Interesting Links for 27-06-2022

[andrewducker]

1. UK plan to impose unlawful steel tariffs sparks fresh clash with EU

(tags:UK Europe trade Doom )

2. Texas still has anti sodomy laws. They might be about to become enforceable again

(tags:law LGBT USA Texas )

3. The Tories have always been wrong in thinking culture wars won the Red Wall

(tags:conservatives politics UK labour economy )

4. This aged well. This is the 2016 advert from Leave.eu

(tags:UK Europe history advertising lies )

5. American woman denied life-saving abortion after suffering miscarriage in Malta asked husband to punch her

(tags:abortion malta OhForFucksSake )

6. How American evangelical Christians went from pro-choice to forced-birth

(tags:abortion religion USA history politics )

7. Scottish councils given powers to run own bus services

(tags:buses Scotland government )

8. What do you do when an AI contains your personally identifying information?

(tags:ai dataprotection privacy )

9. Edinburgh around 1690 (a drawing made for Queen Anne)

(tags:art Edinburgh history Scotland )

10. On the similarities between roleplayers and Christians

(tags:dungeonsanddragons roleplaying christianity religion university )

11. 35 Useful Technologies for a World Experiencing Climate Change

(tags:technology globalwarming )

Comments

RE 3 Culture Wars

[danieldwilliam]

1) Socialised health care is 1) a significant redistribution of wealth 2) a significant form of social insurance alleviating the risk of being cash poor
3) a significant marker of the political cohesion of a deimos- if rich strangers will pay for poor people's doctors that says something about society and its priorities.

So, there's something in the £350m Brexit promise as mostly an economic argument.

2) I don't think culture wars will save the Tories from the economic difficulties that are coming. (I also think the culture wars are in three parts a) acceptance of non-"normal" ways of living and being b) significant changes in the way freedom of speech is understood, applied or prioritised c) some USian stuff that that Europeans don't care much about in the main. I think most British voters are okay with a) some/many a bit uncomfortable about b) and not at all fussed about the USian issues of gun control, abortion and keeping angry urban black men subservient.) Meanwhile, the coming economic troubles will fall harder on the poor and powerless and the solution might be one or both of a) collective action and b) a shift in the proportion of surplus value from capita to labour.

3) I think I agree that the Tory Parliamentary Party doesn't know collectively what to do about Johnson. Problems brewing for them there.

4) Every reshuffle moves a few people from payroll vote for the PM to hates the PM.

5) Indyref 2 is coming in the next 15 months. Not sure how that shapes English politics.

Re: RE 3 Culture Wars

[andrewducker]

Looking at the Leave advertisement it's nearly all economic argument.

Re: RE 3 Culture Wars

[bens_dad]

If Indyref2 votes to leave England (I've never heard Wales mentioned in relation to Scottish Independence) the English Tories will get a big boost. Very big. The rest of England may be screwed.
Boris might even win the next Westminster election :-(
Be prepared for an influx of English people.

Re: RE 3 Culture Wars

[andrewducker]

In the last 70 years it would have made minor differences. But no major ones outside of 2010
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/general-elections-without-scotland-part-1-1945-2010/

And if Labour don't change the voting system this time around then they have nobody to blame but themselves.

Re: RE 3 Culture Wars

[danieldwilliam]

Why do you think the Tories would get a boost from losing Indyref2?

Re: RE 3 Culture Wars

[mtbc]

Higher fraction of Tories in the Commons, I'd think? It's not like many come from Scotland now …

Re: RE 3 Culture Wars

[danieldwilliam]

Instances where the Labour Party has won a General Election but not also won the majority of seats in England are quite rare.

Re: RE 3 Culture Wars

[bens_dad]

Looks like I am the one forgetting Wales (and Northern Ireland).

As AD pointed out, the "Rest of the UK" wont be forever Tory without Scotland, and getting rid of FPTP would make England reasonably sane. I went back to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_England for the figures:

Year	1979	1983	1987	1992	1997	2001	2005	2010	2015	2017	2019
Conservativemajority	96	201	193	114	-199	-199	-141	61	103	59	157

I had not realized, how much England *did* vote for the Blair government. I may have been blinded by seeing New Labour as Tory-lite (how I wish we had those days back :-).

Yes, Labour will have no one but themselves to blame if they don't change the system, but England will still suffer.

So I am wrong. But I am still very worried that Scottish independence will be a disaster for England.

[simont]

#10 gives me the same feeling that a lot of Andrew Rilstone's writing does: there's stuff in there that's interesting and witty and looks at things in ways you hadn't thought of before, but then it all turns out to be introductory material to the main point which you're much less interested in.

All of that good stuff about Christian study groups, roleplaying groups and the points of similarity between them is clearly what you thought was interesting in the article, given your link title. And I think so too. But apparently the followup is going to be about the Gospel of John and none of that!

[andrewducker]

Same here. Fun digressions, don't care about deep dives into Christianity.

[calimac]

My reaction to Andrew Rilstone's writing is that it starts out interesting & witty as you say, and then it all turns out to be about Dr. Who, a show I've never watched.

[simont]

Doctor Who, the Bible, same difference :-)

[calimac]

Maybe not to you. But I've read the Bible, or enough of it to know my way around. It's long and tedious, but not anywhere near so difficult to catch up on as several decades of Dr. Who, which is why I've never watched the show.

[simont]

I was mostly just joking, but now that I think about it, I could make a pretty good sub-Rilstonian case for Doctor Who and the Bible having a lot in common in their own right. Both purport to be one unified thing, but in reality are a patchwork of pieces written by different authors who were trying to achieve different things and ended up contradicting each other a lot, sometimes on purpose, sometimes without even noticing. Both have a dedicated community that sometimes embraces those contradictions, sometimes tries frantically to reconcile them, and sometimes argues about which one to do. Both have a central character with powers beyond mere humans including the ability to survive death.

They even both have an Old Testament and a New Testament!