The real tragedy of it is this: if left-leaning parties still based their policies and marketing on original leftist theory/thought, all this would be an arguments for more people to vote left. Leftism was intended to help the disenfranchised, the workers, the poor. But for a good while, social democrats have tried to become popular with the educated, mid- to high-earning employees; to the point where they've mostly lost their original target group. Meanwhile, the far-right are among the few parties that actually try to speak (pander, imo) to the workers' interests. I really hope this can be a wake up call to political parties that lean left.
The plutocrats in media and politics have turned the young against their own interests and blamed everything on foreigners. It's classic divide and rule.
You‘re right, I thought of Frankfurt am Main, but if it’s one of the others they could be livable. I only have been to Frankfurt am Main, and thats about the last place I would like to end up…
Utterly insane take from him. Based on the strength of a single referendum that was likely influenced by a foreign power and carried out by some of the most determinedly incompetent leaders we've seen in a generation, we are to lose free trade, influence abroad, freedom to roam, consumer protections, and countless other benefits, to continue for the lifetime of an as yet unelected PM who has purged his party of anyone to the left of Barack Obama.
It should be enough to know that Russia prefers the current situation. I'd happily ditch the pound on that basis - it's not exactly as if sir Isaac has been running the mint lately.
Eh, why feed Reform or Conservatives any on-the-edge voters at this late an hour by making them fear a vote for Labour is a vote for more Brexit madness.
His statements are full of weasel words too, as have other party member’s statements. It’s not an insane take, just a “I don’t think we will” to avoid arming opponents with something to fearmonger with.
They need a term, and if they can change the perspective on EU membership and see polling supports rejoining (and they’ve the funds to pump into the obscene political advertising it’ll require to not get drowned out by Conservatives like before the referendum), they just might go for it in a second term.
oh man, so little was achieved and now they are going to roll even that back. With Meloni, the RN in France and the CDU in Germany soon, we‘re completely fucked.
Nah she is just shilling for the high end car builders of Italy. I am fine with gas engines in cars. As long as the fuels are taxed at 5 euro per liter from 2030 adding a euro per liter per year. This goes for bio fuels too.
Hopefully the composition of the EP doesn't change enough in the future to repeal it. Here in Czechia the 'Motorist' party literally won two of our 20 seats.
Only if you're stupid about it and overuse them. My diesel VW runs on 100% biodiesel made from waste fat from chicken processing that would've gotten landfilled or something otherwise.
That's maybe fine for small scale usage. And even then I don't know if this is actually good. In any case your USA case won't scale well. I also don't know if it is even legal in my country.
I more meant large scale biofuel cultivation instead of food and nature. Cause then these companies will start eating up agro subsidies etc while keeping polluting cars on the road.
Not really. Biofuels are better than normal oil-derived fuels in terms of excess CO2 being dispersed in the environment, but they are still overall bad. They still release harmful particulates, they still release lots of NOx, and they are doubly bad in terms of land utilization, where you use huge swaths of land to cultivate plants with the sole goal of making them into fuel, rather than using that land to make food. Moreover, in a lot of places the cultivation of biofuel plants is being done by burning down forests and using that land for farming.
Biofuels are definitely better than normal petrol or diesel, but they are still overall bad, and I'd also argue that if we 100% switched to biofuels we'd have massive issues in terms of land, farming-related emissions, deforesting etc.
Depending on where biofuels are produced, the land use changes can make them worse for climate than fossil fuels. E.g. there was a recent study on US biofuels.
They still release harmful particulates, they still release lots of NOx
Frankly, those are just local problems and thus negligible (compared to greenhouse gas emissions).
they are doubly bad in terms of land utilization, where you use huge swaths of land to cultivate plants with the sole goal of making them into fuel, rather than using that land to make food. Moreover, in a lot of places the cultivation of biofuel plants is being done by burning down forests and using that land for farming.
So don't be stupid about it: make as much of them as you can out of waste fats and oils, then stop. Easy-peasy!
I'd also argue that if we 100% switched to biofuels we'd have massive issues in terms of land, farming-related emissions, deforesting etc.
This isn't wrong, but it's a massive strawman argument because doing that would be idiotic anyway. Biofuels are best used for filling the gaps left over after cities are fixed for bikeability and everything reasonable to electrify is electrified. (In other words, they're the answer to "but what about my [insert special-snowflake reason why I can't ride a damn bike/train/electric car]?" pearl-clutching.)
There is no one solution to sustainability, and pretending there is is a fallacy.
Frankly, those are just local problems and thus negligible (compared to greenhouse gas emissions).
Tell that to those dying because of those toxic emissions.
So don’t be stupid about it: make as much of them as you can out of waste fats and oils, then stop. Easy-peasy!
Sure, I agree, but if you want biofuels to be a significant enough part of the fuel mix, you need to make them at scale, which means you need incentives and by incentives I mean making them profitable enough so that it makes sense to invest billions into making them. At that point it becomes a race towards who can make the most at the lowest price to make the most money, and guess where that brings you. Otherwise, if you limit fuel crops, you'll get a very small production at a high price, since the scalability and possibility for growth will be limited.
Biofuels are best used for filling the gaps left over after cities are fixed for bikeability and everything reasonable to electrify is electrified
This is really what I'd like to see, using the massive taxes on fuels to finance sustainable mobility like trams, rail, bikes etc
Biofuels are great and all to fill that gap, but the moment they become more profitable or cheaper than fossil fuels, it's the moment you're gonna have massive problems.
That doesn't sound fair to the people that just can't afford a new car. The ban is about no new combustion cars getting into the market, not to say nobody can drive on from 2030 onwards.
I don't think a absolute ban is necessary, the phase out already started, most new car models are electric and most car companies for the mass market focus their future on electric. The ban as it currently is should do the job just fine. Most people will see the new electric cars as great, they save a lot of money and the tendency is towards even more.
I think investing in public transport is the most important, especially in Germany...
I'd love to see additional tax increases after a specific year. If you want to drive an Oldtimer or a gas powered supercar.. it should be expensive to operate.
But indeed only once full electrification has reached normal families.
It's the early signs like this that needs the rest of the community to come out against the right hard and relentlessly. Just name and shame until they go away. Allowing them to keep spouting bullshit just gets you a slow roll into fascism. I hope they can accomplish it.
I mean, I don't want to sound like an old fogie or anything but when I was a kid when people would say stupid shit we would just ignore them and tell each other to walk on the other side of the street around them.
We would not listen for the crazy words that crazy people say and then run around telling them to everyone else as if there were any weight or value to those words.
I'm sure if you look hard enough you can find some crazy person saying some crazy thing about any topic you can imagine. Why are we taking those crazy people and putting them up on a planetary podium and putting a microphone in front of them?
The people who are giving the crazy people megaphones are bad people and should be stopped.
The problem as I see it is that those crazy people discovered the internet, and met the other crazies that reinforced the stupid stuff they believed. And when enough of them got together, people started to notice and someone was like, "I can make money off this by making them interact with non-crazies." The first probably was Facebook, but after others saw how profitable it was, they decided to have their own slice of the pie, which in turn made those fringe groups more noticeable.
She wanted to be in the prime position of rebuilding the Tory party with her anti deep state, libertarian ass hattery. It has been obvious since she fucked up that the Tories were going to lose this election big time and she had one of the safest seats in the Country so she would have been confident she would have retained it.
The other option she would have wanted to achieve this aim, to be promoted to the House of Lords, is out as there is currently a queue of ex PMs as no Tory PM wanted to promote either Blair or Brown and its normally done in order.
Make no mistake, there is going to be a vicious fight of the direction the Tories take with this period of rebuilding.
She seemed to be a pretty reasonable politician to me. I think she'll do fine.
If Russia wants to improve their relations with the EU, then they might want to stop acting like an adversary.
Well, I don't have exactly the same opinion, another day we can discuss things like Pfizergate or why a Ukrainian is worth more to this commission than a Palestinian. But it is clear that it is much better that whatever the Kremlin considers acceptable, there is no debate on that
No idea what Kaja Kallas has to do with Pfizergate to be completely honest...
And Palestine & Israel are outside of Europe and both sides are a fucking mess that no one wants to deal with. I also find this whole Palestine argument idiotic and hypocritical when there's been war in the middle East for decades but suddenly everyone claims to care, now that Israel is involved.
I am not worried about the war in the Middle East, I am worried about the genocide in the Middle East, and I have been for decades, but if ethnic cleansing accelerates and yet my rulers applaud the genocidaires, they increase my protests, call me a hypocrite if you want, but it seems logical to me, if not it seems like a silly argument, a bit Nazi to me. Killing children indiscriminately has those things
Yeah, no. Calling me Nazi was the last straw, especially since you people are the ones who are teaming up with them, along with all the other hamas apologists. Have a good one.
Or yes, of course, my argument is stupid but saying that yours is a Nazi is the limit, that is, being against the mass murder of children is being an apolygist for Hamas. You seem eager to use logic.
Do you truly not see a difference between people arguing on the internet and an ideology that led to the wholesale slaughter of over 6 million civilians in extermination camps and another 9 to 14 million in Europe?
Calling someone a Nazi like that just dilutes the meaning of the term and shows how little you actually understand of the world.
He is telling me that being against the extermination of a people completely is being in favor of a terrorist group. If you think that does not fall within what it means to be a Nazi, you should review your history books
It is. I can accept train journeys (like, say, London to Rome or Stockholm to Barcelona) taking longer than flying, and would be happy with that in many cases (you can do things on a train, after all). Though when they take longer, are comprised of six discrete journeys which either fall apart if one train is delayed (and if Germany is in the path, this is likely) or require defensively allocating hours for waiting at provincial stations just in case, and cost several times the cost of flying, catching a sequence of trains out of principle feels like wearing a hair shirt.
What should be done: scrap the post-WW2 tax exemption for aviation fuel and use the funds to improve long-distance rail connections.
(Explanation, for those not familiar with politics: the liberal party in Germany is infamous for blocking progressive economical legislation reasoning it would impede freedoms. For example they blocked a ban in advertising food containing high amounts of sugar, claimingit would impede parents' freedom to buy candy for kids (it wouldn't).)
The answer would be high speed night trains. London - Rome takes a bit over 15h by train today. However that includes waiting for connections and a lot of stops on stations. So a direct train would be siginificantly faster probably more like 12-13h. That would mean you could go into a train station in London at 20:00 and end up in Rome at 8:00 for example.
Stockholm - Barcelona is a much longer journey. 2250km instead of 1400km for Rome - London. So a very long nigh train or a connection in Hamburg or Paris. with a night train going from there to Barcelona or Stockholm respectivly.
as much as I love trains (I'm on one while typing this) I can't get myself to spend 170€ for a 21 hour train, even if part of it is spent sleeping, when a 2 hour flight could do the same for 50€.
I don't know if it's just cheaper or if there's massive subsidies like other comments were saying, but for now it's highly unpractical and uneconomical
... the only alternative left for law enforcement is to issue a European Investigation Order (EIO), but responses for these can take up to 120 days, which isn't ideal when you want to catch a drug dealer who's only in the country for a weekend. "A solution to the situation described above is urgently necessary."...
Off course they target encryption. Look I understand that it is a drag to actually fix the system.. but they should target the 120 day slog of following procedure.
Nah.. never attribute to malice what can easily be explained by incompetence.
And I sort of get where law enforcement is coming from. I just disagree with their solution.
Now they can just do it easy. If they have to go through another country they might even have to provide a reason that will hold up to scrutiny... Think of the consequences that might have!
I see they've lately had some trends around food and architecture, but I assure you that traditionally, yurop is the meme community, where anything goes, while this one is more serious and less appreciative of memes.
I can't say I'm especially pro-military, but I think it's worth noting that a simple budget increase like this is definitely going to be vastly more effective at strengthening our armed forces than what Rishi Sunak BASED HIS ENTIRE CAMPAIGN ON, which was mandatory service for young people.
Budget for good weapons, equipment and vehicles is way more important to a modern army than just having a lot of warm bodies to throw at a target- just look at Russia's atrocious waste of lives in Ukraine.
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