Yeah, but it doesn't route around privacy violations. Those small stores will be full of apps promising to shield you from this intrusion while taking your data for nefarious purposes. Just like there are VPNs designed to hoover up user data.

The UK's age check law because we have a Labour government that is terrified of moral panics *from the right wing press*, specifically the Daily Mail.

Feckless, not freckless!

My points were: that a four buck wine can be great value or overpriced, and so can a 4k wine; and that its been about 50 years since Australia and New Zealand were only in the cheap end of the market, and it's never been true that France was only in the premium end.

Love the peevish Slashdot mods on the right who call me troll despite pointing out a pattern of behaviour that is blindingly obvious and very much on display in the policy change being discussed here.

I don't acknowledge anything of the sort, and it doesn't help your arguments to put words in my mouth. Champagnes refers to wines made in the AOC of Champagne using the methode champenoise. This methode, and variations of it, are also used elsewhere. The combination of terroir and methode produces a particular style that lots of people value highly, although this doesn't include you. If you wanna keep drinking your prosecco, calling it champagne (which would piss the Italians off no end) and muttering darkly about how it's akshully much better value than "French Champagne" thankyouverymuch, you go right ahead. But pretending to yourself that your tastes and opinions are some sort of natural law and objectively correct, and that everyone else is objectively wrong, is just toddler behaviour, placing yourself at the centre of things. You're the centre of your own universe, but not mine nor anyone else's.

I think reasonable people can reasonably disagree about whether the phrase “their electricity mix” refers to consumption (where you are correct) or generation (where the claim as it stands is accurate). On your second point, the political right has long since stopped giving a shit about what it bases its attacks on. When powerful men wang on about whales and birds to attack wind turbines, getting het up about handing them a free pass with an ambiguous phrase is a waste of energy.

There’s plenty of extremely expensive wine made in both Australia and New Zealand, eg Penfolds Grange or Destiny Bay. On value, there’s plenty of incredibly value French, Australian and New Zealand wine, and plenty of terrible value wine from all three countries and beyond. This is true at both the value and premium ends of the market. You sound like someone who’s very new to wine, or missed the last five decades of what’s happened in the wine world.

If you think all champagnes and sparkling wines are identical, then obviously you’re going to think champagne is overrated. You don’t notice or enjoy the differences between wine styles. The same way a non-climber wouldn’t care about the difference between a full crimp and a half crimp. But just as a non-climber who said the two were identical would be wrong, so you are wrong here, especially because you talk in terms of absolutes: “champagne is overrated” vs “I consider champagne overrated”.

Sure, but I have anecdotes to match your anecdotes: my son is veggie and has been since 13, and has enjoyed eating meat substitute products all that time. I’m not veggie but also enjoy eating meat substitute products and use that to reduce my meat consumption. Different strokes for different folks and all that

Yes, I didn't speak with enough precision

The products aren't identical, though. They're the same style, but they are far from identical. I mean, two champagnes aren't identical, even from the same maker. One of the glories of food is that it is so variable. I've drunk a lot of English sparkling wine, lots made using methode champenoise, and it definitely doesn't taste the same as French champagne. My view is that on average it's not as good, but sometimes can be better, but I think there's value in the distinction. Same goes for other PDO products.

Yup

Yes, it's excellent. I am so frigging bored of confected anger from right wing idiots shaping policies like this. It's just endless and it's always making people's lives shittier

Yeah, PDO rules protecting eg Champagne or parmesan make sense to me, although I think they can end up being overly restrictive and arbitrary in what tech and other innovations are and aren't allowed. But "steak" etc aren't geographically bound names, and it's stupid to treat them in this way, in my view. Noone mistakenly picks up a veggie burger thinking it's a meat burger, and even if they somehow did, it's not self-negating behaviour for them to eat it, the way it's self-negating behaviour for a veggie to eat a meat burger.