Padraig

I will admit I was exaggerating somewhat (I hope). People have been saying that Russia will collapse soon after its initial invasion failed. I suppose if you keep repeating it, it could eventually be true. But in the meantime, I will continue to roll my eyes when I read it. I'm sure Russia is suffering a lot. But Ukraine certainly is too. And as you said, continuing external support is a serious concern. It might all work out. I'm not as clued in as some of you all. But I don't see much reason to be optimistic. I hope i'm wrong.

I wouldn't say I know a lot about Venezuela but I know enough to be really confused by what is going on there. I was trying to find some decent analysis of this situation. I think it is reasonable to be skeptical of articles from cato.org but there isn't much else and it does seem to make reasonable points. https://www.cato.org/blog/will-nicolas-maduro-invade-guyana It is basically suggesting that fear of a detrimental ruling from the ICJ, fear of losing the 2024 election, Guyana having no real army, a belief that Colombia and Brazil (with their left wing Presidents) wouldn't oppose them and the US being distracted by other fish, means Venezuela is willing to push this. Concluding... The Brazil thing is the most interesting aspect. Brazil has supported diplomacy but it has moved some of its army near the borders in case things go crazy.

And I’m sure in 20 years those costs will force them to stop fighting in Ukraine.

I’m assuming you read what Kal posted. I mentioned the EU. And on the battlefield, nearly all fronts see Russia grinding forward by meters. Ukraine isn’t even doing that.

There seems to be a new boiling the frog situation too. Over the last 6 months, things seem to have gotten a little worse for Ukraine each month. Now Orban is getting more vocal in the EU, on top of the US money issue. I fear where it ends up.

The interesting question is how far the people there are willing to go. I’m assuming not war. This issue is already with the ICJ, so you’d imagine people will wait to see what it will judge. The US has reduced sanctions on Venezuela recently. Hope they don’t have to reconsider. But still, Russia has helped reopen the threat of war for land. Bad times.

Of the 4 I have seen, my personal favourites would be Oppenheimer, Past Lives, Killers of the Flower Moon and then Barbie. All are very good movies in their own way. I don't think I could ever watch Killers of the Flower Moon again though (or at least, for a very long time), which is both a point in its favour and the opposite. Oppenheimer blew my mind.

Was this response directed at me? I do know a little bit about the Irish economy. That article doesn't say that Ireland is a tax haven, which is a controversial idea. The challenges around Irish GDP figures have been well known for almost a decade. if you read the link in my last post, it talks about those very challenges, which you are now repeating. But even using better measurements of the Irish economy (i.e., not GDP), Ireland has been doing better than "ok". It is heavily dependent on certain industries though. We have done boom and bust and we are probably more open to another bust given those dependencies. And while we have been doing better than "ok", some parts of society have been left behind, and remain very fragile to shocks (e.g., COVID). There are a lot of common features across global economies but each country has its own localised aspects also. That affects the saliency. So one can generalise but not too much.

If anyone really cares about the data behind all this, you can go to Eurobarometer survey. Download the data annex there. On page 45 it looks at "top two most important issues facing your country at the moment" (there are actually several pages on this topic. It is a very large file). I didn't realise Ireland was so out of kilter with the rest of the EU on some measures. 61% says housing is one of the top two (compared to 10% in the EU), then inflation/cost of living at 44% (that is very similar with the rest of EU). While Immigration is also very similar with the average in the rest of EU at 14%. There are a lot of interesting things in this survey (Netherlands scores more than double the EU average when it comes to Immigration, which reflects the latest elections there). The UK obviously doesn't feature in this report. Immigration is non-trivial and I wouldn't want to be seen to dismiss the challenges around it in Ireland. But it is dwarfed by housing and cost of living (and healthcare). And of course these issues are all linked. Partly why immigration is salient is because people can't find homes and blame immigrants. I generally find it pointless to focus on individual people but while there has been a focus on how the recent attacker was an immigrant, he also was homeless (and living in accommodation for the homeless). There were mental health issues also but its maddening how everything bad seems to connect to the housing crisis here. Well, GDP can be a misleading figure to use in the context of Ireland but its not like we perform poorly when you look at other measures (which strips out the weird things going on). See below if interested. https://www.cso.ie/en/interactivezone/statisticsexplained/nationalaccountsexplained/modifiedgni/ And fine on the UK surveys. Interesting as such but pity we don't have the same type of info before the referendum.

But was this polling done before the referendum or after the economic hit? It is still interesting if the polling was after the economic hit but it would be much more powerful if it was before. I am surprised that there isn't more research on this. We all agree that it isn't a binary issue (i.e. no immigration restrictions versus no immigration). So the only question is about quantities required and economic consequences of choosing specific quantities. Right now, people think the other side are patronising because they are making assumptions about the nuances around immigration. But both sides don't seem to know enough (from my perspective anyhow). Except that I don't think it is much of an assumption to say that immigration will increase in future years given worldwide trends around climate change.

This probably highlights how we view things differently. From my perspective, people are complicated and those responses you are criticising are just trying to add nuance to the discussion. Instead, you are banking the "immigration must be reduced significantly" line, without seeing the purpose of exploring those views further. I don't know how many immigrants the UK "needs". That sounds like something that should be researched. Especially since you are mainly focused on the "controllable" quantities. However you choose the define it, I don't believe it was a question at that time of GDP growth v Brexit.

Is that not what I said? You should know this far better than I but I don't believe that was the main argument. Wasn't it that everything was better with Brexit? Hindsight is different. There probably are some differences between Ireland and the UK on this subject generally. For years now, it has been hammered home that the source of our economic success is significant international inward investment (in money and people). Up to now, we haven't had this obsession with immigration as in the UK (i.e., witness Brexit). As I said, people have responded to the most overriding issue in Ireland by moving left. But that issue is housing, not immigration. When immigration comes up, it is often framed in relation to how it makes the housing crisis worse. I can buy the idea that the Tories made a promise on immigration without any idea how to deliver it (if that is what you are saying). But i'm not sure the promise is achievable. We just keep coming back to "we want less" of it, without any real details or plan. Unless Rwanda is the plan. I don't really follow all that.

Is it though? This is the nub of Brexit and other similar issues. What do people actually want? You ask people do they want to reduce immigration, they say yes. But you ask them do you want to improve public transport or health care, they will also say yes. But issues like health care rely on immigration. So the much more salient question is whether you want to reduce immigration even if it leads to a similar decline in health care (if not worse). So when you say that the majority of government departments are trying to increase numbers, I would suggest that they are being very rational in most cases because they will point at a survey that says that people highly value the service they provide. It just happens to depend on immigration. The restructuring idea is interesting but whatever about anything else, we will need more people in health care in future. The question is then restated to say that we want to remove the "bad types" of immigration. But what are those? People hopefully don't support sending refugees back to their homeland when they are at genuine risk of death or serious harm? Or I'm not sure of statistics for other countries but I know in Ireland, it is estimated by the Migrant Rights Centre that there were 17,000 – 20,000 undocumented persons in the State in 2020, which is pretty much nobody, even for a small country like Ireland. So what do people really want? For issues like immigration it is very difficult to parse exactly. It gets more complicated when you throw climate change into the mix and governments talk about delaying climate initiatives or reduced foreign aid. The more climate change hits, the more refugees. If we don't support other countries (and this is complicated too), the more refugees. If you want to stop immigration, its like crime, you need to fight the causes, which are massively complicated. But long term, it is the only appropriate approach. As for the far right. Far right political parties are difficult to ignore but i wouldn't let far right mobs dictate anything . It is fair to say that, iike any other criminal element, they reflect a societal failure (e.g., lack of housing), which should be worked on but that's it. Suggesting we are doing something wrong because there are more right wing violence this year than last year? That's almost pointless to speculate on. Far right wing violence may be something that will never go away for the foreseeable future. Such people are never going to be happy. Social media has incited it, linked groups worldwide, and there will always be some issue that excites a few hundred people to violence. A couple of years ago it was COVID, now its immigration. If immigration really was "reduced", I certainly wouldn't expect a similar decline in far right violence. That genie is uncorked. We might be lucky though. And solving the housing crisis will help the general environment. A more equal society will also help. A lot of things will help but I will agree with HoI in that its hard for governments to look at long term solutions and a lot of these things will take years. The restructure your society idea, so you don't need immigration. I'm curious about that. Japan has taken some steps on that path, as its population is now declining moderately. It goes hand in hand with no longer constructing your economy to grow eternally (which Japan stopped doing since the 1990s, not deliberately though), which probably is required to become more sustainable. But i'm assuming this sort of restructure would still require going well beyond what Japan has done. And i'm not sure what kind of research has been done here (there has definitely been research done on moving away from the economic growth model though).

Thanks for sharing that insight.

Yes. Nobody is immune from real life. Do you have a solution to share with us?

Oh come on. I can assure you that people are well aware of the housing crisis and that immigration is a major challenge also. So no, I wouldn't be thanking a far right mob for raising awareness of them. Making some sort of moral judgment regarding immigration because of the behaviour of one person (who we still know very little about if you ignore the mess that is social media) is as silly as focusing only on the other immigrant who helped save people's lives during the attack. And actually, in Ireland, it is the left which have benefited from the perceived incompetence of the government in managing the housing crisis. There is no significant far right party here, as of yet. While Varadkar is the head of a centre-right party. Par for the course for such parties to try to play to their right.

I would say the opposite sadly. The VVD has said it wouldn't join the next government but it wouldn't block it either. So that makes it much more likely that the PVV will get the numbers it needs. The NSC and BBB seem willing to go along with a VVD government. It may not be a stable government but it will be a government with Wilders presumably as PM. The political parties in the Netherlands can easily decide not to let VVD take power but it seems that enough parties are ok with it. They have more in common with VVD than alternatives. All times are scary. While the Dutch news is very disappointing, we shouldn't forget the better results more recently in Poland or in Spain, where Vox did worse than expected or in Brazil last year. That said, inflation has meant that mainstream parties in power are vulnerable. And it is fair to say that the consequences of climate change will make us all very vulnerable. So I wouldn't be too positive...

Ultimately, you (as in Dutch people) know what it means, so that is all that matters. An international audience may find it confusing but that's by the by. And I don't envy you this. My feeling is that once a party goes into power, it normalises them. It will be far easier for them to get into power again (even if it takes a few years before it arises again) once you accept them as a "normal" governing party. And it will be far easier for people to justify voting for them (if a normal party is willing to work with them, why shouldn't I vote for them). And yes there is a possibility that a party actually does moderate if it comes into power, when faced with the mundaneness of actual governing. On the other hand, worse case scenario, you have a Hungary situation, and you never manage to get them out of power again. Because I wouldn't assume that their support reduces. They might be lucky and inflation drops over the next couple of years (not because of anything they did, just coincidence) and they get the credit. Their immigration policies could be very popular. The longer they are in power, the more damage they'll do. They certainly could be incompetent but we have a clear example in Hungary of the opposite (or at least, where they get away with any incompetence by playing up the populist angle). I don't believe that the Netherlands is as fragile as Hungary but this could be the first step on that path. Yes, sadly you can go through nearly every country in Europe and say something similar. The left are back into power in Spain after the last election, so it's not an immediate problem but admittedly, that government looks a little fragile, so they too may fall eventually.

I find that framing curious. From my perspective, the whole point of an election is forming a government, so divorcing the election results from who forms the next government seems very strange to me. I think there is a little obsession about labels everywhere, which means that nuance suffers. Saying a party won, when it has just under 25% of the seats and no obvious partner, seems like it removes a lot of nuance. Labels have their place but this may not be one of them. I did see this morning that one of the other larger parties has left the door ajar about going into government with PVV, so your fears are probably well placed (sadly). But having PVV be a junior partner in any coalition is one thing. Supporting them to be the senior partner is government would strike me as very dangerous for the junior partner. And for the country. If the Dutch political parties want to keep PVV out of power, they can do it. Whether they have the backbone to do it is another thing of course. But they are far from powerless.

I don't want to underplay the significance of the results but I'm not sure I understand why the word "win" is used. "Win" suggests that Wilders will be PM, or at least hold office, but that is probably more unlikely than likely? Now, the word "win" is used all over the internet in terms of this result but it wouldn't be the first time the mainline media exaggerates things sadly. Unless I am missing something. From my understanding, it will be very difficult for the PVV party to get into power without support from one of the next 3 largest parties and haven't they all said they don't want to work with him? Now maybe no other alternative will emerge and one of them will buckle but while a shocking result, it may not lead to the worst result. On the other hand, this highlights how there is a viable plan for far right parties to take power in Western countries. Wilders did seem to mellow his tone this year. That worked in Italy and seems to be working in France also. On top of that, inflation and immigration are a toxic mix It is sadly ironic that Putin's war has led to both and opened the door for people like Wilders (although, I think he has distanced himself from Putin since that war?). Mellowing your tone will not fool a lot of people but many people are concerned about immigration (whether we like it or not) and it shouldn't be surprising that Wilders saw an opportunity to take advantage of it. So we have far right parties in power in Hungary, Italy, Slovakia etc. The rise of far right parties in Sweden and Finland. The increasing popularity of Le Pen in France, AfD in Germany. Very few countries are untouched by them (although Poland did go in the opposite direction thankfully). It is very disappointing and I don't believe it was expected either.

I suppose you mean (relatively speaking) historically accurate films? When Ben Hur was released, it was the second biggest movie ever (after Gone with the Wind). Both of those are heavily fictionalised but i'd still put them in the historical epic bracket. More recently, Gladiator was huge too but it again falls into the more fictionalised category. Hollywood has struggled to repeat that success though. We'll see what happens with Gladiator 2. I'm not sure how fictionalised Lawrence of Arabia was (it must be less fictionalised than the other films I have mentioned) and it was successful at the time. Oppenheimer is a historical epic, critically acclaimed, long, very successful film. But you might put 20th century set films in a different category (partly because a film made in 1945 about Oppenheimer wouldn't have been seen as a historical epic).

The film, the Woman King, does show that films tackling less European/US centric stories can be made these days. Not that it did that well but you just need an actor passionate about a project and a good script. Its not impossible. But getting any film made these days is challenging.

Yes, Very sad. I imagine things will get worse but its an understandable development after the very poor governments there.

I see Egypt has pulled out of bidding for 2026. They had trouble getting permission from the government there apparently. Given recent world events, probably not a massive surprise. So LA presumably has 2026 in the bag. And Tel Aviv is the only bidder for 2027, which also has its complexities.

I finally got around to finishing my run through movies from the early 1980s. Raging Bull. Definitely a classic. Since I also watched Killers of the Flower Moon recently, it was an interesting experience to compare the two Scorsese movies. You can tell a story about a deeply unpleasant man, and still be willing to watch it again because it is told very well, with great acting. Hard to imagine watching Flower Moon again, even if it had a lot of positive aspects. I’m not the biggest Indiana Jones fan but Raiders is definitely a very enjoyable movie. And oh so influential. I had watched Blade Runner when I was much younger. Wasn’t that impressed as I expected a completely different movie. Now I can appreciate it much more. Ironically, I’m merely following the initial public reaction and the later re-evaluation. A meditation on being human. The Right Stuff. This is a very fine film about the early space age but the heart of the movie is focused on Chuck Yeager, who is tangentially related. It still works but it makes it feels like there are two separate movies pressed together. Probably most famous now for introducing so many younger actors who would become some of the bigger character actors around. And I had never seen Amadeus before. Or that familiar with the story except that F Murray Abraham would play the villain (in his greatest role). While it starts almost as a comedy (and there are some truly hilarious moments in it), it ends as a tragedy, going into a very dark place. Based on this movie, you’d wonder how Mozart ever became famous. (Obviously, artistic license is taken). The fact that I didn’t recognise most of the music just adds to my weird sense of dissonance (I am a philistine it seems). But I really liked it. Jeffrey Jones is great as the Emperor (before I found out he has had seriously unsavoury troubles too in real life). Weird how Hulce never did anything much after this.