Ben Taylor @VoxDei@qoto.org

The arbitrary vandalism of the current government aside, some of this Labour is capable of preventing now simply by announcing it will undo it.

For instance if housebuilders are saving £8k at build time by not having to meet low-carbon standards, at a later cost of £33k to the taxpayer or homeowners to upgrade, Labour could announce that when they win the next election, they will pass legislation requiring housebuilders to pay to retrofit all properties built since now that don't meet low carbon standards. So they can pay £8k now, or £33k later, their choice.

Housebuilders can read polling as well as anyone, they're not going to pay more later.

#ukpol #ukpolitics #uk #guardian #uklabour #climate

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/09/how-tories-green-hostility-will-hinder-a-future-labour-government

@cstross Interesting. The magic number is 326, so even if those numbers were correct (and I realise this isn't a scientific prediction!) the Tories wouldn't have a workable path to power. On those numbers either the Tories or Labour would require SNP votes to form even a minority government - the Lib Dems, Northern Ireland parties, Reform, Green and Plaid between them aren't enough.

So ironically, what the Daily Mail readership is predicting is IndyRef 2.

(Obviously, these numbers aren't what's going to actually happen. But it's still interesting.)

@newsthump And. Not or. Give us another £156 a year *and* we'll keep pouring shit into your rivers.

What? You weren't expecting them to actually fix anything with that money?

@freemo @ihavenopeopleskills

This debate is getting longer than I wanted it to, in the sense that we’re both writing a lot, and I don’t want to offend anyway. I think perhaps I was unclear about some of what I meant, and I don’t want to argue about technicalities - we end up with enormous posts that don’t really get us anywhere. So I’m going to stop, I wish we could have this discussion over a beer some time, it feels like it’d be much more productive in person! I appreciate that you say you know I’m arguing in good faith, because I definitely am, so thank you. :-)

@freemo @ihavenopeopleskills

Yeah, but the argument made was that a license prevents someone who needs a gun immediately from getting one. My point is why would you need a gun immediately? There might be one or two edge cases, but I suspect they’ll be very small numbers of occurrences. I would say preventing people from getting guns immediately is a net good thing - it’ll prevent a lot of suicides, for a start, way more than lives it’ll ever save because someone could obtain a gun on an hour’s notice.

Guns are not trivial to obtain out of thin air. 3D-printed guns are not common. I live in the UK, we have strong gun laws, you don’t find that people have a secret 3D-printed gun hidden in a cupboard just in case they need to shoot someone. Yes, fine, hardened criminals might have one, but that’s the case now - if you’re determined to get an illegal weapon, you can, it doesn’t make them widespread and it doesn’t mean that Joe Average needs a gun and needs one right now (but with a long enough delay to nip down to the shops and come back with a gun).

I’m not denying you your “right” to bear arms (scare quotes because I don’t understand why anywhere bestows that right in the first place, and the 2a explicitly says that it’s related to the requirement for a “well-regulated militia”, which is never considered in the legal arguments). But none of the constitutional rights is absolute. The first amendment, for instance, does not allow you to say anything to anyone at any time. If I go around saying “person X is a rapist” for example, if I can’t prove it I get sued for slander, I can’t say “Oh but the first amendment, I can say what I want whether it’s true or not”. Imposing a requirement on gun ownership to prove that you have some basic competence via a licensing scheme does not infringe your rights. Moreover, the 2fa bestows a “right to keep and bear arms”, not to walk around with assault weapons - it would be within the meaning of the 2fa if the government said “You can have this one type of gun” - you would have a right to keep arms and to bear them. I realise that American jurisprudence, especially from the point of view of the current Supreme Court that barely pays lip service to the actual law, disagrees with that, but that doesn’t change what I think the law actually says.

@ihavenopeopleskills @freemo I would take issue with the idea that anyone (certainly any significant number of people, there may be edge cases) genuinely needs a gun immediately for legitimate purposes. Even more so if you exclude reasons that aren't caused by the wide availability of firearms in the first place - I'm much less likely to feel I need one to protect myself if the likely threat doesn't have one. Moreover the 2a protects the right to bear arms, not to be able to obtain one instantly.

@RickGaehl Don't think I'd use the word "insurgency". Makes them sound like some grass-roots guerilla organisation fighting to Stick It To The Man.

Whereas actually they're an astroturfed dark-money group with connections to 55 Tufton Street.

@drandrewv2 Aha, now we see what he means when he says it won't interfere with hitting the net zero targets!

@drandrewv2 Do you think Rishi's wrestler name is "The Monoxidiser"? 😂

@drandrewv2 If you get carbon monoxided to death by your old gas boiler you don't have to worry about the cost of living?

This is bizarre. Whose votes is this supposed to be winning? Does anyone *not* want a better boiler and better insulation?

#ukpol #rishisunak #climate #insulation

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66900999

@freemo Interacted with you briefly recently but wasn't offended in any way. Apologies in turn if I came across as lecturing, I just... don't get the gun thing.

Sorry to hear you've had a rough time recently. Genuine best wishes, I hope you can get through without too much scarring.

@CGLambdin @drandrewv2

I honestly don't understand this. How can simply informing jurors of their rights according to the law, *which the judge should presumably do anyway*, constitute an offence of any sort, never mind contempt of court? And why is the decision about whether to prosecute made by a Tory MP rather than the Crown Prosecution Service?

#ukpol #climateprotest #uklaw

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/sep/19/protester-who-held-sign-outside-london-climate-trial-prosecuted