Maybe, but for those of us who aren't experts on constitutional law, it's difficult to ascertain exactly who is in the right, we have to decide which self-proclaimed experts to believe.
For this reason it's helpful to understand the motives of those putting forth a particular argument.
I have a rule, and I think it's a good one. When I hear some political rhetoric I ask myself "if the parties were reversed would this person still be saying the same thing?" If the answer is no, I ignore that person. This cuts out about 97% of all political discussion and saves a lot of time.
I don't think that rule can apply for anonymous Internet commenters listing objective claims. You probably don't have enough information to determine the partisanship of the commenter, and even if you did, their claims are either true or false, and debating that is almost certainly a better use of time.
Except, in the general case, that isn't true. Many of the Park Service social media accounts that were shut down do disseminate emergency information.
That part of the "shutdown" was rolled back once the issues were understood, but in the interim those kinds of Twitter feeds were pointing people to their Facebook page for up-to-date information. I guess we're lucky that no one included Facebook in the shutdown order and even luckier that there was no relevant emergency while the social media policy was being clarified.
Or more likely, if you're just a super-hater of Trump and/or Republicans and feel the need to claim that every single decision is terrible, disastrous, stupid etc. Let's face it, roughly 80% of political discourse comes down to this, from one side or another, and can safely be ignored.
It seems to me that if a group of people did come across some new land and decide to vote on what to do with it, they'd immediately vote to subdivide it amongst themselves. Leave some bits as public land for roads and parks and other stuff, and subdivide the rest equally so that families can build their own houses and grow their own crops or whatever with confidence.
Of course within a few generations of inheritances and sales that equitable distribution of land will no longer look like that at all.
A wall one mile long to protect one guy from trespassers is reasonable but a wall two thousand miles long to protect 250 million people is ridiculous, according to Zuck.
But the biggest cities in the world have problems with foot traffic and subway traffic.
I'm not sure that they still employ "pushers" in Tokyo but they very well might.
And that's with the benefit of Japanese culture where people are generally clean and polite. Japanese density plus American social problems sounds hellish.
Yeah all this pro density hype comes off as coming from newbies to big dense cities. High density sucks for quality of life really quickly. Especially peak hours on the subway! I've learned I prefer medium density: walk to a shopping precinct for a commuter train to CBD and essential amenities. Weekends a small car to get about to social stuff, run errands, larger shopping trips, etc. You can have this even in suburban settings by planning well and keeping lot sizes smaller. Hardly exists in the US though.
To each their own I guess. I find being crammed in like that horribly uncomfortable and claustrophobic, to the point where I would rather walk than take a subway I know is going to be a sardine can.
I'm going to guess that you are male. Being female and stuffed into trains like that carries disadvantages when males feel free to pinch your rear. Females learn to hold their briefcase behind them while standing on the train.
I'm male, but I know it happens, regularly. When we were in a group, we always tried to put the females in the middle.
Long commutes and rush hour also sucks in low density suburban america too. I think a lot of the bad sides of high density living for people are unwanted solicitors, bad/old non-soundproofed housing and insecure shipping receiving.
> Long commutes and rush hour also sucks in low density suburban america too.
Depends on where you want to live. I lived in Dallas for just over 14 years and never had a commute that was over 30 minutes each way. Half the time I was there it was 15 minutes door-to-desk.
Now that I'm in the NYC area it's 1+ hour each way and I'm beholden to a bus or train schedule. I could cut it at the expense of increased rent and less space, but that is not a trade-off my wife and I are willing to make.
I don't follow. We don't need two cars here, but my monthly public transit outlay is a small car payment in itself. Were it not for the significant drop in car insurance rates, I would still be paying more for transportation than I did in Dallas (since the car I sold had been paid off for close to seven years).
I wouldn't project your preferences onto everyone. For instance, I vastly prefer being able to do stuff on my phone, even standing in a crowded bus, to driving behind the wheel not being able to do anything.
> If Parliament refuses to carry out the people's wishes, would this be a case in which the Queen would be justified in stepping in?
No.
Parliament authorised Britain's EU accession with the 1972 European Communities Act. It then consulted the people in a non-binding referendum. It has every right, Constitutionally, to do as it pleases. Note that the "Crown only dissolves Parliament before a general election under conditions laid out in the Fixed Term Parliament Act 2011 (dissolution)" (emphasis mine) [1].
But an acre of land in the suburbs costs hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, whereas an acre of land in a normal agricultural area far from a city costs a few thousand dollars.
maybe there has to be a certain chunk of land set aside in urban areas for green and open spaces? concentrating massive food production centers is a terrible idea. not just because its an easy target for bio hacking but also because of the impact on environment and water especially. small distributed food production centers makes much more sense.
In the US, 40% of all its land is in active agriculture production. Most of the remaining 60% is not in production because it is not productive. I suggest production has already spread to everywhere that is viable to do so.
Even if you can find and allocate several thousand acres of productive farmland in every city for growing food, what are you really accomplishing? That's but a tiny little drop in the bucket of all the land needed to sustain the population. Not to mention that many cities rose out of agrarian pasts, so it is quite likely that active farmland is already found on the outskirts.
For this reason it's helpful to understand the motives of those putting forth a particular argument.
I have a rule, and I think it's a good one. When I hear some political rhetoric I ask myself "if the parties were reversed would this person still be saying the same thing?" If the answer is no, I ignore that person. This cuts out about 97% of all political discussion and saves a lot of time.