Good.
Governments should run their own mastadon instances, and provide official accounts for all their public servants, staff, whatever they are called, as well as an account for each agency.
I agree. But this is labour MPs. MP != Government even when members of leading party. Only those with ministerial positions are in government.
As Members of parliament outside ministerial government positions are considered to have free speech and not to be representing the government when speaking, The choice of communication media must be down to the individuals.
I think a cross-party Mastodon instance or something like it could actually be a good idea. The hard part would be deciding who's allowed to create accounts and when (or whether) to deactivate an account after a person stops fitting whatever qualification got them an account in the first place.
Being an MP, sure, that's a given. What about people running to be MP? What about people setting up fake parties / independently standing in order to get a place on there? Consider Count Binface. Clearly he should have an account on such a platform, but how the heck would he qualify without letting someone less sane on under the same criteria?
And then there's the fact it would need to be run by incorruptible third parties.
And the fact that fascist-leaning politicians would need to be allowed on there so they can't cry foul, despite the fact they'll all only ever post on X anyway.
But then, only a handful of MPs would use it even if it was the only platform available, so it being a potentially good idea is probably all it'll ever be.
As it is a licence and a bloody expensive one atm. The % of UK citizens joining are reducing rapidly.
More importantly for a government system. You can see the BBC requiring a licence to set up an account. This instantly makes it unappreate as a giverment distribution and communications system. As wealth has a huge input on access.
Honestly the BBC seems to be hanging on by a thread atm. It has lost a huge amount of trust. And many brits just find the cost vs service much more questionable then in the past.
PS this was the tories intent. But hard to see labour current doing anything to fox it.
Honestly though. For such a service. Id suggest mastidon sorta solves it. as anyone can already post from other servers.
So all you need is a parlimentary server. That alloows a second account for only MPs or those running for MP.
That limitation is hard to argue with. Dosent show any political bias. And only allows people like binface or any other nutty runner during an election period.
But they still have personal accounts they can link that allows them to comment without the parlimentary candidate Accolade during other times. Or with it if we some how end up with PM bin face.
Other MPs who still use X have begun examining alternatives, including Threads, which is owned by Facebook’s parent company, Meta, and the open-source platform Bluesky.
So near, yet so far. They had an enshittification sandwich and instead of swearing off it, they are wondering if they just need less nuts and more sweetcorn.
Home life is hard for tech enthusiasts. I’m tech support for the extended family and they’re pretty intolerant of my tinkering with things. Normies actually get quite upset really quickly if tech doesn’t immediately work the way they want. My router started having some problems that it took me a while to get to the bottom of, this messed with my Plex server availability. My wife got so frustrated with her TV shows not working when she wanted that she’s pretty much sworn off Plex and wants streaming subscriptions restarted.
This is where the huge popularity of Apple and their walled garden comes from. When I got married I made clear that I’m not doing tech support for any Apple products, so she switched to Android.
I’m not brave enough to push my wife to Linux (I’ve only found it to be acceptable for daily use very recently myself; and even then it was painful), when the things she uses the most are MS Office and Teams. She gets triggered if she ever needs to use my Linux computer.
Personally, Threads is the only social media platform where the content on it generally improves my mood by showing me lots of funny, cute or interesting content. It’s the only one where I don’t feel frustrated or angry or outraged by the content the algorithm surfaces or baited. It feels like the feed wants me to smile and cheer up or learn something new, rather than baiting me into getting angry and shouting at people. That counts for a lot, to me.
I think thenpoibt was more that it had a sectarian tinge, rather than being a left/right divide like elsewhere. So, maybe for different reasons than England. However, disaffected youth is always going to be at the core. The rise in middle aged rioters is a worrying trend.
One obvious reason the author doesn’t explore is that neither Wales nor Scotland has ever experienced mass immigration nor profound demographic changes in their population.
Scotland remains 92.87% white (2022), Wales 94.2% (2021), compared to England at 81% (2021).
In Scotland, 2.2% identity as Muslim, 0.4% as Hindu, 0.1% as Jewish.
In England, 6.7% identify as Muslim, 1.8% as Hindu, 0.5% as Jewish.
Scotland and Wales are therefore much more homogenous as populations. They’re whiter, less religious, and from similar backgrounds. They’re not as diverse as England is and therefore don’t have the challenges of community cohesion and social solidarity that England does.
It therefore doesn’t have the levels of intra- and inter-communal diversity which can provoke the kinds of tensions we’ve seen playing out in the streets of England over recent years, whether in Hindutva-Muslim ethnoreligious violence in Leicester or these anti-Islam and racist riots in recent weeks.
Scotland’s sense of its national identity has also not been challenged to the same extent as in England. Nor has a patriotic attitude towards Scottishness been derided as hateful, bigoted or xenophobic, as it has in England. (This sometimes leads to highly funny events, though, like when ScotNats try to claim they were victims of the British Empire.)
Racism is mostly unrelated to actual immigration. In Germany the east has comparable immigration percentages to Scotland but leads the nation in fascist poll numbers by a huge margin. Economic factors are orders of magnitude more important
Yeah if they would meet more immigrants in person and not only in the fear mongering of social media or the right wing press there would be less racism.
Glasgow is only 78% white and more diverse than many of the towns that rioted.
Town/City
% White Population
Belfast
96.7%
Tamworth
95.3%
Blackpool
94.6%
Plymouth
93.1%
Rotherham
90.7%
Hull
89.7%
Liverpool
84.8%
Glasgow
78.6%
Bristol
78.1%
Manchester
66.3%
Birmingham
57.9%
It also takes on more asylum seekers than any other council, and Scotland as a whole takes on more refugees per capita.
“However, across the whole of the UK, only 1,960 refugees were brought to Britain through the scheme during 2020 and 2021 – meaning Scotland’s share totalled 13 per cent, well above the population share of 8.15 per cent.”
“As of 11 July 2022 a total of 21,256 visas have been issued naming a Scottish sponsor – more than 20% of the UK total, and the highest number per head of population in the UK. Scotland is currently providing sanctuary for over 7,000 people, two-thirds of whom applied under the Scottish super sponsor scheme. This exceeds the 3,000 the Scottish Government committed to welcome when the scheme launched in March.”
My in-laws live in Cornwall. Off the tourist beat near Troon. I find the whole place terribly depressing given the enormous divides between the haves and have-nots. The tourist trap parts like St Ives and Padstow are like theme parks, the latter definitely being Rick Stein Land; then, the poorer parts remind me of rural Ayrshire where my Dad’s family are from.
My wife has a lot of positive associations with the place with childhood memories of grandparents and other relatives. I’ve not managed to make any of my own despite visiting at least once a year.
Spray foam is still legal, so there is no way to gain compensation, and the industry is not regulated – neither the installation nor the removal – so choices are open to abuse by companies supplying these services.”
Homeowners say they were misled by the government, which exempted the insulation from VAT to promote uptake, as well as issuing grants worth up to two thirds of the installation costs. They feel this suggested the insulation was being endorsed.
Sounds like a “well there’s your problem” situation.
That’s a shame for the family, especially the wife that may well have seen him dead earlier in the evening but thought it was something normal that he was doing.
That said, it’s remarkable that the only person that got hurt by his ability to control vehicle was himself, looking at the list of blunders he had made with other vehicles.
I imagine Aldi and Lidl have taken a chunk of their budget-focused customers - I now do the Big Shop at Aldi and pick up a few bits at Asda (Aldi expanded their range into brown rice and tins of pulses which pretty much took away the bulk of the items I was still buying at Asda).
However, despite this:
In the meantime, Asda’s high borrowing has weighed on it, something which did not go un-noticed by the Competition and Markets Authority which, in an investigation last year into whether motorists were being over-charged for fuel, singled out a loss of competitiveness at Asda - previously seen as the industry leader when it came to cutting petrol and diesel prices.
I still buy my petrol from them as it’s the cheapest in the area.
I also noticed that they introduced a rewards card, which seemed like a desperate measure at the time, moreso now.
Asda, in my personal opinion, is a little crap.
It’s not as cheap as aldi/lidl, yet somehow has a worse shopping experience.
It just feels like a knock-off Morrisons nowadays. Or a UK walmart.
That’s it really - it falls between two stools. It used to be the cheapest and you’d put up with it being rubbish but it has been undercut on price and is now stuck not doing anything well.
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