Best Of

The UK is finished and there is no polite way to put it. What was once called a developed nation has become a playground for corrupt politicians, greedy corporations, and parasitic landlords feeding on people who are simply trying to survive. The working class has been gutted from the inside out. People are working full time, even taking on second jobs, and still cannot cover the basic cost of living. It is not about laziness or poor budgeting. It is that the system itself has been designed to bleed every last drop of effort, money, and dignity from the average person.

Everything that once made this country liveable has been dismantled. A home that cost £700 a month a decade ago now costs £1,500 or more, often for damp, mouldy, low quality flats. Food prices have exploded to the point where a hundred pounds barely fills two carrier bags. Council tax, gas, electricity, fuel, water, and insurance all rise year after year while wages remain frozen. It no longer feels like you are earning money. It feels like you are temporarily renting it before it gets snatched away through endless hidden charges and taxes.

The government taxes income, property, spending, savings, fuel, and even death. You are taxed to live and taxed to die. Nothing is free and nothing is fair. Meanwhile the people who create nothing and contribute nothing keep pocketing bonuses, handouts, and expense claims that could feed entire families for a year. The rich buy influence, politicians sell out, and the rest of us are left fighting over scraps while being told to “tighten our belts.”

https://x.com/zthoupaul/status/1976892490247503997

Thing is Dimitri that in your country you get your oil refineries blown up by drones. Saying that we are finished just makes us laugh at you more.

Spencer Hakimian
@SpencerHakimian
·
2h
I have never seen a protest this large in New York in my entire life.

I've lived here my entire life.

https://x.com/SpencerHakimian/status/1979594998627860936

This is Washington: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:z6rujpf4u56jfie7aqic2nfg/post/3m3ibpdshq22y?ref_src=embed&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailykos.com%2Fstories%2F2025%2F10%2F18%2F2349211%2F-No-Kings-Rally-LiveBlog

Its a hell of a lot bigger crowd than turned up for you know who's inauguration.

Voldemort?

No, someone with far fewer redeeming features.

Damn, my wife says we are NEVER getting to America.

"I would like to have seen Montana..."

IIUC Imgur has retreated from the UK due to the Online Safety Act. This results in things like this, where the maps are simply not visible

https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/maximum-extension-version-of-russian-dominated-customs-union-in-20th-century.566028/

It's not the Online Safety Act.

Online, UK users speculate that this is due to the Online Safety Act, which went into effect in July. The act has resulted in wide-ranging age verification, requiring users to submit identification, such as a government ID or undergo a facial recognition scan, in order to access explicit and sometimes non-explicit sites.

However, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), which regulates data protection in the UK, released a statement on Tuesday that "Imgur's decision to restrict access in the UK is a commercial decision taken by the company."

The ICO launched an investigation of Imgur in March (as well as TikTok and Reddit) to examine how the site handles children's personal information and how it verifies users' ages. On September 10, ICO issued a notice of intent to fine Imgur's parent company MediaLab, ICO's interim executive director, regulatory supervision, Tim Capel, wrote in a statement. He also said that, "Our findings are provisional and the ICO will carefully consider any representations from MediaLab before taking a final decision whether to issue a monetary penalty."

"We have been clear that exiting the UK does not allow an organisation to avoid responsibility for any prior infringement of data protection law, and our investigation remains ongoing," Capel continued, also stating that no further details about the investigation will be given at this time.

https://mashable.com/article/why-imgur-is-blocked-in-the-uk

Why is Imgur forced to verify user's ages if not because of the OSA?

I, an adult, am not allowed to view a map of a theoretical Russian Customs Union because Starmer, a twelve-year-old boy in a man costume, wants the entire internet to be child-safe.

I hate to be pedantic* but wasn’t it Sunak’s government that brought the bill in?

*I realise this is the most unconvincing lie since Cummings claimed he drove to Barnard Castle to test his eyesight.

Oxford Union faces financial crisis over Charlie Kirk scandal
Donations on hold and high-profile speakers pulling out, sources say, after president-elect appeared to celebrate influencer’s shooting
...
“How can you have a free speech society where the incoming president celebrates the death of a free speech activist?”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/10/18/oxford-union-university-financial-crisis-charlie-kirk-death/ (£££)

Questions from next year's exams...

Sadly, life has become incredibly nuance-free.

Nobody should be celebrating the murder of Charlie Kirk, irrespective of their political views.

At the same time, one should have to now 'agree with Charlie' on everything (or anything) just because he was killed.

No one is saying you should have to agree with Kirk with regard to the Oxford Union debacle. But there was no 'appearance' in what the president-elect tweeted. He was clearly laughing at the death. Now of course to take the whole debate to it's natural conclusion, it is Abaraonye's right to say and tweet what he wants as a point of free speech. It is also the right of those funding the Union and those who might go to speak there to decide to no longer support it. Abaraonye laughed at someone getting murdered because of free speech but then cries when he risks losing his position for his own comments. If nothing else he is a bloody hypocrite.

Oxford Union faces financial crisis over Charlie Kirk scandal
Donations on hold and high-profile speakers pulling out, sources say, after president-elect appeared to celebrate influencer’s shooting
...
“How can you have a free speech society where the incoming president celebrates the death of a free speech activist?”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/10/18/oxford-union-university-financial-crisis-charlie-kirk-death/ (£££)

Questions from next year's exams...

Sadly, life has become incredibly nuance-free.

Nobody should be celebrating the murder of Charlie Kirk, irrespective of their political views.

At the same time, one shouldn't have to now 'agree with Charlie' on everything (or anything) just because he was killed.

A Jewish lawyer wearing a Star of David was arrested after police alleged the symbol had “antagonised” pro-Palestine protesters.

Police interview footage obtained by The Telegraph shows a detective accusing the Jewish man of openly wearing a Star of David that could cause “offence”.

The suspect, who was handcuffed and detained by police for almost ten hours, told The Telegraph his arrest appeared to be an attempt by the Metropolitan Police to “criminalise the wearing of a Star of David”.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/10/18/jewish-man-arrested-star-of-david-antagonised-protesters/

What on earth is going on? Suspensions and sackings are presumably too much to hope for?

Where as...call for Jihad or to globalise the interfada, police, its complicated, freedom of speech....

The Times had an article about this a couple of days ago: https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/civil-service-hamas-bias-study-vmxv9pb78?msockid=286f17fc1c606c5a0eb002b31dff6dac

Those employed by the public sector were far more sympathetic to the likes of Hamas than the rest of the population. We see it in the disgraceful decision of the West Midlands Chief Constable. We see it in this story. We saw it in the attitudes to transmen demanding access to female spaces. It is endemic. I am really not sure how we bring the public sector back into line with what the majority actually think but it needs to be made clear that this is intolerable.

I'm sorry, but are yoiu seriously suggested that the civil service should be filleted depending on their political views?

No. I am saying that in their execution of their public duties they must not behave in an antisemitic or racist fashion, nor should they seek to implement polices that are against our laws. To take the case in point it is intolerable that any serving police officer should detain someone handcuffed for 10 hours for wearing the Star of David in a public place. The price of such stupidity and intolerance should be serious disciplinary action so that his colleagues, whatever their personal views, learn the lesson.

Did you read the article linked?

"The Metropolitan Police deny that his arrest was prompted by the Star of David, and said the man was arrested for allegedly “repeatedly breaching” an order to keep opposing protest groups apart. They claim he got “very close” to the pro-Palestine protesters on multiple occasions, and alleged his actions went “beyond observing to provoking”, leading them to designate him as “actively participating as a protester”, therefore binding him to conditions of the Public Order Act."

Lying through their back teeth yet again.

And the interview footage shows that the interviewing officer considered that wearing a Star of David was “antagonistic”, indeed he laboured that point.

He was also wearing a loud shirt in a built up area and stepping on the cracks in the pavement.

Apart from the fact that Wolves only played one match away at Villa in the Eighties, Jenrick was 8 years old in 1990.

His rose tinted glasses also seem to have missed pretty much all the football hooliganism of the Eighties, not least the 96 police injured when Leeds came to Villa Park.

I usually agree with you on most issues but the determination of people like your good self to pretend that there is no problem with Islam in the UK is why I suspect we will be heading towards a Reform-led government.

I dont think that I have ever said that.

My attitude to Islam is much more nuanced than that. I dislike Islamist politics, and loathe Islamist terrorists like Hamas and ISIS. I think Islamic traditions are often misogynistic and patriarchal. On the other hand a lot of Muslim cultural values very positive, particularly the family and kinship networks, emphasis on charity and personal piety etc. I have many observant Muslim friends and colleagues and in many ways we have a similar world view.

I am a liberal and am perfectly happy for people to live their lives and dress as they choose, and see that perfectly compatible with being English. What I don't approve of is people enforcing their values on the rest of society, but this is as true of MAGA as much as any Islamist. Indeed such enforcement of values is not limited to Religion, as we will shortly see when the Poppy Police swing into action.

Those 'family and kinship networks' also lead to the excessive influence of 'community leaders' and create a 'shame society' which tolerates 'honour' crimes and grooming gangs.

There are usually good and bad aspects to every sort of human interaction.

A Jewish lawyer wearing a Star of David was arrested after police alleged the symbol had “antagonised” pro-Palestine protesters.

Police interview footage obtained by The Telegraph shows a detective accusing the Jewish man of openly wearing a Star of David that could cause “offence”.

The suspect, who was handcuffed and detained by police for almost ten hours, told The Telegraph his arrest appeared to be an attempt by the Metropolitan Police to “criminalise the wearing of a Star of David”.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/10/18/jewish-man-arrested-star-of-david-antagonised-protesters/

A somewhat remarkable inversion of the situation in occupied Europe in the 1940s.

“It is not without sympathy, that one reads the police officer’s terse response, to the obstinate Jew, who insists upon wearing such a provocative symbol. The man is arrested.”

The mentality,of pig-headed officialdom, endures across the centuries.