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The Political Thread

Started by The Legendary Shark, 09 April, 2010, 03:59:03 PM

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Hawkmumbler

Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 23 January, 2019, 01:49:57 PM
Quote from: Theblazeuk on 23 January, 2019, 01:41:12 PM
Why would you need NFC?

I can't work that out, either.
Personally as someone who spends a fair bit of time in London, NFC is useful for capped contactless travel.

Jim_Campbell

Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 23 January, 2019, 01:54:00 PM
Personally as someone who spends a fair bit of time in London, NFC is useful for capped contactless travel.

I understand what it is, I don't understand why it's a requirement for this Home Office app that's never going to see the phone its installed on go anywhere near a contactless PDQ and doesn't need it to.
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Hawkmumbler

Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 23 January, 2019, 02:03:39 PM
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 23 January, 2019, 01:54:00 PM
Personally as someone who spends a fair bit of time in London, NFC is useful for capped contactless travel.

I understand what it is, I don't understand why it's a requirement for this Home Office app that's never going to see the phone its installed on go anywhere near a contactless PDQ and doesn't need it to.
Oh, I misunderstood. I thought yourself and Blaze where queering why android phones, generally lacking NFC, would be a needed feature.

Professor Bear

A cynical man might suggest that knowing someone of uncertain residential status owns an NFC phone will make them easier to track, seeing as Google cooperates with the UKgov in matters of tracking and data decryption while Apple doesn't (yet).
Keeping the cynicism train on track, mass deportations will really help fill those holding centers run by private industry who I am sure are politically neutral and have never donated to any of the UK's major parties.

IndigoPrime

NFC apparently required to read the passport chip, IIRC. But doesn't work with iPhone because the people writing the app are fucking idiots. (They've blamed Apple for "not offering support", reportedly.) Also, given the shitshow that Google Play is, I'm just waiting for the slew of fake apps that steal everyone's details, over and above legally gained details being sold to and shared with third-parties without the express permission of the owners.

Also, as various people have noted, if you were looking to draw up a potential deportation list, this settled status lark and the accompanying "fuck off if you want your data" is precisely how you'd go about doing it...

Funt Solo

Meanwhile, in USA-land, Trump's minions are editing photographs to make his hands look larger (and his neck thinner).
++ A-Z ++  coma ++

Theblazeuk

Holy shit. The passport CHIP?

Set themselves up to fail, every time.

IndigoPrime

It's all going brilliantly, people being denied settled status for not providing information that they shouldn't have to, and using a system that won't allow them to, and in some cases that's impossible to provide anyway. The latest doozy: denying applications if you can't submit proof of six months of employment (exercising treaty rights is NOT a demand for settled status)... for 2019.

I'll bet everyone on this forum would have trouble doing that, unless you have a working TARDIS lying about.

Professor Bear

Giving Graham Linehan time to modify his views is working out well.

IndigoPrime

"8 minutes left. Goodbye twitter."

Shame he doesn't mean for good. I'll admit, I almost skipped Book of Scars because it had a Linehan afterword. Also rather depressing to find Robert Webb has in the same line of thinking. I'd rather liked his book on the whole, although it's not nearly as humble as he thinks it is. (Some bits are about his growing up and sexuality, and having trouble with women; and then he talks about all the women he shagged. So, er...)

It's really odd how people can turn and dig in.

radiator

Is he having some kind of breakdown or something?

He's someone I've always admired up til now and eveyone's entitled to their own opinions, but I'm really not sure what he's trying to achieve with all this? I'll freely admit that I'm largely ignorant of the issue at hand and am far too uninformed to have any strong opinions either way about it... but can he really not see how badly he's coming across? And is it really worth (seemingly) torching his career over?

For the love of God just get off Twitter, man. (That goes for everyone else, too).

Funt Solo

I find gender politics very ... fluid.  It's a lot to take in.  Some people get frustrated with the shifting sands of what was once a seemingly simple binary system of male or female (designated fairly obviously at birth for most people).  It's easy to fall into traps.

Even Monty Python's Life of Brian, with the "I demand the right to be called Loretta!" can now come across as hideously old-fashioned and out of touch, whilst at the time of its release was breaking barriers in terms of our freedom to express our opinion of organized religion.  "Where's the fetus gonna gestate?" points to the idea that gender identity has something to do with sexual proclivity or the desire to procreate, when it needn't.

As for Linehan, it's just odd that anyone would choose to have that conversation with thousands of people at once, in public, and take an extreme stance.
++ A-Z ++  coma ++

Theblazeuk

Gender identity politics is a lot to take in and tricky to navigate when you're one of the heteronormative CIS populace.

But then, when I was a kid, being Gay was still a bit to take in. And I was still in what was, at the time, thought of as the good times and the 'look how far we've come' period. The "I want to identify as an attack helicopter" crap is the same, in the end, as the "Gay marriage - next people will be marrying animals".

I fall into the category of most people, for most things. But no one falls into it for everything, and we all went through those periods when we took some flak for it. Christ, I remember getting shit for playing WH40k and basically dropping the entire hobby. And that was just a hobby. What if I didn't fall into the two binary options dictated at birth and carried throughout my entire life.

That's probably even harder than falling into one of those binary options but being attracted to my type, rather than the other one. I don't want to do anything that makes anyone feel uncomfortable to be themselves, other than if 'themselves' is an exclusionary dickhead.

IndigoPrime

I'll admit something: I find trans hard to fully understand. This despite two people I know having very publicly come out as trans. So what I do is I read. (One of them writes a blog.) I listen. I try to understand. What I don't do is use a massive Twitter following and a platform to unleash hell on people in that situation, or try to pit one chunk of feminists and a certain subset of lesbians against trans people. What Linehan is doing is just fucking insane. And Webb, too. Gah.

I interviewed Linehan once. I had a great time. I loved his shows. I used to really rate his Twitter feed. Now, even the thought of watching the things he was involved with grosses me out.

As for Monty Python, things change. The problem is when we don't. We can look back now and think that was a not good moment in that team's history. Similarly, we can view the train-wreck that is Friends in a similar light, with how awful it is to minorities, anyone who has the audacity to be overweight, and, yes, trans people (remember the 'jokes' about Charles Bing/Helena Handbasket?). What's important is we call shit out when we see it now.

Theblazeuk

At least the lesson of Charles bing is to accept them, right? I forget. Maybe it was actually about the trauma it caused Chandler and how it was a selfish act, I really hope it was the former though.

In related news https://www.newsweek.com/trans-people-required-be-sterilized-changing-gender-after-court-ruling-japan-1304865

Legally enforced sterilisation. Always a good look, to be glib about a sentence that repels me utterly.

As for the feminist/lesbian angle, I think it's inevitable. Some people will always kick the ladder out behind them if they think someone might be trying to climb up in their footsteps. And yeah, I admit I don't understand either and I really struggle to not refer to a person of my acquaintance as 'They', or refrain from calling them 'Man' as part of verbal punctuation. Still - got to try right? Not like it cost us anything.