Aslak Berg

"As an X, I believe Y" I don't care. "I believe Y because of Z" Now we can have a conversation.

My greatest pet peeve is this tendency where everyone puts labels on everyone, including themselves. There's no need! Yu can have a complex set of habits and beliefs that don't put you neatly on anyone's side or in anyone's camp. And that makes it easier to see that is also the case for most people

Good to talk to Amol Rajan on the Today Programme earlier about the Hamas statement. It’s a remarkably astute move, accepting Israel’s key demand for hostage release, thereby earning an approving response from Trump and throwing all the pressure back on Netanyahu. Could still go wrong. But 1/6

AI slop will fix this

Think about the consequences for schools, the size of the labour force etc. And now think about the fact that it's a global system, and eventually we'll get to a point where immigration to one country means faster depopulation of another country. You're already seeing this in Eastern Europe

I don't really think people grasp the extent of the demographic crisis. A fertility rate is 1.5 as the UK, France etc, each generation is 25% smaller without immigration. If it's 1, as it is in several countries in Asia, South America and Europe each generation is less than half the size

Huh, interesting - I always thought parliamentary sovereignty was absolute in the UK system

I'm not grasping that last point - how would it be a constitutional crisis?

And I'm not sure the idea that can find enough healthcare workers by recruiting them en masse from countries where they're also desperately needed is either sustainable or nearly as progressive as people think

Worried about state capacity? Demography plays a huge part in that. Do you care about welfare and our ability to take care of our sick and elderly? Demography is a big factor. Do you care about innovation and dynamic societies? Again, demography plays a huge part.

What's clear from the responses is that a lot of people are quick to dismiss these concerns in a rather facile manner as just racism and/or sexism. The problem is that falling fertility rates are global and increasingly a real problem in "brown" countries and it will make us all poorer in the end.

Just look at this!

Going to the local Lebanese place for lunch and got asked if I wanted my regular table 😬 But it’s really good and the lunch deal is great!

Exactly, the EU wants a big “beware of the dog” sign, but also wants to make sure the dog is securely leashed

It's not completely new, the Anti-Coercion Instrument was as much motivated by Trump 1.0 as by China. But in the end they didn't use it perhaps because it was seen as too much of a nuclear weapon, so they need something more targeted.

On this week’s @centreeuropeanref.bsky.social #podcast @aslak.bsky.social sat down with @agathedemarais.bsky.social to discuss where EU trade policy stands since the signing the EU-US trade agreement in July.

Listen to the episode here: buff.ly/Uu7KDnV

@agathedemarais.bsky.social and I talk EU trade in the era of Trump on our latest podcast

They know a lot of them won't or can't return. No housing, no schools or universities, no jobs - it will take years to rebuild.

Except for in Silicon Valley where it's the standard incentive for employees

Still, whatever the flaws of the plan, with united Arab, American (and European?) backing seems like it's the best hope for an end to the killing in two years, no?

If the UK implements a 10 year requirement to get Indefinite Leave to Remain that means that if you work for 9 years and then lose your job you're ineligible for unemployment benefits and risk having to uproot your entire existence. It's cruel and inhumane.

That's the kind of productivity growth Britain needs as well!

Only in a very inconsistent and incoherent way - take the reverence for the NHS and some of the speech restrictions as well as crackdowns on anti-social behaviour, as well as the wide latitude given to security services

They negotiated hard to get a cap, so...

Good tragedies all have some sense of inevitability to them - that's what makes them tragic and not just sad. Apparent choices aren't real possibilities, things are doomed from the start. Maybe it really is a tragic government in that sense

That is a good one

No specifics on what exactly those hard choices are or what to choose of course. Just vague hard choices hovering over us, like drones with a menacing buzz.

Not sure it's good news, but it made me chuckle!

So does anyone have any good news about anything? Cheer me up!

Hardly anyone outside the US either. Nobody in Europe considers the millions of Europeans descended from people who became refugees in or after WW2 as themselves being refugees.