Got the ball rolling on this, junior doctor strikes, and planning system reform on day one.
The manifesto was fairly unradical and didn't seek to rock the boat too much, but tbh I'm glad it wasn't just filled with unworkable populist stuff that they probably couldn't achieve (cough, Tory, Green, and Reform, cough).
It did actually do that. The UK wasn't even the most Eurosceptic country around the time of 2015/2016. (I.e. the aftermath of the refugee crisis where the EU took a severe hit in popularity across the union).
Anti-EU sentiment was huge around that time particularly in the UK, Latvia, Hungary, France, Greece, Spain and the Netherlands. Averaged across all members of the union, less than 50% looked at the EU favourably after removing "don't know" answers (Eurobarometer survey).
The UK (or rather more specifically, David Cameron), was just the only one stupid enough to pull that kind of reckless political brinkmanship.
He thought that by calling the referendum and having Remain win (which is what polling indicated, plus he probably didn't think Tory media would love Brexit so much considering he, the PM, was massively against it), UKIP would fall apart, anti-EU sentiment would subside, and the emergence of a competing right-wing party would be halted.
Logical, but a ridiculously high-risk game. He gambled the UK's international standing on political games to help his own party.
By 2019, after seeing the ensuing shitshow that the Tories handling Brexit was, as well as the refugee crisis becoming a memory not an ongoing event, the EU had rebounded and hit its highest approval rating since 1983.
Look, I don't expect the back to be trivial to pop off and have a battery that I can yank out and replace within 5 seconds.
The need for high capacity batteries in phones pretty much necessitates thinner-walled (and therefore more easy to damage) batteries, and phones being all-screen pretty much necessitates phones being reasonably thin, so protective cases can be used without making the phones ridiculously cumbersome.
But if it does indeed require special tools, heatguns, and a skilled technician to do this, then I will be pissed off. There is zero reason Apple and the other industry shitheads can't design a phone with a battery that can be replaced without much chance of damage, or specialised tooling, by a normal person in under 10 minutes.
I'd also like to see them be forced to publish open schematics for their batteries so alternate companies can sell batteries if the OEM decides to be a shithead and charge you £160 for a new one.
Unfortunately there are all kinds of caveats in the law. E.g. phone batteries over a certain capacity are exempt, you can be exempted if you provide a battery warranty of (iirc) 3 years, etc.
Who on Earth refers to electric vehicles as "e-cars"? Lol
EVs or BEVs is the terminology I've always heard.
That aside, I don't really see how European companies can compete at the low end without slapping tariffs on Chinese goods. Europe doesn't have the benefit of things like forced labour.
Also, I think it's unwise to allow our reliance on China to grow even further. We've seen from Russia that making a hostile nation integral to our economies not only makes us reluctant to hold them to account properly, but it also causes us tremendous disruption if we do go about severing ties.
People need to remember the vote happened immediately after the EU migration crisis. Anti-EU sentiment was at a high all across the union.
I don't know why people act like being anti-EU was a UK thing, not a shared issue across several members. People should remember that before they shit on the UK too much.
Shit, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Hungary, and perhaps others had a similar or higher level of anti-EU sentiment at the time compared to the UK. It's just that David Cameron was the only one stupid enough to gamble on having a referendum.
Nobody else voted for it because nobody else had the chance to.
My whole point is that it's extremely likely other countries that also experienced a wave of anti-EU sentiment would've voted the same way, had they been given the chance.
I don't know why you'd think that the UK is unique in its anti-EU streak. It was huge in a handful of places at the time.
Global warming is still a correct term because the globe is warming.
Some areas aren't getting warmer. But the globe is. Hence global warming, not everywhere without exception warming.
We only moved on to saying climate change because some morons were pushing the same bullshit view that you are - iF gLoBaL wARmiNg iS ReAL hOw CoMe XYZ pLacE wAs CoLdEr tHiS yEaR???4
Yes, that's what I said. We generally say climate change now because people have idiotic takes like yours and (puzzlingly) don't appear to understand that global warming means warming of the globe.
We had to change the language used because people like you can't parse basic English or apply the smallest amount of thought to the phrase.
Global warming isn't an incorrect term in the slightest. It describes the warming of the globe, which is exactly what's happening.
China's commerce ministry said on Wednesday that it had urged Britain to stop sanctioning Chinese firms after the country sanctioned five Chinese companies over their links to Russia....
Britain has been harsher on China than anybody in the EU for a while now.
E.g. the UK is one of only four countries in the world that have the balls to formally recognise the Uyghur Genocide as a genocide. The UK offered asylum to over 3 million Hong Kong citizens. The UK sanctioned china over attempts to infiltrate the UK's Electoral Commission. The UK got into a spat with China over them hacking some MoD server. Several Chinese spies have been charged by the UK, etc...
UK-China relations were already rocky even before the bullshit in Hong Kong (which as you can imagine is a big issue for the UK and not others) and Russia invading Ukraine (in which the UK has been one of the top supporters of Ukraine), and it's got worse from there. Clearly you're talking about something that you know nothing about.
You're letting your xenophobic attitude towards the UK cloud your judgement. Put your hate aside for a moment and actually look at reality.
President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that there would be “serious consequences” if Western countries allowed Ukraine to use their weapons to strike targets in Russia, as sought by Kyiv.
If you read that comment and thought they were saying that it's fine when Russia attacks Ukraine, so long as it's done from within Ukraine using shorter range missiles, then you need to touch some grass, speak face to face with some actual humans, and discover how people talk, because any normal person wouldn't interpret that comment that way.
I genuinely don't mean this in a nasty way: I think you need more experience in talking to actual human beings face to face. The misunderstanding you have here is probably down to rusty communication skills.
Nuclear plants are designed to withstand a passenger jet flying into them, as well as minor direct missile barrages.
And with modern reactors, they can't really have Chernobyl-style meltdowns — if the cooling system fails, the fission stops by itself with no active involvement required.
I.e. you have to actively keep modern fission reactors going otherwise it stops on its own, as opposed to actively keep it cooled and safe, like the reactors of the 60s/70s.
Nuclear energy has, by a staggering margin, the lowest death toll of any form of energy generation per kW produced. And almost all of these come from Chernobyl, where 31 people died due to the explosion, then a further 46 died due to radiation poisoning from the cleanup.
By far the biggest issue with modern nuclear is the cost and them taking 7-12 years to deploy, as opposed to safety. SMRs are supposed to help with that aspect, but not enough have been rolled out to get a very good picture of that.
Really we have two choices, because renewables can't provide 100% of our energy mix yet:
build out nuclear as a base energy load and massively decrease fossil fuels in the short term
ignore nuclear and temporarily build out more fossil fuel plants, hoping that planet-scale energy storage will become cheap and extremely ubiquitous in a very short timeframe.
Wind and solar cannot provide all our energy. Nuclear does not replace wind and solar, it complements it. The sun doesn't always shine, and the wind doesn't always blow.
Yes it costs more than burning gas or coal, but that doesn't take into account the environmental cost or the cost on the health of living things.
And yeah we do know how to store nuclear waste for *hundreds of years. We do so already. I don't know where you're getting the "hundreds of thousands of years" from. Even old reactors althat don't recycle waste didn't have half-lives anywhere near that long.
That green party estimate is so laughable I'm not even going to comment on it further.
The WHO states it could be up to 4,000 in the long term, but may be substantially lower. The UN Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation concluded that even this figure is far too high.
Harvard university says that 8.7 million people die from greenhouse gas emissions each year. And that doesn't even account for direct accidents from generation and coal/gas extraction. Having a nuclear base load would save millions of lives, and do a huge amount to curb fossil fuel emissions. But "greens" want us to keep burning fossil fuels.
Battery storage and connecting grids together (which we do already) doesn't even come close to solving our energy needs. And no it can't be built way faster. We cannot have worldwide, practically unlimited, cheap battery storage right now.
Don't get me wrong, I really, really want to live in your fantasy world, but for now, that's all it is.
Lmao you're the one being insulting, dipshit. Sorry you don't understand a highly researched event and are too fucking dumb to look into it. Seriously. I truly am sorry that you have to live with being that fucking dumb.
Keep spewing propaganda for big oil companies and petrostates like Russia, scum.
Not surprised. When China disregarded their promise of keeping Hong Kong under a separate system, and started violently cracking down on the populace, the UK kicked up a fuss about it and offered to take on HKers that wanted to get out of there, and it pissed China off.
Unsurprising that they'd send their spies alongside the genuine migrants.
Onshoring the EV supply chain to Europe would cut the emissions of producing a battery by 37% compared to a China-controlled supply chain, according to new analysis by Transport & Environment (T&E). This carbon saving rises to over 60% when renewable electricity is used. Producing Europe’s demand for battery cells and...
We all want fewer cars on the road. Objecting to cars/buses/other road-using vehicles (which will certainly be here for the short-medium term future whether people like it or not) transitioning to using clean energy in both the production and usage stages of their lives achieves nothing other than keeping us burning fossil fuels for longer.
Even if everywhere could use rail, it will take decades to build that infrastructure out everywhere. In the meantime, cars, buses, vans, and lorries exist and they should be as clean as we can make them. You're letting perfect be the enemy of good.
That might be possible in cities (if we're being extremely generous to your position). But not everyone lives in cities, some of us aren't that privileged. What do those people do, stay at home?
You're living in another universe if you think it's possible to move away from road vehicles in the short term.
Road vehicles will exist for the foreseeable future. So they may as well be as clean as they can be.
People who live away from all settlements make up maybe up to 5% of population
You made that up.
and they can all roll coal and it would still be a net win if the vast majority of people take a tram or train instead of a car or plane.
Or they could drive EVs while the places where it makes sense to build out rail can build out rail. That would be better. Encouraging sticking to petrol/diesel for cars/buses/vans/lorries is worse.
Also people living in the middle of nowhere have no infrastructure to recharge their cars anyway
???
Believe it or not, people who live outside of cities still have electricity. I even have running water, too.
You are not living in reality if you think electric vehicle adoption can be fast enough to have any effect on climate change.
Never said it would solve climate change or anything. I said it's better than what we have and would be a preferable change. We can't go all rail in all circumstances any time soon. Probably ever.
Building a proper electric train and tram network on the other hand is doable in a short timeframe while being cheaper.
No it isn't. It's doable in some places and takes a long time. Seriously, have you not seen how long large infrastructure projects take? Now imagine you try to do the same projects everywhere all at once. There wouldn't be the resources or the expertise for it.
What you are asking for is more pollution.
Look, I get that you're young and privileged enough to live in a very urbanised area, but not everybody has that luxury.
Cars will be around for a long while. You can plug your fingers in your ears and pretend they won't be, but they will. It's weird to want them to continue polluting (or even roll coal) when there's an easy way to make it better.
This sounds exactly like when people oppose nuclear because it's not "pure" enough. You know what that causes? Sticking to coal/gas for longer.
Wait, so you want government investment to focus on electric cars even though it won't have an impact on climate change?
I'd appreciate it if you didn't jump to conclusions about what I said.
I want governments to enforce moving away from ICE vehicles and towards BEV ones as they are demonstrably far cleaner both in terms of climate change and particulates that affect the local environment.
No, BEVs alone can't reverse climate change. Neither can rail. They can both only be one part of the solution, which will obviously be a multi-pronged approach with many changes required in almost all aspects of our lives, not just transportation.
I want that investment in rail
You speak as if I don't. I was very clear that I do want that.
...because rail is most likely to have the largest impact while being doable in a short term for the vast majority of the population.
And this is where we differ. Building out rail will take decades, and even then won't even come close to serving all populations or all usecases. That means for the time being, cars, vans, buses, and lorries will be used for a long time to come. My position is that while these exist, they should be as clean as possible, your position seems to be switching between "let's get rid of them immediately" (which isn't feasible for obvious reasons) and "get rid of environmental regs and let them roll coal", which I don't like the sound of.
I get that your an American
I'm not. Since I'm posting in the Europe community, you'd think it'd be obvious that I'm from Europe, but oh well.
...that car companies have propagandised to oblivion but public transit works
Like I said, but you refuse to listen to, I like public transportation and want more of it. Please stop deliberately strawmanning. You're the one who wants to get rid of buses - an extremely effective form of public transport - and seemingly wants to scrap environmental regulations on cars. I should be asking you if you're some kind of auto-industry shill.
and it works better than electric cars for most people.
Assuming that's true, what of the rest? Fuck them? What of those who need ambulances called out? Let them die? Firefighters shouldn't have access to roads to get to places and put out fires? Lorries and vans shouldn't be able to deliver to places? People who live rurally (~5-35% of the population depending on where in Europe you are) can get fucked?
I said government funding for transit should focus mainly on rail as that would actually reduce pollution.
As would BEVs
Private entities should obviously be free to develop EVs
You were saying they shouldn't have roads to drive on.
but I never advocated for the removal of busses, ambulances, firefighters and enviourmental regulations. Where the fuck did you even get that, or are you arguing with someone else?
They require road infrastructure, which you said we should do away with.
EV adoption would take far longer than decades
EV adoption is happening right now.
We're likely hundreds of years away from removing road travel.
If you want EV mass adoption there needs to be used EVs available for around 5000 to 2000 euros
We're already going to get EV mass adoption. It's happening now and will continue. And 2000 to 5000? Lol, pull the other one. Cars cost far far far more than that and they're everywhere. You're just making up nonsense, again.
To fix climate change you don't need to serve literally everyone with EVs
Point me to where I said that. I've said the opposite. Stop with this strawman bullshit.
you need to reduce emissions enough and rail would serve the transit needs of more people than EVs ever could so that's where I want government funding for transit to go to.
Rail is part of it. As are BEVs. Like I said. Are you even reading?
You seem to be more in the camp that we need a perfect solution that serves every person on the planet but EVs can't even do that.
No, I'm in the realistic camp. You're in the fantasy camp. "Just get rid of cars and everyone have rail, we can build rail to everybody's houses within 5 years extremely cheaply!!"
The company made a net loss of 629bn roubles (£5.5bn) in 2023 amid dwindling gas trade with Europe, once Gazprom’s main sales market, as a result of sanctions and the throttling of pipelines to the continent.
As it stands, there's no real way to compete on price with a country like China that can do so much processing of raw materials in-house, has practically unlimited, very cheap labour, very cheap energy, almost no environmental regulations, outright steals tech, and straight-up uses slave labour.
Some form of protectionism is likely needed.
That said, car companies have been pissing me off recently. The prices are insane, and I don't particularly want to give them even less of a reason to keep pricing competitive.
In case of paywall: https://web.archive.org/web/20240429084944/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/04/28/ireland-plans-send-asylum-seekers-back-uk/
I mean they're not really wrong. If the UK can't refuse migrants arriving by boat on the basis of them coming from France, which is a safe country, then it stands to reason that Ireland can't refuse ones coming from the UK. Thinking one of those is fine but the other isn't is certainly hypocritical.
That said, I do find the political football of boat crossings to be quite tedious. They make up a tiny portion of immigration into the UK, yet it's all the government and media seem to talk about.
Starmer kills off Rwanda plan on first day as PM ( www.telegraph.co.uk ) Englisch
In case of paywall
'Change begins now', Starmer says - as Labour win historic landslide ( news.sky.com ) Englisch
General Election 2024: Former Prime Minister Liz Truss loses South West Norfolk seat ( www.itv.com ) Englisch
She lost to Labour.
[from !esp@lemm.ee] Spain - Adults who want to enter porn websites must have a 'digital card' with 30 accesses valid for 30 days ( www.elmundo.es ) Englisch
From !esp...
Brexit Backlash: Brits Now Regret Their Populist Revolt ( archive.ph ) Englisch
As the U.K. heads to the polls next week, a majority thinks that leaving the EU was a mistake and has delivered few benefits—and new problems.
Apple is working to make iPhone 16 battery removal easier to comply with EU regulations ( www.techspot.com ) Englisch
Vast majority of German companies support tariffs on Chinese products, including e-cars, demand stop of technology transfers to China over fears tech could be used for Chinese military, study says ( www.iwkoeln.de ) Englisch
Here is the study (pdf)...
Scholz proposes equally high tariffs for EVs from China and the EU - electrive.com ( www.electrive.com ) Englisch
Please update your subscription to europe@feddit.ORG Englisch
See title, given the current state of feddit.DE, please update your subscriptions to the new Europe community: !europe
The complete list of European news websites blocked by Russia on the 25th of June 2024 Englisch
Austria...
Exclusive: Majority Of Voters Want Next Government To Take UK Back Into European Union ( www.huffingtonpost.co.uk ) Englisch
Stonehenge sprayed with paint by environmental protesters ( www.dw.com ) Englisch
Beijing urges Britain to stop sanctioning Chinese firms over Russian links ( www.reuters.com ) Englisch
China's commerce ministry said on Wednesday that it had urged Britain to stop sanctioning Chinese firms after the country sanctioned five Chinese companies over their links to Russia....
Macron says Kyiv should be allowed to ‘neutralise’ Russian military bases, prompting Putin warning ( www.france24.com ) Englisch
President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that there would be “serious consequences” if Western countries allowed Ukraine to use their weapons to strike targets in Russia, as sought by Kyiv.
Nuclear energy has no place in a green Scotland ( greens.scot ) Englisch
Nuclear power leaves a long and toxic legacy....
UK charges three with working for Hong Kong intelligence as cases against Chinese and Russian spies mount across Europe ( www.aljazeera.com ) Englisch
The British police have charged three men with assisting Hong Kong’s foreign intelligence service....
European made batteries could be 60% less carbon intensive than Chinese, researchers urging Europe to support investments ( www.transportenvironment.org ) Englisch
Onshoring the EV supply chain to Europe would cut the emissions of producing a battery by 37% compared to a China-controlled supply chain, according to new analysis by Transport & Environment (T&E). This carbon saving rises to over 60% when renewable electricity is used. Producing Europe’s demand for battery cells and...
Gazprom slumps to first annual loss in 22 years as trade with Europe hit ( www.theguardian.com ) Englisch
The company made a net loss of 629bn roubles (£5.5bn) in 2023 amid dwindling gas trade with Europe, once Gazprom’s main sales market, as a result of sanctions and the throttling of pipelines to the continent.
EU would need 50% tariffs to curb imports of Chinese electric cars ( www.ft.com ) Englisch
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/15025234...
UK attacks EU double standards on migrants ( www.telegraph.co.uk ) Englisch
In case of paywall: https://web.archive.org/web/20240429084944/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/04/28/ireland-plans-send-asylum-seekers-back-uk/