I normally don’t support bypassing paywalls for newspapers.

Quality journalism has a price. We should all support it. I lived in a country where all great newspapers collapsed, because no one wanted to subscribe (cultural reason). Only clickbait trash survived. I can assure you it’s really not a nice country.

However, I’ll make an exception for The Times, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch.

The same Rupert Murdoch who owns The Sun, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and many other media organizations. He also owned News of the World, a newspaper which illegally hacked crime victims and broke into the homes of UK politicians.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/apr/26/gordon-brown-criminal-complaint-rupert-murdoch-news-group-newspapers

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-68615789

Rupert Murdoch once attempted to blackmail the British Prime Minister

https://www.channel4.com/news/major-denies-sun-editor-abused-him-after-black-wednesday

He is also a huge climate change denier:

https://time.com/5765304/rupert-murdoch-son-climate/

This man has done more damage to democracy than any other Australian.

Fuck Rupert Murdoch.

I’m not British. But this is what I think Britain needs :

1. Campaign finance reform. The United Kingdom is one of the only democracies in the world where corporations are allowed to wire hundreds of thousands of pounds to political parties. Brits often argue their system is better than the US. I’m sorry, but being better than the US is the same as having no standards at all.

2. Publically owned water companies. The senior management of UK water companies have looted the country. Billions were lost. It’s a complete disaster.

3. A ban on gambling ads. Gambling ruins the lives of so many people.

These 3 policies are not extreme in any way. They are not far-left, hard-left, communist, or whatever. They are simply about creating better incentives for a better country. Implementing them would help ordinary people.

Yet Keir Starmer doesn’t have seem to have the guts to do that. I hope I’m proved wrong.

Britons deserves better.

To do list for Mark Carney:

• Encourage all Government Agencies to switch to Linux. It’s completely ridiculous that hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money are wasted every year on Microsoft licenses. The French Gendarmerie switched to Linux and they never went back to Windows. They saved millions. Money that they can spend on actually doing their job.

• Create a Canadian fund to encourage Open Source Software. A $10 million fund over 5 years would not be much money, but it could help open source software developers. A small $100 000 grant could really help Gimp, Kdenlive and Krita fight Adobe. Too many Canadian artists and Canadian production companies are exploited by Adobe.

• Ban foreigners from owning more than 40% of any Canadian media outlet. It’s absolutely sickening that an american hedge fund (Chatham Asset Management) currently owns 20 different canadian newspapers.

• Reduce the immigration rate. Justin Trudeau did a lot of good things, but immigration was one of two biggest failures. Under his leadership, the population increased by 3% a year. The Canadian population increase twice as fast as the population of Mexico, Brazil, Spain, the United States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia. This is too extreme. Canada should aim for 2% population growth instead of 3%. Also, don’t concentrate people in a single place. It’s wrong to have a 4% population growth in Toronto and 0.5% elsewhere.

• Improve the voting system. This was the second failure of Justin Trudeau. The First-Past-The-Post voting system is just flawed. It is basically designed to create two very powerful political parties, at the expense of pluralism. FPTP is the reason why the US is stuck with only two parties.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger's_law

I’m not Australian and I don’t know much about Australian politics.

However, I know that Australian people drive some of the biggest cars in the world. Car companies just manufacture huge SUVs and sell them to the Australian, thinking “these dumb fucks will buy them”.

That’s not good for the climate. That’s bad for the roads. That’s not even good for Australians themselves, because it’s very unsafe for pedestrians. I heard that Albanese encouraged mandatory rules for better fuel efficiency. Which is a good idea. I just don’t understand why the other bald guy says they are bad.

In the 1990s and 2000s, the US Auto Industry successfully fought against every attempt to impose fuel efficiency rules. After US Auto manufacturers went bankrupt in 2008, President Obama bailed them out and forced them to save some fuel. Because outside North American, no one wanted to buy american cars anymore.

During his first mandate, Trump rolled back all those Obama fuel-efficiency rules:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/15/us/politics/trump-obama-fuel-economy-standards.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/13/climate/cafe-emissions-rollback-oil-industry.html

Lack of strong fuel efficiency rules is the main reason why American cars are so heavy and consume so much oil compared to European cars. The bald candidate is wrong to say fuel efficiency rules are bad.

Some of his ideas, like defunding CBC, are foolish.

I don’t think Pierre Poilievre is a Nazi. Statements like that are unhelpful.

To be clear. This is a government agency endorsing the software as safe and effective. So bureaucrats and employees can’t be reprimanded if they use them.

This isn’t the French Prime Minister announcing the country will cancel Microsoft Office subscriptions and build a fund to support FOSS projects. Gimp has nowhere near the ressources they actually need.

If you want to see what ideology can do to a nation’s elite, look at the United Kingdom today.

London isn’t a global financial center because the British have special genes for money. London is a global finance center because the United Kingdom was the most powerful global empire that the world had ever seen.

Throughout history, the powerful nations scream “FREE TRADE, OPEN YOUR MARKETS. NOW !!!” because they are confident. They know that their big corporations can be unleashed on the small countries. At the peak of its power, the UK was the most free trade country in the world. In London, the UK elite were 100% confident their corporations could dominate the world. The Chinese try to resist? They don’t want to accept our corporations ? We will make them open their market, whether they like or not.

For a long period, the US was actually a protectionist country.

Why did the entire US elite became a cheerleader of globalization after World War 2 ? Extreme confidence. They know that globalization means Coca-Cola, Starbucks Coffee, Amazon, Adobe, Boeing, Microsoft and Apple can be unleashed on the planet.

From Tokyo to Mumbai, from Montreal to Rio de Janeiro, from Mecca to Sydney. They want to see McDonalds and Starbucks everywhere. They want Amazon everywhere. They want Adobe Software and Microsoft Windows everywhere. They want to see Apple phones everywhere.

In recent years, the Chinese started to build sophisticated large corporations capable of threatening US dominance in fields like Pharma, Satellites, Chips, Robotics, Technology, Planes.

That’s when the US elite really started to worry. Under the Biden administration, the americans tried to throw money at Intel and Boeing. They created a powerful wall to protect car corporations against BYD. Trump is just a symptom of the american panic, but he is crude and ignorant.

The British are no longer an empire. They are increasingly a small little country like many others. And like all small countries, they are fucked by corporate empires like Starbucks Coffee or Amazon

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-19967397

https://www.channel4.com/news/amazons-tax-bill-and-government-grants-revealed

Make absolutely no mistake. Going to Amazon is worse for the economy than going to a British-owned book store. Going to Starbucks is worse for the economy than going to a British-citizen owned coffee. Anyone telling you otherwise is taking you for a fool. In one case the money is leaving Britain and increasing the foreign deficit. In another case, the money is taxed and stays in Britain.

The London elites, still believe they run the British empire. They openly scream “We LOVE globalization, we LOVE free trade”. These fools went as far as selling their critical water infrastructure to foreign investors and bragging about it (“Britain is open for business”).

Now, Trump openly declared a trade war on them. The British Chancellor reacts by saying calls for buying British products are bad because it’s against free trade.

That’s what happens when you completely swallow your own bullshit.

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