Popular protests in the EU

[Manfred Belheim]

That's what the women were protesting about.
What a women is wearing does not mean that she agrees to have sex with her attacker.

Yeah but if you agree to have sex, then it's not rape is it.

 

[Estebonrober]

Which is reason enough. The government should newer take steps to deliberately hurt the living standards of their people other than in dire and severe emergencies like war.

Never? I’m not sure about that, but it inevitably ends up hurting politically. Science said diesel was better and governments adjusted for it. We’ve now learned better, and governments adjusted again.

This is learning in a social level and it’s ok but when you do it it needs to be accounted for properly and adjusted to carefully. In this case a longer timeline maybe? Rebates? Subsidies? There are ways.

 

[Hrothbern]

What does growth have to do with anything? There is a difference between demanding growth and demanding the government not deliberately undercut you by policy to suit their own ideological agenda.

Taking appropiate action against climate changes should cost 2-3% of global GDP.
When an average government has 40% of national GDP as tax earnings. A cost of 2% of GDP would amount of redirecting a relative 5% of the 40% towards Climate actions.
That means that that government has either to apply 5% austerity or increase the overall tax with relative 5%.

The government should newer take steps to deliberately hurt the living standards of their people other than in dire and severe emergencies like war.

7
If I follow what you say here: austerity cuts are out of the question.
That leaves growth of GDP as source to pay for Climate actions, or higher tax on the few that can pay without being affected in their personal lives.

And businesses. Tax businesses. They ain't people.

If you tax businesses barely able to stay profitable, barely able to invest in needed developments, you force them to increase prices to the people or just remove jobs and GDP. It is only the money extracting by big corporate and big investors that you need to adress. People getting and having money that do no longer contribute to our economies and their growths.

 

[Hrothbern]

And businesses. Tax businesses. They ain't people.

If you tax businesses barely able to stay profitable, barely able to invest in needed developments, you force them to increase prices to the people or just remove jobs and GDP. It is only the money extracting by big corporate and big investors that you need to adress. People getting and having money that do no longer contribute to our economies and their growths.

Adding some info to back that:

Most businesses are people !
You can see from table below that for example in the UK 96% of all the companies have between 0-9 employees. They supply 33% of the UK employmernt and 22% of UK turnover.
And I add the recent statement on tax and (small) business of Corbyn, who is as dedicated as I am to tax the extreme incomes and wealth.

House of Commons library Business statistics

Asked what he [Corbyn] thought about people who do well from business, he [Corbyn] replied:
No, I don’t have a problem with people doing well at all. Indeed, I know many in my own community and other places that do set up and establish small businesses, and sometimes they grow to be considerably bigger. They all go through the pain of trying to get a premises, if they are making things or selling things, trying to borrow the money to do it, trying to fix it up and all that to get started. And they work incredibly hard and they do take huge personal risks to achieve it.
Some fall by the wayside, and those businesses don’t make it. Others do very well.
I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t have a problem at all with that. Quite the opposite. Actually, it’s the dynamic that’s brought about much of the technical and economic development we’ve got in this country.
But two things need to happen. One is, those innovative, creative people who have designed so much of the high-technology we’ve got need support to do it, and need access to appropriate funding to get their businesses going.
And if they do become incredibly rich, then I invite them to be happy with their wealth, but also to share it a bit by paying their taxes as appropriately so that our public services are there for them, just as much as they are there for everybody else, so that we don’t have this horribly divided society. I don’t think any of use want to walk past rough sleepers on the way into our businesses every day.
https://www.theguardian.com/politic...-for-up-to-two-years-clark-says-politics-live

 

[AmazonQueen]

Yeah but if you agree to have sex, then it's not rape is it.

The protest was about a court case where a defence barrister argued that the underwear the victim was wearing implied consent to sex which is effectively arguing that women don't have to actually consent to sex to be deemed to have consented to it.
A return to the old she was asking for it standard.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Adding some info to back that:

Most businesses are people !

So tax the ones that ain't. Done deal.

Really though I don't see why this is even a discussion. Governments shouldn't do anything that 50%+1 people in their country disprove off. Ever. Under any condition. No matter what. So in all these cases all they should do is count up the protesters and their sympathizers. Maybe like hold a plebiscite or something and be done with it.

 

[rah]

Governments shouldn't do anything that 50%+1 people in their country disprove off. Ever. Under any condition. No matter what.

That is the recipe to oppress minorities.

 

[Cheetah]

Really though I don't see why this is even a discussion. Governments shouldn't do anything that 50%+1 people in their country disprove off. Ever. Under any condition. No matter what.

So when 50%+1 of the people disprove of blacks or Jews living in their country, the government shouldn't let the blacks and the Jews living there. Glad we got that cleared out.

Reminds me I should really find that other thread again...

 

[Manfred Belheim]

The protest was about a court case where a defence barrister argued that the underwear the victim was wearing implied consent to sex which is effectively arguing that women don't have to actually consent to sex to be deemed to have consented to it.
A return to the old she was asking for it standard.

I was just being a pedant about language usage. As in "consent to rape" being meaningless, but it doesn't matter.

 

[AmazonQueen]

I was just being a pedant about language usage. As in "consent to rape" being meaningless, but it doesn't matter.

I think "consent to rape" qualifies as an oxymoron

 

[Manfred Belheim]

I was going to type "oxymoron", but then I checked the actual definition because this came up before. Then I didn't.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

No so much:

 

[FriendlyFire]

I suspect there is a lot more to the story, perhaps the Cleaning lady Lied repeatably under oath ?
There is wide spread practice of faking university degrees to get government jobs, the Greek government previously just did mass firings. Its odd that a cleaning lady received a 10 year sentence

Greek cleaning lady jailed for 10 years for faking diploma
https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe...-faking-diploma-20181123-p50hse.html#comments

 

[Hrothbern]

I suspect there is a lot more to the story, perhaps the Cleaning lady Lied repeatably under oath ?
There is wide spread practice of faking university degrees to get government jobs, the Greek government previously just did mass firings. Its odd that a cleaning lady received a 10 year sentence

Odd indeed
Let's wait and see what comes out until is more known.
My first impression is that they were looking for dirt (checking 15 year old documents for hiring someone for a civil servant cleaning job) to be able to fire her, to reduce government cost, to save cost. And that it run out of control to a court case (10 years prison is much higher cost for the government).
10 years for defrauding the public for such petty things... wow... in that case Greece can better use uninhabitated islands to put away whole generations of politicians and higher ranking civil servants.... and not only Greece !
And even if she did lie in court.... did she have a pro bono lawyer to protect her ?
It smells like class justice.

EDIT
on that 10 years
I checked some recent court verdicts in the Netherlands of that same petty character for perjury (lie under oath) and that was typically punished with 100-200 hours community service + 1-2 years conditional punishment in prison (meaning no prison unless a new crime).

 

[r16]

so , anyone feeling Ghosn of Nissan taken down because Macron had to be doing something ? Or whatever . Poster with like muddled mind set on conspiracies and every TV footage here showed Ghosn standing next to Macron ? Who has provided 0% taxes for corporations but has raised diesel 20% in a year and accuses Right Wing conspiracy ?

 

[AdrienIer]

The Japanese got Ghosn, so probably no conspiracy from Macron

 

[Akka]

Pretty sure the Japanese wanted to nail him mainly due to nationalistic irritation, but yet somehow I can't really rouse myself to give a crap about some taxe-cheating millionnaire getting the short end of the stick.

 

[Silurian]

The Greek Cleaning women story does look a bit strange.

She left school when she was 11 rather than 12 as she claimed.
She took a job when she was 34 and produced a fake certificate to show that she left school at 12.
She worked there for 15 years until being discovered.

I assume that she could read and write and do basic maths, all that is required for most cleaners.
They did not check her certificate for fifteen years.
In the 23 years before she took the job it is probable that she improved those skills; but she could have lost some but that is also true of someone who left after 6 years at primary school.
The education she had 23 years before she took the job is not of great importance, what matters is her willingness to do the job and her recent work history.

If they had discovered the falsification shortly after she had been employed I could understand her being dismissed but after fifteen years she has demonstrated that she can do the job. Since she has carried out the job for fifteen years she has not defrauded the Greek government of any money.

If the Greek Supreme Court do not dismiss this I would think she would have grounds for appeal to the ECJ or ECHR.

 

[innonimatu]

The empreror has already sent in the troops to crush the protests that spread to the "colonies":
https://abcnews.go.com/Internationa...eployed-amid-protests-reunion-island-59359264
Protect tourist and the property of the wealth from the mass of the poor, restore order and all that good stuff...

In the metropolis of course that would be more complicated. One may not have enough foreign legion to turn against the people. If only we could go back to the times of the Holy Alliance and sent in soldiers from country A to calm down the plebs in country B...

I'm getting a feeling that this is not something Macron will easily suppress. Nor that he can order crushed, because most of his police and army are recruited in the marginalized areas of the country where most people are coming out to protest.

 

[FriendlyFire]

If the Greek Supreme Court do not dismiss this I would think she would have grounds for appeal to the ECJ or ECHR.

But that would be German Jackbooted tyranny and fascism of the evil EU

Her sentence was already appealed from 15 to 10 years, unless she was stealing school supplies over the period of her employment, or not carrying out cleaning duties. This wouldn't surprise me as during the economic lending spree, public services workers collected wages without turning up to work. Essentially ghost workers on government payroll