In 1974 I was on the UK/Ireland desk in the OECD's Department of Economics, writing about and forecasting the UK economy. But I couldn't vote in the October general election that year, being abroad.
Robert Jenrick has vowed to lead the Conservative Party away from “needless drama” and avoid picking fights on Twitter, in a veiled criticism of Kemi Badenoch
Jenrick has vowed to avoid picking fights by picking a fight with his rival. Makes sense. 🤷♂️
In 1974 I was on the UK/Ireland desk in the OECD's Department of Economics, writing about and forecasting the UK economy. But I couldn't vote in the October general election that year, being abroad.
I was walking, and talking. Not certain if I'd mastered reading yet. Definitely a long way from being allowed to vote.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
I remember the 90s. People got mugged in broad daylight all the time. We look back on it as a golden age. People rioted regularly too. Your first paragraph is belied by data, including the BCS which is immune from crime recording biases.
Your later paragraphs - about the seeming economic death spiral we’ve entered, essentially ever since the 2008 financial crisis - are more on point.
People also forget that certain crimes - like burglary - have almost entirely disappeared in the last forty years.
They have?
So when I was woken up and went downstairs and found someone in my house whom I came face-to-face with before he ran out the back door (which had the key in it on the inside, he'd crowbarred open the kitchen window making a clattering noise which is what had woken me up) - what crime is that classed as?
My parents still live in the address where I was born. Burgled five times when I was a child - once we interrupted it in process. Hasn't happened in twenty years. The area has not improved socially otherwise.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
Social mobility is likely a lot easier in Hartlepool than London because of housing affordability.
Similarly I walked past the Wath Holiday Inn a few weeks before one of the riots took place there - the whole area is much improved with new housing estates, nature reserves, leisure facilities and trendy bars.
I'm curious as to what you term by 'a career and decent salary' actually is. £50k, £75k, £100k ?
I do enjoy reading about the urban squalor though as it allows me to appreciate the comfortable affluence I, and most of the people I know, have.
I'm sure these lads will tell you what a hotbed of social mobility and opportunity Hartlepool is.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
Social mobility is likely a lot easier in Hartlepool than London because of housing affordability.
Similarly I walked past the Wath Holiday Inn a few weeks before one of the riots took place there - the whole area is much improved with new housing estates, nature reserves, leisure facilities and trendy bars.
I'm curious as to what you term by 'a career and decent salary' actually is. £50k, £75k, £100k ?
I do enjoy reading about the urban squalor though as it allows me to appreciate the comfortable affluence I, and most of the people I know, have.
I think this is one of those cases where they slightly hackneyed stat applies: ask people whether they are optimistic about the UK, many will say no, but ask if they're optimistic about their personal circumstances and they'll say yes.
I think this is in part doom-mongering (on topic I find 1974 an excellent palette cleanser when getting too maudlin - at least we're not yet at the 3-day week); in part I think kyf and others' experiences and these stats reflect the increasing individualism in the UK - individual circumstances might be getting better but the public realm is not.
It's why I quite liked the theme of collectivism running through Starmer's conference speech. Which might just be hot air, but I'm hoping not.
Something doesn't compute. They're the most talented side on the planet and freed from the dead hand of Southgate were going to win match after match after match.
Something doesn't compute. They're the most talented side on the planet and freed from the dead hand of Southgate were going to win match after match after match.
Robert Jenrick has vowed to lead the Conservative Party away from “needless drama” and avoid picking fights on Twitter, in a veiled criticism of Kemi Badenoch
Jenrick has vowed to avoid picking fights by picking a fight with his rival. Makes sense. 🤷♂️
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
I remember the 90s. People got mugged in broad daylight all the time. We look back on it as a golden age. People rioted regularly too. Your first paragraph is belied by data, including the BCS which is immune from crime recording biases.
Your later paragraphs - about the seeming economic death spiral we’ve entered, essentially ever since the 2008 financial crisis - are more on point.
People also forget that certain crimes - like burglary - have almost entirely disappeared in the last forty years.
They have?
So when I was woken up and went downstairs and found someone in my house whom I came face-to-face with before he ran out the back door (which had the key in it on the inside, he'd crowbarred open the kitchen window making a clattering noise which is what had woken me up) - what crime is that classed as?
My parents still live in the address where I was born. Burgled five times when I was a child - once we interrupted it in process. Hasn't happened in twenty years. The area has not improved socially otherwise.
I have been burgled twice, the last time was 1992. It really is a much less frequent occurrence.
I think that there is some truth that it's portable devices that are more nickable. There really isn't a market for stolen household goods like TVs and stereos etc.
Something doesn't compute. They're the most talented side on the planet and freed from the dead hand of Southgate were going to win match after match after match.
Results don't lie. We are not the most talented side on the planet.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
Social mobility is likely a lot easier in Hartlepool than London because of housing affordability.
Similarly I walked past the Wath Holiday Inn a few weeks before one of the riots took place there - the whole area is much improved with new housing estates, nature reserves, leisure facilities and trendy bars.
I'm curious as to what you term by 'a career and decent salary' actually is. £50k, £75k, £100k ?
I do enjoy reading about the urban squalor though as it allows me to appreciate the comfortable affluence I, and most of the people I know, have.
I'm sure these lads will tell you what a hotbed of social mobility and opportunity Hartlepool is.
What matters is whether the people who want to improve their socioeconomic status by improving their skillset and working hard can do so.
Because this sort of rioting always breaks out in places that are hotbeds of social mobility?
No, it breaks out where there are scum, likely drunken scum, who want a fight.
Its why there are disturbances on weekend evenings in town centres.
Given that you were just bewailing that London is full of muggers, shoplifters and doorway shitters you must think that London is fast undergoing societal collapse.
Or are those attributes of 'the last place where you can get a career and decent salary' ?
I'd rather have the affordable housing even if it does mean a riot a few miles away every few years.
Because without affordable housing you don't have socioeconomic mobility, you have wage slavery.
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
What on earth did he do that was treasonous ?
Felonious, as adjudicated thus far. (And under US law, attempting to stage a coup isn’t treason.)
But his dealings with both Russia and Saudi Arabia are potentially treasonous.
Attempted to stage a coup? Are you out of your mind? Sore loser, yes.
I completely fail to see why the ‘patriotic’ right continually talks Britain down. I do not recognise the crime addled country that is portrayed. I had last weekend out in Liverpool, pub crawling and eating out and the whole place was literally buzzing. Nowhere felt intimidating. Just a cracking place to wander round and spend money. I work in Telford, the place has its ups and downs but again, generally it’s a pretty decent place to live and most folk rub along together fine.
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
What on earth did he do that was treasonous ?
Try to prevent a democratic election result being declared.
By asking people to peacefully protest?
"I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."
If he was going to have a coup, as implied by another poster, you know him being the president of the USA and all, you think he might have managed more than that weirdo with the animal skin and a staff. You know, like maybe some weapons? A few tanks. A few friendly senior military and civilian police forces?
I completely fail to see why the ‘patriotic’ right continually talks Britain down. I do not recognise the crime addled country that is portrayed. I had last weekend out in Liverpool, pub crawling and eating out and the whole place was literally buzzing. Nowhere felt intimidating. Just a cracking place to wander round and spend money. I work in Telford, the place has its ups and downs but again, generally it’s a pretty decent place to live and most folk rub along together fine.
Indeed. I'm in London, somewhere a couple here portray as some den of villainy. Crime is the lowest I can remember. I feel safer than ever. The city is also cleaner than any time since I was born, or since my parents were born.
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
What on earth did he do that was treasonous ?
Try to prevent a democratic election result being declared.
By asking people to peacefully protest?
"I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."
If he was going to have a coup, as implied by another poster, you know him being the president of the USA and all, you think he might have managed more than that weirdo with the animal skin and a staff. You know, like maybe some weapons? A few tanks. A few friendly senior military and civilian police forces?
Not just by violence. If he had conceded defeat gracefully (stop laughing at the back!) then America would be in a much better place. Trump might even have been miles ahead in his campaign this year.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
Social mobility is likely a lot easier in Hartlepool than London because of housing affordability.
Similarly I walked past the Wath Holiday Inn a few weeks before one of the riots took place there - the whole area is much improved with new housing estates, nature reserves, leisure facilities and trendy bars.
I'm curious as to what you term by 'a career and decent salary' actually is. £50k, £75k, £100k ?
I do enjoy reading about the urban squalor though as it allows me to appreciate the comfortable affluence I, and most of the people I know, have.
I'm sure these lads will tell you what a hotbed of social mobility and opportunity Hartlepool is.
What matters is whether the people who want to improve their socioeconomic status by improving their skillset and working hard can do so.
But the statistics show that the opportunities there are less good, as per my link above.
Opportunities for what ?
Getting a skillset ? Getting a job ? Getting a house ?
Depending on what an individual wants opportunities vary from place to place.
You'll likely have more opportunities for a niche career in London but its unlikely that would give you the same opportunities to buy a house.
Sure, but if you buy a house in Hartlepool you are not just buying a home you are stunting your own social mobility. That's what the statistics show.
We cannot fix these problems if we refuse to acknowledge them.
That depends upon how social mobile you want to be.
Once you've got the skillset, job and house you've done pretty well.
Now you can get a better skillset, job and house but that depends not only on available opportunities but also on how much you want it and how much intrinsic ability you have.
No matter how many opportunities there are, not everyone can reach the top, earn £100k or maximise their potential.
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
What on earth did he do that was treasonous ?
Felonious, as adjudicated thus far. (And under US law, attempting to stage a coup isn’t treason.)
But his dealings with both Russia and Saudi Arabia are potentially treasonous.
Attempted to stage a coup? Are you out of your mind? Sore loser, yes.
I completely fail to see why the ‘patriotic’ right continually talks Britain down. I do not recognise the crime addled country that is portrayed. I had last weekend out in Liverpool, pub crawling and eating out and the whole place was literally buzzing. Nowhere felt intimidating. Just a cracking place to wander round and spend money. I work in Telford, the place has its ups and downs but again, generally it’s a pretty decent place to live and most folk rub along together fine.
Indeed. I'm in London, somewhere a couple here portray as some den of villainy. Crime is the lowest I can remember. I feel safer than ever. The city is also cleaner than any time since I was born, or since my parents were born.
Leicester city centre is a bit more mixed. Several major shops have closed or moved to Fosse park at motorway junction. On the other hand the night time economy is thriving. There are more homeless in doorways, but less random violence. I would say it is safer at night than when I moved here 3 decades ago.
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
What on earth did he do that was treasonous ?
Try to prevent a democratic election result being declared.
By asking people to peacefully protest?
"I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."
If he was going to have a coup, as implied by another poster, you know him being the president of the USA and all, you think he might have managed more than that weirdo with the animal skin and a staff. You know, like maybe some weapons? A few tanks. A few friendly senior military and civilian police forces?
He did not 'ask people to peacefully protest.' He incited a riot to try and overturn the result of an election he had lost because he was emotionally hurt at being rejected.
Among other things, he also tried to falsify election returns and made threats to senior officials including his own vice-president.
Anyone who thinks that doesn't amount to an attempted coup has either not bothered to look at what happened or is so incredibly stupid they would pay $44 billion for Twitter.
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
What on earth did he do that was treasonous ?
Try to prevent a democratic election result being declared.
By asking people to peacefully protest?
"I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."
If he was going to have a coup, as implied by another poster, you know him being the president of the USA and all, you think he might have managed more than that weirdo with the animal skin and a staff. You know, like maybe some weapons? A few tanks. A few friendly senior military and civilian police forces?
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
At last we're starting to get some flesh on the "hard right" Government meme.
It's a strong law-and-order Government - now, that can work in places like Dubai and Singapore but how would that operate in Britain or even London?
How many Police Officers would you need to enforce the kind of strict law and order policies those advocating "hard right" solutions would want - how many judges, how much extra prison capacity, how many extra Police stations? Who pays for all this and from where?
I completely fail to see why the ‘patriotic’ right continually talks Britain down. I do not recognise the crime addled country that is portrayed. I had last weekend out in Liverpool, pub crawling and eating out and the whole place was literally buzzing. Nowhere felt intimidating. Just a cracking place to wander round and spend money. I work in Telford, the place has its ups and downs but again, generally it’s a pretty decent place to live and most folk rub along together fine.
Indeed. I'm in London, somewhere a couple here portray as some den of villainy. Crime is the lowest I can remember. I feel safer than ever. The city is also cleaner than any time since I was born, or since my parents were born.
Likewise - in places the public realm is looking a bit tired and in need some money being spent on it, but no worse than the late 80s or early 90s (also after an extended period of Tory government; there is a pattern here). I'm not old enough to remember the 70s properly, but anecdotally that wasn't great either. The one obvious difference between my youth and now is the number of homeless on the streets.
I feel safe wherever I go - and I live in one of the less fashionable outer London suburbs - admittedly I don't venture into inner city estates but I didn't do that 30 years ago either. Perhaps those Londoners who live in terror of your lives could let me know where those places are, so I can keep clear.
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
What on earth did he do that was treasonous ?
Thanks for the reply.
I'd identify at least four areas I would regard as treasonous to the USA:
1- The Jan 6 insurrection to overthrow the 2020 Election, and the violence Trump unleashed. 2 - His attempts to manipulate the 2020 Election result by corrupting the electoral system. 3 - All the things around illegal retention of Classified documents, including deceiving the FBI when they eventually came to recover them, and what he did with them / the plans he had to do with them. 4 - His financial and other involvement with foreign Governments whilst in office as President.
I could perhaps add 5, his corrupting of the Supreme Court, but that is not really out yet,
He's facing charges on all of these, except I think 4. I've lost count of how many charges he now faces.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
Social mobility is likely a lot easier in Hartlepool than London because of housing affordability.
Similarly I walked past the Wath Holiday Inn a few weeks before one of the riots took place there - the whole area is much improved with new housing estates, nature reserves, leisure facilities and trendy bars.
I'm curious as to what you term by 'a career and decent salary' actually is. £50k, £75k, £100k ?
I do enjoy reading about the urban squalor though as it allows me to appreciate the comfortable affluence I, and most of the people I know, have.
I think this is one of those cases where they slightly hackneyed stat applies: ask people whether they are optimistic about the UK, many will say no, but ask if they're optimistic about their personal circumstances and they'll say yes.
I think this is in part doom-mongering (on topic I find 1974 an excellent palette cleanser when getting too maudlin - at least we're not yet at the 3-day week); in part I think kyf and others' experiences and these stats reflect the increasing individualism in the UK - individual circumstances might be getting better but the public realm is not.
It's why I quite liked the theme of collectivism running through Starmer's conference speech. Which might just be hot air, but I'm hoping not.
We do tend to notice things which have declined easier, or just fear that they have.
Whereas the bad things of the past are forgotten about or even romanticised.
In 1974 for example there was pretty continual violence from football hooliganism, industrial disputes or terrorism.
There was perhaps less individualism back then but certainly more 'them and us' between different social groups.
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
What on earth did he do that was treasonous ?
Try to prevent a democratic election result being declared.
By asking people to peacefully protest?
"I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."
If he was going to have a coup, as implied by another poster, you know him being the president of the USA and all, you think he might have managed more than that weirdo with the animal skin and a staff. You know, like maybe some weapons? A few tanks. A few friendly senior military and civilian police forces?
He asked the Vice President not to certify legitimate election results. (The VP fortunately said no.) He asked the Department of Justice to come up with bogus claims of election fraud. (Fortunately, they refused.) He organised fake slates of electors. He fired the Secretary of Defense, the DoD Chief of Staff, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) director, CISA's deputy director, CISA's assistant director for cybersecurity, etc. The Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy and General James McConville, the Army chief of staff, had to issue a statement saying, "There is no role for the US military in determining the outcome of an American election".
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
I remember the 90s. People got mugged in broad daylight all the time. We look back on it as a golden age. People rioted regularly too. Your first paragraph is belied by data, including the BCS which is immune from crime recording biases.
Your later paragraphs - about the seeming economic death spiral we’ve entered, essentially ever since the 2008 financial crisis - are more on point.
People also forget that certain crimes - like burglary - have almost entirely disappeared in the last forty years.
They have?
So when I was woken up and went downstairs and found someone in my house whom I came face-to-face with before he ran out the back door (which had the key in it on the inside, he'd crowbarred open the kitchen window making a clattering noise which is what had woken me up) - what crime is that classed as?
I was guilty of exaggeration, for sure, but the stats from the BCS show a really dramatic decline in burglary levels - from 1.7 million in 1993 to 196,000 in the year ending in March 2023.
they don't report them
Exactly. Ditto muggings, "Asian gang rape", phone theft, etc
All this shit is known to be "insoluble" so no one reports it, what is the point
That. Is. Not. How. The. British. Crime. Survey. Works.
Crime has declined overall. Largely, I’d say, due to improved security on most forms of property, a huge surge in CCTV, and there no longer being no-go areas for police in inner cities as there were in the 1960s to the 90s, meaning violent crime is harder to commit with impunity.
But some crimes are rising. In broad terms it seems that violent mugging is well down but teen mugging of iPhones is persistently high, burglary is down hugely but car theft of certain models has had a mini boom, bike theft is down but remains a problem, financial fraud and online scams are sky high and rising, alcohol related crimes like drunk driving and random fights at closing time are well down, drug dealing and use are steady as she goes, tax evasion, forgery, insider trading, bribery and corruption are still problems but less so than a few decades ago.
Edit: oh and shoplifting. Seems to be a fashionable crime these days.
People all remember the bits that are getting worse, and forget that in the 1980s, car stereos got nicked all the time.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
Social mobility is likely a lot easier in Hartlepool than London because of housing affordability.
Similarly I walked past the Wath Holiday Inn a few weeks before one of the riots took place there - the whole area is much improved with new housing estates, nature reserves, leisure facilities and trendy bars.
I'm curious as to what you term by 'a career and decent salary' actually is. £50k, £75k, £100k ?
I do enjoy reading about the urban squalor though as it allows me to appreciate the comfortable affluence I, and most of the people I know, have.
I'm sure these lads will tell you what a hotbed of social mobility and opportunity Hartlepool is.
What matters is whether the people who want to improve their socioeconomic status by improving their skillset and working hard can do so.
Because this sort of rioting always breaks out in places that are hotbeds of social mobility?
No, it breaks out where there are scum, likely drunken scum, who want a fight.
Its why there are disturbances on weekend evenings in town centres.
Given that you were just bewailing that London is full of muggers, shoplifters and doorway shitters you must think that London is fast undergoing societal collapse.
Or are those attributes of 'the last place where you can get a career and decent salary' ?
I'd rather have the affordable housing even if it does mean a riot a few miles away every few years.
Because without affordable housing you don't have socioeconomic mobility, you have wage slavery.
There are two separate factors at play here, the doorway shitters and shoplifters of London feel tied to more recent immigration (the shitters and stealers I have witnessed do not look or speak like they were born here). See also the tent cities springing up around Park Lane. Not limited to London - See the numerous illegal immigrants busted in Bristol yesterday, living in a caravan city by the side of a motorway -https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyl65knxzxo
Then you have the left behind WWC types in the video I linked to previously. No job, no aspiration, no hope. As Foxy points out, sure housing is cheap, but opportunities for social mobility are zero. You live and die on benefits in the same sink estate.
The situation is horrible for both those groups of people. And speaks volumes about the UK's decline.
Then you have people like me who are educated and well off. But being asked to fund increasing amounts for benefits and so on, without seeing a corresponding rise in growth or even basic law and order. As per the watch thread the other day, you can't even wear anything nice on the streets without fear of being mugged. And, as I say, I'm a decently sized bloke, not a smallish woman who is at risk of far worse.
Low level crime like graffiti, broken windows, shoplifting, street shitting, drug dealing etc is a blight that affects us all.
But as oft pointed out, the richest 1% or so make up 30% of the UK's income tax take. People like Leon are rightfully suggesting that maybe either clean it up or the richest people in our society will justifiably think maybe they can get better value for money elsewhere?
I personally have zero faith that if I pay more in tax, I will enjoy a better standard of living. And that is the problem. If Reeves told me CGT was going up to 39% tomorrow but also I'd live in a clean and orderly place where my mates don't have to meet their girlfriends at the tube and walk them home after dark, I'd consider it. Instead I'm being asked to pay ever more taxes against a backdrop of continual decay.
Which brings us back to Leon's original point, the doom spiral. Things get worse, more rich and educated people leave. Tax take declines, the economy falters. So even more people with the ability to get out leave.
It isn't just London that feels trapped in that doom spiral, it's the entire country. As I say, it largely happened on the Tories watch. I'm just not convinced Labour have the answer to it. Doubling my taxes to pay the train drivers on 70k a bit more isn't going to stop the low level decay. And Labour have absolutely no recipe for growth.
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
What on earth did he do that was treasonous ?
Try to prevent a democratic election result being declared.
By asking people to peacefully protest?
"I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."
If he was going to have a coup, as implied by another poster, you know him being the president of the USA and all, you think he might have managed more than that weirdo with the animal skin and a staff. You know, like maybe some weapons? A few tanks. A few friendly senior military and civilian police forces?
He did not 'ask people to peacefully protest.' He incited a riot to try and overturn the result of an election he had lost because he was emotionally hurt at being rejected.
Among other things, he also tried to falsify election returns and made threats to senior officials including his own vice-president.
Anyone who thinks that doesn't amount to an attempted coup has either not bothered to look at what happened or is so incredibly stupid they would pay $44 billion for Twitter.
I completely fail to see why the ‘patriotic’ right continually talks Britain down. I do not recognise the crime addled country that is portrayed. I had last weekend out in Liverpool, pub crawling and eating out and the whole place was literally buzzing. Nowhere felt intimidating. Just a cracking place to wander round and spend money. I work in Telford, the place has its ups and downs but again, generally it’s a pretty decent place to live and most folk rub along together fine.
Indeed. I'm in London, somewhere a couple here portray as some den of villainy. Crime is the lowest I can remember. I feel safer than ever. The city is also cleaner than any time since I was born, or since my parents were born.
I was in London a couple of months ago and it was fine.
Admittedly I was around Covent Garden and Trafalgar Square.
Perhaps kyf's muggers, shoplifters and doorway shitters are in the suburbs.
I completely fail to see why the ‘patriotic’ right continually talks Britain down. I do not recognise the crime addled country that is portrayed. I had last weekend out in Liverpool, pub crawling and eating out and the whole place was literally buzzing. Nowhere felt intimidating. Just a cracking place to wander round and spend money. I work in Telford, the place has its ups and downs but again, generally it’s a pretty decent place to live and most folk rub along together fine.
Indeed. I'm in London, somewhere a couple here portray as some den of villainy. Crime is the lowest I can remember. I feel safer than ever. The city is also cleaner than any time since I was born, or since my parents were born.
Leicester city centre is a bit more mixed. Several major shops have closed or moved to Fosse park at motorway junction. On the other hand the night time economy is thriving. There are more homeless in doorways, but less random violence. I would say it is safer at night than when I moved here 3 decades ago.
I suspect every town and city has more, better and more varied bars and restaurants than it did three decades ago.
Anyway - Northern lights visible in suburban South Manchester.
Actually only just visible with the naked eye. But visible nonetheless. Feel very happy now. Didn't see them on a week in Lapland - only needed to go 100 yards from my hous3, it turned out.
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
What on earth did he do that was treasonous ?
Thanks for the reply.
I'd identify at least four areas I would regard as treasonous to the USA:
1- The Jan 6 insurrection to overthrow the 2020 Election, and the violence Trump unleashed. 2 - His attempts to manipulate the 2020 Election result by corrupting the electoral system. 3 - All the things around illegal retention of Classified documents, including deceiving the FBI when they eventually came to recover them, and what he did with them / the plans he had to do with them. 4 - His financial and other involvement with foreign Governments whilst in office as President.
I could perhaps add 5, his corrupting of the Supreme Court, but that is not really out yet,
He's facing charges on all of these, except I think 4. I've lost count of how many charges he now faces.
Personally, I think (1) is pretty weak sauce. Trump didn't lead the protestors into the Capitol demanding the head of Mike Pence. He might have hoped they'd do it, but he did not direct it, and it was hardly a coup attempt.
What was - though - an incredibly serious crime was the creation of slates of fake electors, and the scheme to have the Vice President recognize them.
That was genuinely an attempt to overthrow a democratic election. How much more treasonous can you get?
I completely fail to see why the ‘patriotic’ right continually talks Britain down. I do not recognise the crime addled country that is portrayed. I had last weekend out in Liverpool, pub crawling and eating out and the whole place was literally buzzing. Nowhere felt intimidating. Just a cracking place to wander round and spend money. I work in Telford, the place has its ups and downs but again, generally it’s a pretty decent place to live and most folk rub along together fine.
I completely fail to see why the ‘patriotic’ right continually talks Britain down. I do not recognise the crime addled country that is portrayed. I had last weekend out in Liverpool, pub crawling and eating out and the whole place was literally buzzing. Nowhere felt intimidating. Just a cracking place to wander round and spend money. I work in Telford, the place has its ups and downs but again, generally it’s a pretty decent place to live and most folk rub along together fine.
Indeed. I'm in London, somewhere a couple here portray as some den of villainy. Crime is the lowest I can remember. I feel safer than ever. The city is also cleaner than any time since I was born, or since my parents were born.
I was in London a couple of months ago and it was fine.
Admittedly I was around Covent Garden and Trafalgar Square.
Perhaps kyf's muggers, shoplifters and doorway shitters are in the suburbs.
Around our apartment (Shaftesbury Avenue, by Forbidden Planet), things have definitely gotten worse in the last five years. There are a lot of homeless heroin / crack addicts getting fucked up in office doorways. Having chatted to them ("would you mind terribly shooting up in the doorway to the office next door rather than here?"), they're almost entirely British. One chap, with a nice dog, was about 40 (but looked 60) and used to be a plasterer, and then fell out with his wife, became homeless, and then discovered heroin.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
I remember the 90s. People got mugged in broad daylight all the time. We look back on it as a golden age. People rioted regularly too. Your first paragraph is belied by data, including the BCS which is immune from crime recording biases.
Your later paragraphs - about the seeming economic death spiral we’ve entered, essentially ever since the 2008 financial crisis - are more on point.
People also forget that certain crimes - like burglary - have almost entirely disappeared in the last forty years.
They have?
So when I was woken up and went downstairs and found someone in my house whom I came face-to-face with before he ran out the back door (which had the key in it on the inside, he'd crowbarred open the kitchen window making a clattering noise which is what had woken me up) - what crime is that classed as?
I was guilty of exaggeration, for sure, but the stats from the BCS show a really dramatic decline in burglary levels - from 1.7 million in 1993 to 196,000 in the year ending in March 2023.
they don't report them
Exactly. Ditto muggings, "Asian gang rape", phone theft, etc
All this shit is known to be "insoluble" so no one reports it, what is the point
That. Is. Not. How. The. British. Crime. Survey. Works.
This is PoliticalBullshitting.com
PoliticalAccurateInformation.com - turn at the pub and down the road a bit.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
Social mobility is likely a lot easier in Hartlepool than London because of housing affordability.
Similarly I walked past the Wath Holiday Inn a few weeks before one of the riots took place there - the whole area is much improved with new housing estates, nature reserves, leisure facilities and trendy bars.
I'm curious as to what you term by 'a career and decent salary' actually is. £50k, £75k, £100k ?
I do enjoy reading about the urban squalor though as it allows me to appreciate the comfortable affluence I, and most of the people I know, have.
I'm sure these lads will tell you what a hotbed of social mobility and opportunity Hartlepool is.
What matters is whether the people who want to improve their socioeconomic status by improving their skillset and working hard can do so.
Because this sort of rioting always breaks out in places that are hotbeds of social mobility?
No, it breaks out where there are scum, likely drunken scum, who want a fight.
Its why there are disturbances on weekend evenings in town centres.
Given that you were just bewailing that London is full of muggers, shoplifters and doorway shitters you must think that London is fast undergoing societal collapse.
Or are those attributes of 'the last place where you can get a career and decent salary' ?
I'd rather have the affordable housing even if it does mean a riot a few miles away every few years.
Because without affordable housing you don't have socioeconomic mobility, you have wage slavery.
There are two separate factors at play here, the doorway shitters and shoplifters of London feel tied to more recent immigration (the shitters and stealers I have witnessed do not look or speak like they were born here). See also the tent cities springing up around Park Lane. Not limited to London - See the numerous illegal immigrants busted in Bristol yesterday, living in a caravan city by the side of a motorway -https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyl65knxzxo
Then you have the left behind WWC types in the video I linked to previously. No job, no aspiration, no hope. As Foxy points out, sure housing is cheap, but opportunities for social mobility are zero. You live and die on benefits in the same sink estate.
The situation is horrible for both those groups of people. And speaks volumes about the UK's decline.
Then you have people like me who are educated and well off. But being asked to fund increasing amounts for benefits and so on, without seeing a corresponding rise in growth or even basic law and order. As per the watch thread the other day, you can't even wear anything nice on the streets without fear of being mugged. And, as I say, I'm a decently sized bloke, not a smallish woman who is at risk of far worse.
Low level crime like graffiti, broken windows, shoplifting, street shitting, drug dealing etc is a blight that affects us all.
But as oft pointed out, the richest 1% or so make up 30% of the UK's income tax take. People like Leon are rightfully suggesting that maybe either clean it up or the richest people in our society will justifiably think maybe they can get better value for money elsewhere?
I personally have zero faith that if I pay more in tax, I will enjoy a better standard of living. And that is the problem. If Reeves told me CGT was going up to 39% tomorrow but also I'd live in a clean and orderly place where my mates don't have to meet their girlfriends at the tube and walk them home after dark, I'd consider it. Instead I'm being asked to pay ever more taxes against a backdrop of continual decay.
Which brings us back to Leon's original point, the doom spiral. Things get worse, more rich and educated people leave. Tax take declines, the economy falters. So even more people with the ability to get out leave.
It isn't just London that feels trapped in that doom spiral, it's the entire country. As I say, it largely happened on the Tories watch. I'm just not convinced Labour have the answer to it. Doubling my taxes to pay the train drivers on 70k a bit more isn't going to stop the low level decay. And Labour have absolutely no recipe for growth.
Sorry but that all reads like a conspiratorialist racist diatribe unmoored from reality. Maybe unplug from Twitter a bit and come back to earth.
There's things wrong with this country that need fixing, that too many are trapped working to pay rent and can't get an affordable home of their own being number one of them, but that's not remotely matching this third world bullshit you're spouting.
No jobs or aspirations? We have almost record low unemployment in this country.
Can't go out without being mugged? Don't know what its like where you are but I'll quite comfortably walk the streets with my phone out with no big fear of being mugged.
The country is not in a doom spiral. If you think it is, it says more about you than it does the country.
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
What on earth did he do that was treasonous ?
Thanks for the reply.
I'd identify at least four areas I would regard as treasonous to the USA:
1- The Jan 6 insurrection to overthrow the 2020 Election, and the violence Trump unleashed. 2 - His attempts to manipulate the 2020 Election result by corrupting the electoral system. 3 - All the things around illegal retention of Classified documents, including deceiving the FBI when they eventually came to recover them, and what he did with them / the plans he had to do with them. 4 - His financial and other involvement with foreign Governments whilst in office as President.
I could perhaps add 5, his corrupting of the Supreme Court, but that is not really out yet,
He's facing charges on all of these, except I think 4. I've lost count of how many charges he now faces.
Personally, I think (1) is pretty weak sauce. Trump didn't lead the protestors into the Capitol demanding the head of Mike Pence. He might have hoped they'd do it, but he did not direct it, and it was hardly a coup attempt.
What was - though - an incredibly serious crime was the creation of slates of fake electors, and the scheme to have the Vice President recognize them.
That was genuinely an attempt to overthrow a democratic election. How much more treasonous can you get?
That is literally a coup attempt. It’s not, under US law, ‘treason’.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
Social mobility is likely a lot easier in Hartlepool than London because of housing affordability.
Similarly I walked past the Wath Holiday Inn a few weeks before one of the riots took place there - the whole area is much improved with new housing estates, nature reserves, leisure facilities and trendy bars.
I'm curious as to what you term by 'a career and decent salary' actually is. £50k, £75k, £100k ?
I do enjoy reading about the urban squalor though as it allows me to appreciate the comfortable affluence I, and most of the people I know, have.
I'm sure these lads will tell you what a hotbed of social mobility and opportunity Hartlepool is.
What matters is whether the people who want to improve their socioeconomic status by improving their skillset and working hard can do so.
Because this sort of rioting always breaks out in places that are hotbeds of social mobility?
No, it breaks out where there are scum, likely drunken scum, who want a fight.
Its why there are disturbances on weekend evenings in town centres.
Given that you were just bewailing that London is full of muggers, shoplifters and doorway shitters you must think that London is fast undergoing societal collapse.
Or are those attributes of 'the last place where you can get a career and decent salary' ?
I'd rather have the affordable housing even if it does mean a riot a few miles away every few years.
Because without affordable housing you don't have socioeconomic mobility, you have wage slavery.
There are two separate factors at play here, the doorway shitters and shoplifters of London feel tied to more recent immigration (the shitters and stealers I have witnessed do not look or speak like they were born here). See also the tent cities springing up around Park Lane. Not limited to London - See the numerous illegal immigrants busted in Bristol yesterday, living in a caravan city by the side of a motorway -https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyl65knxzxo
Then you have the left behind WWC types in the video I linked to previously. No job, no aspiration, no hope. As Foxy points out, sure housing is cheap, but opportunities for social mobility are zero. You live and die on benefits in the same sink estate.
The situation is horrible for both those groups of people. And speaks volumes about the UK's decline.
Then you have people like me who are educated and well off. But being asked to fund increasing amounts for benefits and so on, without seeing a corresponding rise in growth or even basic law and order. As per the watch thread the other day, you can't even wear anything nice on the streets without fear of being mugged. And, as I say, I'm a decently sized bloke, not a smallish woman who is at risk of far worse.
Low level crime like graffiti, broken windows, shoplifting, street shitting, drug dealing etc is a blight that affects us all.
But as oft pointed out, the richest 1% or so make up 30% of the UK's income tax take. People like Leon are rightfully suggesting that maybe either clean it up or the richest people in our society will justifiably think maybe they can get better value for money elsewhere?
I personally have zero faith that if I pay more in tax, I will enjoy a better standard of living. And that is the problem. If Reeves told me CGT was going up to 39% tomorrow but also I'd live in a clean and orderly place where my mates don't have to meet their girlfriends at the tube and walk them home after dark, I'd consider it. Instead I'm being asked to pay ever more taxes against a backdrop of continual decay.
Which brings us back to Leon's original point, the doom spiral. Things get worse, more rich and educated people leave. Tax take declines, the economy falters. So even more people with the ability to get out leave.
It isn't just London that feels trapped in that doom spiral, it's the entire country. As I say, it largely happened on the Tories watch. I'm just not convinced Labour have the answer to it. Doubling my taxes to pay the train drivers on 70k a bit more isn't going to stop the low level decay. And Labour have absolutely no recipe for growth.
I was mugged on Denmark Hill train station in April 1998. No problems living in London in the last quarter of a century. I simply do not recognise the picture you paint. I'm rich and educated and don't want to live anywhere else.
Anyway - Northern lights visible in suburban South Manchester.
Actually only just visible with the naked eye. But visible nonetheless. Feel very happy now. Didn't see them on a week in Lapland - only needed to go 100 yards from my hous3, it turned out.
We've got them in north London too. Well, only visible through the phone* camera and even then faint, but definitely something.
* Which no-one snatched off me in the street today, or any preceding day since I got it. Maybe the thieves don't want a Samsung!
I completely fail to see why the ‘patriotic’ right continually talks Britain down. I do not recognise the crime addled country that is portrayed. I had last weekend out in Liverpool, pub crawling and eating out and the whole place was literally buzzing. Nowhere felt intimidating. Just a cracking place to wander round and spend money. I work in Telford, the place has its ups and downs but again, generally it’s a pretty decent place to live and most folk rub along together fine.
Indeed. I'm in London, somewhere a couple here portray as some den of villainy. Crime is the lowest I can remember. I feel safer than ever. The city is also cleaner than any time since I was born, or since my parents were born.
Likewise - in places the public realm is looking a bit tired and in need some money being spent on it, but no worse than the late 80s or early 90s (also after an extended period of Tory government; there is a pattern here). I'm not old enough to remember the 70s properly, but anecdotally that wasn't great either. The one obvious difference between my youth and now is the number of homeless on the streets.
I feel safe wherever I go - and I live in one of the less fashionable outer London suburbs - admittedly I don't venture into inner city estates but I didn't do that 30 years ago either. Perhaps those Londoners who live in terror of your lives could let me know where those places are, so I can keep clear.
I'd say Manchester, Stockport, Salford, Sale, Stretford and Altrincham are all far better than they were in 2010. Bury a bit better. Bolton worse.
I completely fail to see why the ‘patriotic’ right continually talks Britain down. I do not recognise the crime addled country that is portrayed. I had last weekend out in Liverpool, pub crawling and eating out and the whole place was literally buzzing. Nowhere felt intimidating. Just a cracking place to wander round and spend money. I work in Telford, the place has its ups and downs but again, generally it’s a pretty decent place to live and most folk rub along together fine.
Indeed. I'm in London, somewhere a couple here portray as some den of villainy. Crime is the lowest I can remember. I feel safer than ever. The city is also cleaner than any time since I was born, or since my parents were born.
Likewise - in places the public realm is looking a bit tired and in need some money being spent on it, but no worse than the late 80s or early 90s (also after an extended period of Tory government; there is a pattern here). I'm not old enough to remember the 70s properly, but anecdotally that wasn't great either. The one obvious difference between my youth and now is the number of homeless on the streets.
I feel safe wherever I go - and I live in one of the less fashionable outer London suburbs - admittedly I don't venture into inner city estates but I didn't do that 30 years ago either. Perhaps those Londoners who live in terror of your lives could let me know where those places are, so I can keep clear.
I do think that public spaces are more alienating than they used to be though. I recently had cause to go back to the doctor's surgery I used to bust as a child. Back then I remember carpets, pan pipe music, magazines and a play area. Now it was completely empty with beige walls and linoleum flooring. I'm sure this is all for good clinical reasons but with the rush of emergency patients it was just depressing.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
Social mobility is likely a lot easier in Hartlepool than London because of housing affordability.
Similarly I walked past the Wath Holiday Inn a few weeks before one of the riots took place there - the whole area is much improved with new housing estates, nature reserves, leisure facilities and trendy bars.
I'm curious as to what you term by 'a career and decent salary' actually is. £50k, £75k, £100k ?
I do enjoy reading about the urban squalor though as it allows me to appreciate the comfortable affluence I, and most of the people I know, have.
I'm sure these lads will tell you what a hotbed of social mobility and opportunity Hartlepool is.
What matters is whether the people who want to improve their socioeconomic status by improving their skillset and working hard can do so.
Because this sort of rioting always breaks out in places that are hotbeds of social mobility?
No, it breaks out where there are scum, likely drunken scum, who want a fight.
Its why there are disturbances on weekend evenings in town centres.
Given that you were just bewailing that London is full of muggers, shoplifters and doorway shitters you must think that London is fast undergoing societal collapse.
Or are those attributes of 'the last place where you can get a career and decent salary' ?
I'd rather have the affordable housing even if it does mean a riot a few miles away every few years.
Because without affordable housing you don't have socioeconomic mobility, you have wage slavery.
There are two separate factors at play here, the doorway shitters and shoplifters of London feel tied to more recent immigration (the shitters and stealers I have witnessed do not look or speak like they were born here). See also the tent cities springing up around Park Lane. Not limited to London - See the numerous illegal immigrants busted in Bristol yesterday, living in a caravan city by the side of a motorway -https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyl65knxzxo
Then you have the left behind WWC types in the video I linked to previously. No job, no aspiration, no hope. As Foxy points out, sure housing is cheap, but opportunities for social mobility are zero. You live and die on benefits in the same sink estate.
The situation is horrible for both those groups of people. And speaks volumes about the UK's decline.
Then you have people like me who are educated and well off. But being asked to fund increasing amounts for benefits and so on, without seeing a corresponding rise in growth or even basic law and order. As per the watch thread the other day, you can't even wear anything nice on the streets without fear of being mugged. And, as I say, I'm a decently sized bloke, not a smallish woman who is at risk of far worse.
Low level crime like graffiti, broken windows, shoplifting, street shitting, drug dealing etc is a blight that affects us all.
But as oft pointed out, the richest 1% or so make up 30% of the UK's income tax take. People like Leon are rightfully suggesting that maybe either clean it up or the richest people in our society will justifiably think maybe they can get better value for money elsewhere?
I personally have zero faith that if I pay more in tax, I will enjoy a better standard of living. And that is the problem. If Reeves told me CGT was going up to 39% tomorrow but also I'd live in a clean and orderly place where my mates don't have to meet their girlfriends at the tube and walk them home after dark, I'd consider it. Instead I'm being asked to pay ever more taxes against a backdrop of continual decay.
Which brings us back to Leon's original point, the doom spiral. Things get worse, more rich and educated people leave. Tax take declines, the economy falters. So even more people with the ability to get out leave.
It isn't just London that feels trapped in that doom spiral, it's the entire country. As I say, it largely happened on the Tories watch. I'm just not convinced Labour have the answer to it. Doubling my taxes to pay the train drivers on 70k a bit more isn't going to stop the low level decay. And Labour have absolutely no recipe for growth.
Then you have the left behind WWC types in the video I linked to previously. No job, no aspiration, no hope. As Foxy points out, sure housing is cheap, but opportunities for social mobility are zero. You live and die on benefits in the same sink estate.
So they need to get a skillset and get a job.
There is no social mobility without those.
And there are opportunities to get a skillset and a job, the best there have been since at least the 1960s.
And millions of people do get them and do get social mobility.
But scum who would rather commit crime than work don't have social mobility.
By the way, train drivers who have learned a skillset and got a job are an example of social mobility.
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
What on earth did he do that was treasonous ?
Thanks for the reply.
I'd identify at least four areas I would regard as treasonous to the USA:
1- The Jan 6 insurrection to overthrow the 2020 Election, and the violence Trump unleashed. 2 - His attempts to manipulate the 2020 Election result by corrupting the electoral system. 3 - All the things around illegal retention of Classified documents, including deceiving the FBI when they eventually came to recover them, and what he did with them / the plans he had to do with them. 4 - His financial and other involvement with foreign Governments whilst in office as President.
I could perhaps add 5, his corrupting of the Supreme Court, but that is not really out yet,
He's facing charges on all of these, except I think 4. I've lost count of how many charges he now faces.
1) if it was black people protesting doing exactly the same thing you would have had a CNN reporter declaring it “mostly peaceful”.
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
What on earth did he do that was treasonous ?
Thanks for the reply.
I'd identify at least four areas I would regard as treasonous to the USA:
1- The Jan 6 insurrection to overthrow the 2020 Election, and the violence Trump unleashed. 2 - His attempts to manipulate the 2020 Election result by corrupting the electoral system. 3 - All the things around illegal retention of Classified documents, including deceiving the FBI when they eventually came to recover them, and what he did with them / the plans he had to do with them. 4 - His financial and other involvement with foreign Governments whilst in office as President.
I could perhaps add 5, his corrupting of the Supreme Court, but that is not really out yet,
He's facing charges on all of these, except I think 4. I've lost count of how many charges he now faces.
1) if it was black people protesting doing exactly the same thing you would have had a CNN reporter declaring it “mostly peaceful”.
That's just blatant racism.
Trying to remember a crowd of black people burst into the US Congress, leading to multiple deaths, threatening to hang the Vice President, and CNN called it mostly peaceful. Drawing a blank.
I assume your Klan buddies have a list of times it happened, but in my reality it hasn't.
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
What on earth did he do that was treasonous ?
Thanks for the reply.
I'd identify at least four areas I would regard as treasonous to the USA:
1- The Jan 6 insurrection to overthrow the 2020 Election, and the violence Trump unleashed. 2 - His attempts to manipulate the 2020 Election result by corrupting the electoral system. 3 - All the things around illegal retention of Classified documents, including deceiving the FBI when they eventually came to recover them, and what he did with them / the plans he had to do with them. 4 - His financial and other involvement with foreign Governments whilst in office as President.
I could perhaps add 5, his corrupting of the Supreme Court, but that is not really out yet,
He's facing charges on all of these, except I think 4. I've lost count of how many charges he now faces.
Personally, I think (1) is pretty weak sauce. Trump didn't lead the protestors into the Capitol demanding the head of Mike Pence. He might have hoped they'd do it, but he did not direct it, and it was hardly a coup attempt.
What was - though - an incredibly serious crime was the creation of slates of fake electors, and the scheme to have the Vice President recognize them.
That was genuinely an attempt to overthrow a democratic election. How much more treasonous can you get?
That is literally a coup attempt. It’s not, under US law, ‘treason’.
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
What on earth did he do that was treasonous ?
Try to prevent a democratic election result being declared.
By asking people to peacefully protest?
"I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."
If he was going to have a coup, as implied by another poster, you know him being the president of the USA and all, you think he might have managed more than that weirdo with the animal skin and a staff. You know, like maybe some weapons? A few tanks. A few friendly senior military and civilian police forces?
He did not 'ask people to peacefully.' He incited a riot to try and overturn the result of an election he had lost because he was emotionally hurt at being rejected.
Among other things, he also tried to falsify election returns and made threats to senior officials including his own vice-president.
Anyone who thinks that doesn't amount to an attempted coup has either not bothered to look at what happened or is so incredibly stupid they would pay $44 billion for Twitter.
Literally literally literally asked people to peacefully and patriotically protest.
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
What on earth did he do that was treasonous ?
Thanks for the reply.
I'd identify at least four areas I would regard as treasonous to the USA:
1- The Jan 6 insurrection to overthrow the 2020 Election, and the violence Trump unleashed. 2 - His attempts to manipulate the 2020 Election result by corrupting the electoral system. 3 - All the things around illegal retention of Classified documents, including deceiving the FBI when they eventually came to recover them, and what he did with them / the plans he had to do with them. 4 - His financial and other involvement with foreign Governments whilst in office as President.
I could perhaps add 5, his corrupting of the Supreme Court, but that is not really out yet,
He's facing charges on all of these, except I think 4. I've lost count of how many charges he now faces.
1) if it was black people protesting doing exactly the same thing you would have had a CNN reporter declaring it “mostly peaceful”.
That's just blatant racism.
Trying to remember a crowd of black people burst into the US Congress, leading to multiple deaths, threatening to hang the Vice President, and CNN called it mostly peaceful. Drawing a blank.
I assume your Klan buddies have a list of times it happened, but in my reality it hasn't.
Yes, because we have lots of klan north of Manchester.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
Social mobility is likely a lot easier in Hartlepool than London because of housing affordability.
Similarly I walked past the Wath Holiday Inn a few weeks before one of the riots took place there - the whole area is much improved with new housing estates, nature reserves, leisure facilities and trendy bars.
I'm curious as to what you term by 'a career and decent salary' actually is. £50k, £75k, £100k ?
I do enjoy reading about the urban squalor though as it allows me to appreciate the comfortable affluence I, and most of the people I know, have.
I'm sure these lads will tell you what a hotbed of social mobility and opportunity Hartlepool is.
What matters is whether the people who want to improve their socioeconomic status by improving their skillset and working hard can do so.
Because this sort of rioting always breaks out in places that are hotbeds of social mobility?
No, it breaks out where there are scum, likely drunken scum, who want a fight.
Its why there are disturbances on weekend evenings in town centres.
Given that you were just bewailing that London is full of muggers, shoplifters and doorway shitters you must think that London is fast undergoing societal collapse.
Or are those attributes of 'the last place where you can get a career and decent salary' ?
I'd rather have the affordable housing even if it does mean a riot a few miles away every few years.
Because without affordable housing you don't have socioeconomic mobility, you have wage slavery.
There are two separate factors at play here, the doorway shitters and shoplifters of London feel tied to more recent immigration (the shitters and stealers I have witnessed do not look or speak like they were born here). See also the tent cities springing up around Park Lane. Not limited to London - See the numerous illegal immigrants busted in Bristol yesterday, living in a caravan city by the side of a motorway -https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyl65knxzxo
Then you have the left behind WWC types in the video I linked to previously. No job, no aspiration, no hope. As Foxy points out, sure housing is cheap, but opportunities for social mobility are zero. You live and die on benefits in the same sink estate.
The situation is horrible for both those groups of people. And speaks volumes about the UK's decline.
Then you have people like me who are educated and well off. But being asked to fund increasing amounts for benefits and so on, without seeing a corresponding rise in growth or even basic law and order. As per the watch thread the other day, you can't even wear anything nice on the streets without fear of being mugged. And, as I say, I'm a decently sized bloke, not a smallish woman who is at risk of far worse.
Low level crime like graffiti, broken windows, shoplifting, street shitting, drug dealing etc is a blight that affects us all.
But as oft pointed out, the richest 1% or so make up 30% of the UK's income tax take. People like Leon are rightfully suggesting that maybe either clean it up or the richest people in our society will justifiably think maybe they can get better value for money elsewhere?
I personally have zero faith that if I pay more in tax, I will enjoy a better standard of living. And that is the problem. If Reeves told me CGT was going up to 39% tomorrow but also I'd live in a clean and orderly place where my mates don't have to meet their girlfriends at the tube and walk them home after dark, I'd consider it. Instead I'm being asked to pay ever more taxes against a backdrop of continual decay.
Which brings us back to Leon's original point, the doom spiral. Things get worse, more rich and educated people leave. Tax take declines, the economy falters. So even more people with the ability to get out leave.
It isn't just London that feels trapped in that doom spiral, it's the entire country. As I say, it largely happened on the Tories watch. I'm just not convinced Labour have the answer to it. Doubling my taxes to pay the train drivers on 70k a bit more isn't going to stop the low level decay. And Labour have absolutely no recipe for growth.
I was mugged on Denmark Hill train station in April 1998. No problems living in London in the last quarter of a century. I simply do not recognise the picture you paint. I'm rich and educated and don't want to live anywhere else.
Lived in London since about then. Remember how rough it was - murder on my street the first week I moved into my student digs, neighbour got mugged for, of all things, a gold tooth, not long after. Been held up at gunpoint once, and knifepoint another time. All 20 years or so ago.
Well aware of how rough things used to be. The thing is, I've also seen how much better they became from the mid 2000s and onwards. Which makes the decline that seemed to start post-covid all the worse. The tent cities, the doorway shitters. I've been buying my daily scran from the same corner shop the last ten years and only in the last two years have I seen shoplifters regularly walking in and out with impunity, on average once a week. Or been hassled by aggressive panhandlers (that I can say no to - very different story if i was a 5ft tall woman). The decline is obvious and palpable, and is often a topic of conversation for my friends.
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
What on earth did he do that was treasonous ?
Thanks for the reply.
I'd identify at least four areas I would regard as treasonous to the USA:
1- The Jan 6 insurrection to overthrow the 2020 Election, and the violence Trump unleashed. 2 - His attempts to manipulate the 2020 Election result by corrupting the electoral system. 3 - All the things around illegal retention of Classified documents, including deceiving the FBI when they eventually came to recover them, and what he did with them / the plans he had to do with them. 4 - His financial and other involvement with foreign Governments whilst in office as President.
I could perhaps add 5, his corrupting of the Supreme Court, but that is not really out yet,
He's facing charges on all of these, except I think 4. I've lost count of how many charges he now faces.
1) if it was black people protesting doing exactly the same thing you would have had a CNN reporter declaring it “mostly peaceful”.
Don't be so damned blinkered. People died.
January 6th would have resulted in a coup if it had succeded in preventing the true results being acted upon. It would have been the darkest hour for American democracy.
We should be thankful that a) those defending democracy did the right thing, en masse and b) those trying to suppress democracy were mostly thick as pig shit.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
Social mobility is likely a lot easier in Hartlepool than London because of housing affordability.
Similarly I walked past the Wath Holiday Inn a few weeks before one of the riots took place there - the whole area is much improved with new housing estates, nature reserves, leisure facilities and trendy bars.
I'm curious as to what you term by 'a career and decent salary' actually is. £50k, £75k, £100k ?
I do enjoy reading about the urban squalor though as it allows me to appreciate the comfortable affluence I, and most of the people I know, have.
I'm sure these lads will tell you what a hotbed of social mobility and opportunity Hartlepool is.
What matters is whether the people who want to improve their socioeconomic status by improving their skillset and working hard can do so.
Because this sort of rioting always breaks out in places that are hotbeds of social mobility?
No, it breaks out where there are scum, likely drunken scum, who want a fight.
Its why there are disturbances on weekend evenings in town centres.
Given that you were just bewailing that London is full of muggers, shoplifters and doorway shitters you must think that London is fast undergoing societal collapse.
Or are those attributes of 'the last place where you can get a career and decent salary' ?
I'd rather have the affordable housing even if it does mean a riot a few miles away every few years.
Because without affordable housing you don't have socioeconomic mobility, you have wage slavery.
There are two separate factors at play here, the doorway shitters and shoplifters of London feel tied to more recent immigration (the shitters and stealers I have witnessed do not look or speak like they were born here). See also the tent cities springing up around Park Lane. Not limited to London - See the numerous illegal immigrants busted in Bristol yesterday, living in a caravan city by the side of a motorway -https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyl65knxzxo
Then you have the left behind WWC types in the video I linked to previously. No job, no aspiration, no hope. As Foxy points out, sure housing is cheap, but opportunities for social mobility are zero. You live and die on benefits in the same sink estate.
The situation is horrible for both those groups of people. And speaks volumes about the UK's decline.
Then you have people like me who are educated and well off. But being asked to fund increasing amounts for benefits and so on, without seeing a corresponding rise in growth or even basic law and order. As per the watch thread the other day, you can't even wear anything nice on the streets without fear of being mugged. And, as I say, I'm a decently sized bloke, not a smallish woman who is at risk of far worse.
Low level crime like graffiti, broken windows, shoplifting, street shitting, drug dealing etc is a blight that affects us all.
But as oft pointed out, the richest 1% or so make up 30% of the UK's income tax take. People like Leon are rightfully suggesting that maybe either clean it up or the richest people in our society will justifiably think maybe they can get better value for money elsewhere?
I personally have zero faith that if I pay more in tax, I will enjoy a better standard of living. And that is the problem. If Reeves told me CGT was going up to 39% tomorrow but also I'd live in a clean and orderly place where my mates don't have to meet their girlfriends at the tube and walk them home after dark, I'd consider it. Instead I'm being asked to pay ever more taxes against a backdrop of continual decay.
Which brings us back to Leon's original point, the doom spiral. Things get worse, more rich and educated people leave. Tax take declines, the economy falters. So even more people with the ability to get out leave.
It isn't just London that feels trapped in that doom spiral, it's the entire country. As I say, it largely happened on the Tories watch. I'm just not convinced Labour have the answer to it. Doubling my taxes to pay the train drivers on 70k a bit more isn't going to stop the low level decay. And Labour have absolutely no recipe for growth.
I was mugged on Denmark Hill train station in April 1998. No problems living in London in the last quarter of a century. I simply do not recognise the picture you paint. I'm rich and educated and don't want to live anywhere else.
Britain, to me - and specifically Greater Manchester - feels far, far safer than it did in the 80s and 90s; and somewhat safer than the 00s. Possibly just a factor of being older - so attracting less trouble? But I genuinely think the culture is less criminal and violent. Mind you, Manchester was genuinely quite hairy in the 90s.
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
What on earth did he do that was treasonous ?
Thanks for the reply.
I'd identify at least four areas I would regard as treasonous to the USA:
1- The Jan 6 insurrection to overthrow the 2020 Election, and the violence Trump unleashed. 2 - His attempts to manipulate the 2020 Election result by corrupting the electoral system. 3 - All the things around illegal retention of Classified documents, including deceiving the FBI when they eventually came to recover them, and what he did with them / the plans he had to do with them. 4 - His financial and other involvement with foreign Governments whilst in office as President.
I could perhaps add 5, his corrupting of the Supreme Court, but that is not really out yet,
He's facing charges on all of these, except I think 4. I've lost count of how many charges he now faces.
1) if it was black people protesting doing exactly the same thing you would have had a CNN reporter declaring it “mostly peaceful”.
That's just blatant racism.
Trying to remember a crowd of black people burst into the US Congress, leading to multiple deaths, threatening to hang the Vice President, and CNN called it mostly peaceful. Drawing a blank.
I assume your Klan buddies have a list of times it happened, but in my reality it hasn't.
The only person who died that day was a woman who was randomly shot at by a black police officer poking his gun through a grate and firing into the crowd. He got a commendation for it.
I completely fail to see why the ‘patriotic’ right continually talks Britain down. I do not recognise the crime addled country that is portrayed. I had last weekend out in Liverpool, pub crawling and eating out and the whole place was literally buzzing. Nowhere felt intimidating. Just a cracking place to wander round and spend money. I work in Telford, the place has its ups and downs but again, generally it’s a pretty decent place to live and most folk rub along together fine.
Glasgow and West of Scotland in general much better than say 30 years ago.
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
What on earth did he do that was treasonous ?
Thanks for the reply.
I'd identify at least four areas I would regard as treasonous to the USA:
1- The Jan 6 insurrection to overthrow the 2020 Election, and the violence Trump unleashed. 2 - His attempts to manipulate the 2020 Election result by corrupting the electoral system. 3 - All the things around illegal retention of Classified documents, including deceiving the FBI when they eventually came to recover them, and what he did with them / the plans he had to do with them. 4 - His financial and other involvement with foreign Governments whilst in office as President.
I could perhaps add 5, his corrupting of the Supreme Court, but that is not really out yet,
He's facing charges on all of these, except I think 4. I've lost count of how many charges he now faces.
1) if it was black people protesting doing exactly the same thing you would have had a CNN reporter declaring it “mostly peaceful”.
That's just blatant racism.
Trying to remember a crowd of black people burst into the US Congress, leading to multiple deaths, threatening to hang the Vice President, and CNN called it mostly peaceful. Drawing a blank.
I assume your Klan buddies have a list of times it happened, but in my reality it hasn't.
Yes, because we have lots of klan north of Manchester.
I'm sure the racists you chat shit with online that feed this delusional bullshit aren't all in Manchester.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
I remember the 90s. People got mugged in broad daylight all the time. We look back on it as a golden age. People rioted regularly too. Your first paragraph is belied by data, including the BCS which is immune from crime recording biases.
Your later paragraphs - about the seeming economic death spiral we’ve entered, essentially ever since the 2008 financial crisis - are more on point.
People also forget that certain crimes - like burglary - have almost entirely disappeared in the last forty years.
They have?
So when I was woken up and went downstairs and found someone in my house whom I came face-to-face with before he ran out the back door (which had the key in it on the inside, he'd crowbarred open the kitchen window making a clattering noise which is what had woken me up) - what crime is that classed as?
I was guilty of exaggeration, for sure, but the stats from the BCS show a really dramatic decline in burglary levels - from 1.7 million in 1993 to 196,000 in the year ending in March 2023.
they don't report them
Exactly. Ditto muggings, "Asian gang rape", phone theft, etc
All this shit is known to be "insoluble" so no one reports it, what is the point
That. Is. Not. How. The. British. Crime. Survey. Works.
Tried telling him but @leon just argued back with bollocks and a complete lack of understanding of statistics.
Anecdotally it seems a hell of a lot safer now than in the 70s. Lots of memories of skinheads, NF, football hooligans. Very wary of where and when to go out as a young man. Never went out in Manchester on a Saturday afternoon if United were playing at home. It wasn't unusual to witness violence particularly near pubs. I never do now. Similarly housebreaking was common. Again I haven't come across it in years.
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
What on earth did he do that was treasonous ?
Thanks for the reply.
I'd identify at least four areas I would regard as treasonous to the USA:
1- The Jan 6 insurrection to overthrow the 2020 Election, and the violence Trump unleashed. 2 - His attempts to manipulate the 2020 Election result by corrupting the electoral system. 3 - All the things around illegal retention of Classified documents, including deceiving the FBI when they eventually came to recover them, and what he did with them / the plans he had to do with them. 4 - His financial and other involvement with foreign Governments whilst in office as President.
I could perhaps add 5, his corrupting of the Supreme Court, but that is not really out yet,
He's facing charges on all of these, except I think 4. I've lost count of how many charges he now faces.
1) if it was black people protesting doing exactly the same thing you would have had a CNN reporter declaring it “mostly peaceful”.
Could you perhaps give us an example of a black group storming - if not the capitol - maybe something more minor, maybe a statehouse or something. And we can see how CNN covered it.
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
What on earth did he do that was treasonous ?
Thanks for the reply.
I'd identify at least four areas I would regard as treasonous to the USA:
1- The Jan 6 insurrection to overthrow the 2020 Election, and the violence Trump unleashed. 2 - His attempts to manipulate the 2020 Election result by corrupting the electoral system. 3 - All the things around illegal retention of Classified documents, including deceiving the FBI when they eventually came to recover them, and what he did with them / the plans he had to do with them. 4 - His financial and other involvement with foreign Governments whilst in office as President.
I could perhaps add 5, his corrupting of the Supreme Court, but that is not really out yet,
He's facing charges on all of these, except I think 4. I've lost count of how many charges he now faces.
Personally, I think (1) is pretty weak sauce. Trump didn't lead the protestors into the Capitol demanding the head of Mike Pence. He might have hoped they'd do it, but he did not direct it, and it was hardly a coup attempt.
What was - though - an incredibly serious crime was the creation of slates of fake electors, and the scheme to have the Vice President recognize them.
That was genuinely an attempt to overthrow a democratic election. How much more treasonous can you get?
That is literally a coup attempt. It’s not, under US law, ‘treason’.
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
What on earth did he do that was treasonous ?
Try to prevent a democratic election result being declared.
By asking people to peacefully protest?
"I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."
If he was going to have a coup, as implied by another poster, you know him being the president of the USA and all, you think he might have managed more than that weirdo with the animal skin and a staff. You know, like maybe some weapons? A few tanks. A few friendly senior military and civilian police forces?
Not just by violence. If he had conceded defeat gracefully (stop laughing at the back!) then America would be in a much better place. Trump might even have been miles ahead in his campaign this year.
The only reason Trump is in the running again is because he denied defeat and convinced GOP voters he didn't lose.
Otherwise he'd be a loser and people would have moved on to someone else who they thought could win.
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
What on earth did he do that was treasonous ?
Thanks for the reply.
I'd identify at least four areas I would regard as treasonous to the USA:
1- The Jan 6 insurrection to overthrow the 2020 Election, and the violence Trump unleashed. 2 - His attempts to manipulate the 2020 Election result by corrupting the electoral system. 3 - All the things around illegal retention of Classified documents, including deceiving the FBI when they eventually came to recover them, and what he did with them / the plans he had to do with them. 4 - His financial and other involvement with foreign Governments whilst in office as President.
I could perhaps add 5, his corrupting of the Supreme Court, but that is not really out yet,
He's facing charges on all of these, except I think 4. I've lost count of how many charges he now faces.
1) if it was black people protesting doing exactly the same thing you would have had a CNN reporter declaring it “mostly peaceful”.
That's just blatant racism.
Trying to remember a crowd of black people burst into the US Congress, leading to multiple deaths, threatening to hang the Vice President, and CNN called it mostly peaceful. Drawing a blank.
I assume your Klan buddies have a list of times it happened, but in my reality it hasn't.
The only person who died that day was a woman who was randomly shot at by a black police officer poking his gun through a grate and firing into the crowd. He got a commendation for it.
"That day".
The fact you choose to frame it that way so as to minimize the death of Officer Brian Sicknick rather suggests you don't give a shit about accuracy.
I completely fail to see why the ‘patriotic’ right continually talks Britain down. I do not recognise the crime addled country that is portrayed. I had last weekend out in Liverpool, pub crawling and eating out and the whole place was literally buzzing. Nowhere felt intimidating. Just a cracking place to wander round and spend money. I work in Telford, the place has its ups and downs but again, generally it’s a pretty decent place to live and most folk rub along together fine.
Indeed. I'm in London, somewhere a couple here portray as some den of villainy. Crime is the lowest I can remember. I feel safer than ever. The city is also cleaner than any time since I was born, or since my parents were born.
I was in London a couple of months ago and it was fine.
Admittedly I was around Covent Garden and Trafalgar Square.
Perhaps kyf's muggers, shoplifters and doorway shitters are in the suburbs.
Did you steal some steaks from Tesco Local, chop someone’s hand off for their Patek Philippe, then take a shit in a doorway?
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
What on earth did he do that was treasonous ?
Thanks for the reply.
I'd identify at least four areas I would regard as treasonous to the USA:
1- The Jan 6 insurrection to overthrow the 2020 Election, and the violence Trump unleashed. 2 - His attempts to manipulate the 2020 Election result by corrupting the electoral system. 3 - All the things around illegal retention of Classified documents, including deceiving the FBI when they eventually came to recover them, and what he did with them / the plans he had to do with them. 4 - His financial and other involvement with foreign Governments whilst in office as President.
I could perhaps add 5, his corrupting of the Supreme Court, but that is not really out yet,
He's facing charges on all of these, except I think 4. I've lost count of how many charges he now faces.
1) if it was black people protesting doing exactly the same thing you would have had a CNN reporter declaring it “mostly peaceful”.
That's just blatant racism.
Trying to remember a crowd of black people burst into the US Congress, leading to multiple deaths, threatening to hang the Vice President, and CNN called it mostly peaceful. Drawing a blank.
I assume your Klan buddies have a list of times it happened, but in my reality it hasn't.
The only person who died that day was a woman who was randomly shot at by a black police officer poking his gun through a grate and firing into the crowd. He got a commendation for it.
Rosanne Boyland and Kevin Greeson also died that day.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
I remember the 90s. People got mugged in broad daylight all the time. We look back on it as a golden age. People rioted regularly too. Your first paragraph is belied by data, including the BCS which is immune from crime recording biases.
Your later paragraphs - about the seeming economic death spiral we’ve entered, essentially ever since the 2008 financial crisis - are more on point.
People also forget that certain crimes - like burglary - have almost entirely disappeared in the last forty years.
They have?
So when I was woken up and went downstairs and found someone in my house whom I came face-to-face with before he ran out the back door (which had the key in it on the inside, he'd crowbarred open the kitchen window making a clattering noise which is what had woken me up) - what crime is that classed as?
My parents still live in the address where I was born. Burgled five times when I was a child - once we interrupted it in process. Hasn't happened in twenty years. The area has not improved socially otherwise.
That chimes with my experience, touch wood. I wondered whetger it was down to us owning less nickable stuff nowadays. If a burglar broke in here, what would he take that would make it worthi his while? I can't think of anything I own which is both portable and valuable.
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
What on earth did he do that was treasonous ?
Thanks for the reply.
I'd identify at least four areas I would regard as treasonous to the USA:
1- The Jan 6 insurrection to overthrow the 2020 Election, and the violence Trump unleashed. 2 - His attempts to manipulate the 2020 Election result by corrupting the electoral system. 3 - All the things around illegal retention of Classified documents, including deceiving the FBI when they eventually came to recover them, and what he did with them / the plans he had to do with them. 4 - His financial and other involvement with foreign Governments whilst in office as President.
I could perhaps add 5, his corrupting of the Supreme Court, but that is not really out yet,
He's facing charges on all of these, except I think 4. I've lost count of how many charges he now faces.
1) if it was black people protesting doing exactly the same thing you would have had a CNN reporter declaring it “mostly peaceful”.
That's just blatant racism.
Trying to remember a crowd of black people burst into the US Congress, leading to multiple deaths, threatening to hang the Vice President, and CNN called it mostly peaceful. Drawing a blank.
I assume your Klan buddies have a list of times it happened, but in my reality it hasn't.
Yes, because we have lots of klan north of Manchester.
Well, Scotland was covered in burning crosses every other weekend. According to Sir Walter Scott, anyway.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
I remember the 90s. People got mugged in broad daylight all the time. We look back on it as a golden age. People rioted regularly too. Your first paragraph is belied by data, including the BCS which is immune from crime recording biases.
Your later paragraphs - about the seeming economic death spiral we’ve entered, essentially ever since the 2008 financial crisis - are more on point.
People also forget that certain crimes - like burglary - have almost entirely disappeared in the last forty years.
They have?
So when I was woken up and went downstairs and found someone in my house whom I came face-to-face with before he ran out the back door (which had the key in it on the inside, he'd crowbarred open the kitchen window making a clattering noise which is what had woken me up) - what crime is that classed as?
My parents still live in the address where I was born. Burgled five times when I was a child - once we interrupted it in process. Hasn't happened in twenty years. The area has not improved socially otherwise.
That chimes with my experience, touch wood. I wondered whetger it was down to us owning less nickable stuff nowadays. If a burglar broke in here, what would he take that would make it worthi his while? I can't think of anything I own which is both portable and valuable.
Of course:
People never used to carry around £1,000 pieces of electronics, while video recorders and CD players were valuable.
If you wanted to steal something valuable, you used to need to break into someone's home. Nowadays, nicking a phone is the economically rational decision.
In 1974 I was on the UK/Ireland desk in the OECD's Department of Economics, writing about and forecasting the UK economy. But I couldn't vote in the October general election that year, being abroad.
Must have been a very depressing job in 1974.
And more depressing still to see us repeating the same economic policy errors in overtaxation, overspending, overregulation, industrial subsidies etc 50 years later.
Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome. Einstein had a word for that.
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
What on earth did he do that was treasonous ?
Thanks for the reply.
I'd identify at least four areas I would regard as treasonous to the USA:
1- The Jan 6 insurrection to overthrow the 2020 Election, and the violence Trump unleashed. 2 - His attempts to manipulate the 2020 Election result by corrupting the electoral system. 3 - All the things around illegal retention of Classified documents, including deceiving the FBI when they eventually came to recover them, and what he did with them / the plans he had to do with them. 4 - His financial and other involvement with foreign Governments whilst in office as President.
I could perhaps add 5, his corrupting of the Supreme Court, but that is not really out yet,
He's facing charges on all of these, except I think 4. I've lost count of how many charges he now faces.
1) if it was black people protesting doing exactly the same thing you would have had a CNN reporter declaring it “mostly peaceful”.
Don't be so damned blinkered. People died.
January 6th would have resulted in a coup if it had succeded in preventing the true results being acted upon. It would have been the darkest hour for American democracy.
We should be thankful that a) those defending democracy did the right thing, en masse and b) those trying to suppress democracy were mostly thick as pig shit.
The recent documentary on the events was an eye opener. It was closer than I thought and the coup only failed due to some very brave Republicans in Georgia, Arizona and Pence's staff. The chair of the committee that appointed the EC voters in Arizona admitted that when the committee voted he did not know what the result would be. Film of the vote was shown. He was so relieved they appointed according to how Arizona voted. They were under tremendous pressure, as was Pence and his staff. We only saw the tip of the iceberg on the news.
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
What on earth did he do that was treasonous ?
Thanks for the reply.
I'd identify at least four areas I would regard as treasonous to the USA:
1- The Jan 6 insurrection to overthrow the 2020 Election, and the violence Trump unleashed. 2 - His attempts to manipulate the 2020 Election result by corrupting the electoral system. 3 - All the things around illegal retention of Classified documents, including deceiving the FBI when they eventually came to recover them, and what he did with them / the plans he had to do with them. 4 - His financial and other involvement with foreign Governments whilst in office as President.
I could perhaps add 5, his corrupting of the Supreme Court, but that is not really out yet,
He's facing charges on all of these, except I think 4. I've lost count of how many charges he now faces.
1) if it was black people protesting doing exactly the same thing you would have had a CNN reporter declaring it “mostly peaceful”.
That's just blatant racism.
Trying to remember a crowd of black people burst into the US Congress, leading to multiple deaths, threatening to hang the Vice President, and CNN called it mostly peaceful. Drawing a blank.
I assume your Klan buddies have a list of times it happened, but in my reality it hasn't.
The only person who died that day was a woman who was randomly shot at by a black police officer poking his gun through a grate and firing into the crowd. He got a commendation for it.
Rosanne Boyland and Kevin Greeson also died that day.
Thanks I hadn’t read about those two, she got crushed in the protest and he had a heart attack, though he might not have taken part in any violence.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
I remember the 90s. People got mugged in broad daylight all the time. We look back on it as a golden age. People rioted regularly too. Your first paragraph is belied by data, including the BCS which is immune from crime recording biases.
Your later paragraphs - about the seeming economic death spiral we’ve entered, essentially ever since the 2008 financial crisis - are more on point.
People also forget that certain crimes - like burglary - have almost entirely disappeared in the last forty years.
They have?
So when I was woken up and went downstairs and found someone in my house whom I came face-to-face with before he ran out the back door (which had the key in it on the inside, he'd crowbarred open the kitchen window making a clattering noise which is what had woken me up) - what crime is that classed as?
My parents still live in the address where I was born. Burgled five times when I was a child - once we interrupted it in process. Hasn't happened in twenty years. The area has not improved socially otherwise.
That chimes with my experience, touch wood. I wondered whetger it was down to us owning less nickable stuff nowadays. If a burglar broke in here, what would he take that would make it worthi his while? I can't think of anything I own which is both portable and valuable.
Of course:
People never used to carry around £1,000 pieces of electronics, while video recorders and CD players were valuable.
If you wanted to steal something valuable, you used to need to break into someone's home. Nowadays, nicking a phone is the economically rational decision.
Nicking a USB drive and blackmailing them for the contents via facebook/twitter/whatever is the de jour.
I completely fail to see why the ‘patriotic’ right continually talks Britain down. I do not recognise the crime addled country that is portrayed. I had last weekend out in Liverpool, pub crawling and eating out and the whole place was literally buzzing. Nowhere felt intimidating. Just a cracking place to wander round and spend money. I work in Telford, the place has its ups and downs but again, generally it’s a pretty decent place to live and most folk rub along together fine.
Indeed. I'm in London, somewhere a couple here portray as some den of villainy. Crime is the lowest I can remember. I feel safer than ever. The city is also cleaner than any time since I was born, or since my parents were born.
I was in London a couple of months ago and it was fine.
Admittedly I was around Covent Garden and Trafalgar Square.
Perhaps kyf's muggers, shoplifters and doorway shitters are in the suburbs.
Did you steal some steaks from Tesco Local, chop someone’s hand off for their Patek Philippe, then take a shit in a doorway?
Only participants count….
There's possibly a niche tourism opportunity here for those who want to see some contemporary squalor.
A sort of updating of the 'walk in the footsteps of Jack the Ripper / Krays' tours.
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
What on earth did he do that was treasonous ?
Thanks for the reply.
I'd identify at least four areas I would regard as treasonous to the USA:
1- The Jan 6 insurrection to overthrow the 2020 Election, and the violence Trump unleashed. 2 - His attempts to manipulate the 2020 Election result by corrupting the electoral system. 3 - All the things around illegal retention of Classified documents, including deceiving the FBI when they eventually came to recover them, and what he did with them / the plans he had to do with them. 4 - His financial and other involvement with foreign Governments whilst in office as President.
I could perhaps add 5, his corrupting of the Supreme Court, but that is not really out yet,
He's facing charges on all of these, except I think 4. I've lost count of how many charges he now faces.
1) if it was black people protesting doing exactly the same thing you would have had a CNN reporter declaring it “mostly peaceful”.
That's just blatant racism.
Trying to remember a crowd of black people burst into the US Congress, leading to multiple deaths, threatening to hang the Vice President, and CNN called it mostly peaceful. Drawing a blank.
I assume your Klan buddies have a list of times it happened, but in my reality it hasn't.
The only person who died that day was a woman who was randomly shot at by a black police officer poking his gun through a grate and firing into the crowd. He got a commendation for it.
Rosanne Boyland and Kevin Greeson also died that day.
Thanks I hadn’t read about those two, she got crushed in the protest and he had a heart attack, though he might not have taken part in any violence.
Maybe you should keep reading more about January 6 and other events leading up to it.
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
What on earth did he do that was treasonous ?
Thanks for the reply.
I'd identify at least four areas I would regard as treasonous to the USA:
1- The Jan 6 insurrection to overthrow the 2020 Election, and the violence Trump unleashed. 2 - His attempts to manipulate the 2020 Election result by corrupting the electoral system. 3 - All the things around illegal retention of Classified documents, including deceiving the FBI when they eventually came to recover them, and what he did with them / the plans he had to do with them. 4 - His financial and other involvement with foreign Governments whilst in office as President.
I could perhaps add 5, his corrupting of the Supreme Court, but that is not really out yet,
He's facing charges on all of these, except I think 4. I've lost count of how many charges he now faces.
1) if it was black people protesting doing exactly the same thing you would have had a CNN reporter declaring it “mostly peaceful”.
That's just blatant racism.
Trying to remember a crowd of black people burst into the US Congress, leading to multiple deaths, threatening to hang the Vice President, and CNN called it mostly peaceful. Drawing a blank.
I assume your Klan buddies have a list of times it happened, but in my reality it hasn't.
The only person who died that day was a woman who was randomly shot at by a black police officer poking his gun through a grate and firing into the crowd. He got a commendation for it.
"That day".
The fact you choose to frame it that way so as to minimize the death of Officer Brian Sicknick rather suggests you don't give a shit about accuracy.
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
What on earth did he do that was treasonous ?
Thanks for the reply.
I'd identify at least four areas I would regard as treasonous to the USA:
1- The Jan 6 insurrection to overthrow the 2020 Election, and the violence Trump unleashed. 2 - His attempts to manipulate the 2020 Election result by corrupting the electoral system. 3 - All the things around illegal retention of Classified documents, including deceiving the FBI when they eventually came to recover them, and what he did with them / the plans he had to do with them. 4 - His financial and other involvement with foreign Governments whilst in office as President.
I could perhaps add 5, his corrupting of the Supreme Court, but that is not really out yet,
He's facing charges on all of these, except I think 4. I've lost count of how many charges he now faces.
1) if it was black people protesting doing exactly the same thing you would have had a CNN reporter declaring it “mostly peaceful”.
That's just blatant racism.
Trying to remember a crowd of black people burst into the US Congress, leading to multiple deaths, threatening to hang the Vice President, and CNN called it mostly peaceful. Drawing a blank.
I assume your Klan buddies have a list of times it happened, but in my reality it hasn't.
The only person who died that day was a woman who was randomly shot at by a black police officer poking his gun through a grate and firing into the crowd. He got a commendation for it.
"That day".
The fact you choose to frame it that way so as to minimize the death of Officer Brian Sicknick rather suggests you don't give a shit about accuracy.
So he died of an injury from the event?
"On January 7, 2021, a United States Capitol Police (USCP) officer, Brian Sicknick, died after suffering two strokes the day after he responded to the attack on the U.S. Capitol during which he was assaulted with a chemical spray by two rioters.[2] His cremated remains were laid in honor in the Capitol Rotunda on February 2, 2021, before they were buried with full honors at Arlington National Cemetery.[3]"
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
Social mobility is likely a lot easier in Hartlepool than London because of housing affordability.
Similarly I walked past the Wath Holiday Inn a few weeks before one of the riots took place there - the whole area is much improved with new housing estates, nature reserves, leisure facilities and trendy bars.
I'm curious as to what you term by 'a career and decent salary' actually is. £50k, £75k, £100k ?
I do enjoy reading about the urban squalor though as it allows me to appreciate the comfortable affluence I, and most of the people I know, have.
I'm sure these lads will tell you what a hotbed of social mobility and opportunity Hartlepool is.
What matters is whether the people who want to improve their socioeconomic status by improving their skillset and working hard can do so.
Because this sort of rioting always breaks out in places that are hotbeds of social mobility?
No, it breaks out where there are scum, likely drunken scum, who want a fight.
Its why there are disturbances on weekend evenings in town centres.
Given that you were just bewailing that London is full of muggers, shoplifters and doorway shitters you must think that London is fast undergoing societal collapse.
Or are those attributes of 'the last place where you can get a career and decent salary' ?
I'd rather have the affordable housing even if it does mean a riot a few miles away every few years.
Because without affordable housing you don't have socioeconomic mobility, you have wage slavery.
There are two separate factors at play here, the doorway shitters and shoplifters of London feel tied to more recent immigration (the shitters and stealers I have witnessed do not look or speak like they were born here). See also the tent cities springing up around Park Lane. Not limited to London - See the numerous illegal immigrants busted in Bristol yesterday, living in a caravan city by the side of a motorway -https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyl65knxzxo
Then you have the left behind WWC types in the video I linked to previously. No job, no aspiration, no hope. As Foxy points out, sure housing is cheap, but opportunities for social mobility are zero. You live and die on benefits in the same sink estate.
The situation is horrible for both those groups of people. And speaks volumes about the UK's decline.
Then you have people like me who are educated and well off. But being asked to fund increasing amounts for benefits and so on, without seeing a corresponding rise in growth or even basic law and order. As per the watch thread the other day, you can't even wear anything nice on the streets without fear of being mugged. And, as I say, I'm a decently sized bloke, not a smallish woman who is at risk of far worse.
Low level crime like graffiti, broken windows, shoplifting, street shitting, drug dealing etc is a blight that affects us all.
But as oft pointed out, the richest 1% or so make up 30% of the UK's income tax take. People like Leon are rightfully suggesting that maybe either clean it up or the richest people in our society will justifiably think maybe they can get better value for money elsewhere?
I personally have zero faith that if I pay more in tax, I will enjoy a better standard of living. And that is the problem. If Reeves told me CGT was going up to 39% tomorrow but also I'd live in a clean and orderly place where my mates don't have to meet their girlfriends at the tube and walk them home after dark, I'd consider it. Instead I'm being asked to pay ever more taxes against a backdrop of continual decay.
Which brings us back to Leon's original point, the doom spiral. Things get worse, more rich and educated people leave. Tax take declines, the economy falters. So even more people with the ability to get out leave.
It isn't just London that feels trapped in that doom spiral, it's the entire country. As I say, it largely happened on the Tories watch. I'm just not convinced Labour have the answer to it. Doubling my taxes to pay the train drivers on 70k a bit more isn't going to stop the low level decay. And Labour have absolutely no recipe for growth.
Sorry but that all reads like a conspiratorialist racist diatribe unmoored from reality. Maybe unplug from Twitter a bit and come back to earth.
There's things wrong with this country that need fixing, that too many are trapped working to pay rent and can't get an affordable home of their own being number one of them, but that's not remotely matching this third world bullshit you're spouting.
No jobs or aspirations? We have almost record low unemployment in this country.
Can't go out without being mugged? Don't know what its like where you are but I'll quite comfortably walk the streets with my phone out with no big fear of being mugged.
The country is not in a doom spiral. If you think it is, it says more about you than it does the country.
I take umbrage at being called a racist.
I pointed out that in London there seem to be more problems with recent immigrants, which you might expect in an area with... more recent immigrants. But also note similar problems occur in high poverty areas with WWC types. And note my sympathy for both groups, but also my despair at being forced to pay increasing taxes without an apparent solution.
So if you want to call me a racist, go ahead. I'll reply quite simply to that one - fuck off.
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
What on earth did he do that was treasonous ?
Thanks for the reply.
I'd identify at least four areas I would regard as treasonous to the USA:
1- The Jan 6 insurrection to overthrow the 2020 Election, and the violence Trump unleashed. 2 - His attempts to manipulate the 2020 Election result by corrupting the electoral system. 3 - All the things around illegal retention of Classified documents, including deceiving the FBI when they eventually came to recover them, and what he did with them / the plans he had to do with them. 4 - His financial and other involvement with foreign Governments whilst in office as President.
I could perhaps add 5, his corrupting of the Supreme Court, but that is not really out yet,
He's facing charges on all of these, except I think 4. I've lost count of how many charges he now faces.
1) if it was black people protesting doing exactly the same thing you would have had a CNN reporter declaring it “mostly peaceful”.
That's just blatant racism.
Trying to remember a crowd of black people burst into the US Congress, leading to multiple deaths, threatening to hang the Vice President, and CNN called it mostly peaceful. Drawing a blank.
I assume your Klan buddies have a list of times it happened, but in my reality it hasn't.
The only person who died that day was a woman who was randomly shot at by a black police officer poking his gun through a grate and firing into the crowd. He got a commendation for it.
Rosanne Boyland and Kevin Greeson also died that day.
Thanks I hadn’t read about those two, she got crushed in the protest and he had a heart attack, though he might not have taken part in any violence.
Maybe you should keep reading more about January 6 and other events leading up to it.
So there’s a shed of evidence that shows that the actual attempts to break into the building were planned, and planned by Trump? It was a protest that got out of hand, like many throughout history. If there was any genuine attempt to take power you would have thought the most well armed population in the world would have bothered to bring some firearms with them.
They got carried away, did not really expect to overwhelm the security, entirely unplanned and without any kind of game plan once there.
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
What on earth did he do that was treasonous ?
Thanks for the reply.
I'd identify at least four areas I would regard as treasonous to the USA:
1- The Jan 6 insurrection to overthrow the 2020 Election, and the violence Trump unleashed. 2 - His attempts to manipulate the 2020 Election result by corrupting the electoral system. 3 - All the things around illegal retention of Classified documents, including deceiving the FBI when they eventually came to recover them, and what he did with them / the plans he had to do with them. 4 - His financial and other involvement with foreign Governments whilst in office as President.
I could perhaps add 5, his corrupting of the Supreme Court, but that is not really out yet,
He's facing charges on all of these, except I think 4. I've lost count of how many charges he now faces.
1) if it was black people protesting doing exactly the same thing you would have had a CNN reporter declaring it “mostly peaceful”.
That's just blatant racism.
Trying to remember a crowd of black people burst into the US Congress, leading to multiple deaths, threatening to hang the Vice President, and CNN called it mostly peaceful. Drawing a blank.
I assume your Klan buddies have a list of times it happened, but in my reality it hasn't.
Er, wasn't an independent statelet declared in Seattle? In which the leftist vigilantes ended up causing deaths? Days and days of successive riots in, I think, Portland, with destruction of various government buildings and any businesses not considered sufficiently one-of-us? Riots in Minneapolis resulting in basically the abandonment of a whole district? Riots in Chicago, New York? I wasn't there. But the impression I get is that consiserably more death and destruction has been caused by explicitly left womg riots over the past five years in the USA than right wing ones. The 'mostly peaceful' meme referring to a CNN report of oneof these which was clearly not mostly peaceful.
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
What on earth did he do that was treasonous ?
Thanks for the reply.
I'd identify at least four areas I would regard as treasonous to the USA:
1- The Jan 6 insurrection to overthrow the 2020 Election, and the violence Trump unleashed. 2 - His attempts to manipulate the 2020 Election result by corrupting the electoral system. 3 - All the things around illegal retention of Classified documents, including deceiving the FBI when they eventually came to recover them, and what he did with them / the plans he had to do with them. 4 - His financial and other involvement with foreign Governments whilst in office as President.
I could perhaps add 5, his corrupting of the Supreme Court, but that is not really out yet,
He's facing charges on all of these, except I think 4. I've lost count of how many charges he now faces.
1) if it was black people protesting doing exactly the same thing you would have had a CNN reporter declaring it “mostly peaceful”.
That's just blatant racism.
Trying to remember a crowd of black people burst into the US Congress, leading to multiple deaths, threatening to hang the Vice President, and CNN called it mostly peaceful. Drawing a blank.
I assume your Klan buddies have a list of times it happened, but in my reality it hasn't.
The only person who died that day was a woman who was randomly shot at by a black police officer poking his gun through a grate and firing into the crowd. He got a commendation for it.
"That day".
The fact you choose to frame it that way so as to minimize the death of Officer Brian Sicknick rather suggests you don't give a shit about accuracy.
So he died of an injury from the event?
"On January 7, 2021, a United States Capitol Police (USCP) officer, Brian Sicknick, died after suffering two strokes the day after he responded to the attack on the U.S. Capitol during which he was assaulted with a chemical spray by two rioters.[2] His cremated remains were laid in honor in the Capitol Rotunda on February 2, 2021, before they were buried with full honors at Arlington National Cemetery.[3]"
Comments
And deserved
We cannot fix these problems if we refuse to acknowledge them.
I think this is in part doom-mongering (on topic I find 1974 an excellent palette cleanser when getting too maudlin - at least we're not yet at the 3-day week); in part I think kyf and others' experiences and these stats reflect the increasing individualism in the UK - individual circumstances might be getting better but the public realm is not.
It's why I quite liked the theme of collectivism running through Starmer's conference speech. Which might just be hot air, but I'm hoping not.
England have fluked so many games recently which have covered up their rubbish performances.
I think that there is some truth that it's portable devices that are more nickable. There really isn't a market for stolen household goods like TVs and stereos etc.
Its why there are disturbances on weekend evenings in town centres.
Given that you were just bewailing that London is full of muggers, shoplifters and doorway shitters you must think that London is fast undergoing societal collapse.
Or are those attributes of 'the last place where you can get a career and decent salary' ?
I'd rather have the affordable housing even if it does mean a riot a few miles away every few years.
Because without affordable housing you don't have socioeconomic mobility, you have wage slavery.
Sore loser, yes.
"I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."
If he was going to have a coup, as implied by another poster, you know him being the president of the USA and all, you think he might have managed more than that weirdo with the animal skin and a staff. You know, like maybe some weapons? A few tanks. A few friendly senior military and civilian police forces?
Once you've got the skillset, job and house you've done pretty well.
Now you can get a better skillset, job and house but that depends not only on available opportunities but also on how much you want it and how much intrinsic ability you have.
No matter how many opportunities there are, not everyone can reach the top, earn £100k or maximise their potential.
Even if they wanted to.
20 council by-elections, polls to close at 10pm, most results overnight
11 Labour defences
5 Conservative
2 Independent
1 Green
1 Lib Dem
Are you ?
Among other things, he also tried to falsify election returns and made threats to senior officials including his own vice-president.
Anyone who thinks that doesn't amount to an attempted coup has either not bothered to look at what happened or is so incredibly stupid they would pay $44 billion for Twitter.
https://youtu.be/FGj0gq75VwQ?t=66&si=45yO5DzpEmD02pPg
I feel safe wherever I go - and I live in one of the less fashionable outer London suburbs - admittedly I don't venture into inner city estates but I didn't do that 30 years ago either. Perhaps those Londoners who live in terror of your lives could let me know where those places are, so I can keep clear.
“Former President Trump, get a life, man.”
I'd identify at least four areas I would regard as treasonous to the USA:
1- The Jan 6 insurrection to overthrow the 2020 Election, and the violence Trump unleashed.
2 - His attempts to manipulate the 2020 Election result by corrupting the electoral system.
3 - All the things around illegal retention of Classified documents, including deceiving the FBI when they eventually came to recover them, and what he did with them / the plans he had to do with them.
4 - His financial and other involvement with foreign Governments whilst in office as President.
I could perhaps add 5, his corrupting of the Supreme Court, but that is not really out yet,
He's facing charges on all of these, except I think 4. I've lost count of how many charges he now faces.
Whereas the bad things of the past are forgotten about or even romanticised.
In 1974 for example there was pretty continual violence from football hooliganism, industrial disputes or terrorism.
There was perhaps less individualism back then but certainly more 'them and us' between different social groups.
(What’s the orange haired loser done now?)
Is.
Not.
How.
The.
British.
Crime.
Survey.
Works.
Then you have the left behind WWC types in the video I linked to previously. No job, no aspiration, no hope. As Foxy points out, sure housing is cheap, but opportunities for social mobility are zero. You live and die on benefits in the same sink estate.
The situation is horrible for both those groups of people. And speaks volumes about the UK's decline.
Then you have people like me who are educated and well off. But being asked to fund increasing amounts for benefits and so on, without seeing a corresponding rise in growth or even basic law and order. As per the watch thread the other day, you can't even wear anything nice on the streets without fear of being mugged. And, as I say, I'm a decently sized bloke, not a smallish woman who is at risk of far worse.
Low level crime like graffiti, broken windows, shoplifting, street shitting, drug dealing etc is a blight that affects us all.
But as oft pointed out, the richest 1% or so make up 30% of the UK's income tax take. People like Leon are rightfully suggesting that maybe either clean it up or the richest people in our society will justifiably think maybe they can get better value for money elsewhere?
I personally have zero faith that if I pay more in tax, I will enjoy a better standard of living. And that is the problem. If Reeves told me CGT was going up to 39% tomorrow but also I'd live in a clean and orderly place where my mates don't have to meet their girlfriends at the tube and walk them home after dark, I'd consider it. Instead I'm being asked to pay ever more taxes against a backdrop of continual decay.
Which brings us back to Leon's original point, the doom spiral. Things get worse, more rich and educated people leave. Tax take declines, the economy falters. So even more people with the ability to get out leave.
It isn't just London that feels trapped in that doom spiral, it's the entire country. As I say, it largely happened on the Tories watch. I'm just not convinced Labour have the answer to it. Doubling my taxes to pay the train drivers on 70k a bit more isn't going to stop the low level decay. And Labour have absolutely no recipe for growth.
https://x.com/KamalaHQ/status/1844129779076702470
Admittedly I was around Covent Garden and Trafalgar Square.
Perhaps kyf's muggers, shoplifters and doorway shitters are in the suburbs.
And fewer shops, especially big shops.
Actually only just visible with the naked eye. But visible nonetheless. Feel very happy now.
Didn't see them on a week in Lapland - only needed to go 100 yards from my hous3, it turned out.
What was - though - an incredibly serious crime was the creation of slates of fake electors, and the scheme to have the Vice President recognize them.
That was genuinely an attempt to overthrow a democratic election. How much more treasonous can you get?
* Enjoy your retirement.
PoliticalAccurateInformation.com - turn at the pub and down the road a bit.
There's things wrong with this country that need fixing, that too many are trapped working to pay rent and can't get an affordable home of their own being number one of them, but that's not remotely matching this third world bullshit you're spouting.
No jobs or aspirations? We have almost record low unemployment in this country.
Can't go out without being mugged? Don't know what its like where you are but I'll quite comfortably walk the streets with my phone out with no big fear of being mugged.
The country is not in a doom spiral. If you think it is, it says more about you than it does the country.
It’s not, under US law, ‘treason’.
https://x.com/KemiBadenoch/status/1844468060989816838
* Which no-one snatched off me in the street today, or any preceding day since I got it. Maybe the thieves don't want a Samsung!
(I get the bit about the rockets, mildly unhinged as it is.)
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1844444488187478017
So they need to get a skillset and get a job.
There is no social mobility without those.
And there are opportunities to get a skillset and a job, the best there have been since at least the 1960s.
And millions of people do get them and do get social mobility.
But scum who would rather commit crime than work don't have social mobility.
By the way, train drivers who have learned a skillset and got a job are an example of social mobility.
Trying to remember a crowd of black people burst into the US Congress, leading to multiple deaths, threatening to hang the Vice President, and CNN called it mostly peaceful. Drawing a blank.
I assume your Klan buddies have a list of times it happened, but in my reality it hasn't.
Well aware of how rough things used to be. The thing is, I've also seen how much better they became from the mid 2000s and onwards. Which makes the decline that seemed to start post-covid all the worse. The tent cities, the doorway shitters. I've been buying my daily scran from the same corner shop the last ten years and only in the last two years have I seen shoplifters regularly walking in and out with impunity, on average once a week. Or been hassled by aggressive panhandlers (that I can say no to - very different story if i was a 5ft tall woman). The decline is obvious and palpable, and is often a topic of conversation for my friends.
January 6th would have resulted in a coup if it had succeded in preventing the true results being acted upon. It would have been the darkest hour for American democracy.
We should be thankful that a) those defending democracy did the right thing, en masse and b) those trying to suppress democracy were mostly thick as pig shit.
Possibly just a factor of being older - so attracting less trouble? But I genuinely think the culture is less criminal and violent. Mind you, Manchester was genuinely quite hairy in the 90s.
Anecdotally it seems a hell of a lot safer now than in the 70s. Lots of memories of skinheads, NF, football hooligans. Very wary of where and when to go out as a young man. Never went out in Manchester on a Saturday afternoon if United were playing at home. It wasn't unusual to witness violence particularly near pubs. I never do now. Similarly housebreaking was common. Again I haven't come across it in years.
Otherwise he'd be a loser and people would have moved on to someone else who they thought could win.
The fact you choose to frame it that way so as to minimize the death of Officer Brian Sicknick rather suggests you don't give a shit about accuracy.
Only participants count….
I wondered whetger it was down to us owning less nickable stuff nowadays. If a burglar broke in here, what would he take that would make it worthi his while? I can't think of anything I own which is both portable and valuable.
It's a great night for Northern lights. This is from my back garden just now in Leics.
People never used to carry around £1,000 pieces of electronics, while video recorders and CD players were valuable.
If you wanted to steal something valuable, you used to need to break into someone's home. Nowadays, nicking a phone is the economically rational decision.
And more depressing still to see us repeating the same economic policy errors in overtaxation, overspending, overregulation, industrial subsidies etc 50 years later.
Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome. Einstein had a word for that.
A sort of updating of the 'walk in the footsteps of Jack the Ripper / Krays' tours.
I pointed out that in London there seem to be more problems with recent immigrants, which you might expect in an area with... more recent immigrants. But also note similar problems occur in high poverty areas with WWC types. And note my sympathy for both groups, but also my despair at being forced to pay increasing taxes without an apparent solution.
So if you want to call me a racist, go ahead. I'll reply quite simply to that one - fuck off.
They got carried away, did not really expect to overwhelm the security, entirely unplanned and without any kind of game plan once there.
I wasn't there. But the impression I get is that consiserably more death and destruction has been caused by explicitly left womg riots over the past five years in the USA than right wing ones.
The 'mostly peaceful' meme referring to a CNN report of oneof these which was clearly not mostly peaceful.