u/dwazou

I normally don't support bypassing paywalls for newspapers.

Quality journalism has a price. We should all support it. I lived in a country where all great newspapers collapsed, because no one wanted to subscribe (cultural reason). Only clickbait trash survived. I can assure you it's really not a nice country.

However, I'll make an exception for The Times, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch.


The same Rupert Murdoch who owns The Sun, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and many other media organizations. He also owned *News of the World*, a newspaper which illegally hacked crime victims and broke into the homes of UK politicians.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/apr/26/gordon-brown-criminal-complaint-rupert-murdoch-news-group-newspapers

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-68615789

Rupert Murdoch once attempted to blackmail the British Prime Minister

https://www.channel4.com/news/major-denies-sun-editor-abused-him-after-black-wednesday

He is also a huge climate change denier:

https://time.com/5765304/rupert-murdoch-son-climate/

This man has done more damage to democracy than any other Australian.

Fuck Rupert Murdoch.

I'm not British. But this is what I think Britain needs :

**1.** Campaign finance reform. The United Kingdom is one of the only democracies in the world where corporations are allowed to wire hundreds of thousands of pounds to political parties. Brits often argue their system is better than the US. I'm sorry, but being better than the US is the same as having no standards at all.

**2.** Publically owned water companies. The senior management of UK water companies have looted the country. Billions were lost. It's a complete disaster.

**3.** A ban on gambling ads. Gambling ruins the lives of so many people.

These 3 policies are not extreme in any way. They are not far-left, hard-left, communist, or whatever. They are simply about creating better incentives for a better country. Implementing them would help ordinary people.

Yet Keir Starmer doesn't have seem to have the guts to do that. I hope I'm proved wrong.

Britons deserves better.

**To do list for Mark Carney:**

• Encourage all Government Agencies to switch to Linux. It's completely ridiculous that hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money are wasted every year on Microsoft licenses. The French Gendarmerie switched to Linux and they never went back to Windows. They saved millions. Money that they can spend on actually doing their job.

• Create a Canadian fund to encourage Open Source Software. A $10 million fund over 5 years would not be much money, but it could help open source software developers. A small $100 000 grant could really help Gimp, Kdenlive and Krita fight Adobe. Too many Canadian artists and Canadian production companies are exploited by Adobe.

• Ban foreigners from owning more than 40% of any Canadian media outlet. It's absolutely sickening that an american hedge fund (Chatham Asset Management) currently owns 20 different canadian newspapers.

• Reduce the immigration rate. Justin Trudeau did a lot of good things, but immigration was one of two biggest failures. Under his leadership, the population increased by 3% a year. The Canadian population increase twice as fast as the population of Mexico, Brazil, Spain, the United States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia. This is too extreme. Canada should aim for 2% population growth instead of 3%. Also, don't concentrate people in a single place. It's wrong to have a 4% population growth in Toronto and 0.5% elsewhere.

• Improve the voting system. This was the second failure of Justin Trudeau. The First-Past-The-Post voting system is just flawed. It is basically designed to create two very powerful political parties, at the expense of pluralism. FPTP is the reason why the US is stuck with only two parties.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law

I'm not Australian and I don't know much about Australian politics.

However, I know that Australian people drive some of the biggest cars in the world. Car companies just manufacture huge SUVs and sell them to the Australian, thinking *"these dumb fucks will buy them"*.

That's not good for the climate. That's bad for the roads. That's not even good for Australians themselves, because it's very unsafe for pedestrians. I heard that Albanese encouraged mandatory rules for better fuel efficiency. Which is a good idea. I just don't understand why the other bald guy says they are bad.

In the 1990s and 2000s, the US Auto Industry successfully fought against every attempt to impose fuel efficiency rules. After US Auto manufacturers went bankrupt in 2008, President Obama bailed them out and forced them to save some fuel. Because outside North American, *no one* wanted to buy american cars anymore.

During his first mandate, Trump rolled back all those Obama fuel-efficiency rules:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/15/us/politics/trump-obama-fuel-economy-standards.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/13/climate/cafe-emissions-rollback-oil-industry.html

Lack of strong fuel efficiency rules is the main reason why American cars are so heavy and consume so much oil compared to European cars. The bald candidate is wrong to say fuel efficiency rules are bad.

Some of his ideas, like defunding CBC, are foolish.

I don't think Pierre Poilievre is a Nazi. Statements like that are unhelpful.