Meh, a bit overstated, I’d say.
Anyway, I just always make an effort to fight back against unironic uses of that Koch-fueled term, “nanny state.” It’s packed so tightly with so much Grade-A bullshit.
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Fine, you win. I withdraw my anecdotal example.
Clearly that bus driver was just whining about his job, which so many of us do, with out any cause or reason. Hell I’d love to just be able to drop what I am doing and go home when my time is up. Like Homer Simpson in the beginning of the SImpsons. The guy should consider it a perk and be grateful he even has a job.
Not everyone who uses the term are Koch-fueled. I have heard the term used in the UK, where most people don’t know who the Kochs even are. It is the same state which Cory keeps posting warning about snooping laws. I guess he is just a paranoid Koch robot who is getting in the way of UK security?
Not at all, and government overreach in those terms is of course a problem. But does Cory use the term “nanny state”? I suspect he knows of its conotations for his U.S. readers, and thus doesn’t, even when addressing UK snooping laws. But I could be wrong.
ETA: And I do acknowledge that my objections to the term are entirely a reaction to its use in the U.S., where most people who I’ve heard use it are mostly referring to pretty much anything government related, all in obedience to a lengthy elite-rightwing effort to brand government as bad, and “free markets” as good, despite their effects for most of the rest of us to the contrary.
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I’m guessing, based on your tone and your history, that you see this as a bad thing.
Could you explain exactly what is good about having sleepy drivers in charge of 48,000 pounds traveling at 60 miles an hour while responsible for 50 or more passengers?
Could you explain exactly what is so onerous about expecting companies to put the modicum of effort into planning and scheduling required to avoid that?
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Trucker meth and Personal Responsibility.
You really think the Brussels will never demand any move on London’s part to harmonize monetary policy? I don’t claim to be an expert on how the Euro and Pound are managed, and I hope it never becomes a point of contention.
But OTOH, if you are right, then we have an answer for the rest of Europe: stay in the EU. Leave the eurozone and restart your own currency. Works for Britain, right?
I am going to repeat myself.
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I don’t remember all the details of the specifics of his gripe.
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I think one can agree that having a law to stop bus drivers from working too long is a good thing, but it is ALSO possible that the law goes too far in some scenarios, forcing everything to stop because of the letter of the law, vs whether or not the person is actually over worked/tired.
I THINK his point was that he could go over total hours for a week, be 30 min from getting back home, but have to stop and wait 1-2 hours for a relief driver, even though he isn’t impaired. But again, I am not 100% sure that was his specific gripe as it was over 10 years ago.
Another example of the concept of a rule or law not being bad, but how it is executed or enforced would be a school “no weapons” policy. Having one is good. Suspending or expelling a kid for a stick used as a “gun”, or a 2" plastic GI Joe gun is an absurd enforcement of the rule.
I concede it is a poor example I can’t defend. It was supposed to be a real world anecdote to illustrate my actual point: Britains wanting out of the EU because of too much regulation is laughable because the UK itself has a ton of regulations, and not being in the EU would probably mean more, as they would require new regulations in dealing with the EU directly, vs being part of it. Though I guess it would be UK regulations, not EU regulations…
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Well, it’s not a complete loss: Your example is shit, and so is your point. So there’s that.
And, I think we all inadvertently learned something today. Bonus!
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Economics aren’t everything. The EU is given to interfering in domestic laws.
But this is a pure Cameron cockup. He thought the threat of Brexit would give him negotiating leverage in getting a better deal out of Brussels. In the end, he got bugger all from Brussels while simultaneously underestimating the depth of nativist sentiment in the Tory base.
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I imagine his thoughts were something like “promising this will get me elected, and the referendum won’t pass, so I don’t need to worry about going down in history as Lord North Mk 2”.
When we examine who was complicit in creating the recent instability in Iraq and Syria it makes a large part of the UK populace (the UK being a representative democracy) look like the hypocrites they are. It shouldn’t have been Germany or Sweden taking in scores of syrian/iraqi refugees but those who are responsible for this mess.
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So “I don’t know but I want to fearmonger.” Check.
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That’s pretty much how it’s used here as well.
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The thing that really struck me after watching the piece is the question of what will actually change if the Brexit happens. Presumably British manufacturers will continue to follow EU regulations because they want to sell to the EU market, and Britons will buy mostly from Britain or from the EU, so all those “pillow regulations” will still be in full effect. Presumably Britain will want to continue to access the common market and allow their citizens freedom of movement within the EU so likely they will continue to allow freedom for EU citizens to come to Britain. Britain never adopted the Euro to begin with, so they aren’t ditching that.
But it’s sort of like a divorce. If both parties were totally reasonable and rational and got along fine with one another then you could have a divorce that went perfectly smoothly and hardly disrupted anyone’s life. But if your goal was minimum disruption and you are both reasonable and you get along fine then you wouldn’t be getting divorced in the first place. This is happening because of unreasonability, because people don’t get along, because people want disruption of a situation that is making them upset.
So I wonder if what would happen after a Leave vote is that after a short victory party those in favour of leaving would end up feeling even more bitter and dissatisfied.
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Those are excellent questions. Unfortunately the pro-Brexit answers seem to boil down to this rather nebulous plan to negotiate a better deal later. Casting any doubt on this is seen as a threat from the continent. Sure, there would be some sort of deal because a simple total withdrawal would be an unmitigated disaster for everyone involved. However what is never addressed properly is that the EU has little reason to give the UK a better deal than they have now and even good reason not to do so. One possible outcome would be basically an EEA membership by another name. In that scenario the Uk would have disenfranchised itself at the European level while not all that much changes in daily life. Other scenarios would lock them out the common market to some degree which would be pretty hard on the British economy.
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I’m sorry, but I think you’re jumping to conclusions about my intentions here that aren’t warranted. I don’t think I at any point reduced this to just about the refugee crisis, just noted that this is the prominent context right now against which the right is digging in. I’m aware that there is a longer history of racism/xenophobia aimed at Eastern Europeans in which this vote is unfolding and that the UK sees themselves as apart from the rest of Europe to some degree.
I’m also not sure how this is derailing in anyway. I honestly don’t know what you want from me here, as talking about the refugee crisis is part of this discussion, like it or not. And it’s not just about the US, either. Although the war in Iraq was primarily a US project, Europe has not stood idly by in the underlying causes here.
I’m sorry if I unwittingly offended you somehow, as that was not my intent.
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I find the amusing thing about the extremely strict working hours for drivers is when you compare it to the medical profession:
-Drivers can’t work too long hours in case they get overtired and cause an accident.
-Doctors, who quite literally make life or death situations constantly, feck those guys they can work until they fall over…
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In an ideal world, the US and UK would take prime responsibility for resettling refugees, I agree. Right now, the Schengen seems shut down (perhaps not to EU citizens) and Germany and Sweden seem to be taking the majority of refugees, when they can even get through (which seems to be where most want to go anyway). But this isn’t just Syrians, of course. You have Afghans and Africans (north and sub-Saharan) also making this trek, which opens up a whole new can of worms of responsibility (legacies of French and British colonialism, but also local mismanagement by governments corrupted by neo-imperialism, corporate interventions, the legacy of the Cold War, the role of Middle Eastern countries in some places, maybe even the current Chinese outreach to some African countries).
The whole thing is a mess, though. I wish instead of squabbling over who should take responsibility we could just have our governments help people. This is what I find the most frustrating of the whole thing. The need is obvious, so that’s what we should be focused on right now.
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Canada went through this with Quebec in the 1990’s. I remember thinking that instead of having a “Fuck Canada” campaign vs. a “Fuck Quebec if it doesn’t have Canada” campaign, leaders could have sat down and said, “Okay, so you are unhappy in Canada. What is it that you hope to accomplish by separating? What federal powers are we exercising over you that you would rather control provincially? Is it trade deals? Is it military actions? Is it the criminal code?” You know, sit down and talk like adults and figure out what the problem is so that we can figure out a solution. But instead there was this referendum first, talk later attitude.
I was just talking to a doctor recently who observed that the people with the most important roles in crises in society the most likely to have a severe sleep deficit.
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