The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I can understand why you say that, and feel that way myself at times, but I'll also counter it. The 'state' generally does reasonably well. Things certainly are not as good as they can be thanks to the current government, but we're nowhere near (say) South Africa's levels of chaos. Not that we should be aiming for comparisons that low, but there is a comparison to be made.
Employment is high. The economy is, if not good, not terrible. The bins get collected. Most of us can see a doctor in a reasonable timeframe - for free. Things generally work, albeit somewhat chaotically. The 'state' makes mistakes - but it always has. And there are an awful lot of good workers within, and without, the state; people who work hard and diligently for both themselves and others. Yet we hear about the scoundrels.
Also, I'd say most politicians are good people, albeit flawed, as are we all. Some are sometimes put into positions they do not have the capability to do well, but there are few I would count as truly venal. And some who are absolute stars (IMO George Howarth being one such). But we rarely get to hear about them, as they just get on with their jobs.
I'd also add that I think there are very few states that are doing really well at the moment, particularly of the large economies, and not a single country has zero problems or issues. Neither is it realistic to expect that.
There's no other country I'd prefer to live in, if I was rich, or if I was poor.
Yes. It is a sort of John Rawls test: Which countries would you choose to be born in if you did not know, apart from that, in what circumstances you would be born and you might be bottom of the pile?
I doubt if the UK would be top choice for what it is like to be absolutely born bottom of the pile; but USA would be loads worse, as would most other countries.
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I can understand why you say that, and feel that way myself at times, but I'll also counter it. The 'state' generally does reasonably well. Things certainly are not as good as they can be thanks to the current government, but we're nowhere near (say) South Africa's levels of chaos. Not that we should be aiming for comparisons that low, but there is a comparison to be made.
Employment is high. The economy is, if not good, not terrible. The bins get collected. Most of us can see a doctor in a reasonable timeframe - for free. Things generally work, albeit somewhat chaotically. The 'state' makes mistakes - but it always has. And there are an awful lot of good workers within, and without, the state; people who work hard and diligently for both themselves and others. Yet we hear about the scoundrels.
Also, I'd say most politicians are good people, albeit flawed, as are we all. Some are sometimes put into positions they do not have the capability to do well, but there are few I would count as truly venal. And some who are absolute stars (IMO George Howarth being one such). But we rarely get to hear about them, as they just get on with their jobs.
I'd also add that I think there are very few states that are doing really well at the moment, particularly of the large economies, and not a single country has zero problems or issues. Neither is it realistic to expect that.
There's no other country I'd prefer to live in, if I was rich, or if I was poor.
So we are still able to do things we did 70 years ago, and are grateful for it. Not much sign of progress, is it?
Yeah, we're just like we were 70 years ago. Sheesh.
We're in a far better situation that we were in 1953. To take one important measure, back then, life expectancy was about 68/69. Now it's about 82. Or air quality: the last great London smog was 72 years ago. Since then, we've had a series of brilliant pieces of legislation that have massively improved air quality - with corresponding health benefits.
I could go on, but let's take occupations. In particular let's take the binmen. Back then, their job was very heavy work: having to lift heavy bins into the back of the lorry y. Now, whilst it's still a hard, stinky job I wouldn't particularly want to do, it's at least a fair bit easier. And you know what? The same is true for many, many jobs.
And for another thing, I'm alive. I wasn't then.
This does not mean that we should rest on our laurels and continue striving for improvement, but the idea we've not made progress since the 1950s is ridiculous. And an indication of how politicians simply cannot win.
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I can understand why you say that, and feel that way myself at times, but I'll also counter it. The 'state' generally does reasonably well. Things certainly are not as good as they can be thanks to the current government, but we're nowhere near (say) South Africa's levels of chaos. Not that we should be aiming for comparisons that low, but there is a comparison to be made.
Employment is high. The economy is, if not good, not terrible. The bins get collected. Most of us can see a doctor in a reasonable timeframe - for free. Things generally work, albeit somewhat chaotically. The 'state' makes mistakes - but it always has. And there are an awful lot of good workers within, and without, the state; people who work hard and diligently for both themselves and others. Yet we hear about the scoundrels.
Also, I'd say most politicians are good people, albeit flawed, as are we all. Some are sometimes put into positions they do not have the capability to do well, but there are few I would count as truly venal. And some who are absolute stars (IMO George Howarth being one such). But we rarely get to hear about them, as they just get on with their jobs.
I'd also add that I think there are very few states that are doing really well at the moment, particularly of the large economies, and not a single country has zero problems or issues. Neither is it realistic to expect that.
There's no other country I'd prefer to live in, if I was rich, or if I was poor.
So we are still able to do things we did 70 years ago, and are grateful for it. Not much sign of progress, is it?
Yeah, we're just like we were 70 years ago. Sheesh.
We're in a far better situation that we were in 1953. To take one important measure, back then, life expectancy was about 68/69. Now it's about 82. Or air quality: the last great London smog was 72 years ago. Since then, we've had a series of brilliant pieces of legislation that have massively improved air quality - with corresponding health benefits.
I could go on, but let's take occupations. In particular let's take the binmen. Back then, their job was very heavy work: having to lift heavy bins into the back of the lorry y. Now, whilst it's still a hard, stinky job I wouldn't particularly want to do, it's at least a fair bit easier. And you know what? The same is true for many, many jobs.
And for another thing, I'm alive. I wasn't then.
This does not mean that we should rest on our laurels and continue striving for improvement, but the idea we've not made progress since the 1950s is ridiculous. And an indication of how politicians simply cannot win.
There was one last London smog, which I remember well, in 1962, 10 years after the previous one. (This was immediately followed a month or two later by the great freeze of 1963).
"And, probably my most controversial opinion- I cannot see the problem in Trans being able to have some say on which gendered prison they go to. Again, subject to the prison authorities and a medical opinion. I've been in a lot of prisons over the years with work, including women's prisons where the person would be much safer in a gender prison they felt more aligned to."
The misogyny on display here is quite something.
Let's ignore for the moment Art. 3 of the ECHR or the Mandela Principles on prisons.
The women prisoners are not even mentioned and the idea that they should have a say or, even, a veto on whether a male offender should be locked up with them simply does not even occur to him. Women prisoners must simply put up with the risk or reality of rape or violence or indecent exposure or voyeurism. Because their rights or views don't matter.
And then @kinabalu has the nerve to say that trans rights are at risk of being rolled back. No they aren't: in this country trans people have exactly the same legal rights as everyone else. There is no political party which has put forward any proposal to remove any of these legal rights. What they do not have and should not have is the right to take away the rights of others - the right of women to single sex spaces, services or associations, for instance. And yet that is the explicit campaigning position of trans activist groups. It is the explicit position of such groups to want the removal of one type of offence of rape - rape by deception. Very progressive, that: wanting to be able to deceive women into sex.
But, hey, who cares about consent!
And what is also very common is those who come out with this totally ignore the court judgments which women have been winning in recent years, funded by endless crowd-funding, to preserve their existing rights. Those judgments are long but are worth reading, especially by those who opine on the law without understanding it, without understanding why ignoring what the law says causes real harm to others and without understanding the reality of what women have endured.
There is something deeply unpleasant about the way in which any woman talking about women's' rights or needs or the reality of what life is like because of their sex is almost always automatically attacked as bigoted or hateful because she does not centre or deem as the only important thing the demands of men.
I expect the usual suspects will do this to me too. But, fuck it, I don't care. Women are not support animals for men. Men's demands are not "rights". Men's feelings are not more important than anyone else's. Women's rights are human rights. Anyone seeking to limit or remove them is not, in any sense, "progressive" or "liberal".
Surely the problem with this rant is it begs the question of whether trans women are women or men. And even if we grant that post-op trans women are women, what about the first day a man dons a frock: when does the transition occur.
And as a practical matter in the context of prison, criminals as a class are not known for their veracity, and there is an incentive for cis men to pretend to be trans women in order to gain access to women's spaces or at least to get a cushier life (whether life in a women's prison is actually better than life in a men's prison is open to doubt but that's another matter).
“ And as a practical matter in the context of prison, criminals as a class are not known for their veracity, and there is an incentive for cis men to pretend to be trans women in order to gain access to women's spaces or at least to get a cushier life”
It sounds so simple, and to most normal people it is. But there’s a certain type of person in political discussion that thinks they’re convincing when they pretend not to understand how you’ve come to that conclusion
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I can understand why you say that, and feel that way myself at times, but I'll also counter it. The 'state' generally does reasonably well. Things certainly are not as good as they can be thanks to the current government, but we're nowhere near (say) South Africa's levels of chaos. Not that we should be aiming for comparisons that low, but there is a comparison to be made.
Employment is high. The economy is, if not good, not terrible. The bins get collected. Most of us can see a doctor in a reasonable timeframe - for free. Things generally work, albeit somewhat chaotically. The 'state' makes mistakes - but it always has. And there are an awful lot of good workers within, and without, the state; people who work hard and diligently for both themselves and others. Yet we hear about the scoundrels.
Also, I'd say most politicians are good people, albeit flawed, as are we all. Some are sometimes put into positions they do not have the capability to do well, but there are few I would count as truly venal. And some who are absolute stars (IMO George Howarth being one such). But we rarely get to hear about them, as they just get on with their jobs.
I'd also add that I think there are very few states that are doing really well at the moment, particularly of the large economies, and not a single country has zero problems or issues. Neither is it realistic to expect that.
There's no other country I'd prefer to live in, if I was rich, or if I was poor.
So we are still able to do things we did 70 years ago, and are grateful for it. Not much sign of progress, is it?
Yeah, we're just like we were 70 years ago. Sheesh.
We're in a far better situation that we were in 1953. To take one important measure, back then, life expectancy was about 68/69. Now it's about 82. Or air quality: the last great London smog was 72 years ago. Since then, we've had a series of brilliant pieces of legislation that have massively improved air quality - with corresponding health benefits.
I could go on, but let's take occupations. In particular let's take the binmen. Back then, their job was very heavy work: having to lift heavy bins into the back of the lorry y. Now, whilst it's still a hard, stinky job I wouldn't particularly want to do, it's at least a fair bit easier. And you know what? The same is true for many, many jobs.
And for another thing, I'm alive. I wasn't then.
This does not mean that we should rest on our laurels and continue striving for improvement, but the idea we've not made progress since the 1950s is ridiculous. And an indication of how politicians simply cannot win.
In a few charts - we are getting on for three times richer as a nation than 1950 (inflation adjusted)
A large number of illnesses have gone from a slow, tortuous death, to some pills/injections you take each week. Provided free. See various forms of arthritis, diabetes.
We have gone from a colonial society, complete with explicit racism, to one where every office of state (pretty much) has been filled by non-white people. Without much comment.
Women have gone from being definitely second class citizens to PMs. While we haven't completed some equality nirvana, women are assumed to be able to reach the top of any organisation - and often have.
While we have a great deal to do, the distance travelled is enormous. One threat is the failure to understand and defend what we have already.
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I can understand why you say that, and feel that way myself at times, but I'll also counter it. The 'state' generally does reasonably well. Things certainly are not as good as they can be thanks to the current government, but we're nowhere near (say) South Africa's levels of chaos. Not that we should be aiming for comparisons that low, but there is a comparison to be made.
Employment is high. The economy is, if not good, not terrible. The bins get collected. Most of us can see a doctor in a reasonable timeframe - for free. Things generally work, albeit somewhat chaotically. The 'state' makes mistakes - but it always has. And there are an awful lot of good workers within, and without, the state; people who work hard and diligently for both themselves and others. Yet we hear about the scoundrels.
Also, I'd say most politicians are good people, albeit flawed, as are we all. Some are sometimes put into positions they do not have the capability to do well, but there are few I would count as truly venal. And some who are absolute stars (IMO George Howarth being one such). But we rarely get to hear about them, as they just get on with their jobs.
I'd also add that I think there are very few states that are doing really well at the moment, particularly of the large economies, and not a single country has zero problems or issues. Neither is it realistic to expect that.
There's no other country I'd prefer to live in, if I was rich, or if I was poor.
So we are still able to do things we did 70 years ago, and are grateful for it. Not much sign of progress, is it?
Yeah, we're just like we were 70 years ago. Sheesh.
We're in a far better situation that we were in 1953. To take one important measure, back then, life expectancy was about 68/69. Now it's about 82. Or air quality: the last great London smog was 72 years ago. Since then, we've had a series of brilliant pieces of legislation that have massively improved air quality - with corresponding health benefits.
I could go on, but let's take occupations. In particular let's take the binmen. Back then, their job was very heavy work: having to lift heavy bins into the back of the lorry y. Now, whilst it's still a hard, stinky job I wouldn't particularly want to do, it's at least a fair bit easier. And you know what? The same is true for many, many jobs.
And for another thing, I'm alive. I wasn't then.
This does not mean that we should rest on our laurels and continue striving for improvement, but the idea we've not made progress since the 1950s is ridiculous. And an indication of how politicians simply cannot win.
In a few charts - we are getting on for three times richer as a nation than 1950 (inflation adjusted)
A large number of illnesses have gone from a slow, tortuous death, to some pills/injections you take each week. Provided free. See various forms of arthritis, diabetes.
We have gone from a colonial society, complete with explicit racism, to one where every office of state (pretty much) has been filled by non-white people. Without much comment.
Women have gone from being definitely second class citizens to PMs. While we haven't completed some equality nirvana, women are assumed to be able to reach the top of any organisation - and often have.
While we have a great deal to do, the distance travelled is enormous. One threat is the failure to understand and defend what we have already.
Absolutely. Important to remind people of this as we plunge seemingly headlong into either global or (in the US) civil war.
Managing the stagnation of the next century is going to be difficult though. Declining population and ageing demographics are a new challenge for all of us.
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I have the choice between a possible SNP or Labour MP. And I can't say I'm especially enthused to vote for either. But I feel I should vote all the same. The SNP aren't exactly showering themselves in glory, and Labour.... ?
'?' about sums up my feelings towards what they are standing for as a platform.
Last time I was in this position I voted for a no-hope Tory candidate for two reasons : 1) It might make them mistakenly direct resources here, 2) his surname had the word 'bum' in it.
OT. A fine Danish film on Netflix 'The Day will Come'. Especially salient for those who might have gone to boarding schools anywhere. Shades of The White Ribbon by Michael Heneke
“While we have a great deal to do, the distance travelled is enormous. One threat is the failure to understand and defend what we have already.” The current Tory government sums up the last sentence perfectly.
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I can understand why you say that, and feel that way myself at times, but I'll also counter it. The 'state' generally does reasonably well. Things certainly are not as good as they can be thanks to the current government, but we're nowhere near (say) South Africa's levels of chaos. Not that we should be aiming for comparisons that low, but there is a comparison to be made.
Employment is high. The economy is, if not good, not terrible. The bins get collected. Most of us can see a doctor in a reasonable timeframe - for free. Things generally work, albeit somewhat chaotically. The 'state' makes mistakes - but it always has. And there are an awful lot of good workers within, and without, the state; people who work hard and diligently for both themselves and others. Yet we hear about the scoundrels.
Also, I'd say most politicians are good people, albeit flawed, as are we all. Some are sometimes put into positions they do not have the capability to do well, but there are few I would count as truly venal. And some who are absolute stars (IMO George Howarth being one such). But we rarely get to hear about them, as they just get on with their jobs.
I'd also add that I think there are very few states that are doing really well at the moment, particularly of the large economies, and not a single country has zero problems or issues. Neither is it realistic to expect that.
There's no other country I'd prefer to live in, if I was rich, or if I was poor.
Yes. It is a sort of John Rawls test: Which countries would you choose to be born in if you did not know, apart from that, in what circumstances you would be born and you might be bottom of the pile?
I doubt if the UK would be top choice for what it is like to be absolutely born bottom of the pile; but USA would be loads worse, as would most other countries.
Best country to be born bottom of the pile: Canada, because you’ve a reasonable chance and unlike Scandinavia or Australia you don’t have the huge inbuilt disadvantage if you’re born non-white. I was going to say Australia but then remembered I would not want to be born Aboriginal there.
Worst rich country to be born bottom of the pile: one of the gulf states.
Cash for courses: top universities recruit foreign students on low grades While Britons need straight As to get onto prestigious Russell Group degree courses, their international classmates can buy their way in through secret routes
This was pretty much my experience 20 years ago of 2x Russell Group unis so I doubt it is something new. Seminars with people who could not speak english and had no clue about what we were discussing. In my vocational masters degree there were foreign students from the far east whose professional experience was not relevant to what they were studying and seemed to have just booked on to the wrong course without doing any research. But they still all left with degrees. It cemented a pretty dim view of universities in my mind, which was probably not really fair, but evidence in any case of a deeply flawed structure.
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I can understand why you say that, and feel that way myself at times, but I'll also counter it. The 'state' generally does reasonably well. Things certainly are not as good as they can be thanks to the current government, but we're nowhere near (say) South Africa's levels of chaos. Not that we should be aiming for comparisons that low, but there is a comparison to be made.
Employment is high. The economy is, if not good, not terrible. The bins get collected. Most of us can see a doctor in a reasonable timeframe - for free. Things generally work, albeit somewhat chaotically. The 'state' makes mistakes - but it always has. And there are an awful lot of good workers within, and without, the state; people who work hard and diligently for both themselves and others. Yet we hear about the scoundrels.
Also, I'd say most politicians are good people, albeit flawed, as are we all. Some are sometimes put into positions they do not have the capability to do well, but there are few I would count as truly venal. And some who are absolute stars (IMO George Howarth being one such). But we rarely get to hear about them, as they just get on with their jobs.
I'd also add that I think there are very few states that are doing really well at the moment, particularly of the large economies, and not a single country has zero problems or issues. Neither is it realistic to expect that.
There's no other country I'd prefer to live in, if I was rich, or if I was poor.
Yes. It is a sort of John Rawls test: Which countries would you choose to be born in if you did not know, apart from that, in what circumstances you would be born and you might be bottom of the pile?
I doubt if the UK would be top choice for what it is like to be absolutely born bottom of the pile; but USA would be loads worse, as would most other countries.
True. Somewhere in northern Europe though - Norway or Denmark, maybe?
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I have the choice between a possible SNP or Labour MP. And I can't say I'm especially enthused to vote for either. But I feel I should vote all the same. The SNP aren't exactly showering themselves in glory, and Labour.... ?
'?' about sums up my feelings towards what they are standing for as a platform.
Last time I was in this position I voted for a no-hope Tory candidate for two reasons : 1) It might make them mistakenly direct resources here, 2) his surname had the word 'bum' in it.
Vote for the candidate that appeals to you personally, ignoring party politics.
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I can understand why you say that, and feel that way myself at times, but I'll also counter it. The 'state' generally does reasonably well. Things certainly are not as good as they can be thanks to the current government, but we're nowhere near (say) South Africa's levels of chaos. Not that we should be aiming for comparisons that low, but there is a comparison to be made.
Employment is high. The economy is, if not good, not terrible. The bins get collected. Most of us can see a doctor in a reasonable timeframe - for free. Things generally work, albeit somewhat chaotically. The 'state' makes mistakes - but it always has. And there are an awful lot of good workers within, and without, the state; people who work hard and diligently for both themselves and others. Yet we hear about the scoundrels.
Also, I'd say most politicians are good people, albeit flawed, as are we all. Some are sometimes put into positions they do not have the capability to do well, but there are few I would count as truly venal. And some who are absolute stars (IMO George Howarth being one such). But we rarely get to hear about them, as they just get on with their jobs.
I'd also add that I think there are very few states that are doing really well at the moment, particularly of the large economies, and not a single country has zero problems or issues. Neither is it realistic to expect that.
There's no other country I'd prefer to live in, if I was rich, or if I was poor.
I used to be a real w***** when it came to British pride. I would only buy politically British consumer goods including cars, ( wearing a little union flag under the bumper of my new Cologne built Ford Capri. I worshipped the BBC (I detest them now). I hated the notion that foreign asset strippers could defile our industrial crown jewels, and here we are with Tata dismantling our last remaining virgin steel works. Yes, I was a real buyer of pups.
From 2016 I was told by self-styled patriots like Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, Dominic Cummings, Richard Tice and Arron Banks that people like me were traitors. Some of these people even made their fortunes betting against Britain.
Labour and the Liberal Democrats may be as disastrous as the PB faithful claim, and Starmer and Davey haven't exactly covered themselves in glory, but anything that gets rid of the self-serving grifters who have hijacked my country over the last decade can't come soon enough for me. My expectation however, is through sleight of hand or good fortune they will once again prevail, and take our once great nation further down the road to ruin.
"And, probably my most controversial opinion- I cannot see the problem in Trans being able to have some say on which gendered prison they go to. Again, subject to the prison authorities and a medical opinion. I've been in a lot of prisons over the years with work, including women's prisons where the person would be much safer in a gender prison they felt more aligned to."
The misogyny on display here is quite something.
Let's ignore for the moment Art. 3 of the ECHR or the Mandela Principles on prisons.
The women prisoners are not even mentioned and the idea that they should have a say or, even, a veto on whether a male offender should be locked up with them simply does not even occur to him. Women prisoners must simply put up with the risk or reality of rape or violence or indecent exposure or voyeurism. Because their rights or views don't matter.
And then @kinabalu has the nerve to say that trans rights are at risk of being rolled back. No they aren't: in this country trans people have exactly the same legal rights as everyone else. There is no political party which has put forward any proposal to remove any of these legal rights. What they do not have and should not have is the right to take away the rights of others - the right of women to single sex spaces, services or associations, for instance. And yet that is the explicit campaigning position of trans activist groups. It is the explicit position of such groups to want the removal of one type of offence of rape - rape by deception. Very progressive, that: wanting to be able to deceive women into sex.
But, hey, who cares about consent!
And what is also very common is those who come out with this totally ignore the court judgments which women have been winning in recent years, funded by endless crowd-funding, to preserve their existing rights. Those judgments are long but are worth reading, especially by those who opine on the law without understanding it, without understanding why ignoring what the law says causes real harm to others and without understanding the reality of what women have endured.
There is something deeply unpleasant about the way in which any woman talking about women's' rights or needs or the reality of what life is like because of their sex is almost always automatically attacked as bigoted or hateful because she does not centre or deem as the only important thing the demands of men.
I expect the usual suspects will do this to me too. But, fuck it, I don't care. Women are not support animals for men. Men's demands are not "rights". Men's feelings are not more important than anyone else's. Women's rights are human rights. Anyone seeking to limit or remove them is not, in any sense, "progressive" or "liberal".
Surely the problem with this rant is it begs the question of whether trans women are women or men. And even if we grant that post-op trans women are women, what about the first day a man dons a frock: when does the transition occur.
And as a practical matter in the context of prison, criminals as a class are not known for their veracity, and there is an incentive for cis men to pretend to be trans women in order to gain access to women's spaces or at least to get a cushier life (whether life in a women's prison is actually better than life in a men's prison is open to doubt but that's another matter).
“ And as a practical matter in the context of prison, criminals as a class are not known for their veracity, and there is an incentive for cis men to pretend to be trans women in order to gain access to women's spaces or at least to get a cushier life”
It sounds so simple, and to most normal people it is. But there’s a certain type of person in political discussion that thinks they’re convincing when they pretend not to understand how you’ve come to that conclusion
A sort of James O’Brien pretend befuddlement
I was watching a Japanese cookery show the other week and it had an interview with a European chef who was desperately pretending he didn't know the words for 'fusion cooking'.
"Oh, what do you call it? .... When chefs try to blend cuisines? ..... What is the word? ...... "
The presenter left juuuust a long enough pause to let you know what they thought of the charade & chef in question and said "Fusion?"
"Ah! That's it! Fusion cooking!" with a look of faint disgust on his face. While he then served up some fusion mush for $$$$.
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I can understand why you say that, and feel that way myself at times, but I'll also counter it. The 'state' generally does reasonably well. Things certainly are not as good as they can be thanks to the current government, but we're nowhere near (say) South Africa's levels of chaos. Not that we should be aiming for comparisons that low, but there is a comparison to be made.
Employment is high. The economy is, if not good, not terrible. The bins get collected. Most of us can see a doctor in a reasonable timeframe - for free. Things generally work, albeit somewhat chaotically. The 'state' makes mistakes - but it always has. And there are an awful lot of good workers within, and without, the state; people who work hard and diligently for both themselves and others. Yet we hear about the scoundrels.
Also, I'd say most politicians are good people, albeit flawed, as are we all. Some are sometimes put into positions they do not have the capability to do well, but there are few I would count as truly venal. And some who are absolute stars (IMO George Howarth being one such). But we rarely get to hear about them, as they just get on with their jobs.
I'd also add that I think there are very few states that are doing really well at the moment, particularly of the large economies, and not a single country has zero problems or issues. Neither is it realistic to expect that.
There's no other country I'd prefer to live in, if I was rich, or if I was poor.
Yes. It is a sort of John Rawls test: Which countries would you choose to be born in if you did not know, apart from that, in what circumstances you would be born and you might be bottom of the pile?
I doubt if the UK would be top choice for what it is like to be absolutely born bottom of the pile; but USA would be loads worse, as would most other countries.
True. Somewhere in northern Europe though - Norway or Denmark, maybe?
Not sure about Denmark - there is some pretty bad poverty/conditions among immigrants there.
OT. A fine Danish film on Netflix 'The Day will Come'. Especially salient for those who might have gone to boarding schools anywhere. Shades of The White Ribbon by Michael Heneke
If it's as boring and pretentious as Weisse Band, thank you for warning us so we know not to watch it.
I woke up early and decided to watch the conclusion of the Australia v West Indies match first (a good job as they kept showing what was happening in that match during India v England). Unfortunately, it meant I couldn't enjoy the victory for England with everyone on here. I can see it was great fun.
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I am an undecided too. I certainly won't be voting Con or REFUK and certainly will vote. I have never missed a chance to vote and won't now. On current polling my constituency is a Lab/Con marginal, but I don't want to vote Labour. Its difficult.
On the other hand if this constituency is marginal, then the Tories face a near armagedon, and Labour don't need my help.
I was chatting to Fox jr2 earlier. He is in a safe seat but can't stomach voting Labour either. Starmer’s lack of support for a Gaza ceasefire is the issue. I have never heard him mention the Israel/Palestine conflict before the current conflict.
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I have the choice between a possible SNP or Labour MP. And I can't say I'm especially enthused to vote for either. But I feel I should vote all the same. The SNP aren't exactly showering themselves in glory, and Labour.... ?
'?' about sums up my feelings towards what they are standing for as a platform.
Last time I was in this position I voted for a no-hope Tory candidate for two reasons : 1) It might make them mistakenly direct resources here, 2) his surname had the word 'bum' in it.
Vote for the candidate that appeals to you personally, ignoring party politics.
That doesn't help. The last two election leaflets from Tory, Labour and SNP candidates were all just national issues with literally zero information about themselves. Tory bad! Labour bad! SNP bad! Depending which leaflet it was. It's not like (round here) they demean themselves by canvassing.
The only candidate who's canvassed around here was a local Green councillor - who in turn got my vote for even being half sympathetic to my moan about the bin collections.
"And, probably my most controversial opinion- I cannot see the problem in Trans being able to have some say on which gendered prison they go to. Again, subject to the prison authorities and a medical opinion. I've been in a lot of prisons over the years with work, including women's prisons where the person would be much safer in a gender prison they felt more aligned to."
The misogyny on display here is quite something.
Let's ignore for the moment Art. 3 of the ECHR or the Mandela Principles on prisons.
The women prisoners are not even mentioned and the idea that they should have a say or, even, a veto on whether a male offender should be locked up with them simply does not even occur to him. Women prisoners must simply put up with the risk or reality of rape or violence or indecent exposure or voyeurism. Because their rights or views don't matter.
And then @kinabalu has the nerve to say that trans rights are at risk of being rolled back. No they aren't: in this country trans people have exactly the same legal rights as everyone else. There is no political party which has put forward any proposal to remove any of these legal rights. What they do not have and should not have is the right to take away the rights of others - the right of women to single sex spaces, services or associations, for instance. And yet that is the explicit campaigning position of trans activist groups. It is the explicit position of such groups to want the removal of one type of offence of rape - rape by deception. Very progressive, that: wanting to be able to deceive women into sex.
But, hey, who cares about consent!
And what is also very common is those who come out with this totally ignore the court judgments which women have been winning in recent years, funded by endless crowd-funding, to preserve their existing rights. Those judgments are long but are worth reading, especially by those who opine on the law without understanding it, without understanding why ignoring what the law says causes real harm to others and without understanding the reality of what women have endured.
There is something deeply unpleasant about the way in which any woman talking about women's' rights or needs or the reality of what life is like because of their sex is almost always automatically attacked as bigoted or hateful because she does not centre or deem as the only important thing the demands of men.
I expect the usual suspects will do this to me too. But, fuck it, I don't care. Women are not support animals for men. Men's demands are not "rights". Men's feelings are not more important than anyone else's. Women's rights are human rights. Anyone seeking to limit or remove them is not, in any sense, "progressive" or "liberal".
Surely the problem with this rant is it begs the question of whether trans women are women or men. And even if we grant that post-op trans women are women, what about the first day a man dons a frock: when does the transition occur.
And as a practical matter in the context of prison, criminals as a class are not known for their veracity, and there is an incentive for cis men to pretend to be trans women in order to gain access to women's spaces or at least to get a cushier life (whether life in a women's prison is actually better than life in a men's prison is open to doubt but that's another matter).
I would have sympathy with someone who is trans and forced to live in a prison of the opposite gender. The root of the problem is that the whole prison system is a disaster. People are living 2xto a cell, 6.5 sqm big, for 23 out of 24 hours a day, in squalid victorian buildings, with rodents, cockroaches etc. The rest of Europe has moved on but we are stuck in this situation which is basically evidence of civilisation decline.
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I am an undecided too. I certainly won't be voting Con or REFUK and certainly will vote. I have never missed a chance to vote and won't now. On current polling my constituency is a Lab/Con marginal, but I don't want to vote Labour. Its difficult.
On the other hand if this constituency is marginal, then the Tories face a near armagedon, and Labour don't need my help.
I was chatting to Fox jr2 earlier. He is in a safe seat but can't stomach voting Labour either. Starmer’s lack of support for a Gaza ceasefire is the issue. I have never heard him mention the Israel/Palestine conflict before the current conflict.
I run a Discord server which has quite a few politically engaged users. Numerous emoji for Liz, Boris, Rishi etc. What larks!
The emoji for Keir is just a grey question mark.
It's really hard to feel engage with 'the project' when it's just a word-cloud fog.
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I have said the same thing for a while and get branded a political nihilist when in reality is all I have done is lost all faith in our political system and its ability to fix anything
Agreed on this. As someone who has never liked the SNP and still doesn't,
Given that it appears to be Groundhog Referendum Day on PB, Remainia is falling well short of where it could be as a country and needs to break free from Leavistan to achieve its long term potential.
Bye bye Barnsley and Bolsover, good luck on your own.
This is clear from some of the not so subtle messaging from Sadiq Khan. Labour's forthcoming victory will further embolden him and others of his persuasion.
Although to win a majority labour needs these areas as much as it needs the big cities.
I'm thinking more of what will happen after, rather than before, the election.
That housebuilding will fall even further behind immigration.
Isn't that the one area where Labour appear to be making a definite commitment?
The Tories made a similar commitment which evaporated after the Chesham and Amersham by election.
Difference is that C+A is a must win seat for the Conservatives, and core Nimby is pretty much core Conservative demographic.
Whereas Labour's core vote is fed up with overpriced flat shares and their winning Amersham is the blob of icing on the icing figurine on the icing on the cake.
And home owners have traditionally been more inclined to vote Tory so Labour have every incentive to talk the talk but not walk the walk.
There is increasing evidence that social values are forestalling the traditional shift to voting Conservative as people near their forties. The traditional economic reasons to vote Tory have disappeared for working age folk, as the Tories only care about featherbedding the retired vote.
I think too that by building around the cities that the Labour vote moving into more marginal suburban and commuter seats could well make the Labour vote more efficient and flip a lot of previously safe Shire seats.
We are dealing with a new political world, and new demographics.
Are we? In 2019 the Conservatives won most voters over 39, in 2005 and 2001 the Tories won only most voters over 55.
Given the Tories back gay marriage and don't want to ban abortion or make changing sex illegal social values are hardly a major issue.
Brexit maybe but then most voters over 47 voted for Brexit, not most voters over 77, so plenty of mileage in that yet for them. Indeed far more voters voted for Brexit than currently back the Tories
Past performance doesn't predict future performance, as any fule kno!
Polling for Tories (and Reform too if you add them in) is pisspoor below the age of 50 and you are doing less than zero about it.
Indeed, the problem for the Tories isn't that they are doing badly among the Under 50s, it's that they are doing catastrophically badly. Comically badly. They aren't just unpopular, to all intents and purposes, outside a few oddballs, those who expect to remain in the workforce for 20 years or more have stopped voting Tory almost altogether.
Sure, that should improve in opposition as general polling improves and they recalibrate - but to the level of health where previously won? They have been so bad for and elicit such anger among the Under 40s in particular that the shift maybe generational and permanent - a cohort which won't forgive or forget.
Plus, there are little signs the Tory party is capable of coming to terms with this and why they are despised. There's the odd noise from outsiders about housebuilding. Which would be welcome, but one thing among many, and something Labour should find it much easier to outbid them on. Similar for infrastructure.
To take Brexit as an example. It's not going to define how opponents (the vast majority of the young as they were in 2016) vote forever or even now. But it's going to be very difficult to persuade people to give you a chance if they believe your signature achievement, the one the Conservative Party now defines itself by, was a terrible error that created chaos and made them poorer.
"Don't let them back in or they'll ruin Britain like they did last time" is going to be a powerful and persuasive argument to be used against the Tories for a very long time. And one that simple demographics will cement, given those who have been infuriated by and made poorer by the Tories are younger than those they have protected and enriched.
I think there are two different things going on and it is a mistake to conflate them
The cohort that is 40-50 were becoming politically aware during the fag-end of Major’s government /Blair’s prime. That fixed their political views (non-Tory) in the way that the Winter of Discontent did and, possibly Brexit will (too early to say)
Sub-40 I think it’s more about economics - this cohort don’t have an economic stake (housing) and so less to conserve plus social attitudes have evolved fast and the Tories have not (in part) kept up.
But of course it's not just that. Otherwise those who had done well for themselves would still vote Tory. And I can tell you they very much aren't. I have friends who own places in London on v high salaries who are more anti-Tory than I am.
It's a deadly combination of the economics, public services seen as declining, Brexit being seen as a bad move, being reactionary on social issues (people often find 'wokeness' tiresome but asked to choose between that and the likes of Lee Anderson, there's only one winner), and generally being a bit of a joke with the chaos. It's become axiomatic that this has been a terrible government in multiple ways. Some of which the Tories will never have a mea culpa for or a reckoning with as they have become part of Tory dogma and identity.
Obviously there are slight differences as you go through age groups - the very young are more socially conscious but arguably more entrepreneurial (or venal) for instance. But in general the point is simple. It's cohorts that have spent most of their working lives under these last few Tory governments, and view them as having repeatedly made decisions that now regard as harmful to them and terrible for the country - even if they didn't view them as that initially.
That's going to be a very difficult perception to reverse. Especially when you're precluded from making the biggest gestures that would show you're a changed party.
That’s a very good post. Especially the overview of why this government has blown it with so many voters.
Everyone can see that the country is broken; nothing works any more. Which is why the Tories’ talking about future tax cuts or abolishing IHT misses the target entirely. Especially after a decade when they’ve penalised those working, both rich and poor, to support the elderly and economically inactive.
The LibDems’ increasing obsession with what I regard as fringe social issues was a secondary factor behind my deciding no longer to be a member. But Casino’s Meldrew-tribute-act on here made me realise that, if it really has to be a binary choice (the sensible middle way of course being the best course of action), it is better to be on the right side of history rather than join Casino and his mini-me Leon in sticking up for the Neanderthals.
It is becoming hard to see what pitch the Tories can make in GE24 that won’t be met with guffaws of incredulity?
As a potential voter the Govt has blown it with, I also think those are a couple of very interesting posts.
I became somewhat politically and in conscious at an early age - about late-70s early-Thatcher. Partly through going to sleep with the radio playing from the age of about 11 (remember Radio Newsreel?), including World Service and sometimes even the foreign service of Radio Moscow.
One very formative experience for me was difficulty in getting to school because Arthur Scargill sent his mob of perhaps 1000-2000 flying thugs down the motorway to intimidate Nottinghamshire workers at Badminton Colliery. I suggest subsequent events including Scargill's campaign to make the NUM subsidise his lifestyle of the rich, and the looting of NUM Funds by a certain MP justify that evaluation (no names for OGH's sake), confirm that he was always a bad 'un - yet I find a belief in some that that behaviour was somehow OK.
I am always reluctant to vote for a party with TU affiliation, because imo politically-driven TUs in the UK are poisonous - and I can point at plenty of examples even after the TU reforms we have had, starting with McClusky and his cabal. I think I have perhaps only voted for Labour twice since - eg Gloria de Piero in 2015. But then much of the time I have only been offered a clown and a deadbeat as candidates, in Dennis Skinner and Geoff Hoon.
I don't buy the thing about "younger generations being more socially conscious" - I think that is a self-delusion that does not stand the test of history, and varies by area of society; I think it's fair to call society more individualistic now, and I am not sure either about "more environmentally conscious". It was the post-hippy or hippy-turned-practical generation that did the hard yards on much of that, and every UK Govt since 1990 that has been seriously building foundations for a greener future. Until Sunak & the current Tory leadership started burning it all down to save his butt.
Nor do I buy the thing about penalising working people to support pensioners, since pensioners have not had significant support - but perhaps I know more pensioners living on the basic pension than others here.
Current Tories? I am at the point of saying that I will never again vote Conservative, which is what I will tell Lee Anderson or his representative should they knock on my door. Translated into practice that is likely to mean 15-20 years (ie current generation of Tories), which is how long that type of resolution tends to last with me.
My reasons for that stance are their lost moral compass plus inability to govern competently in a post-Brexit environment. I'm still happy to support Brexit, as my main motivation is being outside the horrors of EU politics. I'd support single market without being subsumed by the political structures.
So my vote is available for Labour next time, dependent on getting a sane candidate. None has been appointed for Ashfield yet.
I assume you mean Babbington Colliery not Badminton - Babbington Colliery was just off the M1 on the A610 - It's now Phoenix Park site of the Nottingham Tram. Agree entirely with your voting intentions - Tories have lost my vote cos they are incompetent/stupid whilst Labour have lost it due to Brexit Referendum 2. Lib Dems no chance. I will vote Reform if Nigel takes over otherwise Green or No Vote. I know a lot of former Tory voters like you or me. FWIW I think Lee Anderson will retain his seat.
Yes - Babbington. The dual carriageways were full of flying pickets on that day.
On Lee Anderson, I'd say that Ben Bradley is safer. So if Anderson survives, so will Bradley imo.
I really can't call Ashfield as I can't call the Ashfield Independents. Despite all the slings and arrows, they increased their seats at the last Local Elections. Some of their supporters are extraordinarily loyal.
Two factors are that there has been a lot of housing built in both Ashfield and Mansfield over recent yeas, and both are becoming to some extent commuter towns for Nottingham more than previously (via Robin Hood line light rai partially).
I would not consider Hucknall (southern end of Ashfield Constituency) to be a Nottingham suburb since they are also on the tramway network. Nottingham centric people voting in Ashfield. It is noticeable that house prices there have relatively increased by perhaps 10%+ over a period of years compared to similar housing stick *not* on the tram network.
A third factor is that our District Hospital (Mansfield / Ashfield borders) is now 600 beds and has 3000+ staff, which would probably mainly go against Conservative this time. Many live locally (inexpensive housing), but a small but not tiny number of staff I met whilst in there for 3 weeks last summer commute quite some distance to work there - I met ones coming from both Nottingham and Sheffield.
Hi, Agree entirely with Ben Bradley - he used to be my local County Councillor - why voters are loyal to Ashfield Independents puzzles me as well I honestly thought their period of rule would bring them down. I think Nottingham City Council consider Hucknall to be in their area of influence as to be honest so do I,I live in Hucknall so my MP is Mark Spencer so difficult to call.
Could it be that the assorted representatives of the traditional parties have beeb so poor that none of them are worthy of a vote?
All the main parties have been total shit especially at the County level with regard to Ashfield for a considerable number of years
Cash for courses: top universities recruit foreign students on low grades While Britons need straight As to get onto prestigious Russell Group degree courses, their international classmates can buy their way in through secret routes
This was pretty much my experience 20 years ago of 2x Russell Group unis so I doubt it is something new. Seminars with people who could not speak english and had no clue about what we were discussing. In my vocational masters degree there were foreign students from the far east whose professional experience was not relevant to what they were studying and seemed to have just booked on to the wrong course without doing any research. But they still all left with degrees. It cemented a pretty dim view of universities in my mind, which was probably not really fair, but evidence in any case of a deeply flawed structure.
Not to say you are wrong, but this does cast some doubt on the Times reports being so gleefully jumped on by some ofd us:
'University leaders said the claims were “mendacious” because the reporting by the Sunday Times ignored figures showing rising numbers of UK students enrolled at Russell Group universities and unfairly compared entry requirements on non-degree courses with those of mainstream undergraduate courses.
A spokesperson for the Russell Group of universities said foundation year programmes, designed to prepare students for further study, “are different to degree programmes, have separate admissions processes and, crucially, different entry requirements”.'
So what happened is that a problem arose and it was resolved.
The problem gets the media reports but its solving doesn't.
Very much so. I'm thinking of doing a thread header on a subject that was in the news this time last year but isn't at the moment. But I want a few more weeks of data before a I tempt fate!
"And, probably my most controversial opinion- I cannot see the problem in Trans being able to have some say on which gendered prison they go to. Again, subject to the prison authorities and a medical opinion. I've been in a lot of prisons over the years with work, including women's prisons where the person would be much safer in a gender prison they felt more aligned to."
The misogyny on display here is quite something.
Let's ignore for the moment Art. 3 of the ECHR or the Mandela Principles on prisons.
The women prisoners are not even mentioned and the idea that they should have a say or, even, a veto on whether a male offender should be locked up with them simply does not even occur to him. Women prisoners must simply put up with the risk or reality of rape or violence or indecent exposure or voyeurism. Because their rights or views don't matter.
And then @kinabalu has the nerve to say that trans rights are at risk of being rolled back. No they aren't: in this country trans people have exactly the same legal rights as everyone else. There is no political party which has put forward any proposal to remove any of these legal rights. What they do not have and should not have is the right to take away the rights of others - the right of women to single sex spaces, services or associations, for instance. And yet that is the explicit campaigning position of trans activist groups. It is the explicit position of such groups to want the removal of one type of offence of rape - rape by deception. Very progressive, that: wanting to be able to deceive women into sex.
But, hey, who cares about consent!
And what is also very common is those who come out with this totally ignore the court judgments which women have been winning in recent years, funded by endless crowd-funding, to preserve their existing rights. Those judgments are long but are worth reading, especially by those who opine on the law without understanding it, without understanding why ignoring what the law says causes real harm to others and without understanding the reality of what women have endured.
There is something deeply unpleasant about the way in which any woman talking about women's' rights or needs or the reality of what life is like because of their sex is almost always automatically attacked as bigoted or hateful because she does not centre or deem as the only important thing the demands of men.
I expect the usual suspects will do this to me too. But, fuck it, I don't care. Women are not support animals for men. Men's demands are not "rights". Men's feelings are not more important than anyone else's. Women's rights are human rights. Anyone seeking to limit or remove them is not, in any sense, "progressive" or "liberal".
Surely the problem with this rant is it begs the question of whether trans women are women or men. And even if we grant that post-op trans women are women, what about the first day a man dons a frock: when does the transition occur.
And as a practical matter in the context of prison, criminals as a class are not known for their veracity, and there is an incentive for cis men to pretend to be trans women in order to gain access to women's spaces or at least to get a cushier life (whether life in a women's prison is actually better than life in a men's prison is open to doubt but that's another matter).
“ And as a practical matter in the context of prison, criminals as a class are not known for their veracity, and there is an incentive for cis men to pretend to be trans women in order to gain access to women's spaces or at least to get a cushier life”
It sounds so simple, and to most normal people it is. But there’s a certain type of person in political discussion that thinks they’re convincing when they pretend not to understand how you’ve come to that conclusion
A sort of James O’Brien pretend befuddlement
I was watching a Japanese cookery show the other week and it had an interview with a European chef who was desperately pretending he didn't know the words for 'fusion cooking'.
"Oh, what do you call it? .... When chefs try to blend cuisines? ..... What is the word? ...... "
The presenter left juuuust a long enough pause to let you know what they thought of the charade & chef in question and said "Fusion?"
"Ah! That's it! Fusion cooking!" with a look of faint disgust on his face. While he then served up some fusion mush for $$$$.
Does Balti count as fusion or fission in this context? It was definitely mush the first and last time I tried it.
So what happened is that a problem arose and it was resolved.
The problem gets the media reports but its solving doesn't.
A friend of mine and her daughter were planning on coming over last july from the states they applied for their passports beginning of march...they received them in october
"And, probably my most controversial opinion- I cannot see the problem in Trans being able to have some say on which gendered prison they go to. Again, subject to the prison authorities and a medical opinion. I've been in a lot of prisons over the years with work, including women's prisons where the person would be much safer in a gender prison they felt more aligned to."
The misogyny on display here is quite something.
Let's ignore for the moment Art. 3 of the ECHR or the Mandela Principles on prisons.
The women prisoners are not even mentioned and the idea that they should have a say or, even, a veto on whether a male offender should be locked up with them simply does not even occur to him. Women prisoners must simply put up with the risk or reality of rape or violence or indecent exposure or voyeurism. Because their rights or views don't matter.
And then @kinabalu has the nerve to say that trans rights are at risk of being rolled back. No they aren't: in this country trans people have exactly the same legal rights as everyone else. There is no political party which has put forward any proposal to remove any of these legal rights. What they do not have and should not have is the right to take away the rights of others - the right of women to single sex spaces, services or associations, for instance. And yet that is the explicit campaigning position of trans activist groups. It is the explicit position of such groups to want the removal of one type of offence of rape - rape by deception. Very progressive, that: wanting to be able to deceive women into sex.
But, hey, who cares about consent!
And what is also very common is those who come out with this totally ignore the court judgments which women have been winning in recent years, funded by endless crowd-funding, to preserve their existing rights. Those judgments are long but are worth reading, especially by those who opine on the law without understanding it, without understanding why ignoring what the law says causes real harm to others and without understanding the reality of what women have endured.
There is something deeply unpleasant about the way in which any woman talking about women's' rights or needs or the reality of what life is like because of their sex is almost always automatically attacked as bigoted or hateful because she does not centre or deem as the only important thing the demands of men.
I expect the usual suspects will do this to me too. But, fuck it, I don't care. Women are not support animals for men. Men's demands are not "rights". Men's feelings are not more important than anyone else's. Women's rights are human rights. Anyone seeking to limit or remove them is not, in any sense, "progressive" or "liberal".
Surely the problem with this rant is it begs the question of whether trans women are women or men. And even if we grant that post-op trans women are women, what about the first day a man dons a frock: when does the transition occur.
And as a practical matter in the context of prison, criminals as a class are not known for their veracity, and there is an incentive for cis men to pretend to be trans women in order to gain access to women's spaces or at least to get a cushier life (whether life in a women's prison is actually better than life in a men's prison is open to doubt but that's another matter).
“ And as a practical matter in the context of prison, criminals as a class are not known for their veracity, and there is an incentive for cis men to pretend to be trans women in order to gain access to women's spaces or at least to get a cushier life”
It sounds so simple, and to most normal people it is. But there’s a certain type of person in political discussion that thinks they’re convincing when they pretend not to understand how you’ve come to that conclusion
A sort of James O’Brien pretend befuddlement
I was watching a Japanese cookery show the other week and it had an interview with a European chef who was desperately pretending he didn't know the words for 'fusion cooking'.
"Oh, what do you call it? .... When chefs try to blend cuisines? ..... What is the word? ...... "
The presenter left juuuust a long enough pause to let you know what they thought of the charade & chef in question and said "Fusion?"
"Ah! That's it! Fusion cooking!" with a look of faint disgust on his face. While he then served up some fusion mush for $$$$.
Does Balti count as fusion or fission in this context? It was definitely mush the first and last time I tried it.
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I am an undecided too. I certainly won't be voting Con or REFUK and certainly will vote. I have never missed a chance to vote and won't now. On current polling my constituency is a Lab/Con marginal, but I don't want to vote Labour. Its difficult.
On the other hand if this constituency is marginal, then the Tories face a near armagedon, and Labour don't need my help.
I was chatting to Fox jr2 earlier. He is in a safe seat but can't stomach voting Labour either. Starmer’s lack of support for a Gaza ceasefire is the issue. I have never heard him mention the Israel/Palestine conflict before the current conflict.
I will definitely vote because voting is a privilege which most of the world and the vast majority of humans through history have not enjoyed, and for which many fought in the past.
I'll vote for Lab or LD, whichever I think has the best chance of knocking over this very safe Tory seat.
"And, probably my most controversial opinion- I cannot see the problem in Trans being able to have some say on which gendered prison they go to. Again, subject to the prison authorities and a medical opinion. I've been in a lot of prisons over the years with work, including women's prisons where the person would be much safer in a gender prison they felt more aligned to."
The misogyny on display here is quite something.
Let's ignore for the moment Art. 3 of the ECHR or the Mandela Principles on prisons.
The women prisoners are not even mentioned and the idea that they should have a say or, even, a veto on whether a male offender should be locked up with them simply does not even occur to him. Women prisoners must simply put up with the risk or reality of rape or violence or indecent exposure or voyeurism. Because their rights or views don't matter.
And then @kinabalu has the nerve to say that trans rights are at risk of being rolled back. No they aren't: in this country trans people have exactly the same legal rights as everyone else. There is no political party which has put forward any proposal to remove any of these legal rights. What they do not have and should not have is the right to take away the rights of others - the right of women to single sex spaces, services or associations, for instance. And yet that is the explicit campaigning position of trans activist groups. It is the explicit position of such groups to want the removal of one type of offence of rape - rape by deception. Very progressive, that: wanting to be able to deceive women into sex.
But, hey, who cares about consent!
And what is also very common is those who come out with this totally ignore the court judgments which women have been winning in recent years, funded by endless crowd-funding, to preserve their existing rights. Those judgments are long but are worth reading, especially by those who opine on the law without understanding it, without understanding why ignoring what the law says causes real harm to others and without understanding the reality of what women have endured.
There is something deeply unpleasant about the way in which any woman talking about women's' rights or needs or the reality of what life is like because of their sex is almost always automatically attacked as bigoted or hateful because she does not centre or deem as the only important thing the demands of men.
I expect the usual suspects will do this to me too. But, fuck it, I don't care. Women are not support animals for men. Men's demands are not "rights". Men's feelings are not more important than anyone else's. Women's rights are human rights. Anyone seeking to limit or remove them is not, in any sense, "progressive" or "liberal".
Surely the problem with this rant is it begs the question of whether trans women are women or men. And even if we grant that post-op trans women are women, what about the first day a man dons a frock: when does the transition occur.
And as a practical matter in the context of prison, criminals as a class are not known for their veracity, and there is an incentive for cis men to pretend to be trans women in order to gain access to women's spaces or at least to get a cushier life (whether life in a women's prison is actually better than life in a men's prison is open to doubt but that's another matter).
I would have sympathy with someone who is trans and forced to live in a prison of the opposite gender. The root of the problem is that the whole prison system is a disaster. People are living 2xto a cell, 6.5 sqm big, for 23 out of 24 hours a day, in squalid victorian buildings, with rodents, cockroaches etc. The rest of Europe has moved on but we are stuck in this situation which is basically evidence of civilisation decline.
Theory:
The UK prison system is stuck in that situation because of Porridge.
"And, probably my most controversial opinion- I cannot see the problem in Trans being able to have some say on which gendered prison they go to. Again, subject to the prison authorities and a medical opinion. I've been in a lot of prisons over the years with work, including women's prisons where the person would be much safer in a gender prison they felt more aligned to."
The misogyny on display here is quite something.
Let's ignore for the moment Art. 3 of the ECHR or the Mandela Principles on prisons.
The women prisoners are not even mentioned and the idea that they should have a say or, even, a veto on whether a male offender should be locked up with them simply does not even occur to him. Women prisoners must simply put up with the risk or reality of rape or violence or indecent exposure or voyeurism. Because their rights or views don't matter.
And then @kinabalu has the nerve to say that trans rights are at risk of being rolled back. No they aren't: in this country trans people have exactly the same legal rights as everyone else. There is no political party which has put forward any proposal to remove any of these legal rights. What they do not have and should not have is the right to take away the rights of others - the right of women to single sex spaces, services or associations, for instance. And yet that is the explicit campaigning position of trans activist groups. It is the explicit position of such groups to want the removal of one type of offence of rape - rape by deception. Very progressive, that: wanting to be able to deceive women into sex.
But, hey, who cares about consent!
And what is also very common is those who come out with this totally ignore the court judgments which women have been winning in recent years, funded by endless crowd-funding, to preserve their existing rights. Those judgments are long but are worth reading, especially by those who opine on the law without understanding it, without understanding why ignoring what the law says causes real harm to others and without understanding the reality of what women have endured.
There is something deeply unpleasant about the way in which any woman talking about women's' rights or needs or the reality of what life is like because of their sex is almost always automatically attacked as bigoted or hateful because she does not centre or deem as the only important thing the demands of men.
I expect the usual suspects will do this to me too. But, fuck it, I don't care. Women are not support animals for men. Men's demands are not "rights". Men's feelings are not more important than anyone else's. Women's rights are human rights. Anyone seeking to limit or remove them is not, in any sense, "progressive" or "liberal".
Surely the problem with this rant is it begs the question of whether trans women are women or men. And even if we grant that post-op trans women are women, what about the first day a man dons a frock: when does the transition occur.
And as a practical matter in the context of prison, criminals as a class are not known for their veracity, and there is an incentive for cis men to pretend to be trans women in order to gain access to women's spaces or at least to get a cushier life (whether life in a women's prison is actually better than life in a men's prison is open to doubt but that's another matter).
“ And as a practical matter in the context of prison, criminals as a class are not known for their veracity, and there is an incentive for cis men to pretend to be trans women in order to gain access to women's spaces or at least to get a cushier life”
It sounds so simple, and to most normal people it is. But there’s a certain type of person in political discussion that thinks they’re convincing when they pretend not to understand how you’ve come to that conclusion
A sort of James O’Brien pretend befuddlement
I was watching a Japanese cookery show the other week and it had an interview with a European chef who was desperately pretending he didn't know the words for 'fusion cooking'.
"Oh, what do you call it? .... When chefs try to blend cuisines? ..... What is the word? ...... "
The presenter left juuuust a long enough pause to let you know what they thought of the charade & chef in question and said "Fusion?"
"Ah! That's it! Fusion cooking!" with a look of faint disgust on his face. While he then served up some fusion mush for $$$$.
Does Balti count as fusion or fission in this context? It was definitely mush the first and last time I tried it.
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I am an undecided too. I certainly won't be voting Con or REFUK but certainly will vote. I have never missed a chance to vote and won't now. On current polling my constituency is a Lab/Con marginal, but I don't want to vote Labour. Its difficult.
On the other hand if this constituency is marginal, then the Tories face a near armagedon, and Labour don't need my help.
I was chatting to Fox jr2 earlier. He is in a safe seat but can't stomach voting Labour either. Starmer’s lack of support for a Gaza ceasefire is the issue. I have never heard him mention the Israel/Palestine conflict before the current conflict.
If we don't vote appropriately in our own constituencies the Conservatives squeeze out narrow win after narrow win and squeak home with a majority.
For anyone desperate to see the back of this appalling Conservative Government they cannot be under any illusion that a Labour landslide is remotely in the bag. Labour most seats isn't even a racing certainty. Voting for anyone other than the candidate best placed to beat the Tory incumbent runs the risk of another five year Tory doom loop.
Labour may, as the PB loyalists claim, be even worse. However the bar is so low, they can be useless and still better this lot. A government interested only in power, with no interest in governing, just jockeying each other for position to get to the top of the greasy pole first. Unbelievable!
But Starmer for whatever reason (and he may have a decent practical one, if no moral one) has been very poor over Gaza.
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
At some level you have to come to terms with living in an unjust world.
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I can understand why you say that, and feel that way myself at times, but I'll also counter it. The 'state' generally does reasonably well. Things certainly are not as good as they can be thanks to the current government, but we're nowhere near (say) South Africa's levels of chaos. Not that we should be aiming for comparisons that low, but there is a comparison to be made.
Employment is high. The economy is, if not good, not terrible. The bins get collected. Most of us can see a doctor in a reasonable timeframe - for free. Things generally work, albeit somewhat chaotically. The 'state' makes mistakes - but it always has. And there are an awful lot of good workers within, and without, the state; people who work hard and diligently for both themselves and others. Yet we hear about the scoundrels.
Also, I'd say most politicians are good people, albeit flawed, as are we all. Some are sometimes put into positions they do not have the capability to do well, but there are few I would count as truly venal. And some who are absolute stars (IMO George Howarth being one such). But we rarely get to hear about them, as they just get on with their jobs.
I'd also add that I think there are very few states that are doing really well at the moment, particularly of the large economies, and not a single country has zero problems or issues. Neither is it realistic to expect that.
There's no other country I'd prefer to live in, if I was rich, or if I was poor.
I used to be a real w***** when it came to British pride. I would only buy politically British consumer goods including cars, ( wearing a little union flag under the bumper of my new Cologne built Ford Capri. I worshipped the BBC (I detest them now). I hated the notion that foreign asset strippers could defile our industrial crown jewels, and here we are with Tata dismantling our last remaining virgin steel works. Yes, I was a real buyer of pups.
From 2016 I was told by self-styled patriots like Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, Dominic Cummings, Richard Tice and Arron Banks that people like me were traitors. Some of these people even made their fortunes betting against Britain.
Labour and the Liberal Democrats may be as disastrous as the PB faithful claim, and Starmer and Davey haven't exactly covered themselves in glory, but anything that gets rid of the self-serving grifters who have hijacked my country over the last decade can't come soon enough for me. My expectation however, is through sleight of hand or good fortune they will once again prevail, and take our once great nation further down the road to ruin.
I'm unsure quite what that's got to do with my post. I'm not talking about 'British pride'; but neither am I interested in 'British shame'. We're far from perfect, and I doubt I've ever suggested otherwise. We can improve a great deal - and hopefully the next (Labour) government will make progress.
But to listen to some people, you'd think we all lived in hovels with outside toilets, no running water and electricity powered by methane piped in from the local urchin farm. That there was mass unemployment and a gunman on every street corner.
That isn't a reason to vote Conservative, or indeed for anyone; just that people who are constantly utterly negative have probably lost all perspective.
Let me put it this way; one of the reasons the Post Office scandal has eventually struck the public's consciousness so strongly is that it seems so utterly against the way we think things should work in this country. And rightly so. But in many, many countries, what happened - and worse - would be accepted with a shrug and be seen as utterly unnoteworthy - "it's the way things are done."
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I am an undecided too. I certainly won't be voting Con or REFUK and certainly will vote. I have never missed a chance to vote and won't now. On current polling my constituency is a Lab/Con marginal, but I don't want to vote Labour. Its difficult.
On the other hand if this constituency is marginal, then the Tories face a near armagedon, and Labour don't need my help.
I was chatting to Fox jr2 earlier. He is in a safe seat but can't stomach voting Labour either. Starmer’s lack of support for a Gaza ceasefire is the issue. I have never heard him mention the Israel/Palestine conflict before the current conflict.
I will definitely vote because voting is a privilege which most of the world and the vast majority of humans through history have not enjoyed, and for which many fought in the past.
I'll vote for Lab or LD, whichever I think has the best chance of knocking over this very safe Tory seat.
Imagine this a general election where no one casts a vote....sometimes withdrawing from the process is the only way to say this doesnt work....when you believe the current system is broken how else apart from not voting to you express it?
Hi folks. My laptop has died because the HDD may have died. So I'm on the tablet. Apologies for any typos. Can somebody contact me backstage so you can talk me thru the probability of repair plz.
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
What I find interesting is that if we'd stuck to the old paper system everything would have been much slower, but innocent people almost certainly wouldn't have gone to prison.
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I am an undecided too. I certainly won't be voting Con or REFUK but certainly will vote. I have never missed a chance to vote and won't now. On current polling my constituency is a Lab/Con marginal, but I don't want to vote Labour. Its difficult.
On the other hand if this constituency is marginal, then the Tories face a near armagedon, and Labour don't need my help.
I was chatting to Fox jr2 earlier. He is in a safe seat but can't stomach voting Labour either. Starmer’s lack of support for a Gaza ceasefire is the issue. I have never heard him mention the Israel/Palestine conflict before the current conflict.
If we don't vote appropriately in our own constituencies the Conservatives squeeze out narrow win after narrow win and squeak home with a majority.
For anyone desperate to see the back of this appalling Conservative Government they cannot be under any illusion that a Labour landslide is remotely in the bag. Labour most seats isn't even a racing certainty. Voting for anyone other than the candidate best placed to beat the Tory incumbent runs the risk of another five year Tory doom loop.
Labour may, as the PB loyalists claim, be even worse. However the bar is so low, they can be useless and still better this lot. A government interested only in power, with no interest in governing, just jockeying each other for position to get to the top of the greasy pole first. Unbelievable!
But Starmer for whatever reason (and he may have a decent practical one, if no moral one) has been very poor over Gaza.
No, if my seat is in contention then a Labour majority will be easily into 3 figures. Another one wouldn't make much difference.
Good evening all. Today I heard a good comment regarding organised religion:
"They tell you that they've got all of the answers, but won't let you ask any questions."
'Organised religion' is a department of massively widespread human activity ranging from the nice retired teacher who organises the coffee rota and toy box for the parents and toddlers group at a Methodist church in Accrington to some of the most manipulative, violent and narcissistic activities on the planet. As a result generalisations are not so much true or untrue as without meaning.
So what happened is that a problem arose and it was resolved.
The problem gets the media reports but its solving doesn't.
A friend of mine and her daughter were planning on coming over last july from the states they applied for their passports beginning of march...they received them in october
That seems entirely possible:
Current Processing Times (applied on or after December 18, 2023) Routine 6 to 8 weeks Expedited 2 to 3 weeks Expedited at Agency Must have international travel within 14 calendar days Appointment required
Previous Processing Times I applied between November 6, 2023 and December 17, 2023 Routine: 7 to 10 weeks Expedited: 3 to 5 weeks
I applied between October 2, 2023 and November 5, 2023 Routine: 8 to 11 weeks Expedited: 5 to 7 weeks
So what happened is that a problem arose and it was resolved.
The problem gets the media reports but its solving doesn't.
When in November Mrs Eek ordered her replacement passport - it was ordered on Sunday, old passport sent on Monday, processed early Wednesday morning and the new passport was with us Thursday.
Cash for courses: top universities recruit foreign students on low grades While Britons need straight As to get onto prestigious Russell Group degree courses, their international classmates can buy their way in through secret routes
This was pretty much my experience 20 years ago of 2x Russell Group unis so I doubt it is something new. Seminars with people who could not speak english and had no clue about what we were discussing. In my vocational masters degree there were foreign students from the far east whose professional experience was not relevant to what they were studying and seemed to have just booked on to the wrong course without doing any research. But they still all left with degrees. It cemented a pretty dim view of universities in my mind, which was probably not really fair, but evidence in any case of a deeply flawed structure.
Not to say you are wrong, but this does cast some doubt on the Times reports being so gleefully jumped on by some ofd us:
'University leaders said the claims were “mendacious” because the reporting by the Sunday Times ignored figures showing rising numbers of UK students enrolled at Russell Group universities and unfairly compared entry requirements on non-degree courses with those of mainstream undergraduate courses.
A spokesperson for the Russell Group of universities said foundation year programmes, designed to prepare students for further study, “are different to degree programmes, have separate admissions processes and, crucially, different entry requirements”.'
The low standards revealed in the statement really are alarming.
How could anybody with pretensions to academic rigour not know it's 'different from?'
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I am an undecided too. I certainly won't be voting Con or REFUK and certainly will vote. I have never missed a chance to vote and won't now. On current polling my constituency is a Lab/Con marginal, but I don't want to vote Labour. Its difficult.
On the other hand if this constituency is marginal, then the Tories face a near armagedon, and Labour don't need my help.
I was chatting to Fox jr2 earlier. He is in a safe seat but can't stomach voting Labour either. Starmer’s lack of support for a Gaza ceasefire is the issue. I have never heard him mention the Israel/Palestine conflict before the current conflict.
I will definitely vote because voting is a privilege which most of the world and the vast majority of humans through history have not enjoyed, and for which many fought in the past.
I'll vote for Lab or LD, whichever I think has the best chance of knocking over this very safe Tory seat.
Imagine this a general election where no one casts a vote....sometimes withdrawing from the process is the only way to say this doesnt work....when you believe the current system is broken how else apart from not voting to you express it?
I don't think the system works very well - my issues with it include: the party system, FPTP, the role of the press and big money donors. But how would withdrawing my vote fix that?
At the moment, I am inclined to vote tactically to punish the current government - indeed I'd like to see the Tories gone forever.
In an ideal world I'd vote for the things I believe in, or rather the candidate that professed to believe most closely in the same things as me.
OT. A fine Danish film on Netflix 'The Day will Come'. Especially salient for those who might have gone to boarding schools anywhere. Shades of The White Ribbon by Michael Heneke
If it's as boring and pretentious as Weisse Band, thank you for warning us so we know not to watch it.
It's in no way boring. It's compelling. More so than Heneke.
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I am an undecided too. I certainly won't be voting Con or REFUK and certainly will vote. I have never missed a chance to vote and won't now. On current polling my constituency is a Lab/Con marginal, but I don't want to vote Labour. Its difficult.
On the other hand if this constituency is marginal, then the Tories face a near armagedon, and Labour don't need my help.
I was chatting to Fox jr2 earlier. He is in a safe seat but can't stomach voting Labour either. Starmer’s lack of support for a Gaza ceasefire is the issue. I have never heard him mention the Israel/Palestine conflict before the current conflict.
I will definitely vote because voting is a privilege which most of the world and the vast majority of humans through history have not enjoyed, and for which many fought in the past.
I'll vote for Lab or LD, whichever I think has the best chance of knocking over this very safe Tory seat.
Imagine this a general election where no one casts a vote....sometimes withdrawing from the process is the only way to say this doesnt work....when you believe the current system is broken how else apart from not voting to you express it?
It depends on what you think doesn't work. Mass not voting suggests to bad actors that they would get along fine without an electorate, and the electorate wish to be disenfranchised. Syria and North Korea come to mind.
If what we need is brighter voters and better candidates, then good and better people standing and voting more brightly would seem the only options. There is no-one apart from the great UK public who can sort that one, by standing and voting.
While I'm here let's briefly go thru your points. Firstly @Cyclefree: your statement that trans people have the same rights as everybody else is a miscomprehension. The creation of trans rights increased the rights of all people born as one legal sex to be considered in law as the other sex, a process known as "transition". That is the right in question. This was made explicit by the Gender Reassignment Act which created a legal mechanism whereby the sex on the birth certificate can be changed, thereby moving the person from one legal sex to the other. This is the root of the recent court decisions that were so widely discussed here
To demonstrate by analogy: if a gay person had the right to have same-sex sex removed then that person could legitimately claim to have had their rights removed, even though they still had the same right to have different-sex sex as other people. I could repeat the analogy for other characteristics (eg race, religion) but hopefully that will be unnecessary.
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I am an undecided too. I certainly won't be voting Con or REFUK and certainly will vote. I have never missed a chance to vote and won't now. On current polling my constituency is a Lab/Con marginal, but I don't want to vote Labour. Its difficult.
On the other hand if this constituency is marginal, then the Tories face a near armagedon, and Labour don't need my help.
I was chatting to Fox jr2 earlier. He is in a safe seat but can't stomach voting Labour either. Starmer’s lack of support for a Gaza ceasefire is the issue. I have never heard him mention the Israel/Palestine conflict before the current conflict.
I will definitely vote because voting is a privilege which most of the world and the vast majority of humans through history have not enjoyed, and for which many fought in the past.
I'll vote for Lab or LD, whichever I think has the best chance of knocking over this very safe Tory seat.
Imagine this a general election where no one casts a vote....sometimes withdrawing from the process is the only way to say this doesnt work....when you believe the current system is broken how else apart from not voting to you express it?
Nah, not voting simply means someone else decides rather than you.
OT. A fine Danish film on Netflix 'The Day will Come'. Especially salient for those who might have gone to boarding schools anywhere. Shades of The White Ribbon by Michael Heneke
If it's as boring and pretentious as Weisse Band, thank you for warning us so we know not to watch it.
It's in no way boring. It's compelling. More so than Heneke.
Talk about low bars...
Weisse Band is the dullest film I've ever watched. And when you consider that includes Carry on Columbus, that's saying something.
Admittedly, it's not quite as bad as Gormenghast or The White Queen, but since they're actually unwatchable that's not difficult either.
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I can understand why you say that, and feel that way myself at times, but I'll also counter it. The 'state' generally does reasonably well. Things certainly are not as good as they can be thanks to the current government, but we're nowhere near (say) South Africa's levels of chaos. Not that we should be aiming for comparisons that low, but there is a comparison to be made.
Employment is high. The economy is, if not good, not terrible. The bins get collected. Most of us can see a doctor in a reasonable timeframe - for free. Things generally work, albeit somewhat chaotically. The 'state' makes mistakes - but it always has. And there are an awful lot of good workers within, and without, the state; people who work hard and diligently for both themselves and others. Yet we hear about the scoundrels.
Also, I'd say most politicians are good people, albeit flawed, as are we all. Some are sometimes put into positions they do not have the capability to do well, but there are few I would count as truly venal. And some who are absolute stars (IMO George Howarth being one such). But we rarely get to hear about them, as they just get on with their jobs.
I'd also add that I think there are very few states that are doing really well at the moment, particularly of the large economies, and not a single country has zero problems or issues. Neither is it realistic to expect that.
There's no other country I'd prefer to live in, if I was rich, or if I was poor.
I used to be a real w***** when it came to British pride. I would only buy politically British consumer goods including cars, ( wearing a little union flag under the bumper of my new Cologne built Ford Capri. I worshipped the BBC (I detest them now). I hated the notion that foreign asset strippers could defile our industrial crown jewels, and here we are with Tata dismantling our last remaining virgin steel works. Yes, I was a real buyer of pups.
From 2016 I was told by self-styled patriots like Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, Dominic Cummings, Richard Tice and Arron Banks that people like me were traitors. Some of these people even made their fortunes betting against Britain.
Labour and the Liberal Democrats may be as disastrous as the PB faithful claim, and Starmer and Davey haven't exactly covered themselves in glory, but anything that gets rid of the self-serving grifters who have hijacked my country over the last decade can't come soon enough for me. My expectation however, is through sleight of hand or good fortune they will once again prevail, and take our once great nation further down the road to ruin.
I had one of those Ford Capris. OMG, The roadholding! Even @Dura_Ace would have left shit stains on the drivers seat!
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I can understand why you say that, and feel that way myself at times, but I'll also counter it. The 'state' generally does reasonably well. Things certainly are not as good as they can be thanks to the current government, but we're nowhere near (say) South Africa's levels of chaos. Not that we should be aiming for comparisons that low, but there is a comparison to be made.
Employment is high. The economy is, if not good, not terrible. The bins get collected. Most of us can see a doctor in a reasonable timeframe - for free. Things generally work, albeit somewhat chaotically. The 'state' makes mistakes - but it always has. And there are an awful lot of good workers within, and without, the state; people who work hard and diligently for both themselves and others. Yet we hear about the scoundrels.
Also, I'd say most politicians are good people, albeit flawed, as are we all. Some are sometimes put into positions they do not have the capability to do well, but there are few I would count as truly venal. And some who are absolute stars (IMO George Howarth being one such). But we rarely get to hear about them, as they just get on with their jobs.
I'd also add that I think there are very few states that are doing really well at the moment, particularly of the large economies, and not a single country has zero problems or issues. Neither is it realistic to expect that.
There's no other country I'd prefer to live in, if I was rich, or if I was poor.
I used to be a real w***** when it came to British pride. I would only buy politically British consumer goods including cars, ( wearing a little union flag under the bumper of my new Cologne built Ford Capri. I worshipped the BBC (I detest them now). I hated the notion that foreign asset strippers could defile our industrial crown jewels, and here we are with Tata dismantling our last remaining virgin steel works. Yes, I was a real buyer of pups.
From 2016 I was told by self-styled patriots like Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, Dominic Cummings, Richard Tice and Arron Banks that people like me were traitors. Some of these people even made their fortunes betting against Britain.
Labour and the Liberal Democrats may be as disastrous as the PB faithful claim, and Starmer and Davey haven't exactly covered themselves in glory, but anything that gets rid of the self-serving grifters who have hijacked my country over the last decade can't come soon enough for me. My expectation however, is through sleight of hand or good fortune they will once again prevail, and take our once great nation further down the road to ruin.
I'm unsure quite what that's got to do with my post. I'm not talking about 'British pride'; but neither am I interested in 'British shame'. We're far from perfect, and I doubt I've ever suggested otherwise. We can improve a great deal - and hopefully the next (Labour) government will make progress.
But to listen to some people, you'd think we all lived in hovels with outside toilets, no running water and electricity powered by methane piped in from the local urchin farm. That there was mass unemployment and a gunman on every street corner.
That isn't a reason to vote Conservative, or indeed for anyone; just that people who are constantly utterly negative have probably lost all perspective.
Let me put it this way; one of the reasons the Post Office scandal has eventually struck the public's consciousness so strongly is that it seems so utterly against the way we think things should work in this country. And rightly so. But in many, many countries, what happened - and worse - would be accepted with a shrug and be seen as utterly unnoteworthy - "it's the way things are done."
We should not try to change that.
I suspect we are mostly on PB in the luxurious position of living in expensive, and comfortable homes. We are fortunate.
I have seen for myself (my wife was involved in parent and child foster caring for a number of years) and I saw poverty of an order I had no idea existed. We have ex-servicemen living in tents that Suella Braverman wanted to remove from them. We have families dispossessed of their homes and sent to local authority emergency accomodation. We live in a society that it more inequitable than it was a decade ago. To drive such inequality further is immoral. Maybe Labour can't do anything about it. The Conservatives on the other hand won't even try.
One nation feudal Tories in this iteration of the Conservative Party are a thing of the past.
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I am an undecided too. I certainly won't be voting Con or REFUK but certainly will vote. I have never missed a chance to vote and won't now. On current polling my constituency is a Lab/Con marginal, but I don't want to vote Labour. Its difficult.
On the other hand if this constituency is marginal, then the Tories face a near armagedon, and Labour don't need my help.
I was chatting to Fox jr2 earlier. He is in a safe seat but can't stomach voting Labour either. Starmer’s lack of support for a Gaza ceasefire is the issue. I have never heard him mention the Israel/Palestine conflict before the current conflict.
If we don't vote appropriately in our own constituencies the Conservatives squeeze out narrow win after narrow win and squeak home with a majority.
For anyone desperate to see the back of this appalling Conservative Government they cannot be under any illusion that a Labour landslide is remotely in the bag. Labour most seats isn't even a racing certainty. Voting for anyone other than the candidate best placed to beat the Tory incumbent runs the risk of another five year Tory doom loop.
Labour may, as the PB loyalists claim, be even worse. However the bar is so low, they can be useless and still better this lot. A government interested only in power, with no interest in governing, just jockeying each other for position to get to the top of the greasy pole first. Unbelievable!
But Starmer for whatever reason (and he may have a decent practical one, if no moral one) has been very poor over Gaza.
No, if my seat is in contention then a Labour majority will be easily into 3 figures. Another one wouldn't make much difference.
Maybe.
I'll be voting Labour (and I don't like Starmer) for one less Tory MP, and I like Alun Cairns despite his unflinching party loyalty.
Secondly, @darkage . I note your observation that one should get used to living in an unjust world. You may find the saying "Drink the wine, praise the God of all, and let the world be the world" (sometimes phrased as "...all the Gods...", which changes the meaning) to be a source of comfort. I first heard it in the TV series "The Tudors", although I think it originated outside it: Google may help you here.
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I am an undecided too. I certainly won't be voting Con or REFUK and certainly will vote. I have never missed a chance to vote and won't now. On current polling my constituency is a Lab/Con marginal, but I don't want to vote Labour. Its difficult.
On the other hand if this constituency is marginal, then the Tories face a near armagedon, and Labour don't need my help.
I was chatting to Fox jr2 earlier. He is in a safe seat but can't stomach voting Labour either. Starmer’s lack of support for a Gaza ceasefire is the issue. I have never heard him mention the Israel/Palestine conflict before the current conflict.
I will definitely vote because voting is a privilege which most of the world and the vast majority of humans through history have not enjoyed, and for which many fought in the past.
I'll vote for Lab or LD, whichever I think has the best chance of knocking over this very safe Tory seat.
Imagine this a general election where no one casts a vote....sometimes withdrawing from the process is the only way to say this doesnt work....when you believe the current system is broken how else apart from not voting to you express it?
It depends on what you think doesn't work. Mass not voting suggests to bad actors that they would get along fine without an electorate, and the electorate wish to be disenfranchised. Syria and North Korea come to mind.
If what we need is brighter voters and better candidates, then good and better people standing and voting more brightly would seem the only options. There is no-one apart from the great UK public who can sort that one, by standing and voting.
So what happened is that a problem arose and it was resolved.
The problem gets the media reports but its solving doesn't.
Good news doesn't sell papers.
So let's accept that 'nothing works, everything is broken' is wrong, it should be: 'lots of stuff that should work, that used to work, doesn't'.
Management of Pension Credit is one niche example: The Pension Service don't have enough staff (apparently) to review Pension Credit payments where the recipient has increased their income or assets and should no longer qualify for PC, so the state carries on paying them when they are no longer eligible.
Some others are: - Ambulances - awful response times. - Armed forces - not enough staff to crew the Navy's ships. - Education - where to begin. - Councils - going bust and cutting services left, right and centre. - Justice - huge lead times for court cases. - Immigration service - losing track of immigrants, slow processing times.
I could go on...
Sure it is not all broken but overall, things have gone backwards in recent years.
Cash for courses: top universities recruit foreign students on low grades While Britons need straight As to get onto prestigious Russell Group degree courses, their international classmates can buy their way in through secret routes
This was pretty much my experience 20 years ago of 2x Russell Group unis so I doubt it is something new. Seminars with people who could not speak english and had no clue about what we were discussing. In my vocational masters degree there were foreign students from the far east whose professional experience was not relevant to what they were studying and seemed to have just booked on to the wrong course without doing any research. But they still all left with degrees. It cemented a pretty dim view of universities in my mind, which was probably not really fair, but evidence in any case of a deeply flawed structure.
Not to say you are wrong, but this does cast some doubt on the Times reports being so gleefully jumped on by some ofd us:
'University leaders said the claims were “mendacious” because the reporting by the Sunday Times ignored figures showing rising numbers of UK students enrolled at Russell Group universities and unfairly compared entry requirements on non-degree courses with those of mainstream undergraduate courses.
A spokesperson for the Russell Group of universities said foundation year programmes, designed to prepare students for further study, “are different to degree programmes, have separate admissions processes and, crucially, different entry requirements”.'
The low standards revealed in the statement really are alarming.
How could anybody with pretensions to academic rigour not know it's 'different from?'
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I can understand why you say that, and feel that way myself at times, but I'll also counter it. The 'state' generally does reasonably well. Things certainly are not as good as they can be thanks to the current government, but we're nowhere near (say) South Africa's levels of chaos. Not that we should be aiming for comparisons that low, but there is a comparison to be made.
Employment is high. The economy is, if not good, not terrible. The bins get collected. Most of us can see a doctor in a reasonable timeframe - for free. Things generally work, albeit somewhat chaotically. The 'state' makes mistakes - but it always has. And there are an awful lot of good workers within, and without, the state; people who work hard and diligently for both themselves and others. Yet we hear about the scoundrels.
Also, I'd say most politicians are good people, albeit flawed, as are we all. Some are sometimes put into positions they do not have the capability to do well, but there are few I would count as truly venal. And some who are absolute stars (IMO George Howarth being one such). But we rarely get to hear about them, as they just get on with their jobs.
I'd also add that I think there are very few states that are doing really well at the moment, particularly of the large economies, and not a single country has zero problems or issues. Neither is it realistic to expect that.
There's no other country I'd prefer to live in, if I was rich, or if I was poor.
I used to be a real w***** when it came to British pride. I would only buy politically British consumer goods including cars, ( wearing a little union flag under the bumper of my new Cologne built Ford Capri. I worshipped the BBC (I detest them now). I hated the notion that foreign asset strippers could defile our industrial crown jewels, and here we are with Tata dismantling our last remaining virgin steel works. Yes, I was a real buyer of pups.
From 2016 I was told by self-styled patriots like Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, Dominic Cummings, Richard Tice and Arron Banks that people like me were traitors. Some of these people even made their fortunes betting against Britain.
Labour and the Liberal Democrats may be as disastrous as the PB faithful claim, and Starmer and Davey haven't exactly covered themselves in glory, but anything that gets rid of the self-serving grifters who have hijacked my country over the last decade can't come soon enough for me. My expectation however, is through sleight of hand or good fortune they will once again prevail, and take our once great nation further down the road to ruin.
I'm unsure quite what that's got to do with my post. I'm not talking about 'British pride'; but neither am I interested in 'British shame'. We're far from perfect, and I doubt I've ever suggested otherwise. We can improve a great deal - and hopefully the next (Labour) government will make progress.
But to listen to some people, you'd think we all lived in hovels with outside toilets, no running water and electricity powered by methane piped in from the local urchin farm. That there was mass unemployment and a gunman on every street corner.
That isn't a reason to vote Conservative, or indeed for anyone; just that people who are constantly utterly negative have probably lost all perspective.
Let me put it this way; one of the reasons the Post Office scandal has eventually struck the public's consciousness so strongly is that it seems so utterly against the way we think things should work in this country. And rightly so. But in many, many countries, what happened - and worse - would be accepted with a shrug and be seen as utterly unnoteworthy - "it's the way things are done."
We should not try to change that.
I suspect we are mostly on PB in the luxurious position of living in expensive, and comfortable homes. We are fortunate.
I have seen for myself (my wife was involved in parent and child foster caring for a number of years) and I saw poverty of an order I had no idea existed. We have ex-servicemen living in tents that Suella Braverman wanted to remove from them. We have families dispossessed of their homes and sent to local authority emergency accomodation. We live in a society that it more inequitable than it was a decade ago. To drive such inequality further is immoral. Maybe Labour can't do anything about it. The Conservatives on the other hand won't even try.
One nation feudal Tories in this iteration of the Conservative Party are a thing of the past.
I agree there is poverty. We need to change that. What I disagree with is this idea that ye olden days were any less shit. From everything I've heard, they were far worse. People are far too keen to wear rose-coloured spectacles about the past.
Again, that does not mean that we do not need to improve things.
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I can understand why you say that, and feel that way myself at times, but I'll also counter it. The 'state' generally does reasonably well. Things certainly are not as good as they can be thanks to the current government, but we're nowhere near (say) South Africa's levels of chaos. Not that we should be aiming for comparisons that low, but there is a comparison to be made.
Employment is high. The economy is, if not good, not terrible. The bins get collected. Most of us can see a doctor in a reasonable timeframe - for free. Things generally work, albeit somewhat chaotically. The 'state' makes mistakes - but it always has. And there are an awful lot of good workers within, and without, the state; people who work hard and diligently for both themselves and others. Yet we hear about the scoundrels.
Also, I'd say most politicians are good people, albeit flawed, as are we all. Some are sometimes put into positions they do not have the capability to do well, but there are few I would count as truly venal. And some who are absolute stars (IMO George Howarth being one such). But we rarely get to hear about them, as they just get on with their jobs.
I'd also add that I think there are very few states that are doing really well at the moment, particularly of the large economies, and not a single country has zero problems or issues. Neither is it realistic to expect that.
There's no other country I'd prefer to live in, if I was rich, or if I was poor.
I used to be a real w***** when it came to British pride. I would only buy politically British consumer goods including cars, ( wearing a little union flag under the bumper of my new Cologne built Ford Capri. I worshipped the BBC (I detest them now). I hated the notion that foreign asset strippers could defile our industrial crown jewels, and here we are with Tata dismantling our last remaining virgin steel works. Yes, I was a real buyer of pups.
From 2016 I was told by self-styled patriots like Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, Dominic Cummings, Richard Tice and Arron Banks that people like me were traitors. Some of these people even made their fortunes betting against Britain.
Labour and the Liberal Democrats may be as disastrous as the PB faithful claim, and Starmer and Davey haven't exactly covered themselves in glory, but anything that gets rid of the self-serving grifters who have hijacked my country over the last decade can't come soon enough for me. My expectation however, is through sleight of hand or good fortune they will once again prevail, and take our once great nation further down the road to ruin.
I had one of those Ford Capris. OMG, The roadholding! Even @Dura_Ace would have left shit stains on the drivers seat!
Fortunately most weren't very fast either. Although my second was a 2.8i which was, and the handling despite a limited slip diff, was no better than the 1.6 Laser I started with.
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I can understand why you say that, and feel that way myself at times, but I'll also counter it. The 'state' generally does reasonably well. Things certainly are not as good as they can be thanks to the current government, but we're nowhere near (say) South Africa's levels of chaos. Not that we should be aiming for comparisons that low, but there is a comparison to be made.
Employment is high. The economy is, if not good, not terrible. The bins get collected. Most of us can see a doctor in a reasonable timeframe - for free. Things generally work, albeit somewhat chaotically. The 'state' makes mistakes - but it always has. And there are an awful lot of good workers within, and without, the state; people who work hard and diligently for both themselves and others. Yet we hear about the scoundrels.
Also, I'd say most politicians are good people, albeit flawed, as are we all. Some are sometimes put into positions they do not have the capability to do well, but there are few I would count as truly venal. And some who are absolute stars (IMO George Howarth being one such). But we rarely get to hear about them, as they just get on with their jobs.
I'd also add that I think there are very few states that are doing really well at the moment, particularly of the large economies, and not a single country has zero problems or issues. Neither is it realistic to expect that.
There's no other country I'd prefer to live in, if I was rich, or if I was poor.
I used to be a real w***** when it came to British pride. I would only buy politically British consumer goods including cars, ( wearing a little union flag under the bumper of my new Cologne built Ford Capri. I worshipped the BBC (I detest them now). I hated the notion that foreign asset strippers could defile our industrial crown jewels, and here we are with Tata dismantling our last remaining virgin steel works. Yes, I was a real buyer of pups.
From 2016 I was told by self-styled patriots like Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, Dominic Cummings, Richard Tice and Arron Banks that people like me were traitors. Some of these people even made their fortunes betting against Britain.
Labour and the Liberal Democrats may be as disastrous as the PB faithful claim, and Starmer and Davey haven't exactly covered themselves in glory, but anything that gets rid of the self-serving grifters who have hijacked my country over the last decade can't come soon enough for me. My expectation however, is through sleight of hand or good fortune they will once again prevail, and take our once great nation further down the road to ruin.
I'm unsure quite what that's got to do with my post. I'm not talking about 'British pride'; but neither am I interested in 'British shame'. We're far from perfect, and I doubt I've ever suggested otherwise. We can improve a great deal - and hopefully the next (Labour) government will make progress.
But to listen to some people, you'd think we all lived in hovels with outside toilets, no running water and electricity powered by methane piped in from the local urchin farm. That there was mass unemployment and a gunman on every street corner.
That isn't a reason to vote Conservative, or indeed for anyone; just that people who are constantly utterly negative have probably lost all perspective.
Let me put it this way; one of the reasons the Post Office scandal has eventually struck the public's consciousness so strongly is that it seems so utterly against the way we think things should work in this country. And rightly so. But in many, many countries, what happened - and worse - would be accepted with a shrug and be seen as utterly unnoteworthy - "it's the way things are done."
We should not try to change that.
I suspect we are mostly on PB in the luxurious position of living in expensive, and comfortable homes. We are fortunate.
I have seen for myself (my wife was involved in parent and child foster caring for a number of years) and I saw poverty of an order I had no idea existed. We have ex-servicemen living in tents that Suella Braverman wanted to remove from them. We have families dispossessed of their homes and sent to local authority emergency accomodation. We live in a society that it more inequitable than it was a decade ago. To drive such inequality further is immoral. Maybe Labour can't do anything about it. The Conservatives on the other hand won't even try.
One nation feudal Tories in this iteration of the Conservative Party are a thing of the past.
There are more people sleeping in doorways in Leicester than have seen in any of the 30 years that I have lived here.
"And, probably my most controversial opinion- I cannot see the problem in Trans being able to have some say on which gendered prison they go to. Again, subject to the prison authorities and a medical opinion. I've been in a lot of prisons over the years with work, including women's prisons where the person would be much safer in a gender prison they felt more aligned to."
The misogyny on display here is quite something.
Let's ignore for the moment Art. 3 of the ECHR or the Mandela Principles on prisons.
The women prisoners are not even mentioned and the idea that they should have a say or, even, a veto on whether a male offender should be locked up with them simply does not even occur to him. Women prisoners must simply put up with the risk or reality of rape or violence or indecent exposure or voyeurism. Because their rights or views don't matter.
And then @kinabalu has the nerve to say that trans rights are at risk of being rolled back. No they aren't: in this country trans people have exactly the same legal rights as everyone else. There is no political party which has put forward any proposal to remove any of these legal rights. What they do not have and should not have is the right to take away the rights of others - the right of women to single sex spaces, services or associations, for instance. And yet that is the explicit campaigning position of trans activist groups. It is the explicit position of such groups to want the removal of one type of offence of rape - rape by deception. Very progressive, that: wanting to be able to deceive women into sex.
But, hey, who cares about consent!
And what is also very common is those who come out with this totally ignore the court judgments which women have been winning in recent years, funded by endless crowd-funding, to preserve their existing rights. Those judgments are long but are worth reading, especially by those who opine on the law without understanding it, without understanding why ignoring what the law says causes real harm to others and without understanding the reality of what women have endured.
There is something deeply unpleasant about the way in which any woman talking about women's' rights or needs or the reality of what life is like because of their sex is almost always automatically attacked as bigoted or hateful because she does not centre or deem as the only important thing the demands of men.
I expect the usual suspects will do this to me too. But, fuck it, I don't care. Women are not support animals for men. Men's demands are not "rights". Men's feelings are not more important than anyone else's. Women's rights are human rights. Anyone seeking to limit or remove them is not, in any sense, "progressive" or "liberal".
Surely the problem with this rant is it begs the question of whether trans women are women or men. And even if we grant that post-op trans women are women, what about the first day a man dons a frock: when does the transition occur.
And as a practical matter in the context of prison, criminals as a class are not known for their veracity, and there is an incentive for cis men to pretend to be trans women in order to gain access to women's spaces or at least to get a cushier life (whether life in a women's prison is actually better than life in a men's prison is open to doubt but that's another matter).
I would have sympathy with someone who is trans and forced to live in a prison of the opposite gender. The root of the problem is that the whole prison system is a disaster. People are living 2xto a cell, 6.5 sqm big, for 23 out of 24 hours a day, in squalid victorian buildings, with rodents, cockroaches etc. The rest of Europe has moved on but we are stuck in this situation which is basically evidence of civilisation decline.
Theory:
The UK prison system is stuck in that situation because of Porridge.
Porridge the sitcom or Michael Gove's breakfast at school in Scotland?
Thirdly, @Malmesbury: I am more than happy to accept your assertion that life is lot better than N years ago, where N is multidecadal. I think you may have missed the point, which is that life *feels* much worse now than it did. Frasier Nelson spotted in the early 2010s that people were unnecessarily unhappy and wondered about it, although he later succumbed to the same phenomenon. I think it's social media instead of a specific politician (I think @Leon made a similar point the other day) which is why I think @Casino_Royale is right: Sunak will lose bad in 2024/5, and Starmer will follow suit in 2029/30. We are in unhappy times.
I don't know if people read my post from earlier on the Russia/Ukraine war, but some Romanian politicians have joined Hungarian ones in wanting to grab parts of Ukraine if they lose the war:
Hopefully the Romanian and Hungarian electorate will see these people off. But it is an indication of the 'offer' Russia may be giving some neighbouring states.
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
What I find interesting is that if we'd stuck to the old paper system everything would have been much slower, but innocent people almost certainly wouldn't have gone to prison.
Nope - the problem was mentality.
The PO bosses were convinced that the lower class SPMs were all thieves. After all, many of them were a bit foreign.
The Horizon system was just the (incompetent) opportunity to turn this belief loose.
The problem was the lack of any kind of internal check - "WTAF is happening here?"
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I can understand why you say that, and feel that way myself at times, but I'll also counter it. The 'state' generally does reasonably well. Things certainly are not as good as they can be thanks to the current government, but we're nowhere near (say) South Africa's levels of chaos. Not that we should be aiming for comparisons that low, but there is a comparison to be made.
Employment is high. The economy is, if not good, not terrible. The bins get collected. Most of us can see a doctor in a reasonable timeframe - for free. Things generally work, albeit somewhat chaotically. The 'state' makes mistakes - but it always has. And there are an awful lot of good workers within, and without, the state; people who work hard and diligently for both themselves and others. Yet we hear about the scoundrels.
Also, I'd say most politicians are good people, albeit flawed, as are we all. Some are sometimes put into positions they do not have the capability to do well, but there are few I would count as truly venal. And some who are absolute stars (IMO George Howarth being one such). But we rarely get to hear about them, as they just get on with their jobs.
I'd also add that I think there are very few states that are doing really well at the moment, particularly of the large economies, and not a single country has zero problems or issues. Neither is it realistic to expect that.
There's no other country I'd prefer to live in, if I was rich, or if I was poor.
I used to be a real w***** when it came to British pride. I would only buy politically British consumer goods including cars, ( wearing a little union flag under the bumper of my new Cologne built Ford Capri. I worshipped the BBC (I detest them now). I hated the notion that foreign asset strippers could defile our industrial crown jewels, and here we are with Tata dismantling our last remaining virgin steel works. Yes, I was a real buyer of pups.
From 2016 I was told by self-styled patriots like Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, Dominic Cummings, Richard Tice and Arron Banks that people like me were traitors. Some of these people even made their fortunes betting against Britain.
Labour and the Liberal Democrats may be as disastrous as the PB faithful claim, and Starmer and Davey haven't exactly covered themselves in glory, but anything that gets rid of the self-serving grifters who have hijacked my country over the last decade can't come soon enough for me. My expectation however, is through sleight of hand or good fortune they will once again prevail, and take our once great nation further down the road to ruin.
I had one of those Ford Capris. OMG, The roadholding! Even @Dura_Ace would have left shit stains on the drivers seat!
Fortunately most weren't very fast either. Although my second was a 2.8i which was, and the handling despite a limited slip diff, was no better than the 1.6 Laser I started with.
But then, it was only a Corsair with limited headroom in the back seats.
So what happened is that a problem arose and it was resolved.
The problem gets the media reports but its solving doesn't.
Nobody in my family has had to wait much more than a week or so for a renewal in recent years. The online renewal works really well now, and much of the time is simply waiting for the old passport to be returned.
Fourthly, @Big_G_NorthWales . I note your upcoming surgery and wish to express my hope that it works and you continue to grace the site for many years to come.
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I am an undecided too. I certainly won't be voting Con or REFUK and certainly will vote. I have never missed a chance to vote and won't now. On current polling my constituency is a Lab/Con marginal, but I don't want to vote Labour. Its difficult.
On the other hand if this constituency is marginal, then the Tories face a near armagedon, and Labour don't need my help.
I was chatting to Fox jr2 earlier. He is in a safe seat but can't stomach voting Labour either. Starmer’s lack of support for a Gaza ceasefire is the issue. I have never heard him mention the Israel/Palestine conflict before the current conflict.
I will definitely vote because voting is a privilege which most of the world and the vast majority of humans through history have not enjoyed, and for which many fought in the past.
I'll vote for Lab or LD, whichever I think has the best chance of knocking over this very safe Tory seat.
Imagine this a general election where no one casts a vote....sometimes withdrawing from the process is the only way to say this doesnt work....when you believe the current system is broken how else apart from not voting to you express it?
Imo this falls into the same fallacy as the ‘1 tonners’ who commit to a lifestyle of only emitting a tonne of carbon per year, at great personal cost.*
If only everyone acted like me, we’d solve the problem.
We’ve been sold a dud when we allow ourselves to be convinced that the appropriate level of political action is at the individual level. We need to act collectively to solve political problems, but not voting is a quintessentially individual (and therefore ineffective) act.
(To be fair, posting a message on a political forum trying to persuade others not to vote is trying to encourage collective action I suppose)
Fourthly, @Big_G_NorthWales . I note your upcoming surgery and wish to express my hope that it works and you continue to grace the site for many years to come.
(Also you @OldKingCole: not the surgery bit, the "continue to grace us" bit)
OT. A fine Danish film on Netflix 'The Day will Come'. Especially salient for those who might have gone to boarding schools anywhere. Shades of The White Ribbon by Michael Heneke
If it's as boring and pretentious as Weisse Band, thank you for warning us so we know not to watch it.
It's in no way boring. It's compelling. More so than Heneke.
Talk about low bars...
Weisse Band is the dullest film I've ever watched. And when you consider that includes Carry on Columbus, that's saying something.
Admittedly, it's not quite as bad as Gormenghast or The White Queen, but since they're actually unwatchable that's not difficult either.
It won 46 awards including two Oscar nominations and scored 94 on Rotten Toms so perhaps you just couldn't get into it. Though not as immediately engrossing as 'The Day Will Come' I liked everything about it. The mood the menace and the black and white photography in particular.
Fifthly the Finnish Presidential Election round one concluded tonite, with the Green candidate a close second. I hope the odds came in enough for you to now trade out with a modest profit. Given the poor liquidity the profit may be in pennies, but I never promised you a rose garden 😃
Unfortunately, having your passport renewed is a bit of a first world problem. Having to walk three miles down a busy A road with no proper pavement with a distressed 12 year old girl twice this term, leaving multiple classes without a teacher of any kind, because there's nobody else available to keep her safe and calm, crossing multiple roads, including dual carriageways, and no one to refer her on to to see within six months is more what I consider "nothing works".
Fifthly the Finnish Presidential Election round one concluded tonite, with the Green candidate a close second. I hope the odds came in enough for you to now trade out with a modest profit. Given the poor liquidity the profit may be in pennies, but I never promised you a rose garden 😃
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I can understand why you say that, and feel that way myself at times, but I'll also counter it. The 'state' generally does reasonably well. Things certainly are not as good as they can be thanks to the current government, but we're nowhere near (say) South Africa's levels of chaos. Not that we should be aiming for comparisons that low, but there is a comparison to be made.
Employment is high. The economy is, if not good, not terrible. The bins get collected. Most of us can see a doctor in a reasonable timeframe - for free. Things generally work, albeit somewhat chaotically. The 'state' makes mistakes - but it always has. And there are an awful lot of good workers within, and without, the state; people who work hard and diligently for both themselves and others. Yet we hear about the scoundrels.
Also, I'd say most politicians are good people, albeit flawed, as are we all. Some are sometimes put into positions they do not have the capability to do well, but there are few I would count as truly venal. And some who are absolute stars (IMO George Howarth being one such). But we rarely get to hear about them, as they just get on with their jobs.
I'd also add that I think there are very few states that are doing really well at the moment, particularly of the large economies, and not a single country has zero problems or issues. Neither is it realistic to expect that.
There's no other country I'd prefer to live in, if I was rich, or if I was poor.
I used to be a real w***** when it came to British pride. I would only buy politically British consumer goods including cars, ( wearing a little union flag under the bumper of my new Cologne built Ford Capri. I worshipped the BBC (I detest them now). I hated the notion that foreign asset strippers could defile our industrial crown jewels, and here we are with Tata dismantling our last remaining virgin steel works. Yes, I was a real buyer of pups.
From 2016 I was told by self-styled patriots like Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, Dominic Cummings, Richard Tice and Arron Banks that people like me were traitors. Some of these people even made their fortunes betting against Britain.
Labour and the Liberal Democrats may be as disastrous as the PB faithful claim, and Starmer and Davey haven't exactly covered themselves in glory, but anything that gets rid of the self-serving grifters who have hijacked my country over the last decade can't come soon enough for me. My expectation however, is through sleight of hand or good fortune they will once again prevail, and take our once great nation further down the road to ruin.
I'm unsure quite what that's got to do with my post. I'm not talking about 'British pride'; but neither am I interested in 'British shame'. We're far from perfect, and I doubt I've ever suggested otherwise. We can improve a great deal - and hopefully the next (Labour) government will make progress.
But to listen to some people, you'd think we all lived in hovels with outside toilets, no running water and electricity powered by methane piped in from the local urchin farm. That there was mass unemployment and a gunman on every street corner.
That isn't a reason to vote Conservative, or indeed for anyone; just that people who are constantly utterly negative have probably lost all perspective.
Let me put it this way; one of the reasons the Post Office scandal has eventually struck the public's consciousness so strongly is that it seems so utterly against the way we think things should work in this country. And rightly so. But in many, many countries, what happened - and worse - would be accepted with a shrug and be seen as utterly unnoteworthy - "it's the way things are done."
We should not try to change that.
I suspect we are mostly on PB in the luxurious position of living in expensive, and comfortable homes. We are fortunate.
I have seen for myself (my wife was involved in parent and child foster caring for a number of years) and I saw poverty of an order I had no idea existed. We have ex-servicemen living in tents that Suella Braverman wanted to remove from them. We have families dispossessed of their homes and sent to local authority emergency accomodation. We live in a society that it more inequitable than it was a decade ago. To drive such inequality further is immoral. Maybe Labour can't do anything about it. The Conservatives on the other hand won't even try.
One nation feudal Tories in this iteration of the Conservative Party are a thing of the past.
I used to support the Tories, because the Tories used to believe in fixing such problems in society. The difference between Labour and Tories not being intention, but methods.
Problem is the Tories have been hijacked by shitheads who want to treat houses as commodities to be sweated for wealth and income, rather than affordable for people who want and need somewhere of their own to live.
The Tories will be worth voting for only if they change their spots, and once more have a leader who can say (and more importantly believe and follow through on) the following:
I am much nearer to creating one nation than Labour will ever be. Socialism is two nations. The privileged rulers, and everyone else. And it always gets to that. What I am desperately trying to do is create one nation with everyone being a man of property, or having the opportunity to be a man of property.
Or: I want a capital-earning democracy. Every man and woman a capitalist. Housing is the start. If you're a man or woman of property, you've got something. So every man a capitalist, and every man a man of property.
Say that is what you desire to many Tories today, and they'll accuse you of being a socialist.
Fourthly, @Big_G_NorthWales . I note your upcoming surgery and wish to express my hope that it works and you continue to grace the site for many years to come.
Unfortunately, having your passport renewed is a bit of a first world problem.
I totally agree but it does demonstrate that the government isn't incapable of fixing things, and that government IT projects do quite often work well. The HMRC, DVLA, HMPO and probably some other departments all have effective online services that have made some of the necessary administrative procedures of modern life simpler and faster.
While I'm here let's briefly go thru your points. Firstly @Cyclefree: your statement that trans people have the same rights as everybody else is a miscomprehension. The creation of trans rights increased the rights of all people born as one legal sex to be considered in law as the other sex, a process known as "transition". That is the right in question. This was made explicit by the Gender Reassignment Act which created a legal mechanism whereby the sex on the birth certificate can be changed, thereby moving the person from one legal sex to the other. This is the root of the recent court decisions that were so widely discussed here
To demonstrate by analogy: if a gay person had the right to have same-sex sex removed then that person could legitimately claim to have had their rights removed, even though they still had the same right to have different-sex sex as other people. I could repeat the analogy for other characteristics (eg race, religion) but hopefully that will be unnecessary.
They have that right under the GRA and no party is proposing taking it away. But what is now being demanded is that they also have the right to insist that other people must believe that they have - in fact - changed sex and accommodate them in facilities for their own sex, thus removing their own rights. Whereas in fact they have not - and cannot change - sex as a matter of biological reality. A legal fiction does not change factual reality. People can believe what they want but they cannot and should not force others to share their beliefs. Social transition does not make a man into a woman because a woman is not a dress or make up or a name. And mutilation of one's body does not change sex.
If a female only space accommodates men it is no longer a female only space. Females are denied a right they previously had. They self-exclude. That is what has happened in the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre. It is not a "rant" to point out how unfair to raped women this is nor how unprogressive.
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I can understand why you say that, and feel that way myself at times, but I'll also counter it. The 'state' generally does reasonably well. Things certainly are not as good as they can be thanks to the current government, but we're nowhere near (say) South Africa's levels of chaos. Not that we should be aiming for comparisons that low, but there is a comparison to be made.
Employment is high. The economy is, if not good, not terrible. The bins get collected. Most of us can see a doctor in a reasonable timeframe - for free. Things generally work, albeit somewhat chaotically. The 'state' makes mistakes - but it always has. And there are an awful lot of good workers within, and without, the state; people who work hard and diligently for both themselves and others. Yet we hear about the scoundrels.
Also, I'd say most politicians are good people, albeit flawed, as are we all. Some are sometimes put into positions they do not have the capability to do well, but there are few I would count as truly venal. And some who are absolute stars (IMO George Howarth being one such). But we rarely get to hear about them, as they just get on with their jobs.
I'd also add that I think there are very few states that are doing really well at the moment, particularly of the large economies, and not a single country has zero problems or issues. Neither is it realistic to expect that.
There's no other country I'd prefer to live in, if I was rich, or if I was poor.
I used to be a real w***** when it came to British pride. I would only buy politically British consumer goods including cars, ( wearing a little union flag under the bumper of my new Cologne built Ford Capri. I worshipped the BBC (I detest them now). I hated the notion that foreign asset strippers could defile our industrial crown jewels, and here we are with Tata dismantling our last remaining virgin steel works. Yes, I was a real buyer of pups.
From 2016 I was told by self-styled patriots like Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, Dominic Cummings, Richard Tice and Arron Banks that people like me were traitors. Some of these people even made their fortunes betting against Britain.
Labour and the Liberal Democrats may be as disastrous as the PB faithful claim, and Starmer and Davey haven't exactly covered themselves in glory, but anything that gets rid of the self-serving grifters who have hijacked my country over the last decade can't come soon enough for me. My expectation however, is through sleight of hand or good fortune they will once again prevail, and take our once great nation further down the road to ruin.
I had one of those Ford Capris. OMG, The roadholding! Even @Dura_Ace would have left shit stains on the drivers seat!
They were basically a Mk.2 Cortina from the B-Pillar back so leaf spring/live axle and all of the massive unsprung weight that implies. My mate had a 1.3 XFlow variant in Baby Shit Bronze that we crashed somewhere near Osmotherly.
I don't recall it being particularly frightening, maybe because it had so little power. It was certainly crude compared the Manta but outsold it at least 20:1.
So what happened is that a problem arose and it was resolved.
The problem gets the media reports but its solving doesn't.
Good news doesn't sell papers.
So let's accept that 'nothing works, everything is broken' is wrong, it should be: 'lots of stuff that should work, that used to work, doesn't'.
Management of Pension Credit is one niche example: The Pension Service don't have enough staff (apparently) to review Pension Credit payments where the recipient has increased their income or assets and should no longer qualify for PC, so the state carries on paying them when they are no longer eligible.
Some others are: - Ambulances - awful response times. - Armed forces - not enough staff to crew the Navy's ships. - Education - where to begin. - Councils - going bust and cutting services left, right and centre. - Justice - huge lead times for court cases. - Immigration service - losing track of immigrants, slow processing times.
I could go on...
Sure it is not all broken but overall, things have gone backwards in recent years.
Some things have gone backwards and some things have improved.
We all know which gets the media attention.
And why have the things that have gone backwards gone backwards ?
"And, probably my most controversial opinion- I cannot see the problem in Trans being able to have some say on which gendered prison they go to. Again, subject to the prison authorities and a medical opinion. I've been in a lot of prisons over the years with work, including women's prisons where the person would be much safer in a gender prison they felt more aligned to."
The misogyny on display here is quite something.
Let's ignore for the moment Art. 3 of the ECHR or the Mandela Principles on prisons.
The women prisoners are not even mentioned and the idea that they should have a say or, even, a veto on whether a male offender should be locked up with them simply does not even occur to him. Women prisoners must simply put up with the risk or reality of rape or violence or indecent exposure or voyeurism. Because their rights or views don't matter.
And then @kinabalu has the nerve to say that trans rights are at risk of being rolled back. No they aren't: in this country trans people have exactly the same legal rights as everyone else. There is no political party which has put forward any proposal to remove any of these legal rights. What they do not have and should not have is the right to take away the rights of others - the right of women to single sex spaces, services or associations, for instance. And yet that is the explicit campaigning position of trans activist groups. It is the explicit position of such groups to want the removal of one type of offence of rape - rape by deception. Very progressive, that: wanting to be able to deceive women into sex.
But, hey, who cares about consent!
And what is also very common is those who come out with this totally ignore the court judgments which women have been winning in recent years, funded by endless crowd-funding, to preserve their existing rights. Those judgments are long but are worth reading, especially by those who opine on the law without understanding it, without understanding why ignoring what the law says causes real harm to others and without understanding the reality of what women have endured.
There is something deeply unpleasant about the way in which any woman talking about women's' rights or needs or the reality of what life is like because of their sex is almost always automatically attacked as bigoted or hateful because she does not centre or deem as the only important thing the demands of men.
I expect the usual suspects will do this to me too. But, fuck it, I don't care. Women are not support animals for men. Men's demands are not "rights". Men's feelings are not more important than anyone else's. Women's rights are human rights. Anyone seeking to limit or remove them is not, in any sense, "progressive" or "liberal".
Surely the problem with this rant is it begs the question of whether trans women are women or men. And even if we grant that post-op trans women are women, what about the first day a man dons a frock: when does the transition occur.
And as a practical matter in the context of prison, criminals as a class are not known for their veracity, and there is an incentive for cis men to pretend to be trans women in order to gain access to women's spaces or at least to get a cushier life (whether life in a women's prison is actually better than life in a men's prison is open to doubt but that's another matter).
A man cannot turn into a woman. He can pretend to be one - like Andrew Miller, say. But no matter what he does he will never be a woman. A man who believes he is a woman needs to be put in a separate wing of a man's prison. Personally the amazing phenomenon of Prison Onset Gender Dysphoria which only seems to manifest itself when a man is charged with sexual offences against women or children sounds like a racket to me. But even if such men are genuine and are at risk from other male victims prisoners, that is an issue for men to solve. It is not for women to solve the problem of male violence or to be made subject to it.
Unfortunately, having your passport renewed is a bit of a first world problem. Having to walk three miles down a busy A road with no proper pavement with a distressed 12 year old girl twice this term, leaving multiple classes without a teacher of any kind, because there's nobody else available to keep her safe and calm, crossing multiple roads, including dual carriageways, and no one to refer her on to to see within six months is more what I consider "nothing works".
Don't worry! I found this on a Department for Transport webpage!
"The forthcoming revision of the Manual for Streets will highlight the continuing need to design streets with people walking, cycling and taking public transport as the priority. Inclusive Mobility, updated in January 2022, provides detailed design advice to ensure the pedestrian environment is accessible to all."
Oh wait, something's just been added at the top of the page. Let me have a look:
"This statutory guidance was withdrawn on 2 October 2023. This guidance has been withdrawn with immediate effect. For more information, see the Plan for drivers."
So what happened is that a problem arose and it was resolved.
The problem gets the media reports but its solving doesn't.
Good news doesn't sell papers.
So let's accept that 'nothing works, everything is broken' is wrong, it should be: 'lots of stuff that should work, that used to work, doesn't'.
Management of Pension Credit is one niche example: The Pension Service don't have enough staff (apparently) to review Pension Credit payments where the recipient has increased their income or assets and should no longer qualify for PC, so the state carries on paying them when they are no longer eligible.
Some others are: - Ambulances - awful response times. - Armed forces - not enough staff to crew the Navy's ships. - Education - where to begin. - Councils - going bust and cutting services left, right and centre. - Justice - huge lead times for court cases. - Immigration service - losing track of immigrants, slow processing times.
I could go on...
Sure it is not all broken but overall, things have gone backwards in recent years.
Some things have gone backwards and some things have improved.
We all know which gets the media attention.
And why have the things that have gone backwards gone backwards ?
Multiple reasons and varying from one problem to another.
The world is dynamic, continually changing - this causes problems and these need to be resolved.
And resolved to a level which enough of the population are willing to accept - not a 'perfect solution' which those directly affected might want.
I have paid my income tax tonight, and it is all so easy online. Taxing a car is so simple too, no scurrying around to find MOT or cover note, just click click.
On the other hand NHS waiting times are the worst that I have known in my 35 year career.
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I can understand why you say that, and feel that way myself at times, but I'll also counter it. The 'state' generally does reasonably well. Things certainly are not as good as they can be thanks to the current government, but we're nowhere near (say) South Africa's levels of chaos. Not that we should be aiming for comparisons that low, but there is a comparison to be made.
Employment is high. The economy is, if not good, not terrible. The bins get collected. Most of us can see a doctor in a reasonable timeframe - for free. Things generally work, albeit somewhat chaotically. The 'state' makes mistakes - but it always has. And there are an awful lot of good workers within, and without, the state; people who work hard and diligently for both themselves and others. Yet we hear about the scoundrels.
Also, I'd say most politicians are good people, albeit flawed, as are we all. Some are sometimes put into positions they do not have the capability to do well, but there are few I would count as truly venal. And some who are absolute stars (IMO George Howarth being one such). But we rarely get to hear about them, as they just get on with their jobs.
I'd also add that I think there are very few states that are doing really well at the moment, particularly of the large economies, and not a single country has zero problems or issues. Neither is it realistic to expect that.
There's no other country I'd prefer to live in, if I was rich, or if I was poor.
I used to be a real w***** when it came to British pride. I would only buy politically British consumer goods including cars, ( wearing a little union flag under the bumper of my new Cologne built Ford Capri. I worshipped the BBC (I detest them now). I hated the notion that foreign asset strippers could defile our industrial crown jewels, and here we are with Tata dismantling our last remaining virgin steel works. Yes, I was a real buyer of pups.
From 2016 I was told by self-styled patriots like Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, Dominic Cummings, Richard Tice and Arron Banks that people like me were traitors. Some of these people even made their fortunes betting against Britain.
Labour and the Liberal Democrats may be as disastrous as the PB faithful claim, and Starmer and Davey haven't exactly covered themselves in glory, but anything that gets rid of the self-serving grifters who have hijacked my country over the last decade can't come soon enough for me. My expectation however, is through sleight of hand or good fortune they will once again prevail, and take our once great nation further down the road to ruin.
I'm unsure quite what that's got to do with my post. I'm not talking about 'British pride'; but neither am I interested in 'British shame'. We're far from perfect, and I doubt I've ever suggested otherwise. We can improve a great deal - and hopefully the next (Labour) government will make progress.
But to listen to some people, you'd think we all lived in hovels with outside toilets, no running water and electricity powered by methane piped in from the local urchin farm. That there was mass unemployment and a gunman on every street corner.
That isn't a reason to vote Conservative, or indeed for anyone; just that people who are constantly utterly negative have probably lost all perspective.
Let me put it this way; one of the reasons the Post Office scandal has eventually struck the public's consciousness so strongly is that it seems so utterly against the way we think things should work in this country. And rightly so. But in many, many countries, what happened - and worse - would be accepted with a shrug and be seen as utterly unnoteworthy - "it's the way things are done."
We should not try to change that.
I suspect we are mostly on PB in the luxurious position of living in expensive, and comfortable homes. We are fortunate.
I have seen for myself (my wife was involved in parent and child foster caring for a number of years) and I saw poverty of an order I had no idea existed. We have ex-servicemen living in tents that Suella Braverman wanted to remove from them. We have families dispossessed of their homes and sent to local authority emergency accomodation. We live in a society that it more inequitable than it was a decade ago. To drive such inequality further is immoral. Maybe Labour can't do anything about it. The Conservatives on the other hand won't even try.
One nation feudal Tories in this iteration of the Conservative Party are a thing of the past.
I agree there is poverty. We need to change that. What I disagree with is this idea that ye olden days were any less shit. From everything I've heard, they were far worse. People are far too keen to wear rose-coloured spectacles about the past.
Again, that does not mean that we do not need to improve things.
When I was at school we had the working poor. They were my school friends. They lived in good quality local authority housing, they had free health care, the school dentist, local authority swimming pools, libraries, school libraries, an equitable education system, free school meals, playgrounds, playing fields, subsidised works canteens, affordable public transport and public utilities that did their best not to cut off late payers. Bosses who's salary was a few notches up from the workers as opposed to now when Captains of Industry have earned the average salary by the 10th of January.
Yes at the time we were the sick man of Europe, but we were also a fairer, happier society. The right of centre argument is all this "free" stuff is unsustainable. I would warrant the average FTSE CEO earning 30 pr 40 times the average salary is even more unsustainable. And I repeat, people like Robert Jenrick and Braverman couldn't give two hoots for the welfare of British citizens, they are too busy feathering their own meaningless ambitions. What kind of moral vacuum paints over Disney characters at a children's asylum centre, or removes tents from destitute PTSD suffering ex-soldiers?
So what happened is that a problem arose and it was resolved.
The problem gets the media reports but its solving doesn't.
Has anyone else read Robin Cook's's book Point of Departure ?
Now, I would think life in Britain in around 2000, when he noted the following fact, was much more benign than in the 1970s. E.g. no Berlin Wall, hardly any strikes, no power cuts, no 3-day weeks or calls to the IMF.
In the 1970s, when he first became an MP, there were 4 times as many negative headlines in the national newspapers as positive ones. Around 2000, that ratio was 18 to 1.
For those complaining about X, Y or Z public service isn't at the required level then part of the answer is there.
There's enough people who prefer resources are spent on cruises than on X, Y or Z.
I'm not saying which is more worthwhile merely pointing out that in democracies what the people want money spent on is generally what money is spent on.
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I can understand why you say that, and feel that way myself at times, but I'll also counter it. The 'state' generally does reasonably well. Things certainly are not as good as they can be thanks to the current government, but we're nowhere near (say) South Africa's levels of chaos. Not that we should be aiming for comparisons that low, but there is a comparison to be made.
Employment is high. The economy is, if not good, not terrible. The bins get collected. Most of us can see a doctor in a reasonable timeframe - for free. Things generally work, albeit somewhat chaotically. The 'state' makes mistakes - but it always has. And there are an awful lot of good workers within, and without, the state; people who work hard and diligently for both themselves and others. Yet we hear about the scoundrels.
Also, I'd say most politicians are good people, albeit flawed, as are we all. Some are sometimes put into positions they do not have the capability to do well, but there are few I would count as truly venal. And some who are absolute stars (IMO George Howarth being one such). But we rarely get to hear about them, as they just get on with their jobs.
I'd also add that I think there are very few states that are doing really well at the moment, particularly of the large economies, and not a single country has zero problems or issues. Neither is it realistic to expect that.
There's no other country I'd prefer to live in, if I was rich, or if I was poor.
I used to be a real w***** when it came to British pride. I would only buy politically British consumer goods including cars, ( wearing a little union flag under the bumper of my new Cologne built Ford Capri. I worshipped the BBC (I detest them now). I hated the notion that foreign asset strippers could defile our industrial crown jewels, and here we are with Tata dismantling our last remaining virgin steel works. Yes, I was a real buyer of pups.
From 2016 I was told by self-styled patriots like Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, Dominic Cummings, Richard Tice and Arron Banks that people like me were traitors. Some of these people even made their fortunes betting against Britain.
Labour and the Liberal Democrats may be as disastrous as the PB faithful claim, and Starmer and Davey haven't exactly covered themselves in glory, but anything that gets rid of the self-serving grifters who have hijacked my country over the last decade can't come soon enough for me. My expectation however, is through sleight of hand or good fortune they will once again prevail, and take our once great nation further down the road to ruin.
I had one of those Ford Capris. OMG, The roadholding! Even @Dura_Ace would have left shit stains on the drivers seat!
They were basically a Mk.2 Cortina from the B-Pillar back so leaf spring/live axle and all of the massive unsprung weight that implies. My mate had a 1.3 XFlow variant in Baby Shit Bronze that we crashed somewhere near Osmotherly.
I don't recall it being particularly frightening, maybe because it had so little power. It was certainly crude compared the Manta but outsold it at least 20:1.
Mine was a 1.6, also in baby shit bronze. It didn’t need to be fast to lose traction.
So what happened is that a problem arose and it was resolved.
The problem gets the media reports but its solving doesn't.
Good news doesn't sell papers.
So let's accept that 'nothing works, everything is broken' is wrong, it should be: 'lots of stuff that should work, that used to work, doesn't'.
Management of Pension Credit is one niche example: The Pension Service don't have enough staff (apparently) to review Pension Credit payments where the recipient has increased their income or assets and should no longer qualify for PC, so the state carries on paying them when they are no longer eligible.
Some others are: - Ambulances - awful response times. - Armed forces - not enough staff to crew the Navy's ships. - Education - where to begin. - Councils - going bust and cutting services left, right and centre. - Justice - huge lead times for court cases. - Immigration service - losing track of immigrants, slow processing times.
I could go on...
Sure it is not all broken but overall, things have gone backwards in recent years.
Some things have gone backwards and some things have improved.
We all know which gets the media attention.
And why have the things that have gone backwards gone backwards ?
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I can understand why you say that, and feel that way myself at times, but I'll also counter it. The 'state' generally does reasonably well. Things certainly are not as good as they can be thanks to the current government, but we're nowhere near (say) South Africa's levels of chaos. Not that we should be aiming for comparisons that low, but there is a comparison to be made.
Employment is high. The economy is, if not good, not terrible. The bins get collected. Most of us can see a doctor in a reasonable timeframe - for free. Things generally work, albeit somewhat chaotically. The 'state' makes mistakes - but it always has. And there are an awful lot of good workers within, and without, the state; people who work hard and diligently for both themselves and others. Yet we hear about the scoundrels.
Also, I'd say most politicians are good people, albeit flawed, as are we all. Some are sometimes put into positions they do not have the capability to do well, but there are few I would count as truly venal. And some who are absolute stars (IMO George Howarth being one such). But we rarely get to hear about them, as they just get on with their jobs.
I'd also add that I think there are very few states that are doing really well at the moment, particularly of the large economies, and not a single country has zero problems or issues. Neither is it realistic to expect that.
There's no other country I'd prefer to live in, if I was rich, or if I was poor.
I used to be a real w***** when it came to British pride. I would only buy politically British consumer goods including cars, ( wearing a little union flag under the bumper of my new Cologne built Ford Capri. I worshipped the BBC (I detest them now). I hated the notion that foreign asset strippers could defile our industrial crown jewels, and here we are with Tata dismantling our last remaining virgin steel works. Yes, I was a real buyer of pups.
From 2016 I was told by self-styled patriots like Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, Dominic Cummings, Richard Tice and Arron Banks that people like me were traitors. Some of these people even made their fortunes betting against Britain.
Labour and the Liberal Democrats may be as disastrous as the PB faithful claim, and Starmer and Davey haven't exactly covered themselves in glory, but anything that gets rid of the self-serving grifters who have hijacked my country over the last decade can't come soon enough for me. My expectation however, is through sleight of hand or good fortune they will once again prevail, and take our once great nation further down the road to ruin.
I had one of those Ford Capris. OMG, The roadholding! Even @Dura_Ace would have left shit stains on the drivers seat!
They were basically a Mk.2 Cortina from the B-Pillar back so leaf spring/live axle and all of the massive unsprung weight that implies. My mate had a 1.3 XFlow variant in Baby Shit Bronze that we crashed somewhere near Osmotherly.
I don't recall it being particularly frightening, maybe because it had so little power. It was certainly crude compared the Manta but outsold it at least 20:1.
The worst thing about the Capri that I drove 40 years ago was pulling out of blind corners. The bonnet was so long that it made for guesswork.
Comments
I doubt if the UK would be top choice for what it is like to be absolutely born bottom of the pile; but USA would be loads worse, as would most other countries.
We're in a far better situation that we were in 1953. To take one important measure, back then, life expectancy was about 68/69. Now it's about 82. Or air quality: the last great London smog was 72 years ago. Since then, we've had a series of brilliant pieces of legislation that have massively improved air quality - with corresponding health benefits.
I could go on, but let's take occupations. In particular let's take the binmen. Back then, their job was very heavy work: having to lift heavy bins into the back of the lorry y. Now, whilst it's still a hard, stinky job I wouldn't particularly want to do, it's at least a fair bit easier. And you know what? The same is true for many, many jobs.
And for another thing, I'm alive. I wasn't then.
This does not mean that we should rest on our laurels and continue striving for improvement, but the idea we've not made progress since the 1950s is ridiculous. And an indication of how politicians simply cannot win.
It sounds so simple, and to most normal people it is. But there’s a certain type of person in political discussion that thinks they’re convincing when they pretend not to understand how you’ve come to that conclusion
A sort of James O’Brien pretend befuddlement
A large number of illnesses have gone from a slow, tortuous death, to some pills/injections you take each week. Provided free. See various forms of arthritis, diabetes.
We have gone from a colonial society, complete with explicit racism, to one where every office of state (pretty much) has been filled by non-white people. Without much comment.
Women have gone from being definitely second class citizens to PMs. While we haven't completed some equality nirvana, women are assumed to be able to reach the top of any organisation - and often have.
While we have a great deal to do, the distance travelled is enormous. One threat is the failure to understand and defend what we have already.
Managing the stagnation of the next century is going to be difficult though. Declining population and ageing demographics are a new challenge for all of us.
'?' about sums up my feelings towards what they are standing for as a platform.
Last time I was in this position I voted for a no-hope Tory candidate for two reasons : 1) It might make them mistakenly direct resources here, 2) his surname had the word 'bum' in it.
The current Tory government sums up the last sentence perfectly.
Worst rich country to be born bottom of the pile: one of the gulf states.
While Britons need straight As to get onto prestigious Russell Group degree courses, their international classmates can buy their way in through secret routes
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/c19d0459-e4dd-4380-98b1-1765db01aac2?shareToken=19aff2d67c5d76a5f003fabc3e112951
This was pretty much my experience 20 years ago of 2x Russell Group unis so I doubt it is something new. Seminars with people who could not speak english and had no clue about what we were discussing. In my vocational masters degree there were foreign students from the far east whose professional experience was not relevant to what they were studying and seemed to have just booked on to the wrong course without doing any research. But they still all left with degrees. It cemented a pretty dim view of universities in my mind, which was probably not really fair, but evidence in any case of a deeply flawed structure.
From 2016 I was told by self-styled patriots like Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, Dominic Cummings, Richard Tice and Arron Banks that people like me were traitors. Some of these people even made their fortunes betting against Britain.
Labour and the Liberal Democrats may be as disastrous as the PB faithful claim, and Starmer and Davey haven't exactly covered themselves in glory, but anything that gets rid of the self-serving grifters who have hijacked my country over the last decade can't come soon enough for me. My expectation however, is through sleight of hand or good fortune they will once again prevail, and take our once great nation further down the road to ruin.
"Oh, what do you call it? .... When chefs try to blend cuisines? ..... What is the word? ...... "
The presenter left juuuust a long enough pause to let you know what they thought of the charade & chef in question and said "Fusion?"
"Ah! That's it! Fusion cooking!" with a look of faint disgust on his face. While he then served up some fusion mush for $$$$.
On the other hand if this constituency is marginal, then the Tories face a near armagedon, and Labour don't need my help.
I was chatting to Fox jr2 earlier. He is in a safe seat but can't stomach voting Labour either. Starmer’s lack of support for a Gaza ceasefire is the issue. I have never heard him mention the Israel/Palestine conflict before the current conflict.
The only candidate who's canvassed around here was a local Green councillor - who in turn got my vote for even being half sympathetic to my moan about the bin collections.
The emoji for Keir is just a grey question mark.
It's really hard to feel engage with 'the project' when it's just a word-cloud fog.
@TuckerCarlson
Fucking lunatics.
Its currently taking an average of 8 days to renew your passport:
https://www.passportwaitingtime.co.uk/latest-uk-passport-waiting-times/
Compared to over 20 days for much of 2021 and 2022:
https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=355859120530039&set=a.103845305731423
So what happened is that a problem arose and it was resolved.
The problem gets the media reports but its solving doesn't.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/jan/28/british-students-not-being-squeezed-out-by-overseas-applicants-say-universities
'University leaders said the claims were “mendacious” because the reporting by the Sunday Times ignored figures showing rising numbers of UK students enrolled at Russell Group universities and unfairly compared entry requirements on non-degree courses with those of mainstream undergraduate courses.
A spokesperson for the Russell Group of universities said foundation year programmes, designed to prepare students for further study, “are different to degree programmes, have separate admissions processes and, crucially, different entry requirements”.'
"They tell you that they've got all of the answers, but won't let you ask any questions."
I'll vote for Lab or LD, whichever I think has the best chance of knocking over this very safe Tory seat.
The UK prison system is stuck in that situation because of Porridge.
For anyone desperate to see the back of this appalling Conservative Government they cannot be under any illusion that a Labour landslide is remotely in the bag. Labour most seats isn't even a racing certainty. Voting for anyone other than the candidate best placed to beat the Tory incumbent runs the risk of another five year Tory doom loop.
Labour may, as the PB loyalists claim, be even worse. However the bar is so low, they can be useless and still better this lot. A government interested only in power, with no interest in governing, just jockeying each other for position to get to the top of the greasy pole first. Unbelievable!
But Starmer for whatever reason (and he may have a decent practical one, if no moral one) has been very poor over Gaza.
At some level you have to come to terms with living in an unjust world.
But to listen to some people, you'd think we all lived in hovels with outside toilets, no running water and electricity powered by methane piped in from the local urchin farm. That there was mass unemployment and a gunman on every street corner.
That isn't a reason to vote Conservative, or indeed for anyone; just that people who are constantly utterly negative have probably lost all perspective.
Let me put it this way; one of the reasons the Post Office scandal has eventually struck the public's consciousness so strongly is that it seems so utterly against the way we think things should work in this country. And rightly so. But in many, many countries, what happened - and worse - would be accepted with a shrug and be seen as utterly unnoteworthy - "it's the way things are done."
We should not try to change that.
Current Processing Times (applied on or after December 18, 2023)
Routine 6 to 8 weeks
Expedited 2 to 3 weeks
Expedited at Agency Must have international travel within 14 calendar days
Appointment required
Previous Processing Times
I applied between November 6, 2023 and December 17, 2023
Routine: 7 to 10 weeks
Expedited: 3 to 5 weeks
I applied between October 2, 2023 and November 5, 2023
Routine: 8 to 11 weeks
Expedited: 5 to 7 weeks
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/News/passports/passport-processing-updates.html#:~:text=Current Processing Times: Processing times,which costs an additional $60.
How could anybody with pretensions to academic rigour not know it's 'different from?'
At the moment, I am inclined to vote tactically to punish the current government - indeed I'd like to see the Tories gone forever.
In an ideal world I'd vote for the things I believe in, or rather the candidate that professed to believe most closely in the same things as me.
If what we need is brighter voters and better candidates, then good and better people standing and voting more brightly would seem the only options. There is no-one apart from the great UK public who can sort that one, by standing and voting.
To demonstrate by analogy: if a gay person had the right to have same-sex sex removed then that person could legitimately claim to have had their rights removed, even though they still had the same right to have different-sex sex as other people. I could repeat the analogy for other characteristics (eg race, religion) but hopefully that will be unnecessary.
I will never not vote.
Weisse Band is the dullest film I've ever watched. And when you consider that includes Carry on Columbus, that's saying something.
Admittedly, it's not quite as bad as Gormenghast or The White Queen, but since they're actually unwatchable that's not difficult either.
I have seen for myself (my wife was involved in parent and child foster caring for a number of years) and I saw poverty of an order I had no idea existed. We have ex-servicemen living in tents that Suella Braverman wanted to remove from them. We have families dispossessed of their homes and sent to local authority emergency accomodation. We live in a society that it more inequitable than it was a decade ago. To drive such inequality further is immoral. Maybe Labour can't do anything about it. The Conservatives on the other hand won't even try.
One nation feudal Tories in this iteration of the Conservative Party are a thing of the past.
I'll be voting Labour (and I don't like Starmer) for one less Tory MP, and I like Alun Cairns despite his unflinching party loyalty.
So let's accept that 'nothing works, everything is broken' is wrong, it should be: 'lots of stuff that should work, that used to work, doesn't'.
Management of Pension Credit is one niche example: The Pension Service don't have enough staff (apparently) to review Pension Credit payments where the recipient has increased their income or assets and should no longer qualify for PC, so the state carries on paying them when they are no longer eligible.
Some others are:
- Ambulances - awful response times.
- Armed forces - not enough staff to crew the Navy's ships.
- Education - where to begin.
- Councils - going bust and cutting services left, right and centre.
- Justice - huge lead times for court cases.
- Immigration service - losing track of immigrants, slow processing times.
I could go on...
Sure it is not all broken but overall, things have gone backwards in recent years.
Again, that does not mean that we do not need to improve things.
That's why I'm a Buddhist.
https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1751620428152324122
https://www.rferl.org/a/hungary-far-right-ukraine-region/32795184.html
Hopefully the Romanian and Hungarian electorate will see these people off. But it is an indication of the 'offer' Russia may be giving some neighbouring states.
The PO bosses were convinced that the lower class SPMs were all thieves. After all, many of them were a bit foreign.
The Horizon system was just the (incompetent) opportunity to turn this belief loose.
The problem was the lack of any kind of internal check - "WTAF is happening here?"
If only everyone acted like me, we’d solve the problem.
We’ve been sold a dud when we allow ourselves to be convinced that the appropriate level of political action is at the individual level. We need to act collectively to solve political problems, but not voting is a quintessentially individual (and therefore ineffective) act.
(To be fair, posting a message on a political forum trying to persuade others not to vote is trying to encourage collective
action I suppose)
*I’ve met a few, every one a misery guts.
Having to walk three miles down a busy A road with no proper pavement with a distressed 12 year old girl twice this term, leaving multiple classes without a teacher of any kind, because there's nobody else available to keep her safe and calm, crossing multiple roads, including dual carriageways, and no one to refer her on to to see within six months is more what I consider "nothing works".
Problem is the Tories have been hijacked by shitheads who want to treat houses as commodities to be sweated for wealth and income, rather than affordable for people who want and need somewhere of their own to live.
The Tories will be worth voting for only if they change their spots, and once more have a leader who can say (and more importantly believe and follow through on) the following:
I am much nearer to creating one nation than Labour will ever be. Socialism is two nations. The privileged rulers, and everyone else. And it always gets to that. What I am desperately trying to do is create one nation with everyone being a man of property, or having the opportunity to be a man of property.
Or: I want a capital-earning democracy. Every man and woman a capitalist. Housing is the start. If you're a man or woman of property, you've got something. So every man a capitalist, and every man a man of property.
Say that is what you desire to many Tories today, and they'll accuse you of being a socialist.
If a female only space accommodates men it is no longer a female only space. Females are denied a right they previously had. They self-exclude. That is what has happened in the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre. It is not a "rant" to point out how unfair to raped women this is nor how unprogressive.
I don't recall it being particularly frightening, maybe because it had so little power. It was certainly crude compared the Manta but outsold it at least 20:1.
We all know which gets the media attention.
And why have the things that have gone backwards gone backwards ?
External shocks, outside influences, increasing demand, misallocation of resources, internal inefficiencies ?
Multiple reasons and varying from one problem to another.
The world is dynamic, continually changing - this causes problems and these need to be resolved.
And resolved to a level which enough of the population are willing to accept - not a 'perfect solution' which those directly affected might want.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68118822
"The forthcoming revision of the Manual for Streets will highlight the continuing need to design streets with people walking, cycling and taking public transport as the priority. Inclusive Mobility, updated in January 2022, provides detailed design advice to ensure the pedestrian environment is accessible to all."
Oh wait, something's just been added at the top of the page. Let me have a look:
"This statutory guidance was withdrawn on 2 October 2023. This guidance has been withdrawn with immediate effect. For more information, see the Plan for drivers."
Like you said. Nothing f—king works.
On the other hand NHS waiting times are the worst that I have known in my 35 year career.
have earned the average salary by the 10th of January.
Yes at the time we were the sick man of Europe, but we were also a fairer, happier society. The right of centre argument is all this "free" stuff is unsustainable. I would warrant the average FTSE CEO earning 30 pr 40 times the average salary is even more unsustainable. And I repeat, people like Robert Jenrick and Braverman couldn't give two hoots for the welfare of British citizens, they are too busy feathering their own meaningless ambitions. What kind of moral vacuum paints over Disney characters at a children's asylum centre, or removes tents from destitute PTSD suffering ex-soldiers?
Now, I would think life in Britain in around 2000, when he noted the following fact, was much more benign than in the 1970s. E.g. no Berlin Wall, hardly any strikes, no power cuts, no 3-day weeks or calls to the IMF.
In the 1970s, when he first became an MP, there were 4 times as many negative headlines in the national newspapers as positive ones.
Around 2000, that ratio was 18 to 1.
There's enough people who prefer resources are spent on cruises than on X, Y or Z.
I'm not saying which is more worthwhile merely pointing out that in democracies what the people want money spent on is generally what money is spent on.
David Cameron
Theresa May
Boris Johnson
Liz Truss
Rishi Sunak
Things are broken. It is the fault of the Conservative Party. And everyone knows it.