I’ve emotionally gone from being mentally and emotionally reconciled to a Trump win to having hope that Harris actually might do it. Sadly it’s the hope that kills you.
*Raises eyebrows*
Has Governor Walz's daughter taken up a new career?
You’re going to have to explain that one to me.
She’s called Hope and may have become an assassin according to your post…
It wasn’t really worth explaining…
But she is called Hope as she was an IVF baby and somehow the Republicans have managed to put themselves in the position of looking anti-IVF.
I thought they *were* anti-IVF?
I am anti taxpayer-funded IVF.
In the scheme of things I can think of a whole set of items that I object to far more.
Giving a family a chance of children seems to be a noble use of a tiny percentage of what I pay in taxes.
Certainly with fertility rates now below replacement level in the UK and USA
Sadly, reproductive services are something that the NHS have all but abandoned.
Technically, they still aim to offer three cycles to under-40s, and one to those aged 40 and 41 - but in most of the country are nowhere close to achieving this. The usual pattern is to mange the problem by delaying long enough that people age out of eligibility, so if you're in your mid 30s they'll drag it out so you get one cycle at 38 or 39, and another a couple of years later. And that's only if you're very persistent.
In reality, most people on average need around four cycles, with some trying up to six before giving up. Each cycle typically costs around £10k.
Fertility rapidly declines once you hit your late 20s, but as a society we've set ourselves up so that people are unable to even consider having children until a decade later. So we're effectively expecting people to pay £20k or so on average to be able to have children, and that's before you even get on to the nightmarish situation that NHS maternity services are in.
Agreed, though there is the freezing eggs option too.
Of course in the 1930s there was mass unemployment and most people of all ages rented but yet most 20 to 30 year olds had children and the fertility rate was above average so it is also a lifestyle choice, especially with more women wanting careers and leaving children until their 30s and early 40s if they decide to have them at all
Egg-freezing is £20k and only works about half the time. It's also less likely to be covered by private health insurance than IVF, though some employers do explicitly fund it separately.
As for it being a lifestyle choice, I think it's a bit stronger than that. It's a choice between building your career, being able to rent a flat by yourself, and generally having a stable life that you control before getting pregnant - or having kids in your 20s, and hoping that the state will provide an adequate safety net if things go wrong.
Not many people trust that safety net these days, and I don't think it's fair to blame them for that.
As with so much else, the best way to fix this would be to ease the pressure on housing. If the best a 20-something at the start of a professional career can expect is to live in a houseshare for the next decade, then is it any wonder why they're not settling down and having kids?
Absolutely!
And this is another reason why too everyone who is working ought to be able to afford a home of their own, from their own efforts, with no inheritance in their twenties as was achievable in the past and could be again if the prices were more appropriate.
An inheritance if you get one (and many won't) is likely to come in your sixties or later nowadays and won't get you on the housing ladder in your twenties.
Most people rented 100 years ago, they still managed to have children in their 20s
'Managed' is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
Society was organised entirely differently, and there were little to no reliable forms of contraception.
I am staggered by those who stagger through life waiting for an inheritance.
Inheritance is irrelevant to this argument as it 100 years ago most couples in their 20s rented and did not have an inheritance but still managed to have children.
Of course we could also go Vatican and restrict contraception too, certainly to 20-35 year olds at peak fertility in settled relationships
I'm not sure how settled most of those relationships would be if contraception was entirely eliminated.
I disagree with the header. I don't think it's a 50/50 race anymore.
At the moment, it's between a narrow win and a big win.
I think I am still scarred by 2016.
I realised over the weekend I am more emotionally invested in the 2024 US Presidential election than I have ever been in any UK general election or Brexit referendum/Scottish independence referendum and I was pretty emotionally invested in the those too.
Whilst I understand the point, and your investment is shared by many on PB, it is another example of people living on the Internet instead of on the ground. Unless you have plans you have not announced, you live in the UK and do not plan to move to the US. The activities of the UK govt will affect you a lot more than any US govt, regardless of its greater magnitude. Yet Trump v Harris matters more to you (and most of PB) emotionally.
I’ve got friends in America.
I think Trump withdrawing from NATO/selling out Ukraine will do more damage to the UK than anything Starmer will manage.
Heck the same applies to Trump’s tariffs.
While not advisable at most Trump would do a peace deal with Putin and tell Zelensky to give Russia the land they now still occupy in Ukraine. Given for most of the last 100 years Ukraine was part of the USSR anyway it wouldn't be a massive issue for the UK though obviously not great for Ukranians self determination and freedom.
Trump's tariffs would be focused at China and the EU rather than the UK, not sure we would want a trade deal with him though now as even if offered it would be US biased
Trump's proposal is for
(a) Tariffs that are at least 10% for all products entering the US, irrespective of where they come from (b) Plus, in the event that any country were to respond with higher tariffs on US goods, then the US would match them and (c) A 60% tariff on all goods from China
That's a lot of tariffs. And a lot less international trade.
I disagree with the header. I don't think it's a 50/50 race anymore.
At the moment, it's between a narrow win and a big win.
I think I am still scarred by 2016.
I realised over the weekend I am more emotionally invested in the 2024 US Presidential election than I have ever been in any UK general election or Brexit referendum/Scottish independence referendum and I was pretty emotionally invested in the those too.
Whilst I understand the point, and your investment is shared by many on PB, it is another example of people living on the Internet instead of on the ground. Unless you have plans you have not announced, you live in the UK and do not plan to move to the US. The activities of the UK govt will affect you a lot more than any US govt, regardless of its greater magnitude. Yet Trump v Harris matters more to you (and most of PB) emotionally.
I’ve got friends in America.
I think Trump withdrawing from NATO/selling out Ukraine will do more damage to the UK than anything Starmer will manage.
Heck the same applies to Trump’s tariffs.
While not advisable at most Trump would do a peace deal with Putin and tell Zelensky to give Russia the land they now still occupy in Ukraine. Given for most of the last 100 years Ukraine was part of the USSR anyway it wouldn't be a massive issue for the UK though obviously not great for Ukranians self determination and freedom.
Trump's tariffs would be focused at China and the EU rather than the UK, not sure we would want a trade deal with him though now as even if offered it would be US biased
Trump's proposal is for
(a) Tariffs that are at least 10% for all products entering the US, irrespective of where they come from (b) Plus, in the event that any country were to respond with higher tariffs on US goods, then the US would match them and (c) A 60% tariff on all goods from China
That's a lot of tariffs. And a lot less international trade.
I disagree with the header. I don't think it's a 50/50 race anymore.
At the moment, it's between a narrow win and a big win.
I think I am still scarred by 2016.
I realised over the weekend I am more emotionally invested in the 2024 US Presidential election than I have ever been in any UK general election or Brexit referendum/Scottish independence referendum and I was pretty emotionally invested in the those too.
Whilst I understand the point, and your investment is shared by many on PB, it is another example of people living on the Internet instead of on the ground. Unless you have plans you have not announced, you live in the UK and do not plan to move to the US. The activities of the UK govt will affect you a lot more than any US govt, regardless of its greater magnitude. Yet Trump v Harris matters more to you (and most of PB) emotionally.
I’ve got friends in America.
I think Trump withdrawing from NATO/selling out Ukraine will do more damage to the UK than anything Starmer will manage.
Heck the same applies to Trump’s tariffs.
While not advisable at most Trump would do a peace deal with Putin and tell Zelensky to give Russia the land they now still occupy in Ukraine. Given for most of the last 100 years Ukraine was part of the USSR anyway it wouldn't be a massive issue for the UK though obviously not great for Ukranians self determination and freedom.
Trump's tariffs would be focused at China and the EU rather than the UK, not sure we would want a trade deal with him though now as even if offered it would be US biased
Trump's proposal is for
(a) Tariffs that are at least 10% for all products entering the US, irrespective of where they come from (b) Plus, in the event that any country were to respond with higher tariffs on US goods, then the US would match them and (c) A 60% tariff on all goods from China
That's a lot of tariffs. And a lot less international trade.
And a lot of price rises for the working middle classes. The tarrif's gotta come from someone.
Has he thought this through?
We are talking Trump who doesn't understand Game theory and that there are games where co-operating results in both sides winning...
Trump believes that everything has 1 winner and 1 or more losers and he doesn't like being the loser because when you lose and you've been caught trying to cheat court cases appear...
I’ve emotionally gone from being mentally and emotionally reconciled to a Trump win to having hope that Harris actually might do it. Sadly it’s the hope that kills you.
*Raises eyebrows*
Has Governor Walz's daughter taken up a new career?
You’re going to have to explain that one to me.
She’s called Hope and may have become an assassin according to your post…
It wasn’t really worth explaining…
But she is called Hope as she was an IVF baby and somehow the Republicans have managed to put themselves in the position of looking anti-IVF.
I thought they *were* anti-IVF?
I am anti taxpayer-funded IVF.
In the scheme of things I can think of a whole set of items that I object to far more.
Giving a family a chance of children seems to be a noble use of a tiny percentage of what I pay in taxes.
Certainly with fertility rates now below replacement level in the UK and USA
Sadly, reproductive services are something that the NHS have all but abandoned.
Technically, they still aim to offer three cycles to under-40s, and one to those aged 40 and 41 - but in most of the country are nowhere close to achieving this. The usual pattern is to mange the problem by delaying long enough that people age out of eligibility, so if you're in your mid 30s they'll drag it out so you get one cycle at 38 or 39, and another a couple of years later. And that's only if you're very persistent.
In reality, most people on average need around four cycles, with some trying up to six before giving up. Each cycle typically costs around £10k.
Fertility rapidly declines once you hit your late 20s, but as a society we've set ourselves up so that people are unable to even consider having children until a decade later. So we're effectively expecting people to pay £20k or so on average to be able to have children, and that's before you even get on to the nightmarish situation that NHS maternity services are in.
Agreed, though there is the freezing eggs option too.
Of course in the 1930s there was mass unemployment and most people of all ages rented but yet most 20 to 30 year olds had children and the fertility rate was above average so it is also a lifestyle choice, especially with more women wanting careers and leaving children until their 30s and early 40s if they decide to have them at all
Egg-freezing is £20k and only works about half the time. It's also less likely to be covered by private health insurance than IVF, though some employers do explicitly fund it separately.
As for it being a lifestyle choice, I think it's a bit stronger than that. It's a choice between building your career, being able to rent a flat by yourself, and generally having a stable life that you control before getting pregnant - or having kids in your 20s, and hoping that the state will provide an adequate safety net if things go wrong.
Not many people trust that safety net these days, and I don't think it's fair to blame them for that.
As with so much else, the best way to fix this would be to ease the pressure on housing. If the best a 20-something at the start of a professional career can expect is to live in a houseshare for the next decade, then is it any wonder why they're not settling down and having kids?
Absolutely!
And this is another reason why too everyone who is working ought to be able to afford a home of their own, from their own efforts, with no inheritance in their twenties as was achievable in the past and could be again if the prices were more appropriate.
An inheritance if you get one (and many won't) is likely to come in your sixties or later nowadays and won't get you on the housing ladder in your twenties.
Most people rented 100 years ago, they still managed to have children in their 20s
'Managed' is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
Society was organised entirely differently, and there were little to no reliable forms of contraception.
I am staggered by those who stagger through life waiting for an inheritance.
Inheritance is irrelevant to this argument as it 100 years ago most couples in their 20s rented and did not have an inheritance but still managed to have children.
Of course we could also go Vatican and restrict contraception too, certainly to 20-35 year olds at peak fertility in settled relationships
Just as a matter of interest, were you involved in the producing the Project 2025 manifesto?
I disagree with the header. I don't think it's a 50/50 race anymore.
At the moment, it's between a narrow win and a big win.
I think I am still scarred by 2016.
I realised over the weekend I am more emotionally invested in the 2024 US Presidential election than I have ever been in any UK general election or Brexit referendum/Scottish independence referendum and I was pretty emotionally invested in the those too.
Whilst I understand the point, and your investment is shared by many on PB, it is another example of people living on the Internet instead of on the ground. Unless you have plans you have not announced, you live in the UK and do not plan to move to the US. The activities of the UK govt will affect you a lot more than any US govt, regardless of its greater magnitude. Yet Trump v Harris matters more to you (and most of PB) emotionally.
I’ve got friends in America.
I think Trump withdrawing from NATO/selling out Ukraine will do more damage to the UK than anything Starmer will manage.
Heck the same applies to Trump’s tariffs.
While not advisable at most Trump would do a peace deal with Putin and tell Zelensky to give Russia the land they now still occupy in Ukraine. Given for most of the last 100 years Ukraine was part of the USSR anyway it wouldn't be a massive issue for the UK though obviously not great for Ukranians self determination and freedom.
Trump's tariffs would be focused at China and the EU rather than the UK, not sure we would want a trade deal with him though now as even if offered it would be US biased
Trump's proposal is for
(a) Tariffs that are at least 10% for all products entering the US, irrespective of where they come from (b) Plus, in the event that any country were to respond with higher tariffs on US goods, then the US would match them and (c) A 60% tariff on all goods from China
That's a lot of tariffs. And a lot less international trade.
And a big China-US trade war
I suspect it wouldn't be just a trade war...
I doubt it, Trump prefers trade wars to actual wars.
China would also be more wary of what Trump might do if it invaded Taiwan as he is unpredictable
I’ve emotionally gone from being mentally and emotionally reconciled to a Trump win to having hope that Harris actually might do it. Sadly it’s the hope that kills you.
*Raises eyebrows*
Has Governor Walz's daughter taken up a new career?
You’re going to have to explain that one to me.
She’s called Hope and may have become an assassin according to your post…
It wasn’t really worth explaining…
But she is called Hope as she was an IVF baby and somehow the Republicans have managed to put themselves in the position of looking anti-IVF.
I thought they *were* anti-IVF?
I am anti taxpayer-funded IVF.
In the scheme of things I can think of a whole set of items that I object to far more.
Giving a family a chance of children seems to be a noble use of a tiny percentage of what I pay in taxes.
Certainly with fertility rates now below replacement level in the UK and USA
Sadly, reproductive services are something that the NHS have all but abandoned.
Technically, they still aim to offer three cycles to under-40s, and one to those aged 40 and 41 - but in most of the country are nowhere close to achieving this. The usual pattern is to mange the problem by delaying long enough that people age out of eligibility, so if you're in your mid 30s they'll drag it out so you get one cycle at 38 or 39, and another a couple of years later. And that's only if you're very persistent.
In reality, most people on average need around four cycles, with some trying up to six before giving up. Each cycle typically costs around £10k.
Fertility rapidly declines once you hit your late 20s, but as a society we've set ourselves up so that people are unable to even consider having children until a decade later. So we're effectively expecting people to pay £20k or so on average to be able to have children, and that's before you even get on to the nightmarish situation that NHS maternity services are in.
Agreed, though there is the freezing eggs option too.
Of course in the 1930s there was mass unemployment and most people of all ages rented but yet most 20 to 30 year olds had children and the fertility rate was above average so it is also a lifestyle choice, especially with more women wanting careers and leaving children until their 30s and early 40s if they decide to have them at all
Egg-freezing is £20k and only works about half the time. It's also less likely to be covered by private health insurance than IVF, though some employers do explicitly fund it separately.
As for it being a lifestyle choice, I think it's a bit stronger than that. It's a choice between building your career, being able to rent a flat by yourself, and generally having a stable life that you control before getting pregnant - or having kids in your 20s, and hoping that the state will provide an adequate safety net if things go wrong.
Not many people trust that safety net these days, and I don't think it's fair to blame them for that.
As with so much else, the best way to fix this would be to ease the pressure on housing. If the best a 20-something at the start of a professional career can expect is to live in a houseshare for the next decade, then is it any wonder why they're not settling down and having kids?
Absolutely!
And this is another reason why too everyone who is working ought to be able to afford a home of their own, from their own efforts, with no inheritance in their twenties as was achievable in the past and could be again if the prices were more appropriate.
An inheritance if you get one (and many won't) is likely to come in your sixties or later nowadays and won't get you on the housing ladder in your twenties.
Most people rented 100 years ago, they still managed to have children in their 20s
'Managed' is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
Society was organised entirely differently, and there were little to no reliable forms of contraception.
I am staggered by those who stagger through life waiting for an inheritance.
On HYUFD's logic, we should increase IHT quite happily - and certainly abolish the house-to-direct-children pampering. Most people didn't pay IHT then.
No we shouldn't, receiving an inheritance is a big financial boost to those in their late 40s to early 60s, including those with older children. That is one of the benefits of property ownership for families
...well, to some of them. Not everyone gets a significant inheritance.
I mean, I sort of see your point. But it would be much better to have houses people could afford, than have houses people could only afford once their parents had died, and many people couldn't afford at all.
35% of BMWs, all of the X models except the iX, are made in the USA. As these are their high volume, high margin products in the US, they will be just fine. They could also switch 3 Series from China to Mexico with the 2 series if necessary.
Porsche would adapt by making everything except the tyres an optional extra thus maintaining the sticker price and revenue.
I’ve emotionally gone from being mentally and emotionally reconciled to a Trump win to having hope that Harris actually might do it. Sadly it’s the hope that kills you.
*Raises eyebrows*
Has Governor Walz's daughter taken up a new career?
You’re going to have to explain that one to me.
She’s called Hope and may have become an assassin according to your post…
It wasn’t really worth explaining…
But she is called Hope as she was an IVF baby and somehow the Republicans have managed to put themselves in the position of looking anti-IVF.
I thought they *were* anti-IVF?
I am anti taxpayer-funded IVF.
In the scheme of things I can think of a whole set of items that I object to far more.
Giving a family a chance of children seems to be a noble use of a tiny percentage of what I pay in taxes.
Certainly with fertility rates now below replacement level in the UK and USA
Sadly, reproductive services are something that the NHS have all but abandoned.
Technically, they still aim to offer three cycles to under-40s, and one to those aged 40 and 41 - but in most of the country are nowhere close to achieving this. The usual pattern is to mange the problem by delaying long enough that people age out of eligibility, so if you're in your mid 30s they'll drag it out so you get one cycle at 38 or 39, and another a couple of years later. And that's only if you're very persistent.
In reality, most people on average need around four cycles, with some trying up to six before giving up. Each cycle typically costs around £10k.
Fertility rapidly declines once you hit your late 20s, but as a society we've set ourselves up so that people are unable to even consider having children until a decade later. So we're effectively expecting people to pay £20k or so on average to be able to have children, and that's before you even get on to the nightmarish situation that NHS maternity services are in.
Agreed, though there is the freezing eggs option too.
Of course in the 1930s there was mass unemployment and most people of all ages rented but yet most 20 to 30 year olds had children and the fertility rate was above average so it is also a lifestyle choice, especially with more women wanting careers and leaving children until their 30s and early 40s if they decide to have them at all
Egg-freezing is £20k and only works about half the time. It's also less likely to be covered by private health insurance than IVF, though some employers do explicitly fund it separately.
As for it being a lifestyle choice, I think it's a bit stronger than that. It's a choice between building your career, being able to rent a flat by yourself, and generally having a stable life that you control before getting pregnant - or having kids in your 20s, and hoping that the state will provide an adequate safety net if things go wrong.
Not many people trust that safety net these days, and I don't think it's fair to blame them for that.
As with so much else, the best way to fix this would be to ease the pressure on housing. If the best a 20-something at the start of a professional career can expect is to live in a houseshare for the next decade, then is it any wonder why they're not settling down and having kids?
Absolutely!
And this is another reason why too everyone who is working ought to be able to afford a home of their own, from their own efforts, with no inheritance in their twenties as was achievable in the past and could be again if the prices were more appropriate.
An inheritance if you get one (and many won't) is likely to come in your sixties or later nowadays and won't get you on the housing ladder in your twenties.
Most people rented 100 years ago, they still managed to have children in their 20s
'Managed' is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
Society was organised entirely differently, and there were little to no reliable forms of contraception.
I am staggered by those who stagger through life waiting for an inheritance.
Inheritance is irrelevant to this argument as it 100 years ago most couples in their 20s rented and did not have an inheritance but still managed to have children.
Of course we could also go Vatican and restrict contraception too, certainly to 20-35 year olds at peak fertility in settled relationships
I'm not sure how settled most of those relationships would be if contraception was entirely eliminated.
Full Vatican of course would be no sex unless married and no contraception if having sex in marriage
I disagree with the header. I don't think it's a 50/50 race anymore.
At the moment, it's between a narrow win and a big win.
I think I am still scarred by 2016.
I realised over the weekend I am more emotionally invested in the 2024 US Presidential election than I have ever been in any UK general election or Brexit referendum/Scottish independence referendum and I was pretty emotionally invested in the those too.
Whilst I understand the point, and your investment is shared by many on PB, it is another example of people living on the Internet instead of on the ground. Unless you have plans you have not announced, you live in the UK and do not plan to move to the US. The activities of the UK govt will affect you a lot more than any US govt, regardless of its greater magnitude. Yet Trump v Harris matters more to you (and most of PB) emotionally.
I’ve got friends in America.
I think Trump withdrawing from NATO/selling out Ukraine will do more damage to the UK than anything Starmer will manage.
Heck the same applies to Trump’s tariffs.
While not advisable at most Trump would do a peace deal with Putin and tell Zelensky to give Russia the land they now still occupy in Ukraine. Given for most of the last 100 years Ukraine was part of the USSR anyway it wouldn't be a massive issue for the UK though obviously not great for Ukranians self determination and freedom.
Trump's tariffs would be focused at China and the EU rather than the UK, not sure we would want a trade deal with him though now as even if offered it would be US biased
Trump's proposal is for
(a) Tariffs that are at least 10% for all products entering the US, irrespective of where they come from (b) Plus, in the event that any country were to respond with higher tariffs on US goods, then the US would match them and (c) A 60% tariff on all goods from China
That's a lot of tariffs. And a lot less international trade.
And a big China-US trade war
I suspect it wouldn't be just a trade war...
I doubt it, Trump prefers trade wars to actual wars.
China would also be more wary of what Trump might do if it invaded Taiwan as he is unpredictable
The demand for chinese goods disappearing would result in China needing to provide a distraction. Attacking Taiwan would provide a very suitable distraction....
I’ve emotionally gone from being mentally and emotionally reconciled to a Trump win to having hope that Harris actually might do it. Sadly it’s the hope that kills you.
*Raises eyebrows*
Has Governor Walz's daughter taken up a new career?
You’re going to have to explain that one to me.
She’s called Hope and may have become an assassin according to your post…
It wasn’t really worth explaining…
But she is called Hope as she was an IVF baby and somehow the Republicans have managed to put themselves in the position of looking anti-IVF.
I thought they *were* anti-IVF?
I am anti taxpayer-funded IVF.
In the scheme of things I can think of a whole set of items that I object to far more.
Giving a family a chance of children seems to be a noble use of a tiny percentage of what I pay in taxes.
Certainly with fertility rates now below replacement level in the UK and USA
Sadly, reproductive services are something that the NHS have all but abandoned.
Technically, they still aim to offer three cycles to under-40s, and one to those aged 40 and 41 - but in most of the country are nowhere close to achieving this. The usual pattern is to mange the problem by delaying long enough that people age out of eligibility, so if you're in your mid 30s they'll drag it out so you get one cycle at 38 or 39, and another a couple of years later. And that's only if you're very persistent.
In reality, most people on average need around four cycles, with some trying up to six before giving up. Each cycle typically costs around £10k.
Fertility rapidly declines once you hit your late 20s, but as a society we've set ourselves up so that people are unable to even consider having children until a decade later. So we're effectively expecting people to pay £20k or so on average to be able to have children, and that's before you even get on to the nightmarish situation that NHS maternity services are in.
Agreed, though there is the freezing eggs option too.
Of course in the 1930s there was mass unemployment and most people of all ages rented but yet most 20 to 30 year olds had children and the fertility rate was above average so it is also a lifestyle choice, especially with more women wanting careers and leaving children until their 30s and early 40s if they decide to have them at all
Egg-freezing is £20k and only works about half the time. It's also less likely to be covered by private health insurance than IVF, though some employers do explicitly fund it separately.
As for it being a lifestyle choice, I think it's a bit stronger than that. It's a choice between building your career, being able to rent a flat by yourself, and generally having a stable life that you control before getting pregnant - or having kids in your 20s, and hoping that the state will provide an adequate safety net if things go wrong.
Not many people trust that safety net these days, and I don't think it's fair to blame them for that.
As with so much else, the best way to fix this would be to ease the pressure on housing. If the best a 20-something at the start of a professional career can expect is to live in a houseshare for the next decade, then is it any wonder why they're not settling down and having kids?
Absolutely!
And this is another reason why too everyone who is working ought to be able to afford a home of their own, from their own efforts, with no inheritance in their twenties as was achievable in the past and could be again if the prices were more appropriate.
An inheritance if you get one (and many won't) is likely to come in your sixties or later nowadays and won't get you on the housing ladder in your twenties.
Most people rented 100 years ago, they still managed to have children in their 20s
'Managed' is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
Society was organised entirely differently, and there were little to no reliable forms of contraception.
I am staggered by those who stagger through life waiting for an inheritance.
On HYUFD's logic, we should increase IHT quite happily - and certainly abolish the house-to-direct-children pampering. Most people didn't pay IHT then.
No we shouldn't, receiving an inheritance is a big financial boost to those in their late 40s to early 60s, including those with older children. That is one of the benefits of property ownership for families
...well, to some of them. Not everyone gets a significant inheritance.
I mean, I sort of see your point. But it would be much better to have houses people could afford, than have houses people could only afford once their parents had died, and many people couldn't afford at all.
Or both more affordable houses and still inheritances even if a bit lower
I disagree with the header. I don't think it's a 50/50 race anymore.
At the moment, it's between a narrow win and a big win.
I think I am still scarred by 2016.
I realised over the weekend I am more emotionally invested in the 2024 US Presidential election than I have ever been in any UK general election or Brexit referendum/Scottish independence referendum and I was pretty emotionally invested in the those too.
Whilst I understand the point, and your investment is shared by many on PB, it is another example of people living on the Internet instead of on the ground. Unless you have plans you have not announced, you live in the UK and do not plan to move to the US. The activities of the UK govt will affect you a lot more than any US govt, regardless of its greater magnitude. Yet Trump v Harris matters more to you (and most of PB) emotionally.
I’ve got friends in America.
I think Trump withdrawing from NATO/selling out Ukraine will do more damage to the UK than anything Starmer will manage.
Heck the same applies to Trump’s tariffs.
While not advisable at most Trump would do a peace deal with Putin and tell Zelensky to give Russia the land they now still occupy in Ukraine. Given for most of the last 100 years Ukraine was part of the USSR anyway it wouldn't be a massive issue for the UK though obviously not great for Ukranians self determination and freedom.
Trump's tariffs would be focused at China and the EU rather than the UK, not sure we would want a trade deal with him though now as even if offered it would be US biased
Trump's proposal is for
(a) Tariffs that are at least 10% for all products entering the US, irrespective of where they come from (b) Plus, in the event that any country were to respond with higher tariffs on US goods, then the US would match them and (c) A 60% tariff on all goods from China
That's a lot of tariffs. And a lot less international trade.
The 60% tariff would crush international trade. US imports from China are enormous. In 2023 the US imported Chinese goods and services worth $450 BILLION
It would indeed:
It would cause a massive recession in China (fewer exports) and in the US (consumer goods massively more expensive, so people's dollars don't go so far).
It would almost certainly also result in retaliatory tariffs on US goods.
I disagree with the header. I don't think it's a 50/50 race anymore.
At the moment, it's between a narrow win and a big win.
I think I am still scarred by 2016.
I realised over the weekend I am more emotionally invested in the 2024 US Presidential election than I have ever been in any UK general election or Brexit referendum/Scottish independence referendum and I was pretty emotionally invested in the those too.
Whilst I understand the point, and your investment is shared by many on PB, it is another example of people living on the Internet instead of on the ground. Unless you have plans you have not announced, you live in the UK and do not plan to move to the US. The activities of the UK govt will affect you a lot more than any US govt, regardless of its greater magnitude. Yet Trump v Harris matters more to you (and most of PB) emotionally.
I’ve got friends in America.
I think Trump withdrawing from NATO/selling out Ukraine will do more damage to the UK than anything Starmer will manage.
Heck the same applies to Trump’s tariffs.
While not advisable at most Trump would do a peace deal with Putin and tell Zelensky to give Russia the land they now still occupy in Ukraine. Given for most of the last 100 years Ukraine was part of the USSR anyway it wouldn't be a massive issue for the UK though obviously not great for Ukranians self determination and freedom.
Trump's tariffs would be focused at China and the EU rather than the UK, not sure we would want a trade deal with him though now as even if offered it would be US biased
Trump's proposal is for
(a) Tariffs that are at least 10% for all products entering the US, irrespective of where they come from (b) Plus, in the event that any country were to respond with higher tariffs on US goods, then the US would match them and (c) A 60% tariff on all goods from China
That's a lot of tariffs. And a lot less international trade.
And a big China-US trade war
Whatever Harris proposes it cannot be as crazy as this.
I disagree with the header. I don't think it's a 50/50 race anymore.
At the moment, it's between a narrow win and a big win.
I think I am still scarred by 2016.
I realised over the weekend I am more emotionally invested in the 2024 US Presidential election than I have ever been in any UK general election or Brexit referendum/Scottish independence referendum and I was pretty emotionally invested in the those too.
Whilst I understand the point, and your investment is shared by many on PB, it is another example of people living on the Internet instead of on the ground. Unless you have plans you have not announced, you live in the UK and do not plan to move to the US. The activities of the UK govt will affect you a lot more than any US govt, regardless of its greater magnitude. Yet Trump v Harris matters more to you (and most of PB) emotionally.
I’ve got friends in America.
I think Trump withdrawing from NATO/selling out Ukraine will do more damage to the UK than anything Starmer will manage.
Heck the same applies to Trump’s tariffs.
While not advisable at most Trump would do a peace deal with Putin and tell Zelensky to give Russia the land they now still occupy in Ukraine. Given for most of the last 100 years Ukraine was part of the USSR anyway it wouldn't be a massive issue for the UK though obviously not great for Ukranians self determination and freedom.
Trump's tariffs would be focused at China and the EU rather than the UK, not sure we would want a trade deal with him though now as even if offered it would be US biased
Trump's proposal is for
(a) Tariffs that are at least 10% for all products entering the US, irrespective of where they come from (b) Plus, in the event that any country were to respond with higher tariffs on US goods, then the US would match them and (c) A 60% tariff on all goods from China
That's a lot of tariffs. And a lot less international trade.
The 60% tariff would crush international trade. US imports from China are enormous. In 2023 the US imported Chinese goods and services worth $450 BILLION
I disagree with the header. I don't think it's a 50/50 race anymore.
At the moment, it's between a narrow win and a big win.
I think I am still scarred by 2016.
I realised over the weekend I am more emotionally invested in the 2024 US Presidential election than I have ever been in any UK general election or Brexit referendum/Scottish independence referendum and I was pretty emotionally invested in the those too.
Whilst I understand the point, and your investment is shared by many on PB, it is another example of people living on the Internet instead of on the ground. Unless you have plans you have not announced, you live in the UK and do not plan to move to the US. The activities of the UK govt will affect you a lot more than any US govt, regardless of its greater magnitude. Yet Trump v Harris matters more to you (and most of PB) emotionally.
I’ve got friends in America.
I think Trump withdrawing from NATO/selling out Ukraine will do more damage to the UK than anything Starmer will manage.
Heck the same applies to Trump’s tariffs.
While not advisable at most Trump would do a peace deal with Putin and tell Zelensky to give Russia the land they now still occupy in Ukraine. Given for most of the last 100 years Ukraine was part of the USSR anyway it wouldn't be a massive issue for the UK though obviously not great for Ukranians self determination and freedom.
Trump's tariffs would be focused at China and the EU rather than the UK, not sure we would want a trade deal with him though now as even if offered it would be US biased
Trump's proposal is for
(a) Tariffs that are at least 10% for all products entering the US, irrespective of where they come from (b) Plus, in the event that any country were to respond with higher tariffs on US goods, then the US would match them and (c) A 60% tariff on all goods from China
That's a lot of tariffs. And a lot less international trade.
And a big China-US trade war
I suspect it wouldn't be just a trade war...
I doubt it, Trump prefers trade wars to actual wars.
China would also be more wary of what Trump might do if it invaded Taiwan as he is unpredictable
"President Xi is a good guy - he said he really likes me. Crazy Kamabla supported Taiwan, BAD. Xi will run Taiwan good, they won't live like dogs anymore. Dems would have given WAR." Something like that.
I’ve emotionally gone from being mentally and emotionally reconciled to a Trump win to having hope that Harris actually might do it. Sadly it’s the hope that kills you.
*Raises eyebrows*
Has Governor Walz's daughter taken up a new career?
You’re going to have to explain that one to me.
She’s called Hope and may have become an assassin according to your post…
It wasn’t really worth explaining…
But she is called Hope as she was an IVF baby and somehow the Republicans have managed to put themselves in the position of looking anti-IVF.
I thought they *were* anti-IVF?
I am anti taxpayer-funded IVF.
In the scheme of things I can think of a whole set of items that I object to far more.
Giving a family a chance of children seems to be a noble use of a tiny percentage of what I pay in taxes.
Certainly with fertility rates now below replacement level in the UK and USA
Sadly, reproductive services are something that the NHS have all but abandoned.
Technically, they still aim to offer three cycles to under-40s, and one to those aged 40 and 41 - but in most of the country are nowhere close to achieving this. The usual pattern is to mange the problem by delaying long enough that people age out of eligibility, so if you're in your mid 30s they'll drag it out so you get one cycle at 38 or 39, and another a couple of years later. And that's only if you're very persistent.
In reality, most people on average need around four cycles, with some trying up to six before giving up. Each cycle typically costs around £10k.
Fertility rapidly declines once you hit your late 20s, but as a society we've set ourselves up so that people are unable to even consider having children until a decade later. So we're effectively expecting people to pay £20k or so on average to be able to have children, and that's before you even get on to the nightmarish situation that NHS maternity services are in.
Agreed, though there is the freezing eggs option too.
Of course in the 1930s there was mass unemployment and most people of all ages rented but yet most 20 to 30 year olds had children and the fertility rate was above average so it is also a lifestyle choice, especially with more women wanting careers and leaving children until their 30s and early 40s if they decide to have them at all
Egg-freezing is £20k and only works about half the time. It's also less likely to be covered by private health insurance than IVF, though some employers do explicitly fund it separately.
As for it being a lifestyle choice, I think it's a bit stronger than that. It's a choice between building your career, being able to rent a flat by yourself, and generally having a stable life that you control before getting pregnant - or having kids in your 20s, and hoping that the state will provide an adequate safety net if things go wrong.
Not many people trust that safety net these days, and I don't think it's fair to blame them for that.
As with so much else, the best way to fix this would be to ease the pressure on housing. If the best a 20-something at the start of a professional career can expect is to live in a houseshare for the next decade, then is it any wonder why they're not settling down and having kids?
Absolutely!
And this is another reason why too everyone who is working ought to be able to afford a home of their own, from their own efforts, with no inheritance in their twenties as was achievable in the past and could be again if the prices were more appropriate.
An inheritance if you get one (and many won't) is likely to come in your sixties or later nowadays and won't get you on the housing ladder in your twenties.
Most people rented 100 years ago, they still managed to have children in their 20s
'Managed' is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
Society was organised entirely differently, and there were little to no reliable forms of contraception.
I am staggered by those who stagger through life waiting for an inheritance.
Inheritance is irrelevant to this argument as it 100 years ago most couples in their 20s rented and did not have an inheritance but still managed to have children.
Of course we could also go Vatican and restrict contraception too, certainly to 20-35 year olds at peak fertility in settled relationships
I'm not sure how settled most of those relationships would be if contraception was entirely eliminated.
Full Vatican of course would be no sex unless married and no contraception if having sex in marriage
No, no: it's no premarital sex.
So long as you never get married, it was never premarital sex.
I disagree with the header. I don't think it's a 50/50 race anymore.
At the moment, it's between a narrow win and a big win.
I think I am still scarred by 2016.
I realised over the weekend I am more emotionally invested in the 2024 US Presidential election than I have ever been in any UK general election or Brexit referendum/Scottish independence referendum and I was pretty emotionally invested in the those too.
Whilst I understand the point, and your investment is shared by many on PB, it is another example of people living on the Internet instead of on the ground. Unless you have plans you have not announced, you live in the UK and do not plan to move to the US. The activities of the UK govt will affect you a lot more than any US govt, regardless of its greater magnitude. Yet Trump v Harris matters more to you (and most of PB) emotionally.
I’ve got friends in America.
I think Trump withdrawing from NATO/selling out Ukraine will do more damage to the UK than anything Starmer will manage.
Heck the same applies to Trump’s tariffs.
While not advisable at most Trump would do a peace deal with Putin and tell Zelensky to give Russia the land they now still occupy in Ukraine. Given for most of the last 100 years Ukraine was part of the USSR anyway it wouldn't be a massive issue for the UK though obviously not great for Ukranians self determination and freedom.
Trump's tariffs would be focused at China and the EU rather than the UK, not sure we would want a trade deal with him though now as even if offered it would be US biased
Trump's proposal is for
(a) Tariffs that are at least 10% for all products entering the US, irrespective of where they come from (b) Plus, in the event that any country were to respond with higher tariffs on US goods, then the US would match them and (c) A 60% tariff on all goods from China
That's a lot of tariffs. And a lot less international trade.
The 60% tariff would crush international trade. US imports from China are enormous. In 2023 the US imported Chinese goods and services worth $450 BILLION
It would indeed:
It would cause a massive recession in China (fewer exports) and in the US (consumer goods massively more expensive, so people's dollars don't go so far).
It would almost certainly also result in retaliatory tariffs on US goods.
It’s insane
He used to crazy but sane, if you know what I mean. He sounded mad and rambly but there was often a kind of logic to his policies. And sometimes he was bang on - eg telling the Germans not to rely on Russia for gas
But this is bonkers. I do wonder if he is losing it entirely
I disagree with the header. I don't think it's a 50/50 race anymore.
At the moment, it's between a narrow win and a big win.
I think I am still scarred by 2016.
I realised over the weekend I am more emotionally invested in the 2024 US Presidential election than I have ever been in any UK general election or Brexit referendum/Scottish independence referendum and I was pretty emotionally invested in the those too.
Whilst I understand the point, and your investment is shared by many on PB, it is another example of people living on the Internet instead of on the ground. Unless you have plans you have not announced, you live in the UK and do not plan to move to the US. The activities of the UK govt will affect you a lot more than any US govt, regardless of its greater magnitude. Yet Trump v Harris matters more to you (and most of PB) emotionally.
I’ve got friends in America.
I think Trump withdrawing from NATO/selling out Ukraine will do more damage to the UK than anything Starmer will manage.
Heck the same applies to Trump’s tariffs.
While not advisable at most Trump would do a peace deal with Putin and tell Zelensky to give Russia the land they now still occupy in Ukraine. Given for most of the last 100 years Ukraine was part of the USSR anyway it wouldn't be a massive issue for the UK though obviously not great for Ukranians self determination and freedom.
Trump's tariffs would be focused at China and the EU rather than the UK, not sure we would want a trade deal with him though now as even if offered it would be US biased
Trump's proposal is for
(a) Tariffs that are at least 10% for all products entering the US, irrespective of where they come from (b) Plus, in the event that any country were to respond with higher tariffs on US goods, then the US would match them and (c) A 60% tariff on all goods from China
That's a lot of tariffs. And a lot less international trade.
The 60% tariff would crush international trade. US imports from China are enormous. In 2023 the US imported Chinese goods and services worth $450 BILLION
It'll trigger Great Depression 2.0.
Not that know-nothing Trump knows or cares.
In which case it might be a pyrrhic victory for the GOP if Trump wins in November, for instance Trump wins but the GOP don't win another presidential election for a generation and lose control of Congress too.
The last time a President was elected to a second non consecutive term was Grover Cleveland in 1892. Cleveland had originally been elected in 1884, lost his 1888 re election bid like Trump in 2020 but won a rematch 4 years later as Trump hopes to do (except against the VP now not POTUS).
However Cleveland's Democrats did not win another presidential election after 1892 until 1912 with Woodrow Wilson
I’ve emotionally gone from being mentally and emotionally reconciled to a Trump win to having hope that Harris actually might do it. Sadly it’s the hope that kills you.
*Raises eyebrows*
Has Governor Walz's daughter taken up a new career?
You’re going to have to explain that one to me.
She’s called Hope and may have become an assassin according to your post…
It wasn’t really worth explaining…
But she is called Hope as she was an IVF baby and somehow the Republicans have managed to put themselves in the position of looking anti-IVF.
I thought they *were* anti-IVF?
I am anti taxpayer-funded IVF.
In the scheme of things I can think of a whole set of items that I object to far more.
Giving a family a chance of children seems to be a noble use of a tiny percentage of what I pay in taxes.
Certainly with fertility rates now below replacement level in the UK and USA
Sadly, reproductive services are something that the NHS have all but abandoned.
Technically, they still aim to offer three cycles to under-40s, and one to those aged 40 and 41 - but in most of the country are nowhere close to achieving this. The usual pattern is to mange the problem by delaying long enough that people age out of eligibility, so if you're in your mid 30s they'll drag it out so you get one cycle at 38 or 39, and another a couple of years later. And that's only if you're very persistent.
In reality, most people on average need around four cycles, with some trying up to six before giving up. Each cycle typically costs around £10k.
Fertility rapidly declines once you hit your late 20s, but as a society we've set ourselves up so that people are unable to even consider having children until a decade later. So we're effectively expecting people to pay £20k or so on average to be able to have children, and that's before you even get on to the nightmarish situation that NHS maternity services are in.
Agreed, though there is the freezing eggs option too.
Of course in the 1930s there was mass unemployment and most people of all ages rented but yet most 20 to 30 year olds had children and the fertility rate was above average so it is also a lifestyle choice, especially with more women wanting careers and leaving children until their 30s and early 40s if they decide to have them at all
Egg-freezing is £20k and only works about half the time. It's also less likely to be covered by private health insurance than IVF, though some employers do explicitly fund it separately.
As for it being a lifestyle choice, I think it's a bit stronger than that. It's a choice between building your career, being able to rent a flat by yourself, and generally having a stable life that you control before getting pregnant - or having kids in your 20s, and hoping that the state will provide an adequate safety net if things go wrong.
Not many people trust that safety net these days, and I don't think it's fair to blame them for that.
As with so much else, the best way to fix this would be to ease the pressure on housing. If the best a 20-something at the start of a professional career can expect is to live in a houseshare for the next decade, then is it any wonder why they're not settling down and having kids?
Absolutely!
And this is another reason why too everyone who is working ought to be able to afford a home of their own, from their own efforts, with no inheritance in their twenties as was achievable in the past and could be again if the prices were more appropriate.
An inheritance if you get one (and many won't) is likely to come in your sixties or later nowadays and won't get you on the housing ladder in your twenties.
Most people rented 100 years ago, they still managed to have children in their 20s
'Managed' is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
Society was organised entirely differently, and there were little to no reliable forms of contraception.
I am staggered by those who stagger through life waiting for an inheritance.
Inheritance is irrelevant to this argument as it 100 years ago most couples in their 20s rented and did not have an inheritance but still managed to have children.
Of course we could also go Vatican and restrict contraception too, certainly to 20-35 year olds at peak fertility in settled relationships
I'm not sure how settled most of those relationships would be if contraception was entirely eliminated.
Full Vatican of course would be no sex unless married and no contraception if having sex in marriage
No, no: it's no premarital sex.
So long as you never get married, it was never premarital sex.
We'll need HYUFD to clarify the cohabitation copulation rules.
The underlying issue absolutely has not gone away; it will likely worsen
Yeah the "racism defeated" cheering this morning is daft. In reality an already toxic but real issue, mass immigration, has now been weaponised by malign actors on social media, almost certianly in part by our foes in Russia. That they can cause widespread unrest in the UK so easily is a very big problem. It's not hard to think of scenarios where things go south very quickly and turn out a lot worse. About the only "ideas" anyone has had are all kinds of mad illiberal bans on language, free movement, access to the internet and so on. Most of which would likely not work and also prove to be counter-productive. Good luck to whoever has to figure out how to prevent repeats of this.
How you prevent repeats is how you prevent all crime. You send the criminals to jail. If anyone thinks setting a police van on fire or trying to intimidate asylum seekers is worth spending three years in jail then I think we'd all be better off without them. I'm curious to know from posters who feel this anger with immigrants and foreigners why? Maybe you and Leon can explain it?
Kwasi Kwarteng was right, on GMB this morning, when he said you also have to tackle the causes of crime as well as crime itself which includes doing something to alleviate the poverty and lack of opportunities in many left behind communities as per the article I posted a link to yesterday on the run down parts of Sunderland.
We have growing inequality in this country. It is only getting worse.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and Chief Whip Alan Campbell ordered Labour MPs not to go to anti-fascist demonstrations.
For safety. Because MPs were being specifically targeted online. But, hey, why let your morning dopamine hate rush be spoiled by actual facts?
It also creates a risk to the police, not just to the MP.
If an MP turns up, either the police can ignore or provide security.
If they ignore this risks a focused attack on the MP, with the police scrambling to get there to help them. That kind of ruck, in the middle of a disturbance, can very easily end up with seriously injured officers.
If they guard the MP, this thins the line of police and reduces the strength of the shield line.
As in ancient warfare, the shield line is all - if it breaks, shit happens.
VIPs rocking up at potential riots is not a good idea.
Even if they turn up for a photo at the command post, they are a distraction.
Trump is looking as deflated as one of those Christmas balloons you find behind the sofa in April.....
Big picture, we’ve been hearing for ages how so many middle of the road Americans were despairing at the choice between two incapable old men that their parties were offering them.
So it isn’t surprising that the first party that broke away from that forced choice is getting a significant electoral dividend.
Trump is looking as deflated as one of those Christmas balloons you find behind the sofa in April.....
Big picture, we’ve been hearing for ages how so many middle of the road Americans were despairing at the choice between two incapable old men that their parties were offering them.
So it isn’t surprising that the first party that broke away from that forced choice is getting a significant electoral dividend.
From this side of the pond she seems to have completely re-invigorated the whole contest.
I always used to say I never understood the unfavourable ratings she had. I guess now people are seeing her for who she is, as opposed to what she was as Biden's VP, they are warming to her.
I’ve emotionally gone from being mentally and emotionally reconciled to a Trump win to having hope that Harris actually might do it. Sadly it’s the hope that kills you.
*Raises eyebrows*
Has Governor Walz's daughter taken up a new career?
You’re going to have to explain that one to me.
She’s called Hope and may have become an assassin according to your post…
It wasn’t really worth explaining…
But she is called Hope as she was an IVF baby and somehow the Republicans have managed to put themselves in the position of looking anti-IVF.
I thought they *were* anti-IVF?
I am anti taxpayer-funded IVF.
In the scheme of things I can think of a whole set of items that I object to far more.
Giving a family a chance of children seems to be a noble use of a tiny percentage of what I pay in taxes.
Certainly with fertility rates now below replacement level in the UK and USA
Sadly, reproductive services are something that the NHS have all but abandoned.
Technically, they still aim to offer three cycles to under-40s, and one to those aged 40 and 41 - but in most of the country are nowhere close to achieving this. The usual pattern is to mange the problem by delaying long enough that people age out of eligibility, so if you're in your mid 30s they'll drag it out so you get one cycle at 38 or 39, and another a couple of years later. And that's only if you're very persistent.
In reality, most people on average need around four cycles, with some trying up to six before giving up. Each cycle typically costs around £10k.
Fertility rapidly declines once you hit your late 20s, but as a society we've set ourselves up so that people are unable to even consider having children until a decade later. So we're effectively expecting people to pay £20k or so on average to be able to have children, and that's before you even get on to the nightmarish situation that NHS maternity services are in.
Agreed, though there is the freezing eggs option too.
Of course in the 1930s there was mass unemployment and most people of all ages rented but yet most 20 to 30 year olds had children and the fertility rate was above average so it is also a lifestyle choice, especially with more women wanting careers and leaving children until their 30s and early 40s if they decide to have them at all
Egg-freezing is £20k and only works about half the time. It's also less likely to be covered by private health insurance than IVF, though some employers do explicitly fund it separately.
As for it being a lifestyle choice, I think it's a bit stronger than that. It's a choice between building your career, being able to rent a flat by yourself, and generally having a stable life that you control before getting pregnant - or having kids in your 20s, and hoping that the state will provide an adequate safety net if things go wrong.
Not many people trust that safety net these days, and I don't think it's fair to blame them for that.
As with so much else, the best way to fix this would be to ease the pressure on housing. If the best a 20-something at the start of a professional career can expect is to live in a houseshare for the next decade, then is it any wonder why they're not settling down and having kids?
Absolutely!
And this is another reason why too everyone who is working ought to be able to afford a home of their own, from their own efforts, with no inheritance in their twenties as was achievable in the past and could be again if the prices were more appropriate.
An inheritance if you get one (and many won't) is likely to come in your sixties or later nowadays and won't get you on the housing ladder in your twenties.
Most people rented 100 years ago, they still managed to have children in their 20s
'Managed' is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
Society was organised entirely differently, and there were little to no reliable forms of contraception.
I am staggered by those who stagger through life waiting for an inheritance.
Inheritance is irrelevant to this argument as it 100 years ago most couples in their 20s rented and did not have an inheritance but still managed to have children.
Of course we could also go Vatican and restrict contraception too, certainly to 20-35 year olds at peak fertility in settled relationships
I'm not sure how settled most of those relationships would be if contraception was entirely eliminated.
Full Vatican of course would be no sex unless married and no contraception if having sex in marriage
No, no: it's no premarital sex.
So long as you never get married, it was never premarital sex.
Nope it is no sex outside of marriage 'the sexual act must take place exclusively within marriage. Outside of marriage it always constitutes a grave sin and excludes one from sacramental communion."
I disagree with the header. I don't think it's a 50/50 race anymore.
At the moment, it's between a narrow win and a big win.
I think I am still scarred by 2016.
I realised over the weekend I am more emotionally invested in the 2024 US Presidential election than I have ever been in any UK general election or Brexit referendum/Scottish independence referendum and I was pretty emotionally invested in the those too.
Whilst I understand the point, and your investment is shared by many on PB, it is another example of people living on the Internet instead of on the ground. Unless you have plans you have not announced, you live in the UK and do not plan to move to the US. The activities of the UK govt will affect you a lot more than any US govt, regardless of its greater magnitude. Yet Trump v Harris matters more to you (and most of PB) emotionally.
I’ve got friends in America.
I think Trump withdrawing from NATO/selling out Ukraine will do more damage to the UK than anything Starmer will manage.
Heck the same applies to Trump’s tariffs.
While not advisable at most Trump would do a peace deal with Putin and tell Zelensky to give Russia the land they now still occupy in Ukraine. Given for most of the last 100 years Ukraine was part of the USSR anyway it wouldn't be a massive issue for the UK though obviously not great for Ukranians self determination and freedom.
Trump's tariffs would be focused at China and the EU rather than the UK, not sure we would want a trade deal with him though now as even if offered it would be US biased
Trump's proposal is for
(a) Tariffs that are at least 10% for all products entering the US, irrespective of where they come from (b) Plus, in the event that any country were to respond with higher tariffs on US goods, then the US would match them and (c) A 60% tariff on all goods from China
That's a lot of tariffs. And a lot less international trade.
The 60% tariff would crush international trade. US imports from China are enormous. In 2023 the US imported Chinese goods and services worth $450 BILLION
It would indeed:
It would cause a massive recession in China (fewer exports) and in the US (consumer goods massively more expensive, so people's dollars don't go so far).
It would almost certainly also result in retaliatory tariffs on US goods.
It’s insane
He used to crazy but sane, if you know what I mean. He sounded mad and rambly but there was often a kind of logic to his policies. And sometimes he was bang on - eg telling the Germans not to rely on Russia for gas
But this is bonkers. I do wonder if he is losing it entirely
Trump has even argued that VAT is a tariff on American goods. One can only imagine he had in mind a parallel with US sales taxes which are not levied in their home states.
I’ve emotionally gone from being mentally and emotionally reconciled to a Trump win to having hope that Harris actually might do it. Sadly it’s the hope that kills you.
*Raises eyebrows*
Has Governor Walz's daughter taken up a new career?
You’re going to have to explain that one to me.
She’s called Hope and may have become an assassin according to your post…
It wasn’t really worth explaining…
But she is called Hope as she was an IVF baby and somehow the Republicans have managed to put themselves in the position of looking anti-IVF.
I thought they *were* anti-IVF?
I am anti taxpayer-funded IVF.
In the scheme of things I can think of a whole set of items that I object to far more.
Giving a family a chance of children seems to be a noble use of a tiny percentage of what I pay in taxes.
Certainly with fertility rates now below replacement level in the UK and USA
Sadly, reproductive services are something that the NHS have all but abandoned.
Technically, they still aim to offer three cycles to under-40s, and one to those aged 40 and 41 - but in most of the country are nowhere close to achieving this. The usual pattern is to mange the problem by delaying long enough that people age out of eligibility, so if you're in your mid 30s they'll drag it out so you get one cycle at 38 or 39, and another a couple of years later. And that's only if you're very persistent.
In reality, most people on average need around four cycles, with some trying up to six before giving up. Each cycle typically costs around £10k.
Fertility rapidly declines once you hit your late 20s, but as a society we've set ourselves up so that people are unable to even consider having children until a decade later. So we're effectively expecting people to pay £20k or so on average to be able to have children, and that's before you even get on to the nightmarish situation that NHS maternity services are in.
Agreed, though there is the freezing eggs option too.
Of course in the 1930s there was mass unemployment and most people of all ages rented but yet most 20 to 30 year olds had children and the fertility rate was above average so it is also a lifestyle choice, especially with more women wanting careers and leaving children until their 30s and early 40s if they decide to have them at all
Egg-freezing is £20k and only works about half the time. It's also less likely to be covered by private health insurance than IVF, though some employers do explicitly fund it separately.
As for it being a lifestyle choice, I think it's a bit stronger than that. It's a choice between building your career, being able to rent a flat by yourself, and generally having a stable life that you control before getting pregnant - or having kids in your 20s, and hoping that the state will provide an adequate safety net if things go wrong.
Not many people trust that safety net these days, and I don't think it's fair to blame them for that.
As with so much else, the best way to fix this would be to ease the pressure on housing. If the best a 20-something at the start of a professional career can expect is to live in a houseshare for the next decade, then is it any wonder why they're not settling down and having kids?
Absolutely!
And this is another reason why too everyone who is working ought to be able to afford a home of their own, from their own efforts, with no inheritance in their twenties as was achievable in the past and could be again if the prices were more appropriate.
An inheritance if you get one (and many won't) is likely to come in your sixties or later nowadays and won't get you on the housing ladder in your twenties.
Most people rented 100 years ago, they still managed to have children in their 20s
'Managed' is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
Society was organised entirely differently, and there were little to no reliable forms of contraception.
I am staggered by those who stagger through life waiting for an inheritance.
Inheritance is irrelevant to this argument as it 100 years ago most couples in their 20s rented and did not have an inheritance but still managed to have children.
Of course we could also go Vatican and restrict contraception too, certainly to 20-35 year olds at peak fertility in settled relationships
I'm not sure how settled most of those relationships would be if contraception was entirely eliminated.
Full Vatican of course would be no sex unless married and no contraception if having sex in marriage
No, no: it's no premarital sex.
So long as you never get married, it was never premarital sex.
Nope it is no sex outside of marriage 'the sexual act must take place exclusively within marriage. Outside of marriage it always constitutes a grave sin and excludes one from sacramental communion."
Lucy, from Shenfield, Essex – who was the first in her family to go to university, gaining a maths degree in 2007 – worked briefly in graduate roles as a transport planner and in private equity. But on an annual salary of £20,000, she felt her student debt was hanging over her. She moved back to her parents’ house and has been in part-time minimum-wage jobs since she was 25. For the past six years, she has been a taxi controller, earning £19,000 last year.
“My student debt makes me not want to earn more, as my equivalent rate of tax would be 38%,” she said. “I see not repaying my loan as an act of defiance.”
A few things there.
Her degree didn’t get her into the middle class, white collar money - these days £50k
Instead she was earning minimum wage.
So shifting to a low status job had not much effect.
The effective tax rate put her off earning more. Think about this - someone on minimum wage looking at an effective tax rate of 38%
We have an increasing number of people, in this country who are not having careers - just getting together existence money. Because we don’t reward moving up enough.
It takes a fair old wage before you are paying more in tax than you take out. We need to grow more of that. Rather than encouraging people to give up and bump along at the bottom.
I remember learning that original print run of the fourth set of Lone Wolf gamebooks are surprisingly valuable. They're just standard paperbacks, but in good nick I think they're worth £50 each (got about half a dozen or so).
Value can be strange. I've got a single gold sovereign from the reign of Queen Victoria. But it's worth less than my Kew Gardens 50p from a decade or two ago.
Kate Hoey was an MP for 30 years and is currently a member of the House of Lords. How can she pretend not to know this stuff?
Sometimes people can be really thick.
Kate Hoey does have half a point, though, since the trial will not start until next year, and many lesser crimes will see longer delays.
For prosecution and defence to prepare properly for a trial in which a 'whole life' order is a major prospect, and where mental states may be crucial to the nature of the defence is going to take time, as is the mere preparation of forensic evidence and all that. Every eventuality has to be covered even though to the uninformed mind it may seem simple and cut and dried. Add to that thata lot of the potential witnesses are aged about 7.
I am not sure what the prosecution and defence can do in a year that they can't do in the space of weeks. If justice can be (rightly) sped up for rioters, there's no reason why the same cannot happen to this murder trial.
I disagree. There is nothing to be gained from rushing such a serious crime.
Locking up rioters asap helps send a message to anyone else thinking of doing it. Thankfully, I don't think too many are thinking of copying the Southport stabber.
What 'rush'? No solicitor or barrister is going to be spending every waking minute between now and some point next year working on this case - they will fit it in between other jobs with long periods of inactivity and he will rot in prison in between. All expediting it means is they will work more intensively on it for a shorter period.
I’ve emotionally gone from being mentally and emotionally reconciled to a Trump win to having hope that Harris actually might do it. Sadly it’s the hope that kills you.
*Raises eyebrows*
Has Governor Walz's daughter taken up a new career?
You’re going to have to explain that one to me.
She’s called Hope and may have become an assassin according to your post…
It wasn’t really worth explaining…
But she is called Hope as she was an IVF baby and somehow the Republicans have managed to put themselves in the position of looking anti-IVF.
I thought they *were* anti-IVF?
I am anti taxpayer-funded IVF.
In the scheme of things I can think of a whole set of items that I object to far more.
Giving a family a chance of children seems to be a noble use of a tiny percentage of what I pay in taxes.
Certainly with fertility rates now below replacement level in the UK and USA
Sadly, reproductive services are something that the NHS have all but abandoned.
Technically, they still aim to offer three cycles to under-40s, and one to those aged 40 and 41 - but in most of the country are nowhere close to achieving this. The usual pattern is to mange the problem by delaying long enough that people age out of eligibility, so if you're in your mid 30s they'll drag it out so you get one cycle at 38 or 39, and another a couple of years later. And that's only if you're very persistent.
In reality, most people on average need around four cycles, with some trying up to six before giving up. Each cycle typically costs around £10k.
Fertility rapidly declines once you hit your late 20s, but as a society we've set ourselves up so that people are unable to even consider having children until a decade later. So we're effectively expecting people to pay £20k or so on average to be able to have children, and that's before you even get on to the nightmarish situation that NHS maternity services are in.
Agreed, though there is the freezing eggs option too.
Of course in the 1930s there was mass unemployment and most people of all ages rented but yet most 20 to 30 year olds had children and the fertility rate was above average so it is also a lifestyle choice, especially with more women wanting careers and leaving children until their 30s and early 40s if they decide to have them at all
Egg-freezing is £20k and only works about half the time. It's also less likely to be covered by private health insurance than IVF, though some employers do explicitly fund it separately.
As for it being a lifestyle choice, I think it's a bit stronger than that. It's a choice between building your career, being able to rent a flat by yourself, and generally having a stable life that you control before getting pregnant - or having kids in your 20s, and hoping that the state will provide an adequate safety net if things go wrong.
Not many people trust that safety net these days, and I don't think it's fair to blame them for that.
As with so much else, the best way to fix this would be to ease the pressure on housing. If the best a 20-something at the start of a professional career can expect is to live in a houseshare for the next decade, then is it any wonder why they're not settling down and having kids?
Absolutely!
And this is another reason why too everyone who is working ought to be able to afford a home of their own, from their own efforts, with no inheritance in their twenties as was achievable in the past and could be again if the prices were more appropriate.
An inheritance if you get one (and many won't) is likely to come in your sixties or later nowadays and won't get you on the housing ladder in your twenties.
Most people rented 100 years ago, they still managed to have children in their 20s
'Managed' is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
Society was organised entirely differently, and there were little to no reliable forms of contraception.
I am staggered by those who stagger through life waiting for an inheritance.
Inheritance is irrelevant to this argument as it 100 years ago most couples in their 20s rented and did not have an inheritance but still managed to have children.
Of course we could also go Vatican and restrict contraception too, certainly to 20-35 year olds at peak fertility in settled relationships
I'm not sure how settled most of those relationships would be if contraception was entirely eliminated.
Full Vatican of course would be no sex unless married and no contraception if having sex in marriage
No, no: it's no premarital sex.
So long as you never get married, it was never premarital sex.
Lucy, from Shenfield, Essex – who was the first in her family to go to university, gaining a maths degree in 2007 – worked briefly in graduate roles as a transport planner and in private equity. But on an annual salary of £20,000, she felt her student debt was hanging over her. She moved back to her parents’ house and has been in part-time minimum-wage jobs since she was 25. For the past six years, she has been a taxi controller, earning £19,000 last year.
“My student debt makes me not want to earn more, as my equivalent rate of tax would be 38%,” she said. “I see not repaying my loan as an act of defiance.”
A few things there.
Her degree didn’t get her into the middle class, white collar money - these days £50k
Instead she was earning minimum wage.
So shifting to a low status job had not much effect.
The effective tax rate put her off earning more. Think about this - someone on minimum wage looking at an effective tax rate of 38%
We have an increasing number of people, in this country who are not having careers - just getting together existence money. Because we don’t reward moving up enough.
It takes a fair old wage before you are paying more in tax than you take out. We need to grow more of that. Rather than encouraging people to give up and bump along at the bottom.
This is one reason universities are going to collapse. The debt you incur as a student makes less and less sense as the economy changes. People will study from home if they need to study at all
The entire higher education model is economically fucked. I’m not sure we have begun to process this yet
I remember learning that original print run of the fourth set of Lone Wolf gamebooks are surprisingly valuable. They're just standard paperbacks, but in good nick I think they're worth £50 each (got about half a dozen or so).
Value can be strange. I've got a single gold sovereign from the reign of Queen Victoria. But it's worth less than my Kew Gardens 50p from a decade or two ago.
I had all of the Lone Wolf books as a kid. Dammit! Although they probably weren't original print runs. And I certainly didn't leave them in good nick.
20 coppers to arrest one man, who came quietly. You can see why there are none left to deal with shoplifters.
I assume they arrested him because he allegedly has been sufficiently violent to possibly merit time in prison, and has possibly already fought with the police.
I’ve emotionally gone from being mentally and emotionally reconciled to a Trump win to having hope that Harris actually might do it. Sadly it’s the hope that kills you.
*Raises eyebrows*
Has Governor Walz's daughter taken up a new career?
You’re going to have to explain that one to me.
She’s called Hope and may have become an assassin according to your post…
It wasn’t really worth explaining…
But she is called Hope as she was an IVF baby and somehow the Republicans have managed to put themselves in the position of looking anti-IVF.
I thought they *were* anti-IVF?
I am anti taxpayer-funded IVF.
In the scheme of things I can think of a whole set of items that I object to far more.
Giving a family a chance of children seems to be a noble use of a tiny percentage of what I pay in taxes.
Certainly with fertility rates now below replacement level in the UK and USA
Sadly, reproductive services are something that the NHS have all but abandoned.
Technically, they still aim to offer three cycles to under-40s, and one to those aged 40 and 41 - but in most of the country are nowhere close to achieving this. The usual pattern is to mange the problem by delaying long enough that people age out of eligibility, so if you're in your mid 30s they'll drag it out so you get one cycle at 38 or 39, and another a couple of years later. And that's only if you're very persistent.
In reality, most people on average need around four cycles, with some trying up to six before giving up. Each cycle typically costs around £10k.
Fertility rapidly declines once you hit your late 20s, but as a society we've set ourselves up so that people are unable to even consider having children until a decade later. So we're effectively expecting people to pay £20k or so on average to be able to have children, and that's before you even get on to the nightmarish situation that NHS maternity services are in.
Agreed, though there is the freezing eggs option too.
Of course in the 1930s there was mass unemployment and most people of all ages rented but yet most 20 to 30 year olds had children and the fertility rate was above average so it is also a lifestyle choice, especially with more women wanting careers and leaving children until their 30s and early 40s if they decide to have them at all
Egg-freezing is £20k and only works about half the time. It's also less likely to be covered by private health insurance than IVF, though some employers do explicitly fund it separately.
As for it being a lifestyle choice, I think it's a bit stronger than that. It's a choice between building your career, being able to rent a flat by yourself, and generally having a stable life that you control before getting pregnant - or having kids in your 20s, and hoping that the state will provide an adequate safety net if things go wrong.
Not many people trust that safety net these days, and I don't think it's fair to blame them for that.
As with so much else, the best way to fix this would be to ease the pressure on housing. If the best a 20-something at the start of a professional career can expect is to live in a houseshare for the next decade, then is it any wonder why they're not settling down and having kids?
Absolutely!
And this is another reason why too everyone who is working ought to be able to afford a home of their own, from their own efforts, with no inheritance in their twenties as was achievable in the past and could be again if the prices were more appropriate.
An inheritance if you get one (and many won't) is likely to come in your sixties or later nowadays and won't get you on the housing ladder in your twenties.
Most people rented 100 years ago, they still managed to have children in their 20s
'Managed' is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
Society was organised entirely differently, and there were little to no reliable forms of contraception.
I am staggered by those who stagger through life waiting for an inheritance.
Inheritance is irrelevant to this argument as it 100 years ago most couples in their 20s rented and did not have an inheritance but still managed to have children.
Of course we could also go Vatican and restrict contraception too, certainly to 20-35 year olds at peak fertility in settled relationships
I'm not sure how settled most of those relationships would be if contraception was entirely eliminated.
Full Vatican of course would be no sex unless married and no contraception if having sex in marriage
No, no: it's no premarital sex.
So long as you never get married, it was never premarital sex.
Nope it is no sex outside of marriage 'the sexual act must take place exclusively within marriage. Outside of marriage it always constitutes a grave sin and excludes one from sacramental communion."
Quite a startling statistic deep in the YouGov polling on all the recent troubles. The British people rightly abhor the riots and violence - lock ‘em up - but they are much more sympathetic on the sentiments behind the initial and peaceful Southport protests
“Sympathies with the views of those taking part in the protests are somewhat broader – six in ten Britons (58%) say they have a great deal or fair amount of sympathy for the views of those peacefully taking part in demonstrations that were ostensibly triggered by the Southport murders. This includes majorities of Labour and Lib Dem voters (53-56%), as well as two-thirds of Conservatives (64%), with Reform voters are most sympathetic at 83%.”
Quite a startling statistic deep in the YouGov polling on all the recent troubles. The British people rightly abhor the riots and violence - lock ‘em up - but they are much more sympathetic on the sentiments behind the initial and peaceful Southport protests
“Sympathies with the views of those taking part in the protests are somewhat broader – six in ten Britons (58%) say they have a great deal or fair amount of sympathy for the views of those peacefully taking part in demonstrations that were ostensibly triggered by the Southport murders. This includes majorities of Labour and Lib Dem voters (53-56%), as well as two-thirds of Conservatives (64%), with Reform voters are most sympathetic at 83%.”
I disagree with the header. I don't think it's a 50/50 race anymore.
At the moment, it's between a narrow win and a big win.
I think I am still scarred by 2016.
I realised over the weekend I am more emotionally invested in the 2024 US Presidential election than I have ever been in any UK general election or Brexit referendum/Scottish independence referendum and I was pretty emotionally invested in the those too.
Whilst I understand the point, and your investment is shared by many on PB, it is another example of people living on the Internet instead of on the ground. Unless you have plans you have not announced, you live in the UK and do not plan to move to the US. The activities of the UK govt will affect you a lot more than any US govt, regardless of its greater magnitude. Yet Trump v Harris matters more to you (and most of PB) emotionally.
I’ve got friends in America.
I think Trump withdrawing from NATO/selling out Ukraine will do more damage to the UK than anything Starmer will manage.
Heck the same applies to Trump’s tariffs.
While not advisable at most Trump would do a peace deal with Putin and tell Zelensky to give Russia the land they now still occupy in Ukraine. Given for most of the last 100 years Ukraine was part of the USSR anyway it wouldn't be a massive issue for the UK though obviously not great for Ukranians self determination and freedom.
Trump's tariffs would be focused at China and the EU rather than the UK, not sure we would want a trade deal with him though now as even if offered it would be US biased
Trump's proposal is for
(a) Tariffs that are at least 10% for all products entering the US, irrespective of where they come from (b) Plus, in the event that any country were to respond with higher tariffs on US goods, then the US would match them and (c) A 60% tariff on all goods from China
That's a lot of tariffs. And a lot less international trade.
The 60% tariff would crush international trade. US imports from China are enormous. In 2023 the US imported Chinese goods and services worth $450 BILLION
It would indeed:
It would cause a massive recession in China (fewer exports) and in the US (consumer goods massively more expensive, so people's dollars don't go so far).
It would almost certainly also result in retaliatory tariffs on US goods.
It’s insane
He used to crazy but sane, if you know what I mean. He sounded mad and rambly but there was often a kind of logic to his policies. And sometimes he was bang on - eg telling the Germans not to rely on Russia for gas
But this is bonkers. I do wonder if he is losing it entirely
The great benefit to tariffs for Trump is that he can control them unilaterally (without Congress) and also unilaterally grant exemptions. Every US manufacturer will need an exemption for the parts they import, so they'll have to bribe and otherwise please Trump personally as the cost of doing business.
Trump is looking as deflated as one of those Christmas balloons you find behind the sofa in April.....
Big picture, we’ve been hearing for ages how so many middle of the road Americans were despairing at the choice between two incapable old men that their parties were offering them.
So it isn’t surprising that the first party that broke away from that forced choice is getting a significant electoral dividend.
From this side of the pond she seems to have completely re-invigorated the whole contest.
I always used to say I never understood the unfavourable ratings she had. I guess now people are seeing her for who she is, as opposed to what she was as Biden's VP, they are warming to her.
The allegation was that she is stupid. I don’t think she’s stupid at all. She’s showing quite a political skill in navigating all this. It could easily have gone horribly wrong - dethroning a sitting president for being gaga? (It could still go wrong but this is where we are now)
She is not overly articulate is more the problem. She tends to jumble words sometimes, and expresses concepts simplistically
But she’s facing Donald Trump who thinks destroying all international trade is a great idea. So she should be fine
Quite a startling statistic deep in the YouGov polling on all the recent troubles. The British people rightly abhor the riots and violence - lock ‘em up - but they are much more sympathetic on the sentiments behind the initial and peaceful Southport protests
“Sympathies with the views of those taking part in the protests are somewhat broader – six in ten Britons (58%) say they have a great deal or fair amount of sympathy for the views of those peacefully taking part in demonstrations that were ostensibly triggered by the Southport murders. This includes majorities of Labour and Lib Dem voters (53-56%), as well as two-thirds of Conservatives (64%), with Reform voters are most sympathetic at 83%.”
Quite a startling statistic deep in the YouGov polling on all the recent troubles. The British people rightly abhor the riots and violence - lock ‘em up - but they are much more sympathetic on the sentiments behind the initial and peaceful Southport protests
“Sympathies with the views of those taking part in the protests are somewhat broader – six in ten Britons (58%) say they have a great deal or fair amount of sympathy for the views of those peacefully taking part in demonstrations that were ostensibly triggered by the Southport murders. This includes majorities of Labour and Lib Dem voters (53-56%), as well as two-thirds of Conservatives (64%), with Reform voters are most sympathetic at 83%.”
Instead it will all get brushed aside as the work of fascists and racists and everything will carry on just as before.
Why do they have sympathy for the protesters, exactly? If the public think the murders were to do with mass migration, they are wrong. The alleged killer was born here, and live his whole life here.
Labour councillor demands that we “cut all their throats” (he means the far right protestors I think) - he is applauded, then the crowd breaks into Free Free Palestine
This game is tiresome. Does the source matter if the video is real? It seems real to me
Actually I think it does matter - very much. Vidoes are cropped and manipulated for social media, often as a tactic to generate polarisation / reaction for those who want to trade off it. And the first check is "where is this from? what is the source doing?". Then qs such as "is this representative" and the rest.
Given that Mayhar Tousi is a prominent Right / Far Right Youtuber trying to look mainstream, and that a tactic being used by the Farage -> Robinson tendency is to platform ethnic minority spokespeople, I think it especially applies here.
One example I can point to from the other side is the two black athletes who were stopped in their car in London a couple of years by police, allegations of racial profiling, deliberate targeting, dragging out of vehicle etc following. The videoclips which were all over media were clipped to exclude that the couple in the car spent quite some time before they exited the car - so that was context removed from the police actions.
I can’t imagine a context that makes “slit all their throats” not-inciteful?
That's exactly the point - you are quoting 4 words without context.
The clip does not even show fully what he actually said. It is being pushed by Tousi, and organisations such as Turning Point UK, and Reform UK (my MP has reposted it) to pretend that it's "that" or "us". It's self-serving shit-stirring, just as was the British-born Christian "Muslim migrant from Rwanda".
It is not "that" or "us", unless we ignore the context. And that is why it matters.
They are pretending that the demonstration was like their micro "sample", when it wasn't, and trying to link it to the Government ("Labour Councillor"), with demands such as (Tousi) "why won't the police arrest them?" (how the fuck does Twat Tousi know they won't?). They are then pushing narratives such as the fake "two tier policing", in the hope that useful idiots will jump straight from one to the other without thinking and build their sectarian movement.
Have they even reported the alleged crime?
Looking briefly at this part of the protest, it is organised by a likely SWP front group "Stand Up to Racism", who like Reform UK and other groups are fishing to exploit current events for their own political purposes.
Kate Hoey was an MP for 30 years and is currently a member of the House of Lords. How can she pretend not to know this stuff?
Sometimes people can be really thick.
Kate Hoey does have half a point, though, since the trial will not start until next year, and many lesser crimes will see longer delays.
For prosecution and defence to prepare properly for a trial in which a 'whole life' order is a major prospect, and where mental states may be crucial to the nature of the defence is going to take time, as is the mere preparation of forensic evidence and all that. Every eventuality has to be covered even though to the uninformed mind it may seem simple and cut and dried. Add to that thata lot of the potential witnesses are aged about 7.
I am not sure what the prosecution and defence can do in a year that they can't do in the space of weeks. If justice can be (rightly) sped up for rioters, there's no reason why the same cannot happen to this murder trial.
I disagree. There is nothing to be gained from rushing such a serious crime.
Locking up rioters asap helps send a message to anyone else thinking of doing it. Thankfully, I don't think too many are thinking of copying the Southport stabber.
What 'rush'? No solicitor or barrister is going to be spending every waking minute between now and some point next year working on this case - they will fit it in between other jobs with long periods of inactivity and he will rot in prison in between. All expediting it means is they will work more intensively on it for a shorter period.
There's the wider problem of a shortage of criminal lawyers (it pays nothing) and a shortage of physical courts...
I’ve emotionally gone from being mentally and emotionally reconciled to a Trump win to having hope that Harris actually might do it. Sadly it’s the hope that kills you.
*Raises eyebrows*
Has Governor Walz's daughter taken up a new career?
You’re going to have to explain that one to me.
She’s called Hope and may have become an assassin according to your post…
It wasn’t really worth explaining…
But she is called Hope as she was an IVF baby and somehow the Republicans have managed to put themselves in the position of looking anti-IVF.
I thought they *were* anti-IVF?
I am anti taxpayer-funded IVF.
In the scheme of things I can think of a whole set of items that I object to far more.
Giving a family a chance of children seems to be a noble use of a tiny percentage of what I pay in taxes.
Certainly with fertility rates now below replacement level in the UK and USA
Sadly, reproductive services are something that the NHS have all but abandoned.
Technically, they still aim to offer three cycles to under-40s, and one to those aged 40 and 41 - but in most of the country are nowhere close to achieving this. The usual pattern is to mange the problem by delaying long enough that people age out of eligibility, so if you're in your mid 30s they'll drag it out so you get one cycle at 38 or 39, and another a couple of years later. And that's only if you're very persistent.
In reality, most people on average need around four cycles, with some trying up to six before giving up. Each cycle typically costs around £10k.
Fertility rapidly declines once you hit your late 20s, but as a society we've set ourselves up so that people are unable to even consider having children until a decade later. So we're effectively expecting people to pay £20k or so on average to be able to have children, and that's before you even get on to the nightmarish situation that NHS maternity services are in.
Agreed, though there is the freezing eggs option too.
Of course in the 1930s there was mass unemployment and most people of all ages rented but yet most 20 to 30 year olds had children and the fertility rate was above average so it is also a lifestyle choice, especially with more women wanting careers and leaving children until their 30s and early 40s if they decide to have them at all
Egg-freezing is £20k and only works about half the time. It's also less likely to be covered by private health insurance than IVF, though some employers do explicitly fund it separately.
As for it being a lifestyle choice, I think it's a bit stronger than that. It's a choice between building your career, being able to rent a flat by yourself, and generally having a stable life that you control before getting pregnant - or having kids in your 20s, and hoping that the state will provide an adequate safety net if things go wrong.
Not many people trust that safety net these days, and I don't think it's fair to blame them for that.
As with so much else, the best way to fix this would be to ease the pressure on housing. If the best a 20-something at the start of a professional career can expect is to live in a houseshare for the next decade, then is it any wonder why they're not settling down and having kids?
Absolutely!
And this is another reason why too everyone who is working ought to be able to afford a home of their own, from their own efforts, with no inheritance in their twenties as was achievable in the past and could be again if the prices were more appropriate.
An inheritance if you get one (and many won't) is likely to come in your sixties or later nowadays and won't get you on the housing ladder in your twenties.
Most people rented 100 years ago, they still managed to have children in their 20s
'Managed' is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
Society was organised entirely differently, and there were little to no reliable forms of contraception.
I am staggered by those who stagger through life waiting for an inheritance.
Inheritance is irrelevant to this argument as it 100 years ago most couples in their 20s rented and did not have an inheritance but still managed to have children.
Of course we could also go Vatican and restrict contraception too, certainly to 20-35 year olds at peak fertility in settled relationships
I'm not sure how settled most of those relationships would be if contraception was entirely eliminated.
Full Vatican of course would be no sex unless married and no contraception if having sex in marriage
No, no: it's no premarital sex.
So long as you never get married, it was never premarital sex.
The technical term is ‘extra-marital sex.’
Which admittedly sounds like a Nick Palmer holiday…
Labour councillor demands that we “cut all their throats” (he means the far right protestors I think) - he is applauded, then the crowd breaks into Free Free Palestine
This game is tiresome. Does the source matter if the video is real? It seems real to me
Actually I think it does matter - very much. Vidoes are cropped and manipulated for social media, often as a tactic to generate polarisation / reaction for those who want to trade off it. And the first check is "where is this from? what is the source doing?". Then qs such as "is this representative" and the rest.
Given that Mayhar Tousi is a prominent Right / Far Right Youtuber trying to look mainstream, and that a tactic being used by the Farage -> Robinson tendency is to platform ethnic minority spokespeople, I think it especially applies here.
One example I can point to from the other side is the two black athletes who were stopped in their car in London a couple of years by police, allegations of racial profiling, deliberate targeting, dragging out of vehicle etc following. The videoclips which were all over media were clipped to exclude that the couple in the car spent quite some time before they exited the car - so that was context removed from the police actions.
I can’t imagine a context that makes “slit all their throats” not-inciteful?
That's exactly the point - you are quoting 4 words without context.
The clip does not even show fully what he actually said. It is being pushed by Tousi, and organisations such as Turning Point UK, and Reform UK (my MP has reposted it) to pretend that it's "that" or "us". It's self-serving shit-stirring, just as was the British-born Christian "Muslim migrant from Rwanda".
It is not "that" or "us", unless we ignore the context. And that is why it matters.
They are pretending that the demonstration was like their micro "sample", when it wasn't, and trying to link it to the Government ("Labour Councillor"), with demands such as (Tousi) "why won't the police arrest them?" (how does he know they won't?). They are then pushing narratives such as the fake "two tier policing", in the hope that useful idiots will jump straight from one to the other without thinking and build their sectarian movement.
Have they even reported the alleged crime?
Looking briefly at this part of the protest, it is organised by a likely SWP front group "Stand Up to Racism", who like Reform UK and other groups are fishing to exploit current events for their own political purposes.
Yes that’s all well and good but we can all see what he says on the video. He says “all these Nazis and fascists, we need to cut all their throats”. It’s quite explicit and there is no context needed - there is no conceivable context where what he says is acceptable. Yes we all hate Nazis and fascists but in Britain you’re still not allowed to publicly call for people to be brutally murdered
It’s clear incitement to violence, indeed it is so clear I wonder if it is now permissible even to share the video!
It’s a test for Sir Kir. Bang up all the far right rioters indeed. But treat all sides equally. And the fact he is an elected politician makes it worse
Quite a startling statistic deep in the YouGov polling on all the recent troubles. The British people rightly abhor the riots and violence - lock ‘em up - but they are much more sympathetic on the sentiments behind the initial and peaceful Southport protests
“Sympathies with the views of those taking part in the protests are somewhat broader – six in ten Britons (58%) say they have a great deal or fair amount of sympathy for the views of those peacefully taking part in demonstrations that were ostensibly triggered by the Southport murders. This includes majorities of Labour and Lib Dem voters (53-56%), as well as two-thirds of Conservatives (64%), with Reform voters are most sympathetic at 83%.”
Instead it will all get brushed aside as the work of fascists and racists and everything will carry on just as before.
I think it will - Labour will work hard to bring immigration down from the 1.2 million per year under the Tories and bang on about it for the next 5 years.
It's the most obvious example of how the Tories machine gunned their own foot in the run up to the election and salted their legacy until the next one.
Quite a startling statistic deep in the YouGov polling on all the recent troubles. The British people rightly abhor the riots and violence - lock ‘em up - but they are much more sympathetic on the sentiments behind the initial and peaceful Southport protests
“Sympathies with the views of those taking part in the protests are somewhat broader – six in ten Britons (58%) say they have a great deal or fair amount of sympathy for the views of those peacefully taking part in demonstrations that were ostensibly triggered by the Southport murders. This includes majorities of Labour and Lib Dem voters (53-56%), as well as two-thirds of Conservatives (64%), with Reform voters are most sympathetic at 83%.”
Instead it will all get brushed aside as the work of fascists and racists and everything will carry on just as before.
I think it will - Labour will work hard to bring immigration down from the 1.2 million per year under the Tories and bang on about it for the next 5 years.
I’ve emotionally gone from being mentally and emotionally reconciled to a Trump win to having hope that Harris actually might do it. Sadly it’s the hope that kills you.
*Raises eyebrows*
Has Governor Walz's daughter taken up a new career?
You’re going to have to explain that one to me.
She’s called Hope and may have become an assassin according to your post…
It wasn’t really worth explaining…
But she is called Hope as she was an IVF baby and somehow the Republicans have managed to put themselves in the position of looking anti-IVF.
I thought they *were* anti-IVF?
I am anti taxpayer-funded IVF.
In the scheme of things I can think of a whole set of items that I object to far more.
Giving a family a chance of children seems to be a noble use of a tiny percentage of what I pay in taxes.
Certainly with fertility rates now below replacement level in the UK and USA
Sadly, reproductive services are something that the NHS have all but abandoned.
Technically, they still aim to offer three cycles to under-40s, and one to those aged 40 and 41 - but in most of the country are nowhere close to achieving this. The usual pattern is to mange the problem by delaying long enough that people age out of eligibility, so if you're in your mid 30s they'll drag it out so you get one cycle at 38 or 39, and another a couple of years later. And that's only if you're very persistent.
In reality, most people on average need around four cycles, with some trying up to six before giving up. Each cycle typically costs around £10k.
Fertility rapidly declines once you hit your late 20s, but as a society we've set ourselves up so that people are unable to even consider having children until a decade later. So we're effectively expecting people to pay £20k or so on average to be able to have children, and that's before you even get on to the nightmarish situation that NHS maternity services are in.
Agreed, though there is the freezing eggs option too.
Of course in the 1930s there was mass unemployment and most people of all ages rented but yet most 20 to 30 year olds had children and the fertility rate was above average so it is also a lifestyle choice, especially with more women wanting careers and leaving children until their 30s and early 40s if they decide to have them at all
Egg-freezing is £20k and only works about half the time. It's also less likely to be covered by private health insurance than IVF, though some employers do explicitly fund it separately.
As for it being a lifestyle choice, I think it's a bit stronger than that. It's a choice between building your career, being able to rent a flat by yourself, and generally having a stable life that you control before getting pregnant - or having kids in your 20s, and hoping that the state will provide an adequate safety net if things go wrong.
Not many people trust that safety net these days, and I don't think it's fair to blame them for that.
As with so much else, the best way to fix this would be to ease the pressure on housing. If the best a 20-something at the start of a professional career can expect is to live in a houseshare for the next decade, then is it any wonder why they're not settling down and having kids?
Absolutely!
And this is another reason why too everyone who is working ought to be able to afford a home of their own, from their own efforts, with no inheritance in their twenties as was achievable in the past and could be again if the prices were more appropriate.
An inheritance if you get one (and many won't) is likely to come in your sixties or later nowadays and won't get you on the housing ladder in your twenties.
Most people rented 100 years ago, they still managed to have children in their 20s
'Managed' is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
Society was organised entirely differently, and there were little to no reliable forms of contraception.
I am staggered by those who stagger through life waiting for an inheritance.
Inheritance is irrelevant to this argument as it 100 years ago most couples in their 20s rented and did not have an inheritance but still managed to have children.
Of course we could also go Vatican and restrict contraception too, certainly to 20-35 year olds at peak fertility in settled relationships
I'm not sure how settled most of those relationships would be if contraception was entirely eliminated.
Full Vatican of course would be no sex unless married and no contraception if having sex in marriage
Of course, we could just ignore religion in our everyday lives.
I’ve emotionally gone from being mentally and emotionally reconciled to a Trump win to having hope that Harris actually might do it. Sadly it’s the hope that kills you.
*Raises eyebrows*
Has Governor Walz's daughter taken up a new career?
You’re going to have to explain that one to me.
She’s called Hope and may have become an assassin according to your post…
It wasn’t really worth explaining…
But she is called Hope as she was an IVF baby and somehow the Republicans have managed to put themselves in the position of looking anti-IVF.
I thought they *were* anti-IVF?
I am anti taxpayer-funded IVF.
In the scheme of things I can think of a whole set of items that I object to far more.
Giving a family a chance of children seems to be a noble use of a tiny percentage of what I pay in taxes.
Certainly with fertility rates now below replacement level in the UK and USA
Sadly, reproductive services are something that the NHS have all but abandoned.
Technically, they still aim to offer three cycles to under-40s, and one to those aged 40 and 41 - but in most of the country are nowhere close to achieving this. The usual pattern is to mange the problem by delaying long enough that people age out of eligibility, so if you're in your mid 30s they'll drag it out so you get one cycle at 38 or 39, and another a couple of years later. And that's only if you're very persistent.
In reality, most people on average need around four cycles, with some trying up to six before giving up. Each cycle typically costs around £10k.
Fertility rapidly declines once you hit your late 20s, but as a society we've set ourselves up so that people are unable to even consider having children until a decade later. So we're effectively expecting people to pay £20k or so on average to be able to have children, and that's before you even get on to the nightmarish situation that NHS maternity services are in.
Agreed, though there is the freezing eggs option too.
Of course in the 1930s there was mass unemployment and most people of all ages rented but yet most 20 to 30 year olds had children and the fertility rate was above average so it is also a lifestyle choice, especially with more women wanting careers and leaving children until their 30s and early 40s if they decide to have them at all
Egg-freezing is £20k and only works about half the time. It's also less likely to be covered by private health insurance than IVF, though some employers do explicitly fund it separately.
As for it being a lifestyle choice, I think it's a bit stronger than that. It's a choice between building your career, being able to rent a flat by yourself, and generally having a stable life that you control before getting pregnant - or having kids in your 20s, and hoping that the state will provide an adequate safety net if things go wrong.
Not many people trust that safety net these days, and I don't think it's fair to blame them for that.
As with so much else, the best way to fix this would be to ease the pressure on housing. If the best a 20-something at the start of a professional career can expect is to live in a houseshare for the next decade, then is it any wonder why they're not settling down and having kids?
Absolutely!
And this is another reason why too everyone who is working ought to be able to afford a home of their own, from their own efforts, with no inheritance in their twenties as was achievable in the past and could be again if the prices were more appropriate.
An inheritance if you get one (and many won't) is likely to come in your sixties or later nowadays and won't get you on the housing ladder in your twenties.
Most people rented 100 years ago, they still managed to have children in their 20s
'Managed' is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
Society was organised entirely differently, and there were little to no reliable forms of contraception.
I am staggered by those who stagger through life waiting for an inheritance.
Inheritance is irrelevant to this argument as it 100 years ago most couples in their 20s rented and did not have an inheritance but still managed to have children.
Of course we could also go Vatican and restrict contraception too, certainly to 20-35 year olds at peak fertility in settled relationships
I'm not sure how settled most of those relationships would be if contraception was entirely eliminated.
Full Vatican of course would be no sex unless married and no contraception if having sex in marriage
Of course, we could just ignore religion in our everyday lives.
And continue with below replacement level birthrate
sending Starliner back unmanned is slightly embarrassing but rather less terminal then a manned Starliner failing to land...
What's interesting is that new suits need to be flown up if the plan is for Wilmore / Wilkins to become "part" of the SpaceX 9 crew because Boeing refused to use the connectors SpaceX use and offered free access to..
To be fair to Boeing, NASA didn’t go for the idea of a common connector, so it didn’t go into the specifications for commercial crew - they thought that would be of no use without common standard for suits. 80% solutions….
The underlying issue absolutely has not gone away; it will likely worsen
Yeah the "racism defeated" cheering this morning is daft. In reality an already toxic but real issue, mass immigration, has now been weaponised by malign actors on social media, almost certianly in part by our foes in Russia. That they can cause widespread unrest in the UK so easily is a very big problem. It's not hard to think of scenarios where things go south very quickly and turn out a lot worse. About the only "ideas" anyone has had are all kinds of mad illiberal bans on language, free movement, access to the internet and so on. Most of which would likely not work and also prove to be counter-productive. Good luck to whoever has to figure out how to prevent repeats of this.
How you prevent repeats is how you prevent all crime. You send the criminals to jail. If anyone thinks setting a police van on fire or trying to intimidate asylum seekers is worth spending three years in jail then I think we'd all be better off without them. I'm curious to know from posters who feel this anger with immigrants and foreigners why? Maybe you and Leon can explain it?
Kwasi Kwarteng was right, on GMB this morning, when he said you also have to tackle the causes of crime as well as crime itself which includes doing something to alleviate the poverty and lack of opportunities in many left behind communities as per the article I posted a link to yesterday on the run down parts of Sunderland.
We have growing inequality in this country. It is only getting worse.
It's great that Tories are waking up to the need for genuine levelling up, after a decade or so in government. It's just a shame it took so long. Any genuine converts are welcome.
I’ve emotionally gone from being mentally and emotionally reconciled to a Trump win to having hope that Harris actually might do it. Sadly it’s the hope that kills you.
*Raises eyebrows*
Has Governor Walz's daughter taken up a new career?
You’re going to have to explain that one to me.
She’s called Hope and may have become an assassin according to your post…
It wasn’t really worth explaining…
But she is called Hope as she was an IVF baby and somehow the Republicans have managed to put themselves in the position of looking anti-IVF.
I thought they *were* anti-IVF?
I am anti taxpayer-funded IVF.
In the scheme of things I can think of a whole set of items that I object to far more.
Giving a family a chance of children seems to be a noble use of a tiny percentage of what I pay in taxes.
Certainly with fertility rates now below replacement level in the UK and USA
Sadly, reproductive services are something that the NHS have all but abandoned.
Technically, they still aim to offer three cycles to under-40s, and one to those aged 40 and 41 - but in most of the country are nowhere close to achieving this. The usual pattern is to mange the problem by delaying long enough that people age out of eligibility, so if you're in your mid 30s they'll drag it out so you get one cycle at 38 or 39, and another a couple of years later. And that's only if you're very persistent.
In reality, most people on average need around four cycles, with some trying up to six before giving up. Each cycle typically costs around £10k.
Fertility rapidly declines once you hit your late 20s, but as a society we've set ourselves up so that people are unable to even consider having children until a decade later. So we're effectively expecting people to pay £20k or so on average to be able to have children, and that's before you even get on to the nightmarish situation that NHS maternity services are in.
Agreed, though there is the freezing eggs option too.
Of course in the 1930s there was mass unemployment and most people of all ages rented but yet most 20 to 30 year olds had children and the fertility rate was above average so it is also a lifestyle choice, especially with more women wanting careers and leaving children until their 30s and early 40s if they decide to have them at all
Egg-freezing is £20k and only works about half the time. It's also less likely to be covered by private health insurance than IVF, though some employers do explicitly fund it separately.
As for it being a lifestyle choice, I think it's a bit stronger than that. It's a choice between building your career, being able to rent a flat by yourself, and generally having a stable life that you control before getting pregnant - or having kids in your 20s, and hoping that the state will provide an adequate safety net if things go wrong.
Not many people trust that safety net these days, and I don't think it's fair to blame them for that.
As with so much else, the best way to fix this would be to ease the pressure on housing. If the best a 20-something at the start of a professional career can expect is to live in a houseshare for the next decade, then is it any wonder why they're not settling down and having kids?
Absolutely!
And this is another reason why too everyone who is working ought to be able to afford a home of their own, from their own efforts, with no inheritance in their twenties as was achievable in the past and could be again if the prices were more appropriate.
An inheritance if you get one (and many won't) is likely to come in your sixties or later nowadays and won't get you on the housing ladder in your twenties.
Most people rented 100 years ago, they still managed to have children in their 20s
'Managed' is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
Society was organised entirely differently, and there were little to no reliable forms of contraception.
I am staggered by those who stagger through life waiting for an inheritance.
Inheritance is irrelevant to this argument as it 100 years ago most couples in their 20s rented and did not have an inheritance but still managed to have children.
Of course we could also go Vatican and restrict contraception too, certainly to 20-35 year olds at peak fertility in settled relationships
I'm not sure how settled most of those relationships would be if contraception was entirely eliminated.
Full Vatican of course would be no sex unless married and no contraception if having sex in marriage
No, no: it's no premarital sex.
So long as you never get married, it was never premarital sex.
Nope it is no sex outside of marriage 'the sexual act must take place exclusively within marriage. Outside of marriage it always constitutes a grave sin and excludes one from sacramental communion."
I’m just pleased that your religion nowadays is essentially powerless, no longer able to torture and condemn and murder and burn people who are slightly eccentric or independently minded or who otherwise don’t sign up to your almost-prehistoric nonsense, as has happened to so many unfortunate souls in times past.
The underlying issue absolutely has not gone away; it will likely worsen
Yeah the "racism defeated" cheering this morning is daft. In reality an already toxic but real issue, mass immigration, has now been weaponised by malign actors on social media, almost certianly in part by our foes in Russia. That they can cause widespread unrest in the UK so easily is a very big problem. It's not hard to think of scenarios where things go south very quickly and turn out a lot worse. About the only "ideas" anyone has had are all kinds of mad illiberal bans on language, free movement, access to the internet and so on. Most of which would likely not work and also prove to be counter-productive. Good luck to whoever has to figure out how to prevent repeats of this.
Exactly so. The first and only instinct is to use draconian measures to shut it down.
I’ve emotionally gone from being mentally and emotionally reconciled to a Trump win to having hope that Harris actually might do it. Sadly it’s the hope that kills you.
*Raises eyebrows*
Has Governor Walz's daughter taken up a new career?
You’re going to have to explain that one to me.
She’s called Hope and may have become an assassin according to your post…
It wasn’t really worth explaining…
But she is called Hope as she was an IVF baby and somehow the Republicans have managed to put themselves in the position of looking anti-IVF.
I thought they *were* anti-IVF?
I am anti taxpayer-funded IVF.
In the scheme of things I can think of a whole set of items that I object to far more.
Giving a family a chance of children seems to be a noble use of a tiny percentage of what I pay in taxes.
Certainly with fertility rates now below replacement level in the UK and USA
Sadly, reproductive services are something that the NHS have all but abandoned.
Technically, they still aim to offer three cycles to under-40s, and one to those aged 40 and 41 - but in most of the country are nowhere close to achieving this. The usual pattern is to mange the problem by delaying long enough that people age out of eligibility, so if you're in your mid 30s they'll drag it out so you get one cycle at 38 or 39, and another a couple of years later. And that's only if you're very persistent.
In reality, most people on average need around four cycles, with some trying up to six before giving up. Each cycle typically costs around £10k.
Fertility rapidly declines once you hit your late 20s, but as a society we've set ourselves up so that people are unable to even consider having children until a decade later. So we're effectively expecting people to pay £20k or so on average to be able to have children, and that's before you even get on to the nightmarish situation that NHS maternity services are in.
Agreed, though there is the freezing eggs option too.
Of course in the 1930s there was mass unemployment and most people of all ages rented but yet most 20 to 30 year olds had children and the fertility rate was above average so it is also a lifestyle choice, especially with more women wanting careers and leaving children until their 30s and early 40s if they decide to have them at all
Egg-freezing is £20k and only works about half the time. It's also less likely to be covered by private health insurance than IVF, though some employers do explicitly fund it separately.
As for it being a lifestyle choice, I think it's a bit stronger than that. It's a choice between building your career, being able to rent a flat by yourself, and generally having a stable life that you control before getting pregnant - or having kids in your 20s, and hoping that the state will provide an adequate safety net if things go wrong.
Not many people trust that safety net these days, and I don't think it's fair to blame them for that.
As with so much else, the best way to fix this would be to ease the pressure on housing. If the best a 20-something at the start of a professional career can expect is to live in a houseshare for the next decade, then is it any wonder why they're not settling down and having kids?
Absolutely!
And this is another reason why too everyone who is working ought to be able to afford a home of their own, from their own efforts, with no inheritance in their twenties as was achievable in the past and could be again if the prices were more appropriate.
An inheritance if you get one (and many won't) is likely to come in your sixties or later nowadays and won't get you on the housing ladder in your twenties.
Most people rented 100 years ago, they still managed to have children in their 20s
'Managed' is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
Society was organised entirely differently, and there were little to no reliable forms of contraception.
I am staggered by those who stagger through life waiting for an inheritance.
Inheritance is irrelevant to this argument as it 100 years ago most couples in their 20s rented and did not have an inheritance but still managed to have children.
Of course we could also go Vatican and restrict contraception too, certainly to 20-35 year olds at peak fertility in settled relationships
I'm not sure how settled most of those relationships would be if contraception was entirely eliminated.
Full Vatican of course would be no sex unless married and no contraception if having sex in marriage
No, no: it's no premarital sex.
So long as you never get married, it was never premarital sex.
Nope it is no sex outside of marriage 'the sexual act must take place exclusively within marriage. Outside of marriage it always constitutes a grave sin and excludes one from sacramental communion."
Quite a startling statistic deep in the YouGov polling on all the recent troubles. The British people rightly abhor the riots and violence - lock ‘em up - but they are much more sympathetic on the sentiments behind the initial and peaceful Southport protests
“Sympathies with the views of those taking part in the protests are somewhat broader – six in ten Britons (58%) say they have a great deal or fair amount of sympathy for the views of those peacefully taking part in demonstrations that were ostensibly triggered by the Southport murders. This includes majorities of Labour and Lib Dem voters (53-56%), as well as two-thirds of Conservatives (64%), with Reform voters are most sympathetic at 83%.”
Instead it will all get brushed aside as the work of fascists and racists and everything will carry on just as before.
I think it will - Labour will work hard to bring immigration down from the 1.2 million per year under the Tories and bang on about it for the next 5 years.
Mr. Seal, my collection isn't complete, especially for the last set, but I've got probably 90% of the books. They recently started printing a new edition and I keep meaning to fill in the gaps.
The underlying issue absolutely has not gone away; it will likely worsen
Yeah the "racism defeated" cheering this morning is daft. In reality an already toxic but real issue, mass immigration, has now been weaponised by malign actors on social media, almost certianly in part by our foes in Russia. That they can cause widespread unrest in the UK so easily is a very big problem. It's not hard to think of scenarios where things go south very quickly and turn out a lot worse. About the only "ideas" anyone has had are all kinds of mad illiberal bans on language, free movement, access to the internet and so on. Most of which would likely not work and also prove to be counter-productive. Good luck to whoever has to figure out how to prevent repeats of this.
How you prevent repeats is how you prevent all crime. You send the criminals to jail. If anyone thinks setting a police van on fire or trying to intimidate asylum seekers is worth spending three years in jail then I think we'd all be better off without them. I'm curious to know from posters who feel this anger with immigrants and foreigners why? Maybe you and Leon can explain it?
Kwasi Kwarteng was right, on GMB this morning, when he said you also have to tackle the causes of crime as well as crime itself...
If I put something like "If only he had been in a position in politics to fix this", would that just be bloody annoying? I'm a bit fed up of Conservative politicians looking at the chaos and blaming the Labour govt. I don't like the latter but it's a bit stupid to blame them: Starmer has only been in power for 34 days.
Quite a startling statistic deep in the YouGov polling on all the recent troubles. The British people rightly abhor the riots and violence - lock ‘em up - but they are much more sympathetic on the sentiments behind the initial and peaceful Southport protests
“Sympathies with the views of those taking part in the protests are somewhat broader – six in ten Britons (58%) say they have a great deal or fair amount of sympathy for the views of those peacefully taking part in demonstrations that were ostensibly triggered by the Southport murders. This includes majorities of Labour and Lib Dem voters (53-56%), as well as two-thirds of Conservatives (64%), with Reform voters are most sympathetic at 83%.”
Instead it will all get brushed aside as the work of fascists and racists and everything will carry on just as before.
I think it will - Labour will work hard to bring immigration down from the 1.2 million per year under the Tories and bang on about it for the next 5 years.
It's the most obvious example of how the Tories machine gunned their own foot in the run up to the election and salted their legacy until the next one.
Lucy, from Shenfield, Essex – who was the first in her family to go to university, gaining a maths degree in 2007 – worked briefly in graduate roles as a transport planner and in private equity. But on an annual salary of £20,000, she felt her student debt was hanging over her. She moved back to her parents’ house and has been in part-time minimum-wage jobs since she was 25. For the past six years, she has been a taxi controller, earning £19,000 last year.
“My student debt makes me not want to earn more, as my equivalent rate of tax would be 38%,” she said. “I see not repaying my loan as an act of defiance.”
A few things there.
Her degree didn’t get her into the middle class, white collar money - these days £50k
Instead she was earning minimum wage.
So shifting to a low status job had not much effect.
The effective tax rate put her off earning more. Think about this - someone on minimum wage looking at an effective tax rate of 38%
We have an increasing number of people, in this country who are not having careers - just getting together existence money. Because we don’t reward moving up enough.
It takes a fair old wage before you are paying more in tax than you take out. We need to grow more of that. Rather than encouraging people to give up and bump along at the bottom.
This is one reason universities are going to collapse. The debt you incur as a student makes less and less sense as the economy changes. People will study from home if they need to study at all
The entire higher education model is economically fucked. I’m not sure we have begun to process this yet
How can you work in "private equity" and only be earning £20K?
I see the Kent county councillor making the Walthamstow speech has now gone unfortunately viral
He's a perfect way for the police to put the "two-tier" stuff to bed.
PB lawyers, what would he get charged with for this one?
There could be things around incitement; it also depends on what the rest of the speech content was. From the edited clip which is being pushed, we do not even know who he is talking about when he says "cut all their throats". The comments are full of "who does he mean?"
The claim that he is suggesting it for Tommy-Robinson-ites is only afaics in the text added by the likes of Tousi or others.
They go into "Free Palestine" chants, which is nearly clipped out at the end, and there being Palestine flags, which are also neatly clipped out. Is he talking about the IDF?
Where's the rest of the clip to let the viewer make a reasoned judgement?
Adds: I see the Councillor has already been suspended.
I’ve emotionally gone from being mentally and emotionally reconciled to a Trump win to having hope that Harris actually might do it. Sadly it’s the hope that kills you.
*Raises eyebrows*
Has Governor Walz's daughter taken up a new career?
You’re going to have to explain that one to me.
She’s called Hope and may have become an assassin according to your post…
It wasn’t really worth explaining…
But she is called Hope as she was an IVF baby and somehow the Republicans have managed to put themselves in the position of looking anti-IVF.
I thought they *were* anti-IVF?
I am anti taxpayer-funded IVF.
In the scheme of things I can think of a whole set of items that I object to far more.
Giving a family a chance of children seems to be a noble use of a tiny percentage of what I pay in taxes.
Certainly with fertility rates now below replacement level in the UK and USA
Sadly, reproductive services are something that the NHS have all but abandoned.
Technically, they still aim to offer three cycles to under-40s, and one to those aged 40 and 41 - but in most of the country are nowhere close to achieving this. The usual pattern is to mange the problem by delaying long enough that people age out of eligibility, so if you're in your mid 30s they'll drag it out so you get one cycle at 38 or 39, and another a couple of years later. And that's only if you're very persistent.
In reality, most people on average need around four cycles, with some trying up to six before giving up. Each cycle typically costs around £10k.
Fertility rapidly declines once you hit your late 20s, but as a society we've set ourselves up so that people are unable to even consider having children until a decade later. So we're effectively expecting people to pay £20k or so on average to be able to have children, and that's before you even get on to the nightmarish situation that NHS maternity services are in.
Agreed, though there is the freezing eggs option too.
Of course in the 1930s there was mass unemployment and most people of all ages rented but yet most 20 to 30 year olds had children and the fertility rate was above average so it is also a lifestyle choice, especially with more women wanting careers and leaving children until their 30s and early 40s if they decide to have them at all
Egg-freezing is £20k and only works about half the time. It's also less likely to be covered by private health insurance than IVF, though some employers do explicitly fund it separately.
As for it being a lifestyle choice, I think it's a bit stronger than that. It's a choice between building your career, being able to rent a flat by yourself, and generally having a stable life that you control before getting pregnant - or having kids in your 20s, and hoping that the state will provide an adequate safety net if things go wrong.
Not many people trust that safety net these days, and I don't think it's fair to blame them for that.
As with so much else, the best way to fix this would be to ease the pressure on housing. If the best a 20-something at the start of a professional career can expect is to live in a houseshare for the next decade, then is it any wonder why they're not settling down and having kids?
Absolutely!
And this is another reason why too everyone who is working ought to be able to afford a home of their own, from their own efforts, with no inheritance in their twenties as was achievable in the past and could be again if the prices were more appropriate.
An inheritance if you get one (and many won't) is likely to come in your sixties or later nowadays and won't get you on the housing ladder in your twenties.
Most people rented 100 years ago, they still managed to have children in their 20s
'Managed' is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
Society was organised entirely differently, and there were little to no reliable forms of contraception.
I am staggered by those who stagger through life waiting for an inheritance.
Inheritance is irrelevant to this argument as it 100 years ago most couples in their 20s rented and did not have an inheritance but still managed to have children.
Of course we could also go Vatican and restrict contraception too, certainly to 20-35 year olds at peak fertility in settled relationships
I'm not sure how settled most of those relationships would be if contraception was entirely eliminated.
Full Vatican of course would be no sex unless married and no contraception if having sex in marriage
No, no: it's no premarital sex.
So long as you never get married, it was never premarital sex.
Nope it is no sex outside of marriage 'the sexual act must take place exclusively within marriage. Outside of marriage it always constitutes a grave sin and excludes one from sacramental communion."
I’m just pleased that your religion nowadays is essentially powerless, no longer able to torture and condemn and murder and burn people who are slightly eccentric or independently minded or who otherwise don’t sign up to your almost-prehistoric nonsense, as has happened to so many unfortunate souls in times past.
I’ve emotionally gone from being mentally and emotionally reconciled to a Trump win to having hope that Harris actually might do it. Sadly it’s the hope that kills you.
*Raises eyebrows*
Has Governor Walz's daughter taken up a new career?
You’re going to have to explain that one to me.
She’s called Hope and may have become an assassin according to your post…
It wasn’t really worth explaining…
But she is called Hope as she was an IVF baby and somehow the Republicans have managed to put themselves in the position of looking anti-IVF.
I thought they *were* anti-IVF?
I am anti taxpayer-funded IVF.
In the scheme of things I can think of a whole set of items that I object to far more.
Giving a family a chance of children seems to be a noble use of a tiny percentage of what I pay in taxes.
Certainly with fertility rates now below replacement level in the UK and USA
Sadly, reproductive services are something that the NHS have all but abandoned.
Technically, they still aim to offer three cycles to under-40s, and one to those aged 40 and 41 - but in most of the country are nowhere close to achieving this. The usual pattern is to mange the problem by delaying long enough that people age out of eligibility, so if you're in your mid 30s they'll drag it out so you get one cycle at 38 or 39, and another a couple of years later. And that's only if you're very persistent.
In reality, most people on average need around four cycles, with some trying up to six before giving up. Each cycle typically costs around £10k.
Fertility rapidly declines once you hit your late 20s, but as a society we've set ourselves up so that people are unable to even consider having children until a decade later. So we're effectively expecting people to pay £20k or so on average to be able to have children, and that's before you even get on to the nightmarish situation that NHS maternity services are in.
Agreed, though there is the freezing eggs option too.
Of course in the 1930s there was mass unemployment and most people of all ages rented but yet most 20 to 30 year olds had children and the fertility rate was above average so it is also a lifestyle choice, especially with more women wanting careers and leaving children until their 30s and early 40s if they decide to have them at all
Egg-freezing is £20k and only works about half the time. It's also less likely to be covered by private health insurance than IVF, though some employers do explicitly fund it separately.
As for it being a lifestyle choice, I think it's a bit stronger than that. It's a choice between building your career, being able to rent a flat by yourself, and generally having a stable life that you control before getting pregnant - or having kids in your 20s, and hoping that the state will provide an adequate safety net if things go wrong.
Not many people trust that safety net these days, and I don't think it's fair to blame them for that.
As with so much else, the best way to fix this would be to ease the pressure on housing. If the best a 20-something at the start of a professional career can expect is to live in a houseshare for the next decade, then is it any wonder why they're not settling down and having kids?
Absolutely!
And this is another reason why too everyone who is working ought to be able to afford a home of their own, from their own efforts, with no inheritance in their twenties as was achievable in the past and could be again if the prices were more appropriate.
An inheritance if you get one (and many won't) is likely to come in your sixties or later nowadays and won't get you on the housing ladder in your twenties.
Most people rented 100 years ago, they still managed to have children in their 20s
'Managed' is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
Society was organised entirely differently, and there were little to no reliable forms of contraception.
I am staggered by those who stagger through life waiting for an inheritance.
Inheritance is irrelevant to this argument as it 100 years ago most couples in their 20s rented and did not have an inheritance but still managed to have children.
Of course we could also go Vatican and restrict contraception too, certainly to 20-35 year olds at peak fertility in settled relationships
I'm not sure how settled most of those relationships would be if contraception was entirely eliminated.
Full Vatican of course would be no sex unless married and no contraception if having sex in marriage
Of course, we could just ignore religion in our everyday lives.
And continue with below replacement level birthrate
So you make it inevitable that millions are born into poverty and end up reliant on the state. I thought you Tories hated benefit culture, now you want to turn the taps on?
I’ve emotionally gone from being mentally and emotionally reconciled to a Trump win to having hope that Harris actually might do it. Sadly it’s the hope that kills you.
*Raises eyebrows*
Has Governor Walz's daughter taken up a new career?
You’re going to have to explain that one to me.
She’s called Hope and may have become an assassin according to your post…
It wasn’t really worth explaining…
But she is called Hope as she was an IVF baby and somehow the Republicans have managed to put themselves in the position of looking anti-IVF.
I thought they *were* anti-IVF?
I am anti taxpayer-funded IVF.
In the scheme of things I can think of a whole set of items that I object to far more.
Giving a family a chance of children seems to be a noble use of a tiny percentage of what I pay in taxes.
Certainly with fertility rates now below replacement level in the UK and USA
Sadly, reproductive services are something that the NHS have all but abandoned.
Technically, they still aim to offer three cycles to under-40s, and one to those aged 40 and 41 - but in most of the country are nowhere close to achieving this. The usual pattern is to mange the problem by delaying long enough that people age out of eligibility, so if you're in your mid 30s they'll drag it out so you get one cycle at 38 or 39, and another a couple of years later. And that's only if you're very persistent.
In reality, most people on average need around four cycles, with some trying up to six before giving up. Each cycle typically costs around £10k.
Fertility rapidly declines once you hit your late 20s, but as a society we've set ourselves up so that people are unable to even consider having children until a decade later. So we're effectively expecting people to pay £20k or so on average to be able to have children, and that's before you even get on to the nightmarish situation that NHS maternity services are in.
Agreed, though there is the freezing eggs option too.
Of course in the 1930s there was mass unemployment and most people of all ages rented but yet most 20 to 30 year olds had children and the fertility rate was above average so it is also a lifestyle choice, especially with more women wanting careers and leaving children until their 30s and early 40s if they decide to have them at all
Egg-freezing is £20k and only works about half the time. It's also less likely to be covered by private health insurance than IVF, though some employers do explicitly fund it separately.
As for it being a lifestyle choice, I think it's a bit stronger than that. It's a choice between building your career, being able to rent a flat by yourself, and generally having a stable life that you control before getting pregnant - or having kids in your 20s, and hoping that the state will provide an adequate safety net if things go wrong.
Not many people trust that safety net these days, and I don't think it's fair to blame them for that.
As with so much else, the best way to fix this would be to ease the pressure on housing. If the best a 20-something at the start of a professional career can expect is to live in a houseshare for the next decade, then is it any wonder why they're not settling down and having kids?
Absolutely!
And this is another reason why too everyone who is working ought to be able to afford a home of their own, from their own efforts, with no inheritance in their twenties as was achievable in the past and could be again if the prices were more appropriate.
An inheritance if you get one (and many won't) is likely to come in your sixties or later nowadays and won't get you on the housing ladder in your twenties.
Most people rented 100 years ago, they still managed to have children in their 20s
'Managed' is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
Society was organised entirely differently, and there were little to no reliable forms of contraception.
I am staggered by those who stagger through life waiting for an inheritance.
Inheritance is irrelevant to this argument as it 100 years ago most couples in their 20s rented and did not have an inheritance but still managed to have children.
Of course we could also go Vatican and restrict contraception too, certainly to 20-35 year olds at peak fertility in settled relationships
I'm not sure how settled most of those relationships would be if contraception was entirely eliminated.
Full Vatican of course would be no sex unless married and no contraception if having sex in marriage
No, no: it's no premarital sex.
So long as you never get married, it was never premarital sex.
Nope it is no sex outside of marriage 'the sexual act must take place exclusively within marriage. Outside of marriage it always constitutes a grave sin and excludes one from sacramental communion."
I’m just pleased that your religion nowadays is essentially powerless, no longer able to torture and condemn and murder and burn people who are slightly eccentric or independently minded or who otherwise don’t sign up to your almost-prehistoric nonsense, as has happened to so many unfortunate souls in times past.
The Roman Catholic church hasn't been the national church in the UK since the 16th century, albeit there are still 1.2 billion Roman Catholics globally
I see the Kent county councillor making the Walthamstow speech has now gone unfortunately viral
He's a perfect way for the police to put the "two-tier" stuff to bed.
PB lawyers, what would he get charged with for this one?
There could be things around incitement; it also depends on what the rest of the speech content was. From the edited clip which is being pushed, we do not even know who he is talking about when he says "cut all their throats". The comments are full of "who does he mean?"
The claim that he is suggesting it for Tommy-Robinson-ites is only afaics in the text added by the likes of Tousi or others.
They go into "Free Palestine" chants, which is nearly clipped out at the end, and there being Palestine flags, which are also neatly clipped out.
Where's the rest of the clip to let the viewer make a judgement?
Adds: I see the Councillor has already been suspended.
Quite a startling statistic deep in the YouGov polling on all the recent troubles. The British people rightly abhor the riots and violence - lock ‘em up - but they are much more sympathetic on the sentiments behind the initial and peaceful Southport protests
“Sympathies with the views of those taking part in the protests are somewhat broader – six in ten Britons (58%) say they have a great deal or fair amount of sympathy for the views of those peacefully taking part in demonstrations that were ostensibly triggered by the Southport murders. This includes majorities of Labour and Lib Dem voters (53-56%), as well as two-thirds of Conservatives (64%), with Reform voters are most sympathetic at 83%.”
Instead it will all get brushed aside as the work of fascists and racists and everything will carry on just as before.
I think it will - Labour will work hard to bring immigration down from the 1.2 million per year under the Tories and bang on about it for the next 5 years.
It's the most obvious example of how the Tories machine gunned their own foot in the run up to the election and salted their legacy until the next one.
Remember when John Kerry was Swiftboated by Chris LaCivita who is doing it (trying to, anyhow) to Tim Walz now? Guess who funded it? Harlan Crow, the billionaire who has been lavishing freebies on Clarence Thomas. https://x.com/JaneMayerNYer/status/1821510748968820954
I’ve emotionally gone from being mentally and emotionally reconciled to a Trump win to having hope that Harris actually might do it. Sadly it’s the hope that kills you.
*Raises eyebrows*
Has Governor Walz's daughter taken up a new career?
You’re going to have to explain that one to me.
She’s called Hope and may have become an assassin according to your post…
It wasn’t really worth explaining…
But she is called Hope as she was an IVF baby and somehow the Republicans have managed to put themselves in the position of looking anti-IVF.
I thought they *were* anti-IVF?
I am anti taxpayer-funded IVF.
In the scheme of things I can think of a whole set of items that I object to far more.
Giving a family a chance of children seems to be a noble use of a tiny percentage of what I pay in taxes.
Certainly with fertility rates now below replacement level in the UK and USA
Sadly, reproductive services are something that the NHS have all but abandoned.
Technically, they still aim to offer three cycles to under-40s, and one to those aged 40 and 41 - but in most of the country are nowhere close to achieving this. The usual pattern is to mange the problem by delaying long enough that people age out of eligibility, so if you're in your mid 30s they'll drag it out so you get one cycle at 38 or 39, and another a couple of years later. And that's only if you're very persistent.
In reality, most people on average need around four cycles, with some trying up to six before giving up. Each cycle typically costs around £10k.
Fertility rapidly declines once you hit your late 20s, but as a society we've set ourselves up so that people are unable to even consider having children until a decade later. So we're effectively expecting people to pay £20k or so on average to be able to have children, and that's before you even get on to the nightmarish situation that NHS maternity services are in.
Agreed, though there is the freezing eggs option too.
Of course in the 1930s there was mass unemployment and most people of all ages rented but yet most 20 to 30 year olds had children and the fertility rate was above average so it is also a lifestyle choice, especially with more women wanting careers and leaving children until their 30s and early 40s if they decide to have them at all
Egg-freezing is £20k and only works about half the time. It's also less likely to be covered by private health insurance than IVF, though some employers do explicitly fund it separately.
As for it being a lifestyle choice, I think it's a bit stronger than that. It's a choice between building your career, being able to rent a flat by yourself, and generally having a stable life that you control before getting pregnant - or having kids in your 20s, and hoping that the state will provide an adequate safety net if things go wrong.
Not many people trust that safety net these days, and I don't think it's fair to blame them for that.
As with so much else, the best way to fix this would be to ease the pressure on housing. If the best a 20-something at the start of a professional career can expect is to live in a houseshare for the next decade, then is it any wonder why they're not settling down and having kids?
Absolutely!
And this is another reason why too everyone who is working ought to be able to afford a home of their own, from their own efforts, with no inheritance in their twenties as was achievable in the past and could be again if the prices were more appropriate.
An inheritance if you get one (and many won't) is likely to come in your sixties or later nowadays and won't get you on the housing ladder in your twenties.
Most people rented 100 years ago, they still managed to have children in their 20s
'Managed' is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
Society was organised entirely differently, and there were little to no reliable forms of contraception.
I am staggered by those who stagger through life waiting for an inheritance.
Inheritance is irrelevant to this argument as it 100 years ago most couples in their 20s rented and did not have an inheritance but still managed to have children.
Of course we could also go Vatican and restrict contraception too, certainly to 20-35 year olds at peak fertility in settled relationships
I'm not sure how settled most of those relationships would be if contraception was entirely eliminated.
Full Vatican of course would be no sex unless married and no contraception if having sex in marriage
No, no: it's no premarital sex.
So long as you never get married, it was never premarital sex.
Nope it is no sex outside of marriage 'the sexual act must take place exclusively within marriage. Outside of marriage it always constitutes a grave sin and excludes one from sacramental communion."
I’m just pleased that your religion nowadays is essentially powerless, no longer able to torture and condemn and murder and burn people who are slightly eccentric or independently minded or who otherwise don’t sign up to your almost-prehistoric nonsense, as has happened to so many unfortunate souls in times past.
That teacher in hiding near Batley waves “hello”
One hopes that Islam is on the same historical path as Christianity.
I’ve emotionally gone from being mentally and emotionally reconciled to a Trump win to having hope that Harris actually might do it. Sadly it’s the hope that kills you.
*Raises eyebrows*
Has Governor Walz's daughter taken up a new career?
You’re going to have to explain that one to me.
She’s called Hope and may have become an assassin according to your post…
It wasn’t really worth explaining…
But she is called Hope as she was an IVF baby and somehow the Republicans have managed to put themselves in the position of looking anti-IVF.
I thought they *were* anti-IVF?
I am anti taxpayer-funded IVF.
In the scheme of things I can think of a whole set of items that I object to far more.
Giving a family a chance of children seems to be a noble use of a tiny percentage of what I pay in taxes.
Certainly with fertility rates now below replacement level in the UK and USA
Sadly, reproductive services are something that the NHS have all but abandoned.
Technically, they still aim to offer three cycles to under-40s, and one to those aged 40 and 41 - but in most of the country are nowhere close to achieving this. The usual pattern is to mange the problem by delaying long enough that people age out of eligibility, so if you're in your mid 30s they'll drag it out so you get one cycle at 38 or 39, and another a couple of years later. And that's only if you're very persistent.
In reality, most people on average need around four cycles, with some trying up to six before giving up. Each cycle typically costs around £10k.
Fertility rapidly declines once you hit your late 20s, but as a society we've set ourselves up so that people are unable to even consider having children until a decade later. So we're effectively expecting people to pay £20k or so on average to be able to have children, and that's before you even get on to the nightmarish situation that NHS maternity services are in.
Agreed, though there is the freezing eggs option too.
Of course in the 1930s there was mass unemployment and most people of all ages rented but yet most 20 to 30 year olds had children and the fertility rate was above average so it is also a lifestyle choice, especially with more women wanting careers and leaving children until their 30s and early 40s if they decide to have them at all
Egg-freezing is £20k and only works about half the time. It's also less likely to be covered by private health insurance than IVF, though some employers do explicitly fund it separately.
As for it being a lifestyle choice, I think it's a bit stronger than that. It's a choice between building your career, being able to rent a flat by yourself, and generally having a stable life that you control before getting pregnant - or having kids in your 20s, and hoping that the state will provide an adequate safety net if things go wrong.
Not many people trust that safety net these days, and I don't think it's fair to blame them for that.
As with so much else, the best way to fix this would be to ease the pressure on housing. If the best a 20-something at the start of a professional career can expect is to live in a houseshare for the next decade, then is it any wonder why they're not settling down and having kids?
Absolutely!
And this is another reason why too everyone who is working ought to be able to afford a home of their own, from their own efforts, with no inheritance in their twenties as was achievable in the past and could be again if the prices were more appropriate.
An inheritance if you get one (and many won't) is likely to come in your sixties or later nowadays and won't get you on the housing ladder in your twenties.
Most people rented 100 years ago, they still managed to have children in their 20s
'Managed' is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
Society was organised entirely differently, and there were little to no reliable forms of contraception.
I am staggered by those who stagger through life waiting for an inheritance.
Inheritance is irrelevant to this argument as it 100 years ago most couples in their 20s rented and did not have an inheritance but still managed to have children.
Of course we could also go Vatican and restrict contraception too, certainly to 20-35 year olds at peak fertility in settled relationships
I'm not sure how settled most of those relationships would be if contraception was entirely eliminated.
Full Vatican of course would be no sex unless married and no contraception if having sex in marriage
No, no: it's no premarital sex.
So long as you never get married, it was never premarital sex.
Nope it is no sex outside of marriage 'the sexual act must take place exclusively within marriage. Outside of marriage it always constitutes a grave sin and excludes one from sacramental communion."
I’m just pleased that your religion nowadays is essentially powerless, no longer able to torture and condemn and murder and burn people who are slightly eccentric or independently minded or who otherwise don’t sign up to your almost-prehistoric nonsense, as has happened to so many unfortunate souls in times past.
The Roman Catholic church hasn't been the national church in the UK since the 16th century, albeit there are still 1.2 billion Roman Catholics globally
To talk of "the national church of the UK since the 16th century" is somewhat muddled historically ...
I’ve emotionally gone from being mentally and emotionally reconciled to a Trump win to having hope that Harris actually might do it. Sadly it’s the hope that kills you.
*Raises eyebrows*
Has Governor Walz's daughter taken up a new career?
You’re going to have to explain that one to me.
She’s called Hope and may have become an assassin according to your post…
It wasn’t really worth explaining…
But she is called Hope as she was an IVF baby and somehow the Republicans have managed to put themselves in the position of looking anti-IVF.
I thought they *were* anti-IVF?
I am anti taxpayer-funded IVF.
In the scheme of things I can think of a whole set of items that I object to far more.
Giving a family a chance of children seems to be a noble use of a tiny percentage of what I pay in taxes.
Certainly with fertility rates now below replacement level in the UK and USA
Sadly, reproductive services are something that the NHS have all but abandoned.
Technically, they still aim to offer three cycles to under-40s, and one to those aged 40 and 41 - but in most of the country are nowhere close to achieving this. The usual pattern is to mange the problem by delaying long enough that people age out of eligibility, so if you're in your mid 30s they'll drag it out so you get one cycle at 38 or 39, and another a couple of years later. And that's only if you're very persistent.
In reality, most people on average need around four cycles, with some trying up to six before giving up. Each cycle typically costs around £10k.
Fertility rapidly declines once you hit your late 20s, but as a society we've set ourselves up so that people are unable to even consider having children until a decade later. So we're effectively expecting people to pay £20k or so on average to be able to have children, and that's before you even get on to the nightmarish situation that NHS maternity services are in.
Agreed, though there is the freezing eggs option too.
Of course in the 1930s there was mass unemployment and most people of all ages rented but yet most 20 to 30 year olds had children and the fertility rate was above average so it is also a lifestyle choice, especially with more women wanting careers and leaving children until their 30s and early 40s if they decide to have them at all
Egg-freezing is £20k and only works about half the time. It's also less likely to be covered by private health insurance than IVF, though some employers do explicitly fund it separately.
As for it being a lifestyle choice, I think it's a bit stronger than that. It's a choice between building your career, being able to rent a flat by yourself, and generally having a stable life that you control before getting pregnant - or having kids in your 20s, and hoping that the state will provide an adequate safety net if things go wrong.
Not many people trust that safety net these days, and I don't think it's fair to blame them for that.
As with so much else, the best way to fix this would be to ease the pressure on housing. If the best a 20-something at the start of a professional career can expect is to live in a houseshare for the next decade, then is it any wonder why they're not settling down and having kids?
Absolutely!
And this is another reason why too everyone who is working ought to be able to afford a home of their own, from their own efforts, with no inheritance in their twenties as was achievable in the past and could be again if the prices were more appropriate.
An inheritance if you get one (and many won't) is likely to come in your sixties or later nowadays and won't get you on the housing ladder in your twenties.
Most people rented 100 years ago, they still managed to have children in their 20s
'Managed' is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
Society was organised entirely differently, and there were little to no reliable forms of contraception.
I am staggered by those who stagger through life waiting for an inheritance.
Inheritance is irrelevant to this argument as it 100 years ago most couples in their 20s rented and did not have an inheritance but still managed to have children.
Of course we could also go Vatican and restrict contraception too, certainly to 20-35 year olds at peak fertility in settled relationships
I'm not sure how settled most of those relationships would be if contraception was entirely eliminated.
Full Vatican of course would be no sex unless married and no contraception if having sex in marriage
No, no: it's no premarital sex.
So long as you never get married, it was never premarital sex.
Nope it is no sex outside of marriage 'the sexual act must take place exclusively within marriage. Outside of marriage it always constitutes a grave sin and excludes one from sacramental communion."
I’m just pleased that your religion nowadays is essentially powerless, no longer able to torture and condemn and murder and burn people who are slightly eccentric or independently minded or who otherwise don’t sign up to your almost-prehistoric nonsense, as has happened to so many unfortunate souls in times past.
That teacher in hiding near Batley waves “hello”
One hopes that Islam is on the same historical path as Christianity.
I really really hope that is true. It is - sincerely - one of my biggest wishes for the future of the world
Quite a startling statistic deep in the YouGov polling on all the recent troubles. The British people rightly abhor the riots and violence - lock ‘em up - but they are much more sympathetic on the sentiments behind the initial and peaceful Southport protests
“Sympathies with the views of those taking part in the protests are somewhat broader – six in ten Britons (58%) say they have a great deal or fair amount of sympathy for the views of those peacefully taking part in demonstrations that were ostensibly triggered by the Southport murders. This includes majorities of Labour and Lib Dem voters (53-56%), as well as two-thirds of Conservatives (64%), with Reform voters are most sympathetic at 83%.”
Instead it will all get brushed aside as the work of fascists and racists and everything will carry on just as before.
I think it will - Labour will work hard to bring immigration down from the 1.2 million per year under the Tories and bang on about it for the next 5 years.
It's the most obvious example of how the Tories machine gunned their own foot in the run up to the election and salted their legacy until the next one.
Hilarious.
All Labour need to do is get immigration down below 1 million - 1 million! - and they have a better record than the Conservatives.
The only party that could claim to actually be tough on immigration is Reform.
I disagree with the header. I don't think it's a 50/50 race anymore.
At the moment, it's between a narrow win and a big win.
I think I am still scarred by 2016.
I realised over the weekend I am more emotionally invested in the 2024 US Presidential election than I have ever been in any UK general election or Brexit referendum/Scottish independence referendum and I was pretty emotionally invested in the those too.
Whilst I understand the point, and your investment is shared by many on PB, it is another example of people living on the Internet instead of on the ground. Unless you have plans you have not announced, you live in the UK and do not plan to move to the US. The activities of the UK govt will affect you a lot more than any US govt, regardless of its greater magnitude. Yet Trump v Harris matters more to you (and most of PB) emotionally.
I’ve got friends in America.
I think Trump withdrawing from NATO/selling out Ukraine will do more damage to the UK than anything Starmer will manage.
Heck the same applies to Trump’s tariffs.
While not advisable at most Trump would do a peace deal with Putin and tell Zelensky to give Russia the land they now still occupy in Ukraine. Given for most of the last 100 years Ukraine was part of the USSR anyway it wouldn't be a massive issue for the UK though obviously not great for Ukranians self determination and freedom.
Trump's tariffs would be focused at China and the EU rather than the UK, not sure we would want a trade deal with him though now as even if offered it would be US biased
Trump's proposal is for
(a) Tariffs that are at least 10% for all products entering the US, irrespective of where they come from (b) Plus, in the event that any country were to respond with higher tariffs on US goods, then the US would match them and (c) A 60% tariff on all goods from China
That's a lot of tariffs. And a lot less international trade.
The 60% tariff would crush international trade. US imports from China are enormous. In 2023 the US imported Chinese goods and services worth $450 BILLION
It would indeed:
It would cause a massive recession in China (fewer exports) and in the US (consumer goods massively more expensive, so people's dollars don't go so far).
It would almost certainly also result in retaliatory tariffs on US goods.
It’s insane
He used to crazy but sane, if you know what I mean. He sounded mad and rambly but there was often a kind of logic to his policies. And sometimes he was bang on - eg telling the Germans not to rely on Russia for gas
But this is bonkers. I do wonder if he is losing it entirely
The great benefit to tariffs for Trump is that he can control them unilaterally (without Congress) and also unilaterally grant exemptions. Every US manufacturer will need an exemption for the parts they import, so they'll have to bribe and otherwise please Trump personally as the cost of doing business.
Sadly this is correct: it's a recipe for corruption on a massive scale.
I’ve emotionally gone from being mentally and emotionally reconciled to a Trump win to having hope that Harris actually might do it. Sadly it’s the hope that kills you.
*Raises eyebrows*
Has Governor Walz's daughter taken up a new career?
You’re going to have to explain that one to me.
She’s called Hope and may have become an assassin according to your post…
It wasn’t really worth explaining…
But she is called Hope as she was an IVF baby and somehow the Republicans have managed to put themselves in the position of looking anti-IVF.
I thought they *were* anti-IVF?
I am anti taxpayer-funded IVF.
In the scheme of things I can think of a whole set of items that I object to far more.
Giving a family a chance of children seems to be a noble use of a tiny percentage of what I pay in taxes.
Certainly with fertility rates now below replacement level in the UK and USA
Sadly, reproductive services are something that the NHS have all but abandoned.
Technically, they still aim to offer three cycles to under-40s, and one to those aged 40 and 41 - but in most of the country are nowhere close to achieving this. The usual pattern is to mange the problem by delaying long enough that people age out of eligibility, so if you're in your mid 30s they'll drag it out so you get one cycle at 38 or 39, and another a couple of years later. And that's only if you're very persistent.
In reality, most people on average need around four cycles, with some trying up to six before giving up. Each cycle typically costs around £10k.
Fertility rapidly declines once you hit your late 20s, but as a society we've set ourselves up so that people are unable to even consider having children until a decade later. So we're effectively expecting people to pay £20k or so on average to be able to have children, and that's before you even get on to the nightmarish situation that NHS maternity services are in.
Agreed, though there is the freezing eggs option too.
Of course in the 1930s there was mass unemployment and most people of all ages rented but yet most 20 to 30 year olds had children and the fertility rate was above average so it is also a lifestyle choice, especially with more women wanting careers and leaving children until their 30s and early 40s if they decide to have them at all
Egg-freezing is £20k and only works about half the time. It's also less likely to be covered by private health insurance than IVF, though some employers do explicitly fund it separately.
As for it being a lifestyle choice, I think it's a bit stronger than that. It's a choice between building your career, being able to rent a flat by yourself, and generally having a stable life that you control before getting pregnant - or having kids in your 20s, and hoping that the state will provide an adequate safety net if things go wrong.
Not many people trust that safety net these days, and I don't think it's fair to blame them for that.
As with so much else, the best way to fix this would be to ease the pressure on housing. If the best a 20-something at the start of a professional career can expect is to live in a houseshare for the next decade, then is it any wonder why they're not settling down and having kids?
Absolutely!
And this is another reason why too everyone who is working ought to be able to afford a home of their own, from their own efforts, with no inheritance in their twenties as was achievable in the past and could be again if the prices were more appropriate.
An inheritance if you get one (and many won't) is likely to come in your sixties or later nowadays and won't get you on the housing ladder in your twenties.
Most people rented 100 years ago, they still managed to have children in their 20s
'Managed' is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
Society was organised entirely differently, and there were little to no reliable forms of contraception.
I am staggered by those who stagger through life waiting for an inheritance.
Inheritance is irrelevant to this argument as it 100 years ago most couples in their 20s rented and did not have an inheritance but still managed to have children.
Of course we could also go Vatican and restrict contraception too, certainly to 20-35 year olds at peak fertility in settled relationships
I'm not sure how settled most of those relationships would be if contraception was entirely eliminated.
Full Vatican of course would be no sex unless married and no contraception if having sex in marriage
No, no: it's no premarital sex.
So long as you never get married, it was never premarital sex.
Nope it is no sex outside of marriage 'the sexual act must take place exclusively within marriage. Outside of marriage it always constitutes a grave sin and excludes one from sacramental communion."
I'd be surprised if there was a single priest in all of Ireland who hadn't provided communion to people who had committed that sin. We're a long way from priests ensuring there was "room left for God" between dancing couples.
I’ve emotionally gone from being mentally and emotionally reconciled to a Trump win to having hope that Harris actually might do it. Sadly it’s the hope that kills you.
*Raises eyebrows*
Has Governor Walz's daughter taken up a new career?
You’re going to have to explain that one to me.
She’s called Hope and may have become an assassin according to your post…
It wasn’t really worth explaining…
But she is called Hope as she was an IVF baby and somehow the Republicans have managed to put themselves in the position of looking anti-IVF.
I thought they *were* anti-IVF?
I am anti taxpayer-funded IVF.
In the scheme of things I can think of a whole set of items that I object to far more.
Giving a family a chance of children seems to be a noble use of a tiny percentage of what I pay in taxes.
Certainly with fertility rates now below replacement level in the UK and USA
Sadly, reproductive services are something that the NHS have all but abandoned.
Technically, they still aim to offer three cycles to under-40s, and one to those aged 40 and 41 - but in most of the country are nowhere close to achieving this. The usual pattern is to mange the problem by delaying long enough that people age out of eligibility, so if you're in your mid 30s they'll drag it out so you get one cycle at 38 or 39, and another a couple of years later. And that's only if you're very persistent.
In reality, most people on average need around four cycles, with some trying up to six before giving up. Each cycle typically costs around £10k.
Fertility rapidly declines once you hit your late 20s, but as a society we've set ourselves up so that people are unable to even consider having children until a decade later. So we're effectively expecting people to pay £20k or so on average to be able to have children, and that's before you even get on to the nightmarish situation that NHS maternity services are in.
Agreed, though there is the freezing eggs option too.
Of course in the 1930s there was mass unemployment and most people of all ages rented but yet most 20 to 30 year olds had children and the fertility rate was above average so it is also a lifestyle choice, especially with more women wanting careers and leaving children until their 30s and early 40s if they decide to have them at all
Egg-freezing is £20k and only works about half the time. It's also less likely to be covered by private health insurance than IVF, though some employers do explicitly fund it separately.
As for it being a lifestyle choice, I think it's a bit stronger than that. It's a choice between building your career, being able to rent a flat by yourself, and generally having a stable life that you control before getting pregnant - or having kids in your 20s, and hoping that the state will provide an adequate safety net if things go wrong.
Not many people trust that safety net these days, and I don't think it's fair to blame them for that.
As with so much else, the best way to fix this would be to ease the pressure on housing. If the best a 20-something at the start of a professional career can expect is to live in a houseshare for the next decade, then is it any wonder why they're not settling down and having kids?
Absolutely!
And this is another reason why too everyone who is working ought to be able to afford a home of their own, from their own efforts, with no inheritance in their twenties as was achievable in the past and could be again if the prices were more appropriate.
An inheritance if you get one (and many won't) is likely to come in your sixties or later nowadays and won't get you on the housing ladder in your twenties.
Most people rented 100 years ago, they still managed to have children in their 20s
'Managed' is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
Society was organised entirely differently, and there were little to no reliable forms of contraception.
I am staggered by those who stagger through life waiting for an inheritance.
Inheritance is irrelevant to this argument as it 100 years ago most couples in their 20s rented and did not have an inheritance but still managed to have children.
Of course we could also go Vatican and restrict contraception too, certainly to 20-35 year olds at peak fertility in settled relationships
I'm not sure how settled most of those relationships would be if contraception was entirely eliminated.
Full Vatican of course would be no sex unless married and no contraception if having sex in marriage
Of course, we could just ignore religion in our everyday lives.
And continue with below replacement level birthrate
So you make it inevitable that millions are born into poverty and end up reliant on the state. I thought you Tories hated benefit culture, now you want to turn the taps on?
No that is the other extreme. Below replacement level birth rates just make it inevitable those of working age have to pay ever higher taxes to support the old, retirement ages become later as we need to work longer and economic growth slows.
Conservatives support the family too, they may not be socialists but they are not laissez faire economic liberals either. Plus now it is the middle class having lower birth rates than the working class if anything as graduate women delay childbirth for careers first
I see the Kent county councillor making the Walthamstow speech has now gone unfortunately viral
He's a perfect way for the police to put the "two-tier" stuff to bed.
PB lawyers, what would he get charged with for this one?
There could be things around incitement; it also depends on what the rest of the speech content was. From the edited clip which is being pushed, we do not even know who he is talking about when he says "cut all their throats". The comments are full of "who does he mean?"
The claim that he is suggesting it for Tommy-Robinson-ites is only afaics in the text added by the likes of Tousi or others.
They go into "Free Palestine" chants, which is nearly clipped out at the end, and there being Palestine flags, which are also neatly clipped out.
Where's the rest of the clip to let the viewer make a judgement?
Adds: I see the Councillor has already been suspended.
lol
Indeed, a whole post of "this is bullshit lies!" followed by "oh he's been suspended" without acknowledging the prior defence of this person calling for murdering people.
Comments
Trump believes that everything has 1 winner and 1 or more losers and he doesn't like being the loser because when you lose and you've been caught trying to cheat court cases appear...
China would also be more wary of what Trump might do if it invaded Taiwan as he is unpredictable
I mean, I sort of see your point. But it would be much better to have houses people could afford, than have houses people could only afford once their parents had died, and many people couldn't afford at all.
Porsche would adapt by making everything except the tyres an optional extra thus maintaining the sticker price and revenue.
Merc/rest of VAG - dunno.
It would cause a massive recession in China (fewer exports) and in the US (consumer goods massively more expensive, so people's dollars don't go so far).
It would almost certainly also result in retaliatory tariffs on US goods.
Not that know-nothing Trump knows or cares.
Omen Sulk
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/c628mxvlrd1o
So long as you never get married, it was never premarital sex.
He used to crazy but sane, if you know what I mean. He sounded mad and rambly but there was often a kind of logic to his policies. And sometimes he was bang on - eg telling the Germans not to rely on Russia for gas
But this is bonkers. I do wonder if he is losing it entirely
The last time a President was elected to a second non consecutive term was Grover Cleveland in 1892. Cleveland had originally been elected in 1884, lost his 1888 re election bid like Trump in 2020 but won a rematch 4 years later as Trump hopes to do (except against the VP now not POTUS).
However Cleveland's Democrats did not win another presidential election after 1892 until 1912 with Woodrow Wilson
We have growing inequality in this country. It is only getting worse.
After that it is back to normal and a free for all if its £200 or less.
If an MP turns up, either the police can ignore or provide security.
If they ignore this risks a focused attack on the MP, with the police scrambling to get there to help them. That kind of ruck, in the middle of a disturbance, can very easily end up with seriously injured officers.
If they guard the MP, this thins the line of police and reduces the strength of the shield line.
As in ancient warfare, the shield line is all - if it breaks, shit happens.
VIPs rocking up at potential riots is not a good idea.
Even if they turn up for a photo at the command post, they are a distraction.
So it isn’t surprising that the first party that broke away from that forced choice is getting a significant electoral dividend.
I always used to say I never understood the unfavourable ratings she had. I guess now people are seeing her for who she is, as opposed to what she was as Biden's VP, they are warming to her.
https://www.vatican.va/content/catechism/en/part_three/section_two/chapter_two/article_6/iv_offenses_against_the_dignity_of_marriage.html
Her degree didn’t get her into the middle class, white collar money - these days £50k
Instead she was earning minimum wage.
So shifting to a low status job had not much effect.
The effective tax rate put her off earning more. Think about this - someone on minimum wage looking at an effective tax rate of 38%
We have an increasing number of people, in this country who are not having careers - just getting together existence money. Because we don’t reward moving up enough.
It takes a fair old wage before you are paying more in tax than you take out. We need to grow more of that. Rather than encouraging people to give up and bump along at the bottom.
Value can be strange. I've got a single gold sovereign from the reign of Queen Victoria. But it's worth less than my Kew Gardens 50p from a decade or two ago.
The entire higher education model is economically fucked. I’m not sure we have begun to process this yet
Instead it will all get brushed aside as the work of fascists and racists and everything will carry on just as before.
🔵 Harris 53% (+6)
🔴 Trump 47%
MULaw #A+ - 879 RV - 8/1
She is not overly articulate is more the problem. She tends to jumble words sometimes, and expresses concepts simplistically
But she’s facing Donald Trump who thinks destroying all international trade is a great idea. So she should be fine
The clip does not even show fully what he actually said. It is being pushed by Tousi, and organisations such as Turning Point UK, and Reform UK (my MP has reposted it) to pretend that it's "that" or "us". It's self-serving shit-stirring, just as was the British-born Christian "Muslim migrant from Rwanda".
It is not "that" or "us", unless we ignore the context. And that is why it matters.
They are pretending that the demonstration was like their micro "sample", when it wasn't, and trying to link it to the Government ("Labour Councillor"), with demands such as (Tousi) "why won't the police arrest them?" (how the fuck does Twat Tousi know they won't?). They are then pushing narratives such as the fake "two tier policing", in the hope that useful idiots will jump straight from one to the other without thinking and build their sectarian movement.
Have they even reported the alleged crime?
Looking briefly at this part of the protest, it is organised by a likely SWP front group "Stand Up to Racism", who like Reform UK and other groups are fishing to exploit current events for their own political purposes.
The police are positive about the peacefulness of the Walthamstow protest. (Caveat: unless there are multiple protests, which I doubt.)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c623g0xnrero
It's a little ... weird.
https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/campaigns/court-reform/whats-changing/court-closures
PB lawyers, what would he get charged with for this one?
Still within "they stole the election" territory.
Need a 55/42/3
Which admittedly sounds like a Nick Palmer holiday…
It’s clear incitement to violence, indeed it is so clear I wonder if it is now permissible even to share the video!
It’s a test for Sir Kir. Bang up all the far right rioters indeed. But treat all sides equally. And the fact he is an elected politician makes it worse
"Immigration - down! Growth - up! Fascists - defeated!"
It's the most obvious example of how the Tories machine gunned their own foot in the run up to the election and salted their legacy until the next one.
If Governments make you feel richer most other issues are glossed over.
Any genuine converts are welcome.
I’m just pleased that your religion nowadays is essentially powerless, no longer able to torture and condemn and murder and burn people who are slightly eccentric or independently minded or who otherwise don’t sign up to your almost-prehistoric nonsense, as has happened to so many unfortunate souls in times past.
It's pathetic, feeble, dumb and dangerous.
https://x.com/guidofawkes/status/1821513834164621719?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
Shit.
I'm in big trouble.
* I admit nothing
A reminder of the biggest issues in the run up to the election:
Economy 50%
Health 50%
Immigration 40%
Environment 24%
Housing 24%
+ plus stuff less than 20% like defence, tax (!), crime
https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/24505054.live-five-sentenced-hartlepool-violent-disorder/
First 2 got 26 months each..
It seems a lost and impossible golden age, an epoch of unparalleled innocence, that reads like a dream of a fairy tale
The claim that he is suggesting it for Tommy-Robinson-ites is only afaics in the text added by the likes of Tousi or others.
They go into "Free Palestine" chants, which is nearly clipped out at the end, and there being Palestine flags, which are also neatly clipped out. Is he talking about the IDF?
Where's the rest of the clip to let the viewer make a reasoned judgement?
Adds: I see the Councillor has already been suspended.
https://www.largsandmillportnews.com/news/20266847.ayrshire---company-insist-cable-plant-will-bring-900-jobs-hunterston/?utm_source=ground.news&utm_medium=referral
Visa requirements for skilled workers in IT, telecommunications and engineering to come to Britain to fill jobs could be tightened up
https://x.com/JaneMayerNYer/status/1821510748968820954
The only party that could claim to actually be tough on immigration is Reform.
Conservatives support the family too, they may not be socialists but they are not laissez faire economic liberals either. Plus now it is the middle class having lower birth rates than the working class if anything as graduate women delay childbirth for careers first