advertisement


British Covid Response: View From Across the Pond

DimitryZ said:
In a sad way, it is good to know that Republican US hasn't entirely cornered the market for crazy and evil.

I didn't realize that Hostile Environment was an actual policy in the UK, since 2013. We have similar laws stateside, but states and municipalities are refusing to cooperate with the feds on deportation and holding people for ICE. Also teaching the children of the undocumented and issuing driver licenses. Trump sends in immigration raids and tries to defund us. But at least we are fighting back.
Click to expand...

You're like a drowning man, reaching out and clinging onto whoever is closest. You know the US is in decline, it's obvious. That's shown by the Republican Party's absolute refusal to do anything much about climate change. Yes the science of climate change is dodgy but sensible people hedge their bets in case the scientists are right. You've lost all touch with reality to become a foaming at the mouth caricature of yourselves.

I don't recall a single post from you that wasn't serving your own shit stirring agenda, your need to somehow show that we're just as bad as you. We're not.

I can't ban you from this forum but fortunately I can ban you from my version of it. Bye :p
 
2ManyBoxes said:
You're like a drowning man, reaching out and clinging onto whoever is closest. You know the US is in decline, it's obvious. That's shown by the Republican Party's absolute refusal to do anything much about climate change. Yes the science of climate change is dodgy but sensible people hedge their bets in case the scientists are right. You've lost all touch with reality to become a foaming at the mouth caricature of yourselves.

I don't recall a single post from you that wasn't serving your own shit stirring agenda, your need to somehow show that we're just as bad as you. We're not.

I can't ban you from this forum but fortunately I can ban you from my version of it. Bye :p
Click to expand...
I didn't mean to upset you...sorry, I guess. I won't miss your responses if above is typical.

My British experience is limited. I was in London over 20 years ago.
 
Last edited:
The US and Britain are both in a phase of self inflicted decline. It seems pretty pointless arguing about whose decline is the steepest. Besides, most of the folks on PFM do not seem to belong to the political factions most responsible for our decline, so there are no points to be scored. It has been a tragic start to the century for both countries.
 
DimitryZ said:
In a sad way, it is good to know that Republican US hasn't entirely cornered the market for crazy and evil.

I didn't realize that Hostile Environment was an actual policy in the UK, since 2013. We have similar laws stateside, but states and municipalities are refusing to cooperate with the feds on deportation and holding people for ICE. Also teaching the children of the undocumented and issuing driver licenses. Trump sends in immigration raids and tries to defund us. But at least we are fighting back.
Click to expand...

Strictly speaking, it's the Tea Parry/Freedom Caucus/Trumpkins/I got COVID because I touched my mask Texans etc wing of the party that are mad. There are some reasonable Republicans about.
 
sean99 said:
The US and Britain are both in a phase of self inflicted decline. It seems pretty pointless arguing about whose decline is the steepest. Besides, most of the folks on PFM do not seem to belong to the political factions most responsible for our decline, so there are no points to be scored. It has been a tragic start to the century for both countries.
Click to expand...
Brits do seem to be denial, though, about how bad things have become here and how deep the roots of the problem lie. And about how awful our media is, top to bottom: much worse than the US, despite Fox. For instance I’m not sure there’s a US equivalent for this:

https://twitter.com/lazebnic/status/1291997617229045760?s=21

That’s the state broadcaster and the “newspaper of record” - never mind the tabloids, for which there really is no US equivalent - pushing a National Front agenda and framework. It’s like Steve Bannon were editor of The Washington Post.
 
DimitryZ said:
I didn't mean to upset you...sorry, I guess. I won't miss your responses if above is typical.

My British experience is limited. I was in London over 20 years ago.
Click to expand...
Was everyone wearing a bowler hat and carrying an umbrella...
 
Tony L said:
We are just the ones that notice it. It is you Tories that so willingly embrace racism and even laughably try to deny it when people notice the death count for your policies (Hostile Environment, Windrush, Grenfell, covid 19 etc etc). The party of elitism, slavery, colonialism and butchery is still what it always has been. Maybe ask yourself why you vote for it? What makes centuries of institutional racism so attractive to you?
Click to expand...

I'd like to share a couple of examples of individuals with different political beliefs working together to improve working conditions...

I may have contributed to this one...
http://saferoxfordstreet.blogspot.com/2020/07/stopkillingbusdrivers-whos-listening-to.html?m=1

And this is the latest:

http://saferoxfordstreet.blogspot.com/2020/08/stopkillingbusdrivers-tfl-surface.html

What is clear to me is that there are people from different political persuasions working hard to raise awareness and ask searching questions.

About the hostile environment, yes I have noticed more racism. Look at how Harry and Megan have been hounded. Compare the press coverage with that of William and Kate.

These are just some of my thoughts.
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
No the science of climate change isn’t dodgy.
Click to expand...

I think it is. You can't strap the climate of the whole world onto a bench and do experiments on it. You can't change one thing at a time and see what happens.

The best you've got are models and models can be wrong, especially over longer time scales. Things that have a small day to day effect can become significant over several decades. Slight errors in starting parameters or errors in modelling the processes get exaggerated.

I'm not saying that climate change isn't real but I am saying that the science behind it is fuzzier than astrophysics or medicine. Both those sciences have fuzziness of their own but they're certainly less than climate science.

Having said that, it is blindingly obvious over my 50 year lifetime that the climate has changed. Our emissions are the most likely culprits.

The difficulty comes in with working out how far you go in dealing with it and having particularly fuzzy science behind it doesn't help.
 
Fuzziness isn't dodgy. And medicine is one of the fuzzier sciences, surely, otherwise drugs and treatments would work the same for everyone? And as for astrophysics, puhleeaze. Lots of informed speculation about the origins of the universe. Even cosmologists accept that their theories are fuzzy. All science is fuzzy. Climate science is no fuzzier than most, and certainly not 'dodgy'. You sound a bit like an apologist for the petrochemicals industry; these are the same argument techniques the tobacco lobby used to use to muddy the waters.
 
Sensationalist news. All news outlets guilty. Watching BBC sometime wonder what on earth they are actually talking about.
 
2ManyBoxes said:
I think it is. You can't strap the climate of the whole world onto a bench and do experiments on it. You can't change one thing at a time and see what happens.

The best you've got are models and models can be wrong, especially over longer time scales. Things that have a small day to day effect can become significant over several decades. Slight errors in starting parameters or errors in modelling the processes get exaggerated.

I'm not saying that climate change isn't real but I am saying that the science behind it is fuzzier than astrophysics or medicine. Both those sciences have fuzziness of their own but they're certainly less than climate science.

Having said that, it is blindingly obvious over my 50 year lifetime that the climate has changed. Our emissions are the most likely culprits.

The difficulty comes in with working out how far you go in dealing with it and having particularly fuzzy science behind it doesn't help.
Click to expand...
Well at least you recognise there’s a potential problem and one from which very serious consequences may flow. Then there’s the broad consensus among independent scientists ( those not funded by the oil and gas industry -or coal in Australia) that we have a looming problem. So given that there are alternative energy sources not reliant on carbon, why not grasp the cold end of the poker and do something about it now?
Trump is a climate change denier, he’s a racist who divides his own country against itself and I’m afraid I see the current UK Government aping him. Let’s not turn society here against itself.
 
"Trump is a climate change denier, he’s a racist who divides his own country against itself" No reasonable person could deny this the facts speak for themselves. "and I’m afraid I see the current UK Government aping him." is the usual BS beloved of Remainers and the Far Left. "Let’s not turn society here against itself." Bit late for that I would have thought with the venomous name calling of white working class voters who voted for Brexit. A lot of whom were former Labour Supporters sick and tired of being ignored and taken for granted by those who knew best for them and the Country. And if that was not enough the SNP want to break up the Union. I imagine that will involve more name calling on both sides. Not sure what other fall out will ensue.
 
TheDecameron said:
Well at least you recognise there’s a potential problem and one from which very serious consequences may flow. Then there’s the broad consensus among independent scientists ( those not funded by the oil and gas industry -or coal in Australia) that we have a looming problem. So given that there are alternative energy sources not reliant on carbon, why not grasp the cold end of the poker and do something about it now?
Trump is a climate change denier, he’s a racist who divides his own country against itself and I’m afraid I see the current UK Government aping him. Let’s not turn society here against itself.
Click to expand...

I didn't say that we should do nothing. I said that the science is fuzzier than others but there's too much evidence to ignore it. We should hedge our bets and do something substantial about it. Trump is trying his best to ignore it totally because it'll get him votes in his core supporters.

It doesn't really matter what we do, nobody is looking for us to take a lead, even though I think we have in some areas. Who would take us seriously now? In Brexit we've made one of the stupidest political decisions of this century and we've turned ourselves into pip-squeaks.

What the EU does is far more important.
 
SteveT said:
"Trump is a climate change denier, he’s a racist who divides his own country against itself" No reasonable person could deny this the facts speak for themselves. "and I’m afraid I see the current UK Government aping him." is the usual BS beloved of Remainers and the Far Left. "Let’s not turn society here against itself." Bit late for that I would have thought with the venomous name calling of white working class voters who voted for Brexit. A lot of whom were former Labour Supporters sick and tired of being ignored and taken for granted by those who knew best for them and the Country. And if that was not enough the SNP want to break up the Union. I imagine that will involve more name calling on both sides. Not sure what other fall out will ensue.
Click to expand...
I can understand why you're on a hifi and music forum like PFM. You have very good hearing, a very wide range. You're able to hear a dog whistle. You still Seem to struggle with Using capital letters At appropriate points in a sentence Though. "Pig shit ignorant twat" using one of your own phrases.
 
sean99 said:
The US and Britain are both in a phase of self inflicted decline. It seems pretty pointless arguing about whose decline is the steepest. Besides, most of the folks on PFM do not seem to belong to the political factions most responsible for our decline, so there are no points to be scored. It has been a tragic start to the century for both countries.
Click to expand...

The U.K. seems to have forgotten that it attained world power status through technological advantage, this seems to have spread to the USA more recently, globalisation and communications have caused a levelling to some extent of the playing field, so someone with no qualifications in the U.K. or USA cannot compete with a graduate from India, China, Philippines, Sudan.. wherever. Both countries, particularly the U.K. have rewarded financial manipulation, which certainly can allow a player to amass wealth, but it does not create any wealth, this leaves a dispossessed underclass and a squeezed middle class fearful and ripe for manipulation, the situation is compounded as the system is rewarding those that siphon off what wealth is left and leaving. It’s a siphon off and pi55 off culture and it will get flattened and quite possibly not by something better.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


advertisement


Back
Top