> It seems like you're going around tech forums arguing with the democratic decision and fear-mongering about how legitimate projects will be removed next.
If we're going to argue that a platform is free to make decisions, aren't its [ex-]users also free to make decisions, too?
> A sensible regulator would leave some responsibility to the parents
(Speaking as a parent of three) why can't we just leave all responsibility to the parents? In our experience in the offline world it seems this applies!
I speak as someone who's taken each of my three children - for two of them, multiple times - to the emergency room to be treated for broken bones incurred in the course of Real Life[tm].
Yes, they play contact sports.
Yes, we use Family Link with pretty restrictive settings.
Despite the series of broken bones, I'm still in favour of kids playing sports and still dubious about the effect of screen time on young minds...
"What costs make up an electricity bill?" from the House of Commons Library is worth a read[0], it reveals the typical breakdown of a household electricity bill in the UK:
Wholesale electricity costs make up 28.7% of the bill
Neither Binface nor Farage have any answers for the problems the UK appears to be facing; this election feels like something specifically designed to create material for viewers of Have I Got News For You[0] to laugh at.
From The Atlantic: "The [UK's] output per person is now only just above that of Mississippi, America’s poorest state - and that slight lead is only achieved thanks to London. Outside the capital, in places where tourists do not visit, living standards fall well below Mississippi’s"[1]
According to the IEA, the UK has the highest industrial electricity prices of the 25 IEA countries reporting data.[2]
Hinkley Point C is routinely described as the most expensive nuclear power station ever built, four times the average for South Korean plants. Guaranteed pricing originally £92.50/MWh (2012 prices), now equivalent to around £133/MWh (2025 prices), inflation-linked for 35 years...[3]
HS2 is consistently ranked as the most expensive high-speed rail on the planet.[4]
> The confirmation vote is not just about the President of the Commission but the entire package, including other major positions in the Commission and major policy directions
It's two votes, not one; the President and the rest of the Commission are confirmed separately. In this case there was a four month gap between the two votes!
VDL was confirmed by the Parliament on 16 July 2019, by 383 votes to 327 against, with 22 abstentions[0].
Her Commission was approved by the Parliament on 27 November 2019 by 461 votes to 157 against, with 89 abstentions[1].
All the European Council's negotiations were private.
No public hearings, no public votes, not even any public parliamentary debates(!) about different candidates for the Commission. This is indeed "the EU way", trying to find compromise via party-family bargaining ... in private.
> All lead candidates had been tried before her, but all of them failed to obtain majority support in the negotiations.
The Parliament didn't actually get to vote on any of the other candidates, did they?
I'm not sure the EU needs to worry about political capital in the way that many national and regional governments do. Power moves through negotiations between institutions, party groups, lobbyists, activists, and heads of government rather than through anything voters can trace. If one is being unkind, it's basically backroom deals all the way down. Naturally, the EU has more respectable terms for this sort of thing, like "trilogue".
Look at how the President of the European Commission got her job in 2019 - there was an election campaign in which major parties presented lead candidates for the post and she wasn't one of them, then post-election - ta da - she's nominiated for the post and there's a confirmatory vote in the Parliament on which the ballot paper had precisely one name listed - hers.
> A reduction is still a reduction, even if is not a 100% total and full stop
The advice I was given from our family doctor was that having had an utterly mild case of (actual) Covid, as I had (two separate times!), during the pandemic, was significantly better in protecting against both future infection - and subsequent transmission - than any protection I could have gained by vaccination.
YMMV. I suspect this is down to those who have had mild Covid pre-vaccination and those who have not.
Some of us didn't even know we had had Covid until afterwards, others think the vaccine saved them from an untimely death/hospitalisation.
The overall VE [Vaccine Effectiveness] of the complete primary series against infection with any SARS-CoV-2 variant was 70.7%. VE was lower for Omicron, at 26.1%, than for pre-Omicron strains, at 77.0%. Over time, VE against infection by any variant decreased from 68.9% to 38.9% after 6 months.
> the kids that would have died from vaccines are still in danger
Except that we knew by May 2020 (possibly even earlier) that the data showed that the young and otherwise healthy were at extraordinarily low risk from Covid.
I still recall a conversation with child#2 after one of his school friends was at home quarantining after testing positive for Covid.
I asked my son if he knew if his friend was feeling better...
If we're going to argue that a platform is free to make decisions, aren't its [ex-]users also free to make decisions, too?