Compared to MPs expenses scandal, or Farage’s undeclared £5 million (plus his dodgy house buying tactic) and their denial of wring doing or even why people might have an issue each step of the way him owning up, accepting responsibility and paying what’s owed and the fine is very much “paying his fair share”.
Could he do better? Yes, of course. Is he doing better that most non-Green national level policians? Seems to be.
I usually download Eurovision, as the politics isn’t new… Just more apparent.
Maybe find a Eurovision community and ask about alternate viewing methods? I’m sure there are other ways to watch live, which if you’ve got a gathering is the way to do it.
SOAS is an amazing community of students, often organising amazing speakers and events - even when university administration is rallied, as is almost universally the case, againt them.
And sadly still currently are in much of it.
Aye, only Protestantist Christianity (if it can be called that) and mormonism are worse.
The True Church of our Lord Father is Ethiopian Orthodoxy.
There’s a surface level understanding that racism is bad.
But that’s seen as having no impact on holding strong, negative, stereotypes about other ethnicities and cultures.
And tends to be, in many cases followed up with “it’s not a prejudice/racism, it’s a fact!” =(
Sadly there’s a lot of anti-African, anti-South East Asian, anti-Japanese & Korean, anti-Turkic, antisemitic, sentiment floating around in general in the PRC.
White man who lived in China here chiming in.
The racism, or at least prejudices and a lack of understanding that cause racism, are very real.
Asia benefited from being near the top of the racist hierarchy of lies that Europeans instituted in the 19th century and also mostly learn about Black people from Hollywood films. (There’s also a really odd trend of New Right and crypto-fash talking points getting popular and spread around Chinese social media.)
In China at least, dating is seen as valid only in the path to marriage, and family and kids is an expected and socially impressed upon goal. To the point where plenty of women in China have kids they don’t want because of familial and social pressure.
At the same time, Asian society is very colourist which combined with having ingested the racist hierarchy somewhat and only really knowing Black people and culture from Hollywood isn’t a great start.
Rounding it off, I China at least is a desire for in group marriage. Foreigners are seen as a risky choice, who could leave and don’t share the same cultural values (regardless of the truth of it).
White people get more of a benefit of a doubt, but there’s still pressure against a Chinese-White relationship. I’ve heard of plenty of families putting pressure that ens inter-ethnic relationships, and there is definitely more pressure against Chinese-Black relationships. (Both cases also, sexistly, exacerbated when Chinese women, foreign man.)
Don’t think this is anything new or not know, sadly.
If the family is supportive, things work a lot better - unsurprisingly. But with Asian value of family, if the family are openly against it, it’s very unlikely to work out.
Or maybe since he was an early written source for low culture, he is just the first attested source because we didn’t print out what plebs were talking about prior to that?
Yup, competing factions in power on both sides of the relationship could knock things about.
Vikings were amazing, we (or at least I) still often underestimate or forget their reach. The idea of Vikings in the Middle East and North Africa trading and marrying, and generally being part of the flow of goods, people, and ideas always seems wild.
Anyhow, it’s been lovely set of exchanges and I’ve learnt things and: thanks.
We always used colonisation for European imperialism in my history classes, but I can see how the word doesn’t fully jive with expected meaning.
And we tend to use “neo-colonial” at least in my experience of British education for the US imperialism, too.
Crossed wires, eh?
I learned thermodynamics before I learned economics, so it didn’t escape my notice that GDP looks more like a measure of heat than a measure of work. It gives an overall “operating temperature” of the economy
That’s a really good analogy for it, thanks for sharing.
Maybe I’m biased, but I find it hard to believe that those 150 million (nearly half the population of the US?) would see a notable drop in the quality of their lives if their iPhones were Samsung, or Huawai, or any other non-domestic company’s.
You’re right in that “meaningfully improve” and “disproportionate” aren’t precise or scientific terms, either.
And re: colonialism, I think more people have managed international trade without going coloniser than did, so it can’t be seen as the sole origin. Needs more to germinate.
On the main issue, I’d say while GDP is far from perfect, it’s better to have the measure than not. Even if it works best as part of a range of measures and not over relied upon as it tends to be in popular understandings at the moment, in my view anyhow.
Temper it with more inequality stats, and also median wages vs. cost of living.
I suspect that what the person you replied to, meant with “meaningfully improve the lives of US citizens” was that the amount Apple contributes to the GDP of the USA (odd, since much of the goods aren’t domestically produced) is disproportionately high compared to its impact on quality of life of people in the US as a whole.
While I’m sure most Apple employees are paid slightly above the median wage, I don’t know the median salary for an Apply employee. I also, like you, am not utilitarian enough to think that a handful of people living large in opulence makes up for the way inequality is harming living standards and the economy as whole (not to mention the impact of it all on the planet). Additionally, Apple and large companies don’t buy from, or in most cases sell to individuals. They buy and sell mostly to other companies and only at the end do smaller branches or franchises sell to actual people. Mostly you have numbers and goods moving between old fashioned AIs running on human-processing power, but not actual people.
You’re very correct, in that any measure that becomes valued turns into a gamified target.
I do think that we have a habit of using GDP rather than GNP to obscure how many British products have been bought by Yanks, and have their profits syphoned off overseas.
My bigger issues with GDP is how it does tend to end up as the sole yardstick used in mainstream economics debates, and how it often includes financial services - which seems an artifical inflation; for instance simply paying the fees on a savings account (or even the overdraft fee) count towards GDP figures by default, but then arbitrarily choosing what to exclude makes a whole lot of new problems, and is something else you’re right about, too.
I thought it was a common first name because of all the fooling around in the Cyberdog dressing rooms?
Until a bunch of unknowns and uncertainty are added because no-one knows the future.
And they almost always assume that their actions won’t lead to a decline in users, too.
No, that’s Europe.
The PRC days off are appalling in comparison. And the previous comment didn’t even mention make up days.
Generally they’re not, provided they can keep it low key.
And since within the PRC it’s quite easy to fire people, and courts and settlement is about how much 面子 you can make the company lose without pissing off local authorities vs. the 关系 and pressure they can bring to bear to have you drop it there’s not much to be done.
“ask” that people do overtime, and then fire them for not being a team player, or downmote them into a stressful deadend if they don’t take the voluntary overtime.
No, the age of America is over.
The Trump preaidencies aren’t a radical break from the past, he’s just an unveiling of it’s darkest, ugliest, impulses and the logical conclusion of its ideals.
Maybe European mainstream leaders can convince themselves to get back into bed with US imperialism, as we benefit from it so much, but US in the eyes of the people never recovered post Iraq II, and across the whole world the US is now primarily seen as the demagogic bully that it is.
The US must learn to get along with its neighbours and treat other nations and people with respect.
I mean, he’s a former lib dem not the second coming of Rosa Luxembourg and Simone Weil.
And in response to your other one, politicians who aren’t right wing tend to get much more flak for these behaviours.