4 ms·

UK government makes me sick, and what makes me even more sick is that no political party in the UK seems capable of fixing what needs to be fixed; they all focu

UK government makes me sick, and what makes me even more sick is that no political party in the UK seems capable of fixing what needs to be fixed; they all focus on the particular populist opinions within their particular voter bases. It's really quite sad. I just wish people would work together to compromise but it seems all over the world there's this intense tribal effect. I guess evolution is to blame, we never evolved to live in such large groups as we are now and as individuals modern life is far too complicated to have enough attention span to worry about every little thing, especially when governments and corporations often purposefully make it very difficult.

symbogra 11mo ago
The UK has a clear path to overcome the failure of democracy when people vote along purely tribal lines; the King should retake power and rule benevolently for the good of the UK.
lukan 11mo ago
"we never evolved to live in such large groups as we are now" Then maybe this is the problem? And the solution to build smaller societies again where the individual can have meaningful impact and not give up from the start to even try to move the buerocratic leviathan even a little bit in the right direction?
- AngryData 11mo ago
  Which does sound nice, but then runs into the problems of neighbors who don't follow those same rules and who decided to eat your lunch, either economically through unrestrained capitalism seeking infinite growth over sustainability, or militarily to feed their internal economic pyramid scheme, or maybe just because assholes run their country and believe they are better and more deserving and decided might makes right. There are significant efficiency gains to be had with increasing organizational and operational sizes, the problem is many people assume those gains will benefit everyone, at least partially, rather than the more common reality of all that efficiency being redirected towards the personal gains of a few. And billions of dollars are spent year after year to convince the common people that they will get screwed more if they don't allow it to happen because all the efficiency gains, that they have never actually experienced, will disappear.
  - lukan 11mo ago
    "eat your lunch .. or militarily" Obviously all empires want to grow and devour the independent small states/societies and this is what happened and this is why only gigantic states(and those small ones siding with them) stand a chance today. But a often tried out concept is that of federation. Meaning (semi) autonomous entieties get together for common benefits, like military defense and infrastructure. But of course also those have a tendency to turn into empires. (The Delian League in ancient greece comes to mind, or well the russian federation today. ) But that does not mean it must be always like this. I believe there is a sweet spot that can be achieved and stays stable. But the current Zeitgeist seems to head in another direction.
naIak 11mo ago
[flagged]
- sofixa 11mo ago
  > Brexit was a good first step. Not really. The UK having a forum in the EU or not really doesn't change the size of the British society and the complexities of its governance. It only made a million small and medium and large things more complicated, for no benefit at all. It will go down in history as one of the biggest debacles ever. The fact that the people who pushed for it like Farage are still listened to is bone chilling. He was wrong about everything before, why does anyone still believe him?
- subscribed 11mo ago
  > Brexit was a good first step What? In a way to USA++ unbridled libertarianism, free if regulations and oversight, perhaps. Praising _less_ ways to force the government, especially as heavily lobbied as the UK, into a positive direction is an astonishing stance. Lest we forget who was famously the dirty man of Europe. And it's coming back, this time with unrestricted growing of the food on the industrial sludge (including a hearty dose of heavy metals and PFAS, of course). Brexit was good to Putin and oligarchs of the UK. To no one else.
epolanski 11mo ago
> UK government makes me sick, and what makes me even more sick is that no political party in the UK seems capable of fixing what needs to be fixed; they all focus on the particular populist opinions within their particular voter bases. I really don't see any major western democracy being exempt from this. Especially now that demographics have shifted and our populations get older it's hard to be elected unless you cater about what older folks care and don't care about. This makes long-term planning very difficult, as older folks couldn't care less with spend gargantuan money today so situation is improved decades from now.
dgroshev 11mo ago
But what needs to be fixed? Here's a small list of things that different groups think need to be fixed: - too many immigrants - too many small boat arrivals - the existence of billionaires - too much tax - too little tax - UK membership in NATO - UK being too weak in NATO - too much smut online that kids can see - too many attempts to control the web Agreeing on which of those "need to be fixed" is the essence of politics. There are no universally accepted answers. The current government, for all its failings, is focusing on fundamentals: get building again; repair public finances to then invest into infrastructure; repair international relationships. To that end, they are calling projects in right and left, pushing the planning bill through the parliament, rising taxes (which is utterly necessary!), reforming the NHS (online appointments are coming), talking to businesses, building nuclear power plants, striking deals with allies (Norway just ordered £10bn worth of frigates, AUKUS is steaming ahead), and forging new alliances (Japan has just deployed their air force to the UK, their first European deployment in 71 years). This is the opposite of populism, in fact a lot of that is making them unpopular in the short term. Yet it's the first time in more than a decade when we have a government that does those things. We got populists out and let's-do-serious-work-on-fundamentals people in, and now people complain that they aren't populist enough.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- 1718627440 11mo ago
  > Here's a small list of things that different groups think need to be fixed: Honestly I think all of them need to be fixed. You might think they are contradicting, but I think that is only a way to make people be angry at each other, and not starting to demand really fixing things.
- rsynnott 11mo ago
  I mean arguably those are all distractions (except for the tax thing, indirectly); what really need to be fixed are the core, boring issues. The country, fundamentally, needs to keep the lights on; it needs to fix services which have been in decline for some time, it needs a credible route forward on pensions and other funding issues (but pensions are the scariest) and so forth. A big part of the problem with the UK is exactly that; since 2015, the UK has been lurching from crisis to crisis, and more or less ignoring actually keeping the country running (keeping the country running is boring, Brexit is not boring, and so on).
radicalbyte 11mo ago
The amount of damage done in the 15 years of successively worse leaders requires not only time to fix but also incredible political bravery. That in the backdrop of a press who are actively working against the best interests of the country (they serve their often foreign billionaire owners). I would give us a chance if we had an extremely charismatic and rational progressive in charge but we don't. Starmer is an admirable person but he doesn't have the charisma or the vision needed to get us out of this mess. Thirty years ago he would have been a "One Britain" Tory. The UK progressives - the Lib Dems and the Greens - have absolutely no chance electorally and the media is pushing the far-right Russian-funded Reform Party as a "solution" and I'm worried that enough low-information voters will fall for it.
subscribed 11mo ago
It seems to be that Greens _do_ actually provide bold and actionable way forward. And since they recently overtook the blue Labour, it's actually possible to hope again.

symbogra 11mo ago

The UK has a clear path to overcome the failure of democracy when people vote along purely tribal lines; the King should retake power and rule benevolently for the good of the UK.

lukan 11mo ago

"we never evolved to live in such large groups as we are now" Then maybe this is the problem? And the solution to build smaller societies again where the individual can have meaningful impact and not give up from the start to even try to move the buerocratic leviathan even a little bit in the right direction?

AngryData 11mo ago
Which does sound nice, but then runs into the problems of neighbors who don't follow those same rules and who decided to eat your lunch, either economically through unrestrained capitalism seeking infinite growth over sustainability, or militarily to feed their internal economic pyramid scheme, or maybe just because assholes run their country and believe they are better and more deserving and decided might makes right. There are significant efficiency gains to be had with increasing organizational and operational sizes, the problem is many people assume those gains will benefit everyone, at least partially, rather than the more common reality of all that efficiency being redirected towards the personal gains of a few. And billions of dollars are spent year after year to convince the common people that they will get screwed more if they don't allow it to happen because all the efficiency gains, that they have never actually experienced, will disappear.
- lukan 11mo ago
  "eat your lunch .. or militarily" Obviously all empires want to grow and devour the independent small states/societies and this is what happened and this is why only gigantic states(and those small ones siding with them) stand a chance today. But a often tried out concept is that of federation. Meaning (semi) autonomous entieties get together for common benefits, like military defense and infrastructure. But of course also those have a tendency to turn into empires. (The Delian League in ancient greece comes to mind, or well the russian federation today. ) But that does not mean it must be always like this. I believe there is a sweet spot that can be achieved and stays stable. But the current Zeitgeist seems to head in another direction.

naIak 11mo ago

[flagged]

sofixa 11mo ago
> Brexit was a good first step. Not really. The UK having a forum in the EU or not really doesn't change the size of the British society and the complexities of its governance. It only made a million small and medium and large things more complicated, for no benefit at all. It will go down in history as one of the biggest debacles ever. The fact that the people who pushed for it like Farage are still listened to is bone chilling. He was wrong about everything before, why does anyone still believe him?
subscribed 11mo ago
> Brexit was a good first step What? In a way to USA++ unbridled libertarianism, free if regulations and oversight, perhaps. Praising _less_ ways to force the government, especially as heavily lobbied as the UK, into a positive direction is an astonishing stance. Lest we forget who was famously the dirty man of Europe. And it's coming back, this time with unrestricted growing of the food on the industrial sludge (including a hearty dose of heavy metals and PFAS, of course). Brexit was good to Putin and oligarchs of the UK. To no one else.

epolanski 11mo ago

> UK government makes me sick, and what makes me even more sick is that no political party in the UK seems capable of fixing what needs to be fixed; they all focus on the particular populist opinions within their particular voter bases. I really don't see any major western democracy being exempt from this. Especially now that demographics have shifted and our populations get older it's hard to be elected unless you cater about what older folks care and don't care about. This makes long-term planning very difficult, as older folks couldn't care less with spend gargantuan money today so situation is improved decades from now.

dgroshev 11mo ago

But what needs to be fixed? Here's a small list of things that different groups think need to be fixed: - too many immigrants - too many small boat arrivals - the existence of billionaires - too much tax - too little tax - UK membership in NATO - UK being too weak in NATO - too much smut online that kids can see - too many attempts to control the web Agreeing on which of those "need to be fixed" is the essence of politics. There are no universally accepted answers. The current government, for all its failings, is focusing on fundamentals: get building again; repair public finances to then invest into infrastructure; repair international relationships. To that end, they are calling projects in right and left, pushing the planning bill through the parliament, rising taxes (which is utterly necessary!), reforming the NHS (online appointments are coming), talking to businesses, building nuclear power plants, striking deals with allies (Norway just ordered £10bn worth of frigates, AUKUS is steaming ahead), and forging new alliances (Japan has just deployed their air force to the UK, their first European deployment in 71 years). This is the opposite of populism, in fact a lot of that is making them unpopular in the short term. Yet it's the first time in more than a decade when we have a government that does those things. We got populists out and let's-do-serious-work-on-fundamentals people in, and now people complain that they aren't populist enough.

deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
1718627440 11mo ago
> Here's a small list of things that different groups think need to be fixed: Honestly I think all of them need to be fixed. You might think they are contradicting, but I think that is only a way to make people be angry at each other, and not starting to demand really fixing things.
rsynnott 11mo ago
I mean arguably those are all distractions (except for the tax thing, indirectly); what really need to be fixed are the core, boring issues. The country, fundamentally, needs to keep the lights on; it needs to fix services which have been in decline for some time, it needs a credible route forward on pensions and other funding issues (but pensions are the scariest) and so forth. A big part of the problem with the UK is exactly that; since 2015, the UK has been lurching from crisis to crisis, and more or less ignoring actually keeping the country running (keeping the country running is boring, Brexit is not boring, and so on).

radicalbyte 11mo ago

The amount of damage done in the 15 years of successively worse leaders requires not only time to fix but also incredible political bravery. That in the backdrop of a press who are actively working against the best interests of the country (they serve their often foreign billionaire owners). I would give us a chance if we had an extremely charismatic and rational progressive in charge but we don't. Starmer is an admirable person but he doesn't have the charisma or the vision needed to get us out of this mess. Thirty years ago he would have been a "One Britain" Tory. The UK progressives - the Lib Dems and the Greens - have absolutely no chance electorally and the media is pushing the far-right Russian-funded Reform Party as a "solution" and I'm worried that enough low-information voters will fall for it.

subscribed 11mo ago

It seems to be that Greens _do_ actually provide bold and actionable way forward. And since they recently overtook the blue Labour, it's actually possible to hope again.