The point is that the government tried to sell this as helping against illegal immigration by enabling effective right to work checks and this was a blatant lie since it would not change anything: right to work checks are already carried put amd legal immigrants have eVisa that are checked online by employers.

It is obvious that the government is being deceitful. Noone wants ID cards except the Tony Blair Institute.

To be honest it sounds like you (and some other commenters) are just rationalizing because the concept of giving stuff away for free is too much at odds with your world view. Maybe some is going to waste but surely less than would go to waste if they destroyed all of these.

Can we not start with the personal attacks and the assumptions about other's "worldviews"?

Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

It might be a lossy savings, but I would think at least some percentage of people who take the free potatoes weren't going to buy them and will eat some of them. So maybe you get 5-10 percent less total waste for the labor time, pessimistically? And hopefully more.

Civilised people might consider it to be "appearing reasonable"?

Trump is not long for this world, MAGA might crumble or more probably fall under the control of one of the possible successors in the WH. Establishing diplomatic ties with his wranglers pre heart attack is smart.

As for how this is seen internally for Danes, at least in my part of the world the US admin has already achieved crackhead with a knife status. I suspect that trying the dog whisperer shtick (like Mamdani) will not be seen negatively.

They requested a meeting with Rubio. Only later on Vance said he would crash the party.

Sure but why should they request a meeting? The Americans should go to Copenhagen if they want to discuss something.

You go to the King, the King does not go to you. The party that travels is the weaker one. Maybe that's childish but it is the standard power play even in daily life and business.

In this case I think AI was used to look for justifications to a decision already made, not to make the decision.

> We're already at 70%+ of our energy coming from non-fossil-fuel sources

Is it actually the case on an annualised basis? Or was it just the case when you looked at the live grid data? (There is also the issue with "biomass", which is wood imported from abroad to be burnt)

Yes -- you can switch to see the past year's data. Fossil fuels are at about 29%!

Ah yes, I can see it now: 28.9% for fossil fuels over the past year.

The spot on observation for me is the very last sentence that quotes Putt's Law:

"Technology is dominated by two types of people, those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand."

> For the UK you need Gareth Williams, the GHCQ analyst who was found dead inside a padlocked duffel bag.

And whose death was "probably an accident" according to the Met Police...

> He was of the opinion that the best thing for the UK economy was Brexit

I don't want to start another Brexit debate or even take position on it. However I'd like to point out that the key with Brexit is the plan on what to do afterwards and that is what has been completely lacking.

Whatever one's opinion of Cummings, he did put forward a plan and that plan was never attempted (probably too bold, shall we say, for politicians to touch it). I am not commenting on whether that would have worked or not, but at least he put forward a plan and strategy. On the other hand, Bojo's "plan" for Brexit seemed to have been limited to becoming PM...

I would say “could not possibly be implemented” rather than “bold”.

Anyone can propose a brave or bold course of action. It’s very rare these people have any idea how to actually execute their plans.

> It’s very rare these people have any idea how to actually execute their plans.

Regarding Cummins, Why exactly? Dominic Cummins is articulate, seems to be quite intelligent and seems to be very fact/data orientated. I've also heard him describe how he would action particular policy.

Therefore I find it hard to believe he had didn't have any idea on how to execute his plans.

You are Dominic Cummins and I claim my 5 pounds :)

It seems when some people don't have an answer they prefer to deflect with a joke.

I think one issue we are having is that more and more things are said to be impossible to implement to the point that nothing happens... There is a lack of ambition, boldness, and leadership.

I don’t know.

Increasingly I see people offering simplistic solutions that don’t even pass basic smell tests.

And then when you point out the obvious flaws the response is that you just have to be brave or take a risk.

But I do agree - we seem to be in a world full of intractable problems and doing something may be better than nothing.

Yes there are simplistic solutions but, on the other hand, more often that not I think that claiming that issues are extremely complex is a way of avoiding doing anything for whatever reasons. So, it depends.

I think that the UK won't solve its issues until it gets a PM with a bold plan and great leadership, whatever side they may come from.

Macron took public action against this treaty because of domestic pressure but there is high scepticism about this conssidering that the deal was 25 years in the making.

I think this will only push euroscepticism and opposition to Macron and his allies so next elections have become even more interesting to watch. Short term we see the fall of another PM.

I don’t know much about European views on this deal, but will it create an opening for the rising far right in many countries? What is the EU’s answer to that - how will this deal help those populations of European voters?

You can do Paris-Berlin-Moscow-Beijing by train via the trans-Siberian, or via Ulan-Bataar with the trans-Mongolian.

Quite an iconic route that became much simpler administratively to travel in 2000s but perhaps again trickier now because of the situation with Russia.

You can't, unfortunately. No trains run between Poland and Belarus.

Oh that's a shame... I believe the whole journey was not an issue during the "warm period" of the 2000s.