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Topics - More Than Mortal
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421
« on: December 18, 2015, 05:14:33 PM »
Telegraph.David Cameron has been accused of a "migration cover-up" after it emerged that more than a million migrants who have come to the UK in recent years are unaccounted for.
Ministers have failed to release data which experts believe could show the true number of EU migrants coming to the UK, claiming that it would be “unhelpful” to Mr Cameron’s current renegotiation with Brussels ahead of the in-out referendum.
There were accusations that the figures are being suppressed amid fears that releasing the data could lead to Britain leaving the EU.
Experts warned that it could mean the number of migrants coming to Britain from the EU is actually hundreds of thousands higher than previously thought.
It came as Mr Cameron was left isolated as more than a dozen European leaders spoke out ahead of a crucial Brussels summit to say that they would oppose his plans to strip EU workers of in-work benefits for four years.
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« on: December 18, 2015, 12:17:27 PM »
Sorry, I misspelled NASA.A new NASA study says that an increase in Antarctic snow accumulation that began 10,000 years ago is currently adding enough ice to the continent to outweigh the increased losses from its thinning glaciers.
The research challenges the conclusions of other studies, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2013 report, which says that Antarctica is overall losing land ice.
According to the new analysis of satellite data, the Antarctic ice sheet showed a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001. That net gain slowed to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008.
“We’re essentially in agreement with other studies that show an increase in ice discharge in the Antarctic Peninsula and the Thwaites and Pine Island region of West Antarctica,” said Jay Zwally, a glaciologist with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of the study, which was published on Oct. 30 in the Journal of Glaciology. “Our main disagreement is for East Antarctica and the interior of West Antarctica – there, we see an ice gain that exceeds the losses in the other areas.” Zwally added that his team “measured small height changes over large areas, as well as the large changes observed over smaller areas.”
Scientists calculate how much the ice sheet is growing or shrinking from the changes in surface height that are measured by the satellite altimeters. In locations where the amount of new snowfall accumulating on an ice sheet is not equal to the ice flow downward and outward to the ocean, the surface height changes and the ice-sheet mass grows or shrinks.
But it might only take a few decades for Antarctica’s growth to reverse, according to Zwally. “If the losses of the Antarctic Peninsula and parts of West Antarctica continue to increase at the same rate they’ve been increasing for the last two decades, the losses will catch up with the long-term gain in East Antarctica in 20 or 30 years -- I don’t think there will be enough snowfall increase to offset these losses.”
The study analyzed changes in the surface height of the Antarctic ice sheet measured by radar altimeters on two European Space Agency European Remote Sensing (ERS) satellites, spanning from 1992 to 2001, and by the laser altimeter on NASA’s Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) from 2003 to 2008.
Zwally said that while other scientists have assumed that the gains in elevation seen in East Antarctica are due to recent increases in snow accumulation, his team used meteorological data beginning in 1979 to show that the snowfall in East Antarctica actually decreased by 11 billion tons per year during both the ERS and ICESat periods. They also used information on snow accumulation for tens of thousands of years, derived by other scientists from ice cores, to conclude that East Antarctica has been thickening for a very long time.
“At the end of the last Ice Age, the air became warmer and carried more moisture across the continent, doubling the amount of snow dropped on the ice sheet,” Zwally said.
The extra snowfall that began 10,000 years ago has been slowly accumulating on the ice sheet and compacting into solid ice over millennia, thickening the ice in East Antarctica and the interior of West Antarctica by an average of 0.7 inches (1.7 centimeters) per year. This small thickening, sustained over thousands of years and spread over the vast expanse of these sectors of Antarctica, corresponds to a very large gain of ice – enough to outweigh the losses from fast-flowing glaciers in other parts of the continent and reduce global sea level rise.
Zwally’s team calculated that the mass gain from the thickening of East Antarctica remained steady from 1992 to 2008 at 200 billion tons per year, while the ice losses from the coastal regions of West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula increased by 65 billion tons per year.
“The good news is that Antarctica is not currently contributing to sea level rise, but is taking 0.23 millimeters per year away,” Zwally said. “But this is also bad news. If the 0.27 millimeters per year of sea level rise attributed to Antarctica in the IPCC report is not really coming from Antarctica, there must be some other contribution to sea level rise that is not accounted for.”
“The new study highlights the difficulties of measuring the small changes in ice height happening in East Antarctica,” said Ben Smith, a glaciologist with the University of Washington in Seattle who was not involved in Zwally’s study.
"Doing altimetry accurately for very large areas is extraordinarily difficult, and there are measurements of snow accumulation that need to be done independently to understand what’s happening in these places,” Smith said.
To help accurately measure changes in Antarctica, NASA is developing the successor to the ICESat mission, ICESat-2, which is scheduled to launch in 2018. “ICESat-2 will measure changes in the ice sheet within the thickness of a No. 2 pencil,” said Tom Neumann, a glaciologist at Goddard and deputy project scientist for ICESat-2. “It will contribute to solving the problem of Antarctica’s mass balance by providing a long-term record of elevation changes.” So, aside from the article, which is interesting in itself, I thought I'd use this thread to conduct a little social experiment. I didn't use Donald Trump, since that would just be asking for trouble, so I went with generic "Republicans"; how did you react to the title? Did you scoff and say it can't possibly be true?
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« on: December 15, 2015, 02:40:38 PM »
I don't usually like PragerU, but this seemed worth posting.
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« on: December 15, 2015, 02:12:57 PM »
According to the Norwegian police.Hundreds of asylum seekers entering Norway have been discovered with images of “Isis flags” and “executions” on their mobile phones, Norwegian police have said.
The Police Immigration (PU) in Norway have reportedly been working under severe strain to register increasing numbers of refugees hoping to seek asylum in the country.
Police told the Norwegian newspaper Nettavisen “hundreds” of examples of “photos and videos of executions and brutal punishments, such as images of people holding up severed heads or hands” have been found after searching the luggage and phones of new arrivals.
Authorities also discovered numerous examples of Isis flags and symbols belonging to other terrorist organisations, according to reports.
The discoveries come amid concerns Isis may be utilising the refugee crisis in order to smuggle extremists into Europe, following the string of terror attacks in Paris last month, which killed 130 people.
Last month the French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, announced some of the Paris attackers “took advantage of the refugee crisis” to slip into Europe.
Mr Valls was among a number of leaders calling for tighter security at the Schengen area’s external borders after Greek authorities confirmed one of the suicide bombers at the Stade de France used a fake Syrian passport to enter the EU as an asylum seeker.
Reports of concerning images being found in the possession of refugees' surfaced earlier this year.
A director of the Norwegian government asylum division told Norwegian newspaper Dagsavisen in March: “It can be very demanding to find out who these people are and what they have done.
“We have to detect whether they have taken part in terrorist operations, deserted a terrorist operation or defected from a terrorist organization, and that’s critical for our evaluation of their application”.
Hanne Jendal at the Immigration Directorate said asylum seekers found to have participated in criminal acts would be denied refugee status, The Local reports.
Since 2008, between 90 and 100 people have been denied asylum due to past participation in terrorism.
The number of asylum seekers making first-time applications in Norway has been steadily rising throughout this year, Eurostat figures show.
In January the number stood at just 570 but in October, the most recent month recorded, the total hit 8,575.
The Norwegian government is paying asylum seekers to return to their home countries as the refugee crisis continues.
The immigration department’s return unit (UDI) figures show more than 900 people have applied to take financial support to leave Norway so far.
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« on: December 13, 2015, 08:33:49 AM »
The Future PrimaevalAn argument for traditions:
The space of possible human cultural practices is large.
The subspace of 1 which is well tuned, robust, compatible with human flourishing, and generally good is small.
Humans generally have limited ability to distinguish between good cultural practices and bad ones without direct experience.
Therefore, by 1, 2, and 3, cultural practices constructed ex-nihilo are not likely to be good.
Given experience with a specific bad cultural practice, humans are generally able to critique it and improve upon it.
Given experience with a specific good cultural practice, humans will generally believe it to be good.
Barring cultural shocks, humans will mostly successfully pass on to their descendants those cultural practices which they believe to be good.
Therefore, by 5, 6, and 7, barring cultural shocks, bad cultural practices that cause specific bad experience will tend to wipe themselves out across generations.
Therefore, by 3, 4, and 8, a mature and established cultural practice is likely to be better than a new one, in ways that are not obvious before experience.
Therefore, by 9, we should bias our lifestyles towards mature cultural practices, and away from newly invented ones, even sometimes against our own judgement. QED
This is a structured argument. The premises and inferences are all made explicit, labeled, and stripped of confusing rhetorical device. This lends an appearance of formality, but we have to be careful to not mistake this kind of argument for a formal proof. It's not. Any one of the premises might be nonsense, and any of the inferences may not follow. Arguments cast in this form are often presented as being inescapable logic, when they are just as often incoherent nonsense. The above argument is not inherently all that different from the more compact "traditions have proved themselves over the generations, so are more likely to be good than newly made up practices", just taken apart and labeled for easy reference and analysis.
For example, instead of a vague sense of "that doesn't quite make sense", the structured form invites the criticism that "#3 was true in the past, but the modern intellectual environment makes us more able to design cultural practices than our predecessors". We may then proceed to restructure the argument to see what that actually implies, or to argue whether that is actually true. I don't think it is true, but at least we have a more specific disagreement.
Note that if we disbelieve #3, that does not imply a simple "humans are naturally good at cultural design", but includes all statements that contradict the premise as given, including the above more nuanced objection, and "that whole way of framing it is stupid or otherwise misguided". This is again something to watch out for; the implicit frame of the premises is part of the argument that needs to be justified like the rest. This is often ignored or papered over by people trying to convince you of something.
The other thing to note is that you should not (and won't) find the above structured argument fully convincing on its own. It's deceptively phrased as a proof, but even if sound, it's not a proof. It's only one argument and one line of evidence of what should be many. It should cause a small update, possibly inspire some other lines of reasoning, and help contextualize later evidence in this direction, but not much more.
With a few caveats like the above, I think structured arguments like this are a valuable way to communicate arguments among sincere collaborators, though obviously most useful for disagreements and uncertainty. When you share most of your models, the compact form usually communicates the new idea more efficiently. But if you're going to argue about it, or check your work in more detail to make sure it makes real sense, a structured argument like the above is helpful. A structured argument is for when extra clarity is required.
The example argument above is the culmination of arguments I've about tradition with rationalists of the constructivist "but I don't see any reason not to tear down the Patriarchy and eliminate gender" variety. I hope the structured argument helps them to understand part of my reasoning. In future posts, we will explore the other empirical and theoretical justifications for specific traditions, and tradition in general.
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« on: December 12, 2015, 09:28:28 PM »
If you think this, you are a masochist.
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« on: December 10, 2015, 10:26:17 PM »
 Thoughts?
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« on: December 10, 2015, 07:32:59 AM »
And thrived in the postwar economic boom. The (still new) Conservative government is going to face five more years of people focusing on what looks to be rather mild austerity. We need an aphorism for a situation like this. Something like: "Concerns about austerity are concerns about monetary navigation".
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« on: December 10, 2015, 12:44:42 AM »
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« on: December 09, 2015, 10:41:17 PM »
LBC. Presidential candidate Trump angered Londoners when he said: "We have places in London and other places that are so radicalised that the police are afraid for their own iives."
"Rob", currently serving in the Met Police, insisted police weren't scared, but admitted bosses had told officers to avoid wearing uniforms in certain places in the capital.
He told Nick Ferrari: "There has been a time when it's been advised not to wear half-blues or uniform to and from work.
"It's like damage limitation. You try to do the most you can to prevent anything bad from happening.
"All intelligence is around you and you do the best with that to essentially stay safe. And if that means taking measures to not identify yourself off-duty too much then so be it.
"It's covering your backs. It's a common sense approach."
Regarding no-go areas in London, Rob added: "With gang crime in London, there are areas which you wouldn't go into as a pair of cops in a car because of the fear of having things thrown at you when you're driving through certain estates - bottles etc.
"There are areas when you have to be a little switched on about what's happening in the world."
Afterwards, Nick Ferrari commented: "Hang on a second, maybe there is something in what Donald Trump said. Police are being advised not to travel to and from work in their uniforms.
"So suddenly all this "How dare he say this about London", well no the Met Police accept it as well.
"I appreciate this isn't radicalisation. But certain estates they only go mob-handed - I don't blame them for a second.
"So instead of all shrieking about Donald Trump, perhaps there is just something about what he says."
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« on: December 08, 2015, 12:42:23 AM »
Just on cigarettes and weed.
432
« on: December 08, 2015, 12:35:54 AM »
 RUNNING AMOK
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« on: December 08, 2015, 12:27:30 AM »
So my university sent me on a "neuroatypicality and historical atrocity awareness course".
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« on: December 07, 2015, 11:03:18 PM »
nobody bans me from serious for posterity 
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« on: December 06, 2015, 06:44:30 PM »
Birmingham is a city close to my heart, being the second-most populous of the U.K. and the most populous of my home region. ITV News. One of the terrorist gunmen who brought terror to Paris is believed to have called a number in Birmingham several times before launching the attack, according to reports.
Counter terror police are investigating information that one of the nine attackers rang the number “on several occasions” before the assault that killed 130 people, the Daily Mirror reports.
A source told the newspaper:
These calls to Birmingham were made shortly before the Paris attacks.
If the French police know who made the call to Birmingham, it is likely that they also know who received those calls.
British police are urgently investigating whether anyone in the UK was involved in the Paris attacks. They also want to determine whether there is a linked terror cell based here.
The news comes as Britain begins bombing targets of the so-called Islamic State in response to the Paris murders, and raises the fear that a terror cell is in the UK planning a similar attack.
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« on: December 04, 2015, 12:11:21 PM »
Telegraph live blog - The shooter, Syed Farook, had deleted his data on electronic devices days before the attacks. - It is believed the couple self-radicalised, rather than being formally directed by ISIS. - They had a "bomb factory" in an apartment they rented 10 miles east of San Bernardino. - Suspects' explosives were "similar to those in al-Qaeda manual". - Farook had been in contact with a small number of suspected extremists, leading the authorities to think there may be some deeper terrorist plan at work. - Farook had argued over religion with a colleague--a Messianic Jew--who would become one of the victims.
437
« on: December 03, 2015, 01:36:25 PM »
Or, at least, it would be had medical advances not occurred.
438
« on: November 30, 2015, 02:16:05 PM »
I don't normally use Al Jazeera, but fuck it.
Russia is striking back after a "stab in the back by an accomplice to terrorists" by changing the "game" in Syria.
Moscow's retaliation is not just about severing economic and diplomatic ties. It is pursuing a policy that could tie Turkey's hands in Syria.
Ankara never received international backing for a safe zone across its border, but Russia has now ruled that out.
The deployment of S-400 anti-air missiles means Russia has effectively imposed a no-fly zone over Syria.
And now, Moscow seems to be moving closer to a group that has been the US-led coalition's main ground force in Syria - a group which Turkey, itself a member of that coalition, calls "terrorists".
The Syrian Kurdish forces (YPG) is a US-backed Kurdish group that has pushed the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) back from areas along the border with Turkey.
In an attempt to change the solely "Kurdish face" of anti-ISIL ground troops, it aligned with some Arab brigades to form "the Syria Democratic Forces" (SDF).
No doubt a further strengthened YPG will anger Turkey, which has long feared that Kurdish autonomy in northern Syria would stir up similar sentiments among its own Kurdish population.
The SDF are now engaged in a fierce battle with Turkey-backed opposition factions in what is considered to be an important corner of Syria - the northern countryside of Aleppo.
To be more specific: the area west of the Euphrates River, which Turkey calls a red line.
The SDF captured some opposition-controlled towns close to the Turkish border of Kilis - known in Syria as Bab al-Salameh, an important lifeline for rebel groups.
Russian air strikes have been targeting the area for days now.
US guarantees
Control there would allow the YPG to link predominantly Kurdish villages in the north, like Afrin, to areas under its administration from the town of Kobane to the Iraqi border.
To do this, the YPG must first take control of Jarablous, an ISIL-controlled town along Turkey's border.
There was talk of a US-backed Syrian Kurd offensive in Jarablous in the summer. That never happened, as Turkey threatened a cross-border operation.
Ankara apparently got the guarantees it wanted from the US.
The Kurds won't advance in the Aleppo region, and in return the coalition would be given access to Turkey's Incirlik air base from where it can launch raids against ISIL.
Days before the Russian plane was shot down, the US said it would start an operation with Turkey to finish securing the northern Syrian border area to cut off the remaining ISIL lifeline. Since then, there has been no talk about this military operation.
Bigger picture
The rules may now have changed. The YPG has still not pushed west of the Euphrates, but along with its allies, and with the help of Russian strikes, the SDF are threatening Turkey-backed opposition groups in another key border crossing, Kilis, west of Jarablous.
Losing control of the northern countryside of Aleppo would be a setback for the opposition. Turkey, too, would lose influence.
But Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to be eyeing an even bigger victory. He called on the Assad government and the political wing of the YPG to unite. This has still not happened - at least not officially.
But Syrian Kurdish officials have said they are ready to work with anyone fighting ISIL, and anyone who works for a united, secular and democratic Syria.
Such an alliance would change the battlefield and the balance of power on the ground.
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« on: November 25, 2015, 09:21:49 PM »
i'm fucken STONED
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« on: November 24, 2015, 12:00:17 PM »
Does the trend worry you? Why do you think the West is(n't) in decline?
Will post my thoughts shortly.
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« on: November 15, 2015, 07:04:15 AM »
Maths is one of those subjects where you either love it, or hate it. I tend to hate it, but I can get along with it well enough if it has some kind of practical application. Yet, despite many people hating it, a lot of people also wish they were better at it; it's obviously a skill people desire. Since I do statistics (econometrics, actually, but it's pretty broad) I figured I'd combine the desire to be better at maths by explaining it's practical application in terms of a specific area of study. So, if you want to know more about statistics, then hopefully this will be a pretty decent guide. It will follow the same trajectory as my lectures have taken, and I will be using old notes and my textbook as a way of guiding myself. Also, me being able to explain certain things will probably help me. Measures of Central Tendency So, we're starting with the really basic stuff. Let's get some simple notation down: - Observations of a variable are denoted by a letter such as X (or Y, or Z). - The index "i" denotes a generic observation of that variable. i takes on the value of 1, 2, 3, 4 and so on so forth. So, X 1 would be the first observation. X 4 the fourth. When it comes to measures of central tendency, we are concerned with what the typical value of X is in a given data set. The most common answer is to compute the mean of the variable's observations, which is denoted by X with a bar above it. Or, when typed, as Xbar. As most of you probably know, the mean is defined as the sum of all the given values (or observations) divided by the overall quantity of those values. Written mathematically, Xbar = ΣX i / n. The E-looking letter is a capital sigma, which is a summation notation. All it means is that we sum every given instance of X in the data set. Then, of course, we divide it by n which is the quantity of observations. The summation notation is a very useful tool; it can help organise calculations into a much more manageable layout. Say we have some constant, "a" (usually, constants are denoted by Greek letters such as alpha, but I can't be fucked to copy-paste it every time). If, for instance, we have Σ a X i, this is essentially the equivalent to aX 1 + aX 2 + aX 3 + . . . + aX n. This, however, can be re-arranged into the much more manageable aΣX i. This saves you having to compute every instance of aX i individually. This is called simplifying the expression. Knowing how to rearrange equations in order to simplify them can be very useful and time saving, as I will later demonstrate. But, for now, have a go at rearranging some yourself and I'll put the answers in spoilers. A) Simplify the expression Σ(8 + 3X i + 7Y i - 5Z i). Spoiler First of all, the summation notation can be placed in front of each part of the expression. Thus, it becomes:
- Σ8 + Σ3Xi +Σ7Yi - Σ5Zi.
It can thus be simplified further to:
- 8n + 3ΣXi + 7ΣYi - 5ΣZi.
Remember, Σ8 simply means we need to sum 8 for every instance of Xi, which is denoted by n. Accordingly, Σ8 can simply be reduced to "an eight for each individual observation"; or, 8n. It can be difficult to remember than the summation notation includes the entire range of observations involved (unless denoted otherwise). In order to make this clearer, it is acceptable to write Σ with a subscript "i". This makes it clear you are summing for all instances.
For the final three parts of the simplification, it is worth moving the constant (either 3, 7 or 5 in this case) to before the summation notation. Allow me to prove they are equivalent, if you cannot see the logic:
Say we have three observations on variable X, and their values are 1, 2 and 3. And, we have a constant: 3.
- Written as "Σ3Xi", we are essentially performing this calculation: (1 x 3) + (2 x 3) + (3 x 3) = 3 + 6 + 9 = 18.
Or, we can simply move the constant to before the summation to make it (1 + 2 + 3) x 3 which again equals 18. This saves you multiplying every instance of X by 3, and allows you to simply multiply the entire summation.
So, let's return to our definition of the mean: Xbar = ΣX i / n. This, however, is not the only measure of central tendency. The other common answer is the median, which is simply the middle value of a ranked set of observations. The mean is used more commonly than the median, but it's important to remember that sometimes the latter may be preferable; the mean is more easily distorted by extreme values. For instance, say you have some data on income in a given town and you want to find the typical value. Yet, unfortunately, Donald Trump lives in this town. The mean would be skewed upwards due to the large value of Trump's income, whereas the median would remain the same as the middle observation remains the middle observation regardless of how high Trump's income may be in a given set of values. If n (the number of observations) is odd, then the median is as follows: M = X (n + 1) / 2. Say n = 11, then M = X (11 + 1) / 2 = X 6. The median, therefore, is the sixth observation of the variable. If n is even, then M = X n / 2 + X (n / 2) + 1 / 2. If n = 126, then n / 2 = 63 and (n / 2) + 1 = 64. Therefore, M = X 63 + X 64 / 2. Or, the 63rd and 64th observations of the variable divided by 2. Now that you've read through all of that, try some questions: B) The percentage marks of a class of 12 students is as follows: 80, 16, 11, 71, 85, 95, 12, 71, 8, 15 31, 25. Calculate both the mean and the median. C) The amount of benefits, X, received by fifteen individuals in a given street, in a given week, in a given currency is: 67.73, 121.36, 54.32, 36.24, 176.56, 201.34, 97.26, 168.93, 35.61, 145.57, 76.58, 213.06, 232.55, 69.47 and 215.95. Calculate the mean and the median. I'll wait for somebody to hit on the correct answers before posting them in a spoiler, so don't be lazy cunts. Next post, whenever it is, will deal with measures of variance and dispersion.
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« on: November 15, 2015, 04:07:12 AM »
 One is the North facade, the other the South facade. I've only just realised this. Anybody else?
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« on: October 28, 2015, 12:49:53 AM »
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« on: October 23, 2015, 12:30:48 AM »
Actually, don't, you narcissistic fucks.
I hate all of you anyway.
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« on: October 22, 2015, 09:27:57 AM »
Independent.Former Conservative Chancellor Lord Lawson has become the most senior figure yet to call on George Osborne to soften the impact of his £4.4bn a year cuts to working tax credits.
He said there “could be some tweaking” to spare those at the lowest end of the income scale suffering, accepting there was “a problem” with the controversial move to cut the subsidies for people in low-paid work.
Mr Osborne is coming under increasing pressure to introduce safeguards to protect the hardest hit, with several Tories threatening to rebel against the Government in a key vote in the Commons next week.
An estimated 3.2 million families are set to lose an average of £1,300 a year when the cuts come into effect.
David Cameron sparked outrage at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday when he said he was “delighted” that the tax credit cuts had passed a Commons vote on Tuesday.
It followed an extraordinary intervention by new Tory MP Heidi Allen, who used her maiden speech to warn that the “poorest and most vulnerable” would be hit the hardest by the cuts.
Her comments were seized upon by Jeremy Corbyn to ask Mr Cameron at Prime Minister’s Questions: “where was she wrong?”
Speaking on the Today programme, Lord Lawson said: "You cannot remove these tax credits without people being worse off. The question is who is going to be worse off," he said.
"People are going to get better off as the economy grows, and it is growing and we want a successful economic policy to ensure it continues to. But there is a problem.
"Tax credits go a long way up the scale. It goes up to half the families in the land. And so the tweaking would be to make the burden - and there is always a burden when you make these tough decisions to cut tax credits - rather less for the people towards the bottom end of the scale."
The reforms will lower the amount you can earn before working tax credit starts to reduce from £6,420 to £3,850 from April 2016.
Mr Osborne faces a tricky choice as he tries to balance widespread concerns about the impact on the lowest paid with his manifesto pledge to cut £12bn from the welfare bill, which are crucial to his plan to balance the books by 2019.
The Resolution Foundation think tank published a report saying there was “no easy solutions” as he considers how to soften the blow of the cuts.
It found that some options being canvassed by MPs would cost much more than the £4.4bn savings from his proposals.
Reports in The Times have suggested Number 10 and the Treasury are split over whether to cave in to demands from figures such as Lord Lawson, Boris Johnson and Zac Goldsmith and introduce safeguards.
But in public Mr Cameron appears to back his Chancellor in refusing to budge over the cuts.
On Wednesday he indicated his willingness to go nuclear with the House of Lords if peers go ahead with a plan to table a so-called ‘fatal motion’ to defeat the £4.4bn tax credits, which would be an unprecedented move by the upper chamber in challenging a key plank of the Government’s financial policy, which was introduced through a parliamentary procedure called a statutory instrument rather than as legislation in the Financial Bill.
The Prime Minister warned the Lords not to defy convention and signalled he would be willing to flood the House with Tory peers to make sure the Government had enough to vote through the measures.
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« on: October 21, 2015, 12:05:14 PM »
 I honestly have no idea how this myth persists.
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« on: October 19, 2015, 07:42:58 AM »
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« on: October 17, 2015, 06:19:40 AM »
He comes off as an incredibly sanctimonious cunt to Greenspan here. For a guy who seems to want to take the venom and personal attacks out of politics, he seems pretty insistent on emotionally-charged rhetoric and insinuations which suggest he isn't as consistent as people like to think he is. I mean, fuck. The guy's a prick.
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« on: October 16, 2015, 01:39:24 PM »
Here. America has a big economic problem and it’s called Washington. The weak economic growth of the past several years isn’t because Washington failed to do enough, but because Washington succeeded in doing too much. By making government smaller, less costly and more responsive to our needs we can get our economy going again and have the resources to secure our nation, strengthen our families and communities, and reach our God-given potential. In his first 100 days as President, John Kasich will send Congress a comprehensive plan that creates the climate for job creation by balancing the budget in eight years, cutting taxes for families and businesses, reining in federal regulations,tearing down barriers to increased energy production, and returning major federal responsibilities back to our states and communities where they can be performed more efficiently and responsively to serve Americans. Balance the Budget and Keep it Balanced: John Kasich will work with Congress to put Washington on the path to a balanced budget within eight years by reducing spending, reforming entitlements, and encouraging economic growth. To keep the budget balanced he will work with Congress and the states to enact a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, and will keep it balanced by dismantling the big barrier holding our economy back: big government. America must scrap the Washington big government model because it costs too much and delivers too little value. Our states and communities can provide better value and more quickly respond to the unique needs of their citizens. By shrinking and breaking up the big Washington bureaucracies and sending their responsibilities and resources back to the states with fewer strings attached, Americans can have lower-cost government that serves them—not the other way around. • Transportation: With the interstate system long finished and highway design and construction overseen by the states, the costly federal highway bureaucracy and its burdensome oversight of state highway work are barriers to growth. John Kasich will return the federal gas tax to the states, keep just a sliver with the Department of Transportation for truly national priorities, downsize the department and refocus it on safety and research support for states. • Education: End Washington’s education micromanagement, shrink the federal education bureaucracy by consolidating more than 100 programs into four key block grants and funds back to the states, repurpose the Department of Education to support the states with research and suggested innovations—and end its interference. • Job Training: Across its dozens of job training programs, Washington permits very little state flexibility, innovation or true responsiveness to employers’ needs. It is often only geared to help workers if they first lose their jobs. To reduce federal costs and improve help for workers who need it, job training should be consolidated into a handful of block grants administered by the states, provide states the flexibility to align training with the skills employers are seeking and help workers with jobs upgrade their skills so their employers can stay competitive and in business. • Medicaid: Ohio reined-in Medicaid spending growth and is improving health outcomes using private sector health insurance, medical homes and payment reform, but could innovate more if Washington allowed it. Unleashing state innovation across the country is essential to providing better value and higher quality and containing costs. Cut Taxes & Make The Tax Code Simpler & Fairer: Americans’ taxes are too high. They are a barrier to work, saving, growth and investment, and innovation and must be significantly reduced for individuals and businesses to spark growth. • Cut Individuals’ Taxes: John Kasich will simplify and cut taxes for Americans by reducing the number of brackets from seven to three, cutting the top rate from the current 39.6 percent to 28 percent—the same rate President Reagan used in his 1986 tax cut—and cutting the other rates as well. Kasich also will increase the Earned Income Tax Credit by 10 percent, cut the long-term capital gains rate to 15 percent, eliminate the death tax and preserve the deductions for charitable donations and mortgage interest (consistent with current limits). • Cut Business Taxes: John Kasich will cut the top rate from 35 percent to 25 percent to make America globally competitive, establish a low tax rate to repatriate the estimated $2 trillion in profits held overseas, double the research and development tax credit for businesses under $20 million, allow same-year expensing for new investments, and create a “territorial” system that only taxes U.S.-produced income, like most other major industrialized nations. • Fix the IRS: Additionally, John Kasich will launch a top-to-bottom review of the IRS and tax code to root out the barriers to innovation and small business start-ups, as well as to end the IRS culture of bias, arrogance and political favoritism. Reduce Regulations and Bureaucratic Red Tape: John Kasich will rein-in unelected agency bureaucrats whose regulations, red tape and enforcement decisions are often extreme and inconsistent with congressional intent. Together these abuses choke economic activity and to reverse them, John Kasich will: • Impose a one-year freeze on major new regulations to give job creators a respite while the regulatory system is rebuilt. • Call on Congress to require mandatory cost-benefit analysis in rulemaking so regulations don’t do more harm than good. • Call on Congress to require congressional approval for any regulation costing the economy more than $100 million. • Re-establish strong central oversight of all new agency regulations. • Replace agencies’ internally-staffed administrative appeals processes with appointed, truly independent, common sense reviews. This would allow smaller businesses adversely impacted by regulatory, permitting or enforcement decisions access to fair appeals processes that are quicker and less expensive than federal court. • Establish a two-year deadline for new major infrastructure permits. Produce More Energy from All Sources and Achieve Energy Independence: Increasing energy from all sources—oil and gas, nuclear, coal, alternatives and renewables and emerging technologies—will provide the affordable, reliable energy our economy needs, make us independent from overseas oil and allow us to achieve the goal of sourcing all our energy entirely from North America. To do this John Kasich will: • Approve the Keystone XL pipeline to increase access to oil from Canada and along the pipeline’s route. • Allow export of U.S.-produced oil and end this artificial, counterproductive market distortion. • Increase access to oil and gas production on non-sensitive public lands with proper environmental protections. • Keep fracking regulations at the state level and eliminate efforts by the federal government to impose new ones. • Repeal regulations on energy production that are counterproductive and extreme such as the Clean Power Plan. • Encourage research in new technologies that increase efficiency & conservation while reducing costs & environmental impact such as high-capacity, long-life batteries; fuel cells; the high-efficiency “smart” electricity grid; and clean coal. Open New International Markets, but Get Smart About Unfair Trade: When American products and services are accessible around the world American businesses and workers benefit. Trade also enhances global security and stability. It can’t come at the cost of common sense, however. If other countries want access to the American market they should provide access to their markets, and trade violations must be quickly addressed to prevent significant economic damage to businesses and workers. • The International Trade Commission and other U.S. trade bodies must be reformed to expedite consideration of complaints from companies that are negatively impacted by unfair trade practices. • America must seek more favorable terms in trade negotiations including better protection against currency manipulation, intellectual property theft and cyber-attacks.
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« on: October 16, 2015, 12:59:57 PM »
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