A Political Thread pt. 2

[pagliaccio_euforico]

To me at least, war around Jerusalem is THE WAR. You learn about how many times it's been fought over and how long ago that was but it's still being fought over.

List of ongoing armed conflicts - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

I thought this was an interesting list.

It's a conflict that's been going on forever and it's cost a shitload of lives. That plus the religious aspect and it's going to be something people are interested in. It also seeps into domestic news because of how willing the west is to fund Israel whereas for Ukraine we are dragging our feet.

 

[Al Bangor]

Now Walkie-Talkies Are Exploding After Dastardly Pager Bombing Plot

With their pagers out of action after being blasted into tiny pieces on Tuesday, members of Hezbollah were forced to communicate via hand-held radios. Those devices also exploded Wednesday in a devastating one-two punch.A security source and witness told Reuters that the walkie-talkies used by...

www.yahoo.com

 

[McTallshort]

Could a software program cause the battery to overload?

 

[ncurd]

Could a software program cause the battery to overload?

Yes quite easily.

Explode to this extent, no. I think most people are agreeing the devices needed to tampered with in the first place.

 

[Ragey Erasmus]

UN just passed another pointless resolution on Israel and Palestine. As well as dominating in the media, all things Israel also dominate the UN. It's not just a western phenomenon.

 

[Reiser99]

Chris Mason: Why finding out about Sue Gray’s salary really matters

Chris Mason explains why the story about the prime minister's chief of staff earning £170,000 a year matters.

www.bbc.co.uk

Anyone else think it's important. In terms of Labour scandals so far, it a bit of nothing for me.

 

[General Melchett]

.

Chris Mason: Why finding out about Sue Gray’s salary really matters

Chris Mason explains why the story about the prime minister's chief of staff earning £170,000 a year matters.

www.bbc.co.uk

Anyone else think it's important. In terms of Labour scandals so far, it a bit of nothing for me.

Comparing her salary to the national average seems pretty pointless to me given that it's likely to be a highly stressful role involving long hours that would see your average person melt like a red hot mars bar if they tried to do it. I remember Dominic Cummings reportedly working 16 hour days and I assume his salary wasn't a million miles away from what Gray is getting. The country is broken and if paying capable people above average salaries helps fix it then I don't see the issue.

If the implication is that it's a misuse of taxpayers money then I suspect it pales into insignificance when you compare it with money lost due to COVID fraud, dodgy PPE contracts, the failed Rwanda scheme and Truss crashing the economy.

 

[Which Tyler]

Comparing her salary to the national average seems pretty pointless to me given that it's likely to be a highly stressful role involving long hours that would see your average person melt like a red hot mars bar if they tried to do it. I remember Dominic Cummings reportedly working 16 hour days and I assume his salary wasn't a million miles away from what Gray is getting. The country is broken and if paying capable people above average salaries helps fix it then I don't see the issue.

If the implication is that it's a misuse of taxpayers money then I suspect it pales into insignificance when you compare it with money lost due to COVID fraud, dodgy PPE contracts, the cancelled Rwanda scheme and Truss crashing the economy.

Yeah, if we're to judge her salary as excessive, then we need to judge like-with-like, and compare it to previous chiefs of staff, and the equivalent positions in other countries, and the private sector.
eg. is Sue Grey worth approximately 1/3 of a Huw Edwards (picking ass the most recent publicly announced high salary)? I'd argue that a PM's chief of staff is worth significantly more than that (largely because I don't think a TV face should be worth £480k)


ETA: going hunting for an easy-but-better equivalence:

Phil Harrold

Company Secretary and Chief of Staff to the Chair and Director-General

www.bbc.com

"Phil is the BBC's Company Secretary and Chief of Staff"
"Annual remuneration (as at July 2024) £205,000 - £209,999"
PM's Chief of Staff earns approximately 80% of the BBC's Chief of Staff - may not be quite the same headline that the BBC went with.

ETA2: and I see Rishi's CoS (Liam Booth-Smith ) is reported as having been paid £150k - so not a million miles away; Cummings and Guto Harri are reported to have on the same salary (having bumped up from £100k when Cummings was first appointed).

 

[Leonormous Boozer]

UN just passed another pointless resolution on Israel and Palestine. As well as dominating in the media, all things Israel also dominate the UN. It's not just a western phenomenon.

Ineffective but I don't think motions like this should be dismissed given its a landslide vote of member states.

Israel's UN rep responding to the nations of the world not wanting them to encroach further on and end their illegal occupation of the West Bank as "diplomatic terrorism" is also noteworthy in contrast to their state terrorism.

 

[pagliaccio_euforico]

.


Comparing her salary to the national average seems pretty pointless to me given that it's likely to be a highly stressful role involving long hours that would see your average person melt like a red hot mars bar if they tried to do it. I remember Dominic Cummings reportedly working 16 hour days and I assume his salary wasn't a million miles away from what Gray is getting. The country is broken and if paying capable people above average salaries helps fix it then I don't see the issue.

If the implication is that it's a misuse of taxpayers money then I suspect it pales into insignificance when you compare it with money lost due to COVID fraud, dodgy PPE contracts, the failed Rwanda scheme and Truss crashing the economy.

Hot take, they are underpaid for the work they do. I imagine if you asked people how much they would want an hour to do the work a chief of staff does and it would be much higher than 170k pounds.

 

[Ragey Erasmus]

Ineffective but I don't think motions like this should be dismissed given its a landslide vote of member states.

Israel's UN rep responding to the nations of the world not wanting them to encroach further on and end their illegal occupation of the West Bank as "diplomatic terrorism" is also noteworthy in contrast to their state terrorism.

These things are routinely dismissed any time the resolution relates to something inherently political, which is most things. Particularly true when it relates to something that the major world powers have an interest in, they won't change how they act based on a UN resolution.

Many UN states are themselves serial abusers of human rights or utterly corrupt.

The UN has a role to play but resolving geological situations like this is not one of them. For context, Israel has had more resolutions passed against them then every other human rights abusing nation combined. Regardless of anyone's view on Israel, there is no way that amount of attention is justified.

 

[Leonormous Boozer]

These things are routinely dismissed any time the resolution relates to something inherently political, which is most things. Particularly true when it relates to something that the major world powers have an interest in, they won't change how they act based on a UN resolution.

Many UN states are themselves serial abusers of human rights or utterly corrupt.

The UN has a role to play but resolving geological situations like this is not one of them. For context, Israel has had more resolutions passed against them then every other human rights abusing nation combined. Regardless of anyone's view on Israel, there is no way that amount of attention is justified.

The UNGA's jurisdiction is international issues within its competence, civil war and human rights abuses against their own people aren't really in scope.

China isn't a member and the US have gotten away with a very light touch, but Israel have been constantly involved in international conflict to varying degrees for 75 years.

Your criticism is a (legitimate) one of the UN charter as a whole but it's the reason why Israel are top of the list.

The VP of the European Commission has endorsed this resolution also so there's an immediate international reaction.

 

[Ragey Erasmus]

The UNGA's jurisdiction is international issues within its competence, civil war and human rights abuses against their own people aren't really in scope.

China isn't a member and the US have gotten away with a very light touch, but Israel have been constantly involved in international conflict to varying degrees for 75 years.

Your criticism is a (legitimate) one of the UN charter as a whole but it's the reason why Israel are top of the list.

The VP of the European Commission has endorsed this resolution also so there's an immediate international reaction.

Maybe but there are multiple other things that have happened in the world that would require the UN's attention and Israel gets a disproportionately huge amount of attention, in the media and in the UN. The UN seems to feel it is their job to repeatedly pass the same resolutions on Israel over and over and over again. What does it achieve? There have already been resolutions on this and previous conflicts and not a single one did anything other than have the nations of the world publicly state their positions that everyone already knew they held.

It's an utterly pointless exercise.