> A spokesman for the Home Office said: "The Government is closing every asylum hotel, saving taxpayers over £1 billion on asylum support since the election.
With nothing. Why does the UK have giant numbers of asylum seekers, and why wasn't any of the EU countries they travelled through to get there good enough? It's the hardest to reach country in Western Europe.
Because the UK wants them. They can stop the boats at any time. They can stop feeding and housing them at any time. They come because the UK government and NGOs provide them with a comfortable life.
It's the minimum requirement under ECHR. The government does actually have to comply with its legal obligations, this isn't America. They can't choose to just ignore them.
This is why the problem hasn't been fixed. You can't say "just do X" when X isn't legal. Do you really think nobody's thought of this? That the government actually likes being in this position of the past decade or so?
I think you mean "Because the UK wants them, only 2% or so of illegal immigrants arrive by boats".
Boris Johnson did Brexit "to stop the immigrants" ... and opened the floodgates. The very opposite of what his campaign promised. The very opposite of WHY the British public wanted Brexit.
The main negative of the EU is people can migrate through it to get to your country, like the UK's small boats crisis. Canada, being so far from the EU, doesn't have that unique disadvantage. Which is good news for Canada if this does end up working.
The 2021 ProPublica tax leak showed the 25 richest Americans paid a "true tax rate" of roughly 3.4% on their $401 billion in wealth growth between 2014 and 2018, because their wealth grew without triggering realization events.
“Net” is not relevant, nominal tax rate matters, and billionaires are the biggest tax dodgers by far, stop trying to blame poor people and civil servants for your weird hangups.
Sure, undoubtedly. But, also... you don't have to make a ton of money to pay more than 3% of your income.
To be clear, I don't pretend to have preferences. I'm idealistically libertarian, but I think that nukes have ruined the right to bear arms, propaganda has ruined free speech, and central banks have ruined currency. I'm a demoralist, I guess, to coin a term.
I'll be honest, I think Dr Who is due for a 1989-style shelving for a while. I've loved watching the show since I was young, but I think the quality has fallen off significantly recently. Capaldi was the last "great doctor" in my opinion. Whittaker is a good actress, I thought she performed well in Broadchurch (ironically also written by Chibnall), but her writing was just awful, and it feels like they've just spent the last couple of seasons nostalgia-baiting the fans, like with the Midnight episode
Much like the show in the latter years of its first run it collapsed under the weight of its own canon, and writers/showrunners that enthusiastically embraced that canon and alienated the casual audience.
IMO they should never have brought back the Time Lords. That was the genius stroke of the 2005 reboot. Just make the Doctor an intergalactic oddball, let the adventures run from there. What's weird is that Russell Davies was the one who understood this... then when he came back to the show he shoveled nostalgia on top of nostalgia and sank the thing.
I never even watched the Chibnall era so I'm not fully informed but from reading about the Timeless Child arc it just sounds like a show disappearing up its own arse. It's supposed to be a family show, younger kids don't care about that kind of stuff. Just make it fun.
The Chibnall episodes sucked, but then Russell T. Davies came back as showrunner. If you haven't seen the first three episodes he did, with David Tennant returning as the Doctor, you're missing out!
I liked the regular season that followed too. It had good and bad episodes, just like the last time RTD was showrunner, but the good ones were very good.
(I haven't watched the most recent season yet, but that's less because I'm unexcited and more because I want to save it.)
Capaldi had strong episodes throughout his run, but yes, I personally did dislike some of the storylines. The Zygon stuff felt very weak to me, and I never understood the "The Hybrid" storyline. But heaven sent/hell bent were bangers, and I definitely enjoyed his finale Cybermen episodes.
But yes, the moon suddenly reappearing in between shots, perfectly fine and identical to before, was very silly
Maybe Capaldi ended on a high note. I was done with the show after the moon episode and quit watching. I couldn't keep suspending disbelief after that. It wasn't just one bad episode the whole thing felt tired.
Capaldi was a great actor and it was nice that he got some good scripts (I really liked the one where he was in Doctor Prison, great concept), but his run felt to me like a show running out of ideas.
I didn't watch the Whittaker doctor. Heard it was awful and wasn't surprised. I eventually saw the pilot and it was indeed, awful.
Back when it was airing, I sort of lost interest around Capaldi. I think his episodes were a bit too "mature" for me, when I preferred funny scifi show. But I've come to appreciate a lot of his episodes more. But he did have some really dogshit ones, like the moon episode, The Caretaker (Where a school gets attacked by a dalek knockoff), and Sleep No More, which was so bad that me and my girlfriend spent the whole episode talking about other stuff when having a marathon rewatch. Both of us are big fans of doctor who in general
Doctor Who has been "woke" for a long time. I believe the 4th doctor discuss what pronouns to use for an alien. There have been several episodes essentially about slavery in the 10th and 11th doctors runs. Also you should read about The Happiness Patrol, a 7th doctor episode
Also, well, women in major non-romantic roles in the 1960s! I'm struggling to think of another major TV example of that from the time period, honestly.
Could you please define what you think "woke" means then? Because I'm working off the definition of "being aware of and attentive to social and political injustices, especially regarding race, gender, and inequality"
Traditionally (in the modern pejorative sense), it means "things the speaker doesn't like", in much the same sense as "common sense" means "the speaker's opinions".
It definitely is a lot more specific than that. It means, at the very least means having certain views on the causes of injustices, and on the policies required to fix them, and even on how one judges whether there has been an injustice in the first place.
I think you have to be completely in another universe to think that's all anyone means by that. Are you really so delusional about your own superiority that you think "anti-woke" just means anti those things? It's 2026 and there has been almost 10 years of woke excess. I don't think me explaining is going to do anything for you or to knock you off your high horse.
That's pretty much the definition that the term started with (arguably it was a bit more general in some sense: just along the lines of 'politically aware and engaged'). It seems to have morphed, but I find that when it's used pejoratively there's not one fixed definition beyond 'I don't like it'.
> That's pretty much the definition that the term started with
No, it started as being aware of issues black Americans were facing. Then it got co-opted and contorted by the far left in America into all sorts of crazy issues.
It got co-opted and contorted by the right in America. The right intentionally pretended that "woke" was an umbrella term for "all sorts of crazy issues" that it never was. The more "crazy issues" that they could add onto the pile the better, in order to make the word useless to the left. If anyone on the left continued to use "woke" intending its original meaning, those listening would associate their own thoughts about the extra unrelated issues, muddying the speaker's message.
It's good that the left has got to the point where they're disavowing woke[0], although they're only doing it to not plummet further into the depths of unpopularity, but to say it was never co-opted by the radical left in the first place is so breathtakingly untrue even they haven't done that.
> I believe the 4th doctor discuss what pronouns to use for an alien.
An alien, not a human.
> There have been several episodes essentially about slavery in the 10th and 11th doctors runs.
Progressive in 1830 maybe. In the 21st century saying that slavery is bad thing is hardly revolutionary.
> The Happiness Patrol, a 7th doctor episode
A bit of left wing subtext and some caricature? So what? Very common at the time. Lots of comedians doing the same. Nothing like woke, not even a bit controversial.
Staggers me when I see viewpoints like this about Who, Trek and the like. Take a second to consider, maybe it isn't the show's outlook that changed, it's you?
Who has always been progressive. Trek, too. If you were your current age in the 60s I bet you'd be railing against Kirk kissing Uhura.
More like "go woke because you've run out of ideas." The only "woke" thing about Whittaker was that the doctor was female, something they would have done in earlier episodes (in fact, did do) and wouldn't have made a big deal about it.
But they had no reason for people to watch Who by the time you got to Whittaker, and the show should have been cancelled already but it was making too much money, so they treated her like a Cousin Oliver and made the fact that she was the First Female Doctor (not even true) into a huge thing because they had nothing else.
Probably the fact that in one episode[0] the Doctor's incarnations were actually mostly women except for the most recent few - who obscured this important fact - smelled a lot like "yet another man taking credit for a woman's work".
I think the episode written by Malorie Blackman about some random time criminal appearing during MLK and Rosa Parks' protests would fall under "woke" too, but that was just a shit episode because of bad writing. A competent episode writer could probably have done something better with that time period/setting
idk, Who, Trek, Star Wars have been woke since the 60s. At this point, it seems more likely that you've changed woke to mean "anything I don't like". Or you watch too much Fox
Implying it hadn't already fell apart in the Matt Smith era, where there was a season finale that made less sense than the end of Neo Genesis Evangelion (I think I'm talking about The Pandorica Opens, but it's honestly all a blur, and was at the time I watched it too). Moffat hyped up future episodes but could rarely deliver, RTD just hit you with a massive sucker punch on the 2nd or 3rd last episode and WOW.
Also implying that the wheels weren't kinda getting loose when 10ant said his final farewell at that (otherwise fairly underrated IMO) episode where the Master was hungry.
All of the big franchises are collapsing under the weight of nostalgia and self-reference. Reboots like Picard are shockingly, almost insensitively, retrospective.
Thanks for posting that. Good to know the BBC is moving on from Davies, and investing in a full season with a new production company.
Star Trek is in far worse shape these days. According to Riker, this is the first time in decades where there is no TV or movie even in the planning phase.
Main line Star Wars is a train wreck, unfortunately. I was one of the apparently few people who was looking forward to something new, even deconstructive, in the sequel trilogy. I'm so sick of Palpatine vs. Skywalker chosen bloodline nonsense you can't even imagine, and the last thing I want is to have my nostalgia pandered to.
The ancillary stuff is a lot better however. I hear good things about Star Wars Visions but I haven't seen it.
There is a new movie in the early stages of development. Some news was teased at Comic-Con in July and the directors spoke about it a few weeks ago.
"After years of an unclear future, it seemed as though “Star Trek” finally found a path back to the big screen as “Spider-Man: Homecoming” writers and “Game Night” and “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” filmmakers Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley boarded the film."
Development on ‘09 started after production wrapped on enterprise in March 2005, although there wasn’t a lot in it. Production in earnest was certainly underway 18 months after.
I love Star Trek, I love Star Wars, and I love Doctor Who. I have very fond memories of watching Tom Baker's episodes on PBS back in the day.
But once you have nothing to draw on but nostalgia I think it's time to move on. I liked the Doctor better when they were just an outlaw Time Lord in a stolen car doing good and getting into adventures, and not the eldritch abomination they've become, whose mere name causes the galaxy to shiver in terror. I liked Star Trek better when the humans weren't the most powerful force in the galaxy, one-shotting Borg cubes, but they were an upstart species getting a foothold in a universe bigger, stranger and far more dangerous than they imagine. In both cases, nostalgia leads to a sort of narrative power creep.
Star Wars has the same problem. Everything has to be about the Palpatines versus the Skywalkers. It would have been such a better story if it turned out Rey really was a nobody, if the entire plot had the courage to examine its own mythology from the outside and establish that the universe really is bigger than these two players, but we don't dare subvert tropes when the viewer has the media literacy of a mollusk and can't accept a protagonist who isn't Space Goku.
There's no wonder left to any of it. No mystery, no awe. No sense that the universe is bigger than you can imagine. God forbid something take a risk with the fucking franchise. Maybe we should just let it all die.
> This is why most online mapping platforms like Google Maps or Apple Maps rely on a variation of the Mercator projection to provide directions. Using the Equal Earth projection for navigation would not be as effective as the Mercator projection.
> What the UN did was endorse the broader message that Equal Earth is a fairer projection that more equitably displays the true size of the Earth’s land
You are right about this though - it's a moral fashion. Who cares about land size on a map unless you've got the priorities and advancement of a prehistoric king? People with plenty of spare time who constantly talk in an echo chamber[0], that's who.
> They practice cannibalism, and Michael Rockefeller was likely eaten there, and maybe Joe Biden’s uncle too - and one group ate their dead relatives’ brains at funerals so consistently that they gave themselves a mad cow type disease called kuru, which killed a large percentage of their population and then, within a few generations, evolved a genetic mutation that protects against it, one of the fastest cases of natural selection ever documented in humans
> Jared Diamond thinks the people there are genetically smarter than Europeans
Never seen two consecutive paragraphs so completely contradict each other.
Well Jared Diamond is referring to individual intelligence, not the wisdom of their cultural practices.
More specifically, he states: "My perspective on this controversy comes from 33 years of working with New Guineans in their own intact societies. From the very beginning of my work with New Guineans, they impressed me as being on the average more intelligent, more alert, more expressive, and more interested in things and people around them than the average European or American is. At some tasks that one might reasonably suppose to reflect aspects of brain function, such as the ability to form a mental map of unfamiliar surroundings, they appear considerably more adept than Westerners. Of course, New Guineans tend to perform poorly at tasks that Westerners have been trained to perform since childhood and that New Guineans have not. Hence when unschooled New Guineans from remote villages visit towns, they look stupid to Westerners. Conversely, I am constantly aware of how stupid I look to New Guineans when I’m with them in the jungle, displaying my incompetence at simple tasks (such as following a jungle trail or erecting a shelter) at which New Guineans have been trained since childhood and I have not."
As opposed to us smarter people making cattle feed that contains cow brains, thereby propagating mad cow disease, then killing ourselves by eating them (Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease)!
Or for that matter killing ourselves in dozens of other ways due to lack of scientific knowledge, or ignoring it.
We didn't keep contracting mad cow disease until everyone who wasn't genetically immune to it died. I'm pretty sure we figured it out and killed loads of cattle to stop us getting it.
Ethnicity never mattered (other than for the people that think too many white people are doing something). It's culture, in particular government ties, that are the worry with China.
A huge amount of housing demand comes from immigration. You can't call people who like their neighbourhoods "NIMBYs" for not wanting their nice area to triple in population to solve a problem. They aren't the problem. The demand is the problem.
So lack of supply isn't the problem, it's the people who want a place to live who are the problem? Would you make this same argument if the increased demand was from people being born rather than immigration (because it is both)?
I think if you want to be able to block your neighbors from building denser housing on their property then that should only be enforceable if it was agreed to by everybody in advance when they bought the place (e.g. via an HOA contract or some similar type of restriction on the property deed). Otherwise this is tantamount to allowing Walmart to get a vote on whether to allow Target to set up next door.
> So lack of supply isn't the problem, it's the people who want a place to live who are the problem? Would you make this same argument if the increased demand was from people being born rather than immigration (because it is both)?
I totally agree it's both, although most first world populations have low birth rates (until you add in generational immigration from high birth rate cultures), so slow building works well.
Actually you can blame them because it was the done thing throughout US history to build more homes when people moved to an area. And there is nothing more American than moving to a place with better opportunities or amenities. "The pursuit of happiness" and all that.
Actual immigration from outside the US is a vanishingly small part of our housing problems, just as immigrants do not actually "eat the cats and dogs".
Where I live in Oregon the conflict is almost entirely about other Americans moving here vs those pulling up the ladder - which doesn't, of course,stop anyone from moving here, it just means only the wealthy can, rather than teachers, nurses, firefighters and so on.
>immigrants do not actually "eat the cats and dogs"
This is a pretty stark straw man. It's very normal to be critical of immigration policy without believing that immigrants will eat your pets, and it's petty to try to implicitly cast the person you're talking to into that camp.
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