Our new Indie Games subforum is now open for business in G&T. Go and check it out, you might land a code for a free game. If you're developing an indie game and want to post about it,
follow these directions. If you don't, he'll break your legs! Hahaha! Seriously though.
[Hiberno-Britannic Politics] Welp
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Also interesting how he's decided it's not viable as the entire car industry is visibly shifting in the direction of electric.
Clive Sinclair should re-assert himself. He was right, he was just four decades ahead of his time.
Steam | XBL
Of course it'll come to nothing.
UK pays £87m for no-deal Brexit ferry contracts
We've heard this before, but this time they're giving them to actual ferry companies! They have boats that go on the water and everything!
maybe no one wants a car that’s marginally better than other cars at five times the price
Blueberrywerewlf on the Sony Anime Games Box | BluberryWerewlf on the BroBone
but that business model has worked so well for Apple!
Steam, Warframe: Megajoule
I would've thought just setting up a full manufacturing business for it at this point would be a dubious prospect. With the automotive industry finally coming around, and newcomers like Tesla already pretty well established, the window for this particular venture to be a success seems to have closed already. Best bet would probably be to make a few concept cars to advertise to other companies the licensing rights for any patented features that would've set theirs apart from the crowd.
And Dyson's own vacuum cleaners!
Steam | XBL
There's also the issue Tesla has highlighted very well: just cause you know electric and electronic devices doesn't mean you know how to build a car on a mass manufactured scale. Basically, what are the odds he can consistently build a reliable car?
Blueberrywerewlf on the Sony Anime Games Box | BluberryWerewlf on the BroBone
So we’re now spending four times as much as before, but this time we get some boats. Some very expensive boats. On the plus side, If we don’t need the boats, we only pay as much as we paid the company with no boats to provide us with no boats the last time that we didn’t need them.
Excellent.
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― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
Because everybody hated it, natch.
The problem has been the same from the start. Any form of negotiated exit is inferior to membership and still leaves us with the same set of economic and diplomatic problems that necessitated the EU in the first place. A no deal exit solves none of those problems and provides no basis to. No WA is good enough to get support and no deal is only wanted by a minority of loonies.
Norway doesn't even like the Norway model, it's kind of pointless because pretty much to all intents and purposes you are in the EU just without any real say (Norway is so close to being in it that it sends representatives to the EU parliament who have the right to speak and ask questions, just not to vote). They also pay membership fees and can't really negotiate significant international trade deals because their custom's policy is set by the EU.
It's the least damaging form of Brexit, if you eventually decide to just 'technically' leave the EU so that people shut up about Brexit all the time. But it's not going satisfy Farage's lot and will make the EU more like the thing they keep complaining about.
Norway also knuckles under to pretty much any EU decision that doesn't involve Fishing, Agriculture and Oil without a peep. Even then its only to preserve its local industries from being crushed or taken over by EU companies. It also allows Free movement to the point that Polish is now the biggest minority group in the country and its rare to hear Norwegian spoken on a building site.
People talk about Eurabia? the way things are going we are all going to bow to Rome before to long.
Yes, but, Norway is doing fine and given the political situation in the UK where half want in and half want out, it seems like a reasonable off the shelf solution that would make everyone unhappy but not too unhappy. It obviously is not on the cards given Parliament couldn't even get May's deal through.
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
It would make Remainers uphappy, and would make Leavers furious - with no upside to try to sell it. It's just Brexit for the sake of Brexit.
No Deal would be a catastrophe, but some people would get very rich off it and we would be free to make whatever deals we wanted with however we wanted and radically change domestic politics without getting checked by the EU courts. Those can be sold as a positive, even if they're all bad.
Norway doesn't really have the same thing.
Needless to say, this disenfranchises anyone who struggles to afford a passport and who doesn’t have access to a driver’s license. I’ll be very interested to see the analytics on the impact this would have on an election or second referendum in the coming days.
I guess its good that the UK is moving closer to the way things are done in other EU countries, eh? /s
Source: https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/paspoort-en-identiteitskaart/vraag-en-antwoord/wat-zijn-de-kosten-van-paspoorten-en-identiteitskaarten
We don't have a system that consistently tracks identity, and the documents that are available aren't issued in the same formats, or with the same information, across the country
For a passport you need to be able to obtain quite a lot of documentation about both you and your parents, and you need to provide it all as original documents
Getting a provisional driving licence is probably the easiest way in, but you still need to obtain your birth certificate (costs and administrative requirements vary) and combine that with other evidence that will then be interpreted to determine whether it's adequate
There are a lot of people for whom this kind of exercise is not going to be trivial, and they aren't edge cases
I'm not opposed to ID requirements in principle, but there needs to be a properly robust system for obtaining the relevant documents
The point is that it provides an indirect way to suppress certain groups from voting. By limiting the options for what constitutes valid ID, you can massively reduce voting eligibility simply by making it inconvenient to get those IDs.
If you make the law require a form of ID that requires going to a certain government department to acquire, then you can target specific areas of the country and lower their voter turnout by closing down/understaffing the relevant departments in those areas, while making it easy in areas.
If X-Shire tends to vote the way you want, while Y-Shire tends to vote the opposite way, then you can get an advantage by opening additional centres for acquiring ID in X-Shire and understaffing/closing those in Y-Shire.
It's a very sneaky and underhanded method and works extremely well in any country without compulsory voting.
- There's almost never any evidence of existing fraud where a new ID system would provide a clear benefit.
- ID requirements are almost always proposed with a burden (cost, qualification, documentation, or just plain access to the ID office) that can be difficult for some segments to meet, making it likely that they wont bother to obtain a valid ID and therefore "opt out" of voting.
- Voter ID requirements are almost always proposed by political groups (usually conservative) who would benefit from the segments in #2 having lower voter turnout.
It's almost always framed as "Party A wants to protect the integrity of voting, while Party B doesn't want them to" when the reality is almost always "Party A sees an opportunity to suppress votes to their advantage in the next few elections, while Party B doesn't want them to".If it's cheap, easy to get, and can be obtained substantially before the next election for which it is required - as is the case for many countries who have been utilising Voter ID for some time - then you probably wouldn't hear too much about it.
The problem is that proposed introduction of Voter ID systems are often none of these, and there's usually an ulterior motive why they aren't.
but that’s the point of the law
there are less-advantaged groups who don’t have easy access to transportation, or a DMV within miles of where they live, or easy access to the records necessary to obtain an ID, or haven’t had a drivers license or 20+ years
every single place in the US voter ID has been proposed has been a place where Republicans hold thin majorities in many districts within that state and that’s not a coincidence
Blueberrywerewlf on the Sony Anime Games Box | BluberryWerewlf on the BroBone
"How do I know you're not Nicolas Cage wearing klemming's face"
You need to be realistic about the world we live in man.
"I will in no circumstances carry one and even were I compelled to do so, I would take it out and destroy it on the spot were I ever asked to produce it. It is a plastic poll tax that will do nothing to assist the struggle against terrorists and will hugely expand the powers of the state over the individual." B. Johnson
I suspect if Labour couldn't get ID cards through back in 2005, with a passable majority, then Johnson won't be able to get compulsory voter ID through in the current parliament. Or, without a solid majority, the next one either.
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Interesting because the economic uncertainty and "stronger together" was a key line of argument for the No campaign last time
Scotland: "This deal is getting worse all the time..."
Steam | XBL
Meanwhile fraudulent disinformation at the party and government level has swayed entire elections. I wonder how attaching an amendment proposing huge fines and jail time for knowingly misleading the public would play out.
Yeah, but independence with staying in the EU as a sweetener might be more sellable.
So, for me, I'm not a rabid indy advocate, all things being equal I'd probably prefer to see greater devolution (I was attracted to Kezia Dugdale's federal UK idea)
However, the political issue that's going to dominate the next ten years or so is undoing brexit
And the quickest and cleanest way of accomplishing that, that I can see right now, is independence