Domain: fullfact.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to fullfact.org.
Comments · 25
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Re:Yeah no fan of that
Oh, you fucking make me laugh with https://fullfact.org/crime/eth...
So more white people are arrested than any other single racial group. A whole 38% of arrests. It's almost as though 86% of the population are classed as 'white'.
Of course, since you're the racist focussing on 'white' people, we can look at this another way: Even though 86% of people in the UK are 'white', 62% of terror arrests are for other demographics. Seems to me the white majority are being extremely tolerant of representatives of the 14% getting arrested for 62% of the terror.
It depends how you slice it.
I try to slice it in a way that doesn't demonise primarily innocent demographics. I try to slice it in a way that doesn't push a racist narrative. I try to slice it differently to you for both of those reasons.
Who are these Marxists committing all these terrorist acts?
Perhaps you should ask the US Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation, as they're the people that designated Antifa a terror organisation.
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Re:Yeah no fan of that
It depends how you slice it. In the West white guys are the biggest source of terrorism at the moment, always have been. This is especially true in the US. If you designate Islamic State as terrorists and consider everything they do as terrorism, you can make them the worst.
Who are these Marxists committing all these terrorist acts? Are we talking historically, before the internet existed?
Citations:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://fullfact.org/crime/eth...
https://ourworldindata.org/ter... -
Re:UKThe finer point being that people did not think this through before they set it in motion.
How I know? Because I made the effort to actually read the post and followed the link and looked what other information that source presents. There I found this article about EU Membership Fee and Economy. They don't pretend to have a definitive answer for this. To quote them directly:So if the economy is important to you in making your decision, it’s best not to focus too much on the membership fee on its own, and instead think about the impact overall. We’ve looked at the arguments about that here.
So they do seem to care about the facts. However the people who selectively interpret the information that is presented there might still not care about the "full facts". As a result I can say that GP apparently does not think the economy is important, that they don't see the broader implications and "focus too much on membership fee on its own".
Of course like any other larger institution the EU has become self serving. They will be assholes and foul up things as far as they for the UK. Things like EFTA won't safe them from this. It may be a solution if the UK never was in the EU. But since it is, the EU will be using this as a deterrent for others from leaving the EU. And of course it works the other way around and makes joining the EU in the first place less attractive.
In the end it'll cost both. The question that remains is who will pay more for it in the long run. Who could be the new big trade partners of the UK? EFTA nations, sure. America comes first? Japan? Maybe China or even Russia? Probably not the latter two if the US has a say in this.
If you still think that the EU is beyond any reforms, that things will only get worse over time I will have to agree that you'd better leave the EU sooner than later. -
Re:Wages
they did take a number of jobs from the local economy.
Also, the salary for H1Bs was lower.
So they did two illegal things there, and you and maybe other people observed it happening but didn't report it? Didn't document it and make a complaint?
I challenge your statement asking if wages are depressed, but in the next sentence say every study done on this matter found they raised wages. If there are studies, which are not sited here, you're saying H1Bs raise pay over all? How? Again, where is your studies?
This article has an excellent overview and links to all the studies and official data: https://fullfact.org/immigrati...
As you can see, at least in the UK migrant workers actually increase wages and prosperity for medium and high income natives. Maybe H1B is different, but I don't see why it would be. The same arguments are made in the UK and debunked by the data. As a highly skilled migrant worker myself I can tell you that the salary I'm getting paid is above the going rate and the availability of my skills to this company has lead to growth and other natives being employed.
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Re: Of course
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Re:Statement from Eric Schmidt
Jesus' teachings in the gospels do say killing is wrong, even capital punishment (e.g. the adulterous woman, "he who is without sin cast the first stone"). That does not help a rabbi who sticks with the Torah, but it is there in the bible.
That's disputed.
https://www.christianity.com/b...
NB - I'm not a Christian, many Christians do support capital punishment and you'll have to take up the compatibility of that with the Bible with them. I do know that the notion that capital punishment is incompatible with Christianity is not one that Christians universally accept.
I see nothing wrong with a person being a pacifist, but at least justify your stance with "I think killing is wrong no matter what" instead "this book says killing is wrong no matter what" (even if the book did say that). One is your own opinion, the other quickly falls into a discussion of etymology and logic because that person is building a cause on a faulty foundation.
It's fairly easy to make up examples where killing is justified - if someone attacks you, I'd say you're allowed to defend yourself. If your country is attacked, I'd say it would be legitimate to use force to defend it. Similarly if your home is invaded, I'd say it is legitimate to use force to fight off the invaders.
When it comes to capital punishment you can make a somewhat chilly argument that a society with capital punishment would kill fewer innocent people than one without. E.g. in the UK the homicide rate has risen since capital punishment was abolished.
https://fullfact.org/news/has-...
The UK executed relatively small numbers of people in the 20th Century and even if every single one was innocent that is still less than the additional number of people who are murdered due to the increase in the homicide rate.
Now would I support reintroducing capital punishment in the UK? I'm not sure. I do definitely support the notion that killing in self defence or a just war is not murder.
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Re:The case for BREXIT
I voted for BREXIT.
Out of interest, what did you think would happen with the Irish border?
And, more subtly, being inside the EU means we have to sign up to the ECHR. Article 8 of that makes it almost impossible to deport criminal, non EU aliens.
Brexit has little ot do with that. ECHR is a separte thing and exiting the EU won't take us out of the ECHR. Also, Article 8, the right to a privacy?
And third, it's false. We can and do deport people all the time.
2) Trade. Inside the EU we need to have tariffs on non EU imports.
Half truth: We need to have tarriffs on non EU imports for which tarriff free trade has not been agreed. Not all non EU imports have tarriffs.
Outside the EU we don't - we could sign free trade agreements with the US for example, which is our largest export customer.
False, the EU is our largest single export market. Second that will likely involve having weaker regulations on product safety, e.g . cars.
We vote for the EU MEPs and the council are drawn from our elected MPs.
Claiming it's not a democracy because the people you voted for did something you don't like is facile.
. In fact the EU is still trying to impose a quota system on EU countries to accept their 'fair share' of the migrants Merkel invited into Germany.
The EU is not, Germany is. And it never happened, so you voted BREXIT for something that never happened?
5) Defence. The EU wants an army and to be a state.
Some people proposed it, it went a bit forward then it stopped. What you're intentionally ignoring is that the UK like many others would have a veto on such a thing, so it would never go forward unless our government said OK.
contributions of around 1/7 what the UK does.
False.
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Re:Simple explanation for this
When you don't have to pay for ridiculous and harmful social programs, your tax bill goes down.
Total UK tax revenue in 2016: 716 billion £
Total cost of UK's EU membership after discounting the money you go back in different types of programs and payments: 8,6 billion £, meaning roughly 1,2 % of the total tax revenue or 131 pounds per person per year.This is shocking to absolutely nobody with half a clue about how politics and economics work.
If you think your taxes are going to go down after this 1,2 % 'saving' boots you out of the biggest trade union in the world, you've probably gotten your political and economic education from the university of one prominent Solarium Sultan from across the Atlantic. Hint: you're going to end up paying more than that 131 pounds a year just in form of increasing inflation, unemployment and increased cost of importing/exporting goods. Not to mention that the fact that your government's expenditure goes down 1,2 % does not mean they will cut taxes by that amount, or any amount.
Honestly, this reminds me of Kronan the Swedish navy vessel that at the time of its sinking was the Navy's flagship and was sent out to crush some Danes. However, because at that time the Swedish navy chose officers based on family lineage instead of any kind of actual competence, this happened:
Around noon, some distance northeast of Hulterstad, the Swedish fleet made what the military historian Ingvar Sjöblom has described as "a widely debated maneuver". Because of misunderstandings and poorly coordinated signaling, the Swedish fleet attempted to turn and engage the allied fleet before they had sailed past the northern end of Öland, which had been agreed on before the battle. Sharp turns in rough weather were known to be perilous, especially for ships that had stability weaknesses. Kronan turned to port (left), but with too much sail, and heeled so far over that she began to flood through the open gunports
While I do not see Britts as an enemy of any kind and had wished for them to stay in the EU, as a metal fan (not the air conditioning kind) watching the UK government execute this 'widely debated maneuver' of Brexit while no-one at the helm seems to know what the plan is even in the short term, I do get reminded of the lyrics to a metal song about Kronan by the Swedish band Falconer called 'Man of the Hour':
Danes in confusion
Surprisingly greet
The self termination
Of the Swedish fleet.
Without firing a round
On the stronger foe
They're victory bound
As "The Crown" went below. -
Re:And what's wrong with such reasonable assumptio
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Re:Scotland just announced a post-Brexit independe
Spain has explicitly stated that it will not veto the accession of Scotland. They said that they would prevent Scotland from being fast-tracked into the EU, i.e. circumventing the normal accession procedure - which, as EU officials have repeatedly stressed, is a legal impossibility in any case so it's basically a moot point.
See here
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Re:I hope those in power learned
Gotta love all the butt hurt progressives modding me down as troll. I guess that's their form of "tolerance".
I am an American, but from what I understand, Brexit was all about British sovereignty and money. The UK already has a budding non-integrated immigrant problem, not as bad as France or Germany, but they hardly want more "refuges" coming in at a time when it is well known that ISIS sleepers are infiltrating their ranks. As far as money goes, the UK was sending 13B pounds to the EU and only getting 4.5B back in benefits. Further, EU rules and regulations are stifling the European economy and prices on many basic commodities are jacked up by the EU above global levels in certain regions including the EU. Leaving the EU means the UK gets to control it's own destiny on regulations and subsidies.
http://www.washingtontimes.com...
https://fullfact.org/europe/ou... -
Re:Usual media FUD
Trade will continue on as it has - the EU sends more to UK than UK sends to EU, so the EU is net worse off if it starts implementing tarriffs
Only if you completely ignore the relative sizes of the UK & EU GDPs and overall exports. Guess what, absolute numbers need context. A simple way of looking at it is "who would be hit hardest if UK-EU trade stopped overnight".
In 2015, the UK exported 220 billion GBP to the EU, whereas it imported 290 billion GBP. That is 44% of the UK's exports went to the EU, whereas 8-17% of the EU's exports went to the UK, so the UK would be a bigger loser.
As a percentage of GDP, the UK's EU exports made up about 10% of its GDP (2 trillion GBP), whereas the EU's UK exports made up a mere 2% of its GDP (12 trillion GBP).Source: https://fullfact.org/europe/uk...
Take your fact and reality and shove em. We will start to breed unicorns crossed with British bulldogs and reclaim the empire.
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Re:Usual media FUD
Trade will continue on as it has - the EU sends more to UK than UK sends to EU, so the EU is net worse off if it starts implementing tarriffs
Only if you completely ignore the relative sizes of the UK & EU GDPs and overall exports. Guess what, absolute numbers need context. A simple way of looking at it is "who would be hit hardest if UK-EU trade stopped overnight".
In 2015, the UK exported 220 billion GBP to the EU, whereas it imported 290 billion GBP. That is 44% of the UK's exports went to the EU, whereas 8-17% of the EU's exports went to the UK, so the UK would be a bigger loser.
As a percentage of GDP, the UK's EU exports made up about 10% of its GDP (2 trillion GBP), whereas the EU's UK exports made up a mere 2% of its GDP (12 trillion GBP). -
Re:The problem with democracy
What the Brexit guys were saying was that we'd not be sending £350 million a week over the Channel and letting the EU bureacrats decide how it got spent.
This too was a lie. The rebate is deducted before the money is sent.
https://fullfact.org/europe/ou...
Whilst this lie was incidental, lying politicians should face criminal charges and jail time. Blair's lie about 45min WMD may be responsible for ISIS.
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Re:Good for them
Yes, the Government is also propping up house prices, against the interests of most citizens.
However, consider a quote from a politician that supported 'Remain':
"More than one third of all new housing demand in Britain is caused by immigration. And there is evidence that without the demand caused by mass immigration, house prices could be ten per cent lower over a twenty year period."
-- https://fullfact.org/economy/a...
Oops, that's the Home Secretary, not the Daily Mail. Oh well.
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Re:From what I can tellfigures i have for uk contributions are from here
In 2015 the UK government paid £13 billion to the EU budget, and EU spending on the UK was £4.5 billion. So the UK’s ‘net contribution’ was estimated at about £8.5 billion.
Each year the UK gets an instant discount on its contributions to the EU—the ‘rebate’—worth almost £5 billion last year. Without it the UK would have been liable for £18 billion in contributions. -
Re:Standard Operating Practice
The £13.7 billion figure comes from the disproven £350m/day figure (£350m * 365 = £12.8b) that Nigel Farage has described as "a mistake" because it's from *before* the rebate and subsidies; once you take into account the rebate and subsidies it's actually about half that.
Well, I was wrong - the total payment before the rebate is about £18 billion a year; after the rebate it is £13 billion. Taking account of the £4 billion plus the EU pays back, the net is actually about £8.5 billion.
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Re:End of Great Britain?
Apologies, only 8.3bn
https://fullfact.org/europe/ou...
http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/6... -
Spurious Precision - compare and contrasthttp://www.zdnet.com/article/h...
... Overall, Netics researchers estimated a yearly cost per user of Eur530.38 over a five-year period ...
... By contrast, for Office 365, the cost was Eur197.49 a year. ...
... Using Skype for Business and Yammer ... the total cost per user per year could drop to Eur111.98.This implies that the Netics report has figures to an accuracy of better than 0.01%, which I find, to put it mildly, surprising.
I was going to post something along the lines that I am prepared to believe that an organisation might find it more efficient to use Microsoft products instead of open source, but that given the unbelievable precison of the figures:
(1) I don't trust the figures, and (2) I don't trust anyone who prepares a report with unbelievably precise figures: at best, they are being lazy in not rounding the raw figures, or worse they don't understand what they are doing, or at worst they are being deliberately misleading:Spurious accuracy seduces journalists time and time again
Wikipedia - False Precision
Slashdotters may enjoy the 3.5inch floppy diskette story. Personal computers with 3.5 inch diskette drives were commonly specified as having 88.9 mm drives in metric countries, 88.9 mm being the exact, though overly precise, conversion of 3.5 inches. In fact, the diskettes are 90 mm wide everywhere in the world per ISO/IEC 9529-1 specification, 3.5 inch being an approximation. (I had intended to put an "allegedly" in front of that story, but the Wikipedia article links to that ISO/IEC specification and to an HP specifications sheet with the width of the diskette drive being 3.5in/88.9 mm!)That was what I intended to post. Then it occurred to me to look at the Microsoft Italy page linked in the ZDNet article:
https://news.microsoft.com/it-...Using Google Translate gives:
... with OpenOffice annual spending per user has been estimated at more than 500 euros, much higher than the previous annual spending Office user of about 118 Euros ... ... The annual expenditure per user with Office 365 is also approximately 197 euros ... ... the net annual spending per user falls further to around 110 euros ...The "more than 500" is fine and the "around 110" is probably ok.
Being picky, the "about 118" and "approximately 197" should probably be rounded.Even so, that is much better than the ludicrous "precision" of the figures in the ZDNet article. I assume Federico Guerrini (for Italy's got tech) didn't invent the figures in the ZDNet article, so a plausible guess is:
1. Maybe the Netics researchers' report did give figures to "better" than 0.01% "accuracy".
2. Someone in news.microsoft.com/it had the good sense to round these figures for their news item.
3. The ZDNet article by Federico Guerrini used the figures directly from the Netics report.If so, then I suggest that the Italian ZDNet reporters take their Microsoft colleagues out for a long lunch and learn how to treat statistics properly, including asking *really* hard and probing questions to any researchers who use inappropriate precision.
If not, then I am really intrigued as to why the ZDNet article has those "precise" figures.
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Re:Correlation is not causation.
This has been going on in most Western countries since before the internet, mainly in the 60s and 70s. America is just late to the game.
The graphs on this page illustrate this.
Or maybe Americans just had more faith? After being torn apart in two world wars, Europe's faith in god's purpose was worn pretty thin by the 1950s.
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Re:Correlation is not causation.
This has been going on in most Western countries since before the internet, mainly in the 60s and 70s. America is just late to the game.
The graphs on this page illustrate this.
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Re:Extraordinarily expensive solution
You're just putting big numbers together without context.
According to TFA, the initial turbine has a 2 MW capacity. Offshore wind has about a 0.3-0.4 capacity factor. Nuclear has a 0.9 capacity factor. So to replace the 4696 MW the Fukushima nuclear plant could generate, you'd need (4696*0.9) / (2*0.35) = 6038 of these 2 MW turbines. Even if you go with the larger 7 MW turbines they're planning as a follow-up, you'd need 1725 of those.
Well, if the UK can build about 1000 a year or so, I think that it's not so bad for Japan to attempt something similar.
Considering they've set aside $222 million to build and operate these three turbines for 5 years, a full replacement for the nuclear plant's generating capacity would cost $167.5 billion. Realistically I expect that price would come down if they did roll it out on that scale. But even land-based wind turbines are about $1.8 million per MW of capacity. So the 12000 MW of turbines you'd need to replace the Fukushima nuclear plant would have a baseline cost of $22 billion before you added the floating platforms and adapted them to survive in a saltwater environment and lay down power cables to bring the electricity back to shore.
Even assuming your numbers are right (and those $222 mil are not just for running three turbines...), it still comes several times cheaper than the capital costs of building the same amount of power from nuclear reactors. You know the Darlington station in Ontario cost $14 billion CAD for only 3.5 GW? Not to mention that the cost to clean up Fukushima is estimated around $100 billion....
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Re:a tragedy all around
Private health insurance means that everyone pays a premium dependent on their risk level. An NHS type system means people pay a premium based on their income level.
So with private health insurance I don't really care if you live an unhealthy lifestyle. With an NHS type system I do - my taxes will need to go up.
In fact in the UK there have been proposals to remove NHS treatment for people who injure themselves when drunk
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theoneshow/2010/02/should-boozers-foot-the-bill-f.shtml
I work for the NHS on the frontline, and binge drinking is a huge problem, but you can't charge drinkers, unless you charge the smokers and the fatties for the illness their choices cause. You'd even have to charge sportsmen who damange their ligaments running!
A nationwide Freedom of Information request by the medical magazine Pulse revealed many types of surgery, MRI scans and IVF treatment are being withheld from obese people and smokers.
In the Anglia region, NHS Bedfordshire has barred obese patients from hip and knee surgery until they loss 10% of their weight or their Body Mass Index drops below 35.
NHS North Essex requires patients to lose at least 5% of their weight, and keep it off for 6 months.
While NHS Hertfordshire patients must have a BMI under 30, while smokers have to attend a stop smoking course to have any type of surgery.
Lawyers warn that health authorities risk being sued by patients if they can prove they've been discriminated against.
It's particularly risky in places like the UK where the rich pay most of the income taxes but the poor tend to have unhealthy lifestyles.
E.g.
http://fullfact.org/factchecks/tax-28258
In 2009-10, the top 1% of Income Tax payers were responsible for 13.9% of declared income before tax. Conversely, the same group paid some 26.5% of the money taken by HMRC in Income Tax. These figures are very close to those cited by Mr Redwood, albeit slightly different.
and
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9819607/Minister-poor-families-are-likely-to-be-obese.html
According to Department of Health figures, the poorest children are almost twice as likely to be obese than the richest.
Government figures published last month showed that 24.3 per cent of the most deprived 11 year-olds in England were obese, compared with just 13.7 per cent of children from the wealthiest homes.
There's a strong incentive for the rich to support an authoritarian model whereby NHS treatment is withheld from the obese and smokers simply because the rich are less likely to be in that category.
Incidentally if you add in VAT and duty on tobacco and alcohol you find that the poor pay about the same percentage of their income in tax as the rich
Still despite that there is an incentive for NHS trusts to deny treatment to people with unhealthy lifestyles - it cuts down on the expensive medical care you need to provide.
It's like in the US where you pay your premiums and then get denied treatme
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Re:He might not think it works, but IS a politicia
If you read the Early Day Motion he signed in 2007, he says is that he "believes that complementary medicine has the potential to offer clinically-effective and cost-effective solutions to common health problems faced by NHS patients" (emphasis mine). To be fair, he was only one of 206 MPs (including such luminaries as Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister) who signed the motion. That's almost a third of British MPs who believe the NHS should be spending upwards of £4 million* per year treating sick people with something that works no better than a sugar pill.
* This is from the £12 million 2005-2008 expenditure figures for homeopathy obtained by Channel 4, which apparently doesn't include the running costs of the NHS homeopathic hospitals that the Early Day Motion is supporting. -
Re:As we move into Memorial Day and Americans reme
We already do that to a great extent. The United States in particular gives away more aid in food, medicines, and money than anyone else in history. We do it on a massive scale.
In absolute numbers, the U.S. is indeed the single largest aid giver in the world, giving more than double than the next two nations (U.K. and France) put together.
As a percent of GDP though, it's actually Norway. The U.S. comes in at number 19 when counted that way (0.21% of GDP for the U.S, 1.10% for Norway).In fiscal year 2010, the U.S. government allocated the following amounts for aid:
Total economic and military assistance: $52.7 billion
Total military assistance: $15.0 billion
Total economic assistance: $37.7 billion
of which, USAID assistance: $14.1 billionAdd to that somewhere between $10-$30 billion from private sources (foundations, organizations etc).
Grand total, somewhere around a tenth of the military budget:
In fiscal year 2010, the U.S. government spent $711 billion on the military, almost exactly as much as the next fourteen biggest spenders together.
41% of the total military budget of the world is the U.S. alone.sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_foreign_aid
http://fullfact.org/factchecks/Daily_Mail_Express_Daily_Telegraph_international_aid_UK_most_generous_G8_OECD-2738