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Steffan.J

@cymrufod.bsky.social

480 followers 3.3K following 400 posts

Left-Liberal, interested in political ideas. Chances are, you have debated someone like me before.

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Steffan.J @cymrufod.bsky.social · 2h

Bury the lede.

Though Public Service Broadcasting was/is a great band name.

Steffan.J @cymrufod.bsky.social · 3h

The Fall of the Berlin Wall
The Gulf War
The surprise Tory win in 1992
New Labour victory in 1997
Welsh Assembly referendum

Britpop wasn't an event, but it captured and partly created the anti-elitist, all-inclusive, apolitical pre-millennium zeitgeist.

Mx. D. D. Ward (they/them) @ddwardiswriting.bsky.social · 17h

What five events defined your childhood?

• The Challenger Explosion
• The Fall of the Berlin Wall
• The Gulf War
• The Oklahoma City Bombing
• The Clinton-Lewinsky Scandal

I have no memory of the Chernobyl disaster. But I remember the Challenger disaster from the same year.

Steffan.J @cymrufod.bsky.social · 4h

Opposing the death penalty but being fine with the state enabling the circumstances for the death penalty to take place is in many ways more dishonest and morally worse than simply advocating for the death penalty.

Steffan.J @cymrufod.bsky.social · 4h

It's not about being tolerant or kind.
Human Rights are intended to be universal, otherwise they're just human privileges.
Just as I believe even child rapists have a right to a fair trial, I believe they have a right to not be killed during their punishment.

Steffan.J @cymrufod.bsky.social · 5h

You seem to be saying it's ok for prison officials to let prisoners be killed.
No-one here is sad that he's dead, but it's a reasonable principled point that the state, once it's imprisoned someone, has a duty to protect them.
It's very strange for a human rights advocate to think otherwise.

Steffan.J @cymrufod.bsky.social · 1d

If the human mind was simple enough to understand, we'd be too simple to understand it.

Steffan.J @cymrufod.bsky.social · 1d

They'll drive the prices of the remaining non-rent controlled even higher, i.e. for young people and those who migrate to cities.
It'll also disincentivise those lucky enough to get rent controls from moving and their landlords to improve the properties, meaning the problems will baked in for longer

Steffan.J @cymrufod.bsky.social · 1d

Social housing is good, but it should be noted that we have one of the highest levels of social housing, while also having the highest level of homelessness.

We do however have one of the lowest level of empty homes, meaning we have under-supply.

Steffan.J @cymrufod.bsky.social · 1d

I do remember a story of a Lysenkoist trying to prove the theory correct by cutting off the tails of countless generations of mice in the hope of producing a tailless mouse.

He only ended the project when someone pointed out that jews have carried out a similar test without any noticeable success.

Steffan.J @cymrufod.bsky.social · 1d

A curiously large number of recent US presidents have been left-handed.
Not sure if it's pure coincidence, but it seems pretty unlikely if so.

Steffan.J @cymrufod.bsky.social · 1d

One thing I'm trying to evaluate is how much liberal-left voters have geographically segregated themselves to the extent that they're no longer tripping over each other under FPTP.
There's the obvious thing of there being few LD/Lab marginals, but the same might be true of Greens too.

Steffan.J @cymrufod.bsky.social · 1d

I'm touching grass at the mo, but the reason why rents plummeted in London during COVID was because people left, and the supply/demand ratio was more normal.

Also, people complaining that second and empty homes increase prices, but increasing supply won't reduce them is pure double-think.

Steffan.J @cymrufod.bsky.social · 1d

Yes, it will help all of those things.
It'll make housing costs lower.

Steffan.J @cymrufod.bsky.social · 1d

True, to an extent, but there's pretty much no element of the housing crisis that wouldn't be improved by more supply, and if 'building more' isn't the central component of a strategy, then it's a fundamentally disingenuous and ludicrous one.

Steffan.J @cymrufod.bsky.social · 1d

Emeritus Professors never retire. They just lose their faculties.

Steffan.J @cymrufod.bsky.social · 2d

England really need to get over it

Steffan.J @cymrufod.bsky.social · 3d

The funny thing is, I know it's the second city jibe that you're most disappointed by.

Steffan.J @cymrufod.bsky.social · 4d

I support two state as it seems the only plausible way of substantially improving on the status quo.
I don't want to make the perfection of a stable multi-ethnic new state the enemy of the good.

Steffan.J @cymrufod.bsky.social · 5d

We all agree that things should be legal unless officially banned.

Why the hell are we banning anything and everything from being built unless it's officially and individually legalised?

After two decades of zero growth, maybe, just maybe, we need to develop in order to develop.

James Ball @jamesrball.com · 5d

A pub in London Fields is trying to put up a timber canopy over its outside seating.

The planning process so far has taken FIVE YEARS. That’s longer than it took to build the entire Hoover Dam. capx.co/nimby-watch-...

Hackney council is coming down on a popular East London pub

Steffan.J @cymrufod.bsky.social · 5d

There's also lots of Right-wing think-tanks to draw from too, and while some of their research is 'heroically optimistic', not all of it is.

(Admittedly, the better parts tend to be 'difficult-but-correct', rather than "Throwing 100,000s of driven, working-age people out of the country = Profit").

Steffan.J @cymrufod.bsky.social · 5d

It does seem that the BBC News treats criticism from liberals and the Left as proof of its objectivity and criticisms from the Right as proof of its bias.

Given that it's primarily funded by under 50s who lean left, for the benefit for the right-leaning pensioners, this might not be sustainable.

Steffan.J @cymrufod.bsky.social · 6d

Famously, teachers never have a recess during summer.

Steffan.J @cymrufod.bsky.social · 6d

I realise I'm committing the cardinal sin of viewing the US and UK as interchangeable, but I don't think many McCain, Powell, Romney types turned their back on the Republicans following MAGA.
I'm sceptical that many One-Nation Tories would really switch to the Lib Dems over Reform, esp long-term.

Steffan.J @cymrufod.bsky.social · 7d

News and analysis of the upcoming by-election, from the Caerphilly Observer.

Steffan.J @cymrufod.bsky.social · 8d

Violence against women is one of the biggest indicators of terrorism
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...