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submitted 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) by Severus_Snape@lemmy.world to c/fuckcars@lemmy.world
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submitted 13 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) by Severus_Snape@lemmy.world to c/fuckcars@lemmy.world

Valerie Plante is leaving politics.

She was an amazing mayor.

She has gotten a lot of blame for things beyond her control. Canada has one of the highest immigration rate on the planet. Visible homelessness has increased in every single province, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. That had nothing to do with her. Yet some people still blame her for the housing crisis 🤦

Most Canadian mayors are managers. They just manage stuff. They have no vision for their cities. Which is why many Canadian cities are a total disaster.

Valerie Plante is one of the few mayors who is actually a transformative figure.

https://thewalrus.ca/montreal-kicked-cars-to-the-curb-and-thrived/

She widened sidewalks.

She created car-free streets every summer

She created the single-largest bike lane network in North America.

Her last decision was to ban cars from the Mount-Royal Park

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-montreal-to-expand-mount-royal-park-ban-cars-from-part-of-main-access/

Montreal elections are coming very soon:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Montreal_municipal_election

Let's hope whoever replaces her continues on this path.

[-] Severus_Snape@lemmy.world 3 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

Brits: Let's allow MPs to work as lavishly paid lawyers for water companies

Brits: Let's allow House of Lords members to work as lobbyists.

Brits: Let's have a political system where a single party gets an absolute majority

Brits: What could possibly go wrong?

It's the politics. Show me the political institutions of a country. I'll show you the dysfunctional outcomes. You guys have the worst political institutions of any western country outside the United States.

Britain allows MPs to work as lavishly paid consultants/lawyers for multinationals. It's completely illegal in many countries. In Britain, for some reason I don't understand, it's legal.

Several House of Lords MPs are professional lobbyists. They enjoy lifetime access to parliament and they sell that access. That's exactly what Peter Mandelson did.

The UK voting system is also designed to be unrepresentative.

With the Dutch voting system, here what would actually happen.

Greens would say: "You don't have any majority. You can't form a government. We will support you if you tax SUVs and nationalize water companies".

Reform would say: "You don't have any majority. We will support you if you reduce immigration by 50% and ban cousin marriage".

Lib-Dems would say: "You don't have any majority. We will support you if you ban gambling ads and switch computers to Linux. Do we have a deal?".

That's how it works in a healthy system.

In the UK system, with 40% of votes, Labour has an absolute majority. Starmer and his buddies do whatever they want. Just like the Tories did whatever the hell they wanted.

I genuinely believe that with proportional representative and a ban on MPs having second jobs, private water companies would have been nationalized.

People focus on the outcome. But they should focus on the process

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submitted 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) by Severus_Snape@lemmy.world to c/fuckcars@lemmy.world
[-] Severus_Snape@lemmy.world 12 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

As a non-brit, one of the most hilarious - or sad - thing is how easy British political elites can get away with breaching rules.

In France, there is now an independent agency, the authority for ethics and transparency (HATPV) in charge of ensuring politicians respect ethics rules. And if they breach rules, they can face very heavy fines and even jail.

HATPV isn't joking. They have prosecuted dozens of french politicians.

In Britain, you have a bunch of toothless watchdogs that say "The honorable gentleman did not act honorably"

Acoba is an utter JOKE. Their enforcement mechanism is a strongly worded letter 🤦 🤦 🤦

Seriously, this is just embarrassing.

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[-] Severus_Snape@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I hate this so much: why would Palestinian journalism be more “difficult to independently verify” than Israeli journalism?

BBC has experienced journalists inside Israel. They aren't allowed into Gaza.

The BBC has asked to be allowed inside Gaza, but Israel refused:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2025/short-film-launch-calling-for-gaza-access

https://reutersagency.com/media-centre/joint-statement-on-gaza-from-reuters-afp-ap-and-bbc-news

They are forced to rely on social media and free lancers.

[-] Severus_Snape@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Iran is a country with remarkably smart people.

But it's not the smart people who are in charge. It's the dumb ones.

About 40% of the Iranian population is dumb as a fucking rock. They are absolutely TERRIFIED of women who don't wear a veil. They have spent billions on militias slaughtering Syrians. They think old Mullahs are the most pure humans on earth. They hate homosexuals. They hate atheists. They banned dog walking (yeah really).

And it's these 40% idiots who are ruling the country.

Never let religious people in charge of a major country. It can only end badly.

(This is exactly what americans are doing right now by the way. The super religious crazies from the Southern States won power with Donald Trump. Now he is slashing science budgets to make them happy)

[-] Severus_Snape@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

What exactly is Russia ? Russia is a gas station with nukes.

Luckily, they can count on millions of car-addicts and millions of plastic bottle addicts around the world.

If we reduced car dependency and encouraged people to use glass bottles, the price of oil would crash and Russia would feel pain.

[-] Severus_Snape@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Greece is one of the most corrupt countries in Europe. They don't respect driving laws. They openly throw trash in the streets. They smoke right in front of "Please don't smoke here" signs. The Greek politicians are completely corrupt. But these Greek politicians didn't fall from a sky. They are a reflection of Greek society.

Why do I say this ? Because my country faces similar issues.

Some cultures are just fucked.

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Severus_Snape

joined 1 week ago