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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • Also, in my view the EU is quite undemocratic. The separate Council, Commission and Parliament are an affront. Especially the fact that the Parliament, which represents the electorate, does not have the power to introduce legislation.

    You do realise that the entire structure of the EU was primarily dreamt up by British legal experts? It’s quite literally one of the best, most robust and most competent systems of governance in the world.

    Yes, Parliament can’t introduce legislation by themselves, but that’s because we don’t want populists like Farage, Boris or Trump to do that. They’re charismatic, but not actually competent. That’s why talented legal experts in the European Commission (who are each appointed by elected governments of member states, the UK had 6 iirc), people who actually know how law works, write the laws. The elected MEP’s vote on the laws.

    However even here we’re missing the fact that the European Parliament (EP) do have a say in the legislation. The EC writes an “Impact Assessment” with rough draft of the law they’re thinking of writing (which anyone can comment on), then this is presented before Parliament who propose and discuss amendments. So it’s completely disingenuous to imply that the elected EP is somehow beholden to the “unelected” (but chosen for competency by elected member governments) EC bureaucrats.

    And all that skips around what starts the EC’s initial proposal. Aside from occassionally writing laws off their own backs, the EC responds to requests from:

    • The European Council (heads of state or government of each EU country)
    • The Council of the European Union (government ministers from each EU country)
    • The European Parliament (directly elected by EU citizens)
    • Citizens themselves, following a successful European Citizens’ Initiative

    That’s right, not only can Parliament demand new legislation (they just have to get the big boy lawyers to write it for them), but individual citizens can directly!

    Parliament has the final say in whether or not legislation is implemented. That’s completely democratic. What you call “an affront” is actually competent people writing effective legislation. Rather than bullshit like the Rwanda deal which states the UK will accept vulnerable refugees from Rwanda in exchange for the small boat migrants to Rwanda (all paid for by the UK taxpayer), or the general ineptitude of no legislation at all and a Hard Brexit causing issues like sewage being dumped in our rivers since water companies now face restrictions on importing treatment chemicals from the EU.


  • William Rees-Mogg wrote 3 books in the 90s, I forget the 3rd one but the other two were called “(The Best Time To Buy Is When There Is) Blood In The Streets” and “The Sovereign Individual”. The latter describes a Sovereign as someone who earns more than $200k per year (90s money, so more like £500k today) and uses their wealth and influence to live above the laws of any nation. This is the kind of “sovereignty” his son Jacob Rees-Mogg campaigned for, he’s literally laughing at all his supporters while he’s doing it.





  • You don’t apply for a permit, you go to LinesearchbeforeUdig - lsbud.co.uk. This is a free service anyone can use, and you’ll get emails from various asset owners with maps of what they have in the area you select. Some might try to charge for this, these ones are assholes.

    As far as the law is concerned, it’s up to you to make sure you do it right and the costs for doing it wrong will all fall on your shoulders.

    The only permit you need AFAIK is planning permission - which won’t be granted until you convince them you’ve done a sufficient line search. Aside from that, you need permission from the land owner, of course.






  • The UK sells Israel weapons. The US sells Israel weapons. Unlike other countries, Israel pays more reliably. A good salesman looks after their best customers.

    Also, it seems that since Israel suffered no significant damage from the attack, they’re not going to retaliate now. So the support worked, because otherwise there probably would have been more than minimal damge to Israel, they would have responded and we’d have open war between Israel and Iran.