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GreenReaper

Tomorrow's world

by
On Thursday, the UK votes for a new national government. There are several choices, but only one of them seems to make sense to me. Update: I voted! Will probably know the results in 24 hours or so.

As a creature of a similar hue, I naturally considered the Greens. I approve of many of their ideals - eliminating fossil fuels and more stringent pollution controls, for a start. But I do not share their view of nuclear power as "uniquely dangerous" - and in social terms, they can be as authoritarian as the largest parties. To take one example, they'd prohibit the sale of pornography to adults. They're a good option for local government, to put pressure on abusive corporations, but I don't trust them to run the country.

The Conservatives - well, the name says it all. I have relatively few quibbles with their tax or economic policies; it's the paternalistic social aspects which get my goat. I don't care overmuch that May's 'a liar' - everyone is entitled to change their minds. The issue is she hasn't changed from her time at the home office. We don't need to be run like the Chantry, by a champion of intrusive 'investigatory powers' who's using the fear of terrorism to justify sink further hooks into online communications.

Labour is complicated. It's cool that they have so many female candidates - but at times, they share the Tories' nannying, moralistic approach to society. Case in point: they sponsored and brought in legislation criminalizing artwork "for the good of the children" - on the basis of the opinion of police and pressure groups, not behavioural research. And it's unclear how the "new wave" are better.

Sure, it's an exciting movement. But Labour is a great contradiction in modern Europe: in favour of open borders, but fiercely protectionist on trade - representative of the nationalism has been tearing us apart for the last decade. Imagine if you could not bring in fursuit parts from the continent, or faced heavy import duties on art supplies - and if you want a dealer's table, you have to follow union pricing rules.

So in the end, my vote goes to the Liberal Democrats. They're the only party to oppose laws which cause headaches for artists - and art-hosts, and fans - such as those around 'prohibited' images of fictional characters, and mandatory age-verification. They openly supported membership of the EU - not least because it seemed the most sensible thing to do, rather than the most popular idea. They want to maintain low-cost pensions for those working with a low or irregular income (via Class 2 NICs, which the Conservatives are phasing out in 2018). They've even proposed start-up funds for new small businesses.

More generally, I like that they stand for liberty, free expression and free trade, as well as a pragmatic legal approach, as exemplified by their view on cannabis - not a topic I care for personally, but I can appreciate the logic of treating it like alcohol. No party is perfect, but they're the closest to what I want.

Now, the sad reality is that the LibDems have essentially zero chance of winning in my borough - it's held by a Tory whip, and I don't expect that to change this time around. But it won't stop me voting for them. Hopefully, they'll gain enough support elsewhere to form part of the opposition - and, if nothing else, it'll help keep them in the news and on the ballot for future years.

I know most of my watchers aren't from the UK. But for those who can vote… please do. Other citizens may have differing priorities, and make different choices - but even if you don't think there's a 'best' option for you, there's always a worse one, and you don't want to be kicking yourself for letting them in.
Viewed: 374 times
Added: 8 years, 4 months ago
 
35 Comments on this Journal
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KNIFE
KNIFE
8 years, 4 months ago
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Prohibiting sale of porn to ADULTS!!?
AND opposed to Nuclear Power?
Uh ya fuck them.

Good luck with you elections tomorrow.
If it was anything like ours it'll be...interesting!

And dude keep your head down..you're getting hit more times than you deserve..which is more than ZERO!!!
GreenReaper
GreenReaper
8 years, 4 months ago
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One of Inkbunny's caches actually ran on nuclear power fox six months. I'd prefer fusion, but we aren't quite there yet.
moyomongoose
moyomongoose
8 years, 4 months ago
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Edited 8 years, 4 months ago by Owner
"Prohibiting sale of porn to ADULTS"...
...Under that policy, it sounds like not even FA and FurryNetwork would be legal in the UK unless they went to Disney standards...That would make cub porn and all the kinks seem like long forgotten issues.
GreenReaper
GreenReaper
8 years, 4 months ago
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Edited 8 years, 4 months ago by Owner
Well, this would be physical copies, such as in licensed sex shops - or conventions. The issue of age-verification does impact essentially all furry art websites, though, because the UK is trying to impose the requirements to verify all UK citizens on websites worldwide, or be blocked.
moyomongoose
moyomongoose
8 years, 4 months ago
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Well, not as bad I had thought it sounded like.
DanielBunny
DanielBunny
8 years, 4 months ago
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yeah that does sound like the only sensible choice, really. I'm feeling kinda optimistic about 2018 in this country. It seems grass roots movements are gaining more traction than ever before in the wake of the insanity of our last election, as well as Bernie's rising popularity.
GreenReaper
GreenReaper
8 years, 4 months ago
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Edited 8 years, 4 months ago by Owner
At this rate, it sounds like you might be getting a new President around that time, too, at least if you believe what we hear this side of the pond. (Not that the VP would necessarily be an improvement.)
DanielBunny
DanielBunny
8 years, 4 months ago
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Impeachment is looking more and more likely. but no not as excited about that X3
Pilou
Pilou
8 years, 4 months ago
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I hope we get back to a more constructive dialog with UK in Europe and resume building tight links.
GreenReaper
GreenReaper
8 years, 4 months ago
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Edited 8 years, 4 months ago by Owner
I agree. Dad's Army is not a helpful model for continental relations. I mean, ConFuzzled had over 18% non-UK registration, and it wouldn't be the same without it. Inkbunny is also hosted in Europe - and aside from cost and other issues, there's no way I'd want it in the UK in the current political climate.
LunarFlare
LunarFlare
8 years, 4 months ago
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I'm just happy to see you're taking such a logical and reasonable approach to things, considering all the options as equal and examining the stances of the parties, instead of simply voting the color you know best.  Something many in the US, no matter what side, do all too often.

" Now, the sad reality is that the LibDems have essentially zero chance of winning in my borough[...]


I also face this dilemma with where I live, as well.  But once again, it's nice to see it not discourage you from voting - something I faced just a few weeks ago :P
GreenReaper
GreenReaper
8 years, 4 months ago
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It once hosted the headquarters of the British National Party - and two years ago, UKIP was tied with Labour for second place. But things won't change if we sit on our paws.
KevinSnowpaw
KevinSnowpaw
8 years, 4 months ago
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I have no right or power to vote or influance UK elections... bt I dont like the tories and I dont like the labour party and I agree with you on your stance with the green party. Some good but also alot of bad.


It's a complex issue. we all want the best, even over here in the US those of us with a head for polatics understand how importent it is our naibours and allies bee stable and secsessfull and i have friends in the UK I dont want them to suffer under a bad political party. I hope things smooth out. I've been extreamly critical about the liberal party here in the us mostly becouse they are no longer Liberal... there progressive or even regressive at times...


I hope the UK's Lib party is a bit more classical..if thats the case thenmaybe your right and they really are the best choice.


Just dont let the tories win =p
GreenReaper
GreenReaper
8 years, 4 months ago
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Edited 8 years, 4 months ago by Owner
The parties are not equivalents, certainly. You could think of the Conservatives as Republicans who have a more practical approach to nationalized health care (i.e. it gets them votes), and Labour as Democrats who aren't ashamed to be red - well, not all of them…

But even that would be a simplification. And the LibDems are not the equivalent of the Libertarians in the USA. They are, instead, liberal - closer to the New Democrat Coalition. You might find them too progressive; but perhaps you'd have appreciated their 2010-2015 coalition with the Conservatives. Sadly, voters in 2015 punished them for the resulting rise in university fees paid by students.
Salmy
Salmy
8 years, 4 months ago
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I only wish the best to all of you good british people for the future!
graymuzzle
graymuzzle
8 years, 4 months ago
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VOTE, BRITAIN!
You don't want to end up like the United States.........
soggymaster
soggymaster
8 years, 4 months ago
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Still sounds like you folks have a (wider) selection of giant douchebags and turd sandwiches.
GreenReaper
GreenReaper
8 years, 4 months ago
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Edited 8 years, 1 month ago by Owner
Well, sure! Choice is important. And I didn't even get into nationalist parties such as UKIP, or the SNP.
travis181
travis181
8 years, 4 months ago
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I hope they can do something to protect the folks from the radicles that keep killing them over there and make it safe again. Too many are getting killed there. Prayers for the ones who lost love ones there.
GreenReaper
GreenReaper
8 years, 4 months ago
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Edited 8 years, 4 months ago by Owner
Thanks for your wishes. But to be honest, while recent events have been tragic, they are must be put in perspective. The UK's population is ~65,000,000. Since 1970 - over almost 50 years - roughly 3,500 (~0.05% of current population, or one in 20,000 if taken instantaneously) died as a result of terrorism. And the vast majority of those died in Northern Ireland, during the Troubles. 25 times as many people die in car accidents - and the emissions from cars and trucks shorten the lives of thousands annually.
Flygon
Flygon
8 years, 4 months ago
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What are your views regarding preferential (ie. instant runoff, for example) voting?
GreenReaper
GreenReaper
8 years, 4 months ago
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Edited 8 years, 4 months ago by Owner
A good idea, but not one which the electorate or the two largest political parties are keen to adopt.

Personally I favour range voting, which we used to good effect in Inkbunny's t-shirt competition. Re-weighted ranged voting might be superior. But even instant runoff would be a significant improvement over first-past-the-post. Many elections have runoff votes which achieve a similar outcome.

Minor parties do have some say in parliament. They can also influence major parties, if only by threatening to take voters away with good (or at least popular) policies - this was how Brexit got a referendum in the first place. But true influence comes with getting a more-proportional number of MPs. Local government positions can only get you so far.
Flygon
Flygon
8 years, 4 months ago
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Interesting. So you can give multiple candidates the same score, rather than having to strictly order them from most preferred to least preferred?
GreenReaper
GreenReaper
8 years, 4 months ago
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Correct. In the degenerate case it's no worse than approval voting, and - if voters are honest - possibly a lot better at capturing subtle differences in voter approval.
DarkMacroMaster
DarkMacroMaster
8 years, 4 months ago
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A lot of us run into similar issues in the US. The only problem, though, is that we only have two parties that stand a chance of winning. Conservative Republicans, and Liberal Democrats. The Reps have good economic approaches, but have horribly backwards social stances. At the same time, the Dems have a heightened sense of morality, and good approaches toward social freedom, but their carefree stances on economics undermines it's importance and causes lasting damage to the country's internal structure.

Due to this conflict, I am one of the many that refused to vote, because, when pitting financial structure against social integrity, I don't think there is a clear-cut winner, as both can affect each other. I would have voted for the Reps this time around, because I DO feel that our economy needs some immediate attention and THEN get back to working on out social integrity once we can assure we aren't falling financially, AND Trump seems a lot more refined on many social issues than the average Rep, BUT I questioned (and still do) his egotistical attitude and lack of experience. Long story short, I was underwhelmed by my options and couldn't decide on a "lesser of the evils".

That said, I do believe there is another factor that played into the Reps winning, and that's the recent terror attacks. The Reps and Dems have very different stances on how to address these attacks and I don't know who is right, but I do know that that they are becoming a bigger topic every day, and are causing more and more people to be concerned. Whether right or not, the Reps stance on addressing these attacks is more "active", which lends itself to comforting those that are scared. It makes people feel like they are being looked out for by someone higher up.

Lastly, I don't know if your final decision is right or wrong, but I do know that it must have been a hard decision to make, and I respect that you were able to make a choice.
LegoicekingFurditore
LegoicekingFurditore
8 years, 4 months ago
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as a person in the us i really dont have room to talk just, dont end up with a trump xD
moyomongoose
moyomongoose
8 years, 4 months ago
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Edited 8 years, 4 months ago by Owner
...Or a Bush.

Took Early Retirement - "Unemployment" is Like a Broken Record [Page 2] by moyomongoose
+12
kamimatsu
kamimatsu
8 years, 1 month ago
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Honestly my idea is Scorched Earth. Literally. Not even as in "let god sort them out" because last time that happened this mess started. I don't mean as a reset button. I mean everything. Not even to start over. Scorch the earth, and keep it scorched. No reset. As for why, the same reason anything is destroyed by humanity. Because they can.
GreenReaper
GreenReaper
8 years, 1 month ago
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Well, there are plenty of other planets in other solar systems which might be worth giving a chance for galactic dominance, but it would kinda suck for our furry culture, don't you think? All those beautiful fursuits, ruined...
kamimatsu
kamimatsu
8 years, 1 month ago
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Or just take the fursuits. Grab as many .txt files as possible too. Those things take almost no space, run on everything, and are physically impossible to inject with malware (you could try, but best case scenario, you end up with extra garbage data that gets removed via highlighting hit and pressing backspace). Interplanetary life does mean no internet though. If there is any, it would be exclusive to that planet. It would basically be a sneakernet.

The force from the Earth exploding could propel a ship without requiring fuel. This idea has been pitched before, though that idea NASA had involved propelling it by nuking the launch site. They sort of forgot it's actually an IMplsion. That's why trees in nuked areas bend inward.

As for other planets, this is why I came up with my own workaround. Basically, I realized that, while it is possible to find another planet, it would take too much time. It's like bruteforcing a bitcoin key by typing in random ones manually until you get one that has some stuff in it. Possible, but why would you waste your time when Sol would die before you got what you needed? Terraforming is a technically-possible workaround, but when it comes to living in a planet, techically-possible is a fancy way of saying "species-wide suicide". So I thought of a workaround to skip all of that. Not just that, but make terraforming obsolete before it is even invented. Large space stations with thrusters.

First, this means uninhabitable planets are now resource caches.

Second, we don't have to find a home because we can just build one.

Third, it allows us to create spares in case the station is destroyed. Just evacuate and pilot to the next one.

Fourth, unless you are orbiting a planet or on it, there is no such thing as a nearby planet. That means no emergency landings. Those movies are BS. Space is huge and mostly empty. If you can pilot to the nearest planet, you don't need an emergency landing. But if you build a second station, there will be an emergency nearby dock.

Fifth, it gives the option of creating a new home that is identical to the last one in every way. So much for homesickness. And because space is huge, trust me when I say the stars will look like they are in the same place.

Sixth, and this is the most important one. No more time limit based on the lifespan of a star. If we do that space station, when Sol dies, we just turn on the thrusters as it starts to turn red and leave when it dies. Don't worry about heat. Just lowering the heat sink slightly would allow for a heating system fueled by your own body heat. And you'd actually be venting a lot of it. Turns out a lot of space is hot. For instance, you know how people argue that Chell would have froze to death in Portal 2 in the moon scene? She would have baked alive. It's hot on Luna during its daytime period.

And moving it taking fuel? We'd only have to use it to start and stop. We could keep going and probably never hit anything. Once moving, no fuel is needed. We would also save fuel on planetary travel, since we would only have to send anything down to collect resources.

One side effect. While good is a good conductor, due to its density, it may drop sharply in value while on a planet. You would need a lot of fuel to carry very small amounts up. Those people in shows carrying briefcases of gold? Unless you are Heracles, you aren't doing that.
GreenReaper
GreenReaper
8 years, 1 month ago
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It sounds like you have this all planned out! Though I'm a tad concerned about the "probably never hit anything" bit. If you're wrong, the result could be quite... intense.

I'd like a selection of fursuits, but the issue in the past has been that most of the ones I want wouldn't fit. I guess there'd be plenty of time to learn to do adjustments, or make my own, especially without the Internet as a distraction.
kamimatsu
kamimatsu
8 years, 1 month ago
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If in this hypothetical situation I were wrong and we would hit something, We would see it coming so far ahead of time that even if we did absolutely nothing to move out of the way, which would be a matter of turning on the engine for maybe a second and turning it back off, it would take so long to hit us that our children would be dead of old age before it would be close enough for us to have to hurry.
viperious
viperious
7 years, 10 months ago
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Hope to see you at Confuzzled this year. I met you last time, but I had no idea who you were until RobTheBunny explained it to me xD
TylerTheElephant
TylerTheElephant
7 years, 3 months ago
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Edited 7 years, 3 months ago by Owner
Governments scare me. I just hope this doesn't mean a cub ban or takedown of IB. IB is based in the UK right?

EDIT: Never mind. I just saw the date on this journal. Sorry about that.
cathedgefire1000
cathedgefire1000
1 year, 3 months ago
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tbf, not a bad idea to be aware of something like that possibly happening even if it won't.
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