Some of you may be aware of the problems of autocratic states as described in the works of Anne Applebaum. One of the aspects of those problems is the social contract between autocrat and the people: the autocrat provides security and safety, the people give up the desire to get involved in politics. The Simon Whistler channel "Warfronts" has done a brief explainer
British people find it difficult to understand that Putin does have the support of the Russian people, and he genuinely does. But it's not expressed via the democratic process, and he may fall if he cannot maintain his side of the deal.
Much of this is the great political philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who correctly discerned that the 'strong man' theory of politics is sound. Most people will and should support the one who will grant them basic protection by being the strong man/leader for them, even though he is horrible to those who oppose him. Within that limit the 'strong man' can give lots of sub freedoms - of religion, thought, assembly, way of life. Assad and Saddam were classic instances of these.
The genius of western democracy is that it created a 'strong man' theory and system where the ruling state itself could be challenged by a peaceful process called voting - as we saw on 4th July in the UK.
The problem is that it’s a one or two generation form of government.
The strong man is succeeded by incompetents, or his successor is.
As President Trump said, this is not our fight and we should stay out of it.
Aside from that, opinions like the below make me nervous. The last time this guy was celebrating events in Syria we saw the mass slaughter of Christians and a refugee crisis that destabilized Europe.
Many of "the rebels" are a literal offshoot of ISIS. One can hope they've moderated. Time will tell.
Sensible comments from Vance. If the rebels do start attacking the few remaining Christians in Syria we and other western nations must take them in as refugees.
Lebanon must also take in refugees from Assad's Alawite community if the rebels start persecuting and slaughtering them
Whereas you would have had Assad's Alawite community (*) persecuting and slaughtering muslims.
(*) And if you actually followed this, you would realise many alawites were *against* Assad...
No I wouldn't. Assad didn't go around massacring Sunni Muslims for starters as most of Syria is Sunni Muslim and he is a Shia Alawite, he wouldn't even have lasted as long as he did had he done so
You are absolutely clueless. Totally and utterly clueless. Read some of those documents I posted yesterday to see exactly what he, and his dad, did.
In fact, you're worse than clueless.
And you are a grotesque apologist for Islamic extremism and a pompom waver for our disastrous Middle East policy over the past 18 years.
No, I am not.
I refer other readers to your various pro-Russian positions over MH17, which you spammed us with.
I'm also amused by the fact your post was liked by PB's very own Christian fundamentalist, who in some ways is indistinguishable from Muslim fundamentalists.
The more narcissistic basically evil, I the case of Braverman, nut jobs join Reform, better for Labour.
Reform go further and further to the Rabid Right and the more Badenochs Tories and her disgraced Right flank and Reform tear strips off each other trying to be worker than woke and more anti anti establishment.
Keir meanwhile gets his head down and grafts grafts grafts boringly but relentless steady slow improvement.
Turning the NHS around, increasing House Building, reducing net migration, clearing the Tory Asylum backlogs.
Interest rates slip quietly down, mortgage base rate slips in the 3.somethings, god forbid a few tax reductions in the form of slowly increasing tax thresholds, wealth and windfall taxes on the greedy for the needy.
The massive UK tanker, slowly turned around.
By 2028 what is the solution, rabid Right or steady solid dependable Left...
Nah, Labour are fucked. Look how they are already cratering in Scotland. Starmer hasn’t the charisma, wit or ideas to get anything done. One term
He might get loads done but it wont be enough. The message from Biden loss is loud and clear: being able to point at a long list of technocratic things you've done and how good the GDP is, or how high the % of widgets produced this term is not worth gnats piss in the new political era.
Thing is, if Labour goes, it means we're done with liberal democracy. Conservatives won't be able to convince anyone, actually we're fine now. So we end up with Reform. And if anyone thinks that's a recipe for sorting things out, I would have a bridge to sell you.
It’s not “one kid with a toy” and then a load of contagion. My best guess is still Russia or China
That looks suspiciously like a plane.
How come the New Jersey authorities can’t just call Air Traffic Control and say ‘guys, is this a plane?’
THAT is one of the mysteries here. If all these drones are misidentified planes, toys, balloons, surely it takes one person with an IQ north of 120 to prove all this??
Some of you may be aware of the problems of autocratic states as described in the works of Anne Applebaum. One of the aspects of those problems is the social contract between autocrat and the people: the autocrat provides security and safety, the people give up the desire to get involved in politics. The Simon Whistler channel "Warfronts" has done a brief explainer
British people find it difficult to understand that Putin does have the support of the Russian people, and he genuinely does. But it's not expressed via the democratic process, and he may fall if he cannot maintain his side of the deal.
A point of order; whenever you see a 'Simon Whistler' video, understand you are seeing a poorly-researched, quickly-generated video that may, or may not, be factual. Even if it is factual, it misses a heck of a lot of detail.
Seriously: the speed at which he generates this stuff is warning enough,
It’s not “one kid with a toy” and then a load of contagion. My best guess is still Russia or China
That looks suspiciously like a plane.
How come the New Jersey authorities can’t just call Air Traffic Control and say ‘guys, is this a plane?’
THAT is one of the mysteries here. If all these drones are misidentified planes, toys, balloons, surely it takes one person with an IQ north of 120 to prove all this??
As President Trump said, this is not our fight and we should stay out of it.
Aside from that, opinions like the below make me nervous. The last time this guy was celebrating events in Syria we saw the mass slaughter of Christians and a refugee crisis that destabilized Europe.
Many of "the rebels" are a literal offshoot of ISIS. One can hope they've moderated. Time will tell.
Sensible comments from Vance. If the rebels do start attacking the few remaining Christians in Syria we and other western nations must take them in as refugees.
Lebanon must also take in refugees from Assad's Alawite community if the rebels start persecuting and slaughtering them
Whereas you would have had Assad's Alawite community (*) persecuting and slaughtering muslims.
(*) And if you actually followed this, you would realise many alawites were *against* Assad...
No I wouldn't. Assad didn't go around massacring Sunni Muslims for starters as most of Syria is Sunni Muslim and he is a Shia Alawite, he wouldn't even have lasted as long as he did had he done so
You are absolutely clueless. Totally and utterly clueless. Read some of those documents I posted yesterday to see exactly what he, and his dad, did.
In fact, you're worse than clueless.
And you are a grotesque apologist for Islamic extremism and a pompom waver for our disastrous Middle East policy over the past 18 years.
No, I am not.
I refer other readers to your various pro-Russian positions over MH17, which you spammed us with.
I'm also amused by the fact your post was liked by PB's very own Christian fundamentalist, who in some ways is indistinguishable from Muslim fundamentalists.
I think your own fairly repugnant posts make my argument for me.
Some of you may be aware of the problems of autocratic states as described in the works of Anne Applebaum. One of the aspects of those problems is the social contract between autocrat and the people: the autocrat provides security and safety, the people give up the desire to get involved in politics. The Simon Whistler channel "Warfronts" has done a brief explainer
British people find it difficult to understand that Putin does have the support of the Russian people, and he genuinely does. But it's not expressed via the democratic process, and he may fall if he cannot maintain his side of the deal.
There's also the fact that if you stand up to the dictator you mysteriously die. Or, if you're lucky, get shipped off to a labor camp in Siberia. And then die.
It kinda discourages people from sticking their neck out, unless they are really, really unhappy.
Many might to some degree support the autocratic regime, and thus they 'have the support of the people', but the autocrats still never put that to the genuine test of course.
As President Trump said, this is not our fight and we should stay out of it.
Aside from that, opinions like the below make me nervous. The last time this guy was celebrating events in Syria we saw the mass slaughter of Christians and a refugee crisis that destabilized Europe.
Many of "the rebels" are a literal offshoot of ISIS. One can hope they've moderated. Time will tell.
Sensible comments from Vance. If the rebels do start attacking the few remaining Christians in Syria we and other western nations must take them in as refugees.
Lebanon must also take in refugees from Assad's Alawite community if the rebels start persecuting and slaughtering them
Whereas you would have had Assad's Alawite community (*) persecuting and slaughtering muslims.
(*) And if you actually followed this, you would realise many alawites were *against* Assad...
No I wouldn't. Assad didn't go around massacring Sunni Muslims for starters as most of Syria is Sunni Muslim and he is a Shia Alawite, he wouldn't even have lasted as long as he did had he done so
You are absolutely clueless. Totally and utterly clueless. Read some of those documents I posted yesterday to see exactly what he, and his dad, did.
In fact, you're worse than clueless.
And you are a grotesque apologist for Islamic extremism and a pompom waver for our disastrous Middle East policy over the past 18 years.
No, I am not.
I refer other readers to your various pro-Russian positions over MH17, which you spammed us with.
I'm also amused by the fact your post was liked by PB's very own Christian fundamentalist, who in some ways is indistinguishable from Muslim fundamentalists.
I think your own fairly repugnant posts make my argument for me.
Please explain why my posts are 'fairly repugnant', whereas yours shilling for Putin over MH17 or 'Ukrainian biolabs' are perfectly fine.
Some of you may be aware of the problems of autocratic states as described in the works of Anne Applebaum. One of the aspects of those problems is the social contract between autocrat and the people: the autocrat provides security and safety, the people give up the desire to get involved in politics. The Simon Whistler channel "Warfronts" has done a brief explainer
British people find it difficult to understand that Putin does have the support of the Russian people, and he genuinely does. But it's not expressed via the democratic process, and he may fall if he cannot maintain his side of the deal.
There's also the fact that if you stand up to the dictator you mysteriously die. Or, if you're lucky, get shipped off to a labor camp in Siberia. And then die.
It kinda discourages people from sticking their neck out, unless they are really, really unhappy.
Of all the ways of organising society it is, after democracy, the next least worst.
I think in the democratic west we sort of forget that there aren't a lot of options somewhere between the miraculous construction of a multi party democracy 'strong man' as we have, with its amazing power to replace the 'strong man' nicely, and the old fashioned strong man of powerful autocracy, open to every possibility except opposition to itself.
Some of you may be aware of the problems of autocratic states as described in the works of Anne Applebaum. One of the aspects of those problems is the social contract between autocrat and the people: the autocrat provides security and safety, the people give up the desire to get involved in politics. The Simon Whistler channel "Warfronts" has done a brief explainer
British people find it difficult to understand that Putin does have the support of the Russian people, and he genuinely does. But it's not expressed via the democratic process, and he may fall if he cannot maintain his side of the deal.
Much of this is the great political philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who correctly discerned that the 'strong man' theory of politics is sound. Most people will and should support the one who will grant them basic protection by being the strong man/leader for them, even though he is horrible to those who oppose him. Within that limit the 'strong man' can give lots of sub freedoms - of religion, thought, assembly, way of life. Assad and Saddam were classic instances of these.
The genius of western democracy is that it created a 'strong man' theory and system where the ruling state itself could be challenged by a peaceful process called voting - as we saw on 4th July in the UK.
The problem is that it’s a one or two generation form of government.
The strong man is succeeded by incompetents, or his successor is.
Or the initial strong man decides to concentrate more on personal enrichment than on his people's welfare.
People love a strong man, so long as that strong man agrees with all their views. When it turns out that the strong man has some very different views, it turns out there is no painless mechanism for replacement.
Which why democracy is worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried.
Either Reeves needs to back down/ameliorate or Starmer needs to sack her before she ends their 2028-29 chances with four years to go.
It's a bloody disaster as PBers like me said on the day it was announced.
" ‘It’s only a matter of time until we get some terrible case,’ a minister confided to me. ‘It happens every year, some tragedy where a pensioner dies alone. But this year it will be blamed on us – for winter fuel allowance cuts. And then we’re going to be in the midst of a full-blown crisis.’ "
"But they cannot align the relatively small saving with the potentially catastrophic political cost of being seen to target some of the most vulnerable in society in wintertime."
"I’ve spoken to Cabinet ministers, junior ministers, MPs, councillors, party officials, activists, trade union officials. I have yet to find a single person within Labour’s ranks who genuinely believes in the winter fuel benefit cut. Or thinks it is politically sustainable."
Featherbedded spoilt people expecting others to give them money they haven't earned and don't need deserve zero sympathy. None whatsoever.
Pensioners are not the "most vulnerable" in society, that is pig ignorant. 75% own their own home without a mortgage and they aren't even the most vulnerable to the cold, that is infants under 1 year of age who are far more vulnerable than pensioners but have never had such entitlement.
Welfare should be a safety net for those who need it.
You are not even at the level of a halfwit. Plenty of pensioners are poor you absolute unfeeling twat , an excuse for a human being.
Plenty of people of all ages are poor - why do only pensioners matter to you?
If poor people need welfare, then it should be targeted at those who need it, not those who don't.
And the most in need are poor babies, not pensioners. Contrary to received myths on here, pensioners have never been the most vulnerable to the cold.
Compared to the average Briton pensioners are more vulnerable to the cold, what a stupid post
Why are you comparing to "average"?
Compared to infants under 1 year of age pensioners are LESS vulnerable to the cold.
So give me one damned reason why the hell should we give pensioners universal payments for winter fuel while their more vulnerable (great-)grandchildren are left to freeze in their cots without it.
For starters as their parents are likely to be on higher incomes as still earning a wage while many pensioners will be on little more than state pensions
Shows how ignorant you are.
Most pensioners are on both more than state pension and not paying either rent or mortgage.
Almost every parent of an infant is paying either rent or a mortgage and most are not on high incomes.
If you want to support the needy universally then infants are more needy than pensioners, universally. If you want it to be means tested, then support means testing. Supporting universality to the less needy is just preposterous.
A substantial proportion are not.
State pension is £9k a year, large numbers of state pensioners renting privately or in council homes while even minimum wage is £20k a year now full time and WFA been cut even for pensioner incomes thousands less than that
To put that £9k state pension into a different context, the threshold for getting free school meals is a household income of £7400 per annum, so £1600 per year below the state pension level, and a quarter of school age children are on free school meals.
A quarter also being the proportion of state pensioners who don't own their own home without a mortgage.
I don't have a figure available to hand as to what proportion of households with infants are on an income of less than the state pension, but I see no reason why it will be substantially different.
The government wants to introduce a digital ID that lives on your phone rather than a physical card. You can then verify your identity that way.
Seems eminently sensible to me.
I wouldn't trust them to develop such a thing that worked, was safe, and didn't cost 5 times more than whatever they would claim it will cost.
That's leaving aside the pro or anti arguments over the principle.
Gov.uk was one of the few successes of the Tory period. Why can’t this also be a success?
Statistical chance. You said it: "one of the few successes".
And actually, gov.uk wasn't particularly, for us. It took *years* before Mrs C could actually log on and deal with her tax. Because the system thought she didn't exist. And HMRC wouldn't let us do a paper form, because she had to log on and ask for one ...
We *think* the problem might have been an apostrophe in the street address. That's pretty basic.
Edit: there are also other issues with it, such as the poor way in which the tax pages are laid out for one's personal tax, and the confusing statements therein. And anyone who has had to try and deail with additional payments to their pensions ... Though that is perhaps more to do with the customer department, that is still all part of the government, so that's not really an excuse.
The government wants to introduce a digital ID that lives on your phone rather than a physical card. You can then verify your identity that way.
Seems eminently sensible to me.
Amazing what we seem to have money for - someone told me there was a £22bn black hole.
This would be really quite cheap to produce, as it is digital. No doubt HMG will find some way to make it cost 8 trillion, but it shouldn’t
I used to be fiercely anti-ID cards, but given how much data we now yield to tech corporations on an hourly basis, including our precise LOCATION, I can’t be arsed to oppose them any more. A digital ID that allows you to accesss government online, and prove your entitlement to NHS care, benefits, etc, makes a load of sense
It will also be an excellent way of beginning the long overdue crackdown on migration and asylum
Some of you may be aware of the problems of autocratic states as described in the works of Anne Applebaum. One of the aspects of those problems is the social contract between autocrat and the people: the autocrat provides security and safety, the people give up the desire to get involved in politics. The Simon Whistler channel "Warfronts" has done a brief explainer
British people find it difficult to understand that Putin does have the support of the Russian people, and he genuinely does. But it's not expressed via the democratic process, and he may fall if he cannot maintain his side of the deal.
There's also the fact that if you stand up to the dictator you mysteriously die. Or, if you're lucky, get shipped off to a labor camp in Siberia. And then die.
It kinda discourages people from sticking their neck out, unless they are really, really unhappy.
Of all the ways of organising society it is, after democracy, the next least worst.
I think in the democratic west we sort of forget that there aren't a lot of options somewhere between the miraculous construction of a multi party democracy 'strong man' as we have, with its amazing power to replace the 'strong man' nicely, and the old fashioned strong man of powerful autocracy, open to every possibility except opposition to itself.
Strong government is probably better than utterly chaotic weak government, which is often the alternative open to people unfortunately, so it's not a surprise when people would go for it.
The generational issue mentioned is an interesting one, there's probably studies of how long such regimes in general can maintain the beneficial side of the equation before corruption/abuse, and reset/collapse. Take a place like Oman, which seems to have benefited very well under Sultan Qaboos for decades, now gone but will his style continue on this generation? The next?
It’s not “one kid with a toy” and then a load of contagion. My best guess is still Russia or China
That looks suspiciously like a plane.
How come the New Jersey authorities can’t just call Air Traffic Control and say ‘guys, is this a plane?’
THAT is one of the mysteries here. If all these drones are misidentified planes, toys, balloons, surely it takes one person with an IQ north of 120 to prove all this??
Well this is America.
And also the UK - East Anglia - and also now reports from Australia
The more narcissistic basically evil, I the case of Braverman, nut jobs join Reform, better for Labour.
Reform go further and further to the Rabid Right and the more Badenochs Tories and her disgraced Right flank and Reform tear strips off each other trying to be worker than woke and more anti anti establishment.
Keir meanwhile gets his head down and grafts grafts grafts boringly but relentless steady slow improvement.
Turning the NHS around, increasing House Building, reducing net migration, clearing the Tory Asylum backlogs.
Interest rates slip quietly down, mortgage base rate slips in the 3.somethings, god forbid a few tax reductions in the form of slowly increasing tax thresholds, wealth and windfall taxes on the greedy for the needy.
The massive UK tanker, slowly turned around.
By 2028 what is the solution, rabid Right or steady solid dependable Left...
Nah, Labour are fucked. Look how they are already cratering in Scotland. Starmer hasn’t the charisma, wit or ideas to get anything done. One term
He might get loads done but it wont be enough. The message from Biden loss is loud and clear: being able to point at a long list of technocratic things you've done and how good the GDP is, or how high the % of widgets produced this term is not worth gnats piss in the new political era.
Thing is, if Labour goes, it means we're done with liberal democracy. Conservatives won't be able to convince anyone, actually we're fine now. So we end up with Reform. And if anyone thinks that's a recipe for sorting things out, I would have a bridge to sell you.
Except Nigel is selling it already.
Piling speculation upon a heapm of them, it would be interesting to see what happened if Reform had the chance to show us that simple answers are not available to intractable questions thrown up by modernity.
I have no idea what Reform would do, and nor do they, but its current policies consist of: continuation of post 1945 social democracy (at the moment there is nothing else that can get voters voting), + national populism + stop importing the workers who produce the laborious work of that social democracy UK residents don't feel like doing + funding done by milking unicorns.
Either Reeves needs to back down/ameliorate or Starmer needs to sack her before she ends their 2028-29 chances with four years to go.
It's a bloody disaster as PBers like me said on the day it was announced.
" ‘It’s only a matter of time until we get some terrible case,’ a minister confided to me. ‘It happens every year, some tragedy where a pensioner dies alone. But this year it will be blamed on us – for winter fuel allowance cuts. And then we’re going to be in the midst of a full-blown crisis.’ "
"But they cannot align the relatively small saving with the potentially catastrophic political cost of being seen to target some of the most vulnerable in society in wintertime."
"I’ve spoken to Cabinet ministers, junior ministers, MPs, councillors, party officials, activists, trade union officials. I have yet to find a single person within Labour’s ranks who genuinely believes in the winter fuel benefit cut. Or thinks it is politically sustainable."
Featherbedded spoilt people expecting others to give them money they haven't earned and don't need deserve zero sympathy. None whatsoever.
Pensioners are not the "most vulnerable" in society, that is pig ignorant. 75% own their own home without a mortgage and they aren't even the most vulnerable to the cold, that is infants under 1 year of age who are far more vulnerable than pensioners but have never had such entitlement.
Welfare should be a safety net for those who need it.
You are not even at the level of a halfwit. Plenty of pensioners are poor you absolute unfeeling twat , an excuse for a human being.
Plenty of people of all ages are poor - why do only pensioners matter to you?
If poor people need welfare, then it should be targeted at those who need it, not those who don't.
And the most in need are poor babies, not pensioners. Contrary to received myths on here, pensioners have never been the most vulnerable to the cold.
Compared to the average Briton pensioners are more vulnerable to the cold, what a stupid post
Why are you comparing to "average"?
Compared to infants under 1 year of age pensioners are LESS vulnerable to the cold.
So give me one damned reason why the hell should we give pensioners universal payments for winter fuel while their more vulnerable (great-)grandchildren are left to freeze in their cots without it.
For starters as their parents are likely to be on higher incomes as still earning a wage while many pensioners will be on little more than state pensions
Shows how ignorant you are.
Most pensioners are on both more than state pension and not paying either rent or mortgage.
Almost every parent of an infant is paying either rent or a mortgage and most are not on high incomes.
If you want to support the needy universally then infants are more needy than pensioners, universally. If you want it to be means tested, then support means testing. Supporting universality to the less needy is just preposterous.
A substantial proportion are not.
State pension is £9k a year, large numbers of state pensioners renting privately or in council homes while even minimum wage is £20k a year now full time and WFA been cut even for pensioner incomes thousands less than that
To put that £9k state pension into a different context, the threshold for getting free school meals is a household income of £7400 per annum, so £1600 per year below the state pension level, and a quarter of school age children are on free school meals.
A quarter also being the proportion of state pensioners who don't own their own home without a mortgage.
I don't have a figure available to hand as to what proportion of households with infants are on an income of less than the state pension, but I see no reason why it will be substantially different.
That is free school meals for children of school age who will certainly be healthier than an 80 to 90 year old pensioner who won't get a free meal a day and won't even get their heating in winter funded too now even if on a pretty low income.
Unless both parents of the infant are on UC and don't work even a minimum wage job (which will certainly be well under 5% miles less than a quarter) of course they will be earning more than a state pensioner
The more narcissistic basically evil, I the case of Braverman, nut jobs join Reform, better for Labour.
Reform go further and further to the Rabid Right and the more Badenochs Tories and her disgraced Right flank and Reform tear strips off each other trying to be worker than woke and more anti anti establishment.
Keir meanwhile gets his head down and grafts grafts grafts boringly but relentless steady slow improvement.
Turning the NHS around, increasing House Building, reducing net migration, clearing the Tory Asylum backlogs.
Interest rates slip quietly down, mortgage base rate slips in the 3.somethings, god forbid a few tax reductions in the form of slowly increasing tax thresholds, wealth and windfall taxes on the greedy for the needy.
The massive UK tanker, slowly turned around.
By 2028 what is the solution, rabid Right or steady solid dependable Left...
Nah, Labour are fucked. Look how they are already cratering in Scotland. Starmer hasn’t the charisma, wit or ideas to get anything done. One term
He might get loads done but it wont be enough. The message from Biden loss is loud and clear: being able to point at a long list of technocratic things you've done and how good the GDP is, or how high the % of widgets produced this term is not worth gnats piss in the new political era.
Thing is, if Labour goes, it means we're done with liberal democracy. Conservatives won't be able to convince anyone, actually we're fine now. So we end up with Reform. And if anyone thinks that's a recipe for sorting things out, I would have a bridge to sell you.
Except Nigel is selling it already.
“I’ve got a bridge to sell you” really is the most terrible fucking cliche in English, it is so cringe and cliched it makes the oratory of Sir Keir Starmer look refreshingly witty
The more narcissistic basically evil, I the case of Braverman, nut jobs join Reform, better for Labour.
Reform go further and further to the Rabid Right and the more Badenochs Tories and her disgraced Right flank and Reform tear strips off each other trying to be worker than woke and more anti anti establishment.
Keir meanwhile gets his head down and grafts grafts grafts boringly but relentless steady slow improvement.
Turning the NHS around, increasing House Building, reducing net migration, clearing the Tory Asylum backlogs.
Interest rates slip quietly down, mortgage base rate slips in the 3.somethings, god forbid a few tax reductions in the form of slowly increasing tax thresholds, wealth and windfall taxes on the greedy for the needy.
The massive UK tanker, slowly turned around.
By 2028 what is the solution, rabid Right or steady solid dependable Left...
Nah, Labour are fucked. Look how they are already cratering in Scotland. Starmer hasn’t the charisma, wit or ideas to get anything done. One term
He might get loads done but it wont be enough. The message from Biden loss is loud and clear: being able to point at a long list of technocratic things you've done and how good the GDP is, or how high the % of widgets produced this term is not worth gnats piss in the new political era.
Thing is, if Labour goes, it means we're done with liberal democracy. Conservatives won't be able to convince anyone, actually we're fine now. So we end up with Reform. And if anyone thinks that's a recipe for sorting things out, I would have a bridge to sell you.
Except Nigel is selling it already.
Piling speculation upon a heapm of them, it would be interesting to see what happened if Reform had the chance to show us that simple answers are not available to intractable questions thrown up by modernity.
I have no idea what Reform would do, and nor do they, but its current policies consist of: continuation of post 1945 social democracy (at the moment there is nothing else that can get voters voting), + national populism + stop importing the workers who produce the laborious work of that social democracy UK residents don't feel like doing + funding done by milking unicorns.
Best guess: have a look at Italy and Argentina
I just wonder if we have to accept a Reform government now. Hope it’s a success in which case I’ll cheer it on, otherwise they’ll crash and burn and something will hopefully recover from the ashes.
The more narcissistic basically evil, I the case of Braverman, nut jobs join Reform, better for Labour.
Reform go further and further to the Rabid Right and the more Badenochs Tories and her disgraced Right flank and Reform tear strips off each other trying to be worker than woke and more anti anti establishment.
Keir meanwhile gets his head down and grafts grafts grafts boringly but relentless steady slow improvement.
Turning the NHS around, increasing House Building, reducing net migration, clearing the Tory Asylum backlogs.
Interest rates slip quietly down, mortgage base rate slips in the 3.somethings, god forbid a few tax reductions in the form of slowly increasing tax thresholds, wealth and windfall taxes on the greedy for the needy.
The massive UK tanker, slowly turned around.
By 2028 what is the solution, rabid Right or steady solid dependable Left...
Nah, Labour are fucked. Look how they are already cratering in Scotland. Starmer hasn’t the charisma, wit or ideas to get anything done. One term
He might get loads done but it wont be enough. The message from Biden loss is loud and clear: being able to point at a long list of technocratic things you've done and how good the GDP is, or how high the % of widgets produced this term is not worth gnats piss in the new political era.
Thing is, if Labour goes, it means we're done with liberal democracy. Conservatives won't be able to convince anyone, actually we're fine now. So we end up with Reform. And if anyone thinks that's a recipe for sorting things out, I would have a bridge to sell you.
Except Nigel is selling it already.
“I’ve got a bridge to sell you” really is the most terrible fucking cliche in English, it is so cringe and cliched it makes the oratory of Sir Keir Starmer look refreshingly witty
Some of you may be aware of the problems of autocratic states as described in the works of Anne Applebaum. One of the aspects of those problems is the social contract between autocrat and the people: the autocrat provides security and safety, the people give up the desire to get involved in politics. The Simon Whistler channel "Warfronts" has done a brief explainer
British people find it difficult to understand that Putin does have the support of the Russian people, and he genuinely does. But it's not expressed via the democratic process, and he may fall if he cannot maintain his side of the deal.
There's also the fact that if you stand up to the dictator you mysteriously die. Or, if you're lucky, get shipped off to a labor camp in Siberia. And then die.
It kinda discourages people from sticking their neck out, unless they are really, really unhappy.
Of all the ways of organising society it is, after democracy, the next least worst.
I think in the democratic west we sort of forget that there aren't a lot of options somewhere between the miraculous construction of a multi party democracy 'strong man' as we have, with its amazing power to replace the 'strong man' nicely, and the old fashioned strong man of powerful autocracy, open to every possibility except opposition to itself.
Strong government is probably better than utterly chaotic weak government, which is often the alternative open to people unfortunately, so it's not a surprise when people would go for it.
The generational issue mentioned is an interesting one, there's probably studies of how long such regimes in general can maintain the beneficial side of the equation before corruption/abuse, and reset/collapse. Take a place like Oman, which seems to have benefited very well under Sultan Qaboos for decades, now gone but will his style continue on this generation? The next?
Maybe the best solution, if only you thought of it at the right time, is to have an ever changing powerful state called the government/ parliament, + a powerless state alongside it which as it happens can trace its direct descent to and beyond the person of Alfred the Great (b 848). Don't tell our French or USA friends.
I just wonder if a middle aged poor person unable to heat their home in winter and with a health problem would get reported if they died.
The media is rather odd in this regard. It's the question that many ignore: if Madeleine McCann had been black, would she have sold newspaper for two decades? If Charlene Downes had been black, would her disappearance have attracted more notice on the left?
The assumption that the media pay attention to the important stories, rather than the ones they can sell, is an odd one.
Section 1 of the 14th Amendment seems clear enough: "Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_States
There we go then. Nothing to stop the President doing any of those things.
Indeed, it seems to explicitly reserve the power to fuck over citizens to the Federal government
The more narcissistic basically evil, I the case of Braverman, nut jobs join Reform, better for Labour.
Reform go further and further to the Rabid Right and the more Badenochs Tories and her disgraced Right flank and Reform tear strips off each other trying to be worker than woke and more anti anti establishment.
Keir meanwhile gets his head down and grafts grafts grafts boringly but relentless steady slow improvement.
Turning the NHS around, increasing House Building, reducing net migration, clearing the Tory Asylum backlogs.
Interest rates slip quietly down, mortgage base rate slips in the 3.somethings, god forbid a few tax reductions in the form of slowly increasing tax thresholds, wealth and windfall taxes on the greedy for the needy.
The massive UK tanker, slowly turned around.
By 2028 what is the solution, rabid Right or steady solid dependable Left...
Nah, Labour are fucked. Look how they are already cratering in Scotland. Starmer hasn’t the charisma, wit or ideas to get anything done. One term
He might get loads done but it wont be enough. The message from Biden loss is loud and clear: being able to point at a long list of technocratic things you've done and how good the GDP is, or how high the % of widgets produced this term is not worth gnats piss in the new political era.
Thing is, if Labour goes, it means we're done with liberal democracy. Conservatives won't be able to convince anyone, actually we're fine now. So we end up with Reform. And if anyone thinks that's a recipe for sorting things out, I would have a bridge to sell you.
Except Nigel is selling it already.
Piling speculation upon a heapm of them, it would be interesting to see what happened if Reform had the chance to show us that simple answers are not available to intractable questions thrown up by modernity.
I have no idea what Reform would do, and nor do they, but its current policies consist of: continuation of post 1945 social democracy (at the moment there is nothing else that can get voters voting), + national populism + stop importing the workers who produce the laborious work of that social democracy UK residents don't feel like doing + funding done by milking unicorns.
Best guess: have a look at Italy and Argentina
I just wonder if we have to accept a Reform government now. Hope it’s a success in which case I’ll cheer it on, otherwise they’ll crash and burn and something will hopefully recover from the ashes.
Thats just what Germans and Italians said in the 1930s
The more narcissistic basically evil, I the case of Braverman, nut jobs join Reform, better for Labour.
Reform go further and further to the Rabid Right and the more Badenochs Tories and her disgraced Right flank and Reform tear strips off each other trying to be worker than woke and more anti anti establishment.
Keir meanwhile gets his head down and grafts grafts grafts boringly but relentless steady slow improvement.
Turning the NHS around, increasing House Building, reducing net migration, clearing the Tory Asylum backlogs.
Interest rates slip quietly down, mortgage base rate slips in the 3.somethings, god forbid a few tax reductions in the form of slowly increasing tax thresholds, wealth and windfall taxes on the greedy for the needy.
The massive UK tanker, slowly turned around.
By 2028 what is the solution, rabid Right or steady solid dependable Left...
Nah, Labour are fucked. Look how they are already cratering in Scotland. Starmer hasn’t the charisma, wit or ideas to get anything done. One term
He might get loads done but it wont be enough. The message from Biden loss is loud and clear: being able to point at a long list of technocratic things you've done and how good the GDP is, or how high the % of widgets produced this term is not worth gnats piss in the new political era.
Thing is, if Labour goes, it means we're done with liberal democracy. Conservatives won't be able to convince anyone, actually we're fine now. So we end up with Reform. And if anyone thinks that's a recipe for sorting things out, I would have a bridge to sell you.
Except Nigel is selling it already.
Piling speculation upon a heapm of them, it would be interesting to see what happened if Reform had the chance to show us that simple answers are not available to intractable questions thrown up by modernity.
I have no idea what Reform would do, and nor do they, but its current policies consist of: continuation of post 1945 social democracy (at the moment there is nothing else that can get voters voting), + national populism + stop importing the workers who produce the laborious work of that social democracy UK residents don't feel like doing + funding done by milking unicorns.
Best guess: have a look at Italy and Argentina
I just wonder if we have to accept a Reform government now. Hope it’s a success in which case I’ll cheer it on, otherwise they’ll crash and burn and something will hopefully recover from the ashes.
Thats just what Germans and Italians said in the 1930s
Either Reeves needs to back down/ameliorate or Starmer needs to sack her before she ends their 2028-29 chances with four years to go.
It's a bloody disaster as PBers like me said on the day it was announced.
" ‘It’s only a matter of time until we get some terrible case,’ a minister confided to me. ‘It happens every year, some tragedy where a pensioner dies alone. But this year it will be blamed on us – for winter fuel allowance cuts. And then we’re going to be in the midst of a full-blown crisis.’ "
"But they cannot align the relatively small saving with the potentially catastrophic political cost of being seen to target some of the most vulnerable in society in wintertime."
"I’ve spoken to Cabinet ministers, junior ministers, MPs, councillors, party officials, activists, trade union officials. I have yet to find a single person within Labour’s ranks who genuinely believes in the winter fuel benefit cut. Or thinks it is politically sustainable."
Featherbedded spoilt people expecting others to give them money they haven't earned and don't need deserve zero sympathy. None whatsoever.
Pensioners are not the "most vulnerable" in society, that is pig ignorant. 75% own their own home without a mortgage and they aren't even the most vulnerable to the cold, that is infants under 1 year of age who are far more vulnerable than pensioners but have never had such entitlement.
Welfare should be a safety net for those who need it.
You are not even at the level of a halfwit. Plenty of pensioners are poor you absolute unfeeling twat , an excuse for a human being.
Plenty of people of all ages are poor - why do only pensioners matter to you?
If poor people need welfare, then it should be targeted at those who need it, not those who don't.
And the most in need are poor babies, not pensioners. Contrary to received myths on here, pensioners have never been the most vulnerable to the cold.
Compared to the average Briton pensioners are more vulnerable to the cold, what a stupid post
Why are you comparing to "average"?
Compared to infants under 1 year of age pensioners are LESS vulnerable to the cold.
So give me one damned reason why the hell should we give pensioners universal payments for winter fuel while their more vulnerable (great-)grandchildren are left to freeze in their cots without it.
For starters as their parents are likely to be on higher incomes as still earning a wage while many pensioners will be on little more than state pensions
Shows how ignorant you are.
Most pensioners are on both more than state pension and not paying either rent or mortgage.
Almost every parent of an infant is paying either rent or a mortgage and most are not on high incomes.
If you want to support the needy universally then infants are more needy than pensioners, universally. If you want it to be means tested, then support means testing. Supporting universality to the less needy is just preposterous.
A substantial proportion are not.
State pension is £9k a year, large numbers of state pensioners renting privately or in council homes while even minimum wage is £20k a year now full time and WFA been cut even for pensioner incomes thousands less than that
To put that £9k state pension into a different context, the threshold for getting free school meals is a household income of £7400 per annum, so £1600 per year below the state pension level, and a quarter of school age children are on free school meals.
A quarter also being the proportion of state pensioners who don't own their own home without a mortgage.
I don't have a figure available to hand as to what proportion of households with infants are on an income of less than the state pension, but I see no reason why it will be substantially different.
That is free school meals for children of school age who will certainly be healthier than an 80 to 90 year old pensioner who won't get a free meal a day and won't even get their heating in winter funded too now even if on a pretty low income.
Unless both parents of the infant are on UC and don't work even a minimum wage job (which will certainly be well under 5% miles less than a quarter) of course they will be earning more than a state pensioner
Infants are not healthier than pensioners, that's the point. Infants are far more vulnerable than pensioners and I see no reason why the proportion of households with infants getting less than £7400 per annum will be very different to what it is for older children of school age. Especially since mothers of infants generally can't work while mothers of school age children are more able to do so.
You are categorically and factually wrong.
The proportion of people working full time minimum wage is well below what you estimate it is. Rightly or wrongly, that is simply the case.
Proportionally for every pensioner who does not own their own home outright, without a mortgage, there is a child in a family earning less than £7400 per annum.
The government wants to introduce a digital ID that lives on your phone rather than a physical card. You can then verify your identity that way.
Seems eminently sensible to me.
Amazing what we seem to have money for - someone told me there was a £22bn black hole.
This would be really quite cheap to produce, as it is digital. No doubt HMG will find some way to make it cost 8 trillion, but it shouldn’t
I used to be fiercely anti-ID cards, but given how much data we now yield to tech corporations on an hourly basis, including our precise LOCATION, I can’t be arsed to oppose them any more. A digital ID that allows you to accesss government online, and prove your entitlement to NHS care, benefits, etc, makes a load of sense
It will also be an excellent way of beginning the long overdue crackdown on migration and asylum
FFS, it's not like the physical cost of something is ever the reason it's expensive. GTA VI is going to cost $2 billion to make, and that's just a downloadable game.
The government wants to introduce a digital ID that lives on your phone rather than a physical card. You can then verify your identity that way.
Seems eminently sensible to me.
Amazing what we seem to have money for - someone told me there was a £22bn black hole.
This would be really quite cheap to produce, as it is digital. No doubt HMG will find some way to make it cost 8 trillion, but it shouldn’t
I used to be fiercely anti-ID cards, but given how much data we now yield to tech corporations on an hourly basis, including our precise LOCATION, I can’t be arsed to oppose them any more. A digital ID that allows you to accesss government online, and prove your entitlement to NHS care, benefits, etc, makes a load of sense
It will also be an excellent way of beginning the long overdue crackdown on migration and asylum
The actual physical cards are trivially cheap.
The cost is down to how demented to connection to absolutely all other government data is. And how stupid the verification on sign up system is.
On both counts, the previous attempt was a disaster.
The previous system was illegal under current European data protection law, by the way. So would be extremely problematic if we tried to do the same thing again. But we will, of course.
The government wants to introduce a digital ID that lives on your phone rather than a physical card. You can then verify your identity that way.
Seems eminently sensible to me.
Nobody steals phones.
It’s not gonna physically exist solely on your phone
But it can still be useful to a bad actor when stolen. *You* may not lose it, because there may be multiple copes, but someone with the identity can still have lots of fun at your expense.
Additionally, your phone has a unique credit card number/token assigned to each transaction, so they can’t clone your card and reuse it, if you use your phone.
Your phone is a much, much safer way to pay than any other form of payment ever invented. It’s why I solely use Apple Pay.
The more narcissistic basically evil, I the case of Braverman, nut jobs join Reform, better for Labour.
Reform go further and further to the Rabid Right and the more Badenochs Tories and her disgraced Right flank and Reform tear strips off each other trying to be worker than woke and more anti anti establishment.
Keir meanwhile gets his head down and grafts grafts grafts boringly but relentless steady slow improvement.
Turning the NHS around, increasing House Building, reducing net migration, clearing the Tory Asylum backlogs.
Interest rates slip quietly down, mortgage base rate slips in the 3.somethings, god forbid a few tax reductions in the form of slowly increasing tax thresholds, wealth and windfall taxes on the greedy for the needy.
The massive UK tanker, slowly turned around.
By 2028 what is the solution, rabid Right or steady solid dependable Left...
Nah, Labour are fucked. Look how they are already cratering in Scotland. Starmer hasn’t the charisma, wit or ideas to get anything done. One term
He might get loads done but it wont be enough. The message from Biden loss is loud and clear: being able to point at a long list of technocratic things you've done and how good the GDP is, or how high the % of widgets produced this term is not worth gnats piss in the new political era.
Thing is, if Labour goes, it means we're done with liberal democracy. Conservatives won't be able to convince anyone, actually we're fine now. So we end up with Reform. And if anyone thinks that's a recipe for sorting things out, I would have a bridge to sell you.
Except Nigel is selling it already.
“I’ve got a bridge to sell you” really is the most terrible fucking cliche in English, it is so cringe and cliched it makes the oratory of Sir Keir Starmer look refreshingly witty
Stop using it
"I've got an AI tech start up to sell you"?
Better
I don’t trust people who use endless tired cliches, it is either a sign of stupidity, or a sign of a crabbed, narrow, midwit view of the world, devoid of imagination, ideas and the spark of hope, eg Sir Keir Starmer KC
Quite honestly I hate to say it but at this point I’d vote Reform UK over the Tories. They at least made some attempt to appeal to me even if all of their solutions are wrong.
The government wants to introduce a digital ID that lives on your phone rather than a physical card. You can then verify your identity that way.
Seems eminently sensible to me.
Amazing what we seem to have money for - someone told me there was a £22bn black hole.
This would be really quite cheap to produce, as it is digital. No doubt HMG will find some way to make it cost 8 trillion, but it shouldn’t
I used to be fiercely anti-ID cards, but given how much data we now yield to tech corporations on an hourly basis, including our precise LOCATION, I can’t be arsed to oppose them any more. A digital ID that allows you to accesss government online, and prove your entitlement to NHS care, benefits, etc, makes a load of sense
It will also be an excellent way of beginning the long overdue crackdown on migration and asylum
FFS, it's not like the physical cost of something is ever the reason it's expensive. GTA VI is going to cost $2 billion to make, and that's just a downloadable game.
No, digital should be cheaper. You just assign a QR code for every UK citizen, along with some unique password stored elsewhere. Put it on a digital card on your phone, also stored it the cloud, Pay amazon to host it. Add a what3words to tell HMG where you sleep, what corner of the bed etc
That’s it. You gotta have that to access anything to do with HMG, hospital care, doctors, benefits, crossing unsold bridges, using motorways, being protected by the British army. The added advantage of this is that old and stupid people without smartphones or who can’t cope with digital stuff will be refused medical care and they will gradually be winnowed out, thus decreasing the burden on the state of the old and the stupid
The more narcissistic basically evil, I the case of Braverman, nut jobs join Reform, better for Labour.
Reform go further and further to the Rabid Right and the more Badenochs Tories and her disgraced Right flank and Reform tear strips off each other trying to be worker than woke and more anti anti establishment.
Keir meanwhile gets his head down and grafts grafts grafts boringly but relentless steady slow improvement.
Turning the NHS around, increasing House Building, reducing net migration, clearing the Tory Asylum backlogs.
Interest rates slip quietly down, mortgage base rate slips in the 3.somethings, god forbid a few tax reductions in the form of slowly increasing tax thresholds, wealth and windfall taxes on the greedy for the needy.
The massive UK tanker, slowly turned around.
By 2028 what is the solution, rabid Right or steady solid dependable Left...
Nah, Labour are fucked. Look how they are already cratering in Scotland. Starmer hasn’t the charisma, wit or ideas to get anything done. One term
He might get loads done but it wont be enough. The message from Biden loss is loud and clear: being able to point at a long list of technocratic things you've done and how good the GDP is, or how high the % of widgets produced this term is not worth gnats piss in the new political era.
Thing is, if Labour goes, it means we're done with liberal democracy. Conservatives won't be able to convince anyone, actually we're fine now. So we end up with Reform. And if anyone thinks that's a recipe for sorting things out, I would have a bridge to sell you.
Except Nigel is selling it already.
Piling speculation upon a heapm of them, it would be interesting to see what happened if Reform had the chance to show us that simple answers are not available to intractable questions thrown up by modernity.
I have no idea what Reform would do, and nor do they, but its current policies consist of: continuation of post 1945 social democracy (at the moment there is nothing else that can get voters voting), + national populism + stop importing the workers who produce the laborious work of that social democracy UK residents don't feel like doing + funding done by milking unicorns.
Best guess: have a look at Italy and Argentina
I just wonder if we have to accept a Reform government now. Hope it’s a success in which case I’ll cheer it on, otherwise they’ll crash and burn and something will hopefully recover from the ashes.
Thats just what Germans and Italians said in the 1930s
We cannot allow Fascism to entrench in the UK.
And yet you have a well known fascist calling card in your username, which isn't a coincidence given who is behind your account.
I don't know if the claim in this video is accurate, but it's fascinating if true that interstate wars end in a negotiated settlement roughly 2/3 of the time, but civil wars only about 1/5 of the time.
The government wants to introduce a digital ID that lives on your phone rather than a physical card. You can then verify your identity that way.
Seems eminently sensible to me.
Amazing what we seem to have money for - someone told me there was a £22bn black hole.
This would be really quite cheap to produce, as it is digital. No doubt HMG will find some way to make it cost 8 trillion, but it shouldn’t
I used to be fiercely anti-ID cards, but given how much data we now yield to tech corporations on an hourly basis, including our precise LOCATION, I can’t be arsed to oppose them any more. A digital ID that allows you to accesss government online, and prove your entitlement to NHS care, benefits, etc, makes a load of sense
It will also be an excellent way of beginning the long overdue crackdown on migration and asylum
FFS, it's not like the physical cost of something is ever the reason it's expensive. GTA VI is going to cost $2 billion to make, and that's just a downloadable game.
No, digital should be cheaper. You just assign a QR code for every UK citizen, along with some unique password stored elsewhere. Put it on a digital card on your phone, also stored it the cloud, Pay amazon to host it. Add a what3words to tell HMG where you sleep, what corner of the bed etc
That’s it. You gotta have that to access anything to do with HMG, hospital care, doctors, benefits, crossing unsold bridges, using motorways, being protected by the British army. The added advantage of this is that old and stupid people without smartphones or who can’t cope with digital stuff will be refused medical care and they will gradually be winnowed out, thus decreasing the burden on the state of the old and the stupid
A little factoid: data from digital films costs far more for the production companies to store than 'traditional' models.
Data storage can be cheap. Data storage where you can guarantee retrieval? expensive.
The more narcissistic basically evil, I the case of Braverman, nut jobs join Reform, better for Labour.
Reform go further and further to the Rabid Right and the more Badenochs Tories and her disgraced Right flank and Reform tear strips off each other trying to be worker than woke and more anti anti establishment.
Keir meanwhile gets his head down and grafts grafts grafts boringly but relentless steady slow improvement.
Turning the NHS around, increasing House Building, reducing net migration, clearing the Tory Asylum backlogs.
Interest rates slip quietly down, mortgage base rate slips in the 3.somethings, god forbid a few tax reductions in the form of slowly increasing tax thresholds, wealth and windfall taxes on the greedy for the needy.
The massive UK tanker, slowly turned around.
By 2028 what is the solution, rabid Right or steady solid dependable Left...
Nah, Labour are fucked. Look how they are already cratering in Scotland. Starmer hasn’t the charisma, wit or ideas to get anything done. One term
He might get loads done but it wont be enough. The message from Biden loss is loud and clear: being able to point at a long list of technocratic things you've done and how good the GDP is, or how high the % of widgets produced this term is not worth gnats piss in the new political era.
Thing is, if Labour goes, it means we're done with liberal democracy. Conservatives won't be able to convince anyone, actually we're fine now. So we end up with Reform. And if anyone thinks that's a recipe for sorting things out, I would have a bridge to sell you.
Except Nigel is selling it already.
Piling speculation upon a heapm of them, it would be interesting to see what happened if Reform had the chance to show us that simple answers are not available to intractable questions thrown up by modernity.
I have no idea what Reform would do, and nor do they, but its current policies consist of: continuation of post 1945 social democracy (at the moment there is nothing else that can get voters voting), + national populism + stop importing the workers who produce the laborious work of that social democracy UK residents don't feel like doing + funding done by milking unicorns.
Best guess: have a look at Italy and Argentina
I just wonder if we have to accept a Reform government now. Hope it’s a success in which case I’ll cheer it on, otherwise they’ll crash and burn and something will hopefully recover from the ashes.
Thats just what Germans and Italians said in the 1930s
We cannot allow Fascism to entrench in the UK.
And yet you have a well known fascist calling card in your username, which isn't a coincidence given who is behind your account.
The more narcissistic basically evil, I the case of Braverman, nut jobs join Reform, better for Labour.
Reform go further and further to the Rabid Right and the more Badenochs Tories and her disgraced Right flank and Reform tear strips off each other trying to be worker than woke and more anti anti establishment.
Keir meanwhile gets his head down and grafts grafts grafts boringly but relentless steady slow improvement.
Turning the NHS around, increasing House Building, reducing net migration, clearing the Tory Asylum backlogs.
Interest rates slip quietly down, mortgage base rate slips in the 3.somethings, god forbid a few tax reductions in the form of slowly increasing tax thresholds, wealth and windfall taxes on the greedy for the needy.
The massive UK tanker, slowly turned around.
By 2028 what is the solution, rabid Right or steady solid dependable Left...
Nah, Labour are fucked. Look how they are already cratering in Scotland. Starmer hasn’t the charisma, wit or ideas to get anything done. One term
He might get loads done but it wont be enough. The message from Biden loss is loud and clear: being able to point at a long list of technocratic things you've done and how good the GDP is, or how high the % of widgets produced this term is not worth gnats piss in the new political era.
Thing is, if Labour goes, it means we're done with liberal democracy. Conservatives won't be able to convince anyone, actually we're fine now. So we end up with Reform. And if anyone thinks that's a recipe for sorting things out, I would have a bridge to sell you.
Except Nigel is selling it already.
Piling speculation upon a heapm of them, it would be interesting to see what happened if Reform had the chance to show us that simple answers are not available to intractable questions thrown up by modernity.
I have no idea what Reform would do, and nor do they, but its current policies consist of: continuation of post 1945 social democracy (at the moment there is nothing else that can get voters voting), + national populism + stop importing the workers who produce the laborious work of that social democracy UK residents don't feel like doing + funding done by milking unicorns.
Best guess: have a look at Italy and Argentina
I just wonder if we have to accept a Reform government now. Hope it’s a success in which case I’ll cheer it on, otherwise they’ll crash and burn and something will hopefully recover from the ashes.
Thats just what Germans and Italians said in the 1930s
We cannot allow Fascism to entrench in the UK.
And yet you have a well known fascist calling card in your username, which isn't a coincidence given who is behind your account.
The more narcissistic basically evil, I the case of Braverman, nut jobs join Reform, better for Labour.
Reform go further and further to the Rabid Right and the more Badenochs Tories and her disgraced Right flank and Reform tear strips off each other trying to be worker than woke and more anti anti establishment.
Keir meanwhile gets his head down and grafts grafts grafts boringly but relentless steady slow improvement.
Turning the NHS around, increasing House Building, reducing net migration, clearing the Tory Asylum backlogs.
Interest rates slip quietly down, mortgage base rate slips in the 3.somethings, god forbid a few tax reductions in the form of slowly increasing tax thresholds, wealth and windfall taxes on the greedy for the needy.
The massive UK tanker, slowly turned around.
By 2028 what is the solution, rabid Right or steady solid dependable Left...
Nah, Labour are fucked. Look how they are already cratering in Scotland. Starmer hasn’t the charisma, wit or ideas to get anything done. One term
He might get loads done but it wont be enough. The message from Biden loss is loud and clear: being able to point at a long list of technocratic things you've done and how good the GDP is, or how high the % of widgets produced this term is not worth gnats piss in the new political era.
Thing is, if Labour goes, it means we're done with liberal democracy. Conservatives won't be able to convince anyone, actually we're fine now. So we end up with Reform. And if anyone thinks that's a recipe for sorting things out, I would have a bridge to sell you.
Except Nigel is selling it already.
Piling speculation upon a heapm of them, it would be interesting to see what happened if Reform had the chance to show us that simple answers are not available to intractable questions thrown up by modernity.
I have no idea what Reform would do, and nor do they, but its current policies consist of: continuation of post 1945 social democracy (at the moment there is nothing else that can get voters voting), + national populism + stop importing the workers who produce the laborious work of that social democracy UK residents don't feel like doing + funding done by milking unicorns.
Best guess: have a look at Italy and Argentina
I just wonder if we have to accept a Reform government now. Hope it’s a success in which case I’ll cheer it on, otherwise they’ll crash and burn and something will hopefully recover from the ashes.
Thats just what Germans and Italians said in the 1930s
We cannot allow Fascism to entrench in the UK.
And yet you have a well known fascist calling card in your username, which isn't a coincidence given who is behind your account.
The more narcissistic basically evil, I the case of Braverman, nut jobs join Reform, better for Labour.
Reform go further and further to the Rabid Right and the more Badenochs Tories and her disgraced Right flank and Reform tear strips off each other trying to be worker than woke and more anti anti establishment.
Keir meanwhile gets his head down and grafts grafts grafts boringly but relentless steady slow improvement.
Turning the NHS around, increasing House Building, reducing net migration, clearing the Tory Asylum backlogs.
Interest rates slip quietly down, mortgage base rate slips in the 3.somethings, god forbid a few tax reductions in the form of slowly increasing tax thresholds, wealth and windfall taxes on the greedy for the needy.
The massive UK tanker, slowly turned around.
By 2028 what is the solution, rabid Right or steady solid dependable Left...
Nah, Labour are fucked. Look how they are already cratering in Scotland. Starmer hasn’t the charisma, wit or ideas to get anything done. One term
He might get loads done but it wont be enough. The message from Biden loss is loud and clear: being able to point at a long list of technocratic things you've done and how good the GDP is, or how high the % of widgets produced this term is not worth gnats piss in the new political era.
Thing is, if Labour goes, it means we're done with liberal democracy. Conservatives won't be able to convince anyone, actually we're fine now. So we end up with Reform. And if anyone thinks that's a recipe for sorting things out, I would have a bridge to sell you.
Except Nigel is selling it already.
Piling speculation upon a heapm of them, it would be interesting to see what happened if Reform had the chance to show us that simple answers are not available to intractable questions thrown up by modernity.
I have no idea what Reform would do, and nor do they, but its current policies consist of: continuation of post 1945 social democracy (at the moment there is nothing else that can get voters voting), + national populism + stop importing the workers who produce the laborious work of that social democracy UK residents don't feel like doing + funding done by milking unicorns.
Best guess: have a look at Italy and Argentina
I just wonder if we have to accept a Reform government now. Hope it’s a success in which case I’ll cheer it on, otherwise they’ll crash and burn and something will hopefully recover from the ashes.
Thats just what Germans and Italians said in the 1930s
We cannot allow Fascism to entrench in the UK.
And yet you have a well known fascist calling card in your username, which isn't a coincidence given who is behind your account.
The government wants to introduce a digital ID that lives on your phone rather than a physical card. You can then verify your identity that way.
Seems eminently sensible to me.
Amazing what we seem to have money for - someone told me there was a £22bn black hole.
This would be really quite cheap to produce, as it is digital. No doubt HMG will find some way to make it cost 8 trillion, but it shouldn’t
I used to be fiercely anti-ID cards, but given how much data we now yield to tech corporations on an hourly basis, including our precise LOCATION, I can’t be arsed to oppose them any more. A digital ID that allows you to accesss government online, and prove your entitlement to NHS care, benefits, etc, makes a load of sense
It will also be an excellent way of beginning the long overdue crackdown on migration and asylum
FFS, it's not like the physical cost of something is ever the reason it's expensive. GTA VI is going to cost $2 billion to make, and that's just a downloadable game.
No, digital should be cheaper. You just assign a QR code for every UK citizen, along with some unique password stored elsewhere. Put it on a digital card on your phone, also stored it the cloud, Pay amazon to host it. Add a what3words to tell HMG where you sleep, what corner of the bed etc
That’s it. You gotta have that to access anything to do with HMG, hospital care, doctors, benefits, crossing unsold bridges, using motorways, being protected by the British army. The added advantage of this is that old and stupid people without smartphones or who can’t cope with digital stuff will be refused medical care and they will gradually be winnowed out, thus decreasing the burden on the state of the old and the stupid
It is UN digital id so the software probably already exists.
I just wonder if a middle aged poor person unable to heat their home in winter and with a health problem would get reported if they died.
Or indeed the hundreds of thousands of people with lung disease caused by air pollution in our cities. No doubt thousands of lives will be extended or saved by ULEZ.
The more narcissistic basically evil, I the case of Braverman, nut jobs join Reform, better for Labour.
Reform go further and further to the Rabid Right and the more Badenochs Tories and her disgraced Right flank and Reform tear strips off each other trying to be worker than woke and more anti anti establishment.
Keir meanwhile gets his head down and grafts grafts grafts boringly but relentless steady slow improvement.
Turning the NHS around, increasing House Building, reducing net migration, clearing the Tory Asylum backlogs.
Interest rates slip quietly down, mortgage base rate slips in the 3.somethings, god forbid a few tax reductions in the form of slowly increasing tax thresholds, wealth and windfall taxes on the greedy for the needy.
The massive UK tanker, slowly turned around.
By 2028 what is the solution, rabid Right or steady solid dependable Left...
Nah, Labour are fucked. Look how they are already cratering in Scotland. Starmer hasn’t the charisma, wit or ideas to get anything done. One term
He might get loads done but it wont be enough. The message from Biden loss is loud and clear: being able to point at a long list of technocratic things you've done and how good the GDP is, or how high the % of widgets produced this term is not worth gnats piss in the new political era.
Thing is, if Labour goes, it means we're done with liberal democracy. Conservatives won't be able to convince anyone, actually we're fine now. So we end up with Reform. And if anyone thinks that's a recipe for sorting things out, I would have a bridge to sell you.
Except Nigel is selling it already.
Piling speculation upon a heapm of them, it would be interesting to see what happened if Reform had the chance to show us that simple answers are not available to intractable questions thrown up by modernity.
I have no idea what Reform would do, and nor do they, but its current policies consist of: continuation of post 1945 social democracy (at the moment there is nothing else that can get voters voting), + national populism + stop importing the workers who produce the laborious work of that social democracy UK residents don't feel like doing + funding done by milking unicorns.
Best guess: have a look at Italy and Argentina
I just wonder if we have to accept a Reform government now. Hope it’s a success in which case I’ll cheer it on, otherwise they’ll crash and burn and something will hopefully recover from the ashes.
Thats just what Germans and Italians said in the 1930s
We cannot allow Fascism to entrench in the UK.
And yet you have a well known fascist calling card in your username, which isn't a coincidence given who is behind your account.
I just assumed it was 36 year old who hadn't bothered to look up the nasty connotation.
Quite honestly I hate to say it but at this point I’d vote Reform UK over the Tories. They at least made some attempt to appeal to me even if all of their solutions are wrong.
All the way from Corbyn to Farage is some journey !!!!!
The more narcissistic basically evil, I the case of Braverman, nut jobs join Reform, better for Labour.
Reform go further and further to the Rabid Right and the more Badenochs Tories and her disgraced Right flank and Reform tear strips off each other trying to be worker than woke and more anti anti establishment.
Keir meanwhile gets his head down and grafts grafts grafts boringly but relentless steady slow improvement.
Turning the NHS around, increasing House Building, reducing net migration, clearing the Tory Asylum backlogs.
Interest rates slip quietly down, mortgage base rate slips in the 3.somethings, god forbid a few tax reductions in the form of slowly increasing tax thresholds, wealth and windfall taxes on the greedy for the needy.
The massive UK tanker, slowly turned around.
By 2028 what is the solution, rabid Right or steady solid dependable Left...
Nah, Labour are fucked. Look how they are already cratering in Scotland. Starmer hasn’t the charisma, wit or ideas to get anything done. One term
He might get loads done but it wont be enough. The message from Biden loss is loud and clear: being able to point at a long list of technocratic things you've done and how good the GDP is, or how high the % of widgets produced this term is not worth gnats piss in the new political era.
Thing is, if Labour goes, it means we're done with liberal democracy. Conservatives won't be able to convince anyone, actually we're fine now. So we end up with Reform. And if anyone thinks that's a recipe for sorting things out, I would have a bridge to sell you.
Except Nigel is selling it already.
Piling speculation upon a heapm of them, it would be interesting to see what happened if Reform had the chance to show us that simple answers are not available to intractable questions thrown up by modernity.
I have no idea what Reform would do, and nor do they, but its current policies consist of: continuation of post 1945 social democracy (at the moment there is nothing else that can get voters voting), + national populism + stop importing the workers who produce the laborious work of that social democracy UK residents don't feel like doing + funding done by milking unicorns.
Best guess: have a look at Italy and Argentina
I just wonder if we have to accept a Reform government now. Hope it’s a success in which case I’ll cheer it on, otherwise they’ll crash and burn and something will hopefully recover from the ashes.
Thats just what Germans and Italians said in the 1930s
We cannot allow Fascism to entrench in the UK.
And yet you have a well known fascist calling card in your username, which isn't a coincidence given who is behind your account.
I’m like the Mossad of PB. Everything devious, new and clever is ascribed to me, and I am credited with astonishing levels of cunning and wiliness, almost magical powers - so, heh, ta
But only the thick credulous people really fall for it, well done for outing yourself
The more narcissistic basically evil, I the case of Braverman, nut jobs join Reform, better for Labour.
Reform go further and further to the Rabid Right and the more Badenochs Tories and her disgraced Right flank and Reform tear strips off each other trying to be worker than woke and more anti anti establishment.
Keir meanwhile gets his head down and grafts grafts grafts boringly but relentless steady slow improvement.
Turning the NHS around, increasing House Building, reducing net migration, clearing the Tory Asylum backlogs.
Interest rates slip quietly down, mortgage base rate slips in the 3.somethings, god forbid a few tax reductions in the form of slowly increasing tax thresholds, wealth and windfall taxes on the greedy for the needy.
The massive UK tanker, slowly turned around.
By 2028 what is the solution, rabid Right or steady solid dependable Left...
Nah, Labour are fucked. Look how they are already cratering in Scotland. Starmer hasn’t the charisma, wit or ideas to get anything done. One term
He might get loads done but it wont be enough. The message from Biden loss is loud and clear: being able to point at a long list of technocratic things you've done and how good the GDP is, or how high the % of widgets produced this term is not worth gnats piss in the new political era.
Thing is, if Labour goes, it means we're done with liberal democracy. Conservatives won't be able to convince anyone, actually we're fine now. So we end up with Reform. And if anyone thinks that's a recipe for sorting things out, I would have a bridge to sell you.
Except Nigel is selling it already.
Piling speculation upon a heapm of them, it would be interesting to see what happened if Reform had the chance to show us that simple answers are not available to intractable questions thrown up by modernity.
I have no idea what Reform would do, and nor do they, but its current policies consist of: continuation of post 1945 social democracy (at the moment there is nothing else that can get voters voting), + national populism + stop importing the workers who produce the laborious work of that social democracy UK residents don't feel like doing + funding done by milking unicorns.
Best guess: have a look at Italy and Argentina
I just wonder if we have to accept a Reform government now. Hope it’s a success in which case I’ll cheer it on, otherwise they’ll crash and burn and something will hopefully recover from the ashes.
One thing we need to get rid of is the casual racism of the assumption that immigrants only “produce the laborious work of that social democracy UK residents don't feel like doing”
Apart from the fact that the majority of such jobs are done by natives - 80% of care home workers for example….
The real truth is that
1) immigrants are doing the jobs we don’t train our own people to do. The NHS training gap is real, for example. And mandated by government. 2) other immigrants are doing the jobs that are too poorly paid and have such nasty conditions that they are worse than the life on the princely benefits paid in the UK. You know, the benefits that enable people to sleep on a pile of £100 (Scottish) notes.
The more narcissistic basically evil, I the case of Braverman, nut jobs join Reform, better for Labour.
Reform go further and further to the Rabid Right and the more Badenochs Tories and her disgraced Right flank and Reform tear strips off each other trying to be worker than woke and more anti anti establishment.
Keir meanwhile gets his head down and grafts grafts grafts boringly but relentless steady slow improvement.
Turning the NHS around, increasing House Building, reducing net migration, clearing the Tory Asylum backlogs.
Interest rates slip quietly down, mortgage base rate slips in the 3.somethings, god forbid a few tax reductions in the form of slowly increasing tax thresholds, wealth and windfall taxes on the greedy for the needy.
The massive UK tanker, slowly turned around.
By 2028 what is the solution, rabid Right or steady solid dependable Left...
Nah, Labour are fucked. Look how they are already cratering in Scotland. Starmer hasn’t the charisma, wit or ideas to get anything done. One term
He might get loads done but it wont be enough. The message from Biden loss is loud and clear: being able to point at a long list of technocratic things you've done and how good the GDP is, or how high the % of widgets produced this term is not worth gnats piss in the new political era.
Thing is, if Labour goes, it means we're done with liberal democracy. Conservatives won't be able to convince anyone, actually we're fine now. So we end up with Reform. And if anyone thinks that's a recipe for sorting things out, I would have a bridge to sell you.
Except Nigel is selling it already.
Piling speculation upon a heapm of them, it would be interesting to see what happened if Reform had the chance to show us that simple answers are not available to intractable questions thrown up by modernity.
I have no idea what Reform would do, and nor do they, but its current policies consist of: continuation of post 1945 social democracy (at the moment there is nothing else that can get voters voting), + national populism + stop importing the workers who produce the laborious work of that social democracy UK residents don't feel like doing + funding done by milking unicorns.
Best guess: have a look at Italy and Argentina
I just wonder if we have to accept a Reform government now. Hope it’s a success in which case I’ll cheer it on, otherwise they’ll crash and burn and something will hopefully recover from the ashes.
Thats just what Germans and Italians said in the 1930s
We cannot allow Fascism to entrench in the UK.
And yet you have a well known fascist calling card in your username, which isn't a coincidence given who is behind your account.
I just assumed it was 36 year old who hadn't bothered to look up the nasty connotation.
I don't think its a coincidence.
I assumed it was someone whom I believe is in their fifties (not 100% sure on that) with a history of fascist leanings, creating multiple new accounts on this site and deliberate trolling.
The more narcissistic basically evil, I the case of Braverman, nut jobs join Reform, better for Labour.
Reform go further and further to the Rabid Right and the more Badenochs Tories and her disgraced Right flank and Reform tear strips off each other trying to be worker than woke and more anti anti establishment.
Keir meanwhile gets his head down and grafts grafts grafts boringly but relentless steady slow improvement.
Turning the NHS around, increasing House Building, reducing net migration, clearing the Tory Asylum backlogs.
Interest rates slip quietly down, mortgage base rate slips in the 3.somethings, god forbid a few tax reductions in the form of slowly increasing tax thresholds, wealth and windfall taxes on the greedy for the needy.
The massive UK tanker, slowly turned around.
By 2028 what is the solution, rabid Right or steady solid dependable Left...
Nah, Labour are fucked. Look how they are already cratering in Scotland. Starmer hasn’t the charisma, wit or ideas to get anything done. One term
He might get loads done but it wont be enough. The message from Biden loss is loud and clear: being able to point at a long list of technocratic things you've done and how good the GDP is, or how high the % of widgets produced this term is not worth gnats piss in the new political era.
Thing is, if Labour goes, it means we're done with liberal democracy. Conservatives won't be able to convince anyone, actually we're fine now. So we end up with Reform. And if anyone thinks that's a recipe for sorting things out, I would have a bridge to sell you.
Except Nigel is selling it already.
Piling speculation upon a heapm of them, it would be interesting to see what happened if Reform had the chance to show us that simple answers are not available to intractable questions thrown up by modernity.
I have no idea what Reform would do, and nor do they, but its current policies consist of: continuation of post 1945 social democracy (at the moment there is nothing else that can get voters voting), + national populism + stop importing the workers who produce the laborious work of that social democracy UK residents don't feel like doing + funding done by milking unicorns.
Best guess: have a look at Italy and Argentina
I just wonder if we have to accept a Reform government now. Hope it’s a success in which case I’ll cheer it on, otherwise they’ll crash and burn and something will hopefully recover from the ashes.
Thats just what Germans and Italians said in the 1930s
We cannot allow Fascism to entrench in the UK.
And yet you have a well known fascist calling card in your username, which isn't a coincidence given who is behind your account.
I’m like the Mossad of PB. Everything devious, new and clever is ascribed to me, and I am credited with astonishing levels of cunning and wiliness, almost magical powers - so, heh, ta
But only the thick credulous people really fall for it, well done for outing yourself
Trolling is neither astonishing, nor wily, nor cunning, nor magical.
It’s not “one kid with a toy” and then a load of contagion. My best guess is still Russia or China
That looks suspiciously like a plane.
How come the New Jersey authorities can’t just call Air Traffic Control and say ‘guys, is this a plane?’
THAT is one of the mysteries here. If all these drones are misidentified planes, toys, balloons, surely it takes one person with an IQ north of 120 to prove all this??
Otoh if the US authorities are genuinely worried, why can't they lay their hands on a decent camera lens and a drone to mount it on?
The more narcissistic basically evil, I the case of Braverman, nut jobs join Reform, better for Labour.
Reform go further and further to the Rabid Right and the more Badenochs Tories and her disgraced Right flank and Reform tear strips off each other trying to be worker than woke and more anti anti establishment.
Keir meanwhile gets his head down and grafts grafts grafts boringly but relentless steady slow improvement.
Turning the NHS around, increasing House Building, reducing net migration, clearing the Tory Asylum backlogs.
Interest rates slip quietly down, mortgage base rate slips in the 3.somethings, god forbid a few tax reductions in the form of slowly increasing tax thresholds, wealth and windfall taxes on the greedy for the needy.
The massive UK tanker, slowly turned around.
By 2028 what is the solution, rabid Right or steady solid dependable Left...
Nah, Labour are fucked. Look how they are already cratering in Scotland. Starmer hasn’t the charisma, wit or ideas to get anything done. One term
He might get loads done but it wont be enough. The message from Biden loss is loud and clear: being able to point at a long list of technocratic things you've done and how good the GDP is, or how high the % of widgets produced this term is not worth gnats piss in the new political era.
Thing is, if Labour goes, it means we're done with liberal democracy. Conservatives won't be able to convince anyone, actually we're fine now. So we end up with Reform. And if anyone thinks that's a recipe for sorting things out, I would have a bridge to sell you.
Except Nigel is selling it already.
Piling speculation upon a heapm of them, it would be interesting to see what happened if Reform had the chance to show us that simple answers are not available to intractable questions thrown up by modernity.
I have no idea what Reform would do, and nor do they, but its current policies consist of: continuation of post 1945 social democracy (at the moment there is nothing else that can get voters voting), + national populism + stop importing the workers who produce the laborious work of that social democracy UK residents don't feel like doing + funding done by milking unicorns.
Best guess: have a look at Italy and Argentina
I just wonder if we have to accept a Reform government now. Hope it’s a success in which case I’ll cheer it on, otherwise they’ll crash and burn and something will hopefully recover from the ashes.
Thats just what Germans and Italians said in the 1930s
We cannot allow Fascism to entrench in the UK.
And yet you have a well known fascist calling card in your username, which isn't a coincidence given who is behind your account.
I’m like the Mossad of PB. Everything devious, new and clever is ascribed to me, and I am credited with astonishing levels of cunning and wiliness, almost magical powers - so, heh, ta
But only the thick credulous people really fall for it, well done for outing yourself
Trolling is neither astonishing, nor wily, nor cunning, nor magical.
Its merely trolling.
Not your best day. What you’re accusing me of isn’t even “trolling” = you don’t have the vocabulary to precisely express your own thoughts
What you’re accusing me of, re Ms Shecorns, is “sock-puppetry” - creating fake internet personae for amusement, manipulation, or whatever
Quite honestly I hate to say it but at this point I’d vote Reform UK over the Tories. They at least made some attempt to appeal to me even if all of their solutions are wrong.
All the way from Corbyn to Farage is some journey !!!!!
Horseshoe theory.
There's not that big of a gap between far left and far right.
It’s not “one kid with a toy” and then a load of contagion. My best guess is still Russia or China
That looks suspiciously like a plane.
How come the New Jersey authorities can’t just call Air Traffic Control and say ‘guys, is this a plane?’
THAT is one of the mysteries here. If all these drones are misidentified planes, toys, balloons, surely it takes one person with an IQ north of 120 to prove all this??
Otoh if the US authorities are genuinely worried, why can't they lay their hands on a decent camera lens and a drone to mount it on?
Oh, I agree. The whole thing is fucking weird, in multiple ways. I love it
Either Reeves needs to back down/ameliorate or Starmer needs to sack her before she ends their 2028-29 chances with four years to go.
It's a bloody disaster as PBers like me said on the day it was announced.
" ‘It’s only a matter of time until we get some terrible case,’ a minister confided to me. ‘It happens every year, some tragedy where a pensioner dies alone. But this year it will be blamed on us – for winter fuel allowance cuts. And then we’re going to be in the midst of a full-blown crisis.’ "
"But they cannot align the relatively small saving with the potentially catastrophic political cost of being seen to target some of the most vulnerable in society in wintertime."
"I’ve spoken to Cabinet ministers, junior ministers, MPs, councillors, party officials, activists, trade union officials. I have yet to find a single person within Labour’s ranks who genuinely believes in the winter fuel benefit cut. Or thinks it is politically sustainable."
Featherbedded spoilt people expecting others to give them money they haven't earned and don't need deserve zero sympathy. None whatsoever.
Pensioners are not the "most vulnerable" in society, that is pig ignorant. 75% own their own home without a mortgage and they aren't even the most vulnerable to the cold, that is infants under 1 year of age who are far more vulnerable than pensioners but have never had such entitlement.
Welfare should be a safety net for those who need it.
You are not even at the level of a halfwit. Plenty of pensioners are poor you absolute unfeeling twat , an excuse for a human being.
Plenty of people of all ages are poor - why do only pensioners matter to you?
If poor people need welfare, then it should be targeted at those who need it, not those who don't.
And the most in need are poor babies, not pensioners. Contrary to received myths on here, pensioners have never been the most vulnerable to the cold.
Compared to the average Briton pensioners are more vulnerable to the cold, what a stupid post
Why are you comparing to "average"?
Compared to infants under 1 year of age pensioners are LESS vulnerable to the cold.
So give me one damned reason why the hell should we give pensioners universal payments for winter fuel while their more vulnerable (great-)grandchildren are left to freeze in their cots without it.
For starters as their parents are likely to be on higher incomes as still earning a wage while many pensioners will be on little more than state pensions
Shows how ignorant you are.
Most pensioners are on both more than state pension and not paying either rent or mortgage.
Almost every parent of an infant is paying either rent or a mortgage and most are not on high incomes.
If you want to support the needy universally then infants are more needy than pensioners, universally. If you want it to be means tested, then support means testing. Supporting universality to the less needy is just preposterous.
A substantial proportion are not.
State pension is £9k a year, large numbers of state pensioners renting privately or in council homes while even minimum wage is £20k a year now full time and WFA been cut even for pensioner incomes thousands less than that
To put that £9k state pension into a different context, the threshold for getting free school meals is a household income of £7400 per annum, so £1600 per year below the state pension level, and a quarter of school age children are on free school meals.
A quarter also being the proportion of state pensioners who don't own their own home without a mortgage.
I don't have a figure available to hand as to what proportion of households with infants are on an income of less than the state pension, but I see no reason why it will be substantially different.
That is free school meals for children of school age who will certainly be healthier than an 80 to 90 year old pensioner who won't get a free meal a day and won't even get their heating in winter funded too now even if on a pretty low income.
Unless both parents of the infant are on UC and don't work even a minimum wage job (which will certainly be well under 5% miles less than a quarter) of course they will be earning more than a state pensioner
Infants are not healthier than pensioners, that's the point. Infants are far more vulnerable than pensioners and I see no reason why the proportion of households with infants getting less than £7400 per annum will be very different to what it is for older children of school age. Especially since mothers of infants generally can't work while mothers of school age children are more able to do so.
You are categorically and factually wrong.
The proportion of people working full time minimum wage is well below what you estimate it is. Rightly or wrongly, that is simply the case.
Proportionally for every pensioner who does not own their own home outright, without a mortgage, there is a child in a family earning less than £7400 per annum.
Infants don't get free school meals either.
Given the minimum wage is £20k now simple Maths will tell you that with UK unemployment at 4% less than 5% of infants will be getting less than £20k a year let alone £7400 per annum. Even if only the father works.
£7400 is only the threshold for UC parents of those with FSM after tax and not including benefits, so you are distorting that too
Indeed you can also get FSM even if your income is too high for UC and other benefits
It’s not “one kid with a toy” and then a load of contagion. My best guess is still Russia or China
That looks suspiciously like a plane.
How come the New Jersey authorities can’t just call Air Traffic Control and say ‘guys, is this a plane?’
THAT is one of the mysteries here. If all these drones are misidentified planes, toys, balloons, surely it takes one person with an IQ north of 120 to prove all this??
Because ATC do not rely on radars. They rely on *transmitters*, aka transponders, on the aircraft. Not all aircraft have transponders turned on; civils because of mistakes; military because of intent (they don't want people to know where they are, often even whilst training).
Also: ATC can be very busy. They concentrate on keeping airspace safe, not answering weird questions about UFOs.
The more narcissistic basically evil, I the case of Braverman, nut jobs join Reform, better for Labour.
Reform go further and further to the Rabid Right and the more Badenochs Tories and her disgraced Right flank and Reform tear strips off each other trying to be worker than woke and more anti anti establishment.
Keir meanwhile gets his head down and grafts grafts grafts boringly but relentless steady slow improvement.
Turning the NHS around, increasing House Building, reducing net migration, clearing the Tory Asylum backlogs.
Interest rates slip quietly down, mortgage base rate slips in the 3.somethings, god forbid a few tax reductions in the form of slowly increasing tax thresholds, wealth and windfall taxes on the greedy for the needy.
The massive UK tanker, slowly turned around.
By 2028 what is the solution, rabid Right or steady solid dependable Left...
Nah, Labour are fucked. Look how they are already cratering in Scotland. Starmer hasn’t the charisma, wit or ideas to get anything done. One term
He might get loads done but it wont be enough. The message from Biden loss is loud and clear: being able to point at a long list of technocratic things you've done and how good the GDP is, or how high the % of widgets produced this term is not worth gnats piss in the new political era.
Thing is, if Labour goes, it means we're done with liberal democracy. Conservatives won't be able to convince anyone, actually we're fine now. So we end up with Reform. And if anyone thinks that's a recipe for sorting things out, I would have a bridge to sell you.
Except Nigel is selling it already.
Piling speculation upon a heapm of them, it would be interesting to see what happened if Reform had the chance to show us that simple answers are not available to intractable questions thrown up by modernity.
I have no idea what Reform would do, and nor do they, but its current policies consist of: continuation of post 1945 social democracy (at the moment there is nothing else that can get voters voting), + national populism + stop importing the workers who produce the laborious work of that social democracy UK residents don't feel like doing + funding done by milking unicorns.
Best guess: have a look at Italy and Argentina
I just wonder if we have to accept a Reform government now. Hope it’s a success in which case I’ll cheer it on, otherwise they’ll crash and burn and something will hopefully recover from the ashes.
Thats just what Germans and Italians said in the 1930s
We cannot allow Fascism to entrench in the UK.
And yet you have a well known fascist calling card in your username, which isn't a coincidence given who is behind your account.
I’m like the Mossad of PB. Everything devious, new and clever is ascribed to me, and I am credited with astonishing levels of cunning and wiliness, almost magical powers - so, heh, ta
But only the thick credulous people really fall for it, well done for outing yourself
Trolling is neither astonishing, nor wily, nor cunning, nor magical.
Its merely trolling.
If it is trolling, ignore it. If it is not trolling but objectionable, still ignore it.
The more narcissistic basically evil, I the case of Braverman, nut jobs join Reform, better for Labour.
Reform go further and further to the Rabid Right and the more Badenochs Tories and her disgraced Right flank and Reform tear strips off each other trying to be worker than woke and more anti anti establishment.
Keir meanwhile gets his head down and grafts grafts grafts boringly but relentless steady slow improvement.
Turning the NHS around, increasing House Building, reducing net migration, clearing the Tory Asylum backlogs.
Interest rates slip quietly down, mortgage base rate slips in the 3.somethings, god forbid a few tax reductions in the form of slowly increasing tax thresholds, wealth and windfall taxes on the greedy for the needy.
The massive UK tanker, slowly turned around.
By 2028 what is the solution, rabid Right or steady solid dependable Left...
Nah, Labour are fucked. Look how they are already cratering in Scotland. Starmer hasn’t the charisma, wit or ideas to get anything done. One term
He might get loads done but it wont be enough. The message from Biden loss is loud and clear: being able to point at a long list of technocratic things you've done and how good the GDP is, or how high the % of widgets produced this term is not worth gnats piss in the new political era.
Thing is, if Labour goes, it means we're done with liberal democracy. Conservatives won't be able to convince anyone, actually we're fine now. So we end up with Reform. And if anyone thinks that's a recipe for sorting things out, I would have a bridge to sell you.
Except Nigel is selling it already.
Piling speculation upon a heapm of them, it would be interesting to see what happened if Reform had the chance to show us that simple answers are not available to intractable questions thrown up by modernity.
I have no idea what Reform would do, and nor do they, but its current policies consist of: continuation of post 1945 social democracy (at the moment there is nothing else that can get voters voting), + national populism + stop importing the workers who produce the laborious work of that social democracy UK residents don't feel like doing + funding done by milking unicorns.
Best guess: have a look at Italy and Argentina
I just wonder if we have to accept a Reform government now. Hope it’s a success in which case I’ll cheer it on, otherwise they’ll crash and burn and something will hopefully recover from the ashes.
Thats just what Germans and Italians said in the 1930s
We cannot allow Fascism to entrench in the UK.
And yet you have a well known fascist calling card in your username, which isn't a coincidence given who is behind your account.
I’m like the Mossad of PB. Everything devious, new and clever is ascribed to me, and I am credited with astonishing levels of cunning and wiliness, almost magical powers - so, heh, ta
But only the thick credulous people really fall for it, well done for outing yourself
Trolling is neither astonishing, nor wily, nor cunning, nor magical.
Its merely trolling.
Not your best day. What you’re accusing me of isn’t even “trolling” = you don’t have the vocabulary to precisely express your own thoughts
What you’re accusing me of, re Ms Shecorns, is “sock-puppetry” - creating fake internet personae for amusement, manipulation, or whatever
Your attempts to simultaneously humblebrag and deflect are entirely unconvincing.
As are the fact that you don't realise sock puppets are commonly used by trolls, as said by your own link, which is contained within the "internet trolling" category. 🤦♂️
Quite honestly I hate to say it but at this point I’d vote Reform UK over the Tories. They at least made some attempt to appeal to me even if all of their solutions are wrong.
All the way from Corbyn to Farage is some journey !!!!!
A lot of young people are making that journey. They despair at their lack of opportunities, particularly re housing. Corbyn sounded like he might solve that, but it turned out he was a pitiful nutter
Now Nigel offers a solution, and at least his has the power of logic. If you stop 1 million people entering the country every year, the pressure on house prices will dissipate fast
Quite honestly I hate to say it but at this point I’d vote Reform UK over the Tories. They at least made some attempt to appeal to me even if all of their solutions are wrong.
All the way from Corbyn to Farage is some journey !!!!!
Horseshoe theory.
There's not that big of a gap between far left and far right.
Original fascist theory was that the idea behind state direction of the economy and society was correct, but that it needed added nationalism in it’s goals
Either Reeves needs to back down/ameliorate or Starmer needs to sack her before she ends their 2028-29 chances with four years to go.
It's a bloody disaster as PBers like me said on the day it was announced.
" ‘It’s only a matter of time until we get some terrible case,’ a minister confided to me. ‘It happens every year, some tragedy where a pensioner dies alone. But this year it will be blamed on us – for winter fuel allowance cuts. And then we’re going to be in the midst of a full-blown crisis.’ "
"But they cannot align the relatively small saving with the potentially catastrophic political cost of being seen to target some of the most vulnerable in society in wintertime."
"I’ve spoken to Cabinet ministers, junior ministers, MPs, councillors, party officials, activists, trade union officials. I have yet to find a single person within Labour’s ranks who genuinely believes in the winter fuel benefit cut. Or thinks it is politically sustainable."
Featherbedded spoilt people expecting others to give them money they haven't earned and don't need deserve zero sympathy. None whatsoever.
Pensioners are not the "most vulnerable" in society, that is pig ignorant. 75% own their own home without a mortgage and they aren't even the most vulnerable to the cold, that is infants under 1 year of age who are far more vulnerable than pensioners but have never had such entitlement.
Welfare should be a safety net for those who need it.
You are not even at the level of a halfwit. Plenty of pensioners are poor you absolute unfeeling twat , an excuse for a human being.
Plenty of people of all ages are poor - why do only pensioners matter to you?
If poor people need welfare, then it should be targeted at those who need it, not those who don't.
And the most in need are poor babies, not pensioners. Contrary to received myths on here, pensioners have never been the most vulnerable to the cold.
Compared to the average Briton pensioners are more vulnerable to the cold, what a stupid post
Why are you comparing to "average"?
Compared to infants under 1 year of age pensioners are LESS vulnerable to the cold.
So give me one damned reason why the hell should we give pensioners universal payments for winter fuel while their more vulnerable (great-)grandchildren are left to freeze in their cots without it.
For starters as their parents are likely to be on higher incomes as still earning a wage while many pensioners will be on little more than state pensions
Shows how ignorant you are.
Most pensioners are on both more than state pension and not paying either rent or mortgage.
Almost every parent of an infant is paying either rent or a mortgage and most are not on high incomes.
If you want to support the needy universally then infants are more needy than pensioners, universally. If you want it to be means tested, then support means testing. Supporting universality to the less needy is just preposterous.
A substantial proportion are not.
State pension is £9k a year, large numbers of state pensioners renting privately or in council homes while even minimum wage is £20k a year now full time and WFA been cut even for pensioner incomes thousands less than that
To put that £9k state pension into a different context, the threshold for getting free school meals is a household income of £7400 per annum, so £1600 per year below the state pension level, and a quarter of school age children are on free school meals.
A quarter also being the proportion of state pensioners who don't own their own home without a mortgage.
I don't have a figure available to hand as to what proportion of households with infants are on an income of less than the state pension, but I see no reason why it will be substantially different.
That is free school meals for children of school age who will certainly be healthier than an 80 to 90 year old pensioner who won't get a free meal a day and won't even get their heating in winter funded too now even if on a pretty low income.
Unless both parents of the infant are on UC and don't work even a minimum wage job (which will certainly be well under 5% miles less than a quarter) of course they will be earning more than a state pensioner
Infants are not healthier than pensioners, that's the point. Infants are far more vulnerable than pensioners and I see no reason why the proportion of households with infants getting less than £7400 per annum will be very different to what it is for older children of school age. Especially since mothers of infants generally can't work while mothers of school age children are more able to do so.
You are categorically and factually wrong.
The proportion of people working full time minimum wage is well below what you estimate it is. Rightly or wrongly, that is simply the case.
Proportionally for every pensioner who does not own their own home outright, without a mortgage, there is a child in a family earning less than £7400 per annum.
Infants don't get free school meals either.
Given the minimum wage is £20k now simple Maths will tell you that with UK unemployment at 4% less than 5% of infants will be getting less than £20k a year let alone £7400 per annum. Even if only the father works.
£7400 is only the threshold for UC parents of those with FSM after tax and not including benefits, so you are distorting that too
Indeed you can also get FSM even if your income is too high for UC and other benefits
The government wants to introduce a digital ID that lives on your phone rather than a physical card. You can then verify your identity that way.
Seems eminently sensible to me.
Nobody steals phones.
Actually, you’re much safer having your card on your phone as you can deactivate it remotely straight away.
With a physical card they can use it until the bank is told to block it.
Isn't that the same thing, with a different process. If your phone is stolen, you have to deactivate it. If your card is stolen, you have to deactivate it.
The more narcissistic basically evil, I the case of Braverman, nut jobs join Reform, better for Labour.
Reform go further and further to the Rabid Right and the more Badenochs Tories and her disgraced Right flank and Reform tear strips off each other trying to be worker than woke and more anti anti establishment.
Keir meanwhile gets his head down and grafts grafts grafts boringly but relentless steady slow improvement.
Turning the NHS around, increasing House Building, reducing net migration, clearing the Tory Asylum backlogs.
Interest rates slip quietly down, mortgage base rate slips in the 3.somethings, god forbid a few tax reductions in the form of slowly increasing tax thresholds, wealth and windfall taxes on the greedy for the needy.
The massive UK tanker, slowly turned around.
By 2028 what is the solution, rabid Right or steady solid dependable Left...
Nah, Labour are fucked. Look how they are already cratering in Scotland. Starmer hasn’t the charisma, wit or ideas to get anything done. One term
He might get loads done but it wont be enough. The message from Biden loss is loud and clear: being able to point at a long list of technocratic things you've done and how good the GDP is, or how high the % of widgets produced this term is not worth gnats piss in the new political era.
Thing is, if Labour goes, it means we're done with liberal democracy. Conservatives won't be able to convince anyone, actually we're fine now. So we end up with Reform. And if anyone thinks that's a recipe for sorting things out, I would have a bridge to sell you.
Except Nigel is selling it already.
Piling speculation upon a heapm of them, it would be interesting to see what happened if Reform had the chance to show us that simple answers are not available to intractable questions thrown up by modernity.
I have no idea what Reform would do, and nor do they, but its current policies consist of: continuation of post 1945 social democracy (at the moment there is nothing else that can get voters voting), + national populism + stop importing the workers who produce the laborious work of that social democracy UK residents don't feel like doing + funding done by milking unicorns.
Best guess: have a look at Italy and Argentina
I just wonder if we have to accept a Reform government now. Hope it’s a success in which case I’ll cheer it on, otherwise they’ll crash and burn and something will hopefully recover from the ashes.
Thats just what Germans and Italians said in the 1930s
We cannot allow Fascism to entrench in the UK.
And yet you have a well known fascist calling card in your username, which isn't a coincidence given who is behind your account.
I’m like the Mossad of PB. Everything devious, new and clever is ascribed to me, and I am credited with astonishing levels of cunning and wiliness, almost magical powers - so, heh, ta
But only the thick credulous people really fall for it, well done for outing yourself
Trolling is neither astonishing, nor wily, nor cunning, nor magical.
Its merely trolling.
Not your best day. What you’re accusing me of isn’t even “trolling” = you don’t have the vocabulary to precisely express your own thoughts
What you’re accusing me of, re Ms Shecorns, is “sock-puppetry” - creating fake internet personae for amusement, manipulation, or whatever
Your attempts to simultaneously humblebrag and deflect are entirely unconvincing.
As are the fact that you don't realise sock puppets are commonly used by trolls, as said by your own link, which is contained within the "internet trolling" category. 🤦♂️
OK, please continue, I was just trying to help
Also, it is genuinely flattering, tho I’d be annoyed if I was @Shecorns88 - in not being allowed to have my own identity
It’s not “one kid with a toy” and then a load of contagion. My best guess is still Russia or China
That looks suspiciously like a plane.
How come the New Jersey authorities can’t just call Air Traffic Control and say ‘guys, is this a plane?’
THAT is one of the mysteries here. If all these drones are misidentified planes, toys, balloons, surely it takes one person with an IQ north of 120 to prove all this??
Otoh if the US authorities are genuinely worried, why can't they lay their hands on a decent camera lens and a drone to mount it on?
It’s not “one kid with a toy” and then a load of contagion. My best guess is still Russia or China
That looks suspiciously like a plane.
How come the New Jersey authorities can’t just call Air Traffic Control and say ‘guys, is this a plane?’
THAT is one of the mysteries here. If all these drones are misidentified planes, toys, balloons, surely it takes one person with an IQ north of 120 to prove all this??
Otoh if the US authorities are genuinely worried, why can't they lay their hands on a decent camera lens and a drone to mount it on?
A drone hobby building friend tells me that a project that a number of people have been working on is this - a drone that uses staring camera arrays (approaching 360 coverage) to detect other drones. They then approach automatically, using a Lidar to get range.
The more narcissistic basically evil, I the case of Braverman, nut jobs join Reform, better for Labour.
Reform go further and further to the Rabid Right and the more Badenochs Tories and her disgraced Right flank and Reform tear strips off each other trying to be worker than woke and more anti anti establishment.
Keir meanwhile gets his head down and grafts grafts grafts boringly but relentless steady slow improvement.
Turning the NHS around, increasing House Building, reducing net migration, clearing the Tory Asylum backlogs.
Interest rates slip quietly down, mortgage base rate slips in the 3.somethings, god forbid a few tax reductions in the form of slowly increasing tax thresholds, wealth and windfall taxes on the greedy for the needy.
The massive UK tanker, slowly turned around.
By 2028 what is the solution, rabid Right or steady solid dependable Left...
Nah, Labour are fucked. Look how they are already cratering in Scotland. Starmer hasn’t the charisma, wit or ideas to get anything done. One term
He might get loads done but it wont be enough. The message from Biden loss is loud and clear: being able to point at a long list of technocratic things you've done and how good the GDP is, or how high the % of widgets produced this term is not worth gnats piss in the new political era.
Thing is, if Labour goes, it means we're done with liberal democracy. Conservatives won't be able to convince anyone, actually we're fine now. So we end up with Reform. And if anyone thinks that's a recipe for sorting things out, I would have a bridge to sell you.
Except Nigel is selling it already.
Piling speculation upon a heapm of them, it would be interesting to see what happened if Reform had the chance to show us that simple answers are not available to intractable questions thrown up by modernity.
I have no idea what Reform would do, and nor do they, but its current policies consist of: continuation of post 1945 social democracy (at the moment there is nothing else that can get voters voting), + national populism + stop importing the workers who produce the laborious work of that social democracy UK residents don't feel like doing + funding done by milking unicorns.
Best guess: have a look at Italy and Argentina
I just wonder if we have to accept a Reform government now. Hope it’s a success in which case I’ll cheer it on, otherwise they’ll crash and burn and something will hopefully recover from the ashes.
Thats just what Germans and Italians said in the 1930s
We cannot allow Fascism to entrench in the UK.
And yet you have a well known fascist calling card in your username, which isn't a coincidence given who is behind your account.
I’m like the Mossad of PB. Everything devious, new and clever is ascribed to me, and I am credited with astonishing levels of cunning and wiliness, almost magical powers - so, heh, ta
But only the thick credulous people really fall for it, well done for outing yourself
Trolling is neither astonishing, nor wily, nor cunning, nor magical.
Its merely trolling.
Not your best day. What you’re accusing me of isn’t even “trolling” = you don’t have the vocabulary to precisely express your own thoughts
What you’re accusing me of, re Ms Shecorns, is “sock-puppetry” - creating fake internet personae for amusement, manipulation, or whatever
Your attempts to simultaneously humblebrag and deflect are entirely unconvincing.
As are the fact that you don't realise sock puppets are commonly used by trolls, as said by your own link, which is contained within the "internet trolling" category. 🤦♂️
OK, please continue, I was just trying to help
Also, it is genuinely flattering, tho I’d be annoyed if I was @Shecorns88 - in not being allowed to have my own identity
You are allowed your own identity though. You're allowed many of them in fact.
The more narcissistic basically evil, I the case of Braverman, nut jobs join Reform, better for Labour.
Reform go further and further to the Rabid Right and the more Badenochs Tories and her disgraced Right flank and Reform tear strips off each other trying to be worker than woke and more anti anti establishment.
Keir meanwhile gets his head down and grafts grafts grafts boringly but relentless steady slow improvement.
Turning the NHS around, increasing House Building, reducing net migration, clearing the Tory Asylum backlogs.
Interest rates slip quietly down, mortgage base rate slips in the 3.somethings, god forbid a few tax reductions in the form of slowly increasing tax thresholds, wealth and windfall taxes on the greedy for the needy.
The massive UK tanker, slowly turned around.
By 2028 what is the solution, rabid Right or steady solid dependable Left...
Nah, Labour are fucked. Look how they are already cratering in Scotland. Starmer hasn’t the charisma, wit or ideas to get anything done. One term
He might get loads done but it wont be enough. The message from Biden loss is loud and clear: being able to point at a long list of technocratic things you've done and how good the GDP is, or how high the % of widgets produced this term is not worth gnats piss in the new political era.
Thing is, if Labour goes, it means we're done with liberal democracy. Conservatives won't be able to convince anyone, actually we're fine now. So we end up with Reform. And if anyone thinks that's a recipe for sorting things out, I would have a bridge to sell you.
Except Nigel is selling it already.
Piling speculation upon a heapm of them, it would be interesting to see what happened if Reform had the chance to show us that simple answers are not available to intractable questions thrown up by modernity.
I have no idea what Reform would do, and nor do they, but its current policies consist of: continuation of post 1945 social democracy (at the moment there is nothing else that can get voters voting), + national populism + stop importing the workers who produce the laborious work of that social democracy UK residents don't feel like doing + funding done by milking unicorns.
Best guess: have a look at Italy and Argentina
I just wonder if we have to accept a Reform government now. Hope it’s a success in which case I’ll cheer it on, otherwise they’ll crash and burn and something will hopefully recover from the ashes.
Thats just what Germans and Italians said in the 1930s
We cannot allow Fascism to entrench in the UK.
And yet you have a well known fascist calling card in your username, which isn't a coincidence given who is behind your account.
I’m like the Mossad of PB. Everything devious, new and clever is ascribed to me, and I am credited with astonishing levels of cunning and wiliness, almost magical powers - so, heh, ta
But only the thick credulous people really fall for it, well done for outing yourself
Trolling is neither astonishing, nor wily, nor cunning, nor magical.
Its merely trolling.
Not your best day. What you’re accusing me of isn’t even “trolling” = you don’t have the vocabulary to precisely express your own thoughts
What you’re accusing me of, re Ms Shecorns, is “sock-puppetry” - creating fake internet personae for amusement, manipulation, or whatever
Your attempts to simultaneously humblebrag and deflect are entirely unconvincing.
As are the fact that you don't realise sock puppets are commonly used by trolls, as said by your own link, which is contained within the "internet trolling" category. 🤦♂️
OK, please continue, I was just trying to help
Also, it is genuinely flattering, tho I’d be annoyed if I was @Shecorns88 - in not being allowed to have my own identity
The more narcissistic basically evil, I the case of Braverman, nut jobs join Reform, better for Labour.
Reform go further and further to the Rabid Right and the more Badenochs Tories and her disgraced Right flank and Reform tear strips off each other trying to be worker than woke and more anti anti establishment.
Keir meanwhile gets his head down and grafts grafts grafts boringly but relentless steady slow improvement.
Turning the NHS around, increasing House Building, reducing net migration, clearing the Tory Asylum backlogs.
Interest rates slip quietly down, mortgage base rate slips in the 3.somethings, god forbid a few tax reductions in the form of slowly increasing tax thresholds, wealth and windfall taxes on the greedy for the needy.
The massive UK tanker, slowly turned around.
By 2028 what is the solution, rabid Right or steady solid dependable Left...
Nah, Labour are fucked. Look how they are already cratering in Scotland. Starmer hasn’t the charisma, wit or ideas to get anything done. One term
He might get loads done but it wont be enough. The message from Biden loss is loud and clear: being able to point at a long list of technocratic things you've done and how good the GDP is, or how high the % of widgets produced this term is not worth gnats piss in the new political era.
Thing is, if Labour goes, it means we're done with liberal democracy. Conservatives won't be able to convince anyone, actually we're fine now. So we end up with Reform. And if anyone thinks that's a recipe for sorting things out, I would have a bridge to sell you.
Except Nigel is selling it already.
“I’ve got a bridge to sell you” really is the most terrible fucking cliche in English, it is so cringe and cliched it makes the oratory of Sir Keir Starmer look refreshingly witty
Stop using it
"I've got an AI tech start up to sell you"?
Better
I don’t trust people who use endless tired cliches, it is either a sign of stupidity, or a sign of a crabbed, narrow, midwit view of the world, devoid of imagination, ideas and the spark of hope, eg Sir Keir Starmer KC
It's efficient to use the old chestnuts. Why reinvent the wheel?
Quite honestly I hate to say it but at this point I’d vote Reform UK over the Tories. They at least made some attempt to appeal to me even if all of their solutions are wrong.
All the way from Corbyn to Farage is some journey !!!!!
A lot of young people are making that journey. They despair at their lack of opportunities, particularly re housing. Corbyn sounded like he might solve that, but it turned out he was a pitiful nutter
Now Nigel offers a solution, and at least his has the power of logic. If you stop 1 million people entering the country every year, the pressure on house prices will dissipate fast
Nigel actually has absolutely NO POLICIES when he's actually questioned by proper Journalists that is crystal clear.
Leaving ICC and ECHR won't make any difference at all
He is what has always been, a toff rip off show pony afraid of hard work and scared of any form of scrutiny
Obviously not the most-read article on the Spectator, that has remained the same for the last 72 hours, but still good. It hints that the Syrian drama may actually menace the Tehran regime in the end (emphasis on “may”)
If the toppling of Assad really does lead to the end of the hideous Iranian regime then I will genuinely celebrate, as that would be an uncontestable victory for humanity
"The difference between the Russian evacuation of Syria and the U.S evacuation of Afghanistan? There are no crowds of thousands of Syrians trying to get to Russia."
Quite honestly I hate to say it but at this point I’d vote Reform UK over the Tories. They at least made some attempt to appeal to me even if all of their solutions are wrong.
All the way from Corbyn to Farage is some journey !!!!!
Horseshoe theory.
There's not that big of a gap between far left and far right.
Original fascist theory was that the idea behind state direction of the economy and society was correct, but that it needed added nationalism in it’s goals
Political views have never been a straight line. Always been a circle. Stalin and Hitler perfect examples of that
Quite honestly I hate to say it but at this point I’d vote Reform UK over the Tories. They at least made some attempt to appeal to me even if all of their solutions are wrong.
All the way from Corbyn to Farage is some journey !!!!!
A lot of young people are making that journey. They despair at their lack of opportunities, particularly re housing. Corbyn sounded like he might solve that, but it turned out he was a pitiful nutter
Now Nigel offers a solution, and at least his has the power of logic. If you stop 1 million people entering the country every year, the pressure on house prices will dissipate fast
No, it won’t.
We are 8 million homes short. If we had new zero immigration it would take multiple decades for population decrease to close the gap.
Obviously not the most-read article on the Spectator, that has remained the same for the last 72 hours, but still good. It hints that the Syrian drama may actually menace the Tehran regime in the end (emphasis on “may”)
If the toppling of Assad really does lead to the end of the hideous Iranian regime then I will genuinely celebrate, as that would be an uncontestable victory for humanity
We simply don't know where this is going to end up in the short, medium or long term. We can hope, but not know.
We can also encourage the new regime(s) in a pro-western direction; but that is all we can do: encourage.
It is up to Syrians. And that, in a sad way, is progress.
(I'm still interested in what is going to happen to Russian and Iranian/Hezbollah troops in Syria)
Quite honestly I hate to say it but at this point I’d vote Reform UK over the Tories. They at least made some attempt to appeal to me even if all of their solutions are wrong.
All the way from Corbyn to Farage is some journey !!!!!
A lot of young people are making that journey. They despair at their lack of opportunities, particularly re housing. Corbyn sounded like he might solve that, but it turned out he was a pitiful nutter
Now Nigel offers a solution, and at least his has the power of logic. If you stop 1 million people entering the country every year, the pressure on house prices will dissipate fast
No, it won’t.
We are 8 million homes short. If we had new zero immigration it would take multiple decades for population decrease to close the gap.
But it would certainly help, and make our house building target much more achievable. If the population is not increasing by 1m a year then suddenly you don’t have to build a trillion homes just to stay still
Comments
The strong man is succeeded by incompetents, or his successor is.
I refer other readers to your various pro-Russian positions over MH17, which you spammed us with.
I'm also amused by the fact your post was liked by PB's very own Christian fundamentalist, who in some ways is indistinguishable from Muslim fundamentalists.
Except Nigel is selling it already.
THAT is one of the mysteries here. If all these drones are misidentified planes, toys, balloons, surely it takes one person with an IQ north of 120 to prove all this??
Seriously: the speed at which he generates this stuff is warning enough,
Seems eminently sensible to me.
That's leaving aside the pro or anti arguments over the principle.
I think in the democratic west we sort of forget that there aren't a lot of options somewhere between the miraculous construction of a multi party democracy 'strong man' as we have, with its amazing power to replace the 'strong man' nicely, and the old fashioned strong man of powerful autocracy, open to every possibility except opposition to itself.
People love a strong man, so long as that strong man agrees with all their views. When it turns out that the strong man has some very different views, it turns out there is no painless mechanism for replacement.
Which why democracy is worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried.
A quarter also being the proportion of state pensioners who don't own their own home without a mortgage.
I don't have a figure available to hand as to what proportion of households with infants are on an income of less than the state pension, but I see no reason why it will be substantially different.
The sensible thing would be to look at why Gov.uk was a success.
And actually, gov.uk wasn't particularly, for us. It took *years* before Mrs C could actually log on and deal with her tax. Because the system thought she didn't exist. And HMRC wouldn't let us do a paper form, because she had to log on and ask for one ...
We *think* the problem might have been an apostrophe in the street address. That's pretty basic.
Edit: there are also other issues with it, such as the poor way in which the tax pages are laid out for one's personal tax, and the confusing statements therein. And anyone who has had to try and deail with additional payments to their pensions ... Though that is perhaps more to do with the customer department, that is still all part of the government, so that's not really an excuse.
I used to be fiercely anti-ID cards, but given how much data we now yield to tech corporations on an hourly basis, including our precise LOCATION, I can’t be arsed to oppose them any more. A digital ID that allows you to accesss government online, and prove your entitlement to NHS care, benefits, etc, makes a load of sense
It will also be an excellent way of beginning the long overdue crackdown on migration and asylum
The generational issue mentioned is an interesting one, there's probably studies of how long such regimes in general can maintain the beneficial side of the equation before corruption/abuse, and reset/collapse. Take a place like Oman, which seems to have benefited very well under Sultan Qaboos for decades, now gone but will his style continue on this generation? The next?
I have no idea what Reform would do, and nor do they, but its current policies consist of: continuation of post 1945 social democracy (at the moment there is nothing else that can get voters voting), + national populism + stop importing the workers who produce the laborious work of that social democracy UK residents don't feel like doing + funding done by milking unicorns.
Best guess: have a look at Italy and Argentina
Unless both parents of the infant are on UC and don't work even a minimum wage job (which will certainly be well under 5% miles less than a quarter) of course they will be earning more than a state pensioner
Stop using it
The assumption that the media pay attention to the important stories, rather than the ones they can sell, is an odd one.
I really, really don’t. But if they make a success of it then who am I to argue.
With a physical card they can use it until the bank is told to block it.
We cannot allow Fascism to entrench in the UK.
You are categorically and factually wrong.
The proportion of people working full time minimum wage is well below what you estimate it is. Rightly or wrongly, that is simply the case.
Proportionally for every pensioner who does not own their own home outright, without a mortgage, there is a child in a family earning less than £7400 per annum.
The cost is down to how demented to connection to absolutely all other government data is. And how stupid the verification on sign up system is.
On both counts, the previous attempt was a disaster.
The previous system was illegal under current European data protection law, by the way. So would be extremely problematic if we tried to do the same thing again. But we will, of course.
Your phone is a much, much safer way to pay than any other form of payment ever invented. It’s why I solely use Apple Pay.
I don’t trust people who use endless tired cliches, it is either a sign of stupidity, or a sign of a crabbed, narrow, midwit view of the world, devoid of imagination, ideas and the spark of hope, eg Sir Keir Starmer KC
That’s it. You gotta have that to access anything to do with HMG, hospital care, doctors, benefits, crossing unsold bridges, using motorways, being protected by the British army. The added advantage of this is that old and stupid people without smartphones or who can’t cope with digital stuff will be refused medical care and they will gradually be winnowed out, thus decreasing the burden on the state of the old and the stupid
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ro6Mz_Hhbhg (9 mins)
Data storage can be cheap. Data storage where you can guarantee retrieval? expensive.
90% of Syrians are under poverty line. Meanwhile, this is a small section of Assad’s garage.
https://x.com/hassan_akkad/status/1865679796891422995
Who is behind @Shecorns88???
On a completely unrelated note Leon, are you a fan of this song? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PivWY9wn5ps
Arise Sir Sadiq.
I’m like the Mossad of PB. Everything devious, new and clever is ascribed to me, and I am credited with astonishing levels of cunning and wiliness, almost magical powers - so, heh, ta
But only the thick credulous people really fall for it, well done for outing yourself
Apart from the fact that the majority of such jobs are done by natives - 80% of care home workers for example….
The real truth is that
1) immigrants are doing the jobs we don’t train our own people to do. The NHS training gap is real, for example. And mandated by government.
2) other immigrants are doing the jobs that are too poorly paid and have such nasty conditions that they are worse than the life on the princely benefits paid in the UK. You know, the benefits that enable people to sleep on a pile of £100 (Scottish) notes.
I assumed it was someone whom I believe is in their fifties (not 100% sure on that) with a history of fascist leanings, creating multiple new accounts on this site and deliberate trolling.
Its merely trolling.
What you’re accusing me of, re Ms Shecorns, is “sock-puppetry” - creating fake internet personae for amusement, manipulation, or whatever
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sock_puppet_account
There's not that big of a gap between far left and far right.
Given the minimum wage is £20k now simple Maths will tell you that with UK unemployment at 4% less than 5% of infants will be getting less than £20k a year let alone £7400 per annum. Even if only the father works.
£7400 is only the threshold for UC parents of those with FSM after tax and not including benefits, so you are distorting that too
Indeed you can also get FSM even if your income is too high for UC and other benefits
https://www.gov.uk/apply-free-school-meals
Also: ATC can be very busy. They concentrate on keeping airspace safe, not answering weird questions about UFOs.
As are the fact that you don't realise sock puppets are commonly used by trolls, as said by your own link, which is contained within the "internet trolling" category. 🤦♂️
Now Nigel offers a solution, and at least his has the power of logic. If you stop 1 million people entering the country every year, the pressure on house prices will dissipate fast
You don't need to be working full time to not be classed as unemployed.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c77jrrxxn07o
Also, it is genuinely flattering, tho I’d be annoyed if I was @Shecorns88 - in not being allowed to have my own identity
Software written in Sweden. How long before it becomes compulsory?
Leaving ICC and ECHR won't make any difference at all
He is what has always been, a toff rip off show pony afraid of hard work and scared of any form of scrutiny
Just imagine how good bad life would be if your monthly benefits payment relied on not having your phone stolen.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/this-is-irans-annus-horribilis/
Obviously not the most-read article on the Spectator, that has remained the same for the last 72 hours, but still good. It hints that the Syrian drama may actually menace the Tehran regime in the end (emphasis on “may”)
If the toppling of Assad really does lead to the end of the hideous Iranian regime then I will genuinely celebrate, as that would be an uncontestable victory for humanity
"The difference between the Russian evacuation of Syria and the U.S evacuation of Afghanistan? There are no crowds of thousands of Syrians trying to get to Russia."
I am not and have never been, far left.
We are 8 million homes short. If we had new zero immigration it would take multiple decades for population decrease to close the gap.
We can also encourage the new regime(s) in a pro-western direction; but that is all we can do: encourage.
It is up to Syrians. And that, in a sad way, is progress.
(I'm still interested in what is going to happen to Russian and Iranian/Hezbollah troops in Syria)
If a more leftist leader than SKS become leader, I'd probably abstain or vote Tory in protest.
If SKS crashes and burns I will not vote.
The odds I vote for Reform UK are essentially zero, they are just higher than the Tories.
Also, I've voted Tory before.