> Sky is a really right wing partisan channel though, ofc they are going to say negative things about the incumbent government or basically anything it does
You are pretending as if Sky is like Fox News in the UK. It is more like a slightly right of centre network.
Legally they have to provide "Due Impartiality" on the TV network. So they normally invite several people so they can claim they have provided balance.
I actually don't like that they are legally required they do this as often it becomes a shouting match between two participates. I want to hear someone's argument in full.
Not at all. It is simply a score based on your ability to manage credit, it is scored differently based on the company making the assessment.
In reality that means "have you paid off what you owe in the manner that was agreed" and does the person have any red flags e.g. County Court Judgements against their name or residence.
There are people I know that manage it properly and those that don't. It has nothing to do with wealth or class.
It doesn’t inherently have to do with wealth and class, however, all of these things are so tightly correlated that it loses barely any fidelity and just saves you a little bit of time to assume that someone with an 815 credit score is law-abiding, upper-middle or high social class, and has a medium to high net worth, and that somebody with a 550 credit score is at least one of the following: poor, criminal history, and a low social class.
None of this should be that surprising: it’s hard to make all of your debt payment payments on time if you’re either broke or in jail.
No having a high credit score has nothing do with your wealth or social class. I have worked in this industry briefly. It looks at your ability to manage credit, and whether you have any flags.
e.g. I had a 995 credit score on Experian back in the late 2000s. The highest was 999. I earned £18,000 at the time, and was in my mid-20s and didn't really own anything at the time. I did have a credit card at the time where I made the payments, and I lived at a household which had no debt, and I was on the electoral roll.
That is why when you are making larger purchases they do a "means test" e.g. see if you earn enough to pay a mortgage.
Your case is a great example of why credit scores are not reliable indicators. You were living on the ropes then. One job loss and you probably have very little saved and will be forced to incur debt and and start defaulting on payments potentially. You were very much the risky bet. And yet, you were able to game the system to look like a reliable bet.
Gaming the system like you were able to do in order to improve your credit score is very much correlated to financial literacy which is correlated to socioeconomic class which is correlated to race. This is how we arrive at credit scores being race and class indicators, but not bound by laws that prohibit using race and class as indicators.
Your comment is a great example of "If you assume, it makes an ass out of u and me".
Everything about this reply is completely incorrect.
> Your case is a great example of why credit scores are not reliable indicators. You were living on the ropes then. One job loss and you probably have very little saved and will be forced to incur debt and and start defaulting on payments potentially. You were very much the risky bet. And yet, you were able to game the system to look like a reliable bet.
So you made a bunch of assumptions about my personal circumstances. Let me correct you:
- I didn't "Game the system". I had absolutely no idea at the time such a thing as a credit score existed. I cannot game a system when I have no idea that it exists. The only reason I checked is that other people at work were checking theirs and I did so sheerly out of curiosity. Many years later I happened to work a contract where they wrote software that did the credit checks.
- I was not "living on the ropes". I lived within my means.
- I had 2-3 months of savings. My strategy for saving this money was to save it on payday. So I forgot I had the money and couldn't spend it. I do exactly the same thing now.
- The debt I had on my credit card was paid off in full monthly. I only used it for online purchases (many online sites didn't take debit cards still).
> Gaming the system like you were able to do in order to improve your credit score is very much correlated to financial literacy which is correlated to socioeconomic class which is correlated to race.
Again I did not game the system. I was completely financially illiterate at the time. My only financial literacy, I had at time was that I shouldn't spend all my money after payday and I shouldn't spend more money than I had. I found that out in the first month of living on my own. My family actually earn a lot less than I do now.
None of this has anything to do with race. From reading your comments replying to me and your posting history, I am pretty sure you are from the US. You are applying your US centric view of the world onto the UK. The UK is not the US.
> This is how we arrive at credit scores being race and class indicators, but not bound by laws that prohibit using race and class as indicators.
What you are trying to do is to erroneously shoehorn in your brand of US politics into a discussion about the UK. As a result of this you have got everything about my personal circumstances (at the time) and the circumstances of family and wider community completely incorrect, in an attempt to score some political points (it obvious btw from the language you are using).
I suggest in future you shouldn't make assumptions.
If you are going to mock conspiracy theorists can you at least articulate the conspiracy theory correctly.
People are worried that it would be made difficult for you to travel outside 15 minute city via a combination of mandated digital payment system for all transactions that are tied to you identity and removal of personal vehicles (e.g. cars).
e.g. Person A is allowed by authorities to buy a train ticket, while Person B is not due to <arbitrary criteria>.
I've been told this has been done in China to stop people travelling to protests, but I don't actually know if that is true.
Do I think this is the intention behind 15 minute cities? No. I do however think that what they are describing is possible since I've had problems making transactions electronically for legal purchases because my transaction was flagged by the bank for being fraudulent.
Also in the UK the bank can refuse to give you your money.
I have also had a problem before with a transaction being inaccurately flagged as fraudulent. This could either be because an anti-fraud algorithm isn’t perfect 100% of the time, or it could be the result of a vast government conspiracy to limit my travel.
I have my doubts that China, which has many of the densest cities in the world, would get much mileage (pun intended) out of restricting travel to try to quell protests. They have tons of cities that each have millions of residents. If the CPC manages to piss off a significant fraction of the populace to the point where they’re interested in marching down the street demanding regime change, there will be enough of them in those cities that no amount of travel restrictions is going to matter.
Arguably much more important would be that I don’t think most people in China own any significant weapons, and we’ve seen decades ago how shy that government isn’t about just running people over with tanks until protests dissipate.
> I have also had a problem before with a transaction being inaccurately flagged as fraudulent. This could either be because an anti-fraud algorithm isn’t perfect 100% of the time, or it could be the result of a vast government conspiracy to limit my travel.
I never said it was part of a government conspiracy. What I am saying is that your ability to transact freely is infringed by opaque mechanisms.
If that is added with digital only payments which is tied to your gov id, it isn't difficult to imagine a scenario where your ability to transact freely be taken away to stop you from travelling for political reasons.
I admit you have a fair point here. I'm a political independent but started out left-wing. It's hard for me to accept the reality that a government that starts out well-meaning definitely can tilt toward totalitarianism, and that the lack of good chokepoints on the citizens (such as this hypothetical ability to control payments) may well be a key prevention mechanism. I think the left wing in the US likes to frame suspicion of those kinds of things as silly preparations for a future that won't happen, and the right frames roadblocks to government power as being in place to make that bad future harder to bring about.
> It's hard for me to accept the reality that a government that starts out well-meaning definitely can tilt toward totalitarianism, and that the lack of good chokepoints on the citizens (such as this hypothetical ability to control payments) may well be a key prevention mechanism
You are making the assumption that any politician or government is "well meaning" or started out as such. I am in the UK and I look at the politicians and the state apparatus with absolute contempt.
I suggest you listen to some of Dominic Cummings interviews about his experience with Whitehall (UK) during COVID. There was one situation that he described which really stood out to me. There was particular situation early in the pandemic where the NHS was going to run out of a key medical supplies in about 2 weeks and as a result thousands could die. These supplies were shipped from China and it took about 3/4 weeks (I forget the exact time frame).
For some reason it was written into law that they had to be shipped. He had the Prime Minister sign a legal waiver so they could be air-lifted, explained this to key officials in Whitehall. Everyone agreed what needed to be done and then nothing happened for 3 days. These people had to be threatened with losing their jobs and their pensions otherwise they wouldn't do their job, they fully understood the consequences of not doing the job (thousands of people might die) and still did nothing. It is an apathy of evil.
This behaviour is commonplace in ossified organisations unfortunately and I wasn't surprised one iota when I heard this.
As for mechanisms that reduce state power as prevent totalitarianism. No one thing will prevent it. It would be a combination of things.
It is similar to how running Linux (or any alternative OS) won't by itself stop the strangle hold of large tech players over most of the tech/online space. It will at least help you reduce your dependence on these large companies. Combine that with self hosting and/or using alternatives at least you can be somewhat free from the worst of it.
> I think the left wing in the US likes to frame suspicion of those kinds of things as silly preparations for a future that won't happen, and the right frames roadblocks to government power as being in place to make that bad future harder to bring about.
Silly partisan politics is going to have both sides pretending that the other side doesn't have any merit in their positions. I would just ignore the noise and actually read the facts about things and draw your own conclusions.
I believe that most of the politics you see is really theatre. It keeps people squabbling over things that are ultimately unimportant.
There were plenty of TV shows centred around candid camera / security camera / home video footage back in the 1980s/1990s well before digital cameras or the internet was ubiquitous.
Or look at newsreels, or news reports from ... any time up to the 2010s. Obviously people's faces weren't blurred before we had the tech to do it. It's some entirely new, modern prissiness. It screws up the documenting of social history when you can't see any faces. There's been an internet fad for restored film of street scenes from 1915 or so: imagine if all the faces were blurred to protect the privacy of people who no longer care, that would suck.
The difference is that social media now exists. The fear of an embarrassing or compromising moment causing social embarrassment at an unlimited scale or affecting future employment prospects indefinitely is not based on nothing - we have all seen examples of this. Even an unlikely scenario is worth considering if the stakes are that high.
This situation compounded very gradually. In the late 90s, it was extremely common for young people to make each other laugh by doing dumb things in public (sometimes knowingly on camera) that they’d never expect to be seen by a wide audience. Then in the early 00s, the experience of going a little viral (just within your college Facebook community, before the word ‘viral’ was a thing) was actually pretty common and this started to make people just a little more guarded about being photographed. So those who got filmed doing something drunk/dumb would be more likely to go more viral, as it was now a rarer sight. And so on. It’s a recursive effect that made us all duller and more image-conscious and anxious in public. This process took a couple of decades to end up where we are now. It’s not just some new modern prissiness.
> The difference is that social media now exists. The fear of an embarrassing or compromising moment causing social embarrassment at an unlimited scale or affecting future employment prospects indefinitely is not based on nothing - we have all seen examples of this. Even an unlikely scenario is worth considering if the stakes are that high.
Realistically unless you are doing something absolutely unforgivable it will be forgotten about in a few days/weeks. At worst you will become a reaction emote.
Also going viral is a huge opportunity. Some viral people have ended up in commercials, podcasts etc.
Lets not pretend it is all negative.
> Then in the early 00s, the experience of going a little viral (just within your college Facebook community, before the word ‘viral’ was a thing) was actually pretty common and this started to make people just a little more guarded about being photographed. So those who got filmed doing something drunk/dumb would be more likely to go more viral, as it was now a rarer sight. And so on.
No this is a rewriting of history. What happened is that employers started looking through potential hires and/or current employees and quizzing them about getting drunk at a party a few years ago. This seemed to happen in the US more than other places, or maybe it was reported there more.
Then everyone with any sense made their profile semi-private (friends only) on Facebook.
Also a lot of the stuff that went viral was often clever marketing. There are advertising agencies where they have case studies detailing how they have done it.
Also there is a whole genre of streaming where people literally act outrageously in public, called IRL streaming. People have gone/are going to prison in hopes of going viral.
> It’s a recursive effect that made us all duller and more image-conscious and anxious in public. This process took a couple of decades to end up where we are now.
This is absolute nonsense. I am old enough to remember how people acted before social media in is largely the same while out in public. In fact I would say it was actually the opposite of what you claim.
> Watch any home VHS video from the 80s. Half the people the person holding the camera points it at say "stop filming me"
I suspect a lot of that is more to do with them being worried about their how they look on the film than actually being on the film itself.
> There's just always been people uncomfortable with it.
Of course there are going to be people uncomfortable with it. I am. The issue is that it isn't ever going to go backwards and being video recorded in public by amateurs has been around for almost 40 years. The ship has sailed a long time ago.
I mean, I feel like the mindset of privacy and no one can have photos of me is a fairly recent phenomenon. Parents or grandparents definitely had books photos of everyone important to them and probably would have found it weird for someone to ask not to be photographed.
Those photos would have been taken with the understanding that they woupd have ended up in Grandma's album, maybe flipped through a few times, but never spread far and wide. The stakes change quite a lot if those photos can be published.
I found this frustrating to read. First the other airsoft participates he seems to seem to be okay with people filming. There is clearly no expectation of privacy.
> I occasionally see people saying “well, if you don’t want to be in photos published online, don’t be in public spaces”.
>
> This is nonsense, for a number of reasons. Clearly, one should be able to exist in society, including going outside one’s own home, without needing to accept this kind of thing.
There is no expectation of privacy in any place that is considered public.
I don't like it that things are recorded around the clock or by anyone and be broadcast anywhere, but the ship on this has sailed long ago.
> In any case, here, the issue is somewhat different, since it is a private site, where people engage in private activity (a hobby).
>
> But then I’ve seen the same at (private) conferences, with people saying “Of course I’m free to take photos of identifiable individuals without their consent and publish them online”.
Again is there an expectation of privacy? Are people told that they are not allowed to use their cameras?
It is whether the is a expectation of privacy. A McDonald's or a Burger King is "private property", but there is no expectation of privacy. I would not expect privacy at an airsoft, paint-balling or any other outdoor activity even if it is on private property.
A public toilet cubical is a public place with an expectation of privacy.
> Publishing someone’s photo online, without their consent, without another strong justification, just because they happen to be in view of one’s camera lens, feels wrong to me
It depends whether there was an expectation of privacy as whether it should feel wrong. If there isn't an expectation of privacy. Then this is nothing else than you "not liking it".
> This isn’t about what is legal (although, in some cases, claims of legality may be poorly conceived), but around my own perceptions of a private life, and a dislike for the fact that, just because one can publish such things, that one should.
How else is this supposed to be tacked if not by what is legally permissible?
> There is no expectation of privacy in any place that is considered public.
Well that entirely depends on the country - in the UK it is true, but it wouldn't be true in Switzerland or Germany, where you do have the right to privacy even in public spaces.
> Then this is nothing else than you "not liking it".
The author knows what the laws are, but presumably disagrees with the reasoning behind the laws and is criticising them. If someone came to Switzerland and started complaining that they can't install a doorbell camera, then it would also be a case of them 'not liking it' - but they have a right to voice their opinion.
> Well that entirely depends on the country - in the UK it is true, but it wouldn't be true in Switzerland or Germany, where you do have the right to privacy even in public spaces.
Obviously the law is different in different places.
However. The person is talking about Newbury which I used to live near, which is in the UK. So they are talking about their experience in the UK.
So the only law the is applicable here is UK law.
> The author knows what the laws are, but presumably disagrees with the reasoning behind the laws and is criticising them.
He specifically says at the end "This isn’t about what is legal". I also don't believe he understands the law, since he often conflates/misuses the use of term private throughout the entire article.
What he understands as private isn't what is understood by almost anyone (both legal and colloquially).
>There is no expectation of privacy in any place that is considered public.
I had a guy at Walmart yesterday call the cops on me because I took a picture of the strip mall it was in on a small point and shoot and he assumed I was for some reason taking a picture of him, his wife, and kid. He was literally just a random car in the middle of a public parking lot. The officer talked to him and asked that I stepped away and then she came to me. The conversation went exactly like this.
Before she could even start to talk I told her I assumed that she knew that there was no expectation of privacy in public and that I could take a thousand pictures and there would be nothing that she could do about it. She agreed. She then asked if I'd like to give her my name (because she had no right to demand I do), and I said no I wouldn't like that. Then came the kicker. Would you like to just show me you don't have a picture of him. I said no I won't because I did nothing wrong and there's no reason for you to see my pictures. All of these were phrased as requests to bypass illegal search because she knew she was in the wrong even questioning me about it. People seem to really be the main character in the most boring story ever, at least in their minds. I have a healthy disregard for feigned authority anyway and was so indignant that I almost took some pictures of them while they talked. Trampling rights because Jim Bob is upset that someone dared take a picture in his direction rubs me the wrong way.
You are pretending as if Sky is like Fox News in the UK. It is more like a slightly right of centre network.