Notices by Kim Spence-Jones 🇬🇧😷 (kimsj@mastodon.social), page 2

@goatsarah @christineburns I suspect she’s just so lacking in empathy that she thought she was doing a good job. Her main focus seems to have been on NHS admin, completely failing to appreciate what it must be like for folk trapped in a hostile system with a clock ticking.

@goatsarah If this is really a reflection of the views she holds, the report could have benefited from including such points in its summary! Having skip-read the summary, I’m left with the impression that her position is ‘nobody knows’ so more research is needed (which is a very valid point), but what she fails to adequately address is what strategy should be adopted in the mean time, which is surely the most urgent and vital question. I’m not sure this interview throws much more light on that.

@mrblissett @anildash And you trust Threads to be secure, Anil?

Clearly, the Whitehouse should host its own server

@anildash I don’t want to interact with threads. I don’t do Zuckerberg. So I see this as a failure of the Whitehouse: they should be running their own instance in ‘proper’ Mastodon, not weaseling ing via a commercial back door.

@DrALJONES I have suspected all along that criticism of UNRWA by Israel is just another ploy to make life more shit for Palestinians.

@MarleyandMe @paul The trouble is, these days it’s almost impossible not to use Amazon, they have such a monopoly. It’s time the empire was forcibly broken up.

Not only are we in late-stage capitalism, we seem to be in late-stage politics too.
Politicians have completely forgotten that they are elected to make good decisions, and are instead obsessed only with getting re-elected.
I have no idea how to fix this. 😢

@justafrog @mikeolson @floatybirb @sundogplanets I’m starting to think that commercial interests are going to go on ignoring the risks until they trigger the Kessler syndrome. Nobody seems capable of stopping them. Maybe that’s the way it has to be… wait a decade or two for the debris to decay then start again more sensibly.
Never mind, the CEOs will have had their bonuses by the time it all goes pear-shaped.

@carnage4life It’s worse than ‘buy a lot of lottery tickets’… it’s ‘I put all my money on 13 at roulette and it came up, so you should too’.
There are plenty of things you can do wrong after your number comes up, but avoiding such mistakes is just skilled management, and a lot of skilled managers don’t ever have that luck.

@CloudyMrs That’s how most ideas start. 😜

@Yoshi @ChrisMayLA6 The UK has still not recovered from the damage to society wrought by Maggie Thatcher. I’m not sure we’ll ever fully recover from the damage of the last 14 years. For a start there are losses of economic growth and international stature which would require herculean effort to repair, and I think we may have lost both the skills and the will to put in that effort.
Maybe the best we can hope is that Labour slows the decline. 😢

@HighlandLawyer @Yoshi @ChrisMayLA6 I favour keeping the Union, but breaking England into Scotland-sized regions (by population/economy, not geography, of course), and giving all regions devolved Assemblies. Turn Westminster into just a Federal government.

@srtcd424 @thomasfuchs And then there’s like cars, but worse.

It feels like 2024 is going to be the make-or-break year for humanity. By next Christmas, we could be facing run-away global heating, Long Covid rampant, a Russian win in Ukraine and Trump heading for US presidency, or we could be seeing the first sign of a return to stability.
Never has activism been so important. Stay strong, my friends!

@ryanhoulihan I sympathise with your views, but we have to start somewhere. A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.

@SeanJones If I understand this correctly, it will cause foreigners here for academic work to move to other countries, yet further reducing our soft power. And of course other students/postgrads won’t consider coming here in the first place.
A more subtle effect may be a reduction in volunteers. I have worked on charity projects here in Cambridge staffed almost entirely by the spouses of foreigners working or studying here.

Today’s melt-down over the COP28 president’s near denial of climate science has set me thinking about the forces arraigned against doing what must be done to keep the planet habitable.
So, my question is this: has social change of the level that is needed to fix the environment ever been achieved without violent revolution?
#climate #COP28

@britishtechguru @lauxmyth @luckytran
Your point? Here’s a chart on the timescale of hundreds of thousands of years. Never has there been a step change comparable to the effects of industrialisation.
https://climateandcapitalism.com/2023/11/15/the-scariest-climate-graph-of-all/

@siderea I just block people who post prickly replies. Sorry, but that includes you.

A reminder: unemployment benefit is pay to do nothing. Unconditional Basic Income is pay to do anything.
Which do you think is of more benefit to society?
#UBI