Interesting Links for 03-04-2023

[andrewducker]

1. Many countries, including theoretically progressive ones like New Zealand, restrict visas for autistic people

(tags:autism immigration OhForFucksSake )

2. Keir Starmer slammed for throwing trans people under the bus

(tags:LGBT transgender UK labour OhForFucksSake )

3. You let one racist edit a few academic journals and suddenly, shockingly, there's racism everywhere!

(tags:research racism OhForFucksSake )

4. Paris bans cars, brings in bikes: The city pulled off an urban dream. Is it a model or a warning?

(tags:Paris cars bicycles transport viaPatrickHadfield )

5. Do we live in an era of too much music?

(tags:music society business )

Comments

[mtbc]

(1) This seems like but one of many examples of what might deleteriously deter people from even seeking a diagnosis for various issues that they suspect.

[nancylebov]

5. Part of the music situation is that people have only so much time for listening to music.

I think the article left out that the jazz musicians who produced great albums played for live audiences, and that's where both competition and feedback were happening.

[autopope]

WRT why Starmer is going TERF in public: if true, this might explain it (he's trying to appeal to a specific demographic -- they call it "Stevenage woman", I'd call it "mumsnet").

[dewline]

1. And I see we're very slowly changing that situation, which remains to Canada's shame. We have to rectify that.

2. Starmer should be slammed for that.

3. *winces*

5. Actually, I prefer having that particular "firehose" open and available to me. A lot of my favourites are - by present standards - somewhat obscure, and I'll be pleased to discuss those from time to time.

[dewline]

Absolutely!

[dewline]

Such votes are not fit to pursue.

[autopope]

You are correct in principle. But in practice, Starmer has repeatedly pointed out that as Lord Hailsham put it, the UK is an elective dictatorship: if you don't win a majority in the HoC you are political roadkill, so his every act is predicated on winning that majority because without it he's powerless.

What he does with that power? Who knows. (I believe he's probably an unscrupulous Tory-lite authoritarian, but I would be desperately happy to be proven wrong.)

[andrewducker]

If he were to get in, finally pass the recommendations of the Leveson Enquiry (thus neutering the powers of many of the UK's newspapers), and sort out the HoL that would be a good start.

But I suspect the same things as you.

[autopope]

My gimme list from Starmer would be:

1. Leveson Enquiry stage 1 implemented.

2. Leveson Enquiry proposed follow-on enquiry started.

3. Electoral reform -- preferably adopt the same AV system as the Scottish and Welsh parliaments, given that it's been in use for two decades within the UK.

4. HoL reform -- either go fully elected (maybe via the Bragg proposal?) or, minimally, by abolishing the reserved hereditary seats and Lords Spiritual and introducing term limits for life peers. (The existing appointed life peers are a reviewing/revising chamber, not a primary source of new legislation.)

Followed by a raft of obvious stuff -- negotiate for closer trade/movement ties to the EU without taking the Tory "red lines" on board, fixes to tax policy (and make it far harder to obtain non-dom status), long term changes to improve revenue and funding for public services, etc -- this would broadly be a return to the pre-2008 thrust of Blair/Brown domestic policy, but I see that as a minimum (what I want as opposed to what I expect is probably unachievable by Westminster before electoral reform and the utter destruction of the Tory party).

[ninetydegrees]

#4 Most people who live in Paris don't have cars because they don't need it as Paris has a good public transport system, which improved further over the years. Most people who don't like Hidalgo's efforts aren't Parisians. They usually try to reach another suburban area or just come to the city for work. Which is why there were very few protests and the few that happened had little support from the general population. There have been more efforts recently to improve suburb-to-suburb public transportation, which can be nightmarish. Another strategy that some of our towns use is to make using cars difficult (by having lots of one-way or pedestrian-only streets for example).

[andrewducker]

Any particular reason you wouldn't want Non-Dom entirely abolished? (That's Labour's current approach)

[danieldwilliam]

I don't love the Additional Member System but it is probably the most likely PR system to be introduced UK wide given it's long use in Scotland and Wales.

You could argue that STV has been working in Scotland for local elections and is in use in Northern Ireland. You could also argue that the Jenkins system has some Labour history to it. But several decades of operation to elect fairly stable governments probably wins.

I wonder if the implementation of the Leveson Enquiry and follow ons is influenced by a) Rupert Murdoch dying or b) the Mail losing the current case.

Did Bragg put a number on the membership of the House of Lords in his proposal? At the current 820 members you'd need 0.12% of the vote to win a seat which puts the Yorkshire Party and the Scottish Green Party within touching distance of a seat.

I am definately of the view that Starmer's Labour Party is being very cagey about saying and doing stuff that would hurt it's electoral chances because they recognise that they have to win the election before they can do anything. What I can't tell is whether they intend to be dully centrist as they are perporting to be or to tack leftwards or to take a more subtly radical approach (like Thatcher but in the opposite direction) once in government. I could believe any of the three and I don't think Ian Murray will tell me the truth.

[danieldwilliam]

It is presumably much much easier and cheaper now to record music than it has ever been and so everyone is having a go at it.

It feels a bit like the livestreaming of Portuguese T10 cricket or UK amateur American Football via YouTube. I've watched both of those and been delighted to have the opportunity to access something so niche.

[cmcmck]

2.

I am coming to have a suspicion that quite a lot of people (in the general public as well as the likes of Starmer) believe that there are two kinds of trans people- people like me who have been though GC surgery and are therefore protected by the ECtHR judgement and various bits of law like the GR act, the gender equality act and the equal opps act and then there are the rest who aren't

They seem unwilling to admit it or discuss it beyond that though (and I can see why as there's no way it can make them look good).

[hairyears]

4: I watched the transformation of Paris!

Pre-covid, I was a regular visitor to the Paris dojos, and to my employers' trading floors.

I have two observations that are missing from that article:

Despite the 'ban' in the headline, this is actually a partial demotorisation, and a shift to cars being less dominant.

The most visible change, for tourists, was the provision of high-quality segregated cycle lanes. But if you are the kind of person who walks from A to B, and even to X, Y and Z, you would've seen the progressive exclusion of cars from Paris' characteristic mini-villages of residential squares and the narrow streets nearby.

These exclusions started at weekends and on public holidays, with designated time slots (or permit systems) for delivery vehicles, and many of these neighbourhods are still fully accessible to cars on weekdays.

This has been wildly popular with the local residents, and small businesses have flourished: this matters in Paris!

The drive to stricter *partial* exclusions and parking bans is supported by those communities, which are often poor (or less-affluent), relatively old, and have comparatively low car ownership.

There is also a lot of support in neighbourhoods being gentrified in the sense of being 'discovered' by young graduate couples, who aren't actually all that affluent. They haven't grown up into car dependency, they like their car-free outdoor space, and tgey are now raising families in this environment instead of miving outside the Peripherique urban motorway ring road, and dormitory towns.


The 'grassroots' opposition, which enjoys blanket mass-media support and reports of the changes being a disastrous total ban, are found among affluent car-dependent suburbanites, who see their refusal to use the city's dense 24-hour public transit as a way of signalling their affluence and social superiority.

Parisians are status-conscious and socially-competitive, and the distinction of a Director's parking space at work is a massive status symbol in the banks!

[autopope]

Non-dom is applicable to folks who genuinely live outside the UK but are present in the UK for up to a month a year or so: it's onerous and stupid to pursue them for income tax as if they were full-time residents, and most countries allow visits for up to a month without requiring income tax registration.

Example: you're an engineer employed by one of the FAANGs and get posted to London for two weeks to do a job. Your payroll during that period is handled via the London office. Is it reasonable to expect you to register with HMRC with an emergency tax code then jump through hoops later to claim back the 30% or so of your income they're withholding? (Bear in mind that your in-UK income in that period will very probably be below the annual income tax threshold, so by their own rules HMRC should refund the whole lot.)

British non-dom status covers you for up to half a year, which is just taking the piss and enables millionaires to keep homes in multiple jurisdictions and keep moving around to avoid ever being liable for any income tax.

[anef]

Yes. From the article, Starmer is not saying he will roll back trans rights, what he is saying is "I hear you". As a lawyer he has an extremely precise understanding of language. All we can do is hope, because what else is there?