Best Of

If the rumour is related to Starmer's legal career I really don't think it means much given cab rank rule

Does anyone have an example of The Truth, on any matter, first being revealed on Twatter?

As opposed to zillions of lies, bullshit, horseshit etc etc?

Yes, plenty

Otherwise the wokier powers-that-be would not be so exercised by Musk owning it: a social media site that spunked out nothing but misinformation would be quick disregarded. It would be like Russia Today, and everyone would look at it with skepticism and then probably ignore it entirely

However, the problem with TwiX is that the truth is mixed up with half truths and total lies - and that has always been the case

Twitter used to be a place where everyone, no matter what their political persuasion, hung out.

I think there is a very real chance now that it does end up fragmenting, following what has happened with broadcast and print media. In the last month, Bluesky really seems to have gotten awfully close to breakout.

Now, will it replace Twitter? Nope. But what looks entirely possible i that (for politics) left wingers will be on Bluesky, while right wingers on Twitter.

Twitter could lose its ubiquity.

Yes, I can see that happening, which means both sites will fail as "public squares" - which will be a damn shame, and a further silo-isation of discourse and polarisation of politics

However Blusky is still quite a long way from breakout and it is now encountering its own problems. The moderation there is as fierce as lefty Twitter back in the day. eg you get instantly silenced if not banned for anything deemed transphobic - say "there are only two genders" and it's bye bye

Nope - Bluesky just has an easy to use Block policy and a lot of people operate a block on first problem basis because life is too short...

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Because who needs approval when you already have consensus.

Is everything that we're secretly not allowed to say untrue?

Importantly ETA - I haven't signed the OSA or any NDAs

The OSA applies whether you sign it or not.

If you think something is true, then say it. But if you think rumours on Twitter are likely to be true, maybe you should re-think your epistemology.

I don't think that I'm in any danger of breaching the OSA

But I do believe that I'm currently restricted from saying various things that would have been fine to say about Boris

People can now go to prison for a long time for posting the wrong thing

It's fine for me to say that Boris is serially unfaithful. I am restricted from saying BlancheLivermore is serially unfaithful. That's because one is true and one isn't.

To go to prison, you'd have to be inciting hatred, I think. Comments about an individual would, initially, be libel or slander. If you lost a case and faced a court order, and then breached that, you could go to prison.

But why are you so keen to repeat Twitter rumours?

No, you can now be arrested for false statements made online too thanks to the Online Safety Act 2023

'179 False communications offence

(1)A person commits an offence if—

(a)the person sends a message (see section 182),

(b)the message conveys information that the person knows to be false,

(c)at the time of sending it, the person intended the message, or the information in it, to cause non-trivial psychological or physical harm to a likely audience, and

(d)the person has no reasonable excuse for sending the message.

182Interpretation of sections 179 to 181
(1)This section applies for the purposes of sections 179 to 181, and references in this section to an offence are to an offence under section 179 or 181.

(2)A person “sends a message” if the person—

(a)sends, transmits or publishes a communication (including an oral communication) by electronic means, or

(b)sends, or gives to an individual, a letter or a thing of any other description,

and references to a message are to be read accordingly.'

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/50/section/179
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/50/section/182

The reason police knock on doors over tweets is because they're hoping you will incriminate yourself.

EDI "crimes" are easier to clear up and will win you far more brownie points in the force.

The police only enforce the laws they are given, indeed it was Tory governments which passed the Online Safety, Malicious Communications and Public Order Acts that give them powers of arrest over tweets.

Labour did pass the Equality Act under Brown but that is a civil not criminal law

Which is why many of us think the Tories talk right, but act left.

Yes, but a rightwinger simply ignores or mutes a tedious debater, lefties want debaters they dislike silenced, and by law, if necessary

That is a pretty enormous difference

Not sure that the ‘in law’ part is particularly accurate, and is certainly not universal. And without that clause in your argument I can’t see the difference between muted and silenced from a listeners perspective.

We see it in stats on social attitudes. Rightwingers are happy to interact with or date or fuck or have a pint with lefties, lefties do not offer the same generous sociability to rightwingers. "Never kissed a Tory" is not just a meme, it is a behavioural phenomenon, and it is sad and somewhat pathetic

Some would say that the Trumpian attacks on Democrats as ‘communism’ are similar? I’m interested in the stats though. Do you have a link?

Many studies have found this

"The more left-leaning someone is, the less likely he or she will accept others with a different worldview. That is the remarkable conclusion of a new study."

https://cne.news/article/3460-study-left-voting-people-are-more-intolerant-than-their-right-voting-counterparts

"Liberals have most difficulty getting along with opponents on 'culture war' issues"

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/liberals-have-most-difficulty-getting-along-with-opponents-on-culture-war-issues

"Does the left have a problem with empathy?
In our polarised political landscape, it's hard to love our enemies. New evidence suggests that the left find it especially challenging to empathise with the right."

https://newhumanist.org.uk/articles/5726/does-the-left-have-a-problem-with-empathy

I don't find that remotely surprising. The essence of a left-wing worldview is cooperation and empathy with others, and you can't really empathise with someone whose beliefs are fundamentally at odds to your own. But right-wingers are individualists; empathy isn't so important to them, and friendships and relationships are more utilitarian. Because they don't care so much about the views of others, those views are less of a barrier to a relationship.

That is literally the definition of empathy.

Personally I don't find it that hard to understand the motivation why people voted Corbyn. Nor those who voted Trump. When I don't agree with Corbyn or Trump.

I see some people have forgotten the lessons about Twitter and Lord McAlpine.

There was no real need for anyone to bring it up on here this afternoon. Although it got a substantial reaction so I suppose that could be viewed as a job well done by the poster.

The first person to mention The Rumours today was @darkage

And that is not a criticism of @darkage, he/she was careful not to state any specifics, and The Rumours HAVE been dominating social media for a day or two, so they cannot be entirely ignored. We DO need to be mindful of a very twitchy Establishment, willing to use Plod in quite dubious ways to silence everyone

If only you had a magazine that could publish this story.

But I heard the same bullshit about Lord McAlpine.

There's a version of the rumours which I believe IS likely true, and makes sense, and is - potentially - extremely damaging for the government. But it is NOT the one being casually batted about on Le TwiX

So shut the fuck up about in on here.

I've spoken to OGH and he doesn't want to be sued, so your choice.

Again, I did NOT start this conversation - go check - so I am quite happy for it to end

But you piled on.

So this topic, and any other Twitter rumour topics are banned, if the rules are not adhered to people are getting banned, OGH has enough issues than have to deal with you and others getting him into trouble.

I see some people have forgotten the lessons about Twitter and Lord McAlpine.

There was no real need for anyone to bring it up on here this afternoon. Although it got a substantial reaction so I suppose that could be viewed as a job well done by the poster.

The first person to mention The Rumours today was @darkage

And that is not a criticism of @darkage, he/she was careful not to state any specifics, and The Rumours HAVE been dominating social media for a day or two, so they cannot be entirely ignored. We DO need to be mindful of a very twitchy Establishment, willing to use Plod in quite dubious ways to silence everyone

If only you had a magazine that could publish this story.

But I heard the same bullshit about Lord McAlpine.

There's a version of the rumours which I believe IS likely true, and makes sense, and is - potentially - extremely damaging for the government. But it is NOT the one being casually batted about on Le TwiX

So shut the fuck up about in on here.

I've spoken to OGH and he doesn't want to be sued, so your choice.

...

"Paedophile who sexually assaulted stepdaughter allowed to stay in UK under ECHR rules
Kicking sex offender from Democratic Republic of Congo out of Scotland would affect his ‘family life’, tribunal says"

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/17/paedophile-echr-asylum-seeker-deported-glasgow-scotland/

You seem to have missed the full article because the Home Office appealed and it seems the Judge missed half the facts

The Home Secretary won an appeal against the ruling, in part because the interests of the stepdaughter had not been considered in an independent social work report that was crucial to allowing the original appeal.

It was also found that the potential risk MD might pose to his own children had not been taken into account. A new hearing is expected to take place this month.

Once a foreigner is convicted of a crime as evil as this - murder, rape, terrorism, child abuse - lawyers should be removed from the equation. At that point, when the villain has done his time, the RAF should take over, fly the villain into the airspace of his country of origin, strap him into a parachute - then push him out of the helicopter, saying "good luck"

Job done

Is the parachute absolutely necessary?

I think we could save a fortune if we paid their prison service to host the prisoner as soon as they were sentenced.

That would also allow people who have been away a few years to acclimatise to their former country.

My best guess is the current Labour government will last for 1 or 2 years before it collapses. It is incapable of dealing with the problems it is going to encounter and the only thing going for it is its large majority, but the latter will rapidly erode as MP's flake out.

Which 100 odd Labour MPs are going to vote against in the government in a confidence vote? Not even the Corbynite MPs would do it, nobody wants to unnecessarily lose their jobs.

Starmer could be utterly incompetent and do nothing and this Government would sail on to July / August 2029...

The size of the majority and the fact turkeys don't vote for Christmas should tell everyone how things will play out.

The basis for what I am saying is a sense is that there will be no option to 'sail on' to 2029 without taking paradigm shifting decisions which will fundamentally rupture the coalition of interests that form the basis of the labour party. The decisions would be forced on to the leadership due to world economic/geopolitical/military events. It seems likely to me that this could lead to a split in the party such that its ability to govern is jeapordised, but what exact dynamics this will take on depends on how events unfold.

There is a lot of 'normalcy bias' evident in the comments on this website. It is obviously possible that politics will plod on as normal and my 'predictions' will turn out to be laughably hysterical, but I just don't think that is very likely.

You could be right, but I would be sceptical for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, we've seen many massive events in British political history, and few of them have brought a government to a premature end, even if they've led to one PM replacing another. There were hysterical posts about the Tories not being able to stagger on to 2024 after the Truss Calamity, but they did, and in the end everyone was left scratching their heads wondering why Sunak went early.

Secondly, your post reads a lot like the sorts of things people on the far-left say to each other to keep themselves warm on a cold winter's evening. The point of crisis for capitalism is always just over the horizon. The current centrist politics cannot hold. Our time is near.

I do think that, perhaps, there's a greater than normal chance of an extraordinary crisis - but I wouldn't expect an early general election to result, even if there were major political ructions as a consequence.

I’m watching Sky news. I don’t know who the speaker is, but she’s evil. I mean fully fucking evil. Right now she’s doing the whole climate NIMBYism thing. China USA blah blah blah.

But that’s not the evil thing. After commenting that Europe is so “sclerotic” (yawn) that we should do a deal with Trump where we kowtow to his highness in exchange for reduced tariffs, she then said, and I quote, “Zelenskyy is going to have to realise that this war needs a diplomatic solution, rather than a land grab”.

Rather than a land grab. I mean. Where do you start. Who’s doing the land grab? Angry goose meme. But of course she wasn’t challenged on this, because the West is terrified of those twats in the Kremlin.

Hence Zelensky is getting closer to developing a nuclear bomb

https://www.thetimes.com/world/russia-ukraine-war/article/zelensky-nuclear-weapons-bomb-0ddjrs5hw

Her comments might be a bit offensive, but does she deserve to be nuked?

Probably.
I don't see how getting a primitive nuclear device helps Ukraine, they need to deliver it as well and even if they do, Putin will retaliate either with full-blown nukes or by "accidentally" hitting a nuclear power station.
The west left support for Ukraine far too late, in hindsight the time to have stopped Putin was right at the beginning when all his tanks were stuck in a convoy on the roads.

You don't build one, you build a dozen.

And you don't use it, you just ring up the White House and tell them "unless you continue to support us, we will detonate one of these on the Black Sea."

One single nuclear test like that and the entire world is in chaos. Stock markets down 50% overnight. People fighting each other in the shops for the last loo rolls and tinned beans. Half the population of western cities fleeing en masse to the countryside. Panic in the streets.

Ukraine need to play hardball now. It's the only way to prevent themselves being strongarmed into a deal that favours Russia.

Clearly some people on here are desperate for WW3 ..🥴🤨

It is somewhat hard to see how the situation above is better for the rest of the world than a suboptimal peace deal.

As I've pointed out many times, the west giving in to Putin's nuclear blackmail has made the world a much more dangerous place. Now every tinpot regime with expansionist ideas will realise that having nukes means the civilised world will just give in to whatever they wish. Why spend billions on a military that can often be defeated - and which can turn against you - and which puts you in hock to supplier countries, when you can build a nuke for less?

Of the many, many problems inflicted by an old fool's dithering, that's obviously not one. It's been blindingly obvious since the 40s that nuclear weapons have a powerful deterrent effect, and ghastly regimes haven't needed the Ukraine war to demonstrate that to them. Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea, South Africa are varying examples of tinpot regimes who realised this long before 2022.


What the war and Biden's dithering has done is demonstrate to democracies like Ukraine, but perhaps also South Korea, Taiwan, Poland, Japan and others, that they can't rely on the US shield. Again, some have been realising that since 2016 or before - Ukraine is not the only example of America's chronic unreliability as an ally. That is where the true damage to the nuclear proliferation framework lies.

“To be America’s enemy is dangerous. To be America’s friend is fatal.”

The original was better:

I would rather be the Englishman’s enemy than their friend. For they buy their enemies and sell their friends.