Interesting Links for 22-10-2016

[andrewducker]

Scottish courts back minimum alcohol price (tags: scotland alcohol ) Walking lifts your mood, even when you don’t expect it to (tags: happiness emotion exercise ) It rather looks like Europe is in need of significant reform... (tags: europe trade politics canada ) Lib Dems regain position as Britain’s last, desperate choice (tags: libdem

Comments

[bart_calendar]

You know, for some really poor people alcohol is the only thing that allows them to get through the day with anything similar to happiness at all. Is that great for their health? Of course not. But being poor in general is bad for your health. Let them have some cheap booze.

I'm so fucking tired of bourgeois morality.

[gonzo21]

Apparently they have good data that shows minimum pricing saves lives?

I don't know though, if somebody wants a drink I always figured they'd find the extra pound to buy it, and do without somewhere else.

[a_pawson]

I think that is the case for people suffering from alcoholism, but minimum pricing isn't targeted at alcoholics.

When you consider that all the big supermarkets use alcohol as a loss leader, I can see how this will have a big impact. If you can no longer buy massive packs of lager for 40p a can, but have to pay £1 or so, it will have an effect on the quantity of booze people buy each week.

[bart_calendar]

Eh. In America you can buy lager fro $2 a six pack, which is way lower than 40p and people survive even with our shitty healthcare system.

[gonzo21]

That LD result was quite remarkable. The media kinda reported it as no big deal, or what I saw of the coverage anyway, it was all TORIES WIN! YAY! LABOUR BOO! But the LDs must be very happy with it indeed. I think it also knocks any chance of a snap early election on the head, because the LDs don't need to win back many of those seats the Tories snatched up from them at the last GE to either be in a position of coalition or the Tories are a minority government.

(And surely the LDs wouldn't go into coalition with the Tories for a second time?)

The EU trade deal thing kinda illustrates the problem we're gonna have trying to sign a trade deal with the EU eh, this Canadian deal has only been in negotiation for what, 32 years? Though it will be quite funny I suppose seeing what the Poles demand in concessions before they'll sign anything with us.To have the Queen turfed out and replaced with a Polish Queen must be top of the list.

[chess]

So, I'm pretty sure the LDs would go into coalition like a shot if 'don't Brexit, don't invoke S50' was on the table.

[gonzo21]

Do you think the Tories could put that on the table under any circumstances?

Though I suspect the problem will be by the time we get the next GE Article 50 will have been invoked and we'll probably have been turfed out. And we'll be in the midst of an economic catastrophe.

(Which is why I think a Corbyn victory should not be ruled out. The economy could be in freefall in 3/4 years time.)

[kalimac]

The only thing remarkable about the LD result in Witney is how completely the party seems to have recovered from the revulsion over the coalition. Second place results in the 23-30% range used to be normal for the LDs in Witney. I just hope the party has learned its lessons.

Me, I'm still irritated at them, and would have voted for the Green, who was Bernie Sanders' brother of all things.

[andrewducker]

I'm not sure that national parliaments should be bypassed per se, but possibly you should be able to override them with a supermajority, ratified after a given amount of time, or the individual countries should argue out the overall objective, but then allow a solution to be agreed which fitted it, rather than spending years getting unanimous consent on every detail.

We clearly need _something_ to stop a tiny part of the whole from bringing the whole system to a halt.

[meowpurrr]

walking makes me see cute people, which depresses me...