Maybe it’s just me, but I find this a bit of an obnoxious way to ask the question.

“Feddit.uk”, typo in your title.

I don’t have an iPad but I’m able to login to Feddit.UK using Chrome on Windows without issue.

However Chrome on iPad is basically just a skin for Safari given how Apple doesn’t allow other companies browsers on the platform, so how it behaves on other systems may not be representative. This could either be unique to iPad Chrome OR a transitory problem at 13:50?

Interesting but unsurprising polling perhaps. Although the headline is only 18% of leavers think Brexit has been a success, it does also include 61% still think it will turn out well in the end. 72% of the leavers would still vote for Brexit even knowing how it’s turned out.

Given how close the referendum was, this is yet another poll suggesting the vote would have tipped the other way if run now. Although that is just illustrative, it’s quite different to voting to join the EU now which I doubt would be popular.

I think the threshold for rejoining is much higher than it was for leaving - we’d have to sign up to the Euro, we’d get no rebates despite the ongoing borked common agricultural policy, and all the negative aspects of the EU would come back to the fore. I was a remainer, but many of the negatives of the EU have often been ignored due to the polarisation of the debate, including by EU citizens who have focused on a them-vs-us mentality thanks to the antagnostic approach of the Conservative government.

But the EU does have serious problems - structural problems in the Eurozone, unfixed since the 2008 debt crisis, major issues with democratic accountability and unaddressed financial corruption, difficulties effectively dealing with members like Hungry and Poland as they slide towards more authoritarianism, and lack of consensus on dealing with the migration issues which continue to cost lives and are a stain on the entire EU’s (and the UK’s) reputation. Despite being a remainer, if I’m honest I’m not sure how I’d vote.

Truss seem’s unable to accept that her ideas and approach were fundamentally broken. Borrowing to fund tax cuts for the wealthy is just a bad idea. The supposed logic that it would stimulate growth as it is based on an over reliance on “trickle down economics” and also a lack of appreciation of the reality of the last 13 years since the 2008 economic crisis. Interest rates have been low, and “quantitative easing” created cheap money amassed by the wealthy and cheap credit with a low return economy; the wealthy have been hoarding this money rather than investing it in growth and enterprise.

Borrowing to invest in infrastructure such as the hospital rebuilds, HS2 and the Northern Power House rail, and to build a fund for a UK public alternative for business & investment financing to foster entrepreneurs - that would have been a good approach. Using the money to build and buy assets, and invest in growing new companies would both stimulate the economy by putting money into peoples & businessed pockets, while getting something directly in exchange - assets and loans/shares in new companies - and should reassure the markets that the money isn’t just being frittered away on a crazy experiment.

Yeah. Ultimately this is the BoE’s fault for not acting faster and harder. Interest rates would still have gone up but the pain may have been less severe.

Sunak was a fool for trying to take credit for Inflation. He based it on the optimistic predictions that inflation would rapidly come under control and improve towards the end of the year. Instead inflation is not shifting, and interest rates are likely to need to stay higher for longer and probably go up further, plus we’re now realistically looking at a potential recession.

Sunak is out of his depth, and it’s yet another poor leader in a run of 4 now (May, Johnson, Truss) showing how depleted the Conservative party is of talent and any sort of vision.

Yeah I really like this, it’s nice to be in UK specific communities when I’m set to local and see the rest of the Fediverse on subscribed and all.

Personally I have an account here at Feddit UK for UK subs, and separate accounts on other servers on Kbin.Social I’m using for non-UK/generic content.

I’m tempted to subscribe to broader Fediverse content from Feddit UK but then that data would come onto this server (backend). I’m not sure whats the best approach - use one instance to browse the whole Fediverse or multiple accounts on different instances to compartmentalise a little?

It is nice just seeing UK content when I’m on Feddit UK. I even have a custom Lemmy theme (from https://github.com/2xx04/lemmy-ui-themes/) which I changed the background background to a UK Pic so it is instantly seperate from other lemmy instances. The Lemmy UI Themes are easy to install by end users in their browser (use Stylus extension) and can also be installed and adpated by server owners to theme their server.

I think this is an unfounded concern, it’s similar but clearly different. Should that be wrong, the community can move to a new name/domain in good time but will remain as is and connected to the Fediverse.

Expect companies to push hard against anything that costs them money. In this case, there is a smal overhead for reminding subscribers, but the “subscribe and forget about it” is an important source of revenue. Particularly the users who get a “free” subscription, barely used it but it converts to a paid subscription. I’m sure they can live without the revenue stream, but of course they want to keep it if they can as it’s zero effort money.

The whole reason this is being proposed is because this is a widespread issue affecting consumers.

Yeah the “wages demands drive inflation” is a nonsense and always has been. The “Wage/price” spiral is seized on as a justifcation for trying to supress wages to “control inflation”.

The real issue here is the Central Banks, including the Bank of England, have fucked up and are trying to blame anyone but themselves. This is often what happens when they fuck up. We’re in an inflationary mess because they did not react soon enough and hard enough to the inflationary pressures that have driven this including energy price shocks (due to Russia invading Ukraine), supply chain disruption due to Covid (and overlong Zero Covid policies in China in particular worsening that problem), and the chronically low interest rates since the financial crisis which have driven money supply. Brexit has also likedly exacerbated this for the UK as prices have also been pushed up by closing ourselves out of the EU common market.

Wage demands are a symptom of the problem, not the cause. Interest rates need to go up higher and we are facing a recession; something that might have been avoided if the BoE had acted sooner.

We really need electoral reform - enough of parties getting big majorities in the commons and stuffing the lords with supporters.

Even starting with proportional representation in local elections would be a game changer. Although the tories got rid of it in London to increase their chances of winning the mayoralty.

The best outcome in the next election is a hung parliament with Labour depending on the Lib Dems for a majority, and the Lib Dems forcing through electoral reform. No referendums, no more dicussion. They should do what all the other parties do and say “parliament is supreme and our manifesto was clear”.

Yeah I agree - subsidising solar and also subsidising heat pump conversions and insulation for for older properties are essential parts of the mix. These would be impactful on energy generation / energy saving, and in removing our reliance on gas for heating.

I’m not sure how I feel about this. Credit to him for changing his mind but that he thought it was appropriate in the first place says a lot. To be clear, tory MPs are abstaining not to “move on from the drama” as he puts it, but because they are worried about how Tory members in their local associations will react if they vote in favour. This is tempered by concerns that in the upcoming election next year opposition candidates might use their unwillingness to vote against them.

The tory mess just keeps going and going.

Here’s hoping. Unfortunately they do have a lot to show for 13 years of governing - a path of destruction and devastation!

Yeah this sounds reasonable and I hope it’s how things playout.

My concern is that he remains popular with the Tory membership who do not reflect the general views of the population, and the tories ejected a lot of the moderate centerist MPs over Brexit. The rump party may be decidedly right wing, obsessed with brexit and a good breeding ground for a Boris comeback. He certainly won’t be leader before the next election but I can see him being painted as a messiah in a narrower deminished party desperate for success. They struggled to replace him already with a disasterous right wing Truss despite the MPs not favouring her.

He reminds me of Silvio Berlusconi in some ways - that guy was dogged with scandals throughout his career and his governments collapsed, but he bounced back multiple times. Italian politics is very different of course and Berlusconi was a media mogul so he could control the narrative in a way Boris cannot. But also Donald Trump, that guy has done things that would have seemed shocking only 10 years ago, and yet he remains the leading candidate for the Republican nomination for the next presidential election.

I don’t think Boris will achieve the same success as people like Berlusconi or Trump, but I wouldn’t put it past a rump defeated Conservative party to be so desperate they’re drawn to him again and we see him back in frontline politics unfortunately.

They’re hoping that but it’s looking increasingly unachievable. In particular the time bomb is people who fixed at 1-2% but next year they’ll be facing deals new deals next year that are looking like 5-6% at a minimum barring a rapid cooling of inflation.

But yeah, it’s not impossible they can benefit from an improvement in the economy and slashing taxes. I just don’t see it working personally even if they can get into a position to do it.

These concerns are valid.

Some are transitory however - 1, 3 and 4 all reflect the current state of Lemmy and the similar Kbin are in currently. The Reddit issues were unexpected and people have migrated en masse to Lemmy/Kbin and have found was is in many ways Alpha software. This issues will mostly be resolved with time, and that is probably accelerated now as more people means more people interested in development, and motivated by anger at Reddit. I don’t think Lemmy/Kbin will replace Reddit right now, but I think a new trajectory has been set. Communities are hitting critical mass to keep growing.

Look at Mastodon, it’s at 1.2m-2m active users each month; it is still small fry and niche compared to Twitter but it exploded thanks to Twitter’s mess, and is growing. I think we’re seeing something similar with Lemmy and Kbin, but this is just the start of a long road and an expanded community will accelerate improvement and growth.

But point 2 is fundamental to the fediverse - fragmentation due to defederating could be a concern. I get Beehaw’s motivation but I think their actions will consign them to a niche part of the Fediverse, but that may be what they want. Ultimately I suspect the biggest servers will dominate a main interconnected fediverse through sheer size and notoriety - new servers will need to federate to the big players to grow. It’s not necessairly a bad thing - but people may end up signed up to a “main” large interconnected “fediverse” and separately to smaller niche communities they’re interested in but sitting in their own walled gardens/bubbles. It’s not necessairly a bad thing though - it is just different to what people are used to with social media like Reddit. It’ll be a trade off - servers and communities have complete independence and some will go for what suits them - part of a big fediverse or only federating to smaller aligned communities.

Part of the problem may be the bugs on the Lemmy instances which have not been showing “hot” content correctly. This may be giving a false impression of an obsession over reddit as posts are stuck on the front page?

I’ve been browsing a few different communities and am finding things are active, they’re just not reaching the default Lemmy front pages. Sorting by new or diving deeper into communities shows a lot of new content.

For example I’m currently browsing from Feddit.uk and this seems to have exploded into an active community in just a week; it’s really heartening to seen. I’ve also seen different content when viewing from Kbin based instances like Kbin.Social or Fedia.io (including from Lemmy.world).

This is a strawman argument. I was merely trying to give an example of the difficulties in absolutism when talking about moderation. My example may not be the best one but the concern is valid - anyone who thinks moderation will be easy in the Fediverse because everyone will be in harmony and agree on what is acceptable and what is not, is naive to be honest. There are already communities that don’t adhere to the same rules and standards as others, and as you scale up the fediverse into millions of people and lots of communities exposed to each otherthe complexity will come to the fore.

Basically don’t see the fediverse as a golden bullet for solving moderation issues or coming to a happy consensus. It removes the corporate control and influence but each community will come to it’s own consensus about what is and isn’t acceptable. Beehaw is an early example of that - they wish to control and vet who can participate in their community; that is an understandable aim due to the ethos of their community but it may be very difficult to stay federated and achieve that.

The fediverse is a great concept but I suspect we’re going to see a lot of fragmentation into “miniverses” around acceptable codes of conduct and content, because a single broad consensus is very difficult to maintain at scale.

Yeah I understand that concern. It’s difficult though - public utilities like Water have languished in private ownership; treated like expensive assets to hold, use to acquire cheap debt - but there is 0 competition in water provision so privatising it never made much sense.

Openreach is arguably less like the Water companies; the competition is actually the layer down with the consumer facing companies that are either paying for Openreach services which drives the investment or building competing networks (often via access given to them to Openreaches infrastructure by regulation). Who owns Openreach is arguably less important?

I’m personally of the opinion that basic services like Railways, Healthcare, and Water should be in public hands. The profit motive just doesn’t work in those. But it seems to be working in Telecommunications, probably because there is sense in paying “more” for “premium” services. People will pay more for faster connections that they want or businesses need, which drives investment. You can’t really pay for “better” water, and “better” healthcare isn’t generally a thing (as in we should and can be providing the best healthcare options to anyone with proper investment in the NHS; premium in healthcare is jumping the queues but that is a manufactured demand due to poor investment in the service which can’t keep up with demand. The staff in the private sector are actually the same as in the NHS, and private healthcare will never provide the complex and acute stuff without extreme cost; they just cherry pick the easy stuff)

This is now two Tory run authorities in similar boats with very similar reasons - extreme bad management, breaching of fiscal rules, and lack of accountability for their actions.

Woking Council is in even more dire straits, with £1.2bn deficit (guardian article - Jun 23).

And on top of that two Tory county councils have warned they are on the financial brink - Kent and Hampshire (guardian article - Feb 23).

It may not just be Tory councils of course, but so far it looks like a pattern - at the minimum poor governance and a lack of oversight of councils by central government for loans given to councils.