Payment processors contra democracy
TLDR News looks at whether Mastercard's Banning Porn? and asks Who Should Regulate the Internet?:
This is a subject we've previously covered on this blog: Should Visa have the power to shut down OnlyFans?.
Kelly on BBC
James Kelly discusses the BBC:
But this just makes me think about what a deeply peculiar organisation the BBC is. It's somehow been subject to institutional capture from two groups that have nothing in common with each other - gender identity activists on the one hand, and Brexit hardliners on the other. The BBC self-censors on gender to please one particular part of the trendy liberal left, but it also self-censors to please populist right-wingers by failing to report on Brexit as the root cause of many of the challenges the UK currently faces. Shortages of goods and petrol are presented as bafflingly random acts of God, rather than events with a very simple cause-and-effect explanation.
This is true. In general, broadcasting and news organisations tend towards propaganda, at least to some extent, and various group will try to capture them so that their propaganda is of the group's liking. The solution for this is for the people in charge of a country's national broadcaster to be directly elected, something I hope happens in an independent Scotland.
Barrhead Boy on Scottish independence
Barrhead Boy lays out a path to Scottish independence:
The 1918 election is probably best known in Britain as being the first election in which women could vote. In Ireland, it is remembered for something quite different. The general election in December that year saw Sinn Féin – a new revolutionary independence party, which had not contested the previous general election – win 73 out of 105 seats in Ireland. They did that not by having reams and reams of policies.They did it by standing on a single issue, Independence for Ireland. They knew that all the other matters of pensions, trade, defence, health, education, borders could be sorted after the prime objective had been attained, namely independence. The same is true today in Scotland.
We must declare the next UK General Election and all subsequent elections Plebiscite Independence Elections. We stand our candidates on a single issue, The Independence of our nation. Armed with a UK General Election victory the Brits then cannot legally challenge the outcome. However, it is imperative we stand on no other issue, except Independence. Having a manifesto crammed full of policies gives leverage to the opponents of independence to attack us and control the narrative.
I agree that the more policies you have, the more reasons you give for people to not vote for you. I also agree that independence is the most important issue facing Scotland today, and that we will never reach our full potential for as long as Westminster continues to hold us back.
John McWhorter on woke racism
John McWhorter discusses his new book Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America on Chris Williamson's YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaH-gZIVC432YRjNVvnyCA
At @40:09 McWhorter says:
"I think in the conversation we're seeing an amount of pushback against this way of looking at things that we weren't seeing a year ago because I think a critical mass of people in America I think the majority of thinking people in America see that this is wrong. the issue is just creating a bit of a backbone in people so that people will be willing to be called a racist in the public sphere and not think of their lives as being over."
That's the impression I get too -- there has been a change in public opinion over the last year against the excessess of wokeness.
Owen Jones for online anonymity
Owen Jones comes out in favour of online anonymity:
The aftermath of the horrific killing of Conservative MP David Amess should have been a moment for politicians and the public to unite in an effort to protect democracy. Instead, the discussion has been derailed by a push to ban anonymous social media accounts, which would stifle free speech and democratic rights.
There are many legitimate reasons why a citizen may not feel comfortable posting their opinion or sharing information under their own identity. Given the number of politicians who offer off-the-record quotes to journalists on a daily basis, generally for fear of their jobs or other harmful consequences, MPs will be able to empathise with this.
The bill would allow Ofcom to punish social networks that fail to remove “lawful but harmful” content.
Threatening anonymity is bad, as is saying "this is legal but you have to take it down anyway".
Wokists contra parents
Carrying a baby is racist, according to Today's Parent magazine (via Seerut K. Chawla):
Google's "be evil" transformation
The Register reports that Google has fully transformed to a "be evil" company:
Take AMP, a protocol that Google promoted as a way to speed up mobile content delivery and improve user experience. Free to use for everyone, it required some JS code from Google and a few rules to follow; in return you got a free CDN optimised for your mobile content. As a bonus, because your content was faster and Google prioritises speed, AMP content got pushed up the search rankings.
Skip forward a year or so and people had noticed that AMP wasn't actually faster, and that by effectively hosting all third-party content within google.com it was short-circuiting the internet. And the court filing has claimed that AMP's primary purpose was indeed to create huge amounts of data for Google's internal use, while denying that data to other services. If true: insider trading, consumer capture, and competitor freeze-out.
Google needs to be split up into smaller companies. So do Facebook and Amazon.
100th Armistice from Edinburgh Castle
Here's some footage from the 100th Armistice, taken on 11th Nov 2018, at the Scottish National War Memorial in Edinburgh Castle:
Xi contra diplomacy
Noah Smith notes that Xi Jinping's foreign policy has been a disaster:
diplomatically, [Xi] has put China in a worse position
Xi’s pressure on Southeast Asian nations over control of the South China Sea has led to strong negative attitudes toward China in Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, and other countries. But the biggest diplomatic loss might be India, the only other nation that rivals China in size. India is a member of the China-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization, along with Russia and Pakistan, so it looked as if it was edging closer to China. That changed in 2020 when Xi’s troops bloodied India’s nose at a border battle along their disputed border. Now India is moving decisively toward a de facto alliance with the U.S., joining a new, upgraded version of the Quad and deepening cooperation in other ways. As in other Asian countries, Indian public opinion has become sharply more anti-China.
These are all unforced errors on Xi’s part.
China's foreign policy under Xi could well be titled How to lose friends and alienate people.
Trump for Israel
In an interview, Donald Trump laments that Israel no longer controls the US Congress:
Trump said that Israel controlled Congress and rightfully so:
Well you know the biggest change I've seen in Congress is Israel literally owned the Congress, you understand, that 10 years ago or 15 years ago and it was so powerful and today it's almost the opposite. You have between AOC and Omar and these people that hate Israel -- they hate it with a passion -- they're controlling congress and Israel is not a force in Congress any more.
I mean it's just amazing. I've never seen such a change and we're not talking about a change over a very long period of time but I think you know exactly what I'm saying. They had such power, Israel had such power -- and rightfully -- over congress, and now it doesn't. It's incredible, actually.
When Trump was in office his whole foreign policy was based on "America First" and now he thinks the USA should be controlled by Israel, which is bizarre. I would imagine that most Trump supporters would prefer America First to Israel First.
Tories for scurvy
The Mirror reports that under Tory rule scurvy has made a comeback:
Return of scurvy under Tory rule as cases of Victorian illness double in decade
Cases of scurvy – a widespread illness in Victorian times – have more than doubled in a decade.
NHS Digital statistics also reveal hospital admissions for malnutrition have tripled since the Conservatives came to power in the 2010 election. The increases coincide with soaring numbers of people relying on food banks in the wake of austerity policies. In 2010-11, 61,000 people needed food handouts but a decade on this figure now stands at 2.5 million. Hospitals reported cases of scurvy – a vitamin C deficiency that can cause fatigue, bruised skin, swelling of the limbs and tooth loss – rising from 82 in 2010-11 to 171 in 2020-21.
The underlying reason for this, of course, is that the Tories only care about the rich.
If the English want to elect Tories, then in a democracy, they have a democratic right to do so. Unfortunately, while Scotland is still chained to Westminster, we have to suffer from a Tory government that we didn't elect and can't get rid of. So it's time -- in fact, long past time -- for Scotland to throw off the shackles of Westminster and to proudly stand up and rule ourselves.
Then we can build a society that cares about all our people, not just the rich.
The broad shoulders of the UK
Seen on twitter:
According to Wikipedia, Norway's per capita GDP is $74,968 while the UK's is $41,855.
Norway's oil, managed by Norwegians, has given Norwegians a sovereign wealth fund of $1,300 billion ($248,000 per Norwegian), while Scotland's equally large amount of oil, managed by Westminster, has given Scots a sovereign wealth fund of $0 ($0 per Scot).
Thank you, Westminster and the UK, for your broad shoulders. How would we manage without you?