Abelian
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abelian.bsky.social
Abelian
@abelian.bsky.social
79 followers 310 following 450 posts
Trying to commute less these days. DMs turned off because of the UK censors.
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abelian.bsky.social
Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 3d
"We just want to threaten you with massive fines for running a discussion board about folk music, while a deranged government minister from the other side of the world accuses you of being on the side of some British paedophile you have never heard of. Why are you blocking us?"
abelian.bsky.social
Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 3d
"Some"

They aren't even trying to quantify the damage they are causing.
owenboswarva.bsky.social Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva.bsky.social · 4d
Ofcom letter to Parliamentary committees (Commons SITC and Lords Comms Com) with an update on implementation of the UK's Online Safety Act committees.parliament.uk/publications...

It's not censorship if we can badger them into doing it for us
Some smaller sites which are particularly risky for UK users have chosen to shut down or geoblock the UK rather than take steps to protect UK users on their service. We believe our flexible approach to risk assessment and mitigation allows all services to take appropriate and proportionate steps to protect UK users from illegal content. But if services prefer to prevent people in the UK from accessing their sites or parts of their sites, that is their choice.
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abelian.bsky.social
Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 5d
I've been to Ostia, which is littoral Rome.
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abelian.bsky.social
Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 6d
You can make a case that environmental groups are calamitous for the environment. But they aren't unmobilised or ineffectual.
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abelian.bsky.social
Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 6d
Environmental groups have mobilised to restrict housing supply all over the country. They have been key players in killing off HS2 (we will get motorways instead). They have made brownfield development less likely with the Swanscombe campaign. These are all massive successes for the movement.
ca.pa
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abelian.bsky.social
Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 7d
Somebody please tell the Times.
The Times: Shabana Mahmood says rights watchdog undermines UK case to stay in ECHR.
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abelian.bsky.social
Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 7d
Danes and Estonians have, broadly speaking, sane and trustworthy government. The UK government is currently discussing withdrawing from the ECHR so that it can control trans people going to the bogs.
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abelian.bsky.social
Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 8d
Sunday led, but with zero based counting.
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abelian.bsky.social
Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 8d
Or that they spent at least £365k to avoid building new housing, even though they owned land in the borough and were running the planning department.
abelian.bsky.social
Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 10d
Farage didn't have the power to deliver Brexit. He wasn't even an MP at the time. Who actually voted to deliver Brexit by triggering Article 50?
A section of the list of MPs who voted in favour of triggering Article 50 to exit the EU. Includes Redwood, Rees-Mogg and, er, Rachel Reeves.
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abelian.bsky.social
Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 13d
This is the reverse of the truth. Done right, restoring trust in the state could enable digital ID. But that would require the government to be trustworthy, so we'll have to do it back to front.
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abelian.bsky.social
Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 19d
Not going to happen. The government would pull the plug in an instant if it threatened their precious house price inflation. The best we can do is build decent homes for the population we have, because not building makes things worse.
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abelian.bsky.social
Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 20d
Me too, which is why I am not a member of the CPRE.
abelian.bsky.social
Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 20d
So let's do what they say they want. Build 1.5m quality homes on the 30k brownfield sites in their report. No exceptions. Make it dense. Put in high capacity bus, bike and rail links everywhere. Local amenities to reduce car dependency. Reservoirs and power lines, all the necessaries.

Yes or no?
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abelian.bsky.social
Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 20d
So said the CPRE last week. When someone actually tries to build on a brownfield site, like the former cement works at Swanscombe, the CPRE do their level best to prevent that too.
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abelian.bsky.social
Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 20d
Twice, in case I had missed the bit where it came up with workable green ideas for housing the British population (spoiler: I hadn't). The figure for the UK is, per head, among the lowest in Europe - less than 1.5 sq metres per year. We have bigger problems.
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abelian.bsky.social
Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 20d
All Guardian journalists should be made to live in an undeveloped open field for a few years, until they understand that people on cold rainy islands live in houses for more pressing reasons than making the GDP statistics look good.
From the article: "The findings underline the tensions and economic trade-off between the environmental loss of natural capital from development and the economic gains of residential and industrial development and their subsequent value to GDP."
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abelian.bsky.social
Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 20d
So 120 sq km a year on average. In a country with maybe 220,000 square km of undeveloped land, a rising population and a massive shortage of homes.
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abelian.bsky.social
Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 21d
VAT has been charged on glasses and contact lenses for decades, and the sky hasn't fallen in. The political decision to tax cataracts differently from other vision defects is pretty arbitrary.
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abelian.bsky.social
Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 23d
Evening in Carmarthenshire
Snapshot of a river in the last of the evening light. Mist is starting to rise from the fields to the right.
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abelian.bsky.social
Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 25d
Just gone over 2 million.

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/73...
Petition: Do not introduce Digital ID cards
We demand that the UK Government immediately commits to not introducing a digital ID cards. There are reports that this is being looked at.
petition.parliament.uk
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Reposted by Abelian
ranboydell.bsky.social
Ran Boydell @ranboydell.bsky.social · 27d
"this column has described insights from complexity science ranging from the economics of solar panels to how to prevent a housing bubble. All this suggests the problem economics faces isn’t that it is too mathematical, but that the mathematics it has used is needlessly narrow."
@timharford.ft.com
The wrong kind of maths
Why the mathematics used in economics for decades needs a rethink
on.ft.com
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abelian.bsky.social
Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 28d
It's opening in sections, most of it will be open in October but there's a middle section from Nantgaredig to Llanarthne which is scheduled for January.
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abelian.bsky.social
Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 28d
The "Tywi Valley Path" Facebook group has a map and updates.
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abelian.bsky.social
Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 28d
No. There are four miles at the Abergwili end, and two more east of Dryslwyn, but they don't join up and it doesn't run all the way to Ffairfach yet.
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