Why the UK is in the EU

What Hacker News said

Cites gizajob · 2022-04 · on “UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned”

I feel you're misreading what I said, and just seeing your own angle in it. "They took our jobs" isn't exactly true, but what has happened is that wages stayed low and conditions got worse due to capitalism's demand for lower costs and greater efficiency. So a source of cheap labour from Eastern Europe only served that process and made it such that companies didn't have to invest in people locally, because anyone could come in and do the job, and in the case of people from Eastern Europe, our minimum wages were higher than those provided by skilled professions. (I worked with a guy whose mother was the head nurse of a hospital in Hungary, and on a wage of £400 per month, so he was earning a

Cites alephnerd · 2024-10 · on “TI expands internal manufacturing for gallium nitride (GAN) semiconductors”

The impact of BRICS is really overstated, and is only really discussed on Reddit and HN (because Reddit). In action it's been blunted because of China and India's rivalry, with each country vetoing expansion of nations that are fully lopsided one way or the other. It's not different from the SCO or APEC in that sense. If you want to learn further about blunting in IR I highly recommend reading Rush Doshi and Oriana Skylar Mastro's research. Alternatively, this classic scene from "Yes Minister" also pretty much explains this strategy - [this video]

Cites noirscape · 2025-09 · on “Germany is not supporting ChatControl – blocking minority secured”

The goal behind the EU is to represent Europe as a single unified economic bloc capable of being a world power. It's not meant to make the European Union into a superstate. You can pretty directly tie this as a natural consequence of most of Europe's colonial empires falling; without the extra resources the colonies brought in, Europe would've risked being run under by both the US, Russia and nowadays China. The goal of the EU is to essentially find agreement between 27 member states to do things that all those states agree are things they want to do. Actually federalizing the EU wouldn't work simply because Europeans are too different from one another; it's a cooperation between countries t

Cites testdelacc1 · 2025-09 · on “Rights groups urge UK PM Starmer to abandon plans for mandatory digital ID”

I don’t find what either side is saying here very convincing. Anti-ID “it will change our relationship with the state, cause irreversible damage to our civil liberties and fail to deter illegal immigration”. They say it will lead to “frequent identity checks as we navigate our daily lives”. That last part isn’t true, for sure. I’ve lived in a country with a digital ID and you had to verify your identity a few times a year at most - submitting taxes, opening bank accounts etc. They’re exaggerating here. The pro-ID group is even less convincing, if that can be imagined. Tony Blair, former PM has been batting for this for ages - Digital ID is the Disruption the UK Desperately Needs ( [LINK] ).