At least in the UK the vaccine passports are made available through the NHS App, and stored AFAIK the same way any other health information on your person is stored already. At least they show up the same way like all other healthcare appointments, prescription s, etc. The only unique things are the QR codes to "export" that information - the validity of this is not checked against a (separate) database to my knowledge.
Other countries that have nationwide systems should have been able to do something similar - of course there's a good chance they didn't, but that's really not an argument against Covid passports but against bad security practices.
My impression was rather it's consensus that the vaccine provides more predictable immunity, which is the most important thing if you want to set policy. So recommendation in most countries I checked is to get the vaccine, even if you had Covid, cause it's the same dose for each patient and we have much better data on efficacy, whereas immunity from infection is much less predictable and traceable.
How was the UK gov blocked from running trains? From what I read some lines actually did get nationalized again after how poorly Virgin & co run some of the lines.
For sure privatizing them in the first place was a pure UK decision with - IMHO - predictable outcome.
The UK applied the state aid rules in a rigorous way, while other countries, uh, didn't.
> From what I read some lines actually did get nationalized again after how poorly Virgin & co run some of the lines.
That did happen (though I don't think it was Virgin, who were one of the better operators IME - they had sharp elbows in their dealings with the government, but they needed them), but the rules allowed that strictly on a temporary emergency basis (even though they ended up running a significantly better service than most operators).
UK gov runs plenty of trains. Even before covid, TFL took over chunks of the overground and no one batted an eye lid. Where do people get this nonsense from?
And even if it were true, why not just apply the rules less strictly to ourselves like you say everyone else is!?
For decades British politicians have blamed Brussels for their own mistakes and dumb brits have swallowed it without question. That's our fault, no one else's. Brexit at least may price that when we aren't suddenly vastly more free and successful and socialist and capitalist and powerful on 01/01/21...
> UK gov runs plenty of trains. Even before covid, TFL took over chunks of the overground and no one batted an eye lid. Where do people get this nonsense from?
Overground is run by Arriva i.e. Deutsche Bahn who are fully owned by the German government. "TfL" Rail is run by MTR who are majority owned by the government of Hong Kong.
> And even if it were true, why not just apply the rules less strictly to ourselves like you say everyone else is!?
Because respect for the rule of law is one of the greatest strengths of the UK, both for our international reputation and for its own sake. If joining the EU means following rules that are written for Italian-style legal systems, staying out is a lesser evil than turning into Italy.
That great except you haven't explained how TFL exists at all. Are all the lines privately owned and operated?
Also, as I've said before, the UK government does not care about the law. That's why we were so enthusiastic to get involved in Iraq 2. That's why we're still ignoring the ruling on prisoners voting (15 years later). The truth is, laws are just an excuse for governments about why they "can't" do things people want. Don't want to nationalise trains? Blame some obscure foreign law. Do want to play cowboy in the Middle East? Go for it!
And that's without getting into why we never bother to try and enforce all these laws ourself? If DB are an illegal state company, why not say so in court? Instead we give them contracts, because we're a law abiding country that ignores laws when awarding contracts to foreign entities but not domestic ones which is illegal!?
> That great except you haven't explained how TFL exists at all. Are all the lines privately owned and operated?
All national rail lines (including Overground and TfL Rail) are privately operated in general; they're only ever nationalised on a short term basis when something goes wrong with the privatised operations. London Underground falls under a different regulatory regime (as does Tyne & Wear Metro and, without checking, presumably the Glasgow Subway) and I believe they have a derogation to permit that.
> That's why we were so enthusiastic to get involved in Iraq 2.
I won't defend that war but I haven't seen any convincing argument that it was against English law. Royal prerogative is pretty broad, and Blair lying to parliament is not a crime as far as I know.
> The truth is, laws are just an excuse for governments about why they "can't" do things people want. Don't want to nationalise trains? Blame some obscure foreign law.
Even if that's the only effect of EU law, it's corrosive to democracy. Whether it's because of real EU laws or because they can lie about them and get away with it, EU membership has destroyed the accountability of British politicians. E.g. in the aftermath of the leave vote, there was a lot of reporting saying that the UK could have put restrictions on immigration from Romania and Bulgaria without leaving the EU. Which is true, but misses the fact that - despite it being what the majority of voters wanted - that was completely outside the Overton window of UK politics, because the UK political class wanted unrestricted immigration. So practically speaking, voting to leave the EU was actually the only way to achieve that.
> And that's without getting into why we never bother to try and enforce all these laws ourself? If DB are an illegal state company, why not say so in court? Instead we give them contracts, because we're a law abiding country that ignores laws when awarding contracts to foreign entities but not domestic ones which is illegal!?
The European Commission did pursue cases against Deutsche Bahn and others. Under the English law implementation of the same EU directive a structure like Deutsche Bahn's is illegal (because the Duck Test applies); the ECJ ruled it legal (while acknowledging that it was a loophole that was clearly against the intent of the law, and recommended that the next version of the directive should explicitly make it illegal, which was done). But in many ways all that is moot, because even where the ECJ ruled that there was illegal state aid to railway operators (e.g. Spain), there was no practical punishment.
> The difference is that direct democracy doesn't scale.
I hear that every time Switzerland is mentioned. I've yet to see a strong argument to suggest why it wouldn't scale in this day and age.
What I think doesn't scale is centralized systems like France, where all money flows to Paris and rarely any back. Switzerland on the other hand is extremely federated, to the point each canton, often smaller than average cities, have their own school system. Most tax money stays on the local level and didn't go to Bern. This independence IMHO is the critical factor for scaling that would work for moch larger countries.
As to the homogeneity: US has one language any natively born American speaks. Switzerland has 3, with a considerable political divide between the French and German spanking areas. Finally Switzerland has 20% Foreigners vs 10% in US. So again I would very much challenge you there.
Yeah, the last time the US states had that level of autonomy was 1860 [1]. After 1865, the Federal government consolidated power, and more so after the 1940s [2]. It's just that in the US, most calls for more decentralization (aka "states rights") were considered a "dog whistle" for pro-slavery sentiment (or at the least, pro-racist thoughts). I think it's crazy that the US President has the power that he has (and have felt that way for the past few Presidents) and that Congress have shirked their "checks and balances" [3]---it's just been the most blatant for the last two Presidents.
It's funny you mention the school systems. They aren't centralized in the US. Heck, they aren't even necessarily centralized by the states! In the areas I've attended school, it's been by county. And even the one I graduated high school under was administratively treated as three separate school systems (because even at the county level, it was pretty large). It's one of the few areas left that haven't been completely taken over by the Federal government.
Yes, English is widely spoken in the US, but there are areas where it's a distant second. It may surprise you to learn that the US has no official language. I live in South Florida and it's not rare to encounter areas were on Spanish is spoken. There's an older dialect of German still spoken in parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana. And there are areas on the West Coast where Vietnamese, Japanese and Mandarin (I think it's Mandarin is the most widely spoken Chinese language) are spoken.
I am surprised at the 20% (I found figures saying it was as high as %24) in Switzerland, but I would still contend that the US is still diverse. There are cultural differences between New England, the South, Texas, the Midwest, the Southwest and the West Coast that are probably just as deep as the French/German divide in Switzerland.
[1] Just prior the the US Civil war.
[2] Just after the Great Depression and World War II.
[3] And for all my voting life time, Congress has had lower polling numbers than any President, yet we keep electing the same yo-yos to office ("Congresscritter X is an idiot, but X is my idiot!").
Did I miss it or was there no mention of companies like Transferwise at all?
From a laypersons perspective this seems exactly how the "private sector stepped in" to fix the problem, with a solution that's actually out there and working well, without the need for blockchain or other form of digital currencies.
