"How can you be so sure that this time it wont be the same deception and all?"
Well, I don't know how much you know about the history behind the Iraq WMD claims, or whether you're just parroting the usual tosh about this, but you are aware that both the IAEA and the UN agency setup to look for other WMDs such as chemical weapons actually stated they could find no evidence of such a programme in Iraq? In other words, these agencies were not used in the justification for going to war because they actually found in Iraq's favour. It was the US and Britain that persisted with this claim in the face of that that was used for justification for war. Hans Blix who was leading the investigation was critical of this fact at the time and even to this day.
But there's a bigger reason as to why your conspiracy theory doesn't really work, you seem to be basing it on some assumption that the US has a mechanism to control the IAEA. This simply cannot be possible, because the IAEA has been an important organisation in limiting nuclear proliferation, as this requires the organisation to be trusted by the various nuclear states it means it has to be representative of them. So how for example would the US manage to control the opinions of Chinese, and Russian inspectors? how would it even control the opinions of nations that are fairly independent in the world such as those from Brazil? Your theory doesn't make sense because there is simply no mechanism by which the US could control the world's inspectors, much less the whole organisation.
But this is precisely why the US and Britain failed to manipulate the IAEA and the UN monitoring agency for Iraq in the lead up to the 2003 war - because they simply cannot manipulate agencies whereby control is shared with their foes in the world.
As such, the fact the IAEA is making the claims it is about Iraq are much more potent - if they wouldn't even do it under US/UK pressure and intelligence agency meddling in the run up to 2003, what makes you think they could do it now where Iran has banned inspectors from nations it doesn't trust? Something that even Iraq didn't do:
I'd wager that if terrorism is killing feelings then those 1.6bn terrorised folk are terrorising the remaining 5bn+ people on the planet with this sort of bullshit.
Honestly, if people like this want to make it a numbers game by redefining terms, their viewpoint is still not justified, even when they've stacked the odds in their favour by redefining those terms and using arbitrary statistics in the first place.
I think I still have my RM Connect certificate somewhere, I chuckle each time I stumble across it. We were an "RM Partner" and honestly, it was never pleasant. I remember seeing their assembly line for desktops when I went to their offices in Abbingdon once, and that was worrying to say the least. I certainly got my explanation as to why we sometimes got machines straight out of the box that wouldn't boot because stupid things had been missed like PSU cables not plugged into the motherboard and such. RM connect really was quite painful, rather than just teaching staff to use Active Directory, which would, honestly have been easier, they basically just created a horrible front end for it that regularly broke so that you'd have to fall back to AD anyway, except where you couldn't, because they'd mangled their software so badly into the system (including replacing some key Windows DLLs) that they'd even broken parts of that.
Honestly, the reason they did so well in our LEA was because the IT management at the council who helped advise schools on procurement fancied the arse off of the sales girl and nothing more than that.
I remember when the laptops for teachers programme came along and we received a number of trial laptops from different companies, despite the RM being some cheap crap from China low on spec, low on quality, low on design, it was what these guys instantly jumped towards simply because it said RM on and was a chance for them to get the sales girl up for a visit again but thus was the sad state of local government procurement.
"Each time I write about how a disaster has been the foreign affairs handing in USA, there's always someone to write a moronic sentence about how I could be disliking America. It's just like saying someone is a racist because he's complaining about Obama. I don't think that's a scheme that works."
Yes, apologies for that, much of what I said wasn't aimed specifically at you but people who do make such arguments. I recognise that in replying to you it probably game across that I was focussing entirely on you rather than making more general statements about people who believe the Iran/US thing is black and white.
"Right. But what happened with the WMD in Iraq leaves everyone skeptic about Iran's case and USA's bullshit about it."
I sympathise, but this isn't quite the same thing. The IAEA has been much more careful, and held of on making assumptions until it was sure it could make the statements it has. Also, they've been very accomodating of Iran's wishes, again, using my previous example of letting Iran pick and choose the inspectors that come allowing it to eliminate any it deems to be "spies" such as inspectors from the US or some European nations.
"How this is or should be any of USA's concern? If what you say is truth, that's a problem between Palestine, Israel and Iran, and that's it."
Agreed, but again this wasn't focussed towards your point about the US but towards people who have this stupid black white view that if Iran is right, the US is wrong and vice versa. Obviously that's not true - Iran is quite capable of doing wrong even when the US has nothing to do with it.
"What is your point then? There's evil everywhere no?"
Yes, exactly.
"Right, it's not like a computer virus could destroy the heavy water equipment... Seriously, why are you so much one sided that you don't see the obvious?"
But the IAEA inspectors aren't going to be allowed to go near any equipment unattended. That threat comes from people inside the nuclear programme who have been turned, not from fully attended nuclear inspections where Iran was not just allowed to control the inspection how it sees fit, but was also allowed to pick and choose the inspectors out of the IAEA's pool themselves.
Again, I apologise for not being a bit more clear about the fact I was talking about many of the Iran apologists here on Slashdot more generally rather than focussing on you specifically, I should've probably been a bit more clear about that.
The only reason the Church would stand up against nazism was because it was a threat to their control over the populace anyway, so it wasn't for some altruistic stand against nazism, but entirely about self-interest protectionism.
To highlight the hypocrisy of defending the church over this, consider that in an imaginary scenario the country you live in decides to do away with religious influence from all public life to mitigate the issues of police abusing the vulnerable - no more church schools to indoctrinate the young, no more church run addiction clinics etc. and they would all be replaced by secular state funded institutions. In this scenario the church would do exactly the same thing - fight against said government, but it wouldn't make them right. This is all they were doing against Nazism - fighting it not because of an inherent disagreement with Nazism, but simply to protect their own ability to manipulate and control people for their own ends.
I used to work in support for about 150 different schools in the UK and this post made me chuckle, because it's amusing to see that things haven't changed.
I was always pained by how bad education software actually was, and remember even on the admin side the school administration software was always a pile of turd too. Between Capita's SIMS, Serco's CMIS, and RM's G2 it never really suprised me why so many school secretaries seemed to just sit swearing at their computers. I always wondered how the software could be so bad.
I had an offer from a company that writes school management software the other week, but they gave such a weak offer that they were really just wasting my time, something I'm told, by a number of recruiters, said company is renowned for.
As such I suspect I have my explanation as to how much school software is so bad, if educational software works in the same way then the only people these guys are going to recruit are people who are at the lower end of the talent pool because no one with any talent is going to accept their offers.
I don't think these companies care however, they have a near monopoly/duopoly on their respective educational software areas so all they need is the cheapest talent to just churn something out that the schools will pay for. The market just isn't competitive enough so said companies don't even have to try and show at least some semblance of competence as they'll get the money anyway.
As much as anything though UK education policy is as much to blame, I remember a couple of schools who were given a grant to buy software any just left it all in a box because the ICT coordinator didn't have the time to install it (I wouldn't have time either if I fucked off home at 3:30pm each day and got 13 weeks of holiday a year). Stuff like this doesn't help as the software is never even evaluated, so when the next grant comes along and they buy more crap again because they never even bothered to see how bad the last lot was it's just more free money and it doesn't matter how bad the software was.
The problem is that between most schools not having enough IT competence amongst their staff (this is thankfully changing as the younger, more inherently technically literate generations enter teaching), but being told to spend the budget regardless, and the market being controlled by predatory companies that sponge off exploiting public sector naivety like Capita, Serco, and RM, you just end up with a complete trainwreck of wasted public money.
Who said there was no problem about the US flying drones over Iran? That seems to be something you've injected into the conversation of your own will, it's certainly something I've never said, nor believed I think any violation of someone's airspace, especially militarily is a big deal.
Or are you one of those people who can only think in black and white and hence nonsensically believes that any criticism of Iran is inherently support for the US? If so then I can't really help you if you're not capable of rational discussion, for those of us who are, it is perfectly possible to criticise both Iran AND the US and the US doing wrong, doesn't somehow make Iran right, just as Iran doing wrong, doesn't make the US right. It does however make Iran wrong to do what it has done and make it a worthy target of criticism though, just as the US is when it does wrong.
Are you pretending that Neda Agha-Soltan, an innocent civilian wasn't shot dead by her own governments militia trying to put down protests?
Are you pretending that Iranian revolutionary guards haven't actually been arrested in Kenya? Afghanistan?
Are you pretending it didn't really detonate a bomb in Argentina?
Are you pretending that just last week Hezbollah didn't really admit to launching and piloting an Iranian drone over Israel proper?
Are you pretending that Iran hasn't admitted to sending troops, and weapons to Syria to help put down protesters? That Syrian rebels haven't really captured Iranian revolution guards that were fighting with the Syrians?
Are you pretending that Iran didn't in the past, and hasn't threatened to again shut down one of the world's major ocean oil-supply routes?
People say "So?" like it's common knowledge that Iran does all sorts of evils because it does, and often even admits to it, and because unlike you, they aren't a conspiracy theory nut that believes that somehow, the US propaganda campaign against Iran is so strong that they've even managed to get Iran's leadership themselves to admit to many of the evils people bitch at them about.
Honestly, I don't really like America nowadays much either, but fuck me, you've got to be a complete ignorant idiot to think Iran is somehow some innocent little harmless nation that's no threat to anyone and has never done any wrong.
"Then, we don't even have a proof that Iran has a program for nuclear weapons, we only know they are working on nuclear power."
Sure, but we also don't know that they aren't working on nuclear weapons because they've repeatedly over the last decade failed to fulfil their obligations as an NPT signatory despite the IAEA having gone way further than it should have to in accomodating Iran's excuses, for example, by letting Iran selecting out IAEA inspectors from countries it believes are against it and would act as spies- it still refused entry to inspectors to sites and information about nuclear weapons development even when it had stacked the nationality of inspectors in it's favour.
Honestly, apologists for Iran were using the excuse that even the IAEA said for a long time it couldn't confirm any evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons programme, but the IAEA's stance has been changing, and the reports have become ever more damning, to the point where even the IAEA has been saying that on the balance of probabilities it's like Iran does have at least some kind of nuclear weapons programme.
I get that people aren't keen on what the US has done in the world, especially the middle east since 9/11 and even before that, hell, I even agree with them. What I don't get are people who act as apologists for Iran purely to try and spite America and ratchet up their distaste of America. Just because the US has done a lot wrong, doesn't make Iran right by any measure, Iran has been carrying out proxy wars/attacks against nations like Israel, and even coalition troops in Iraq and Afghanistan for a long time now- just last week Hezbollah flew a drone into Israel to gain intel on Israeli military installations, where did that drone come from? who provided the kit and expertise for it's use? that's right, Iran. They've been oppressing the educated minorities in their society who dared to rise up and call for reform in an extremely brutal manner including torture and rape too so it's not like you can even frame Iran as some poor innocent little nation when you isolate your view of it from external, to internal politics and policies.
Honestly, I think it's silly to think Iran is a good nation, and I'm not convinced it's even sensible to believe Iran doesn't have at least some nuclear ambitions (hell, Syria did, and Iran is better resourced and has more reason to want them than Syria) else it could simply fulfil it's NPT obligations (like every other fucking nation on earth that's a signatory) and then there's no harm done is there? All their tech is bought/designed by Russia and the West anyway so any claims about how the IAEA only wants access to steal their nuclear secrets is completely stupid, it's theatre and nothing more.
What does remain in question is what to do about it? should we stop worrying and hope they'll be responsible with them, keep them out of the hands of groups like Hezbollah, and hope they merely use them for their own self-defence? But what if they don't? what if their already unstable regime falls? then what happens to them? It's these questions that really matter and I don't have the answer to them, no one does, that's the problem, but at very least, let's focus on the real questions and cut away the bullshit about how Iran must be an "okay" nation because it hates America. That's just silly, it's not, it's really not in the slightest a good nation, and it's actions are at least as deplorable as the US both in terms of external meddling, and internal stifling of dissenting political views.
I guess it depends on what arbitrary definition you use for "starting it".
Iran has been funding, training, and arming groups like Hezbollah and Hamas to launch attacks in Israeli territory for a long time, and similar against US troops and interests in Iraq, and nowadays, Afghanistan.
But of course, US conflict Iran goes back many decades, which is the reason they do this shit, so deciding "who started it" at this point is probably a largely meaningless metric of whether it's right.
Despite this I agree, whether you start it or not, the act of continuing it means you can't complain when it, well, continues.
Yes, to be honest, Eclipse is probably actually the worst of even the Java IDEs - IntelliJ Idea, JDeveloper, and NetBeans are all much better.
Eclipse's basic architecture doesn't even work, it's plugin system is so fucked that if you want to do any multi-language, or multi-framework development then you ofted outright need two completely separate installs of the IDE for each plugin.
It's also slow as fuck often making things like intellisense style autocomplete less than useless because you've typed the line of code before it figures out what you might have wanted.
It's workspace system of managing projects is just completely unintuitive and extremely awkward if you work on more than one project/have multiple clients etc.
Honestly, it's just bad, objectively so. The only people who seem to defend it are those who have the misfortune to have not had any experience of any of the other much better IDEs out there, anyone whose used any of the other mainstream IDEs like Visual Studio, JDeveloper and so forth to a decent extent know full well what a complete fucking joke Eclipse is in comparison.
Eclipse just isn't the best for anything, it's just outright bad with it's only redeeming feature (and hence why it has a fanboy following) being that it's truly FOSS. Unfortunately, contrary to the beliefs of people like RMS, simply the virtue of a piece of software being FOSS doesn't make the product inherently any better than it's competition, especially when some of it's competition is itself open source and simply better.
The point is that whilst a lot of bad stuff passes, it is, at the end of the day, relatively moderate.
A lot of it gets blown out of proportion too, for example, in the UK since RIPA was passed a lot has been made about the clause about how you can go to jail if you don't hand over your password, however as someone who has actually read the law as is written directly from the government's related website, I've noted many a time here that whilst it's true you can go to jail if you refuse to hand over your password, the law explicitly states that for this to happen the burden is on the police to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that you actually know the password in the first place.
To me that's not too bad, you can still use the "Sorry, I don't know the password excuse" and it's then upto the police to somehow prove that you do know it, which is no easy task. If the law did give the police the freedom to just chuck people in jail who genuinely didn't know a password as many Slashdot comentators etc. claim then I'd agree, things have gotten way out of hand, but that's not the case. I still don't like RIPA, especially the way some public authorities used it beyond it's intended purpose, but ultimately it's not as sinister as was made out and even those bits where it was abused i.e. by local authorities, it's now been reigned in by changes in law
I think a lot more laws are cancelled or the worst clauses mitigated to the point of being no big deal than many people on Slashdot would believe, or at least, have others believe. There are some exceptions - the digital economy act in the UK being the obvious one, but they're so rare, and as I say, this sort of thing doesn't really apply to the UN anyway where the agencies that matter require unanimity for the simple fact that the UN would lose public and hence governmental support if it meant nations were getting things pushed on them against their will by it like this proposed idea by the Saudis.
Oh dear, I think you're having real difficult with the rather simple word "innate".
In this context the word innate would mean that there was a belief that Europeans are born with some kind of natural superiority, the fact that I stated that Europeans tend to be much more rational and not believe in such hogwash doesn't conflict with this, because the rationality spoken about in case is a learnt trait taught into European culture through are many lessons from history we can draw on to understand why that belief is stupid. As I say, some Europeans used to have this exact belief - the British, the French, the Germans, but we also eventually learnt that wasn't true.
In contrast, many Americans do actually believe that being American gives you some kind of natural superiority, which simply isn't true. Americans have yet to learn the same lesson that Europeans have learnt in regards to this mindset, because, like the afformentioned European countries at the height of their power, they were blinkered by that power and that resulted in their eventual downfall.
So now that you understand the word 'innate' in this context, perhaps you can go back and re-read the posts in this thread and begin to understand why people are in disagreement with you and why there is no contradiction in what I said, merely a lack of understanding of a rather simple term on your part.
"Hm, what was the last time Congress declared war? Or are we just making shit up now?"
Note the "invading countries left, right, and centre" part of his argument too, the US has been doing this basically without a single break since World War II in one way or another, whether it's drone strikes in Pakistan, or the CIA pulling off defacto coups across the world. His point is that America spends far too much time and far too much money meddling with other nations, rather than keeping to itself, and that often leads to greater instability. Case in point, by ousting Saddam, the US removed the only credible counterbalance in the middle east to Iran, and since then Iran has been able to carry out proxy attacks everywhere from Iraq, to Lebanon, from Afghanistan, to the Philippines. They couldn't do this shit when Saddam was around, because Saddam would then be given the international blessing he needed to do the exact same thing in Iran proper. By trying to make things better for the oppressed minorities in Iraq, the US ended up making things worse for everyone in Iraq, and people in many other countris too. So when you stop avoiding the point he was making by focussing on a specific intentionally mis-used part of that, tell me, are you disagreeing that America consistently meddles in the dealings of other nations?
"Well, a lot of your countrymen do"
Well, ignoring the fact Europe is a country, what Europeans thinks is not that they have any kind of innate superiority - that's simply not in the European mindset- Europeans are simply much more rational than that, they recognise their fallibility in part because they have thousands of years of history of it to learn from. Some European nations did have this mindset- the French and British at the height of their empires for example, but as their empires fell they realise it was simply a load of bullshit. Ironically, the reason you most likely claim it is because it IS something that's in the US mindset, there's even a term for it - "American exceptionalism", it's something America hasn't, like Europe, grown out of yet.
What many Europeans do believe however, that you're getting confused with, is the fact that currently, Europe is at least governing itself just a little bit more sanely than the US, and that is what Europeans are happy to point out to you. The terms you mention are nothing more than banter, and if you believe any use of them implies some perceived superiority then it simply demonstrates that you, as an American, haven't got out of this absurd mindset that some nations and their people are simply inherently superior to others. Europeans know full well they have their problems, and this is ironically why the current global economic instabilities focus on the Eurozone's issues - because Europe is the only one really openly admitting they have a big problem and trying to deal with it, in contrast to for example America's insanely massive deficit, see here for example, and sort by worst to best, note how insanely large the US figure is in the negative compared to even the closest member on the list?
The only reason you believe there's some kind of belief about inherent superiority is because you have that mindset yourself, until you lose that you wont be able to get over this stupid idea that Europeans think they are innately superior. Believing they are doing some things better that lead to for example, lower infant mortality, longer life expectancy, higher levels of personal happiness, etc. does not in any way imply this is because of some innate superiority or belief in such.
The Tories wouldn't have had a choice as it would happen under a Labour, or Labour/Lib Dem government. Now they can't do that, because Labour/Lib Dems will be shot down in flames by the heavily Tory biased media hoarde if they so much as bring it up.
Waiting two decades, instead of one parliamentary term is just stupid. AV wasn't an improvement in terms of proportional representation, but at very least it solved the problem of MPs who are not representative of their constituents. Another two decades is simply far too long to wait for any change at all - if we even get it then and don't see the same tactic repeated.
Why do you say that? AV would've given more voice to the parties supporting PR, which would've inherently pushed it up the agenda due to more MPs in parliament supporting it.
Voting against AV has had the opposite effect because now any time anyone mentions proper electoral reform like PR the Tories and Murdoch's papers as well as The Daily Mail just go "Well look at the AV vote, no one is interested in electoral reform". This means that ALL electoral reform is now off the agenda for at least another decade or two.
Actually I think reduced voting turnout is the only viable solution left in the UK because when the turnout gets below 50%, our politicians can no longer keep on claiming the existing electoral system is legitimate. No British government is going to have any claim of legitimacy if they only get 30% of the vote of less than 50% of the voting population.
Mandatory voting exacerbates the problem as it means everyone has to vote including those who don't have a clue but at least do the rest of us a favour by not voting.
I believe this might actually be the strongest demonstration yet of what is wrong with our country. These people will have voted in the way they were told to vote by the media, because they're that fucking dumb. I think this really highlights everything that's wrong with the UK's electorate, these people need the vote taken away from them.
How does this even end up on the news? Did they think "Hey, you know how we've spent thousands on labour and completely wrecked our house because we were too stupid to look in a drawer, well why don't we now go and tell the world all about this by reporting it to the BBC?".
Really, I think this does demonstrate my point well, and I sincerely believe the UK has an awful lot of people just like this, who are actually this dumb and like to even advertise the fact to the world.
"But it's not an unmitigated good, and days like this are one reason."
Yes, I think that's where my analogy with government is probably most prominent- I think few but the most fringe of whackos think we should do away with government altogether, but that doesn't of course mean we should mindlessly accept everything government does, and on the contrary, the majority of laws coming out of at least Western governments nowadays seem to be to the distaste of the populace so they must be watched carefully- the UN is the same, let it exist, accept that it's an important institution to facilitate international coordination, but keep an eye on it to ensure it doesn't overstep the mark.
Bless, I actually wondered how far I'd get down the thread before someone started mouthing off about things they don't understand, which is often the case when the UN is in a story, I had to actually get quite far this time before I reached your post.
So let me explain for you, the UN is a bit like your government, except whilst your government represents the population of your nation, the UN represents the governments to the world.
So a bit like when a member of your government comes up with some braindead law and no one wants, the UN works in the same way, but with far more safeguards. Saudi may well be mouthing off about this sort of thing but it wont happen, because the only UN body that comes close to this sort of thing would be the ITU, and the ITU requires unanimity on votes, and as the West wont vote for this measure at the ITU, it wont actually happen.
Think of Saudi as that annoying representative in your government that cries think of the children, and comes up with ideas that frankly scare the shit out of you, but are thankfully so insane, that they don't actually ever get passed.
Really though, the UN is less scary than government in this respect, because sovereign nations can opt-out of it, or elements of it, whereas you can't opt-out of your government. There are some exceptions, if one member state threatens another, or if one government ceases to represent it's people through committing war crimes against them for example, then the UN may act, but for the most part, nations sign up to what does suit them, and don't sign up to what doesn't (i.e. some countries don't think the WTO would benefit them).
The point is though, for every fringe-organisation of the UN filled up by the nutjob countries, there are plenty of UN organisations that facilitate global cooperation, for example, the International Civil Aviation Organization helps facilitate global standards on air traffic control so that when a plane enters another country's air space they can navigate safely to land, or avoid other air traffic, without fear of conflicting standards on such things causing issues. The Universal Postal Union helps ensure you can send a letter from your house in the middle of whatever country your in, to just about any other address in the world and so forth.
So yes, don't worry, your sovereign nation's rights and laws will remain intact, providing it doesn't try and force them on anyone else, which is precisely why Saudi Arabia's bid is just noise that is doomed to fail. The UN still has a point, just as your government still has a point, even if it probably does a lot of things you dislike as most governments do. Just as at least some form of government is necessary for a civilised society to exist by enforcing laws against being able to arbitrarily murder people and so forth, the UN is necessary to ensure that certain international efforts and cooperation flow smoothly by mitigating the potential for cultural barriers and so forth to cause issues (i.e. imagine if an air traffic controller at a busy airport like Heathrow, or Chicago O'Hare had to know every language in the world to cater to pilots flying in from all over the world).
Honestly, for me it's not so much the wrong doing but the hypocrisy that pisses me off.
The same people who voted against AV will have been in the pub the next day bitching about how unaccountable politicians are.
It's for that reason I believe those people deserve the largest proportion of the blame, because they were the ones who bitch and moan about this sort of thing but then when given the chance to at least partially mitigate it, decide not to, only to continue bitching and moaning again.
You see a similar thing with tuition fees, you had over half the country voting for Labour/Tories both of whom said they'd raise fees (albeit Tories by more than Labour) and then the same people go and bitch about it when that actually happens. What the fuck did they expect? The only people who could legitimately complain were those who voted for the handful of Lib Dem MPs that didn't rebel against the increase which is a fraction of the electorate?
Too many people just complain without considering whether it's legitimate for them to do so, they complain whilst ignoring the fact that they got exactly what they voted for.
We use First Past the Post in the UK, chances are your opinion doesn't matter to your local MP anyway because they more often than not get elected with less than a third of their constituents supporting them.
AV would've fixed this to some degree because it would've forced MPs to be at least somewhat palatable to over half their constituency, but it still wouldn't have been led to truly representative governments. Unfortunately the Tories and Murdoch saw that any hope of them having to at least somewhat listen to most of their constituents was thrown out the window whilst hypocritically and hence nonsensically arguing against an actual proportional representation system with the excuse that they wanted an electoral system where the electorate had representatives, which is great, except most of us don't, because our MPs don't actually represent our views in the slightest. As such, the Tory argument was actually irrelevant to the vast majority of the population as a change from a system where you have a representative that doesn't give a fuck what you think, to a system where you don't have a representative at all, is absolutely no change at all.
But here's the real irony, the referendum WAS proportional, and most of the UK's population was too dumb to see that if they wanted MPs that at least somewhat listened to them, that was their opportunity. Instead, over 2/3rds of the population decide they didn't want that, and hence gave their implicit blessing to the status quo - of having MPs that don't give a shit what the vast majority of the country thinks.
So honestly, you can't even blame MPs, the electorate had their chance and threw it away, it's the electorates fault entirely for being so fucking dumb on average that MPs don't listen to them because the electorate voted to maintain a system where MPs don't have to listen to them.
So don't blame the MPs, like most people they're doing their job in a way that best suits them, and the electorate gave them the blessing they required to carry on doing that.
Slashdot Mirror
"How can you be so sure that this time it wont be the same deception and all?"
Well, I don't know how much you know about the history behind the Iraq WMD claims, or whether you're just parroting the usual tosh about this, but you are aware that both the IAEA and the UN agency setup to look for other WMDs such as chemical weapons actually stated they could find no evidence of such a programme in Iraq? In other words, these agencies were not used in the justification for going to war because they actually found in Iraq's favour. It was the US and Britain that persisted with this claim in the face of that that was used for justification for war. Hans Blix who was leading the investigation was critical of this fact at the time and even to this day.
But there's a bigger reason as to why your conspiracy theory doesn't really work, you seem to be basing it on some assumption that the US has a mechanism to control the IAEA. This simply cannot be possible, because the IAEA has been an important organisation in limiting nuclear proliferation, as this requires the organisation to be trusted by the various nuclear states it means it has to be representative of them. So how for example would the US manage to control the opinions of Chinese, and Russian inspectors? how would it even control the opinions of nations that are fairly independent in the world such as those from Brazil? Your theory doesn't make sense because there is simply no mechanism by which the US could control the world's inspectors, much less the whole organisation.
But this is precisely why the US and Britain failed to manipulate the IAEA and the UN monitoring agency for Iraq in the lead up to the 2003 war - because they simply cannot manipulate agencies whereby control is shared with their foes in the world.
As such, the fact the IAEA is making the claims it is about Iraq are much more potent - if they wouldn't even do it under US/UK pressure and intelligence agency meddling in the run up to 2003, what makes you think they could do it now where Iran has banned inspectors from nations it doesn't trust? Something that even Iraq didn't do:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11682871/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/t/iran-bars-entry-nuclear-inspectors/#.UHwYEVF0qUk
I'd wager that if terrorism is killing feelings then those 1.6bn terrorised folk are terrorising the remaining 5bn+ people on the planet with this sort of bullshit.
Honestly, if people like this want to make it a numbers game by redefining terms, their viewpoint is still not justified, even when they've stacked the odds in their favour by redefining those terms and using arbitrary statistics in the first place.
I think I still have my RM Connect certificate somewhere, I chuckle each time I stumble across it. We were an "RM Partner" and honestly, it was never pleasant. I remember seeing their assembly line for desktops when I went to their offices in Abbingdon once, and that was worrying to say the least. I certainly got my explanation as to why we sometimes got machines straight out of the box that wouldn't boot because stupid things had been missed like PSU cables not plugged into the motherboard and such. RM connect really was quite painful, rather than just teaching staff to use Active Directory, which would, honestly have been easier, they basically just created a horrible front end for it that regularly broke so that you'd have to fall back to AD anyway, except where you couldn't, because they'd mangled their software so badly into the system (including replacing some key Windows DLLs) that they'd even broken parts of that.
Honestly, the reason they did so well in our LEA was because the IT management at the council who helped advise schools on procurement fancied the arse off of the sales girl and nothing more than that.
I remember when the laptops for teachers programme came along and we received a number of trial laptops from different companies, despite the RM being some cheap crap from China low on spec, low on quality, low on design, it was what these guys instantly jumped towards simply because it said RM on and was a chance for them to get the sales girl up for a visit again but thus was the sad state of local government procurement.
"Each time I write about how a disaster has been the foreign affairs handing in USA, there's always someone to write a moronic sentence about how I could be disliking America. It's just like saying someone is a racist because he's complaining about Obama. I don't think that's a scheme that works."
Yes, apologies for that, much of what I said wasn't aimed specifically at you but people who do make such arguments. I recognise that in replying to you it probably game across that I was focussing entirely on you rather than making more general statements about people who believe the Iran/US thing is black and white.
"Right. But what happened with the WMD in Iraq leaves everyone skeptic about Iran's case and USA's bullshit about it."
I sympathise, but this isn't quite the same thing. The IAEA has been much more careful, and held of on making assumptions until it was sure it could make the statements it has. Also, they've been very accomodating of Iran's wishes, again, using my previous example of letting Iran pick and choose the inspectors that come allowing it to eliminate any it deems to be "spies" such as inspectors from the US or some European nations.
"How this is or should be any of USA's concern? If what you say is truth, that's a problem between Palestine, Israel and Iran, and that's it."
Agreed, but again this wasn't focussed towards your point about the US but towards people who have this stupid black white view that if Iran is right, the US is wrong and vice versa. Obviously that's not true - Iran is quite capable of doing wrong even when the US has nothing to do with it.
"What is your point then? There's evil everywhere no?"
Yes, exactly.
"Right, it's not like a computer virus could destroy the heavy water equipment... Seriously, why are you so much one sided that you don't see the obvious?"
But the IAEA inspectors aren't going to be allowed to go near any equipment unattended. That threat comes from people inside the nuclear programme who have been turned, not from fully attended nuclear inspections where Iran was not just allowed to control the inspection how it sees fit, but was also allowed to pick and choose the inspectors out of the IAEA's pool themselves.
Again, I apologise for not being a bit more clear about the fact I was talking about many of the Iran apologists here on Slashdot more generally rather than focussing on you specifically, I should've probably been a bit more clear about that.
The only reason the Church would stand up against nazism was because it was a threat to their control over the populace anyway, so it wasn't for some altruistic stand against nazism, but entirely about self-interest protectionism.
To highlight the hypocrisy of defending the church over this, consider that in an imaginary scenario the country you live in decides to do away with religious influence from all public life to mitigate the issues of police abusing the vulnerable - no more church schools to indoctrinate the young, no more church run addiction clinics etc. and they would all be replaced by secular state funded institutions. In this scenario the church would do exactly the same thing - fight against said government, but it wouldn't make them right. This is all they were doing against Nazism - fighting it not because of an inherent disagreement with Nazism, but simply to protect their own ability to manipulate and control people for their own ends.
I used to work in support for about 150 different schools in the UK and this post made me chuckle, because it's amusing to see that things haven't changed.
I was always pained by how bad education software actually was, and remember even on the admin side the school administration software was always a pile of turd too. Between Capita's SIMS, Serco's CMIS, and RM's G2 it never really suprised me why so many school secretaries seemed to just sit swearing at their computers. I always wondered how the software could be so bad.
I had an offer from a company that writes school management software the other week, but they gave such a weak offer that they were really just wasting my time, something I'm told, by a number of recruiters, said company is renowned for.
As such I suspect I have my explanation as to how much school software is so bad, if educational software works in the same way then the only people these guys are going to recruit are people who are at the lower end of the talent pool because no one with any talent is going to accept their offers.
I don't think these companies care however, they have a near monopoly/duopoly on their respective educational software areas so all they need is the cheapest talent to just churn something out that the schools will pay for. The market just isn't competitive enough so said companies don't even have to try and show at least some semblance of competence as they'll get the money anyway.
As much as anything though UK education policy is as much to blame, I remember a couple of schools who were given a grant to buy software any just left it all in a box because the ICT coordinator didn't have the time to install it (I wouldn't have time either if I fucked off home at 3:30pm each day and got 13 weeks of holiday a year). Stuff like this doesn't help as the software is never even evaluated, so when the next grant comes along and they buy more crap again because they never even bothered to see how bad the last lot was it's just more free money and it doesn't matter how bad the software was.
The problem is that between most schools not having enough IT competence amongst their staff (this is thankfully changing as the younger, more inherently technically literate generations enter teaching), but being told to spend the budget regardless, and the market being controlled by predatory companies that sponge off exploiting public sector naivety like Capita, Serco, and RM, you just end up with a complete trainwreck of wasted public money.
Who said there was no problem about the US flying drones over Iran? That seems to be something you've injected into the conversation of your own will, it's certainly something I've never said, nor believed I think any violation of someone's airspace, especially militarily is a big deal.
Or are you one of those people who can only think in black and white and hence nonsensically believes that any criticism of Iran is inherently support for the US? If so then I can't really help you if you're not capable of rational discussion, for those of us who are, it is perfectly possible to criticise both Iran AND the US and the US doing wrong, doesn't somehow make Iran right, just as Iran doing wrong, doesn't make the US right. It does however make Iran wrong to do what it has done and make it a worthy target of criticism though, just as the US is when it does wrong.
So are you saying Iran isn't a bad nation?
Are you pretending that Neda Agha-Soltan, an innocent civilian wasn't shot dead by her own governments militia trying to put down protests?
Are you pretending that Iranian revolutionary guards haven't actually been arrested in Kenya? Afghanistan?
Are you pretending it didn't really detonate a bomb in Argentina?
Are you pretending that just last week Hezbollah didn't really admit to launching and piloting an Iranian drone over Israel proper?
Are you pretending that Iran hasn't admitted to sending troops, and weapons to Syria to help put down protesters? That Syrian rebels haven't really captured Iranian revolution guards that were fighting with the Syrians?
Are you pretending that Iran didn't in the past, and hasn't threatened to again shut down one of the world's major ocean oil-supply routes?
People say "So?" like it's common knowledge that Iran does all sorts of evils because it does, and often even admits to it, and because unlike you, they aren't a conspiracy theory nut that believes that somehow, the US propaganda campaign against Iran is so strong that they've even managed to get Iran's leadership themselves to admit to many of the evils people bitch at them about.
Honestly, I don't really like America nowadays much either, but fuck me, you've got to be a complete ignorant idiot to think Iran is somehow some innocent little harmless nation that's no threat to anyone and has never done any wrong.
"Then, we don't even have a proof that Iran has a program for nuclear weapons, we only know they are working on nuclear power."
Sure, but we also don't know that they aren't working on nuclear weapons because they've repeatedly over the last decade failed to fulfil their obligations as an NPT signatory despite the IAEA having gone way further than it should have to in accomodating Iran's excuses, for example, by letting Iran selecting out IAEA inspectors from countries it believes are against it and would act as spies- it still refused entry to inspectors to sites and information about nuclear weapons development even when it had stacked the nationality of inspectors in it's favour.
Honestly, apologists for Iran were using the excuse that even the IAEA said for a long time it couldn't confirm any evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons programme, but the IAEA's stance has been changing, and the reports have become ever more damning, to the point where even the IAEA has been saying that on the balance of probabilities it's like Iran does have at least some kind of nuclear weapons programme.
I get that people aren't keen on what the US has done in the world, especially the middle east since 9/11 and even before that, hell, I even agree with them. What I don't get are people who act as apologists for Iran purely to try and spite America and ratchet up their distaste of America. Just because the US has done a lot wrong, doesn't make Iran right by any measure, Iran has been carrying out proxy wars/attacks against nations like Israel, and even coalition troops in Iraq and Afghanistan for a long time now- just last week Hezbollah flew a drone into Israel to gain intel on Israeli military installations, where did that drone come from? who provided the kit and expertise for it's use? that's right, Iran. They've been oppressing the educated minorities in their society who dared to rise up and call for reform in an extremely brutal manner including torture and rape too so it's not like you can even frame Iran as some poor innocent little nation when you isolate your view of it from external, to internal politics and policies.
Honestly, I think it's silly to think Iran is a good nation, and I'm not convinced it's even sensible to believe Iran doesn't have at least some nuclear ambitions (hell, Syria did, and Iran is better resourced and has more reason to want them than Syria) else it could simply fulfil it's NPT obligations (like every other fucking nation on earth that's a signatory) and then there's no harm done is there? All their tech is bought/designed by Russia and the West anyway so any claims about how the IAEA only wants access to steal their nuclear secrets is completely stupid, it's theatre and nothing more.
What does remain in question is what to do about it? should we stop worrying and hope they'll be responsible with them, keep them out of the hands of groups like Hezbollah, and hope they merely use them for their own self-defence? But what if they don't? what if their already unstable regime falls? then what happens to them? It's these questions that really matter and I don't have the answer to them, no one does, that's the problem, but at very least, let's focus on the real questions and cut away the bullshit about how Iran must be an "okay" nation because it hates America. That's just silly, it's not, it's really not in the slightest a good nation, and it's actions are at least as deplorable as the US both in terms of external meddling, and internal stifling of dissenting political views.
I guess it depends on what arbitrary definition you use for "starting it".
Iran has been funding, training, and arming groups like Hezbollah and Hamas to launch attacks in Israeli territory for a long time, and similar against US troops and interests in Iraq, and nowadays, Afghanistan.
But of course, US conflict Iran goes back many decades, which is the reason they do this shit, so deciding "who started it" at this point is probably a largely meaningless metric of whether it's right.
Despite this I agree, whether you start it or not, the act of continuing it means you can't complain when it, well, continues.
Yes, to be honest, Eclipse is probably actually the worst of even the Java IDEs - IntelliJ Idea, JDeveloper, and NetBeans are all much better.
Eclipse's basic architecture doesn't even work, it's plugin system is so fucked that if you want to do any multi-language, or multi-framework development then you ofted outright need two completely separate installs of the IDE for each plugin.
It's also slow as fuck often making things like intellisense style autocomplete less than useless because you've typed the line of code before it figures out what you might have wanted.
It's workspace system of managing projects is just completely unintuitive and extremely awkward if you work on more than one project/have multiple clients etc.
Honestly, it's just bad, objectively so. The only people who seem to defend it are those who have the misfortune to have not had any experience of any of the other much better IDEs out there, anyone whose used any of the other mainstream IDEs like Visual Studio, JDeveloper and so forth to a decent extent know full well what a complete fucking joke Eclipse is in comparison.
Eclipse just isn't the best for anything, it's just outright bad with it's only redeeming feature (and hence why it has a fanboy following) being that it's truly FOSS. Unfortunately, contrary to the beliefs of people like RMS, simply the virtue of a piece of software being FOSS doesn't make the product inherently any better than it's competition, especially when some of it's competition is itself open source and simply better.
The point is that whilst a lot of bad stuff passes, it is, at the end of the day, relatively moderate.
A lot of it gets blown out of proportion too, for example, in the UK since RIPA was passed a lot has been made about the clause about how you can go to jail if you don't hand over your password, however as someone who has actually read the law as is written directly from the government's related website, I've noted many a time here that whilst it's true you can go to jail if you refuse to hand over your password, the law explicitly states that for this to happen the burden is on the police to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that you actually know the password in the first place.
To me that's not too bad, you can still use the "Sorry, I don't know the password excuse" and it's then upto the police to somehow prove that you do know it, which is no easy task. If the law did give the police the freedom to just chuck people in jail who genuinely didn't know a password as many Slashdot comentators etc. claim then I'd agree, things have gotten way out of hand, but that's not the case. I still don't like RIPA, especially the way some public authorities used it beyond it's intended purpose, but ultimately it's not as sinister as was made out and even those bits where it was abused i.e. by local authorities, it's now been reigned in by changes in law
I think a lot more laws are cancelled or the worst clauses mitigated to the point of being no big deal than many people on Slashdot would believe, or at least, have others believe. There are some exceptions - the digital economy act in the UK being the obvious one, but they're so rare, and as I say, this sort of thing doesn't really apply to the UN anyway where the agencies that matter require unanimity for the simple fact that the UN would lose public and hence governmental support if it meant nations were getting things pushed on them against their will by it like this proposed idea by the Saudis.
*facepalm*
I'm sure you knew what I meant. That'll teach me for being pedantic about the GP's post!
Oh dear, I think you're having real difficult with the rather simple word "innate".
In this context the word innate would mean that there was a belief that Europeans are born with some kind of natural superiority, the fact that I stated that Europeans tend to be much more rational and not believe in such hogwash doesn't conflict with this, because the rationality spoken about in case is a learnt trait taught into European culture through are many lessons from history we can draw on to understand why that belief is stupid. As I say, some Europeans used to have this exact belief - the British, the French, the Germans, but we also eventually learnt that wasn't true.
In contrast, many Americans do actually believe that being American gives you some kind of natural superiority, which simply isn't true. Americans have yet to learn the same lesson that Europeans have learnt in regards to this mindset, because, like the afformentioned European countries at the height of their power, they were blinkered by that power and that resulted in their eventual downfall.
So now that you understand the word 'innate' in this context, perhaps you can go back and re-read the posts in this thread and begin to understand why people are in disagreement with you and why there is no contradiction in what I said, merely a lack of understanding of a rather simple term on your part.
"Hm, what was the last time Congress declared war? Or are we just making shit up now?"
Note the "invading countries left, right, and centre" part of his argument too, the US has been doing this basically without a single break since World War II in one way or another, whether it's drone strikes in Pakistan, or the CIA pulling off defacto coups across the world. His point is that America spends far too much time and far too much money meddling with other nations, rather than keeping to itself, and that often leads to greater instability. Case in point, by ousting Saddam, the US removed the only credible counterbalance in the middle east to Iran, and since then Iran has been able to carry out proxy attacks everywhere from Iraq, to Lebanon, from Afghanistan, to the Philippines. They couldn't do this shit when Saddam was around, because Saddam would then be given the international blessing he needed to do the exact same thing in Iran proper. By trying to make things better for the oppressed minorities in Iraq, the US ended up making things worse for everyone in Iraq, and people in many other countris too. So when you stop avoiding the point he was making by focussing on a specific intentionally mis-used part of that, tell me, are you disagreeing that America consistently meddles in the dealings of other nations?
"Well, a lot of your countrymen do"
Well, ignoring the fact Europe is a country, what Europeans thinks is not that they have any kind of innate superiority - that's simply not in the European mindset- Europeans are simply much more rational than that, they recognise their fallibility in part because they have thousands of years of history of it to learn from. Some European nations did have this mindset- the French and British at the height of their empires for example, but as their empires fell they realise it was simply a load of bullshit. Ironically, the reason you most likely claim it is because it IS something that's in the US mindset, there's even a term for it - "American exceptionalism", it's something America hasn't, like Europe, grown out of yet.
What many Europeans do believe however, that you're getting confused with, is the fact that currently, Europe is at least governing itself just a little bit more sanely than the US, and that is what Europeans are happy to point out to you. The terms you mention are nothing more than banter, and if you believe any use of them implies some perceived superiority then it simply demonstrates that you, as an American, haven't got out of this absurd mindset that some nations and their people are simply inherently superior to others. Europeans know full well they have their problems, and this is ironically why the current global economic instabilities focus on the Eurozone's issues - because Europe is the only one really openly admitting they have a big problem and trying to deal with it, in contrast to for example America's insanely massive deficit, see here for example, and sort by worst to best, note how insanely large the US figure is in the negative compared to even the closest member on the list?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_current_account_balance
The only reason you believe there's some kind of belief about inherent superiority is because you have that mindset yourself, until you lose that you wont be able to get over this stupid idea that Europeans think they are innately superior. Believing they are doing some things better that lead to for example, lower infant mortality, longer life expectancy, higher levels of personal happiness, etc. does not in any way imply this is because of some innate superiority or belief in such.
What, things like SOPA? PIPA?
The Tories wouldn't have had a choice as it would happen under a Labour, or Labour/Lib Dem government. Now they can't do that, because Labour/Lib Dems will be shot down in flames by the heavily Tory biased media hoarde if they so much as bring it up.
Waiting two decades, instead of one parliamentary term is just stupid. AV wasn't an improvement in terms of proportional representation, but at very least it solved the problem of MPs who are not representative of their constituents. Another two decades is simply far too long to wait for any change at all - if we even get it then and don't see the same tactic repeated.
Why do you say that? AV would've given more voice to the parties supporting PR, which would've inherently pushed it up the agenda due to more MPs in parliament supporting it.
Voting against AV has had the opposite effect because now any time anyone mentions proper electoral reform like PR the Tories and Murdoch's papers as well as The Daily Mail just go "Well look at the AV vote, no one is interested in electoral reform". This means that ALL electoral reform is now off the agenda for at least another decade or two.
Actually I think reduced voting turnout is the only viable solution left in the UK because when the turnout gets below 50%, our politicians can no longer keep on claiming the existing electoral system is legitimate. No British government is going to have any claim of legitimacy if they only get 30% of the vote of less than 50% of the voting population.
Mandatory voting exacerbates the problem as it means everyone has to vote including those who don't have a clue but at least do the rest of us a favour by not voting.
So there I was, reading the BBC, catching up on the day's news, and I came across this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-19921055
I believe this might actually be the strongest demonstration yet of what is wrong with our country. These people will have voted in the way they were told to vote by the media, because they're that fucking dumb. I think this really highlights everything that's wrong with the UK's electorate, these people need the vote taken away from them.
How does this even end up on the news? Did they think "Hey, you know how we've spent thousands on labour and completely wrecked our house because we were too stupid to look in a drawer, well why don't we now go and tell the world all about this by reporting it to the BBC?".
Really, I think this does demonstrate my point well, and I sincerely believe the UK has an awful lot of people just like this, who are actually this dumb and like to even advertise the fact to the world.
"But it's not an unmitigated good, and days like this are one reason."
Yes, I think that's where my analogy with government is probably most prominent- I think few but the most fringe of whackos think we should do away with government altogether, but that doesn't of course mean we should mindlessly accept everything government does, and on the contrary, the majority of laws coming out of at least Western governments nowadays seem to be to the distaste of the populace so they must be watched carefully- the UN is the same, let it exist, accept that it's an important institution to facilitate international coordination, but keep an eye on it to ensure it doesn't overstep the mark.
Hi.
Have you heard of Julian Assange?
Kim Dotcom?
Any of The Pirate Bay folks?
Any of the muslims who have just been extradited to the US despite breaking no UK law for exactly the reasons you cite?
Unfortunately, just because you haven't heard of such things in your little world, doesn't mean they don't happen.
Bless, I actually wondered how far I'd get down the thread before someone started mouthing off about things they don't understand, which is often the case when the UN is in a story, I had to actually get quite far this time before I reached your post.
So let me explain for you, the UN is a bit like your government, except whilst your government represents the population of your nation, the UN represents the governments to the world.
So a bit like when a member of your government comes up with some braindead law and no one wants, the UN works in the same way, but with far more safeguards. Saudi may well be mouthing off about this sort of thing but it wont happen, because the only UN body that comes close to this sort of thing would be the ITU, and the ITU requires unanimity on votes, and as the West wont vote for this measure at the ITU, it wont actually happen.
Think of Saudi as that annoying representative in your government that cries think of the children, and comes up with ideas that frankly scare the shit out of you, but are thankfully so insane, that they don't actually ever get passed.
Really though, the UN is less scary than government in this respect, because sovereign nations can opt-out of it, or elements of it, whereas you can't opt-out of your government. There are some exceptions, if one member state threatens another, or if one government ceases to represent it's people through committing war crimes against them for example, then the UN may act, but for the most part, nations sign up to what does suit them, and don't sign up to what doesn't (i.e. some countries don't think the WTO would benefit them).
The point is though, for every fringe-organisation of the UN filled up by the nutjob countries, there are plenty of UN organisations that facilitate global cooperation, for example, the International Civil Aviation Organization helps facilitate global standards on air traffic control so that when a plane enters another country's air space they can navigate safely to land, or avoid other air traffic, without fear of conflicting standards on such things causing issues. The Universal Postal Union helps ensure you can send a letter from your house in the middle of whatever country your in, to just about any other address in the world and so forth.
So yes, don't worry, your sovereign nation's rights and laws will remain intact, providing it doesn't try and force them on anyone else, which is precisely why Saudi Arabia's bid is just noise that is doomed to fail. The UN still has a point, just as your government still has a point, even if it probably does a lot of things you dislike as most governments do. Just as at least some form of government is necessary for a civilised society to exist by enforcing laws against being able to arbitrarily murder people and so forth, the UN is necessary to ensure that certain international efforts and cooperation flow smoothly by mitigating the potential for cultural barriers and so forth to cause issues (i.e. imagine if an air traffic controller at a busy airport like Heathrow, or Chicago O'Hare had to know every language in the world to cater to pilots flying in from all over the world).
Honestly, for me it's not so much the wrong doing but the hypocrisy that pisses me off.
The same people who voted against AV will have been in the pub the next day bitching about how unaccountable politicians are.
It's for that reason I believe those people deserve the largest proportion of the blame, because they were the ones who bitch and moan about this sort of thing but then when given the chance to at least partially mitigate it, decide not to, only to continue bitching and moaning again.
You see a similar thing with tuition fees, you had over half the country voting for Labour/Tories both of whom said they'd raise fees (albeit Tories by more than Labour) and then the same people go and bitch about it when that actually happens. What the fuck did they expect? The only people who could legitimately complain were those who voted for the handful of Lib Dem MPs that didn't rebel against the increase which is a fraction of the electorate?
Too many people just complain without considering whether it's legitimate for them to do so, they complain whilst ignoring the fact that they got exactly what they voted for.
We use First Past the Post in the UK, chances are your opinion doesn't matter to your local MP anyway because they more often than not get elected with less than a third of their constituents supporting them.
AV would've fixed this to some degree because it would've forced MPs to be at least somewhat palatable to over half their constituency, but it still wouldn't have been led to truly representative governments. Unfortunately the Tories and Murdoch saw that any hope of them having to at least somewhat listen to most of their constituents was thrown out the window whilst hypocritically and hence nonsensically arguing against an actual proportional representation system with the excuse that they wanted an electoral system where the electorate had representatives, which is great, except most of us don't, because our MPs don't actually represent our views in the slightest. As such, the Tory argument was actually irrelevant to the vast majority of the population as a change from a system where you have a representative that doesn't give a fuck what you think, to a system where you don't have a representative at all, is absolutely no change at all.
But here's the real irony, the referendum WAS proportional, and most of the UK's population was too dumb to see that if they wanted MPs that at least somewhat listened to them, that was their opportunity. Instead, over 2/3rds of the population decide they didn't want that, and hence gave their implicit blessing to the status quo - of having MPs that don't give a shit what the vast majority of the country thinks.
So honestly, you can't even blame MPs, the electorate had their chance and threw it away, it's the electorates fault entirely for being so fucking dumb on average that MPs don't listen to them because the electorate voted to maintain a system where MPs don't have to listen to them.
So don't blame the MPs, like most people they're doing their job in a way that best suits them, and the electorate gave them the blessing they required to carry on doing that.