Zombie

joined 1 year ago
[–] Zombie@feddit.uk 3 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Simpson said: “This is not a cosy club, this is a Parliament, this is not a second-rate chamber to be used as a part-time hobby, this is a serious Parliament, and members should be fully focused on their work here.

Along with the ban on double-jobbing, the Bill also makes provisions that will allow foreign nationals with limited leave to remain to run for office while barring sex offenders from holding office, along with those who have been convicted of a crime which includes hostility towards politicians or electoral staff.

Sounds a bit like a cosy club if you can just bar people at will, regardless of whether the public wishes someone to be their MSP or not.

This is the kind of law that sounds reasonable until you hear cases of people being put on the sex offenders register for having a piss near a playground at 3am on their way home from the pub. Or in the future, if we have a hostile parliament to the people and there's a backlash, anyone who stood up could potentially be barred based on their activism.

Scotland is a pretty well run and reasonable country when it comes to laws and courts but that doesn't mean there isn't and won't be abuses of the law now or in the future and laws like this can be abused to ensure only the "right people" get to decide our laws.

I also notice the article focuses heavily on Stephen Flynn with no mention of Douglas Ross at all, wtf?

[–] Zombie@feddit.uk 22 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Don't host on YouTube? They're a big company, I'm sure they've got the resources for a couple of video files.

[–] Zombie@feddit.uk 33 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I don't think Iroh meant disgrace as in failure, more disgrace as in shameful, he regretted his military endeavours. Pearl Harbour, being a surprise attack on a neutral party, could arguably also be regarded as a shameful disgrace.

[–] Zombie@feddit.uk 2 points 8 months ago

No. His lineage traces back to Elrond's brother. Elrond and his brother (whose name I've forgotten) were both half elf and half human, with the ability to essentially choose which side to embrace. Elrond chose to be an elf, his brother chose human.

He then founded the kingdom of Numenor, which was an island nation off the west coast of Middle Earth. It eventually (a few hundred years later) got destroyed by the sea/God and the surviving Numenorians set up the kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor in Middle Earth.

That was many, many years before Aragorn. So there's a tiny, tiny, tiny percentage of elf in there, which is why Numenorians live a bit longer than normal humans and are usually taller, but it's not enough to say he's Elven.

[–] Zombie@feddit.uk 6 points 8 months ago

Because that's not how people think. They could have done a graph of average rent price and shown it going up, and up, and up. But instead, they obfuscate the statistics so the layman casual reader can't understand it, that's better, isn't it?

There's a reason they've got a section titled Landlord's Concerns and not one titled Tenants' Concerns.

[–] Zombie@feddit.uk 13 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] Zombie@feddit.uk 20 points 8 months ago

On McDonald's behalf.

[–] Zombie@feddit.uk 13 points 8 months ago (2 children)

What a disingenuous graph for showing how rent has risen.

This graph shows the percentage increase, not the money increase, so it's harder for people to comprehend exactly how much it's gone up. That plummet in 2020 makes it look like rents went down below 2014-2019 levels, but it just stopped rising, briefly.

[–] Zombie@feddit.uk 31 points 8 months ago (2 children)

The European Union on Friday finalized a blockbuster free trade agreement with Brazil, Argentina and three other South American nations in the Mercosur trade alliance

Are they a secret or something? The amount of words used to say "and three other South American nations" could've just been used to say the names of those nations. Wtf kinda journalism is this.

For the curious, the other nations are Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay.

[–] Zombie@feddit.uk 33 points 8 months ago

A top Romanian court has annulled the first round of the country’s presidential election, days after declassified intelligence alleged Russia ran a coordinated online campaign to promote the far-right outsider who won the first round.

The constitutional court’s decision – which is final – came on Friday after President Klaus Iohannis declassified intelligence two days earlier that alleged Russia ran a sprawling campaign comprising thousands of social media accounts to promote Calin Georgescu across platforms like TikTok and Telegram.

Despite being a huge outsider who declared zero campaign spending, Georgescu emerged as the frontrunner on 24 November. He was due to face the reformist Elena Lasconi, of the Save Romania Union party, in a runoff on Sunday.

More details soon …

  • Associated Press, via The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/06/romanian-court-annuls-first-round-of-presidential-election

[–] Zombie@feddit.uk 20 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Like Felix said, most EU countries have burgundy passports. The UK had burgundy passports while still in the EU.

Parts of the UK right wing press and politics stirred up drama about the colour of UK passports during the Brexit debate bemoaning that the dirty, unelected, bureaucratic EU had forced the beautiful, strong, innocent UK to switch from our nationally loved blue passports to their disgusting red ones when we joined the EU.

What really happened is the EU agreed (with UK input) on a standardised layout and design for passports. They did this to make movement around the EU easier and simpler. These agreed standards were guidelines. Each EU member was free to ignore them if they wished. Most use the standard because it makes their life easier. The UK chose to follow the standard, partially because it was one of the designers of the standard.

Because there was a standard colour (burgundy), this meant there was a higher demand for this colour. Higher demand means passport manufacturers prioritise their production for these demands. Prioritised manufacturing meant this colour and style became cheaper. It's not bespoke, it's the standard.

Because the Conservatives and Reform, etc. (the Brexiters) made such a big deal about the colour of UK passports, when Brexit happened they of course had to follow through on changing the passport colours. The result is that UK passports cost more to manufacture now than they did before, and last I checked were manufactured by a company in France! But the Brexiteers believe they've won against the EU by having blue instead of red passports.

It's so embarrassing.

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