acta_non_verba

Yes, the poor in England really will appreciate this additional kicking. I actually don't understand what has to happen to someone for them to be able to disassociate from normality like this.

One of the unspoken benefits of paying OSS projects is that you then attract the money motivated rather than the ideologically or politically movement. That has value in and of itself.

Fixing it here would mean acknowledging that you cannot run an entire continent of different peoples, languages and cultures (which affect priorities, such as climate be economy) using one central entity.

This is a bad rebuttal. He’s not mentioned race. I’m actually not sure which race you think he’s insulted. Care to elaborate?

Science is the system of questioning things through a repeatable methodology.

Is that not exactly what is happening here?

Science is always in a state of flux, as it should be until we know everything. Don’t get religious about it.

The NHS has been unable to send an ambulance to me in two separate cases in which the operator confirmed I was high priority.

5 years apart. Once in York, once in Bedfordshire.

But it doesn’t matter —- it’s anecdata.

The NHS has a lot of data available. Some is public, some available only to those that have a commercial relationship with them.

There are areas in which the NHS is exceptional — generally those areas which require no personalisation of care and a mass-production style of work (e.g. cervical smear tests and their associated health outcomes) - and then there are the many areas in which it really is appalling.

Lionising the NHS doesn’t help it. Opening discussing its faults does.

This is categorically not true.

In fact, the level of effort required to estimate electricity uses for multiple franchises on one physical section of railway has resulted in nearly all British rolling stock having built-in electricity metering.

You genuinely think a carbon tax would cost more than all the other costs associated with flying an empty plane? Pilots, cabin crew, ground services, fuel, depreciation of the aircraft, landing fees, ATC service fees, etc?

It wouldn’t be. The massive cost already isn’t stopping it.

I don't know how helpful a deliberate misunderstanding of the current economic model is to this conversation.

Capitalism doesn't forbid sensible regulation, it just hasn't happened as politicians don't really understand the space.

China, which runs a completely different economic system has similar issues.

Not anecdotal, just plain wrong!

Imperial college is just a part of the university of London.

Like many words in the UK, sometimes “college” is used in a more historical meaning

I don’t think this kind of response is good for hacker news. It’s just rudeness masked by being patronising.

Bizarre comment. British isles is a geographic term, which is correct in this case.

No one for a moment is suggesting that because of that you have to drink tea or invent the computer or anything else that is considered British.

“Hassle” is relative. It’s just as easy or easier than the 220 countries outside the EU. Ya know, the ones with north of 20x the population of the EU.

Yes, disenfranchising hundreds of millions of people on the European continent sure gets those Americans