Resident in #Italy for years - am behind @newsfromitaly on X/Twitter and on Mastodon. Toot in English about #democracy, society and more. And I write short scifi stories, some of which appear on Thoughts from Italy on #Medium. Am interested in #politics and #geopolitics plus #technology and a few other things as well. I teach English, hold the odd webinar and do translations from time to time.
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Author Public Key
npub1c56vt52mdutufsl0shdky2chptr246tacy8nmzdpvcmkkluxl0ysujw5tl Show more details
Published at
2024-09-17T20:04:40+02:00 Event JSON
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Last Notes npub1c56vt52mdutufsl0shdky2chptr246tacy8nmzdpvcmkkluxl0ysujw5tl Alex P Roe So what's the point? npub1c56vt52mdutufsl0shdky2chptr246tacy8nmzdpvcmkkluxl0ysujw5tl Alex P Roe We think alike! Am not alone! Simple logic really. Once a society has developed and most people have more or less everything, we're in replacement territory so growth is very hard to achieve. We should be looking at this, not trying to grow forever. @npub12pw…zvxn npub1c56vt52mdutufsl0shdky2chptr246tacy8nmzdpvcmkkluxl0ysujw5tl Alex P Roe Only on the off chance. Anyway, your comment is right on the nail. Am not sure how everyone has reacted to the proposals yet and getting everyone in the EU to agree will not be easy. Personally, am not convinced growth is the answer - it's also resource intensive and thus not overly environmentally friendly either. Growth cannot be eternal! npub1c56vt52mdutufsl0shdky2chptr246tacy8nmzdpvcmkkluxl0ysujw5tl Alex P Roe Have you had a chance to read the Draghi proposals? Two papers, one is 69 pages and the other over 350. In the foreword of the first, mention is made of trying to bring growth back to Europe, only the investment required to achieve this is much, much higher than Marshall plan levels, so bringing growth back will not be easy. npub1c56vt52mdutufsl0shdky2chptr246tacy8nmzdpvcmkkluxl0ysujw5tl Alex P Roe Yup, that's what this Wired article suggests: https://www.wired.com/story/pager-explosion-hezbollah/ - a, massive, simply chain breach. @npub1z6y…qah3 npub1c56vt52mdutufsl0shdky2chptr246tacy8nmzdpvcmkkluxl0ysujw5tl Alex P Roe Interesting, thanks. Sounds as if the low tech ruse didn't work out as planned. Not sure how you make pagers explode unless you add explosives...as Mossad apparently has, someone has said. @npub1z6y…qah3 npub1c56vt52mdutufsl0shdky2chptr246tacy8nmzdpvcmkkluxl0ysujw5tl Alex P Roe This is weird! Didn't know so many people still used pagers! Nor that they could be made to explode. npub1c56vt52mdutufsl0shdky2chptr246tacy8nmzdpvcmkkluxl0ysujw5tl Alex P Roe Restore employment stability and watch the financial markets stabilise too! And, of course, stability leads to greater consumer confidence which, in turn, leads to growth, higher profits, rising share prices, more stable financial markets and better returns on investment! 2/2 npub1c56vt52mdutufsl0shdky2chptr246tacy8nmzdpvcmkkluxl0ysujw5tl Alex P Roe Some great listening ideas here. Could you please add a unique hashtag, something like #MayMusic to these toots so we can find them all easily? #thanks 🙂 npub1c56vt52mdutufsl0shdky2chptr246tacy8nmzdpvcmkkluxl0ysujw5tl Alex P Roe Actually, you might want to deboost that! Will add a note to the original to mention how many have pointed out that hydrogen is not as green as it first seems! I knew it was not easy to handle and store, which are other disadvantages. Seems battery electric locos may be the best alternative to traditional electric trains. npub1c56vt52mdutufsl0shdky2chptr246tacy8nmzdpvcmkkluxl0ysujw5tl Alex P Roe Maybe instead of electrification with all the complex, rather unsightly (costly to maintain) infrastructure, they could use the review as an opportunity to look at hydrogen fuel cell locomotives? Something like this: https://newatlas.com/transport/flirt-h2-fuel-cell-train-guinness/ npub1c56vt52mdutufsl0shdky2chptr246tacy8nmzdpvcmkkluxl0ysujw5tl Alex P Roe She's cool! Kind of a US version of Annie Lennox, maybe? npub1c56vt52mdutufsl0shdky2chptr246tacy8nmzdpvcmkkluxl0ysujw5tl Alex P Roe Wasn't it 13 billion from Apple, not Amazon? npub1c56vt52mdutufsl0shdky2chptr246tacy8nmzdpvcmkkluxl0ysujw5tl Alex P Roe Is economic stagnation an inevitable long term consequence of the adoption of #neoliberal policies? One wonders. npub1c56vt52mdutufsl0shdky2chptr246tacy8nmzdpvcmkkluxl0ysujw5tl Alex P Roe Have you heard about a recent case in #Italy? A 17 year-old boy stabbed his younger brother, mother and father to death. And it was a well-off apparently normal family. Child was bright and played sport too. Details are still emerging. Mental health issues may have played a part. npub1c56vt52mdutufsl0shdky2chptr246tacy8nmzdpvcmkkluxl0ysujw5tl Alex P Roe Oh the irony! Thanks to ever lower wages and unstable employment forced upon us by the Right, women have often been forced to work to help support their families. As is often the case, the Right is Wrong! Problem is that children and capitalism can be problematic! npub1c56vt52mdutufsl0shdky2chptr246tacy8nmzdpvcmkkluxl0ysujw5tl Alex P Roe One of the big problems is access to misinformation. Before the advent of the internet, it was WOM, now it's written down, or videoed, podcasted, memed and covered by convincing looking sources (Fox news) and more or less everybody laps it up, Trump lovers and their ilk even believe all the trash they are fed. We have a problem, Huston. Is there a solution? npub1c56vt52mdutufsl0shdky2chptr246tacy8nmzdpvcmkkluxl0ysujw5tl Alex P Roe It's a curious approach. Rather short termist and will potentially kill the geese that lay the golden eggs, but that doesn't seem to bother the greedy few. What might make more sense would be to enrich more people (wealth redistribution) which I suspect would make the rich even richer owing to the increase in the number of people who could afford to consume 🙂 Win-win (but not necessarily for the environment). npub1c56vt52mdutufsl0shdky2chptr246tacy8nmzdpvcmkkluxl0ysujw5tl Alex P Roe Hmm, could this be yet another consequence of the societal instability brought about by #neoloberalism? Parents transmiting their nervousness about the future to their progeny, plus the constant doom and gloom in the news and on social media. Surely not. npub1c56vt52mdutufsl0shdky2chptr246tacy8nmzdpvcmkkluxl0ysujw5tl Alex P Roe Call it what you want, it doesn't work! I wish we'd start experimenting with alternative taxation systems which wouldn't penalise the poor. Financial transaction taxes appear to show some promise - tax rates are low but the income generated is high - more here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_transaction_tax npub1c56vt52mdutufsl0shdky2chptr246tacy8nmzdpvcmkkluxl0ysujw5tl Alex P Roe It's not always low paid work but, decent pay or not, it's unstable. Ask anyone who's self-employed how easy it is to get finance for housing etc. And instability reduces the likelihood of couples having kids...another issue facing #neoliberal societies. Everything is connected. npub1c56vt52mdutufsl0shdky2chptr246tacy8nmzdpvcmkkluxl0ysujw5tl Alex P Roe Gig workers are yet another consequence of #neoliberalism. Very popular with employers, not so great for society. Unstable work can lead to unstable finance and lower spending. Might explain in part why economic growth has become anemic. Hope Labour will intervene, but I won't hold my breath though. npub1c56vt52mdutufsl0shdky2chptr246tacy8nmzdpvcmkkluxl0ysujw5tl Alex P Roe Le Pen had been trying to dispel the image of the far right as being a bunch of thugs. What happened in the UK has undone all her attempts and the attempts of others to "sanitize" the far right. At its core, the far right does appear to be little more than a bunch of thugs who are being manipulated by those after power. Take a look at Italy where far right politicos have lots of links to organised far right sympathising criminals. npub1c56vt52mdutufsl0shdky2chptr246tacy8nmzdpvcmkkluxl0ysujw5tl Alex P Roe Hmm, there's a distinctly #neoliberal stink to this. What a pity. The lesson hasn't been learnt, alas. npub1c56vt52mdutufsl0shdky2chptr246tacy8nmzdpvcmkkluxl0ysujw5tl Alex P Roe Maybe I wasn't clear: People are turning out today to counter the misguided #Fascists. That didn't happen much in the 1930s because nobody really knew what #fascism was. More do today but many are also being misled by fascists who are basically a group of rich people who want to keep themselves rich and are using the poor to achieve this! @npub12pw…zvxn npub1c56vt52mdutufsl0shdky2chptr246tacy8nmzdpvcmkkluxl0ysujw5tl Alex P Roe That fact that you bring up the 1930s gives me hope. Lots of people turned out to counter the #Fascists - not something that happened so much back then. The rich right is making a power grab not sure it'll work. We'll see. @npub12pw…zvxn npub1c56vt52mdutufsl0shdky2chptr246tacy8nmzdpvcmkkluxl0ysujw5tl Alex P Roe That fact that you bring up the 1930s gives me hope. Lots of people turned out to counter the #Fascists - not something that happened so much back then. The rich right is making a power grab not sure it'll work. We'll see. @npub12pw…zvxn npub1c56vt52mdutufsl0shdky2chptr246tacy8nmzdpvcmkkluxl0ysujw5tl Alex P Roe Not sure they can be called journalists, more like propagandists even if spouting propaganda for their rich masters is what keeps these poor lambs in work. They will be replaced by AI anyway. The devil is the only one who gains from soul selling in the long term! It's all one rather big confused mess thanks, one suspects to #neoliberalism npub1c56vt52mdutufsl0shdky2chptr246tacy8nmzdpvcmkkluxl0ysujw5tl Alex P Roe The irony of all this is that it was the #neoliberalism focused right that wanted migration! Cheap labour, even bigger profits! The #farright rioters are directing their wrath at the wrong people but are not bright enough to know they are being manipulated by an elite seeking to retain and grow its power at their expense. The expression shooting yourself in the foot springs to mind. npub1c56vt52mdutufsl0shdky2chptr246tacy8nmzdpvcmkkluxl0ysujw5tl Alex P Roe Maybe prisons in Rwanda are cheaper? @npub1w9f…mufz @npub12pw…zvxn npub1c56vt52mdutufsl0shdky2chptr246tacy8nmzdpvcmkkluxl0ysujw5tl Alex P Roe Attacking people for their color is #weird in this day and age. If it annoys Donold, that's good news but he'll come up with something else. Would it not be worth going after the religious extemeists who forget that God is love and love thy neighbors are fundamental tenets of Christianity? Keep hitting them without giving them the time to react. There's no shortage of material. npub1c56vt52mdutufsl0shdky2chptr246tacy8nmzdpvcmkkluxl0ysujw5tl Alex P Roe Have to admit that I'm a little surprised by all this. I thought the UK had become much more racially integrated that it was back in the 1990's. And then there are coloured people in government - one made it to PM - and in other high level jobs. Or is this just the death throes of the far right? And maybe colour is just one issue disliked by those on the far right? npub1c56vt52mdutufsl0shdky2chptr246tacy8nmzdpvcmkkluxl0ysujw5tl Alex P Roe Obviously education costs but it can generate enormous benfits too. Sounds as if Switzerland and Sweden have done the maths and worked out that low cost or free education up to uni level is a win-win for everyone @npub1gpm…ajeu npub1c56vt52mdutufsl0shdky2chptr246tacy8nmzdpvcmkkluxl0ysujw5tl Alex P Roe How does funding work in Sweden and Switzerland? Sweden offers free degree courses to anyone in the EU/EEA (also distance courses) and Switzerland's uni fees appear to be eminently reasonable even if the cost of living isn't low. npub1c56vt52mdutufsl0shdky2chptr246tacy8nmzdpvcmkkluxl0ysujw5tl Alex P Roe Madness? If people have more cash, they spend more and that is good for the economy. Doesn't anyone view it this way?! npub1c56vt52mdutufsl0shdky2chptr246tacy8nmzdpvcmkkluxl0ysujw5tl Alex P Roe Oops. Pity about the jobs but it sounds as if Crowdstrike may soon be crowdbroke. It is a bit mad that one single application can bring down some many systems so suddenly in this world which now relies so heavily on computers, isn't it? npub1c56vt52mdutufsl0shdky2chptr246tacy8nmzdpvcmkkluxl0ysujw5tl Alex P Roe Well, I suppose those who took the UK down this ludicrous path knew this and are probably smiling smugly to them selves, at least for now. Realignment with EU regulations and laws might wipe the smiles off their faces though. npub1c56vt52mdutufsl0shdky2chptr246tacy8nmzdpvcmkkluxl0ysujw5tl Alex P Roe Ultimately, while the UK might want to rejoin the #EU, the terms the EU will impose on the UK may make it impossible for the UK to do so. One solution may be either the Norway or Swiss approach. It's going to be a very slow dance!
