The site is no nastier or nicer than it’s been since forever. It has a tendency to get quite brutal and angry when very sensitive subjects are being discussed
Two examples from either side: the Muslim rape gangs scandal gets a large chunk of the forum highly animated - for obvious reasons, 100,000s of victims, no justice served
In contrast Gaza gets a different section of PB seriously agitated - for obvious reasons, 10,000s of dead Gazans, still Israel pounds away
You can’t expect these charged emotional debates to leave PB calmly untouched
We can either have a lively debating forum and accept that at times things will get heated, or we can have a super-moderated old people’s tea-shop in Newent which will be so boring everyone will drift away, anyway
Quite. Indyref used to have some seriously mental threads.
Possibly the most incendiary time on PB was just before and maybe a year after Brexit, when a significant minority of Remainers on PB went literally mad (a couple still linger, bless). They couldn’t accept a democratic decision, they believed they were democrats, the cognitive dissonance left them one choice: lunacy
The worst example was Alistair Meeks. When I say worse I mean saddest, as he was one of the very best and smartest of commenters, judicious, wry, often witty
Then Brexit turned him into a smouldering pit of anger and sometimes he would spend a day issuing threats of actual violence. In the end he made the wise but saddening choice to leave
I still live in hope that now he’s calm again - or so it seems on other forums - he might return
ISTR he was somewhat baited by some of our more (ahem) vociferous posters.
It's a shame when people force other posters off this site. You would *never* do such a thing, would you?
Actually no I didn’t bait him. I do like to wind people up but I have a personal rule that if I think someone is in genuine mental distress - having a breakdown, unstable, suicidal, very depressed - then I leave them alone. I do this because 1. I’m not evil and 2. I’m prone to depressions myself and I know how horrible they are
The meltdown of the Meeks at its worst was painful to see - making threats of violence hourly - I left him to it and quietly hoped he’d improve, or leave. He made the correct decision to leave
I’ve since communicated with him personally and it’s been civil and pleasant. The Meeks of old
Have you considered that the abuse you routinely give out might actually lead someone into mental distress?
I simply don’t believe my invective is that powerful and even if it is then they have the option to simply not come to the site. It’s not like I’m visiting their homes and shouting in their tiny redbrick windows. For a start I hate the provinces
Didn’t DougSeal, a man not averse to dishing it out and I remember him being most rude to me when I commented on an equal pay ruling - what a prick, have a hissy fit at you over something you said which seemed a little innocuous.
One of those things that escalated quickly. Sometimes these do over a simple misunderstanding by one party.
He seemed to get really upset. Really upset.
Yes, agreed. He had a funny username and avatar, but that only got him so far.
Not getting involved with Elon Musk IMHO is sensible. He can’t win that war and can only win by showing delivery. If he does that, the voters will reward him.
SKS would only legitimise fuckface by clapping back at him. He should have deniable underlings shitting on Musk at every opportunity though. MI6 must have something on the c-nt. Musk is only rich; but SKS has the power of nation state at his disposal, if he is enough of a prick to deploy it.
Instead the underlings are queueing up to 'suck the cock of a creep'. Not a paticular fan of Jess Phillips but I hope she's had her personal security ramped up.
I'm sorry, but that's a ridiculous point from Irvine Welsh.
Whilst it's true that comments like Musk's are awful and create a risk for others like Phillips, you clearly don't reduce that risk by getting into a flame war with the troll. However much it sticks in the throat, you try to take some of the heat out of the situation.
Saying nothing is an option, particularly as I'm not sure what the increasingly Ket-addled Musk has to do with Streeting's remit Health.
I'm struggling to see what's wrong with what Streeting said. He said that what Musk said was "misjudged and misinformed" but declined to stoop to his level.
I agree that saying nothing is an option, but the UK Government as a whole pretending the owner of a major social media platform (indeed the one Welsh was posting on) does not exist is not a serious option.
The issue is Streeting's stupid triangulation. In the same breath he says he disagrees with Musk but is happy to work with him! This in response to inflammatory falsehood that could see Musk behind bars if he was in the UK.
To the extent Musk is part of the Trump administration, which he is, our government has to work with their government. To the extent we want Tesla and TwiX to build British factories and British datacentres, we have to find a way to work with Musk, whether we shut him up or turn a blind eye.
You need to compartmentalise, which is what we do with all the other disreputable autocrats. Yes we're happy to do business with you, but stay out of how we run our country.
Except for press barons? For those on the left, being attacked in the press is an occupational hazard. Today's Mail splashes Starmer's guilt over grooming gangs. Musk is another Lord Rothermere or Rupert Murdoch in this regard.
I don't think it's equivalent. The argument is that we cannot afford to fall out with the government of our main ally with Musk as a member of that government. Hence we need to suck it up when the same ally tries to undermine our legitimate government.
It may depend on whether Trump is an aberration or if situation normal will reassert itself after him. If it doesn't I would question the value of the supposed special relationship.
The special relationship is surely more important in a world where the US is reshaping the global order.
We started the BBC version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy after lunch today during the kids naptime, it's absolutely excellent, thanks for the recommendation all!
Superbly cast. Even Beryl Reid who gave a great performance.
The site is no nastier or nicer than it’s been since forever. It has a tendency to get quite brutal and angry when very sensitive subjects are being discussed
Two examples from either side: the Muslim rape gangs scandal gets a large chunk of the forum highly animated - for obvious reasons, 100,000s of victims, no justice served
In contrast Gaza gets a different section of PB seriously agitated - for obvious reasons, 10,000s of dead Gazans, still Israel pounds away
You can’t expect these charged emotional debates to leave PB calmly untouched
We can either have a lively debating forum and accept that at times things will get heated, or we can have a super-moderated old people’s tea-shop in Newent which will be so boring everyone will drift away, anyway
Quite. Indyref used to have some seriously mental threads.
Possibly the most incendiary time on PB was just before and maybe a year after Brexit, when a significant minority of Remainers on PB went literally mad (a couple still linger, bless). They couldn’t accept a democratic decision, they believed they were democrats, the cognitive dissonance left them one choice: lunacy
The worst example was Alistair Meeks. When I say worse I mean saddest, as he was one of the very best and smartest of commenters, judicious, wry, often witty
Then Brexit turned him into a smouldering pit of anger and sometimes he would spend a day issuing threats of actual violence. In the end he made the wise but saddening choice to leave
I still live in hope that now he’s calm again - or so it seems on other forums - he might return
ISTR he was somewhat baited by some of our more (ahem) vociferous posters.
It's a shame when people force other posters off this site. You would *never* do such a thing, would you?
Actually no I didn’t bait him. I do like to wind people up but I have a personal rule that if I think someone is in genuine mental distress - having a breakdown, unstable, suicidal, very depressed - then I leave them alone. I do this because 1. I’m not evil and 2. I’m prone to depressions myself and I know how horrible they are
The meltdown of the Meeks at its worst was painful to see - making threats of violence hourly - I left him to it and quietly hoped he’d improve, or leave. He made the correct decision to leave
I’ve since communicated with him personally and it’s been civil and pleasant. The Meeks of old
Have you considered that the abuse you routinely give out might actually lead someone into mental distress?
Have you considered that you might do the same. Or for that matter any one of us.
Words on a board are different to a conversation in person. None of us knows what’s going on in other peoples lives.
Some fuckwit even claimed I led an unhappy life because I criticised SKS !
Yes, I have considered that. And in the past I've said that we need to remember we don't know how the person on the other end of the screen (as it were) is feeling. In response, I've been called a snowflake or similar...
I just don’t know where we draw the line on free speech.
Elon Musk calling Jess Phillips a rape gang supporter is surely beyond the pale.
Would he have been able to have that amplified or made that note if he didn’t own Twitter? It’s very worrying that people can just buy the ability to shout the loudest now.
You are muddling up things.
I haven’t seen what Musk called Phillips but it sounds unpleasant. But free speech is absolutely the right to be unpleasant.
Phillips has the right to rely on the protections of the courts if she has been libelled - it’s not my area of technical expertise but very happy to accept that needs reform to protect against billionaires using money as a shield.
Social media is corrosive and needs regulation. But, again, that’s different to restricting free speech - and I think unhelpful to conflate the two (that’s what the defenders of the status quo do)
Yes, absolutely. How would you regulate it?
It’s the great question confronting democracies at present. Nobody seems anywhere near defining a regime which manages to reduce the real harms of social media.
Not getting involved with Elon Musk IMHO is sensible. He can’t win that war and can only win by showing delivery. If he does that, the voters will reward him.
SKS would only legitimise fuckface by clapping back at him. He should have deniable underlings shitting on Musk at every opportunity though. MI6 must have something on the c-nt. Musk is only rich; but SKS has the power of nation state at his disposal, if he is enough of a prick to deploy it.
Instead the underlings are queueing up to 'suck the cock of a creep'. Not a paticular fan of Jess Phillips but I hope she's had her personal security ramped up.
I'm sorry, but that's a ridiculous point from Irvine Welsh.
Whilst it's true that comments like Musk's are awful and create a risk for others like Phillips, you clearly don't reduce that risk by getting into a flame war with the troll. However much it sticks in the throat, you try to take some of the heat out of the situation.
Saying nothing is an option, particularly as I'm not sure what the increasingly Ket-addled Musk has to do with Streeting's remit Health.
I'm struggling to see what's wrong with what Streeting said. He said that what Musk said was "misjudged and misinformed" but declined to stoop to his level.
I agree that saying nothing is an option, but the UK Government as a whole pretending the owner of a major social media platform (indeed the one Welsh was posting on) does not exist is not a serious option.
The issue is Streeting's stupid triangulation. In the same breath he says he disagrees with Musk but is happy to work with him! This in response to inflammatory falsehood that could see Musk behind bars if he was in the UK.
To the extent Musk is part of the Trump administration, which he is, our government has to work with their government. To the extent we want Tesla and TwiX to build British factories and British datacentres, we have to find a way to work with Musk, whether we shut him up or turn a blind eye.
You need to compartmentalise, which is what we do with all the other disreputable autocrats. Yes we're happy to do business with you, but stay out of how we run our country.
Except for press barons? For those on the left, being attacked in the press is an occupational hazard. Today's Mail splashes Starmer's guilt over grooming gangs. Musk is another Lord Rothermere or Rupert Murdoch in this regard.
I don't think it's equivalent. The argument is that we cannot afford to fall out with the government of our main ally with Musk as a member of that government. Hence we need to suck it up when the same ally tries to undermine our legitimate government.
It may depend on whether Trump is an aberration or if situation normal will reassert itself after him. If it doesn't I would question the value of the supposed special relationship.
The special relationship is surely more important in a world where the US is reshaping the global order.
Yes, and like it or not the UK government needs to engage with the incoming US administration as soon as possible.
There’s a potential massive win to be had on tariffs, for example, which could make British luxury cars cheaper than their German and Italian equivalents in the US.
The site is no nastier or nicer than it’s been since forever. It has a tendency to get quite brutal and angry when very sensitive subjects are being discussed
Two examples from either side: the Muslim rape gangs scandal gets a large chunk of the forum highly animated - for obvious reasons, 100,000s of victims, no justice served
In contrast Gaza gets a different section of PB seriously agitated - for obvious reasons, 10,000s of dead Gazans, still Israel pounds away
You can’t expect these charged emotional debates to leave PB calmly untouched
We can either have a lively debating forum and accept that at times things will get heated, or we can have a super-moderated old people’s tea-shop in Newent which will be so boring everyone will drift away, anyway
Quite. Indyref used to have some seriously mental threads.
Possibly the most incendiary time on PB was just before and maybe a year after Brexit, when a significant minority of Remainers on PB went literally mad (a couple still linger, bless). They couldn’t accept a democratic decision, they believed they were democrats, the cognitive dissonance left them one choice: lunacy
The worst example was Alistair Meeks. When I say worse I mean saddest, as he was one of the very best and smartest of commenters, judicious, wry, often witty
Then Brexit turned him into a smouldering pit of anger and sometimes he would spend a day issuing threats of actual violence. In the end he made the wise but saddening choice to leave
I still live in hope that now he’s calm again - or so it seems on other forums - he might return
ISTR he was somewhat baited by some of our more (ahem) vociferous posters.
It's a shame when people force other posters off this site. You would *never* do such a thing, would you?
Actually no I didn’t bait him. I do like to wind people up but I have a personal rule that if I think someone is in genuine mental distress - having a breakdown, unstable, suicidal, very depressed - then I leave them alone. I do this because 1. I’m not evil and 2. I’m prone to depressions myself and I know how horrible they are
The meltdown of the Meeks at its worst was painful to see - making threats of violence hourly - I left him to it and quietly hoped he’d improve, or leave. He made the correct decision to leave
I’ve since communicated with him personally and it’s been civil and pleasant. The Meeks of old
Have you considered that the abuse you routinely give out might actually lead someone into mental distress?
I simply don’t believe my invective is that powerful and even if it is then they have the option to simply not come to the site. It’s not like I’m visiting their homes and shouting in their tiny redbrick windows. For a start I hate the provinces
Or you have the option not to come on here, as it's clear you cannot control yourself.
Mind you, it'll probably only be another few months before you get banned again...
The site is no nastier or nicer than it’s been since forever. It has a tendency to get quite brutal and angry when very sensitive subjects are being discussed
Two examples from either side: the Muslim rape gangs scandal gets a large chunk of the forum highly animated - for obvious reasons, 100,000s of victims, no justice served
In contrast Gaza gets a different section of PB seriously agitated - for obvious reasons, 10,000s of dead Gazans, still Israel pounds away
You can’t expect these charged emotional debates to leave PB calmly untouched
We can either have a lively debating forum and accept that at times things will get heated, or we can have a super-moderated old people’s tea-shop in Newent which will be so boring everyone will drift away, anyway
Quite. Indyref used to have some seriously mental threads.
Possibly the most incendiary time on PB was just before and maybe a year after Brexit, when a significant minority of Remainers on PB went literally mad (a couple still linger, bless). They couldn’t accept a democratic decision, they believed they were democrats, the cognitive dissonance left them one choice: lunacy
The worst example was Alistair Meeks. When I say worse I mean saddest, as he was one of the very best and smartest of commenters, judicious, wry, often witty
Then Brexit turned him into a smouldering pit of anger and sometimes he would spend a day issuing threats of actual violence. In the end he made the wise but saddening choice to leave
I still live in hope that now he’s calm again - or so it seems on other forums - he might return
ISTR he was somewhat baited by some of our more (ahem) vociferous posters.
It's a shame when people force other posters off this site. You would *never* do such a thing, would you?
Actually no I didn’t bait him. I do like to wind people up but I have a personal rule that if I think someone is in genuine mental distress - having a breakdown, unstable, suicidal, very depressed - then I leave them alone. I do this because 1. I’m not evil and 2. I’m prone to depressions myself and I know how horrible they are
The meltdown of the Meeks at its worst was painful to see - making threats of violence hourly - I left him to it and quietly hoped he’d improve, or leave. He made the correct decision to leave
I’ve since communicated with him personally and it’s been civil and pleasant. The Meeks of old
Have you considered that the abuse you routinely give out might actually lead someone into mental distress?
Get a grip , if they are that fragile they should not be on social media.
'Leon' is such an incredible piece of grotesquery, on a par with other fictional egotists like John Self or Howard Kirk, or one of the iffier characters from the Canterbury Tales. Trading barbs with him is like being insulted by Bruce Robertson. Draw comfort from every spasm of bitchiness, enjoy every missing full stop. Be a witness to this peerless act of satirical creativity.
I just don’t know where we draw the line on free speech.
Elon Musk calling Jess Phillips a rape gang supporter is surely beyond the pale.
Would he have been able to have that amplified or made that note if he didn’t own Twitter? It’s very worrying that people can just buy the ability to shout the loudest now.
You are muddling up things.
I haven’t seen what Musk called Phillips but it sounds unpleasant. But free speech is absolutely the right to be unpleasant.
Phillips has the right to rely on the protections of the courts if she has been libelled - it’s not my area of technical expertise but very happy to accept that needs reform to protect against billionaires using money as a shield.
Social media is corrosive and needs regulation. But, again, that’s different to restricting free speech - and I think unhelpful to conflate the two (that’s what the defenders of the status quo do)
Yes, absolutely. How would you regulate it?
It’s the great question confronting democracies at present. Nobody seems anywhere near defining a regime which manages to reduce the real harms of social media.
Some options
1) Ban the algorithms that promote the spiral 2) Make platforms 100% responsible for the content - including comments. 3) ?
The site is no nastier or nicer than it’s been since forever. It has a tendency to get quite brutal and angry when very sensitive subjects are being discussed
Two examples from either side: the Muslim rape gangs scandal gets a large chunk of the forum highly animated - for obvious reasons, 100,000s of victims, no justice served
In contrast Gaza gets a different section of PB seriously agitated - for obvious reasons, 10,000s of dead Gazans, still Israel pounds away
You can’t expect these charged emotional debates to leave PB calmly untouched
We can either have a lively debating forum and accept that at times things will get heated, or we can have a super-moderated old people’s tea-shop in Newent which will be so boring everyone will drift away, anyway
Quite. Indyref used to have some seriously mental threads.
Possibly the most incendiary time on PB was just before and maybe a year after Brexit, when a significant minority of Remainers on PB went literally mad (a couple still linger, bless). They couldn’t accept a democratic decision, they believed they were democrats, the cognitive dissonance left them one choice: lunacy
The worst example was Alistair Meeks. When I say worse I mean saddest, as he was one of the very best and smartest of commenters, judicious, wry, often witty
Then Brexit turned him into a smouldering pit of anger and sometimes he would spend a day issuing threats of actual violence. In the end he made the wise but saddening choice to leave
I still live in hope that now he’s calm again - or so it seems on other forums - he might return
ISTR he was somewhat baited by some of our more (ahem) vociferous posters.
It's a shame when people force other posters off this site. You would *never* do such a thing, would you?
Actually no I didn’t bait him. I do like to wind people up but I have a personal rule that if I think someone is in genuine mental distress - having a breakdown, unstable, suicidal, very depressed - then I leave them alone. I do this because 1. I’m not evil and 2. I’m prone to depressions myself and I know how horrible they are
The meltdown of the Meeks at its worst was painful to see - making threats of violence hourly - I left him to it and quietly hoped he’d improve, or leave. He made the correct decision to leave
I’ve since communicated with him personally and it’s been civil and pleasant. The Meeks of old
Have you considered that the abuse you routinely give out might actually lead someone into mental distress?
I simply don’t believe my invective is that powerful and even if it is then they have the option to simply not come to the site. It’s not like I’m visiting their homes and shouting in their tiny redbrick windows. For a start I hate the provinces
Didn’t DougSeal, a man not averse to dishing it out and I remember him being most rude to me when I commented on an equal pay ruling - what a prick, have a hissy fit at you over something you said which seemed a little innocuous.
One of those things that escalated quickly. Sometimes these do over a simple misunderstanding by one party.
He seemed to get really upset. Really upset.
Yes he’s a good example. Seemed perfectly normal (for a PB lefty), willing to banter, could be rude but was happy to take it in return, but then over a period of a few weeks - even days - suddenly became quite strange and intensely personal - to me, you and others
Then he left. My sad presumption (I hope I’m wrong) was that he suffered some nasty mental blow. Maybe a bereavement. Or an actual psychological episode
He came back a few times very briefly during which he nearly always called me “a Nazi” but by that time I’d realised something was wrong so I resolved to ignore him
A tough front page for Starmer, without any need to invoke Musk.
Hysterical nonsense.
Is he as guilty as the actual rapists? Why?
Utterly absurd.
Talking of hysteria, have you seen PB this evening? You'd never guess Leon is back and on fire!
It was a sewer last night. PB is getting as bad as Twitter at times.
It's going to kill the site as a place for polite and respectful political debate.
It's time to check out for a bit.
Astute as always @Foxy. This site really has gone down a lot of levels since Labour won. It wasn’t at all like this after Johnson won in 2019 which is a shame as there are a lot of good people still here - but I note posting less - from both sides of the aisle.
It was, and it was filled with people calling Johnson a Clown, unethical, reprehensible and saying they'd quit the Conservatives/ never vote Conservative again and the fanatics had won etc. I remember it all.
Much of it is that left-leaning posters don't like it up 'em, and this government is directionless, weak, appallingly bad, somewhat vindictive and either gets angry at criticism or hides from it.
Utter nonsense I’m afraid Casino. I remember posting about Johnson’s inevitable downfall and having nothing but abuse and laughter in response. “Grow up, you lost” was a common refrain. But nothing like what we have now. And the difference is the left/non-Johnson contingent stayed and argued in good faith.
And it’s sad you’re joining in occasionally as you post some interesting views albeit I disagree with mostly every single one.
I’ve got no issue with anyone disagreeing with Starmer. In fact I welcome it. But just posting how bad Starmer is repeatedly isn’t interesting to read.
You think Starmer is bad because you don’t support Labour. That’s fine as it goes but it somewhat loosens the thrust by which many say “this government is rubbish and hated”.
As I keep saying, I’ve yet to meet anyone here who has actually swapped from Starmer to another party. And this is basically backed up I the focus groups and polling. In two years we can talk.
Are you not at all concerned by Musk calling one of our MPs a rape gang apologist? Would it be different if he’d said that about a Tory?
If that Tory MP was also blocking a full public inquiry into the scandal I'd be quite happy for Musk and anyone else to target them and call them an apologist for rape gangs. Indeed worse was said about Tory MPs by me and others when they were blocking the inquiry into the alleged child abuse network in Westminster. You want to shoot the messenger wrt to this subject, I think. The best way out of this for the government is to call the inquiry and let the chips fall where they fall. Starmer may survive, he may not but having a full public inquiry where victims, whistle blowers and investigators can give full and unredacted evidence live on TV is something this country needs to start moving past this and get action to ensure nothing like this ever happens again.
But *we have had* that enquiry. Under the Tories. It was set aside and ignored by Suella Braverman. And the Phillips letter itself is a carbon copy repeat of one sent by her Tory predecessor to the same council.
The outcome is crap. But the Tory "WHAY HAVE LABOUR DONE NOTHING" attack is so laughable that I question the mental state of the people advancing it.
Exactly. We have had an enquiry, why do we need another and what would it achieve anyway ?
I’d say the same for care costs. Kicking it into the long grass, effectively until after the next election, is shameful.
I'm from Rochdale and I've lived and worked in Rotherham. I'm associated with this via my history, and I can look back over the way those towns worked at the time I was there to have a bit of understanding about the mood.
Both towns had real issues of social and racial division, of suspicion and segregation. I can get how this could go on under the radar - because the radar was crappy and had huge holes in the net. What I can't get is how the authorities were so dismissive. Police who actively disbelieved anything that poor girls said. Social workers who were paranoid about being seen as racist in a town screwed by racism.
The legal and law enforcement issue - traditionally the right - is just as key to this as the social work and councillors issue - traditionally the left. One side trying to blame exclusively the other is how we had this go on for so long. So I am less than amused with Tories denouncing Labour for Tory failings. It gets us nowhere.
I think you are on to something. In most cases huge failures are the result of lots of little failures lining up in the right way (for clarity, none of the failures in this case are individually “little” but it is meant to emphasis that there wet multiple points of failure that created the outcome va a single huge conspiracy).
Eg the social workers fear of being seen as racist (probably influenced by internal politics) is very different to the police unwillingness to believe those they - for prejudicial reasons - see as being non-credible witnesses
Seeing as they are radicalised by fake news from facebook, twatter, Gbeebies, the mail and telegraph that is hardly surprising.
I know I bang on about it but Facebook is astonishing now. Groups representing ultra-lefty bits of Edinburgh are dominated by Reform-type individuals. Must be even more extreme in places like Lincolnshire.
The danger is these people are convinced they represent the general population, even in a constituency where Reform + Conservative = 10.3% of the vote. A bubble implies it can be popped; these folks are trapped in a nuclear bunker convinced that democracy has been subverted by the woke blob. Their tone is increasingly conspiratorial and violent.
The common sense faction is very online.
Real life is probably much more radicalising than being online. There are lots of people who barely ever venture into their local town centres and every time they do, they come home feeling a little more despondent about the direction of the country.
That's just the weather.
Edit: Personally in the centre of the small town where I live, the latest change has been a bookies closing to be replaced by a Card Factory, which is a plus in my eyes.
Yes in Lewisham shopping centre they closed Claire's Accessories and opened a rather fabulous Waterstones. Maybe things are slowly improving?
There was something about this on TRiEntertainment recently. Amazon's Kindle was supposed to kill off books but hasn't. Kindle plateaued and books are back.
Books are great and so nice to browse among the shelves in person. Even the smell of a bookshop is inviting. My only problem is finding space on our shelves.
I just don’t know where we draw the line on free speech.
Elon Musk calling Jess Phillips a rape gang supporter is surely beyond the pale.
Would he have been able to have that amplified or made that note if he didn’t own Twitter? It’s very worrying that people can just buy the ability to shout the loudest now.
You are muddling up things.
I haven’t seen what Musk called Phillips but it sounds unpleasant. But free speech is absolutely the right to be unpleasant.
Phillips has the right to rely on the protections of the courts if she has been libelled - it’s not my area of technical expertise but very happy to accept that needs reform to protect against billionaires using money as a shield.
Social media is corrosive and needs regulation. But, again, that’s different to restricting free speech - and I think unhelpful to conflate the two (that’s what the defenders of the status quo do)
Yes, absolutely. How would you regulate it?
It’s the great question confronting democracies at present. Nobody seems anywhere near defining a regime which manages to reduce the real harms of social media.
Some options
1) Ban the algorithms that promote the spiral 2) Make platforms 100% responsible for the content - including comments. 3) ?
The site is no nastier or nicer than it’s been since forever. It has a tendency to get quite brutal and angry when very sensitive subjects are being discussed
Two examples from either side: the Muslim rape gangs scandal gets a large chunk of the forum highly animated - for obvious reasons, 100,000s of victims, no justice served
In contrast Gaza gets a different section of PB seriously agitated - for obvious reasons, 10,000s of dead Gazans, still Israel pounds away
You can’t expect these charged emotional debates to leave PB calmly untouched
We can either have a lively debating forum and accept that at times things will get heated, or we can have a super-moderated old people’s tea-shop in Newent which will be so boring everyone will drift away, anyway
Quite. Indyref used to have some seriously mental threads.
Possibly the most incendiary time on PB was just before and maybe a year after Brexit, when a significant minority of Remainers on PB went literally mad (a couple still linger, bless). They couldn’t accept a democratic decision, they believed they were democrats, the cognitive dissonance left them one choice: lunacy
The worst example was Alistair Meeks. When I say worse I mean saddest, as he was one of the very best and smartest of commenters, judicious, wry, often witty
Then Brexit turned him into a smouldering pit of anger and sometimes he would spend a day issuing threats of actual violence. In the end he made the wise but saddening choice to leave
I still live in hope that now he’s calm again - or so it seems on other forums - he might return
ISTR he was somewhat baited by some of our more (ahem) vociferous posters.
It's a shame when people force other posters off this site. You would *never* do such a thing, would you?
Actually no I didn’t bait him. I do like to wind people up but I have a personal rule that if I think someone is in genuine mental distress - having a breakdown, unstable, suicidal, very depressed - then I leave them alone. I do this because 1. I’m not evil and 2. I’m prone to depressions myself and I know how horrible they are
The meltdown of the Meeks at its worst was painful to see - making threats of violence hourly - I left him to it and quietly hoped he’d improve, or leave. He made the correct decision to leave
I’ve since communicated with him personally and it’s been civil and pleasant. The Meeks of old
Have you considered that the abuse you routinely give out might actually lead someone into mental distress?
I simply don’t believe my invective is that powerful and even if it is then they have the option to simply not come to the site. It’s not like I’m visiting their homes and shouting in their tiny redbrick windows. For a start I hate the provinces
Or you have the option not to come on here, as it's clear you cannot control yourself.
Mind you, it'll probably only be another few months before you get banned again...
I just don’t know where we draw the line on free speech.
Elon Musk calling Jess Phillips a rape gang supporter is surely beyond the pale.
Would he have been able to have that amplified or made that note if he didn’t own Twitter? It’s very worrying that people can just buy the ability to shout the loudest now.
You are muddling up things.
I haven’t seen what Musk called Phillips but it sounds unpleasant. But free speech is absolutely the right to be unpleasant.
Phillips has the right to rely on the protections of the courts if she has been libelled - it’s not my area of technical expertise but very happy to accept that needs reform to protect against billionaires using money as a shield.
Social media is corrosive and needs regulation. But, again, that’s different to restricting free speech - and I think unhelpful to conflate the two (that’s what the defenders of the status quo do)
Yes, absolutely. How would you regulate it?
It’s the great question confronting democracies at present. Nobody seems anywhere near defining a regime which manages to reduce the real harms of social media.
Some options
1) Ban the algorithms that promote the spiral 2) Make platforms 100% responsible for the content - including comments. 3) ?
3) Ban for children under 16
That’s a different issue to the extremism/misinformation problem. Though related.
I just don’t know where we draw the line on free speech.
Elon Musk calling Jess Phillips a rape gang supporter is surely beyond the pale.
Would he have been able to have that amplified or made that note if he didn’t own Twitter? It’s very worrying that people can just buy the ability to shout the loudest now.
You are muddling up things.
I haven’t seen what Musk called Phillips but it sounds unpleasant. But free speech is absolutely the right to be unpleasant.
Phillips has the right to rely on the protections of the courts if she has been libelled - it’s not my area of technical expertise but very happy to accept that needs reform to protect against billionaires using money as a shield.
Social media is corrosive and needs regulation. But, again, that’s different to restricting free speech - and I think unhelpful to conflate the two (that’s what the defenders of the status quo do)
Yes, absolutely. How would you regulate it?
It’s the great question confronting democracies at present. Nobody seems anywhere near defining a regime which manages to reduce the real harms of social media.
Some options
1) Ban the algorithms that promote the spiral 2) Make platforms 100% responsible for the content - including comments. 3) ?
3) Ban for children under 16
That’s a different issue to the extremism/misinformation problem. Though related.
I am just as concerned - maybe more so - about the damaging effect on mental health. But yes, it’s a materially different issue.
The site is no nastier or nicer than it’s been since forever. It has a tendency to get quite brutal and angry when very sensitive subjects are being discussed
Two examples from either side: the Muslim rape gangs scandal gets a large chunk of the forum highly animated - for obvious reasons, 100,000s of victims, no justice served
In contrast Gaza gets a different section of PB seriously agitated - for obvious reasons, 10,000s of dead Gazans, still Israel pounds away
You can’t expect these charged emotional debates to leave PB calmly untouched
We can either have a lively debating forum and accept that at times things will get heated, or we can have a super-moderated old people’s tea-shop in Newent which will be so boring everyone will drift away, anyway
Quite. Indyref used to have some seriously mental threads.
Possibly the most incendiary time on PB was just before and maybe a year after Brexit, when a significant minority of Remainers on PB went literally mad (a couple still linger, bless). They couldn’t accept a democratic decision, they believed they were democrats, the cognitive dissonance left them one choice: lunacy
The worst example was Alistair Meeks. When I say worse I mean saddest, as he was one of the very best and smartest of commenters, judicious, wry, often witty
Then Brexit turned him into a smouldering pit of anger and sometimes he would spend a day issuing threats of actual violence. In the end he made the wise but saddening choice to leave
I still live in hope that now he’s calm again - or so it seems on other forums - he might return
ISTR he was somewhat baited by some of our more (ahem) vociferous posters.
It's a shame when people force other posters off this site. You would *never* do such a thing, would you?
Actually no I didn’t bait him. I do like to wind people up but I have a personal rule that if I think someone is in genuine mental distress - having a breakdown, unstable, suicidal, very depressed - then I leave them alone. I do this because 1. I’m not evil and 2. I’m prone to depressions myself and I know how horrible they are
The meltdown of the Meeks at its worst was painful to see - making threats of violence hourly - I left him to it and quietly hoped he’d improve, or leave. He made the correct decision to leave
I’ve since communicated with him personally and it’s been civil and pleasant. The Meeks of old
Have you considered that the abuse you routinely give out might actually lead someone into mental distress?
I simply don’t believe my invective is that powerful and even if it is then they have the option to simply not come to the site. It’s not like I’m visiting their homes and shouting in their tiny redbrick windows. For a start I hate the provinces
Didn’t DougSeal, a man not averse to dishing it out and I remember him being most rude to me when I commented on an equal pay ruling - what a prick, have a hissy fit at you over something you said which seemed a little innocuous.
One of those things that escalated quickly. Sometimes these do over a simple misunderstanding by one party.
He seemed to get really upset. Really upset.
Yes he’s a good example. Seemed perfectly normal (for a PB lefty), willing to banter, could be rude but was happy to take it in return, but then over a period of a few weeks - even days - suddenly became quite strange and intensely personal - to me, you and others
Then he left. My sad presumption (I hope I’m wrong) was that he suffered some nasty mental blow. Maybe a bereavement. Or an actual psychological episode
He came back a few times very briefly during which he nearly always called me “a Nazi” but by that time I’d realised something was wrong so I resolved to ignore him
I did say to him, at one stage, if he genuinely felt like that he should seek some help.
I didn’t care for how he posted here, or addressed me, but I’d wish him, and for that matter anyone else here, no Ill.
A tough front page for Starmer, without any need to invoke Musk.
Hysterical nonsense.
Is he as guilty as the actual rapists? Why?
Utterly absurd.
Talking of hysteria, have you seen PB this evening? You'd never guess Leon is back and on fire!
It was a sewer last night. PB is getting as bad as Twitter at times.
It's going to kill the site as a place for polite and respectful political debate.
It's time to check out for a bit.
Astute as always @Foxy. This site really has gone down a lot of levels since Labour won. It wasn’t at all like this after Johnson won in 2019 which is a shame as there are a lot of good people still here - but I note posting less - from both sides of the aisle.
It was, and it was filled with people calling Johnson a Clown, unethical, reprehensible and saying they'd quit the Conservatives/ never vote Conservative again and the fanatics had won etc. I remember it all.
Much of it is that left-leaning posters don't like it up 'em, and this government is directionless, weak, appallingly bad, somewhat vindictive and either gets angry at criticism or hides from it.
Utter nonsense I’m afraid Casino. I remember posting about Johnson’s inevitable downfall and having nothing but abuse and laughter in response. “Grow up, you lost” was a common refrain. But nothing like what we have now. And the difference is the left/non-Johnson contingent stayed and argued in good faith.
And it’s sad you’re joining in occasionally as you post some interesting views albeit I disagree with mostly every single one.
I’ve got no issue with anyone disagreeing with Starmer. In fact I welcome it. But just posting how bad Starmer is repeatedly isn’t interesting to read.
You think Starmer is bad because you don’t support Labour. That’s fine as it goes but it somewhat loosens the thrust by which many say “this government is rubbish and hated”.
As I keep saying, I’ve yet to meet anyone here who has actually swapped from Starmer to another party. And this is basically backed up I the focus groups and polling. In two years we can talk.
Are you not at all concerned by Musk calling one of our MPs a rape gang apologist? Would it be different if he’d said that about a Tory?
If that Tory MP was also blocking a full public inquiry into the scandal I'd be quite happy for Musk and anyone else to target them and call them an apologist for rape gangs. Indeed worse was said about Tory MPs by me and others when they were blocking the inquiry into the alleged child abuse network in Westminster. You want to shoot the messenger wrt to this subject, I think. The best way out of this for the government is to call the inquiry and let the chips fall where they fall. Starmer may survive, he may not but having a full public inquiry where victims, whistle blowers and investigators can give full and unredacted evidence live on TV is something this country needs to start moving past this and get action to ensure nothing like this ever happens again.
But *we have had* that enquiry. Under the Tories. It was set aside and ignored by Suella Braverman. And the Phillips letter itself is a carbon copy repeat of one sent by her Tory predecessor to the same council.
The outcome is crap. But the Tory "WHAY HAVE LABOUR DONE NOTHING" attack is so laughable that I question the mental state of the people advancing it.
Exactly. We have had an enquiry, why do we need another and what would it achieve anyway ?
I’d say the same for care costs. Kicking it into the long grass, effectively until after the next election, is shameful.
I'm from Rochdale and I've lived and worked in Rotherham. I'm associated with this via my history, and I can look back over the way those towns worked at the time I was there to have a bit of understanding about the mood.
Both towns had real issues of social and racial division, of suspicion and segregation. I can get how this could go on under the radar - because the radar was crappy and had huge holes in the net. What I can't get is how the authorities were so dismissive. Police who actively disbelieved anything that poor girls said. Social workers who were paranoid about being seen as racist in a town screwed by racism.
The legal and law enforcement issue - traditionally the right - is just as key to this as the social work and councillors issue - traditionally the left. One side trying to blame exclusively the other is how we had this go on for so long. So I am less than amused with Tories denouncing Labour for Tory failings. It gets us nowhere.
A girls saying I’m being abused by one person is an awkward court case for the police to deal with.
A girl saying I’m being abused by multiple people is very difficult to deal with - it’s 1 (untrustworthy) person against multiple people some or all of whom are unknown to the police.
Hence I can see why it took a long time for it to be investigated and a long time for it to be dealt with.
And we then get to the final point that while it may look organized and like malice the reality is many of the people involved have limited time in a day and more pressing issues which would have an immediate effect
It reminds me of the (most likely apocryphal) story about JFK: he had two inboxes on his desk - one marked urgent and the other marked important.
He always made it a rule to ensure the “important” tray was finished before he started on the “urgent” pile.
A tough front page for Starmer, without any need to invoke Musk.
Hysterical nonsense.
Is he as guilty as the actual rapists? Why?
Utterly absurd.
Talking of hysteria, have you seen PB this evening? You'd never guess Leon is back and on fire!
It was a sewer last night. PB is getting as bad as Twitter at times.
It's going to kill the site as a place for polite and respectful political debate.
It's time to check out for a bit.
Astute as always @Foxy. This site really has gone down a lot of levels since Labour won. It wasn’t at all like this after Johnson won in 2019 which is a shame as there are a lot of good people still here - but I note posting less - from both sides of the aisle.
It was, and it was filled with people calling Johnson a Clown, unethical, reprehensible and saying they'd quit the Conservatives/ never vote Conservative again and the fanatics had won etc. I remember it all.
Much of it is that left-leaning posters don't like it up 'em, and this government is directionless, weak, appallingly bad, somewhat vindictive and either gets angry at criticism or hides from it.
Utter nonsense I’m afraid Casino. I remember posting about Johnson’s inevitable downfall and having nothing but abuse and laughter in response. “Grow up, you lost” was a common refrain. But nothing like what we have now. And the difference is the left/non-Johnson contingent stayed and argued in good faith.
And it’s sad you’re joining in occasionally as you post some interesting views albeit I disagree with mostly every single one.
I’ve got no issue with anyone disagreeing with Starmer. In fact I welcome it. But just posting how bad Starmer is repeatedly isn’t interesting to read.
You think Starmer is bad because you don’t support Labour. That’s fine as it goes but it somewhat loosens the thrust by which many say “this government is rubbish and hated”.
As I keep saying, I’ve yet to meet anyone here who has actually swapped from Starmer to another party. And this is basically backed up I the focus groups and polling. In two years we can talk.
Are you not at all concerned by Musk calling one of our MPs a rape gang apologist? Would it be different if he’d said that about a Tory?
If that Tory MP was also blocking a full public inquiry into the scandal I'd be quite happy for Musk and anyone else to target them and call them an apologist for rape gangs. Indeed worse was said about Tory MPs by me and others when they were blocking the inquiry into the alleged child abuse network in Westminster. You want to shoot the messenger wrt to this subject, I think. The best way out of this for the government is to call the inquiry and let the chips fall where they fall. Starmer may survive, he may not but having a full public inquiry where victims, whistle blowers and investigators can give full and unredacted evidence live on TV is something this country needs to start moving past this and get action to ensure nothing like this ever happens again.
But *we have had* that enquiry. Under the Tories. It was set aside and ignored by Suella Braverman. And the Phillips letter itself is a carbon copy repeat of one sent by her Tory predecessor to the same council.
The outcome is crap. But the Tory "WHAY HAVE LABOUR DONE NOTHING" attack is so laughable that I question the mental state of the people advancing it.
Exactly. We have had an enquiry, why do we need another and what would it achieve anyway ?
I’d say the same for care costs. Kicking it into the long grass, effectively until after the next election, is shameful.
I'm from Rochdale and I've lived and worked in Rotherham. I'm associated with this via my history, and I can look back over the way those towns worked at the time I was there to have a bit of understanding about the mood.
Both towns had real issues of social and racial division, of suspicion and segregation. I can get how this could go on under the radar - because the radar was crappy and had huge holes in the net. What I can't get is how the authorities were so dismissive. Police who actively disbelieved anything that poor girls said. Social workers who were paranoid about being seen as racist in a town screwed by racism.
The legal and law enforcement issue - traditionally the right - is just as key to this as the social work and councillors issue - traditionally the left. One side trying to blame exclusively the other is how we had this go on for so long. So I am less than amused with Tories denouncing Labour for Tory failings. It gets us nowhere.
I think you are on to something. In most cases huge failures are the result of lots of little failures lining up in the right way (for clarity, none of the failures in this case are individually “little” but it is meant to emphasis that there wet multiple points of failure that created the outcome va a single huge conspiracy).
Eg the social workers fear of being seen as racist (probably influenced by internal politics) is very different to the police unwillingness to believe those they - for prejudicial reasons - see as being non-credible witnesses
There’s also the social phenomenon of problems that are Too Big To Deal With.
Herman Kahn noted that when a problem reaches the scale of being majorly disruptive, a common response is to attack the people raising issue.
Seeing as they are radicalised by fake news from facebook, twatter, Gbeebies, the mail and telegraph that is hardly surprising.
I know I bang on about it but Facebook is astonishing now. Groups representing ultra-lefty bits of Edinburgh are dominated by Reform-type individuals. Must be even more extreme in places like Lincolnshire.
The danger is these people are convinced they represent the general population, even in a constituency where Reform + Conservative = 10.3% of the vote. A bubble implies it can be popped; these folks are trapped in a nuclear bunker convinced that democracy has been subverted by the woke blob. Their tone is increasingly conspiratorial and violent.
The common sense faction is very online.
Real life is probably much more radicalising than being online. There are lots of people who barely ever venture into their local town centres and every time they do, they come home feeling a little more despondent about the direction of the country.
That's just the weather.
Edit: Personally in the centre of the small town where I live, the latest change has been a bookies closing to be replaced by a Card Factory, which is a plus in my eyes.
Yes in Lewisham shopping centre they closed Claire's Accessories and opened a rather fabulous Waterstones. Maybe things are slowly improving?
There was something about this on TRiEntertainment recently. Amazon's Kindle was supposed to kill off books but hasn't. Kindle plateaued and books are back.
I'd be interested to know why that happened.
My personal feeling is that the Kindle, which worked well, had digital rights management that was too strict, and so that led to lots of feels bad experiences that put people off. For example, my daughter received a Kindle as a gift, but it ended up linked to her Granddad's Amazon account, who bought lots of books for her on it. My daughter later set up her own Amazon account and bought books on that, and then lost the other books, because Amazon wouldn't let her transfer them.
Other ereaders with less restrictive DRM simply didn't work well. My wife had an Onyx Boox, and it's usability was dire.
“We’re entering this sort of parallel reality based on Musk’s ignorance of the thing he wants to talk about.”
Reflecting on over a decade writing about grooming gangs, @HugoRifkind explains why he’s not sure an inquiry into grooming gangs will provide any answers.
We started the BBC version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy after lunch today during the kids naptime, it's absolutely excellent, thanks for the recommendation all!
The opening sequence (without dialog) is one of the best scenes in TV drama; an absolutely exquisite set of character sketches.
The site is no nastier or nicer than it’s been since forever. It has a tendency to get quite brutal and angry when very sensitive subjects are being discussed
Two examples from either side: the Muslim rape gangs scandal gets a large chunk of the forum highly animated - for obvious reasons, 100,000s of victims, no justice served
In contrast Gaza gets a different section of PB seriously agitated - for obvious reasons, 10,000s of dead Gazans, still Israel pounds away
You can’t expect these charged emotional debates to leave PB calmly untouched
We can either have a lively debating forum and accept that at times things will get heated, or we can have a super-moderated old people’s tea-shop in Newent which will be so boring everyone will drift away, anyway
Quite. Indyref used to have some seriously mental threads.
Possibly the most incendiary time on PB was just before and maybe a year after Brexit, when a significant minority of Remainers on PB went literally mad (a couple still linger, bless). They couldn’t accept a democratic decision, they believed they were democrats, the cognitive dissonance left them one choice: lunacy
The worst example was Alistair Meeks. When I say worse I mean saddest, as he was one of the very best and smartest of commenters, judicious, wry, often witty
Then Brexit turned him into a smouldering pit of anger and sometimes he would spend a day issuing threats of actual violence. In the end he made the wise but saddening choice to leave
I still live in hope that now he’s calm again - or so it seems on other forums - he might return
Really? My most vivid memory of Brexit PB was an erstwhile poster called seanT going around screaming 'traitor' at everyone in the most hysterical manner. And he was (at least at the time) a diehard Leaver.
I think for social media, we will simply have to require some form of age proof to prove you are over 16.
I don't think it is a good idea to train people to think it is normal to provide their passport details to dozens of different random social media sites.
It would make it much more likely that people would then provide those details to scam websites, see their identities stolen, and enable vast amounts of financial fraud. It would be asking for trouble.
In the furore last night, a critical question went unanswered -
Are Balrogs PEPs ( Politically Exposed Persons) under finance regulation?
Sounds like it got a bit heated last night! Glad I was at the Greenwich panto (which is excellent as always but the last show is tomorrow).
Oh no it isn’t.
The panto up in Consett has the guy who played Curly Watts in Corrie in the main role !
I have a friend who goes to see 10+ pantos every year - he said the Greenwich one is the best in London, but Stirling is the best in the UK.
There’s a nice piece in the FT today about London’s theatre industry and its broad success versus Broadway’s. Pantos are mentioned in passing as having a very successful period.
The arts generally is one area where London continues to punch above New York. The British model - which allows for a level of public sector funding somewhere between very generous European models and the miserly American one - works very well.
But here's the problem: that would not just be a trait seen just in immigration from Muslim countries; and many immigrants from Muslim countries do have a loyalty to the British state and people.
I'm married to one.
So events like this are used by racists to say: "This is what all Muslims are like," and then: "This is what all immigrants are like."
I just wonder, if a load of British immigrants - we could call them expats, it has a nice ring - went to a foreign country, say Spain and settled in a random place, say the Costa del Sol and decided to import British fish and chips, speak no Spanish and generally create a mini-Britain, would we be calling them not loyal to Spain and generally destroying their culture, taking over the country?
I think Spain would have every right to deport the lot of them if they became a nuisance.
I've spoken to people from there. They do cause a nuisance, the locals hate them, they have basically destroyed the culture and the Spanish basically see it as a "no go" area.
Sound familiar?
If they don't belong in Spain, what should happen to them? I say deport them.
What do you mean "don't belong"?
I'm happy to accept your definition:
"They do cause a nuisance, the locals hate them, they have basically destroyed the culture and the Spanish basically see it as a "no go" area."
Then I wonder why all of those going after Muslims don't seem to spend any time calling for these people to be deported. If you want to start that train then I will support you.
The issue is multiculturalism has completely failed as a model. Immigrants need to integrate into the host country, not import their own culture and establish it as a separate stream
We started the BBC version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy after lunch today during the kids naptime, it's absolutely excellent, thanks for the recommendation all!
Superbly cast. Even Beryl Reid who gave a great performance.
I came across an old "Armchair Theatre" production of "Mrs Cappers Birthday" with Reid starring. It's a quite delightful performance - written by Noel Coward.
I think for social media, we will simply have to require some form of age proof to prove you are over 16.
I don't think it is a good idea to train people to think it is normal to provide their passport details to dozens of different random social media sites.
It would make it much more likely that people would then provide those details to scam websites, see their identities stolen, and enable vast amounts of financial fraud. It would be asking for trouble.
I used to think that but seeing the impact of social media on young people, it's destroying them. It really is.
All the commentary here about Meeks is rather Freudian.
He was, and so far as I can tell remains, utterly correct in his diagnosis of Brexit.
Freudian or otherwise I for one would welcome Mr Meeks back and hope he returns.
I am sure he was correct in many ways, but maybe was not sufficiently mindful of the case, put then and still put by some sensible people, that we could be out of the political project but in the single market, like Norway.
This remains the best available answer by far and is completely consistent with the Brexit vote, where membership of the EU was the only question.
Seeing as they are radicalised by fake news from facebook, twatter, Gbeebies, the mail and telegraph that is hardly surprising.
I know I bang on about it but Facebook is astonishing now. Groups representing ultra-lefty bits of Edinburgh are dominated by Reform-type individuals. Must be even more extreme in places like Lincolnshire.
The danger is these people are convinced they represent the general population, even in a constituency where Reform + Conservative = 10.3% of the vote. A bubble implies it can be popped; these folks are trapped in a nuclear bunker convinced that democracy has been subverted by the woke blob. Their tone is increasingly conspiratorial and violent.
The common sense faction is very online.
Real life is probably much more radicalising than being online. There are lots of people who barely ever venture into their local town centres and every time they do, they come home feeling a little more despondent about the direction of the country.
That's just the weather.
Edit: Personally in the centre of the small town where I live, the latest change has been a bookies closing to be replaced by a Card Factory, which is a plus in my eyes.
Yes in Lewisham shopping centre they closed Claire's Accessories and opened a rather fabulous Waterstones. Maybe things are slowly improving?
There was something about this on TRiEntertainment recently. Amazon's Kindle was supposed to kill off books but hasn't. Kindle plateaued and books are back.
I'd be interested to know why that happened.
My personal feeling is that the Kindle, which worked well, had digital rights management that was too strict, and so that led to lots of feels bad experiences that put people off. For example, my daughter received a Kindle as a gift, but it ended up linked to her Granddad's Amazon account, who bought lots of books for her on it. My daughter later set up her own Amazon account and bought books on that, and then lost the other books, because Amazon wouldn't let her transfer them.
Other ereaders with less restrictive DRM simply didn't work well. My wife had an Onyx Boox, and it's usability was dire.
Kindle simply lacks the sensory experience of proper books. It has one very powerful use case - reading during travel/holidays.
I just don’t know where we draw the line on free speech.
Elon Musk calling Jess Phillips a rape gang supporter is surely beyond the pale.
Would he have been able to have that amplified or made that note if he didn’t own Twitter? It’s very worrying that people can just buy the ability to shout the loudest now.
You are muddling up things.
I haven’t seen what Musk called Phillips but it sounds unpleasant. But free speech is absolutely the right to be unpleasant.
Phillips has the right to rely on the protections of the courts if she has been libelled - it’s not my area of technical expertise but very happy to accept that needs reform to protect against billionaires using money as a shield.
Social media is corrosive and needs regulation. But, again, that’s different to restricting free speech - and I think unhelpful to conflate the two (that’s what the defenders of the status quo do)
Yes, absolutely. How would you regulate it?
It’s the great question confronting democracies at present. Nobody seems anywhere near defining a regime which manages to reduce the real harms of social media.
Some options
1) Ban the algorithms that promote the spiral 2) Make platforms 100% responsible for the content - including comments. 3) ?
I would ban the algorithms.
I would also consider time-limiting comments on social media. I think it might help if social media comments didn't last longer than, say, twenty-four hours, or possibly an even shorter period of time.
I think for social media, we will simply have to require some form of age proof to prove you are over 16.
I don't think it is a good idea to train people to think it is normal to provide their passport details to dozens of different random social media sites.
It would make it much more likely that people would then provide those details to scam websites, see their identities stolen, and enable vast amounts of financial fraud. It would be asking for trouble.
I used to think that but seeing the impact of social media on young people, it's destroying them. It really is.
Yes, I loathe overweening regulation, but it’s becoming clear that social media is a public harm.
Not 100% of course. PB is, after all, social media.
We started the BBC version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy after lunch today during the kids naptime, it's absolutely excellent, thanks for the recommendation all!
The opening sequence (without dialog) is one of the best scenes in TV drama; an absolutely exquisite set of character sketches.
One thing they got perfectly right in the TV series was that Smiley is never threatening. The character in the recent film descends to strong arm tactics at one point.
Smiley (as written) is always polite - breaking people by pointing out contradictions.
A tough front page for Starmer, without any need to invoke Musk.
Hysterical nonsense.
Is he as guilty as the actual rapists? Why?
Utterly absurd.
Talking of hysteria, have you seen PB this evening? You'd never guess Leon is back and on fire!
It was a sewer last night. PB is getting as bad as Twitter at times.
It's going to kill the site as a place for polite and respectful political debate.
It's time to check out for a bit.
Astute as always @Foxy. This site really has gone down a lot of levels since Labour won. It wasn’t at all like this after Johnson won in 2019 which is a shame as there are a lot of good people still here - but I note posting less - from both sides of the aisle.
It was, and it was filled with people calling Johnson a Clown, unethical, reprehensible and saying they'd quit the Conservatives/ never vote Conservative again and the fanatics had won etc. I remember it all.
Much of it is that left-leaning posters don't like it up 'em, and this government is directionless, weak, appallingly bad, somewhat vindictive and either gets angry at criticism or hides from it.
Utter nonsense I’m afraid Casino. I remember posting about Johnson’s inevitable downfall and having nothing but abuse and laughter in response. “Grow up, you lost” was a common refrain. But nothing like what we have now. And the difference is the left/non-Johnson contingent stayed and argued in good faith.
And it’s sad you’re joining in occasionally as you post some interesting views albeit I disagree with mostly every single one.
I’ve got no issue with anyone disagreeing with Starmer. In fact I welcome it. But just posting how bad Starmer is repeatedly isn’t interesting to read.
You think Starmer is bad because you don’t support Labour. That’s fine as it goes but it somewhat loosens the thrust by which many say “this government is rubbish and hated”.
As I keep saying, I’ve yet to meet anyone here who has actually swapped from Starmer to another party. And this is basically backed up I the focus groups and polling. In two years we can talk.
Are you not at all concerned by Musk calling one of our MPs a rape gang apologist? Would it be different if he’d said that about a Tory?
Stopped reading at utter nonsense.
Sorry.
Is that because you were struggling with the words? The more you read the better the reader you will become. Perseverance will prevail. Good luck!
A tough front page for Starmer, without any need to invoke Musk.
Hysterical nonsense.
Is he as guilty as the actual rapists? Why?
Utterly absurd.
Talking of hysteria, have you seen PB this evening? You'd never guess Leon is back and on fire!
It was a sewer last night. PB is getting as bad as Twitter at times.
It's going to kill the site as a place for polite and respectful political debate.
It's time to check out for a bit.
Astute as always @Foxy. This site really has gone down a lot of levels since Labour won. It wasn’t at all like this after Johnson won in 2019 which is a shame as there are a lot of good people still here - but I note posting less - from both sides of the aisle.
It was, and it was filled with people calling Johnson a Clown, unethical, reprehensible and saying they'd quit the Conservatives/ never vote Conservative again and the fanatics had won etc. I remember it all.
Much of it is that left-leaning posters don't like it up 'em, and this government is directionless, weak, appallingly bad, somewhat vindictive and either gets angry at criticism or hides from it.
Utter nonsense I’m afraid Casino. I remember posting about Johnson’s inevitable downfall and having nothing but abuse and laughter in response. “Grow up, you lost” was a common refrain. But nothing like what we have now. And the difference is the left/non-Johnson contingent stayed and argued in good faith.
And it’s sad you’re joining in occasionally as you post some interesting views albeit I disagree with mostly every single one.
I’ve got no issue with anyone disagreeing with Starmer. In fact I welcome it. But just posting how bad Starmer is repeatedly isn’t interesting to read.
You think Starmer is bad because you don’t support Labour. That’s fine as it goes but it somewhat loosens the thrust by which many say “this government is rubbish and hated”.
As I keep saying, I’ve yet to meet anyone here who has actually swapped from Starmer to another party. And this is basically backed up I the focus groups and polling. In two years we can talk.
Are you not at all concerned by Musk calling one of our MPs a rape gang apologist? Would it be different if he’d said that about a Tory?
If that Tory MP was also blocking a full public inquiry into the scandal I'd be quite happy for Musk and anyone else to target them and call them an apologist for rape gangs. Indeed worse was said about Tory MPs by me and others when they were blocking the inquiry into the alleged child abuse network in Westminster. You want to shoot the messenger wrt to this subject, I think. The best way out of this for the government is to call the inquiry and let the chips fall where they fall. Starmer may survive, he may not but having a full public inquiry where victims, whistle blowers and investigators can give full and unredacted evidence live on TV is something this country needs to start moving past this and get action to ensure nothing like this ever happens again.
But *we have had* that enquiry. Under the Tories. It was set aside and ignored by Suella Braverman. And the Phillips letter itself is a carbon copy repeat of one sent by her Tory predecessor to the same council.
The outcome is crap. But the Tory "WHAY HAVE LABOUR DONE NOTHING" attack is so laughable that I question the mental state of the people advancing it.
Exactly. We have had an enquiry, why do we need another and what would it achieve anyway ?
I’d say the same for care costs. Kicking it into the long grass, effectively until after the next election, is shameful.
I'm from Rochdale and I've lived and worked in Rotherham. I'm associated with this via my history, and I can look back over the way those towns worked at the time I was there to have a bit of understanding about the mood.
Both towns had real issues of social and racial division, of suspicion and segregation. I can get how this could go on under the radar - because the radar was crappy and had huge holes in the net. What I can't get is how the authorities were so dismissive. Police who actively disbelieved anything that poor girls said. Social workers who were paranoid about being seen as racist in a town screwed by racism.
The legal and law enforcement issue - traditionally the right - is just as key to this as the social work and councillors issue - traditionally the left. One side trying to blame exclusively the other is how we had this go on for so long. So I am less than amused with Tories denouncing Labour for Tory failings. It gets us nowhere.
I think you are on to something. In most cases huge failures are the result of lots of little failures lining up in the right way (for clarity, none of the failures in this case are individually “little” but it is meant to emphasis that there wet multiple points of failure that created the outcome va a single huge conspiracy).
Eg the social workers fear of being seen as racist (probably influenced by internal politics) is very different to the police unwillingness to believe those they - for prejudicial reasons - see as being non-credible witnesses
This is used in accident investigation, the thinking is that a whole bunch of things have to all go wrong at the same time or in sequence for an accident to occur, and that there were usually several opportunities not taken to avoid the accident during the sequence of events. Which is why it’s really important to learn from the minor incidents that don’t end up as accidents.
The site is no nastier or nicer than it’s been since forever. It has a tendency to get quite brutal and angry when very sensitive subjects are being discussed
Two examples from either side: the Muslim rape gangs scandal gets a large chunk of the forum highly animated - for obvious reasons, 100,000s of victims, no justice served
In contrast Gaza gets a different section of PB seriously agitated - for obvious reasons, 10,000s of dead Gazans, still Israel pounds away
You can’t expect these charged emotional debates to leave PB calmly untouched
We can either have a lively debating forum and accept that at times things will get heated, or we can have a super-moderated old people’s tea-shop in Newent which will be so boring everyone will drift away, anyway
Quite. Indyref used to have some seriously mental threads.
Possibly the most incendiary time on PB was just before and maybe a year after Brexit, when a significant minority of Remainers on PB went literally mad (a couple still linger, bless). They couldn’t accept a democratic decision, they believed they were democrats, the cognitive dissonance left them one choice: lunacy
The worst example was Alistair Meeks. When I say worse I mean saddest, as he was one of the very best and smartest of commenters, judicious, wry, often witty
Then Brexit turned him into a smouldering pit of anger and sometimes he would spend a day issuing threats of actual violence. In the end he made the wise but saddening choice to leave
I still live in hope that now he’s calm again - or so it seems on other forums - he might return
Really? My most vivid memory of Brexit PB was an erstwhile poster called seanT going around screaming 'traitor' at everyone in the most hysterical manner. And he was (at least at the time) a diehard Leaver.
Leon, Casino and Max are three of the most hysterical and intemperate posters on here. They routinely call for what would amount to a form of dictatorship if taken literally.
Leon of course is mostly very entertaining - especially since the photo and AI bans - and all three make very very valid points quite regularly, in between screams of treachery and calls for their political enemies to be imprisoned if not executed.
The site is no nastier or nicer than it’s been since forever. It has a tendency to get quite brutal and angry when very sensitive subjects are being discussed
Two examples from either side: the Muslim rape gangs scandal gets a large chunk of the forum highly animated - for obvious reasons, 100,000s of victims, no justice served
In contrast Gaza gets a different section of PB seriously agitated - for obvious reasons, 10,000s of dead Gazans, still Israel pounds away
You can’t expect these charged emotional debates to leave PB calmly untouched
We can either have a lively debating forum and accept that at times things will get heated, or we can have a super-moderated old people’s tea-shop in Newent which will be so boring everyone will drift away, anyway
Quite. Indyref used to have some seriously mental threads.
Possibly the most incendiary time on PB was just before and maybe a year after Brexit, when a significant minority of Remainers on PB went literally mad (a couple still linger, bless). They couldn’t accept a democratic decision, they believed they were democrats, the cognitive dissonance left them one choice: lunacy
The worst example was Alistair Meeks. When I say worse I mean saddest, as he was one of the very best and smartest of commenters, judicious, wry, often witty
Then Brexit turned him into a smouldering pit of anger and sometimes he would spend a day issuing threats of actual violence. In the end he made the wise but saddening choice to leave
I still live in hope that now he’s calm again - or so it seems on other forums - he might return
Really? My most vivid memory of Brexit PB was an erstwhile poster called seanT going around screaming 'traitor' at everyone in the most hysterical manner. And he was (at least at the time) a diehard Leaver.
Leon, Casino and Max are three of the most hysterical and intemperate posters on here. They routinely call for what would amount to a form of dictatorship if taken literally.
Leon of course is mostly very entertaining - especially since the photo and AI bans - and all three make very very valid points quite regularly, in between screams of treachery and calls for their political enemies to be imprisoned if not executed.
In the furore last night, a critical question went unanswered -
Are Balrogs PEPs ( Politically Exposed Persons) under finance regulation?
Sounds like it got a bit heated last night! Glad I was at the Greenwich panto (which is excellent as always but the last show is tomorrow).
Oh no it isn’t.
The panto up in Consett has the guy who played Curly Watts in Corrie in the main role !
I have a friend who goes to see 10+ pantos every year - he said the Greenwich one is the best in London, but Stirling is the best in the UK.
There’s a nice piece in the FT today about London’s theatre industry and its broad success versus Broadway’s. Pantos are mentioned in passing as having a very successful period.
The arts generally is one area where London continues to punch above New York. The British model - which allows for a level of public sector funding somewhere between very generous European models and the miserly American one - works very well.
The quality of theatre in London is incredible. In the last decade I have seen some unforgettable performances (Mark Rylance in Jerusalem and James Corden in One Man Two Guvnors maybe the most notable). It is probably the only indisputable and objective way in which London is the greatest city on Earth. Theatre outside of London is lagging, though; the disparity in quality and quantity is massive.
A tough front page for Starmer, without any need to invoke Musk.
Hysterical nonsense.
Is he as guilty as the actual rapists? Why?
Utterly absurd.
Talking of hysteria, have you seen PB this evening? You'd never guess Leon is back and on fire!
It was a sewer last night. PB is getting as bad as Twitter at times.
It's going to kill the site as a place for polite and respectful political debate.
It's time to check out for a bit.
Astute as always @Foxy. This site really has gone down a lot of levels since Labour won. It wasn’t at all like this after Johnson won in 2019 which is a shame as there are a lot of good people still here - but I note posting less - from both sides of the aisle.
It was, and it was filled with people calling Johnson a Clown, unethical, reprehensible and saying they'd quit the Conservatives/ never vote Conservative again and the fanatics had won etc. I remember it all.
Much of it is that left-leaning posters don't like it up 'em, and this government is directionless, weak, appallingly bad, somewhat vindictive and either gets angry at criticism or hides from it.
Utter nonsense I’m afraid Casino. I remember posting about Johnson’s inevitable downfall and having nothing but abuse and laughter in response. “Grow up, you lost” was a common refrain. But nothing like what we have now. And the difference is the left/non-Johnson contingent stayed and argued in good faith.
And it’s sad you’re joining in occasionally as you post some interesting views albeit I disagree with mostly every single one.
I’ve got no issue with anyone disagreeing with Starmer. In fact I welcome it. But just posting how bad Starmer is repeatedly isn’t interesting to read.
You think Starmer is bad because you don’t support Labour. That’s fine as it goes but it somewhat loosens the thrust by which many say “this government is rubbish and hated”.
As I keep saying, I’ve yet to meet anyone here who has actually swapped from Starmer to another party. And this is basically backed up I the focus groups and polling. In two years we can talk.
Are you not at all concerned by Musk calling one of our MPs a rape gang apologist? Would it be different if he’d said that about a Tory?
Starmer is definitely hated in a way that Blair and Brown never were (I'm not old enough to remember Callaghan). Just yesterday I saw some graffiti - in a Labour seat no less, which was most uncomplimentary about "2 Tier Keir".
Do you honestly think Starmer is more hated than Blair was after Iraq?
Remember that Iraq indirectly created Tommy Robinson because it was Muslim protests in Luton that targeted British soldiers that first inspired him.
Fantastic, what a hero, what a patriot, but riddle me this; why did the silly f***** adopt a stage name?
I just don’t know where we draw the line on free speech.
Elon Musk calling Jess Phillips a rape gang supporter is surely beyond the pale.
Would he have been able to have that amplified or made that note if he didn’t own Twitter? It’s very worrying that people can just buy the ability to shout the loudest now.
You are muddling up things.
I haven’t seen what Musk called Phillips but it sounds unpleasant. But free speech is absolutely the right to be unpleasant.
Phillips has the right to rely on the protections of the courts if she has been libelled - it’s not my area of technical expertise but very happy to accept that needs reform to protect against billionaires using money as a shield.
Social media is corrosive and needs regulation. But, again, that’s different to restricting free speech - and I think unhelpful to conflate the two (that’s what the defenders of the status quo do)
Yes, absolutely. How would you regulate it?
It’s the great question confronting democracies at present. Nobody seems anywhere near defining a regime which manages to reduce the real harms of social media.
Some options
1) Ban the algorithms that promote the spiral 2) Make platforms 100% responsible for the content - including comments. 3) ?
I would ban the algorithms.
I would also consider time-limiting comments on social media. I think it might help if social media comments didn't last longer than, say, twenty-four hours, or possibly an even shorter period of time.
But how many junior staff in media companies and political parties would be put out of work, not trawling through years of someone's comments, trying to get a "gotcha"?
The site is no nastier or nicer than it’s been since forever. It has a tendency to get quite brutal and angry when very sensitive subjects are being discussed
Two examples from either side: the Muslim rape gangs scandal gets a large chunk of the forum highly animated - for obvious reasons, 100,000s of victims, no justice served
In contrast Gaza gets a different section of PB seriously agitated - for obvious reasons, 10,000s of dead Gazans, still Israel pounds away
You can’t expect these charged emotional debates to leave PB calmly untouched
We can either have a lively debating forum and accept that at times things will get heated, or we can have a super-moderated old people’s tea-shop in Newent which will be so boring everyone will drift away, anyway
Quite. Indyref used to have some seriously mental threads.
Possibly the most incendiary time on PB was just before and maybe a year after Brexit, when a significant minority of Remainers on PB went literally mad (a couple still linger, bless). They couldn’t accept a democratic decision, they believed they were democrats, the cognitive dissonance left them one choice: lunacy
The worst example was Alistair Meeks. When I say worse I mean saddest, as he was one of the very best and smartest of commenters, judicious, wry, often witty
Then Brexit turned him into a smouldering pit of anger and sometimes he would spend a day issuing threats of actual violence. In the end he made the wise but saddening choice to leave
I still live in hope that now he’s calm again - or so it seems on other forums - he might return
Really? My most vivid memory of Brexit PB was an erstwhile poster called seanT going around screaming 'traitor' at everyone in the most hysterical manner. And he was (at least at the time) a diehard Leaver.
Leon, Casino and Max are three of the most hysterical and intemperate posters on here. They routinely call for what would amount to a form of dictatorship if taken literally.
Leon of course is mostly very entertaining - especially since the photo and AI bans - and all three make very very valid points quite regularly, in between screams of treachery and calls for their political enemies to be imprisoned if not executed.
I’m not sure what to call this “style”.
I've never called for dictatorship.
Maybe you could do with a nice cup of tea and a lie down.
Seeing as they are radicalised by fake news from facebook, twatter, Gbeebies, the mail and telegraph that is hardly surprising.
I know I bang on about it but Facebook is astonishing now. Groups representing ultra-lefty bits of Edinburgh are dominated by Reform-type individuals. Must be even more extreme in places like Lincolnshire.
The danger is these people are convinced they represent the general population, even in a constituency where Reform + Conservative = 10.3% of the vote. A bubble implies it can be popped; these folks are trapped in a nuclear bunker convinced that democracy has been subverted by the woke blob. Their tone is increasingly conspiratorial and violent.
The common sense faction is very online.
Real life is probably much more radicalising than being online. There are lots of people who barely ever venture into their local town centres and every time they do, they come home feeling a little more despondent about the direction of the country.
That's just the weather.
Edit: Personally in the centre of the small town where I live, the latest change has been a bookies closing to be replaced by a Card Factory, which is a plus in my eyes.
Yes in Lewisham shopping centre they closed Claire's Accessories and opened a rather fabulous Waterstones. Maybe things are slowly improving?
There was something about this on TRiEntertainment recently. Amazon's Kindle was supposed to kill off books but hasn't. Kindle plateaued and books are back.
I'd be interested to know why that happened.
My personal feeling is that the Kindle, which worked well, had digital rights management that was too strict, and so that led to lots of feels bad experiences that put people off. For example, my daughter received a Kindle as a gift, but it ended up linked to her Granddad's Amazon account, who bought lots of books for her on it. My daughter later set up her own Amazon account and bought books on that, and then lost the other books, because Amazon wouldn't let her transfer them.
Other ereaders with less restrictive DRM simply didn't work well. My wife had an Onyx Boox, and it's usability was dire.
For me Kindle PW work very well. You just have to avoid the Amazon ecosystem.
If you never connect it to the internet and only load books/papers through USB with Calibre I don't think there is a better reader for the price. I'd love a massive 15 incher with colour e-ink but tis a dream.
One of the defining characteristics of social media, in my view, is the use of algorithms to promote content. Which makes PB non-social-media…
The problem is that such algorithms were selected for those that create the most interaction. So they show you the posts you *mist respond to*.
It was then discovered that stirring up hatred and anger is the best way to do this - after the fact. The various companies were chasing clicks and comments. It was then pointed out that it was creating two phenomena -
1) Promoting content that people really, really hate. Fire them up! 2) Promoting content that is a slightly more extreme version of what you are already reading/writing.
The first is good for getting lynch mobs going. The later creates a spiral of radicalisation.
Banning promoting other posts by algorithm is perfectly possible as a law. Would it be a good idea? Hmmmmmm
Seeing as they are radicalised by fake news from facebook, twatter, Gbeebies, the mail and telegraph that is hardly surprising.
I know I bang on about it but Facebook is astonishing now. Groups representing ultra-lefty bits of Edinburgh are dominated by Reform-type individuals. Must be even more extreme in places like Lincolnshire.
The danger is these people are convinced they represent the general population, even in a constituency where Reform + Conservative = 10.3% of the vote. A bubble implies it can be popped; these folks are trapped in a nuclear bunker convinced that democracy has been subverted by the woke blob. Their tone is increasingly conspiratorial and violent.
The common sense faction is very online.
Real life is probably much more radicalising than being online. There are lots of people who barely ever venture into their local town centres and every time they do, they come home feeling a little more despondent about the direction of the country.
That's just the weather.
Edit: Personally in the centre of the small town where I live, the latest change has been a bookies closing to be replaced by a Card Factory, which is a plus in my eyes.
Yes in Lewisham shopping centre they closed Claire's Accessories and opened a rather fabulous Waterstones. Maybe things are slowly improving?
There was something about this on TRiEntertainment recently. Amazon's Kindle was supposed to kill off books but hasn't. Kindle plateaued and books are back.
I'd be interested to know why that happened.
My personal feeling is that the Kindle, which worked well, had digital rights management that was too strict, and so that led to lots of feels bad experiences that put people off. For example, my daughter received a Kindle as a gift, but it ended up linked to her Granddad's Amazon account, who bought lots of books for her on it. My daughter later set up her own Amazon account and bought books on that, and then lost the other books, because Amazon wouldn't let her transfer them.
Other ereaders with less restrictive DRM simply didn't work well. My wife had an Onyx Boox, and it's usability was dire.
I definitely prefer tangible reading to electronic but I have noticed I find both a bit of a strain these days. I have to force myself to do it. The reason, I think, is podcasts and audio docs and books. I got into all that, late as usual with me, so maybe about a year ago, and I've got used to consuming that way, through my ears. The traditional eyeball method feels slightly cumbersome now. I find myself wishing whatever it is was being read aloud to me by somebody with a nice voice.
I think for social media, we will simply have to require some form of age proof to prove you are over 16.
I don't think it is a good idea to train people to think it is normal to provide their passport details to dozens of different random social media sites.
It would make it much more likely that people would then provide those details to scam websites, see their identities stolen, and enable vast amounts of financial fraud. It would be asking for trouble.
Millions of gamblers already do this, to companies who can afford to spend far less on compliance and vetting than Facebook and Twitter could.
A tough front page for Starmer, without any need to invoke Musk.
Hysterical nonsense.
Is he as guilty as the actual rapists? Why?
Utterly absurd.
Talking of hysteria, have you seen PB this evening? You'd never guess Leon is back and on fire!
It was a sewer last night. PB is getting as bad as Twitter at times.
It's going to kill the site as a place for polite and respectful political debate.
It's time to check out for a bit.
Astute as always @Foxy. This site really has gone down a lot of levels since Labour won. It wasn’t at all like this after Johnson won in 2019 which is a shame as there are a lot of good people still here - but I note posting less - from both sides of the aisle.
It was, and it was filled with people calling Johnson a Clown, unethical, reprehensible and saying they'd quit the Conservatives/ never vote Conservative again and the fanatics had won etc. I remember it all.
Much of it is that left-leaning posters don't like it up 'em, and this government is directionless, weak, appallingly bad, somewhat vindictive and either gets angry at criticism or hides from it.
Utter nonsense I’m afraid Casino. I remember posting about Johnson’s inevitable downfall and having nothing but abuse and laughter in response. “Grow up, you lost” was a common refrain. But nothing like what we have now. And the difference is the left/non-Johnson contingent stayed and argued in good faith.
And it’s sad you’re joining in occasionally as you post some interesting views albeit I disagree with mostly every single one.
I’ve got no issue with anyone disagreeing with Starmer. In fact I welcome it. But just posting how bad Starmer is repeatedly isn’t interesting to read.
You think Starmer is bad because you don’t support Labour. That’s fine as it goes but it somewhat loosens the thrust by which many say “this government is rubbish and hated”.
As I keep saying, I’ve yet to meet anyone here who has actually swapped from Starmer to another party. And this is basically backed up I the focus groups and polling. In two years we can talk.
Are you not at all concerned by Musk calling one of our MPs a rape gang apologist? Would it be different if he’d said that about a Tory?
Starmer is definitely hated in a way that Blair and Brown never were (I'm not old enough to remember Callaghan). Just yesterday I saw some graffiti - in a Labour seat no less, which was most uncomplimentary about "2 Tier Keir".
Do you honestly think Starmer is more hated than Blair was after Iraq?
Remember that Iraq indirectly created Tommy Robinson because it was Muslim protests in Luton that targeted British soldiers that first inspired him.
Fantastic, what a hero, what a patriot, but riddle me this; why did the silly f***** adopt a stage name?
Because Stephen Yaxley-Lennon is Head of Drama at Ipswich's third best comprehensive school. Tommy Robinson is a working class hero.
One of the defining characteristics of social media, in my view, is the use of algorithms to promote content. Which makes PB non-social-media…
The problem is that such algorithms were selected for those that create the most interaction. So they show you the posts you *mist respond to*.
It was then discovered that stirring up hatred and anger is the best way to do this - after the fact. The various companies were chasing clicks and comments. It was then pointed out that it was creating two phenomena -
1) Promoting content that people really, really hate. Fire them up! 2) Promoting content that is a slightly more extreme version of what you are already reading/writing.
The first is good for getting lynch mobs going. The later creates a spiral of radicalisation.
Banning promoting other posts by algorithm is perfectly possible as a law. Would it be a good idea? Hmmmmmm
Way back when, Twitter and Facebook just showed content in chronological order. I wonder if you just mandate that by law.
The site is no nastier or nicer than it’s been since forever. It has a tendency to get quite brutal and angry when very sensitive subjects are being discussed
Two examples from either side: the Muslim rape gangs scandal gets a large chunk of the forum highly animated - for obvious reasons, 100,000s of victims, no justice served
In contrast Gaza gets a different section of PB seriously agitated - for obvious reasons, 10,000s of dead Gazans, still Israel pounds away
You can’t expect these charged emotional debates to leave PB calmly untouched
We can either have a lively debating forum and accept that at times things will get heated, or we can have a super-moderated old people’s tea-shop in Newent which will be so boring everyone will drift away, anyway
Quite. Indyref used to have some seriously mental threads.
Possibly the most incendiary time on PB was just before and maybe a year after Brexit, when a significant minority of Remainers on PB went literally mad (a couple still linger, bless). They couldn’t accept a democratic decision, they believed they were democrats, the cognitive dissonance left them one choice: lunacy
The worst example was Alistair Meeks. When I say worse I mean saddest, as he was one of the very best and smartest of commenters, judicious, wry, often witty
Then Brexit turned him into a smouldering pit of anger and sometimes he would spend a day issuing threats of actual violence. In the end he made the wise but saddening choice to leave
I still live in hope that now he’s calm again - or so it seems on other forums - he might return
Really? My most vivid memory of Brexit PB was an erstwhile poster called seanT going around screaming 'traitor' at everyone in the most hysterical manner. And he was (at least at the time) a diehard Leaver.
Leon, Casino and Max are three of the most hysterical and intemperate posters on here. They routinely call for what would amount to a form of dictatorship if taken literally.
Leon of course is mostly very entertaining - especially since the photo and AI bans - and all three make very very valid points quite regularly, in between screams of treachery and calls for their political enemies to be imprisoned if not executed.
I’m not sure what to call this “style”.
I'd bring back the firing squad for enemies. Public executions always get the blood pumping...
A tough front page for Starmer, without any need to invoke Musk.
Hysterical nonsense.
Is he as guilty as the actual rapists? Why?
Utterly absurd.
Talking of hysteria, have you seen PB this evening? You'd never guess Leon is back and on fire!
It was a sewer last night. PB is getting as bad as Twitter at times.
It's going to kill the site as a place for polite and respectful political debate.
It's time to check out for a bit.
Astute as always @Foxy. This site really has gone down a lot of levels since Labour won. It wasn’t at all like this after Johnson won in 2019 which is a shame as there are a lot of good people still here - but I note posting less - from both sides of the aisle.
It was, and it was filled with people calling Johnson a Clown, unethical, reprehensible and saying they'd quit the Conservatives/ never vote Conservative again and the fanatics had won etc. I remember it all.
Much of it is that left-leaning posters don't like it up 'em, and this government is directionless, weak, appallingly bad, somewhat vindictive and either gets angry at criticism or hides from it.
Utter nonsense I’m afraid Casino. I remember posting about Johnson’s inevitable downfall and having nothing but abuse and laughter in response. “Grow up, you lost” was a common refrain. But nothing like what we have now. And the difference is the left/non-Johnson contingent stayed and argued in good faith.
And it’s sad you’re joining in occasionally as you post some interesting views albeit I disagree with mostly every single one.
I’ve got no issue with anyone disagreeing with Starmer. In fact I welcome it. But just posting how bad Starmer is repeatedly isn’t interesting to read.
You think Starmer is bad because you don’t support Labour. That’s fine as it goes but it somewhat loosens the thrust by which many say “this government is rubbish and hated”.
As I keep saying, I’ve yet to meet anyone here who has actually swapped from Starmer to another party. And this is basically backed up I the focus groups and polling. In two years we can talk.
Are you not at all concerned by Musk calling one of our MPs a rape gang apologist? Would it be different if he’d said that about a Tory?
Starmer is definitely hated in a way that Blair and Brown never were (I'm not old enough to remember Callaghan). Just yesterday I saw some graffiti - in a Labour seat no less, which was most uncomplimentary about "2 Tier Keir".
Do you honestly think Starmer is more hated than Blair was after Iraq?
Remember that Iraq indirectly created Tommy Robinson because it was Muslim protests in Luton that targeted British soldiers that first inspired him.
Fantastic, what a hero, what a patriot, but riddle me this; why did the silly f***** adopt a stage name?
Didn’t he originally have a proper job somewhere, so used the pseudonym for his weekend activities stirring up racial hatred?
The site is no nastier or nicer than it’s been since forever. It has a tendency to get quite brutal and angry when very sensitive subjects are being discussed
Two examples from either side: the Muslim rape gangs scandal gets a large chunk of the forum highly animated - for obvious reasons, 100,000s of victims, no justice served
In contrast Gaza gets a different section of PB seriously agitated - for obvious reasons, 10,000s of dead Gazans, still Israel pounds away
You can’t expect these charged emotional debates to leave PB calmly untouched
We can either have a lively debating forum and accept that at times things will get heated, or we can have a super-moderated old people’s tea-shop in Newent which will be so boring everyone will drift away, anyway
Quite. Indyref used to have some seriously mental threads.
Possibly the most incendiary time on PB was just before and maybe a year after Brexit, when a significant minority of Remainers on PB went literally mad (a couple still linger, bless). They couldn’t accept a democratic decision, they believed they were democrats, the cognitive dissonance left them one choice: lunacy
The worst example was Alistair Meeks. When I say worse I mean saddest, as he was one of the very best and smartest of commenters, judicious, wry, often witty
Then Brexit turned him into a smouldering pit of anger and sometimes he would spend a day issuing threats of actual violence. In the end he made the wise but saddening choice to leave
I still live in hope that now he’s calm again - or so it seems on other forums - he might return
ISTR he was somewhat baited by some of our more (ahem) vociferous posters.
It's a shame when people force other posters off this site. You would *never* do such a thing, would you?
Actually no I didn’t bait him. I do like to wind people up but I have a personal rule that if I think someone is in genuine mental distress - having a breakdown, unstable, suicidal, very depressed - then I leave them alone. I do this because 1. I’m not evil and 2. I’m prone to depressions myself and I know how horrible they are
The meltdown of the Meeks at its worst was painful to see - making threats of violence hourly - I left him to it and quietly hoped he’d improve, or leave. He made the correct decision to leave
I’ve since communicated with him personally and it’s been civil and pleasant. The Meeks of old
Have you considered that the abuse you routinely give out might actually lead someone into mental distress?
Get a grip , if they are that fragile they should not be on social media.
'Leon' is such an incredible piece of grotesquery, on a par with other fictional egotists like John Self or Howard Kirk, or one of the iffier characters from the Canterbury Tales. Trading barbs with him is like being insulted by Bruce Robertson. Draw comfort from every spasm of bitchiness, enjoy every missing full stop. Be a witness to this peerless act of satirical creativity.
Do I like people using offensive terms to describe each other, no. But, trying to determine what is or is not acceptable is much much worse. It is a fool's errand and any imposed limit will be seen as a target. If there were to be a change on this site, and Guido then the only change I could think of that would be useful would be for us to post on our real names. Perhaps that might limit to offence ? But, surely we are all sort of adults and does it really matter if some of us aren't ?
Apparently according to a correspondent on Guido there was a joke about Hitler at a dinner where various former government ministers attended. WOW ! Get a grip. Even Laura K and the Beeb would be scraping the barrel to try to make something of that.
A tough front page for Starmer, without any need to invoke Musk.
Hysterical nonsense.
Is he as guilty as the actual rapists? Why?
Utterly absurd.
Talking of hysteria, have you seen PB this evening? You'd never guess Leon is back and on fire!
It was a sewer last night. PB is getting as bad as Twitter at times.
It's going to kill the site as a place for polite and respectful political debate.
It's time to check out for a bit.
Astute as always @Foxy. This site really has gone down a lot of levels since Labour won. It wasn’t at all like this after Johnson won in 2019 which is a shame as there are a lot of good people still here - but I note posting less - from both sides of the aisle.
It was, and it was filled with people calling Johnson a Clown, unethical, reprehensible and saying they'd quit the Conservatives/ never vote Conservative again and the fanatics had won etc. I remember it all.
Much of it is that left-leaning posters don't like it up 'em, and this government is directionless, weak, appallingly bad, somewhat vindictive and either gets angry at criticism or hides from it.
Utter nonsense I’m afraid Casino. I remember posting about Johnson’s inevitable downfall and having nothing but abuse and laughter in response. “Grow up, you lost” was a common refrain. But nothing like what we have now. And the difference is the left/non-Johnson contingent stayed and argued in good faith.
And it’s sad you’re joining in occasionally as you post some interesting views albeit I disagree with mostly every single one.
I’ve got no issue with anyone disagreeing with Starmer. In fact I welcome it. But just posting how bad Starmer is repeatedly isn’t interesting to read.
You think Starmer is bad because you don’t support Labour. That’s fine as it goes but it somewhat loosens the thrust by which many say “this government is rubbish and hated”.
As I keep saying, I’ve yet to meet anyone here who has actually swapped from Starmer to another party. And this is basically backed up I the focus groups and polling. In two years we can talk.
Are you not at all concerned by Musk calling one of our MPs a rape gang apologist? Would it be different if he’d said that about a Tory?
Starmer is definitely hated in a way that Blair and Brown never were (I'm not old enough to remember Callaghan). Just yesterday I saw some graffiti - in a Labour seat no less, which was most uncomplimentary about "2 Tier Keir".
Do you honestly think Starmer is more hated than Blair was after Iraq?
Remember that Iraq indirectly created Tommy Robinson because it was Muslim protests in Luton that targeted British soldiers that first inspired him.
Fantastic, what a hero, what a patriot, but riddle me this; why did the silly f***** adopt a stage name?
The EDL was also partly inspired by a protests by Sikhs against a play (written by a Sikh woman, incipiently). The police pretty much arranged to have the play pulled, citing public order grounds.
So the thug right thought “Getting things banned with a bit of violence and threats? Let’s get some of that.”
David Starkey's analysis of Rachel Reeves on Youtube is well worth half an hour. Might not be to everyone's taste but I find his arguments interesting and for the main part convincing. Certainly more convincing than anything she herself has said, or Starmer for that matter.
The truth is David Lammy is not the most stupid member of the government front bench, not by a long chalk.
The same way you enforce health and safety at work legislation. With punishments for breaking the law, inspections and support for whistleblowers.
Yes but how on Earth do you police what algorithms are being used without looking at the source code. It's a non-starter.
Ban promoting posts.
Plenty of forums don’t have this.
Okay but that's not banning algorithms as such.
I think you just say that posts have to be in chronological order, you can't pay to promote posts.
By far the stupidest thing Elon Musk has done at Twitter is blue ticks being paid for.
Yup - that’s what is meant by algorithms in social media. Post promotion.
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php - is an example of a tightly moderated forum. They do have a small panel on the front page showing the most recent posts. But otherwise, no promoting stuff.
Ban the concept of paying for anything to get your post promoted on any social media platform. Ban posts out of order.
This would seemingly kill TikTok's app over night but frankly, I'd like to see TikTok die a death.
It’s not obvious to me again why the West allows TikTok to operate freely when there is clear evidence of political manipulation in favour of CCP-approved content.
A tough front page for Starmer, without any need to invoke Musk.
Hysterical nonsense.
Is he as guilty as the actual rapists? Why?
Utterly absurd.
Talking of hysteria, have you seen PB this evening? You'd never guess Leon is back and on fire!
It was a sewer last night. PB is getting as bad as Twitter at times.
It's going to kill the site as a place for polite and respectful political debate.
It's time to check out for a bit.
Astute as always @Foxy. This site really has gone down a lot of levels since Labour won. It wasn’t at all like this after Johnson won in 2019 which is a shame as there are a lot of good people still here - but I note posting less - from both sides of the aisle.
It was, and it was filled with people calling Johnson a Clown, unethical, reprehensible and saying they'd quit the Conservatives/ never vote Conservative again and the fanatics had won etc. I remember it all.
Much of it is that left-leaning posters don't like it up 'em, and this government is directionless, weak, appallingly bad, somewhat vindictive and either gets angry at criticism or hides from it.
Utter nonsense I’m afraid Casino. I remember posting about Johnson’s inevitable downfall and having nothing but abuse and laughter in response. “Grow up, you lost” was a common refrain. But nothing like what we have now. And the difference is the left/non-Johnson contingent stayed and argued in good faith.
And it’s sad you’re joining in occasionally as you post some interesting views albeit I disagree with mostly every single one.
I’ve got no issue with anyone disagreeing with Starmer. In fact I welcome it. But just posting how bad Starmer is repeatedly isn’t interesting to read.
You think Starmer is bad because you don’t support Labour. That’s fine as it goes but it somewhat loosens the thrust by which many say “this government is rubbish and hated”.
As I keep saying, I’ve yet to meet anyone here who has actually swapped from Starmer to another party. And this is basically backed up I the focus groups and polling. In two years we can talk.
Are you not at all concerned by Musk calling one of our MPs a rape gang apologist? Would it be different if he’d said that about a Tory?
If that Tory MP was also blocking a full public inquiry into the scandal I'd be quite happy for Musk and anyone else to target them and call them an apologist for rape gangs. Indeed worse was said about Tory MPs by me and others when they were blocking the inquiry into the alleged child abuse network in Westminster. You want to shoot the messenger wrt to this subject, I think. The best way out of this for the government is to call the inquiry and let the chips fall where they fall. Starmer may survive, he may not but having a full public inquiry where victims, whistle blowers and investigators can give full and unredacted evidence live on TV is something this country needs to start moving past this and get action to ensure nothing like this ever happens again.
But *we have had* that enquiry. Under the Tories. It was set aside and ignored by Suella Braverman. And the Phillips letter itself is a carbon copy repeat of one sent by her Tory predecessor to the same council.
The outcome is crap. But the Tory "WHAY HAVE LABOUR DONE NOTHING" attack is so laughable that I question the mental state of the people advancing it.
Exactly. We have had an enquiry, why do we need another and what would it achieve anyway ?
I’d say the same for care costs. Kicking it into the long grass, effectively until after the next election, is shameful.
I'm from Rochdale and I've lived and worked in Rotherham. I'm associated with this via my history, and I can look back over the way those towns worked at the time I was there to have a bit of understanding about the mood.
Both towns had real issues of social and racial division, of suspicion and segregation. I can get how this could go on under the radar - because the radar was crappy and had huge holes in the net. What I can't get is how the authorities were so dismissive. Police who actively disbelieved anything that poor girls said. Social workers who were paranoid about being seen as racist in a town screwed by racism.
The legal and law enforcement issue - traditionally the right - is just as key to this as the social work and councillors issue - traditionally the left. One side trying to blame exclusively the other is how we had this go on for so long. So I am less than amused with Tories denouncing Labour for Tory failings. It gets us nowhere.
I think you are on to something. In most cases huge failures are the result of lots of little failures lining up in the right way (for clarity, none of the failures in this case are individually “little” but it is meant to emphasis that there wet multiple points of failure that created the outcome va a single huge conspiracy).
Eg the social workers fear of being seen as racist (probably influenced by internal politics) is very different to the police unwillingness to believe those they - for prejudicial reasons - see as being non-credible witnesses
This is used in accident investigation, the thinking is that a whole bunch of things have to all go wrong at the same time or in sequence for an accident to occur, and that there were usually several opportunities not taken to avoid the accident during the sequence of events. Which is why it’s really important to learn from the minor incidents that don’t end up as accidents.
Plus mechanisms to detect that something *has* gone wrong (that can't be ignored) and plans for containment and response when things *have* gone wrong.
The same way you enforce health and safety at work legislation. With punishments for breaking the law, inspections and support for whistleblowers.
Yes but how on Earth do you police what algorithms are being used without looking at the source code. It's a non-starter.
Ban promoting posts.
Plenty of forums don’t have this.
Okay but that's not banning algorithms as such.
I think you just say that posts have to be in chronological order, you can't pay to promote posts.
By far the stupidest thing Elon Musk has done at Twitter is blue ticks being paid for.
Yup - that’s what is meant by algorithms in social media. Post promotion.
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php - is an example of a tightly moderated forum. They do have a small panel on the front page showing the most recent posts. But otherwise, no promoting stuff.
The problem is, this would inevitably be called "shutting down free speech" if applied to Twitter or Facebook.
I just think we have to get away from the idea that you are shown recommendations or paid for stuff. You sign up and can follow who you want but it gets presented chronologically and you're not recommended who to follow.
Or you have some kind of "open" mode where you can see everything but again this is probably too large for Twitter or Facebook to be usable.
Ban the concept of paying for anything to get your post promoted on any social media platform. Ban posts out of order.
This would seemingly kill TikTok's app over night but frankly, I'd like to see TikTok die a death.
It’s not obvious to me again why the West allows TikTok to operate freely when there is clear evidence of political manipulation in favour of CCP-approved content.
The Chinese version is completely moderated and controlled by the CCP.
All the commentary here about Meeks is rather Freudian.
He was, and so far as I can tell remains, utterly correct in his diagnosis of Brexit.
Not really.
It's only a few irreconcilables like you and him and Scott and Foxy that continue to be obsessed by Brexit.
The rest of us have moved on.
I’ve literally moved on, to the U.S.
Not the EU then?
I’d absolutely live in the EU (a diverse place), but right now the U.S. makes sense for my economic situation.
Which is fair, what's very worrying is that Europe (and I include Labour's UK in this) is become a retirement home for people who have found success elsewhere in the world because it is now actively hostile to wealth creation. The welfare states across Europe have created an entitlement culture and people think they are owed wealth transfers from successful people whether that's directly in the form of cash benefits or indirectly in the form of healthcare/education/state employment etc...
I don't know what the solution to this is, but the entitlement culture across Europe is bankrupting the continent, the UK included and it's become a negative spiral as we're having to increase tax to pay for it which further harms economic growth and the tax base and eventually we turn into Argentina.
The site is no nastier or nicer than it’s been since forever. It has a tendency to get quite brutal and angry when very sensitive subjects are being discussed
Two examples from either side: the Muslim rape gangs scandal gets a large chunk of the forum highly animated - for obvious reasons, 100,000s of victims, no justice served
In contrast Gaza gets a different section of PB seriously agitated - for obvious reasons, 10,000s of dead Gazans, still Israel pounds away
You can’t expect these charged emotional debates to leave PB calmly untouched
We can either have a lively debating forum and accept that at times things will get heated, or we can have a super-moderated old people’s tea-shop in Newent which will be so boring everyone will drift away, anyway
Quite. Indyref used to have some seriously mental threads.
Possibly the most incendiary time on PB was just before and maybe a year after Brexit, when a significant minority of Remainers on PB went literally mad (a couple still linger, bless). They couldn’t accept a democratic decision, they believed they were democrats, the cognitive dissonance left them one choice: lunacy
The worst example was Alistair Meeks. When I say worse I mean saddest, as he was one of the very best and smartest of commenters, judicious, wry, often witty
Then Brexit turned him into a smouldering pit of anger and sometimes he would spend a day issuing threats of actual violence. In the end he made the wise but saddening choice to leave
I still live in hope that now he’s calm again - or so it seems on other forums - he might return
Really? My most vivid memory of Brexit PB was an erstwhile poster called seanT going around screaming 'traitor' at everyone in the most hysterical manner. And he was (at least at the time) a diehard Leaver.
Leon, Casino and Max are three of the most hysterical and intemperate posters on here. They routinely call for what would amount to a form of dictatorship if taken literally.
Leon of course is mostly very entertaining - especially since the photo and AI bans - and all three make very very valid points quite regularly, in between screams of treachery and calls for their political enemies to be imprisoned if not executed.
I’m not sure what to call this “style”.
I would be outraged if I were William Glenn and I had been missed off that list.
All the commentary here about Meeks is rather Freudian.
He was, and so far as I can tell remains, utterly correct in his diagnosis of Brexit.
Not really.
It's only a few irreconcilables like you and him and Scott and Foxy that continue to be obsessed by Brexit.
The rest of us have moved on.
I’ve literally moved on, to the U.S.
Not the EU then?
I’d absolutely live in the EU (a diverse place), but right now the U.S. makes sense for my economic situation.
Is this statement not a microcosm for the whole economic argument?
For example, Germany’s economy was essentially built on cheap Russian energy, cheap third world migrant labour, autos, and exports of precision machinery to China, underpinned by a locked in currency competitiveness with the rest of the block. Only thing they have left is the internal terms of trades from the euro and that’s a pretty dishonest way to make a living.
Of the other large economies, France and Italy arguably only have globally significant economic value as living museums, trading on tourism and luxury brands. And they’re buggering up the former thanks to third world immigration.
Would love to say the UK has made the most of the post Brexit economic opportunity but it hasn’t. Yet.
The site is no nastier or nicer than it’s been since forever. It has a tendency to get quite brutal and angry when very sensitive subjects are being discussed
Two examples from either side: the Muslim rape gangs scandal gets a large chunk of the forum highly animated - for obvious reasons, 100,000s of victims, no justice served
In contrast Gaza gets a different section of PB seriously agitated - for obvious reasons, 10,000s of dead Gazans, still Israel pounds away
You can’t expect these charged emotional debates to leave PB calmly untouched
We can either have a lively debating forum and accept that at times things will get heated, or we can have a super-moderated old people’s tea-shop in Newent which will be so boring everyone will drift away, anyway
Quite. Indyref used to have some seriously mental threads.
Possibly the most incendiary time on PB was just before and maybe a year after Brexit, when a significant minority of Remainers on PB went literally mad (a couple still linger, bless). They couldn’t accept a democratic decision, they believed they were democrats, the cognitive dissonance left them one choice: lunacy
The worst example was Alistair Meeks. When I say worse I mean saddest, as he was one of the very best and smartest of commenters, judicious, wry, often witty
Then Brexit turned him into a smouldering pit of anger and sometimes he would spend a day issuing threats of actual violence. In the end he made the wise but saddening choice to leave
I still live in hope that now he’s calm again - or so it seems on other forums - he might return
Really? My most vivid memory of Brexit PB was an erstwhile poster called seanT going around screaming 'traitor' at everyone in the most hysterical manner. And he was (at least at the time) a diehard Leaver.
Leon, Casino and Max are three of the most hysterical and intemperate posters on here. They routinely call for what would amount to a form of dictatorship if taken literally.
Leon of course is mostly very entertaining - especially since the photo and AI bans - and all three make very very valid points quite regularly, in between screams of treachery and calls for their political enemies to be imprisoned if not executed.
I’m not sure what to call this “style”.
I would be outraged if I were William Glenn and I had been missed off that list.
“We’re entering this sort of parallel reality based on Musk’s ignorance of the thing he wants to talk about.”
Reflecting on over a decade writing about grooming gangs, @HugoRifkind explains why he’s not sure an inquiry into grooming gangs will provide any answers.
Answers are not what Musk and his fanbase want. They want 2 things. To damage Keir Starmer. To whip up hatred of Muslims. Both of these things being in the interests of their far right politics.
Ban the concept of paying for anything to get your post promoted on any social media platform. Ban posts out of order.
This would seemingly kill TikTok's app over night but frankly, I'd like to see TikTok die a death.
It’s not obvious to me again why the West allows TikTok to operate freely when there is clear evidence of political manipulation in favour of CCP-approved content.
Tik-Tok is so clearly a Chinese psyop that Western governments should have banned it years ago, before half of Western Gen Z were on the platform.
The site is no nastier or nicer than it’s been since forever. It has a tendency to get quite brutal and angry when very sensitive subjects are being discussed
Two examples from either side: the Muslim rape gangs scandal gets a large chunk of the forum highly animated - for obvious reasons, 100,000s of victims, no justice served
In contrast Gaza gets a different section of PB seriously agitated - for obvious reasons, 10,000s of dead Gazans, still Israel pounds away
You can’t expect these charged emotional debates to leave PB calmly untouched
We can either have a lively debating forum and accept that at times things will get heated, or we can have a super-moderated old people’s tea-shop in Newent which will be so boring everyone will drift away, anyway
Quite. Indyref used to have some seriously mental threads.
Possibly the most incendiary time on PB was just before and maybe a year after Brexit, when a significant minority of Remainers on PB went literally mad (a couple still linger, bless). They couldn’t accept a democratic decision, they believed they were democrats, the cognitive dissonance left them one choice: lunacy
The worst example was Alistair Meeks. When I say worse I mean saddest, as he was one of the very best and smartest of commenters, judicious, wry, often witty
Then Brexit turned him into a smouldering pit of anger and sometimes he would spend a day issuing threats of actual violence. In the end he made the wise but saddening choice to leave
I still live in hope that now he’s calm again - or so it seems on other forums - he might return
Really? My most vivid memory of Brexit PB was an erstwhile poster called seanT going around screaming 'traitor' at everyone in the most hysterical manner. And he was (at least at the time) a diehard Leaver.
Leon, Casino and Max are three of the most hysterical and intemperate posters on here. They routinely call for what would amount to a form of dictatorship if taken literally.
Leon of course is mostly very entertaining - especially since the photo and AI bans - and all three make very very valid points quite regularly, in between screams of treachery and calls for their political enemies to be imprisoned if not executed.
I’m not sure what to call this “style”.
I would be outraged if I were William Glenn and I had been missed off that list.
“We’re entering this sort of parallel reality based on Musk’s ignorance of the thing he wants to talk about.”
Reflecting on over a decade writing about grooming gangs, @HugoRifkind explains why he’s not sure an inquiry into grooming gangs will provide any answers.
Answers are not what Musk and his fanbase want. They want 2 things. To damage Keir Starmer. To whip up hatred of Muslims. Both of these things being in the interests of their far right politics.
Heard it all now. Wanting to damage the most left wing PM of my lifetime means you are far right.
But here's the problem: that would not just be a trait seen just in immigration from Muslim countries; and many immigrants from Muslim countries do have a loyalty to the British state and people.
I'm married to one.
So events like this are used by racists to say: "This is what all Muslims are like," and then: "This is what all immigrants are like."
I just wonder, if a load of British immigrants - we could call them expats, it has a nice ring - went to a foreign country, say Spain and settled in a random place, say the Costa del Sol and decided to import British fish and chips, speak no Spanish and generally create a mini-Britain, would we be calling them not loyal to Spain and generally destroying their culture, taking over the country?
I think Spain would have every right to deport the lot of them if they became a nuisance.
I've spoken to people from there. They do cause a nuisance, the locals hate them, they have basically destroyed the culture and the Spanish basically see it as a "no go" area.
Sound familiar?
If they don't belong in Spain, what should happen to them? I say deport them.
What do you mean "don't belong"?
I'm happy to accept your definition:
"They do cause a nuisance, the locals hate them, they have basically destroyed the culture and the Spanish basically see it as a "no go" area."
Then I wonder why all of those going after Muslims don't seem to spend any time calling for these people to be deported. If you want to start that train then I will support you.
The issue is multiculturalism has completely failed as a model. Immigrants need to integrate into the host country, not import their own culture and establish it as a separate stream
Multiculturalism isn't just about immigrants. A lot of it is homegrown. Look at the cultures of Reform people verus LibDem people.
The model for monoculturalism is China, as the Tibetans and Uyghurs well know.
The upside is that there isn't the tension of "others" or any affront to ones culture. It's one big happy family with common values, in theory.
The downside is the loss of diversity of outlooks, of innovation, and also of the basic freedom to not conform and behave as you want as long as you don't harm others. (Harm is not the same as offend).
The Chinese model is working well, but at a cost. There are pros and cons.
All the commentary here about Meeks is rather Freudian.
He was, and so far as I can tell remains, utterly correct in his diagnosis of Brexit.
Not really.
It's only a few irreconcilables like you and him and Scott and Foxy that continue to be obsessed by Brexit.
The rest of us have moved on.
I’ve literally moved on, to the U.S.
Not the EU then?
I’d absolutely live in the EU (a diverse place), but right now the U.S. makes sense for my economic situation.
Is this statement not a microcosm for the whole economic argument?
For example, Germany’s economy was essentially built on cheap Russian energy, cheap third world migrant labour, autos, and exports of precision machinery to China, underpinned by a locked in currency competitiveness with the rest of the block. Only thing they have left is the internal terms of trades from the euro and that’s a pretty dishonest way to make a living.
Of the other large economies, France and Italy arguably only have globally significant economic value as living museums, trading on tourism and luxury brands. And they’re buggering up the former thanks to third world immigration.
Would love to say the UK has made the most of the post Brexit economic opportunity but it hasn’t. Yet.
The EU was - on balance - a healthier place for the UK economy, and within that, the UK was largely free to pursue its own distinct economic model as a services-based, debtor nation with a social security and tax regime somewhere between the French/German model and the U.S. one.
So I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying, except the suggestion that my move to the U.S. implicitly supports the idea that the EU was economically sub-optimal for the UK.
All the commentary here about Meeks is rather Freudian.
He was, and so far as I can tell remains, utterly correct in his diagnosis of Brexit.
Not really.
It's only a few irreconcilables like you and him and Scott and Foxy that continue to be obsessed by Brexit.
The rest of us have moved on.
I’ve literally moved on, to the U.S.
Not the EU then?
I’d absolutely live in the EU (a diverse place), but right now the U.S. makes sense for my economic situation.
Which is fair, what's very worrying is that Europe (and I include Labour's UK in this) is become a retirement home for people who have found success elsewhere in the world because it is now actively hostile to wealth creation. The welfare states across Europe have created an entitlement culture and people think they are owed wealth transfers from successful people whether that's directly in the form of cash benefits or indirectly in the form of healthcare/education/state employment etc...
I don't know what the solution to this is, but the entitlement culture across Europe is bankrupting the continent, the UK included and it's become a negative spiral as we're having to increase tax to pay for it which further harms economic growth and the tax base and eventually we turn into Argentina.
Comments
How would you regulate it?
It’s the great question confronting democracies at present. Nobody seems anywhere near defining a regime which manages to reduce the real harms of social media.
There’s a potential massive win to be had on tariffs, for example, which could make British luxury cars cheaper than their German and Italian equivalents in the US.
https://x.com/alanjlsmith/status/1875518715036324084?s=61
Mind you, it'll probably only be another few months before you get banned again...
1) Ban the algorithms that promote the spiral
2) Make platforms 100% responsible for the content - including comments.
3) ?
Then he left. My sad presumption (I hope I’m wrong) was that he suffered some nasty mental blow. Maybe a bereavement. Or an actual psychological episode
He came back a few times very briefly during which he nearly always called me “a Nazi” but by that time I’d realised something was wrong so I resolved to ignore him
He was, and so far as I can tell remains, utterly correct in his diagnosis of Brexit.
Eg the social workers fear of being seen as racist (probably influenced by internal politics) is very different to the police unwillingness to believe those they - for prejudicial reasons - see as being non-credible witnesses
Are Balrogs PEPs ( Politically Exposed Persons) under finance regulation?
I would recommend, depending on career and preference, the U.S., Australia, NZ, the Netherlands, or somewhere like Portugal.
Nowhere is perfect of course.
I didn’t care for how he posted here, or addressed me, but I’d wish him, and for that matter anyone else here, no Ill.
The panto up in Consett has the guy who played Curly Watts in Corrie in the main role !
He always made it a rule to ensure the “important” tray was finished before he started on the “urgent” pile.
Herman Kahn noted that when a problem reaches the scale of being majorly disruptive, a common response is to attack the people raising issue.
My personal feeling is that the Kindle, which worked well, had digital rights management that was too strict, and so that led to lots of feels bad experiences that put people off. For example, my daughter received a Kindle as a gift, but it ended up linked to her Granddad's Amazon account, who bought lots of books for her on it. My daughter later set up her own Amazon account and bought books on that, and then lost the other books, because Amazon wouldn't let her transfer them.
Other ereaders with less restrictive DRM simply didn't work well. My wife had an Onyx Boox, and it's usability was dire.
Reflecting on over a decade writing about grooming gangs,
@HugoRifkind
explains why he’s not sure an inquiry into grooming gangs will provide any answers.
@TheTimes
https://x.com/TimesRadio/status/1875503682420396530
Finally, some sensible analysis.
It would make it much more likely that people would then provide those details to scam websites, see their identities stolen, and enable vast amounts of financial fraud. It would be asking for trouble.
The arts generally is one area where London continues to punch above New York. The British model - which allows for a level of public sector funding somewhere between very generous European models and the miserly American one - works very well.
It's only a few irreconcilables like you and him and Scott and Foxy that continue to be obsessed by Brexit.
The rest of us have moved on.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0762584/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt
I am sure he was correct in many ways, but maybe was not sufficiently mindful of the case, put then and still put by some sensible people, that we could be out of the political project but in the single market, like Norway.
This remains the best available answer by far and is completely consistent with the Brexit vote, where membership of the EU was the only question.
I would also consider time-limiting comments on social media. I think it might help if social media comments didn't last longer than, say, twenty-four hours, or possibly an even shorter period of time.
Not 100% of course. PB is, after all, social media.
Smiley (as written) is always polite - breaking people by pointing out contradictions.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model
This is used in accident investigation, the thinking is that a whole bunch of things have to all go wrong at the same time or in sequence for an accident to occur, and that there were usually several opportunities not taken to avoid the accident during the sequence of events. Which is why it’s really important to learn from the minor incidents that don’t end up as accidents.
Leon of course is mostly very entertaining - especially since the photo and AI bans - and all three make very very valid points quite regularly, in between screams of treachery and calls for their political enemies to be imprisoned if not executed.
I’m not sure what to call this “style”.
Maybe you could do with a nice cup of tea and a lie down.
If you never connect it to the internet and only load books/papers through USB with Calibre I don't think there is a better reader for the price. I'd love a massive 15 incher with colour e-ink but tis a dream.
The problem is that such algorithms were selected for those that create the most interaction. So they show you the posts you *mist respond to*.
It was then discovered that stirring up hatred and anger is the best way to do this - after the fact. The various companies were chasing clicks and comments. It was then pointed out that it was creating two phenomena -
1) Promoting content that people really, really hate. Fire them up!
2) Promoting content that is a slightly more extreme version of what you are already reading/writing.
The first is good for getting lynch mobs going. The later creates a spiral of radicalisation.
Banning promoting other posts by algorithm is perfectly possible as a law. Would it be a good idea? Hmmmmmm
Plenty of forums don’t have this.
I think you just say that posts have to be in chronological order, you can't pay to promote posts.
By far the stupidest thing Elon Musk has done at Twitter is blue ticks being paid for.
Apparently according to a correspondent on Guido there was a joke about Hitler at a dinner where various former government ministers attended. WOW ! Get a grip. Even Laura K and the Beeb would be scraping the barrel to try to make something of that.
So the thug right thought “Getting things banned with a bit of violence and threats? Let’s get some of that.”
This would seemingly kill TikTok's app over night but frankly, I'd like to see TikTok die a death.
The truth is David Lammy is not the most stupid member of the government front bench, not by a long chalk.
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php - is an example of a tightly moderated forum. They do have a small panel on the front page showing the most recent posts. But otherwise, no promoting stuff.
I just think we have to get away from the idea that you are shown recommendations or paid for stuff. You sign up and can follow who you want but it gets presented chronologically and you're not recommended who to follow.
Or you have some kind of "open" mode where you can see everything but again this is probably too large for Twitter or Facebook to be usable.
https://x.com/timmyvoe/status/1875108970064757042
He talks about the difficulty of unreliable victims and witnesses, from which one may draw their own conclusions.
It's shocking we allow it to fester here.
I don't know what the solution to this is, but the entitlement culture across Europe is bankrupting the continent, the UK included and it's become a negative spiral as we're having to increase tax to pay for it which further harms economic growth and the tax base and eventually we turn into Argentina.
For example, Germany’s economy was essentially built on cheap Russian energy, cheap third world migrant labour, autos, and exports of precision machinery to China, underpinned by a locked in currency competitiveness with the rest of the block. Only thing they have left is the internal terms of trades from the euro and that’s a pretty dishonest way to make a living.
Of the other large economies, France and Italy arguably only have globally significant economic value as living museums, trading on tourism and luxury brands. And they’re buggering up the former thanks to third world immigration.
Would love to say the UK has made the most of the post Brexit economic opportunity but it hasn’t. Yet.
I'd have that process be open and transparent, again by law.
The model for monoculturalism is China, as the Tibetans and Uyghurs well know.
The upside is that there isn't the tension of "others" or any affront to ones culture. It's one big happy family with common values, in theory.
The downside is the loss of diversity of outlooks, of innovation, and also of the basic freedom to not conform and behave as you want as long as you don't harm others. (Harm is not the same as offend).
The Chinese model is working well, but at a cost. There are pros and cons.
"Because Starmer is guilty of terrible crimes against the British people"
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1875525668227936392
Musk is an absolute fuckwit, and a danger to the civilised world.
So I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying, except the suggestion that my move to the U.S. implicitly supports the idea that the EU was economically sub-optimal for the UK.