Sober Steve / is on Nostr

Irishman. Nationalist. Classical liberal. Replies will usually not be prompt. My NIP-05 name may change.

Last Notes

2025-05-03 18:00:49

Here's an interesting passage from an article¹ published today in the Daily Telegraph:
[start of quote]
Reform UK has declared war on net zero developments in the countryside.
Richard Tice, Reform’s deputy leader, said the party will use its new control of ten councils to use “every lever” available to block renewable projects.
The Telegraph can reveal that Mr Tice will write to potential developers in Lincolnshire projects following Reform’s historic local election victories on Friday.
He said: “I’m now going to write again to them, saying now that we’ve won these elections, you need to be under no illusion. This is war. We will wage war against you people and your terrible ideas.
“If you think that you’re going to do this in the county of Lincolnshire, you are going to regret it. You’re going to waste your money.
“It’s going to be very painful financially, so you might as well take your money and your daft ideas elsewhere.”
The MP for Boston and Skegness added: “Whether it’s planning blockages, whether it’s judicial reviews, whether it’s lawsuits, whether it’s health and safety notices, we will use every available legal measure to an extreme way in order to frustrate these people.”
[end of quote]
[1]: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/05/03/reform-councils-begin-war-net-zero-development-countryside/

2025-03-13 20:09:07

RTÉ News informs¹ us that a zoo in County Cork “has announced the birth of a François' langur monkey [...] The baby's gender has yet to be determined”. Since when do animals have a “gender” (as opposed to a sex)?
[1]: https://www.rte.ie/news/munster/2025/0313/1501829-fota-monkey/

2025-02-04 08:51:08

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You could get the same effect with a field named ‘Sex’.

2025-02-03 14:25:14

A recent publication¹ from the CSO reported the following from a survey of 25-year-olds:
“Almost one in five (18.1%) men had experienced people acting as if they were afraid of them at least a few times a year.”
[1]: https://www.cso.ie/en/csolatestnews/pressreleases/2025pressreleases/pressstatement-growingupinirelandcohort98atage25-mainresults/
It's interesting they would ask that question.

2025-02-02 12:36:17

George Lee writes¹:
“What Storm Éowyn should have driven home to people in power is that storms are getting bigger”
[1]: https://www.rte.ie/news/analysis-and-comment/2025/0202/1494278-storm-analysis-lee/
But 7 paragraphs before that, he writes:
“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said clearly in its science reports that it has very little confidence about the links between extreme wind events like Storm Éowyn and climate change.”

2025-02-02 07:41:15

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Gossip: https://github.com/mikedilger/gossip?tab=readme-ov-file#gossip
It's not perfect, though.

2025-01-30 06:59:55

Sam Bidwell believes¹ the Southport murderer should be executed. He writes:
“Parliament should pass an act which specifically authorises the death penalty for Axel Rudakubana. [...] There is no risk of “getting the wrong man” — this attack was well-documented, and Rudakubana pled guilty to the charges against him. His guilt isn’t just “beyond reasonable doubt” — it is beyond any doubt.”
[1]: https://thecritic.co.uk/the-case-for-execution/
I agree that the murderer should have been condemned to death, but I think the opportunity for doing so has passed. However, this crime should be the spur that leads Parliament to restore capital punishment in cases where the evidence of guilt is overwhelming.
If Parliament attaints this killer, it will face pressure to do the same in future cases, where the evidence may be much weaker. In the next 30 years, this could easily lead to the execution of an innocent person.

2025-01-21 19:26:49

I want to comment on the Department of Education's Gender Pay Gap Report¹ for 2024.
[1]: https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/b1659-gender-pay-gap-report-2024/, published on December 19, 2024.
Here are 3 quotes from that document:
1. “The Department of Education has made great strides in fostering gender parity across all senior management grades, with over 66% of senior managers being women.”
2. “As the Department has more women than men employed at almost all of the grades, the question could be asked as to why any gender pay gap exists at all.”
3. Under “Measures to address the gender pay gap”: “participation of Department staff at Dublin Pride and other Pride-related events”.
And my comments:
1. If 66% of senior managers were men, would the Department be satisfied? Would it describe that state of affairs as “gender parity”?
2. Unless I'm missing something, that sentence is seriously innumerate.
3. What does participation in Pride have to do with the “gender pay gap”?

2025-01-17 05:08:29

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“This Government will: [...] Examine ways to enforce age verification obligations on online service providers and hold them to account for failure to do so.”

2025-01-16 18:51:44

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In the ”Followed” screen:
1. Click the “Edit List” button at the top right of the screen.
2. Click the “Add contact” button.
3. Paste the key into the text area.
4. Click the “Add and continue” button or the “Add and close” button.
That works for me with Gossip 0.14.0-unstable-4cab48d8.

2025-01-15 19:01:39

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This overuse of ‘survivor’ is something I've noticed myself. I think it comes from an aversion to the word ‘victim’, as giving an impression of weakness.

2025-01-15 05:46:32

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Also, I would like Gossip to render the Markdown in kind-30023 events, please.

2025-01-14 19:09:29

I want to contrast two articles about gender pay gaps:
1. https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2023/1220/1423033-department-of-public-expenditures-gender-pay-gap/, dated December 20, 2023
2. https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2025/0114/1490660-an-post-gender-pay-gap-report/, dated January 14, 2025
The first has the headline “Gender pay gap narrows to 2.57% at Dept of Public Expenditure”. It says:
“on average men were paid 2.57% more than women in 2023”, but “the median gender pay gap indicates that, on average, women are paid 1.56% higher than men”.
The second has the headline “An Post reports zero gender pay gap for fourth year in a row”. It says:
“the mean gender pay gap at An Post for 2024 was -2.8% in favour of females, while the median gender pay gap was 0.7%”.
I'd bet that if the pay gap in the second story were 2.8% in favour of men, the headline would not refer to a “zero gender pay gap”.
By the way, the headline of the second story is identical to the headline of An Post's press release:
https://www.anpost.com/Media-Centre/News/An-Post-reports-Zero-Gender-Pay-Gap-for-Fourth-Year-in-a-Row

2025-01-13 19:22:04

I want to comment on this:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/wellbeing/sex/ive-been-an-agony-aunt-for-a-year-heres-what-ive-learnt/
It's by Rachel Johnson, the Daily Telegraph's agony aunt. She writes:
“I have had to point out that there is no such thing [conjugal rights]. Even the long marrieds have no rights of possession or ownership of their spouse, and marital rape entered the statute book in 1992. In theory – if not in practise – consent attaches to every act, it is not assumed just because you are in a relationship. [...]
There is no entitlement to sex or someone’s body even if you are married to them. In this country, women are equal. We have agency, and can choose whether to have sex or reproduce, even if this choice is unwelcome to the male.”
This—especially the reference to marital rape—is missing the point. I very much doubt that her correspondents are saying: “I have the right to get sex from my wife at any time“. Rather, I expect they are saying: “sex is part of marriage; a wife who never has sex with her husband is in default of her obligations”.

2024-12-31 17:49:57

https://sdp.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/SDP_Manifesto_2024.pdf
The above is the manifesto of the Social Democratic Party in the UK, produced for last July‘s election. The immigration policies in that document are surprisingly good.
This is in stark contrast to nationalist parties in the Republic of Ireland, none of whom have produced anything with this level of detail.
Everything after this paragraph is from the manifesto, verbatim except that I have numbered the list items. Items 2, 3, and 4 are of particular interest.
1. In the interests of Britain’s community relations and the survival of our hard-won welfare state we will vigorously resist the idea of ‘open borders’. Britain’s immigration policy must be skills-based, needs-based, legal and subject to democratic control.
2. We will withdraw from the 1951 Refugee Convention, the ECHR and all other international instruments which deny UK border sovereignty. We will promote a new set of international agreements on refugee rights which are fit for purpose, protect genuine refugees and do not facilitate illegal trafficking.
3. We will reduce net migration to 50,000 per annum and promote a generation long cessation of ‘mass immigration’ in the interests of integration, solidarity and social cohesion. Agreements between key strategic partners may result in selective exemptions if clearly in the national interest.
4. All unsolicited asylum applications via breaches of the UK border will be declined. They will result in immediate repatriation or detention offshore within British Overseas Territories until repatriation is expedited. The UK will contribute to humanitarian resettlement of genuine refugees by offering 20,000 refugee visas annually to carefully vetted families fleeing major conflict zones.
5. A foreign spouse of a UK citizen will not qualify for UK residence if there is evidence that the marriage was entered into primarily to obtain admission to the UK. He or she must also demonstrate good quality spoken and written English. Family visas will be offered only to direct lineal ancestors or descendants of UK citizens.
6. No person will be offered UK citizenship unless they have spent 7 years resident in the UK with ‘probationary leave to remain’ (PLR) status. Any indictable offence or any act considered materially hostile to Britain’s social peace committed while on PLR will result in prompt deportation after a single review by a special tribunal.
7. Study visas will be cut by half to approximately 250,000 per annum and only allocated to students with places at accredited universities and colleges. Work visas will be restricted to those with specifically required skills and sponsored by employers with a strong record of paying UK corporate tax. Employers of illegal immigrants will be liable to fines of up to £100,000 per employee concerned and criminal penalties where the offence is knowing or systematic.
8. People who have been resident in the UK unlawfully for more than five years before this policy comes into effect will be offered PLR status if they come forward in a defined period and can show evidence of a settled family life in the UK. Exit checks at all UK points of departure will be reinstated and matched with visa entry data to ensure that overstay is tracked and prevented.