You do not appear to understand what a republic or a democracy is, so I'll ignore the last sentence.

"Independent" does not mean unaccountable to the people. The President is independent of Congress, and vice versa, but both are accountable to the people. Well, the current president doesn't seem to think so, but legally he is.

The civil service is not a part of the executive but is a co-equal branch.

You are correct. In principle, presidents have no authority whatsoever to dictate how an agency runs. The executive branch should have zero authority over the civil service, which is intended to constitute a fourth co-equal branch of government.

In the US, in principle, the status of the civil service as co-equal to, and independent of, the executive should be added to the Constitution and enshrined in law for good measure. Not that that would help much with the current SCOTUS, but a Constitutional change might possibly persuade the current government that absolute authoritatian control is not as popular as Trump thinks.

That is the idea that, in Britain, entities like the NHS and the BBC have operated under. Charters specify the responsibilties and duties, and guarantee the funding needed to provide these, but the organisation is (supposed) to carry these out wholly independently of the government of the day.

It actually worked quite well for some time, but has been under increasing pressure and subject to increasing government sabotage over the past 20-25 years.

It's also the idea behind science/engineering research funding bodies the world over. These should direct funding for grant proposals not on political whim or popularity but on the basis of what is actually needed. Again, though, it does get sabotaged a fair bit.

Exactly how you'd mitigate this is unclear, many governments have - after all - the leading talent in manipulation, corruption, and kickbacks. But presumably, strategies can be devised to weaken political influence.

Erm... that was the point. Hence I referred to the "name" Reading.

Someone who was not native to the UK wouldn't know unless someone told them that Reading was pronounced differently to reading.

Yep, so-called reporter says complete bollocks to get eyeballs on ad laden article.

There are lies, damned lies and reporter suggestions.

Yep, if spelling is the worst they can get him for he has to be doing a decent job.

Worcestershire isn't even that bad once you sit down and actually look at it, it's just long. Leicester is far more confusing and then we have names that are spelled like common English words but are pronounced differently like Reading.

Granted we don't horribly mispronounce words like "solder" (it's "sole-der" not "sod-her", there's an L in it and don't even get me started on Jaguar) however there's a whole swath of words in English that are not pronounced the way you think, Sean Bean for example. there's at least 7 ways to pronounce the "ough" sound. Hell, just try to pronounce a lot of English place names like Bicester, Leicester or Worcestershire let alone the sizable London commuter town of Reading (for the uninitiated, it's pronounced redding, as in Otis, not "reading" as in what you do with a book).

English is a mongrel (and mutated) language, formed from proto-German and proto-French with spatterings of Latin and Greek hundreds of years ago and we've been adding new words from other languages ever since. T|he English language doesn't just borrow words from other languages, it chases them into alleys, beats them down and rifles through it's pockets for new vocabulary.

Spanish is far closer to a language that pronounces things the way they're spelled and even they have huge, glaring exceptions.

DEI is the great satan now.

We're getting closer to the truth though, DEI is just a few steps from admitting that the reason they really don't like them is because they're not white and not male.

Many European manufacturers already have hybrids Renault, BMW, Mercedes, VW, et al. offer hybrid models. Even the supercar brands are getting in on it (Porsche, Ferrari). It's only the US that seems to be behind here.

You're not exactly nostradamus here.

This is exactly how politics work.

1. Make attention grabbing policy.
2. Bask in attention.
3. Slowly roll it back to what the policy should have been but would have grabbed fewer headlines.

This is not something that is exclusive to the EU but they are experts at doing it. This is why you should never fly off the handle at a mere policy announcement, not that logic and reason will dissuade the frothing hordes one iota. Anyone with an ounce of understanding of the technologies involved (or the EU... or politics in general) knew from the word go the policy would be rolled back and watered down. Meanwhile the politicians get a poll boost from the "EVs are the few-char" crowd who seem surprisingly similar to the "Diesel is the few-char" crowd from 10-15 years back.

That's pretty much why these scummy companies are fighting it. We all know tipping in the US is mandatory in all but law, it's culturally obligatory which bears little difference to a legal mandate. Companies like to keep it this way so they can pretend their bill is lower, thus enticing people in with prices that don't accurately reflect what it will actually cost the payer. Uber et al. want to exploit this as much as they can by presenting the pre-tip price on payment and then adding the tip option so it feels like you're paying less than you are (yes, this actually works and works quite well.. Victor Gruen is famous for making a career out of things that fool consumers but shouldn't).

If it's radioactive enough to be a problem I would imagine it's easily detectable, considering that there are solid state sensors that can detect as little as 1 nSv/h of radiation and are apparently sensitive enough to be sometimes triggered by bananas.
If it's so radioactively inert that it can't be detected, then is it really a problem?

That's the reason they want to become a bank... Every time you make a transaction via a card, the banks take a chunk of that transaction (there's 3 middle men, your bank, the payment processor (Visa/MC) and the merchants bank all taking a cut) and Paypal knows that 1. the banks are minting serious coin from it and 2. most people aren't even aware it's happening so they'll keep paying.

Up until now the cost of compliance with regulations has made it to prohibitive for Paypal to become a bank... However now those regulations can just be ignored with a sufficient donation to El Presidente, they don't have to change or even have their shady business practices examined.

A lot of those regulations govern how you can access your money, how much liquidity the bank must hold and many other important things. So you're not just looking at paying more and less transparent fees... but also will be putting your money at risk if Paypal ends up having to pull the plug because they didn't comply with the regs... and you can tell it's going to be shady because they haven't tried to become a bank here in the UK where it's actually pretty easy if you're planning on being a legitimate bank (see: "challenger banks").