Category: Politics
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How computer software can make policy, explained by family separation at the border
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How computer software can make policy, explained by family separation at the border How bad software design decisions can have a more devastating impact than bad policies. At a time when Silicon Valley and the larger public are waking up to the government’s reliance on software to carry out its agenda, it’s more important than […]
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‘For me, this is paradise’: life in the Spanish city that banned cars
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‘For me, this is paradise’: life in the Spanish city that banned cars Pontevedra banned cars from its centre, pedestrianising 300,000 square metres. Miguel Anxo Fernández Lores has been mayor of the Galician city since 1999. His philosophy is simple: owning a car doesn’t give you the right to occupy the public space. “How can […]
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Health chiefs make urgent order for 112 ambulances amid Brexit shortage fears
Health chiefs make urgent order for 112 ambulances amid Brexit shortage fears When you’ve started stockpiling ambulances, maybe it’s time to admit that Brexit is a mistake. The emergency vehicles, built by Mercedes in Germany and finished off in Ireland, are desperately needed by London Ambulance Service to help hit 999 response times over winter. […]
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The problem with trusting experience over expertise (a story about design thinking, astronauts, Formula 1 pundits and Brexit)
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The media — and society in general — has gradually drifted away from listening to expert figures, in favour of practitioners. But it is leaving us less enlightened.
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Four in 10 think British culture is undermined by multiculturalism
Four in 10 think British culture is undermined by multiculturalism This is so messed up, especially considering the concept of British culture is inherently multicultural.
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Facebook fuelled anti-refugee attacks in Germany, new research suggests
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Facebook fuelled anti-refugee attacks in Germany, new research suggests Evidence that racism or anti-refugee sentiment is correlated with Facebook use. Wherever per-person Facebook use rose to one standard deviation above the national average, attacks on refugees increased by about 50 percent.
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A lesson from Germany on how to cover far-right leaders
A lesson from Germany on how to cover far-right leaders It’s a radical idea — interviewing extremists without pandering to their extremist ideas. It turns out that by asking them about their policy positions instead of just letting them bang on about their racist ideas, you can quickly show them up. German television viewers found […]
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Salmond’s £80,000 warning to Sturgeon
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Salmond’s £80,000 warning to Sturgeon I had sort of missed this story while I was on holiday, but this from Torcuil Crichton seems to be a useful summary. Salmond’s fight for “fairness”, as he labels it, only serves to telegraph to them, and us, what forces are stirred when women choose to cross a powerful […]
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Economists have lost the trust of politicians
Economists have lost the trust of politicians It’s always good to read/see/hear Stephanie Flanders. Here she asks why politicians no longer have a favourite economist, in the way that Margaret Thatcher liked Milton Friedman and John F Kennedy admired John Kenneth Galbraith. In one sense, this feels like a concern I have been reading about […]
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Research: Women ask for raises as often as men, but are less likely to get them
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Research: Women ask for raises as often as men, but are less likely to get them The theory that women are paid less because they are less likely to ask for a pay rise appears to be nonsense. The bottom line of our study is that women do “ask” just as often as men. They […]
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Study shows immigrants are twice as likely to become entrepreneurs
Study shows immigrants are twice as likely to become entrepreneurs Economic studies are one way to measure the impact of immigration. Personally, I like to measure it another way. I like to look at my son — the great-grandson of a Mexican immigrant — while he plays cricket with his friends, nearly all of whom […]
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French jogger detained after crossing US-Canada border
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French jogger detained after crossing US-Canada border When going for a run gets you arrested. Border bollocks. A young French woman who went for an evening jog along a Canadian beach spent two weeks in US immigration detention after straying across the border.
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No voter caught on camera
This week I have had the slightly odd experience of being filmed in my living room for a documentary about the Scottish independence referendum.
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Britain’s open borders policy
Britain’s open borders policy Whilst cycling the other day, I crossed the Leicestershire-Rutland border. And I was shocked to see…nothing. No border controls, no passport checks, no customs officials. Here in Rutland we have an open borders policy. Chris Dillow makes the point that most of the debate around immigration and borders does not relate […]
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Revealed: How Britain’s biggest local TV company has “gamed” the BBC for licence fee payers’ money
Revealed: How Britain’s biggest local TV company has “gamed” the BBC for licence fee payers’ money Jeremy Hunt’s scheme to create a network of low-budget local TV stations was absurd from the get-go. Seven years on, it is clear that the scheme is a complete flop, with many of the stations unable to make ends […]
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Food: a class issue
Food: a class issue Why Jamie Oliver’s stunts like trying to ban two-for-one pizza offers are counter-productive and damaging to the poor. …there’s a deeper and nasty question here: if we can’t trust the poor to feed themselves properly, what can we trust them to do?… The problem is capitalism, not the poor. Some of […]
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The problem with professionals
The problem with professionals Paul Taylor argues that the professional class will bring about its own demise. He notes that organisations appear to be becoming more, not less, siloed (“whole sectors are still just talking to themselves”). Moreover, this “disconnection” is visible to the general public, who catch glimpses of this behaviour on social media. […]
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Happy GDPR day
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It has certainly been interesting to receive emails from so many companies I have no recollection of doing any business with.
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Why the TSB IT meltdown may be a failure of regulation
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The root of TSB’s IT disaster comes from the very beginning of its life.
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The Facebook current
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The Facebook current The Senate hearing into Facebook has come to be seen as a bit of a sideshow, partly because the questioning was so inadequate. But this article outlines why it was a bigger deal than it might seem at first glance. [T]here was a significant amount of agreement amongst the Senators… that something […]
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How can we incentivise the digital world to make safer services?
How can we incentivise the digital world to make safer services? How regulation came to be in railways, engineering and cars — and what this tells us about how digital services may be regulated. Trigger points for regulation have varied depending on the field, the period of history and the country. However, the thing all […]
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Centrism isn’t dead – we just need a new word
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Centrism isn’t dead – we just need a new word I find it strange that so much attention is being put on centrism at the moment. I definitely do not identify with either the left or the right. But I have rarely used the word centrist to describe myself. Partly because I find it quite […]
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A year after United’s public-relations disaster
A year after United’s public-relations disaster What happened after United violently removed a passenger against his will from an overbooked flight? What do you think…? Flyers may have said in that survey that they’d avoid United, but they really kept choosing whichever airline offered the best price and itinerary. And often that was United. In […]
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‘The third era of Zuck’: how the CEO went from hero to humiliation
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‘The third era of Zuck’: how the CEO went from hero to humiliation A reminder of just how recently it seemed plausible that Mark Zuckerberg could be a future US President. That seems highly unlikely now. This is one of those moments where we’re really fascinated because this huge PR machine has sort of cracked […]
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But could Remain win a second referendum?
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But could Remain win a second referendum? Some home truths for remainers from Jonathan Calder. In the Remain camp we constantly remind ourselves how good we are and how evil and ridiculous Leavers are. (Leavers do the precise opposite of course.) If insulting Leavers were the key to victory we would have won the first […]
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There are certain things you’re not allowed to say these days
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There are certain things you’re not allowed to say these days. Well it is time to put an end to all this political correctness. People have been frightened to speak openly. We should call a spade a spade. Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable is telling it like it is: 70% of over 65s voted for […]
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How liberals amped up a Parkland shooting conspiracy theory
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How liberals amped up a Parkland shooting conspiracy theory Conspiracy theorists purported that young anti-gun activists are crisis actors. It turns out that those outraged about the theory did more to promote it that the theorists themselves. Frank Luntz… tweeted in protest of the Gateway Pundit story, becoming one of four non-right-wing amplifiers of the […]
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Views from a grumpy millennial on YouGov’s poll on attitudes towards age
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YouGov have released an interesting study on where people draw the boundary between youth, middle age and old age. As a grumpy millennial, I couldn’t help but notice that a certain generation’s attitude on where old age begins appears to be selective.
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Amplitude modification
Absolute Radio have asked Ofcom to allow them to reduce their AM coverage.
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Does Pointless tell us something about why we voted for Brexit?
Does Pointless tell us something about why we voted for Brexit? Jonathan Calder has a very interesting theory about what TV quiz shows tell us about the way people vote.
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Britain grows increasingly hostile to EU citizens
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Britain grows increasingly hostile to EU citizens A German perspective on what’s going on in Britain right now. Whenever Agnieszka Pasieczna opens the curtains of her children’s bedroom, she finds herself facing four electronic eyes staring at her. The cameras, each around the size of a fist, are mounted on a gray wall around eight […]
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Woman’s English too good for UK entry
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Woman’s English too good for UK entry A pregnant Indian woman has been refused entry to live in Scotland with her Fife husband because her language qualification for entry to the UK is too advanced. Disgusting! When is this country going to stop being so hostile to people?
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Woman reports rape to police — and is arrested on immigration charges
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Woman reports rape to police — and is arrested on immigration charges The woman, who was five months pregnant at the time of her arrest, attended a London police station in March to report that she had been kidnapped and raped in Germany between September 2016 and March 2017. Officers took her to the Havens […]
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Why is British public so ignorant on Brexit?
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Why is British public so ignorant on Brexit? An Irish perspective on Brexit. It paints a bleak picture about the quality of political debate in the UK just now.
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Nick Clegg meets Richard Thaler: ‘All it would take to stop Brexit is a couple of dozen brave Tories’
Nick Clegg meets Richard Thaler: ‘All it would take to stop Brexit is a couple of dozen brave Tories’ The Guardian set Nick Clegg up for a Skype interview with Richard Thaler, who has recently been awarded the Nobel economics prize. Thaler was a big influence on the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition and it is clear […]