective might have a narrow focus sometimes and ignore wider global trends, but if you understand this you can interpret it this way, as a window into internal UK politics from an insider and draw the implications of wider more global politics from your own knowledge.

    I have explained my reasoning for my conclusions in this thread about a year to 18 months ago. But to recap.

    In the UK, the left right political divide has been, for the last half century or so, in line with a class divide. So the right wing is primarily the middle and upper middle classes, who are privelidged and dominate the establishment, hold all the wealth and to a lesser extent the professions, arts and media. The left wing has been bottom up from the working classes. There is some movement into privelidge and establishment from this social class, but it is limited. Also the majority of the working classes have improved their circumstances over the last generation and become more middle class. But they are still held at arms length by the traditional privelidged classes by an ingrained, largely unconscious, bias and code. Often based on where people live, what schools and colleges they went to etc. This may be the same in other countries, I don't know, perhaps you can help me there, but in the UK it is still very dominant and skews politics towards the right.

    Anyway the financial crisis was blamed on the City of London in the UK, just as much as US banks had been blamed. The spell, the magic of British capitalism was burst, exstinguished, in the minds of many people in the UK and subsequently knowledge of what the privelidged classes in the City were up to is more widely known. Then we had 10years of austerity imposed by the same establishment that was blamed for allowing and benefitting from the conditions which caused the crisis.

    The young grew up during this and are now impoverished by continuing inflation in the housing market, meaning only privelidged young can purchase property*, with the help of their parents. Also they are in debt when they leave university due to having to pay for all their fees and accommodation etc. critically this impoverishment has affected large numbers of the young of the privelidged as well now. This has resulted in an en-mass move to the left among the young, which is also enmeshed in the newly developed ideologies around combatting climate change and protecting the environment. Issues which are largely denied by the privelidged (largely over 50 years of age) establishment, in favour of more free market capitalism.

    Also the Conservative party is not covering itself in glory at the moment and is becoming a laughing stock.

    The problem with our recent election is that the alternative was possibly even more scary than the Conservative party. A Corbyn government would have been a radically left leaning government and there just aren't enough people in the population who could vote for that kind of radical change.


    * this trend is exacerbated by the housing crisis in general in which young who don't own their own house are forced to pay ever increasing rent for small properties. Meaning they can't pay back their higher education debt, or save money for a deposit to buy a house.
  • Brexit
    ↪Kenosha Kid
    We had a similar thing in the UK with Brexit. The leavers won 51:49%. Because David Gammeron was too thickly cut to consider the possibility that the majority might be comparable to the sort of result variance that would be time-averaged out, we were stuck unable to contest what ought to have been a highly contestable result.

    Yes, Cameron was naive, he didn't realise how much anti-EU sentiment had been developing beneath the surface over the previous 12 years. He was Boyed up with the arrogance that he had won the Scottish Independence referendum and would win the Brexit referendum in the same way. There was little thought of losing it and what the consequence would be. It was a fatal flaw to leave to a simple majority, it should have been a super majority of 60%, or more for a win. Once the referendum was called the right wing populist machine went into overdrive and forced the vote through on paranoia, misinformation and false promises.

    Now we have an equivalent to Trump in the UK, with the same worrying trends emerging. Even today it has been leaked that Paul Dacre the disgraced former editor of the Daily Mail, is being groomed for chairman of Ofcom. And a former editor of The Telegraph for director general of the BBC. With Government Ministers on the media this morning saying that it's time for right wing biased media in the UK. This administration is gunning for the BBC in a big way.

    My take on it is that the economy has been in trouble since the financial crisis of 2008. People are starting to think of alternatives to free market capitalism, which has spooked the Conservative base and the big money backers of the party. They have all feathered their nests for a generation and now the rot has set in to the economy and the country, they don't want to give away any of their wealth to help put it right and the younger generation is turning left on mass. The Conservative party is heading for oblivion, which will allow socialists into office. Once that happens the game is up and the wealth will be clawed back for the good of the whole country. The solution in the eyes of these Conservatives is a lurch to the right with maximum acceleration of rightwing ideology and policies to force the country to the right and hoodwink the population into believing it is the only way to govern. It is high stakes and combined with the disastrous Brexit situation there is going to be much gnashing of teeth and upheaval over the next few years.

    P.s. pasted from the Trump thread.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    We had a similar thing in the UK with Brexit. The leavers won 51:49%. Because David Gammeron was too thickly cut to consider the possibility that the majority might be comparable to the sort of result variance that would be time-averaged out, we were stuck unable to contest what ought to have been a highly contestable result.

    Yes, Cameron was naive, he didn't realise how much anti-EU sentiment had been developing beneath the surface over the previous 12 years. He was Boyed up with the arrogance that he had won the Scottish Independence referendum and would win the Brexit referendum in the same way. There was little thought of losing it and what the consequence would be. It was a fatal flaw to leave to a simple majority, it should have been a super majority of 60%, or more for a win. Once the referendum was called the right wing populist machine went into overdrive and forced the vote through on paranoia, misinformation and false promises.

    Now we have an equivalent to Trump in the UK, with the same worrying trends emerging. Even today it has been leaked that Paul Dacre the disgraced former editor of the Daily Mail, is being groomed for chairman of Ofcom. And a former editor of The Telegraph for director general of the BBC. With Government Ministers on the media this morning saying that it's time for right wing biased media in the UK. This administration is gunning for the BBC in a big way.

    My take on it is that the economy has been in trouble since the financial crisis of 2008. People are starting to think of alternatives to free market capitalism, which has spooked the Conservative base and the big money backers of the party. They have all feathered their nests for a generation and now the rot has set in to the economy and the country, they don't want to give away any of their wealth to help put it right and the younger generation is turning left on mass. The Conservative party is heading for oblivion, which will allow socialists into office. Once that happens the game is up and the wealth will be clawed back for the good of the whole country. The solution in the eyes of these Conservatives is a lurch to the right with maximum acceleration of rightwing ideology and policies to force the country to the right and hoodwink the population into believing it is the only way to govern. It is high stakes and combined with the disastrous Brexit situation there is going to be much gnashing of teeth and upheaval over the next few years.

    P.s. I have copied this into the Brexit thread.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Thes guys must be qanon operatives, the're just hiding under a mask of plausible deniability. They know that if they just came right and and said it (about the children farms in tunnels under London and the blood sucking Democrats) we'd laugh them out of Dodge City. They reserve those gory details for the base, who lap it up.
  • The "One" and "God"
    Any time we talk about the One, duality is already on the scene because the intellect is operating. Any object of thought stands against a backdrop of its negation. (Plato alludes to this in Phaedo). The negation of the One is the Nous and the Soul (sort of).

    Yes, I know this, I suppose the way I'm talking is in abstraction when using words and thoughts. I do have other ways of relating to the one more directly.

    I think of one as already actually two, two is actually three because there are two and the some of them which is one, hence there are three. Three is actually four in the same way. The religious cosmogonies seem to see it this way also. So in a sense one becomes three leapfrogging two.
  • The "One" and "God"
    And yet it is. How could it possibly not be?

    Nicely put, it is odd when folk try to say that the one is something else, thereby insisting one is as least two.
  • Theosophy and the Ascended Master
    "It's a wonder we can even feed ourselves"
    - Bob Dylan.

    So it's a race to the bottom then. Krishnamurti would be turning in his grave.