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Recent content by Jonathan Scott

  1. Jonathan Scott

    Other Parliamentary Democracy - is the grass greener?

    Being informed is not the same as being coerced, and having different opinions is healthy, provided that they are based on reality. When I first became old enough to vote in the UK (over 50 years ago) it seemed that there was fairly universal agreement about the current facts and even to some...
  2. Jonathan Scott

    Other Parliamentary Democracy - is the grass greener?

    The form of "education" which is needed, regardless of politics, is simply to teach people to use critical thinking for themselves and avoid being fooled. This is part of the same education needed nowadays to spot fake or dodgy news, phishing emails, scam advertisements, and indeed lies in...
  3. Jonathan Scott

    Other Pseudo-oppositionist spoilers in autocracies

    Google Lens provides a good explanation of the above, including translations.
  4. Jonathan Scott

    Enviroment Tobacco being phased out in the UK

    There have been various suggestions that rather than banning smoking, the government should somehow get those who smoke to cover the potential cost of their health care between them, for example by charging a very high tax on tobacco which is then directed to the health service. However, this...
  5. Jonathan Scott

    Enviroment Tobacco being phased out in the UK

    In the UK standard health care is essentially free, but the cost to the National Health Service of dealing with smoking-related disease has been a big problem. Smoking in any sort of enclosed public space (including transport) has been banned for some time as it impacts the health and comfort...
  6. Jonathan Scott

    Enviroment Tobacco being phased out in the UK

    I can't speak for anyone else, but I've never smoked and I wouldn't mind if smoking were completely banned, and most vaping too. This seems well justified on general health grounds. But I'm not at all happy with the "nanny state" approach of making laws to enforce a specific code of conduct...
  7. Jonathan Scott

    Other Viktor Orbán concedes Hungarian election

    Viktor Orbán concedes with Hungarian opposition on course for landslide election win https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c2d8zw2d3rkt This certainly sounds like good news, as he was obstructing European efforts to help Ukraine.
  8. Jonathan Scott

    Other Political polarization - causes, remedies, current state

    Today's Washington Post has an article on the background to the increasing polarization in the US: "In 1990, a bipartisan Congress passed historic bills. Then it cracked apart." https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/04/11/bipartisan-congress-bush-trump-immigration-environment/
  9. Jonathan Scott

    Other Political polarization - causes, remedies, current state

    Back in the 1970s when I was first old enough to vote in the UK, the differences between parties seemed like a matter of personal choice based on subjective weighting of the importance of different factors. The main problem then as now is the "first past the post" voting system, which was...
  10. Jonathan Scott

    Other This is Our President

    I'm uncomfortably reminded of the story of King Croesus and the Delphic Oracle. He was told that if he launched an attack he would destroy a great empire. It turned out to be his own.
  11. Jonathan Scott

    Other This is Our President

    Today's angry and expletive-ridden outburst reminds me that it is very common for people to get very angry with others when they themselves have made a mistake. In Trump's case the anger has no significance to a rational person except (a) his enemies may well be delighted that they have...
  12. Jonathan Scott

    Political Cartoons

  13. Jonathan Scott

    Other Kristie Noem and Pam Bondi fired

    I'm hoping that Pete Hegseth is next - Trump could blame him for the mess in Iran.
  14. Jonathan Scott

    Other This is Our President

    If it's the "dried up prune" rant, it's real, and it's on Trump's "Truth Social" earlier today. I find it hard to believe that any supposedly civilised adult could think it acceptable to behave like that.
  15. Jonathan Scott

    Other This is Our President

    I'll excuse the weird formatting of the President of Iran's letter, as it's clearly a technical issue (last character of each paragraph appears at start of line instead of end, presumably because of a glitch mixing up right-to-left script as for Arabic and left-to-right as for English). The...
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