Notices by Simon Brooke (simon_brooke@mastodon.scot)

"It addresses, albeit to a tiny extent, one of the great democratic deficits of our time: that capital operates globally, while voting power stops at the national border. Without global measures, in the contest between people and plutocrats, the plutocrats will inevitably win" -- George Monbiot

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/31/brazil-global-tax-billionaires-super-rich

@GeofCox @seb321 @petealexharris we have developed a professional political class, all of whom have far more in common with one another than they have with ordinary people. Consequently, ordinary people feel alienated.

Because we are.

The parties have a consensus around the things the big donors want, because the same big donors fund all the parties. So they all support private ownership of the means of production, of services we all need, of housing, of fossil fuel extraction, for example.

OK, the first thing to say about #GeneralElectionUK 2024 is this: #Labour lost, and lost badly. They lost, in fact, HALF A MILLION VOTES compared to their 2019 result.

All the major parties, including the #LibDems, lost. Labour just lost less badly than either the #Conservatives or the #SNP.

#UKPol
#ScotPol

@fkamiah17 I hate admitting the #Tories are right about anything, but, when the #SNP came into power fourteen years ago, they could have, and should have, reformed local government taxation. That's ae been a #Holyrood competence. The size of the taxes they could justifiably have levied on Scotland's big landowners is practically unlimited: they could have solved the local government finance problem.

And they bottled it.

@massonpj @ow2 Most #OpenSource software is produced by software engineers and enthusiasts in their spare time as an act of curiosity, generosity, or social conscience: a contribution to making the world a (slightly) better place.

It is neither 'product' nor 'by-product' but conscious #gift -- and this is a good thing.

Viewing open source as something produced primarily by industry and academia is not merely wrong: it's missing the point entirely.

#GiftEconomy

@chaosmonkey @massonpj This is why I use the @fsf' General Public License #GPL on most of my projects. I build them so that other people can use them, yes -- but I don't build them so that companies can lock them into proprietary products and then gouge profits out of them.

#SoftwareLibre
#OpenSource
#FreeAsInFreedom

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html

@ShredderLivesOn Note that what she accuses Soros of is supporting the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood. Behind the whole anti-#Trans campaign is a determination to return all women to 'Kinder, Küche, Kirche'.

Trans rights are the current battle ground in the wider struggle for womens' reproductive rights, and rights to engage in civil society at all. We must defend our Trans comrades.

Destroying the planet we live on -- the only planet we can live on -- is of course totally legal and even supported and subsidised by governments around the world (including #Scotland's).

But PROTESTING against destroying the planet? That's illegal. That's very, very illegal. Don't even think about doing that.

#ClimateEmergency

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/23/alarm-as-german-climate-activists-charged-with-forming-a-criminal-organisation

@fedops @CloudyMrs Less hellish this morning, thank you. I think that I must take it *very* gently through today, but last night I was extremely rough and this morning not nearly so much.

@CloudyMrs Thanks. I'm drinking an ocean of tea.

@CloudyMrs Some sort of extra-vile respiratory virus. And no, there isn't anyone else this side of the hill, which means no-one is catching it off me.

It's my own fault for not downing tools and putting myself to bed on Tuesday, when I was first feeling rough, rather than soldiering on til Friday. I deserve no sympathy.

But holy crap, do I feel ill.

Ah, jings, I am feeling so ill I'd like to just fall through the space-time continuum.

@Tarbh @bobjmsn no, this isn't strictly true. Nuclear energy is far from carbon neutral. Nuclear power stations are built with large amounts of concrete, which is hugely carbon intensive; the mining of uranium is also hugely power intensive.

Two out of phase tidal arrays can produce the same amount of continuous, weather independent power as a nuclear plant, at vastly less cost. Of course, there are nations without two good tidal sites which are out of phase, but Scotland is not one of them.

Last night, I was thinking that Kuenssberg wasn't really a journalist, she was more a groupie; this morning, The Bunker is talking about politics as fandoms. I think this says a lot about modern political discourse in the UK.

There is little serious interest in, or analysis of, policy; the focus is on who is briefing against who, sleeping with who, plotting against who, winning arcane popularity contests.

This is essentially unserious.

#CampaignForSeriousPolitics

https://pod.link/1496246490/episode/1974664bc579725097d9cb038c45092d

No, Mr Musk. Terraforming Mars will not compensate humanity for veneroforming Terra.

https://earthsky.org/space/venus-was-once-earthlike-climate-change/

Penny's been with me since May 2006. She stayed with me when I was sleeping rough. She's been my most constant and most loyal companion for eighteen years. She's now unable to walk, unable to keep herself clean, in pain and incontinent. I am going to take her to the vets today to be put down. It's a hard decision.

@inthehands this isn't actually true. There was the dreadful Pertwee period where the Doctor was attached to some United Nations military unit, rattling round the place in an ancient car advising on how to annihilate aliens. However, I think everyone is agreed that this was the absolute nadir of the series, and it's fifty years ago.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Doctor

"We may be certain that if it was #Hamas being accused of torturing workers for international aid agencies in order to extract false confessions, we’d never hear the end of it"

#GazaGenocide
#Torture

#Israel Accused Of Torturing UN Workers To Obtain False Testimony About #UNRWA
https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-accused-of-torturing-un-workers

Guess which politician's name the dear old #Grauniad finds it too difficult to spell?

Theresa May becomes latest Tory MP to step down before election, saying ‘it has been an honour to serve’ – UK politics live
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/mar/08/theresa-may-rishi-sunak-hunt-starmer-reeves-budget-uk-politics-live-latest-news-updates?CMP=share_btn_url&page=with%3Ablock-65eacbd68f087d93d3c5fa3b#block-65eacbd68f087d93d3c5fa3b

"when... Channel 4 News finally got a copy of #Israel’s dossier, they found no evidence to back the state’s allegations. And today, a month on, UN investigators announced there has still been no evidence...

"This alone is a scandal of historic proportions. Without evidence... when the highest court on earth ordered access to humanitarian aid to prevent #genocide, the West went to war with #Gaza’s main humanitarian agency"

https://www.thenational.scot/politics/24157684.owen-jones-scotlands-stance-unrwa-vindicated/