Thanks, I always try to include them, but I’m never sure whether to keep it as alt text or put it as a caption, or how well alt text works on Lemmy.

Out of curiosity, why do you find them helpful if it’s not for vision reasons? I apologise if that’s too personal a question.

They have to, this was for pre-charge questioning, and they have time limits on custody for that. They’ve also searched 3 of his properties and his former residence. The question now is when and if they formally charge him.

That’s fair. At the time I thought it might be because they were struggling to deal with both the Andrew situation and the Harry drama simultaneously, while Charles was generally more unpopular than his mother, and likely ill.

But if they privately found out something that made the Andrew situation untenable, it makes sense that they would try to distance that ASAP. I wonder whether it’s something that has been released already or is even worse.

Charles’ statement today on “we support the police”, plus letting them search The Lodge, definitely feels like they’re leaving him to rot. At least maybe a little.

Where are you hearing that? The charge is misconduct in public office, and while the initial arrest for it has been made based on sharing documents, the penalty itself can have a maximum of life in prison. Life in prison won’t happen, but given they’ve now searched 4 properties, I don’t think he’s getting away with just a fine either.

Maybe, I’m not so sure. I had thought they knew it was very likely the accusations were true, but they spent a lot of time sidestepping action. If public criticism hadn’t been so relentless, they might have been content to sweep it under the rug, as is tradition.

But I have never kept close track of the royal family, largely because I always assumed they were untouchable.

They probably have to start small, it’s unprecedented territory, and they’d want the proper charges to stick. I expect this also opens up the door to evidence gathering for the bigger charges.

I’m not British but I’m also very surprised. I can’t help but wonder if they would have dared had he still had his title?

on his birthday too.

The cops took the phrase “the icing on the cake” literally, and I think it was an excellent choice.

Why would a group of countries that includes Iran try to get the US to bomb Iran? Is it perhaps more likely that the country which bombed it 6 months ago, whose leader Trump met with last week, would like it bombed? The country that’s a major weapons importer from the US?

To cover up their own internal mess and deep unpopularity, yet again. Nothing boosts politician popularity short-term like a war - it certainly worked for Bush 1 & 2.

I have a few issues with substack, but truth be told, I dislike requiring handing over information to multiple services without seeing value upfront - and getting rid of obtrusive pop-ups does not qualify as value. Their willingness to platform Nazis just sealed my unwillingness into a conscious refusal.

In a similar vein, the corporate relationship adjustments you mentioned are also steps I’ve taken, but I’m inclined to agree with Naomi Klein’s perspective on consumer boycott being insufficient to address systemic problems. The general advice is to change what is within your power, but when you have close to zero power, does that advice then imply that you should try to do nothing or that you simply can affect nothing?

My substack qualms and the corporate relationship adjustments topics tie in quite nicely with a phrase from your substack that has been bothering me all weekend. It critiques my usual instincts for what to do as first steps, but it also articulates a problem I’ve struggled with for a while: “Documentation without transformation”.

Now I’m not of the opinion that we’ve ever truly been able to trust the information we consume as being objective truth, but AI has certainly suddenly increased the scarcity of reliable information.

The larger issue for me is that transformation is clearly necessary, but the scale of transformation required is so immense that it’s not something I’ve seen happen historically without also incurring immense suffering. This is not to say that the majority of humanity isn’t hugely suffering now, just that this kind of systemic change is one of those “this is going to get a lot worse before it gets better” type situations - in an acute way.

The usual trigger for change at this scale seems to be when realised losses of resource scarcity for too many exceeds the risk of setting what’s left on fire.

So we’re left with a situation where there’s potentially neither reliable documentation nor positive transformation. This does not spark joy.

I suppose my questions for you are then:

• what actions do you think would be sufficient to effect the systemic change necessary?
• how do you remain optimistic about this whole thing?

“I don’t know” is a totally valid answer to either too, in the spirit of acknowledging honest uncertainty.

I haven’t got a substack account, or I would have subscribed, but I hope you keep writing. You’ve given me a lot to think about. While I don’t quite know what to do with these questions yet, or if there is even something I can do about them, they’re salient and framed extremely well.

Oh yes, I understand how they go about smoothing everything over.

But, given the details we know, don’t you think:
• one corporate resignation,
• one months-prior bureaucrat firing, and,
• one investigation into a former PM,
is pretty far removed from could be considered a proportional fallout?

This is the theme of almost all of the “toppling”. Mostly they’ve just… resigned. They probably keep all the perks, and then take up a corporate advisor position once there’s less heat.

Headlines like this make it sound like there’s been real impact beyond generating articles about a few of the more public figures. But reading article, it’s really just a few politicians and bureaucrats resigning. Mandelson’s firing was already months ago. The investigation into a former Norwegian PM sounds like that’s as harsh as it’s got so far for politicians this time. And nothing except one law firm board member resigning for private companies?

They’re all getting away with it, and all the victims get is a hundred headlines about Musk being named in the files, and having their lives endangered from the terrible Don-centric redaction.

It’s a wonder people haven’t started throwing water balloons filled with mud and flour at the cameras. Perhaps he should be grateful that’s not a trend?

Same for Japan. No chance they’re wearing full hiking boots or sneakers inside the house in Japan - the shoe cabinet is built in right next to the front door of houses, tiny apartments, temples, many restaurants, etc. I assume the schools still do too.

I took a brief look at one and it seems they may have learnt their lesson from the first time around, unfortunately.