UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
I now believe we need a hard right government. Whether that's the Tories under a hard right leader, or Reform, or a new party entirely, who knows
It is needed, it is also inevitable. This shit is happening across Europe. Europeans can look at Dubai and Singapore and they can see that a no-fucking-nonsense government which strangles muggers and has a "tough" attitude to all crime especially imported migrant crime looks evermore appealing, and evermore prosperous
It will happen when white women, belatedly, swing Right. When they realise that this no-borders happy clappy multikulti bollocks means cities where they cannot safely walk the streets by day, let alone by night
"I now believe we need a hard right government."
Has any hard right government ever been a success?
Meloni's, arguably Reagan and Thatcher's and John Howard's
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
I remember the 90s. People got mugged in broad daylight all the time. We look back on it as a golden age. People rioted regularly too. Your first paragraph is belied by data, including the BCS which is immune from crime recording biases.
Your later paragraphs - about the seeming economic death spiral we’ve entered, essentially ever since the 2008 financial crisis - are more on point.
People also forget that certain crimes - like burglary - have almost entirely disappeared in the last forty years.
They have?
So when I was woken up and went downstairs and found someone in my house whom I came face-to-face with before he ran out the back door (which had the key in it on the inside, he'd crowbarred open the kitchen window making a clattering noise which is what had woken me up) - what crime is that classed as?
I was guilty of exaggeration, for sure, but the stats from the BCS show a really dramatic decline in burglary levels - from 1.7 million in 1993 to 196,000 in the year ending in March 2023.
At last we're starting to get some flesh on the "hard right" Government meme.
It's a strong law-and-order Government - now, that can work in places like Dubai and Singapore but how would that operate in Britain or even London?
How many Police Officers would you need to enforce the kind of strict law and order policies those advocating "hard right" solutions would want - how many judges, how much extra prison capacity, how many extra Police stations? Who pays for all this and from where?
So, I have this idea.
Every police officer is also a Judge...
Bring back stocks and let store security have cattle prods, powerful ones.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
I remember the 90s. People got mugged in broad daylight all the time. We look back on it as a golden age. People rioted regularly too. Your first paragraph is belied by data, including the BCS which is immune from crime recording biases.
Your later paragraphs - about the seeming economic death spiral we’ve entered, essentially ever since the 2008 financial crisis - are more on point.
People also forget that certain crimes - like burglary - have almost entirely disappeared in the last forty years.
They have?
So when I was woken up and went downstairs and found someone in my house whom I came face-to-face with before he ran out the back door (which had the key in it on the inside, he'd crowbarred open the kitchen window making a clattering noise which is what had woken me up) - what crime is that classed as?
I was guilty of exaggeration, for sure, but the stats from the BCS show a really dramatic decline in burglary levels - from 1.7 million in 1993 to 196,000 in the year ending in March 2023.
they don't report them
Exactly. Ditto muggings, "Asian gang rape", phone theft, etc
All this shit is known to be "insoluble" so no one reports it, what is the point
538 ranks McLaughlin at 282 out of 282 ! I expect we’ll see a flood of these Trump arse licking polls over the next few weeks .
I don’t understand why a company would publish such trash. Don’t they make their cash from non-political clients based on the reputation from being right about politics? That being the case, surely doing this is bad for business?
A lot of the trash "pollsters" in the US aren't genuine polling companies in the way that we understand them, so they don't have commercial clients for commercial polling. They're more in the business of opinion-shaping, rather than opinion-measuring, and their polls should be viewed on that basis.
A guy who has a coin flip chance of returning to the presidency is calling for CBS to be pulled off the air for 🤷 and it’ll be ignored by the elite media because Trump being a lunatic isn’t regarded as newsworthy https://x.com/atrupar/status/1844401999644852551
At last we're starting to get some flesh on the "hard right" Government meme.
It's a strong law-and-order Government - now, that can work in places like Dubai and Singapore but how would that operate in Britain or even London?
How many Police Officers would you need to enforce the kind of strict law and order policies those advocating "hard right" solutions would want - how many judges, how much extra prison capacity, how many extra Police stations? Who pays for all this and from where?
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
I now believe we need a hard right government. Whether that's the Tories under a hard right leader, or Reform, or a new party entirely, who knows
It is needed, it is also inevitable. This shit is happening across Europe. Europeans can look at Dubai and Singapore and they can see that a no-fucking-nonsense government which strangles muggers and has a "tough" attitude to all crime especially imported migrant crime looks evermore appealing, and evermore prosperous
It will happen when white women, belatedly, swing Right. When they realise that this no-borders happy clappy multikulti bollocks means cities where they cannot safely walk the streets by day, let alone by night
"I now believe we need a hard right government."
Has any hard right government ever been a success?
Er, yeah
Many many times
But for today: look at the UAE and Singapore. Arguably the most successful nations on the planet, esp given where they came from
These are good examples, but they're small and very money rich states. I'm moving the goalposts, but the questions still stands.
Oh do fuck off. "Yes you're right but I still think you're wrong"
OK El Salvador
Brutally rightwing government
Now has possibly the lowest murder rate in the Western Hemisphere
Er, yeah, in a place as fucked as El Salvador (as was) it is GOOD if people are "scared" of the police
Note also the approval rate for the government in El Salvador.
And before anyone goes fake stats, corruption, yada yada, Bukele was relected on 85% of the vote (up from 53% in 2019) in elections declared 'largely free and fair' (compare that to most small South American nations).
And yet the left wing media seethes and calls him a dictator. When in actual fact, locking up the murderers and the gangs who used to control every street corner has proven unsurprisingly popular with the vast majority of the law-abiding population.
My memories of 74 (I was 13) were power cuts for the first election, followed by some discussions between Heath and Thorpe. I remember being off school on the results day for October, watching the results come through.
It was during then when I realised how unfair the voting system was. Perhaps it was my naievity of age. It was after then that my affinity to the liberals started.
My recollection of those days was settling down to watch Thunderbirds, looked forward to all week, and shortly after it started there being a power-cut and a blank screen. Trauma off the scale.
Must have been enough to turn a whole cohort of 9 year olds into life-long Tories.
Possibly, but the powercuts were during the conservative term up to February.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
I remember the 90s. People got mugged in broad daylight all the time. We look back on it as a golden age. People rioted regularly too. Your first paragraph is belied by data, including the BCS which is immune from crime recording biases.
Your later paragraphs - about the seeming economic death spiral we’ve entered, essentially ever since the 2008 financial crisis - are more on point.
People also forget that certain crimes - like burglary - have almost entirely disappeared in the last forty years.
They have?
So when I was woken up and went downstairs and found someone in my house whom I came face-to-face with before he ran out the back door (which had the key in it on the inside, he'd crowbarred open the kitchen window making a clattering noise which is what had woken me up) - what crime is that classed as?
I was guilty of exaggeration, for sure, but the stats from the BCS show a really dramatic decline in burglary levels - from 1.7 million in 1993 to 196,000 in the year ending in March 2023.
they don't report them
Exactly. Ditto muggings, "Asian gang rape", phone theft, etc
All this shit is known to be "insoluble" so no one reports it, what is the point
Imagine being en ex-fiend and advocating for the hard right monarchic UAE. Genuinely unhinged behaviour.
Seems you desperate fucks can't handle the consequences of all the governments you've voted for. Maybe time to drop the idea you know how a country should be run.
The truth is, all of this polling is so much BS not just because it includes random partisan hacks for both sides plucking figures out of their arses but because everything hinges on turnout.
Which is why any option from a narrow Trump win to a Harris landslide is still possible.
Sounds a bit ghoulish, but do we know how the hurricane will affect Florida from that point of view? How many ballots will have been issued? How many returned? How many kept safely and how many destroyed?
Florida was looking mighty close. It's hard to believe this won't have some impact, especially if it disrupts voting on the day.
This will of course lead The Orange Haired One and Elon PG Musk to claim the Dems arranged the hurricane...
If there really is a weather army, their suspicion might be credible
They will hold the suspicion weather or not it's credible.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
I now believe we need a hard right government. Whether that's the Tories under a hard right leader, or Reform, or a new party entirely, who knows
It is needed, it is also inevitable. This shit is happening across Europe. Europeans can look at Dubai and Singapore and they can see that a no-fucking-nonsense government which strangles muggers and has a "tough" attitude to all crime especially imported migrant crime looks evermore appealing, and evermore prosperous
It will happen when white women, belatedly, swing Right. When they realise that this no-borders happy clappy multikulti bollocks means cities where they cannot safely walk the streets by day, let alone by night
"I now believe we need a hard right government."
Has any hard right government ever been a success?
Er, yeah
Many many times
But for today: look at the UAE and Singapore. Arguably the most successful nations on the planet, esp given where they came from
These are good examples, but they're small and very money rich states. I'm moving the goalposts, but the questions still stands.
Oh do fuck off. "Yes you're right but I still think you're wrong"
OK El Salvador
Brutally rightwing government
Now has possibly the lowest murder rate in the Western Hemisphere
Er, yeah, in a place as fucked as El Salvador (as was) it is GOOD if people are "scared" of the police
Note also the approval rate for the government in El Salvador.
And before anyone goes fake stats, corruption, yada yada, Bukele was relected on 85% of the vote (up from 53% in 2019) in elections declared 'largely free and fair' (compare that to most small South American nations).
And yet the left wing media seethes and calls him a dictator. When in actual fact, locking up the murderers and the gangs who used to control every street corner has proven unsurprisingly popular with the vast majority of the law-abiding population.
Prison works.
I've long been of the theory that young, clever, attractive women who have suffered leftwing government in South America are the most rightwing people on earth
I've met too many for it to be a coincidence
I met ANOTHER in Whistler, BC, Canada, a couple of weeks ago. Let's call her Elvita. She was from Ecuador. She was really funny, smart, nice - we bonded! - and she told me her life. How her family had been upended and impoverished by Ecuador's mad politics, a la Venezuela. She was a total Bukele stan
But her main thing was insecurity for women. How living in a leftwing society which tolerated street crime and bad shit *because left wing politics means do not be nasty to folk of colour* meant that daily life became intolerable. She was hassled all the time, she felt threatened all the time, in the end she left Ecuador. Maybe she was a fascist? Except her experience exactly mirrors what I heard from a young Aussie journalist who moved to the wrong part of London about 2 years ago. Daily hassle, constant threat, she soon moved
Our cities do not have to be like this. We can be as safe as Dubai or Singapore, once more (London used to be one of the safest cities on earth). But that requires being honest about racial issues and being super strict on migration
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
I remember the 90s. People got mugged in broad daylight all the time. We look back on it as a golden age. People rioted regularly too. Your first paragraph is belied by data, including the BCS which is immune from crime recording biases.
Your later paragraphs - about the seeming economic death spiral we’ve entered, essentially ever since the 2008 financial crisis - are more on point.
People also forget that certain crimes - like burglary - have almost entirely disappeared in the last forty years.
They have?
So when I was woken up and went downstairs and found someone in my house whom I came face-to-face with before he ran out the back door (which had the key in it on the inside, he'd crowbarred open the kitchen window making a clattering noise which is what had woken me up) - what crime is that classed as?
I was guilty of exaggeration, for sure, but the stats from the BCS show a really dramatic decline in burglary levels - from 1.7 million in 1993 to 196,000 in the year ending in March 2023.
they don't report them
Exactly. Ditto muggings, "Asian gang rape", phone theft, etc
All this shit is known to be "insoluble" so no one reports it, what is the point
They're the figures from the British Crime Survey, nothing to do with whether people bother to report the crime to the police, but whether they can remember it happening to tell the pollster.
You're so poor at facts I could almost believe you were an "AI" chatbot.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
I remember the 90s. People got mugged in broad daylight all the time. We look back on it as a golden age. People rioted regularly too. Your first paragraph is belied by data, including the BCS which is immune from crime recording biases.
Your later paragraphs - about the seeming economic death spiral we’ve entered, essentially ever since the 2008 financial crisis - are more on point.
People also forget that certain crimes - like burglary - have almost entirely disappeared in the last forty years.
They have?
So when I was woken up and went downstairs and found someone in my house whom I came face-to-face with before he ran out the back door (which had the key in it on the inside, he'd crowbarred open the kitchen window making a clattering noise which is what had woken me up) - what crime is that classed as?
I was guilty of exaggeration, for sure, but the stats from the BCS show a really dramatic decline in burglary levels - from 1.7 million in 1993 to 196,000 in the year ending in March 2023.
they don't report them
Exactly. Ditto muggings, "Asian gang rape", phone theft, etc
All this shit is known to be "insoluble" so no one reports it, what is the point
They're the figures from the British Crime Survey, nothing to do with whether people bother to report the crime to the police, but whether they can remember it happening to tell the pollster.
You're so poor at facts I could almost believe you were an "AI" chatbot.
Yeah, all those white girls in Rotherham statistically and dutifully reporting their rapes to the "British Crime Survey"
At last we're starting to get some flesh on the "hard right" Government meme.
It's a strong law-and-order Government - now, that can work in places like Dubai and Singapore but how would that operate in Britain or even London?
How many Police Officers would you need to enforce the kind of strict law and order policies those advocating "hard right" solutions would want - how many judges, how much extra prison capacity, how many extra Police stations? Who pays for all this and from where?
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
There is a view small scale petty crime is endemic and rampant - now, you might argue it always has been and that's also true to a point and public perceptions of the scale and intensity of this crime may not always mirror the statistics but that isn't the point either.
The right to walk down a street using your Iphone 15 and not have to worry about it being yanked out of her hand by someone on an e-scooter is something many people appreciate. My personal bugbear is fare evasion which costs Transport for London millions in lost revenue - presumably they can charge up the cattle prods from the line current ?
If you want order rather than disorder you need to have both the appropriate legislation but the appropriate street-level deterrent and that probably means more, better trained and better equipped Police operating out of better provisioned local Police stations, open 24/7 and responsive to local needs.
That needs to be paid for - the Police stations were sold off by Osborne (supported enthusiastically by Johnson) while Police operational methods were changed by Theresa May and our public safety was sacrificed on the altar of restoring the public finances without taxing the rich (and not so rich).
Rebuilding public confidence in the Police and the Police's capacity to adequately do their job are two different but not unrelated things.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
I remember the 90s. People got mugged in broad daylight all the time. We look back on it as a golden age. People rioted regularly too. Your first paragraph is belied by data, including the BCS which is immune from crime recording biases.
Your later paragraphs - about the seeming economic death spiral we’ve entered, essentially ever since the 2008 financial crisis - are more on point.
People also forget that certain crimes - like burglary - have almost entirely disappeared in the last forty years.
They have?
So when I was woken up and went downstairs and found someone in my house whom I came face-to-face with before he ran out the back door (which had the key in it on the inside, he'd crowbarred open the kitchen window making a clattering noise which is what had woken me up) - what crime is that classed as?
I was guilty of exaggeration, for sure, but the stats from the BCS show a really dramatic decline in burglary levels - from 1.7 million in 1993 to 196,000 in the year ending in March 2023.
they don't report them
Exactly. Ditto muggings, "Asian gang rape", phone theft, etc
All this shit is known to be "insoluble" so no one reports it, what is the point
They're the figures from the British Crime Survey, nothing to do with whether people bother to report the crime to the police, but whether they can remember it happening to tell the pollster.
You're so poor at facts I could almost believe you were an "AI" chatbot.
Yeah, all those white girls in Rotherham statistically and dutifully reporting their rapes to the "British Crime Survey"
FFS, you fucking twat
The figures were for burglaries.
As regards rape you're normally one of the first to rubbish women claiming not to have consented to sex, so I'm not taking any shit from you on the subject.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
I remember the 90s. People got mugged in broad daylight all the time. We look back on it as a golden age. People rioted regularly too. Your first paragraph is belied by data, including the BCS which is immune from crime recording biases.
Your later paragraphs - about the seeming economic death spiral we’ve entered, essentially ever since the 2008 financial crisis - are more on point.
People also forget that certain crimes - like burglary - have almost entirely disappeared in the last forty years.
They have?
So when I was woken up and went downstairs and found someone in my house whom I came face-to-face with before he ran out the back door (which had the key in it on the inside, he'd crowbarred open the kitchen window making a clattering noise which is what had woken me up) - what crime is that classed as?
I was guilty of exaggeration, for sure, but the stats from the BCS show a really dramatic decline in burglary levels - from 1.7 million in 1993 to 196,000 in the year ending in March 2023.
they don't report them
Exactly. Ditto muggings, "Asian gang rape", phone theft, etc
All this shit is known to be "insoluble" so no one reports it, what is the point
You do know that these BCS stats are NOT compiled from reported crimes don't you, so your 'Exactly' is exactly wrong. It is done to avoid biased reporting.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
I remember the 90s. People got mugged in broad daylight all the time. We look back on it as a golden age. People rioted regularly too. Your first paragraph is belied by data, including the BCS which is immune from crime recording biases.
Your later paragraphs - about the seeming economic death spiral we’ve entered, essentially ever since the 2008 financial crisis - are more on point.
People also forget that certain crimes - like burglary - have almost entirely disappeared in the last forty years.
They have?
So when I was woken up and went downstairs and found someone in my house whom I came face-to-face with before he ran out the back door (which had the key in it on the inside, he'd crowbarred open the kitchen window making a clattering noise which is what had woken me up) - what crime is that classed as?
I was guilty of exaggeration, for sure, but the stats from the BCS show a really dramatic decline in burglary levels - from 1.7 million in 1993 to 196,000 in the year ending in March 2023.
they don't report them
Exactly. Ditto muggings, "Asian gang rape", phone theft, etc
All this shit is known to be "insoluble" so no one reports it, what is the point
They're the figures from the British Crime Survey, nothing to do with whether people bother to report the crime to the police, but whether they can remember it happening to tell the pollster.
You're so poor at facts I could almost believe you were an "AI" chatbot.
Yeah, all those white girls in Rotherham statistically and dutifully reporting their rapes to the "British Crime Survey"
FFS, you fucking twat
The figures were for burglaries.
As regards rape you're normally one of the first to rubbish women claiming not to have consented to sex, so I'm not taking any shit from you on the subject.
IIRC, it wasn't. The best that could be said is that Harris closed the lead a bit and that plus the abortion referndum persuaded everybody that she's in with a chance. Happy to be contradicted but I'm not betting on Harris taking FLA
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
I remember the 90s. People got mugged in broad daylight all the time. We look back on it as a golden age. People rioted regularly too. Your first paragraph is belied by data, including the BCS which is immune from crime recording biases.
Your later paragraphs - about the seeming economic death spiral we’ve entered, essentially ever since the 2008 financial crisis - are more on point.
People also forget that certain crimes - like burglary - have almost entirely disappeared in the last forty years.
They have?
So when I was woken up and went downstairs and found someone in my house whom I came face-to-face with before he ran out the back door (which had the key in it on the inside, he'd crowbarred open the kitchen window making a clattering noise which is what had woken me up) - what crime is that classed as?
I was guilty of exaggeration, for sure, but the stats from the BCS show a really dramatic decline in burglary levels - from 1.7 million in 1993 to 196,000 in the year ending in March 2023.
they don't report them
Exactly. Ditto muggings, "Asian gang rape", phone theft, etc
All this shit is known to be "insoluble" so no one reports it, what is the point
You do know that these BCS stats are compiled from reported crimes don't you, so your 'Exactly' is exactly wrong. It is done to avoid biased reporting.
Where do you think England and Wales stands in the rape stats in Europe? Mid table? Slightly lower? Higher? Where?
Robert Jenrick has vowed to lead the Conservative Party away from “needless drama” and avoid picking fights on Twitter, in a veiled criticism of Kemi Badenoch
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
I don’t have any problems with william and his pro-Trump stance.
But you’re silly. There’s nothing ridiculous about an anti-Trump bias; the guy’s an utter wanker. A dangerous wanker.
Doesn’t stop me posting polls which show Republicans winning in various states. As earlier today.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
I now believe we need a hard right government. Whether that's the Tories under a hard right leader, or Reform, or a new party entirely, who knows
It is needed, it is also inevitable. This shit is happening across Europe. Europeans can look at Dubai and Singapore and they can see that a no-fucking-nonsense government which strangles muggers and has a "tough" attitude to all crime especially imported migrant crime looks evermore appealing, and evermore prosperous
It will happen when white women, belatedly, swing Right. When they realise that this no-borders happy clappy multikulti bollocks means cities where they cannot safely walk the streets by day, let alone by night
"I now believe we need a hard right government."
Has any hard right government ever been a success?
Er, yeah
Many many times
But for today: look at the UAE and Singapore. Arguably the most successful nations on the planet, esp given where they came from
These are good examples, but they're small and very money rich states. I'm moving the goalposts, but the questions still stands.
Oh do fuck off. "Yes you're right but I still think you're wrong"
OK El Salvador
Brutally rightwing government
Now has possibly the lowest murder rate in the Western Hemisphere
There is a view small scale petty crime is endemic and rampant - now, you might argue it always has been and that's also true to a point and public perceptions of the scale and intensity of this crime may not always mirror the statistics but that isn't the point either.
The right to walk down a street using your Iphone 15 and not have to worry about it being yanked out of her hand by someone on an e-scooter is something many people appreciate. My personal bugbear is fare evasion which costs Transport for London millions in lost revenue - presumably they can charge up the cattle prods from the line current ?
If you want order rather than disorder you need to have both the appropriate legislation but the appropriate street-level deterrent and that probably means more, better trained and better equipped Police operating out of better provisioned local Police stations, open 24/7 and responsive to local needs.
That needs to be paid for - the Police stations were sold off by Osborne (supported enthusiastically by Johnson) while Police operational methods were changed by Theresa May and our public safety was sacrificed on the altar of restoring the public finances without taxing the rich (and not so rich).
Rebuilding public confidence in the Police and the Police's capacity to adequately do their job are two different but not unrelated things.
Spot on. I don't feel any more at risk of being murdered or having my house broken into than I did ten years ago, but I do see shoplifting incidents every week (I never used to see any), graffiti and broken windows everywhere, aggressive beggars on the street who are genuinely intimidating to me as a 6ft tall bloke, cannot imagine how that is as a 5ft tall woman, or a senior citizen.
Broken window theory is nothing new, and we need to get back to it.
IIRC, it wasn't. The best that could be said is that Harris closed the lead a bit and that plus the abortion referndum persuaded everybody that she's in with a chance. Happy to be contradicted but I'm not betting on Harris taking FLA
Yes, if Harris wins Florida she is heading for a landslide anyway but that is unlikely on current polls.
She needs to focus on Michigan. Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona as that is where the election will likely be won or lost and all those states are neck and neck
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
I remember the 90s. People got mugged in broad daylight all the time. We look back on it as a golden age. People rioted regularly too. Your first paragraph is belied by data, including the BCS which is immune from crime recording biases.
Your later paragraphs - about the seeming economic death spiral we’ve entered, essentially ever since the 2008 financial crisis - are more on point.
People also forget that certain crimes - like burglary - have almost entirely disappeared in the last forty years.
They have?
So when I was woken up and went downstairs and found someone in my house whom I came face-to-face with before he ran out the back door (which had the key in it on the inside, he'd crowbarred open the kitchen window making a clattering noise which is what had woken me up) - what crime is that classed as?
I was guilty of exaggeration, for sure, but the stats from the BCS show a really dramatic decline in burglary levels - from 1.7 million in 1993 to 196,000 in the year ending in March 2023.
they don't report them
Exactly. Ditto muggings, "Asian gang rape", phone theft, etc
All this shit is known to be "insoluble" so no one reports it, what is the point
They're the figures from the British Crime Survey, nothing to do with whether people bother to report the crime to the police, but whether they can remember it happening to tell the pollster.
You're so poor at facts I could almost believe you were an "AI" chatbot.
Yeah, all those white girls in Rotherham statistically and dutifully reporting their rapes to the "British Crime Survey"
FFS, you fucking twat
The figures were for burglaries.
As regards rape you're normally one of the first to rubbish women claiming not to have consented to sex, so I'm not taking any shit from you on the subject.
I suspect Leon has been drinking again....
It is always a mistake to heed statistical analysis from the Subsampler General.
There is a view small scale petty crime is endemic and rampant - now, you might argue it always has been and that's also true to a point and public perceptions of the scale and intensity of this crime may not always mirror the statistics but that isn't the point either.
The right to walk down a street using your Iphone 15 and not have to worry about it being yanked out of her hand by someone on an e-scooter is something many people appreciate. My personal bugbear is fare evasion which costs Transport for London millions in lost revenue - presumably they can charge up the cattle prods from the line current ?
If you want order rather than disorder you need to have both the appropriate legislation but the appropriate street-level deterrent and that probably means more, better trained and better equipped Police operating out of better provisioned local Police stations, open 24/7 and responsive to local needs.
That needs to be paid for - the Police stations were sold off by Osborne (supported enthusiastically by Johnson) while Police operational methods were changed by Theresa May and our public safety was sacrificed on the altar of restoring the public finances without taxing the rich (and not so rich).
Rebuilding public confidence in the Police and the Police's capacity to adequately do their job are two different but not unrelated things.
I would add that in my internet wanderings in a biome more left-wing and more #fuckcars than PB, I'm struck by how draconian my peers and those younger than me are in regard to crime.
That's not say that Leon is right about a lot of the stuff he comes out with, a lot of which is wishcasting and a bit unsavoury during the far-right riots, but on crime - this is absolutely a thing.
It affects young people through sexual assaults on nights out (almost always by white men, it must be said), bicycle theft, assaults, and all the way down to pavement parking and littering. It may be perception only, but since the pandemic there is a sense that arseholes increasingly get away with being arseholes.
I think stuff like the Post Office scandal also contributes to this. Rots from the head, and people feel powerless - the police most of all, who seem run off their feet when I've spoken with them.
What an interesting question - 1974 memories. I was 8.
I remember power cuts, and it was the year I first met Ed Davey. I beat him to the form prize (never again), and he played El-ahrairah in Watership Down, and jumped off the stage at the end. Common interest was he had lived in the town where I live now, in a *very* nice house overlooking the best park, Sutton Lawn.
I also remember the General Election, as we had a mock one at school. The class vote was 2 Labour, 2 Liberal, 26 (by deduction from class size) Conservative - obviously mainly following parents at that age.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
I now believe we need a hard right government. Whether that's the Tories under a hard right leader, or Reform, or a new party entirely, who knows
It is needed, it is also inevitable. This shit is happening across Europe. Europeans can look at Dubai and Singapore and they can see that a no-fucking-nonsense government which strangles muggers and has a "tough" attitude to all crime especially imported migrant crime looks evermore appealing, and evermore prosperous
It will happen when white women, belatedly, swing Right. When they realise that this no-borders happy clappy multikulti bollocks means cities where they cannot safely walk the streets by day, let alone by night
"I now believe we need a hard right government."
Has any hard right government ever been a success?
It’s Leon’s answer to any social problem. Doesn’t affect him. They’ll probably subscribe to the Knapper.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
I remember the 90s. People got mugged in broad daylight all the time. We look back on it as a golden age. People rioted regularly too. Your first paragraph is belied by data, including the BCS which is immune from crime recording biases.
Your later paragraphs - about the seeming economic death spiral we’ve entered, essentially ever since the 2008 financial crisis - are more on point.
People also forget that certain crimes - like burglary - have almost entirely disappeared in the last forty years.
They have?
So when I was woken up and went downstairs and found someone in my house whom I came face-to-face with before he ran out the back door (which had the key in it on the inside, he'd crowbarred open the kitchen window making a clattering noise which is what had woken me up) - what crime is that classed as?
I was guilty of exaggeration, for sure, but the stats from the BCS show a really dramatic decline in burglary levels - from 1.7 million in 1993 to 196,000 in the year ending in March 2023.
they don't report them
Exactly. Ditto muggings, "Asian gang rape", phone theft, etc
All this shit is known to be "insoluble" so no one reports it, what is the point
They're the figures from the British Crime Survey, nothing to do with whether people bother to report the crime to the police, but whether they can remember it happening to tell the pollster.
You're so poor at facts I could almost believe you were an "AI" chatbot.
Yeah, all those white girls in Rotherham statistically and dutifully reporting their rapes to the "British Crime Survey"
FFS, you fucking twat
You numpty. That is not how surveys work. So much for that IQ.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
I now believe we need a hard right government. Whether that's the Tories under a hard right leader, or Reform, or a new party entirely, who knows
It is needed, it is also inevitable. This shit is happening across Europe. Europeans can look at Dubai and Singapore and they can see that a no-fucking-nonsense government which strangles muggers and has a "tough" attitude to all crime especially imported migrant crime looks evermore appealing, and evermore prosperous
It will happen when white women, belatedly, swing Right. When they realise that this no-borders happy clappy multikulti bollocks means cities where they cannot safely walk the streets by day, let alone by night
"I now believe we need a hard right government."
Has any hard right government ever been a success?
Er, yeah
Many many times
But for today: look at the UAE and Singapore. Arguably the most successful nations on the planet, esp given where they came from
These are good examples, but they're small and very money rich states. I'm moving the goalposts, but the questions still stands.
Oh do fuck off. "Yes you're right but I still think you're wrong"
OK El Salvador
Brutally rightwing government
Now has possibly the lowest murder rate in the Western Hemisphere
Er, yeah, in a place as fucked as El Salvador (as was) it is GOOD if people are "scared" of the police
Banging up druggies?
Are you sure you are in favour?
Duterte just had them shot. The cognitive dissonance of the Spectator's milleu of rapists, sex pests and addicts while advocating for a tough on crime strong man.
Crime has declined overall. Largely, I’d say, due to improved security on most forms of property, a huge surge in CCTV, and there no longer being no-go areas for police in inner cities as there were in the 1960s to the 90s, meaning violent crime is harder to commit with impunity.
But some crimes are rising. In broad terms it seems that violent mugging is well down but teen mugging of iPhones is persistently high, burglary is down hugely but car theft of certain models has had a mini boom, bike theft is down but remains a problem, financial fraud and online scams are sky high and rising, alcohol related crimes like drunk driving and random fights at closing time are well down, drug dealing and use are steady as she goes, tax evasion, forgery, insider trading, bribery and corruption are still problems but less so than a few decades ago.
Edit: oh and shoplifting. Seems to be a fashionable crime these days.
What an interesting question - 1974 memories. I was 8.
I remember power cuts, and it was the year I first met Ed Davey. I beat him to the form prize (never again), and he played El-ahrairah in Watership Down, and jumped off the stage at the end. Common interest was he had lived in the town where I live now, in a *very* nice house overlooking the best park, Sutton Lawn.
I also remember the General Election, as we had a mock one at school. The class vote was 2 Labour, 2 Liberal, 26 (by deduction from class size) Conservative - obviously mainly following parents at that age.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
I now believe we need a hard right government. Whether that's the Tories under a hard right leader, or Reform, or a new party entirely, who knows
It is needed, it is also inevitable. This shit is happening across Europe. Europeans can look at Dubai and Singapore and they can see that a no-fucking-nonsense government which strangles muggers and has a "tough" attitude to all crime especially imported migrant crime looks evermore appealing, and evermore prosperous
It will happen when white women, belatedly, swing Right. When they realise that this no-borders happy clappy multikulti bollocks means cities where they cannot safely walk the streets by day, let alone by night
"I now believe we need a hard right government."
Has any hard right government ever been a success?
Meloni's, arguably Reagan and Thatcher's and John Howard's
These are examples of the soft right. (Who knows how to define this). Governments that were economically stern, but also wildly accommodating in terms of rights etc. (For what it's worth they seem quite bang on to my own views)
There is a view small scale petty crime is endemic and rampant - now, you might argue it always has been and that's also true to a point and public perceptions of the scale and intensity of this crime may not always mirror the statistics but that isn't the point either.
The right to walk down a street using your Iphone 15 and not have to worry about it being yanked out of her hand by someone on an e-scooter is something many people appreciate. My personal bugbear is fare evasion which costs Transport for London millions in lost revenue - presumably they can charge up the cattle prods from the line current ?
If you want order rather than disorder you need to have both the appropriate legislation but the appropriate street-level deterrent and that probably means more, better trained and better equipped Police operating out of better provisioned local Police stations, open 24/7 and responsive to local needs.
That needs to be paid for - the Police stations were sold off by Osborne (supported enthusiastically by Johnson) while Police operational methods were changed by Theresa May and our public safety was sacrificed on the altar of restoring the public finances without taxing the rich (and not so rich).
Rebuilding public confidence in the Police and the Police's capacity to adequately do their job are two different but not unrelated things.
And, being totally brutal, a lot of this corrosive petty crime (and it is corrosive to morale and society) isn't particularly worth solving on a cost-benefit analysis. It doesn't take very many plod-hours to exceed the value of the crime being investigated. Same for fare-dodging.
Doesn't mean it isn't the right thing to do, but it doesn't give ROI. And so, right now, of course it doesn't happen.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
I remember the 90s. People got mugged in broad daylight all the time. We look back on it as a golden age. People rioted regularly too. Your first paragraph is belied by data, including the BCS which is immune from crime recording biases.
Your later paragraphs - about the seeming economic death spiral we’ve entered, essentially ever since the 2008 financial crisis - are more on point.
People also forget that certain crimes - like burglary - have almost entirely disappeared in the last forty years.
They have?
So when I was woken up and went downstairs and found someone in my house whom I came face-to-face with before he ran out the back door (which had the key in it on the inside, he'd crowbarred open the kitchen window making a clattering noise which is what had woken me up) - what crime is that classed as?
I was guilty of exaggeration, for sure, but the stats from the BCS show a really dramatic decline in burglary levels - from 1.7 million in 1993 to 196,000 in the year ending in March 2023.
they don't report them
Exactly. Ditto muggings, "Asian gang rape", phone theft, etc
All this shit is known to be "insoluble" so no one reports it, what is the point
You do know that these BCS stats are compiled from reported crimes don't you, so your 'Exactly' is exactly wrong. It is done to avoid biased reporting.
Where do you think England and Wales stands in the rape stats in Europe? Mid table? Slightly lower? Higher? Where?
Try and answer without Googling
No idea and that has nothing whatsoever with the fact that you got it wrong. BCS figures are NOT compiled from reported crimes. You're just deflecting now from your error.
There is a view small scale petty crime is endemic and rampant - now, you might argue it always has been and that's also true to a point and public perceptions of the scale and intensity of this crime may not always mirror the statistics but that isn't the point either.
The right to walk down a street using your Iphone 15 and not have to worry about it being yanked out of her hand by someone on an e-scooter is something many people appreciate. My personal bugbear is fare evasion which costs Transport for London millions in lost revenue - presumably they can charge up the cattle prods from the line current ?
If you want order rather than disorder you need to have both the appropriate legislation but the appropriate street-level deterrent and that probably means more, better trained and better equipped Police operating out of better provisioned local Police stations, open 24/7 and responsive to local needs.
That needs to be paid for - the Police stations were sold off by Osborne (supported enthusiastically by Johnson) while Police operational methods were changed by Theresa May and our public safety was sacrificed on the altar of restoring the public finances without taxing the rich (and not so rich).
Rebuilding public confidence in the Police and the Police's capacity to adequately do their job are two different but not unrelated things.
And, being totally brutal, a lot of this corrosive petty crime (and it is corrosive to morale and society) isn't particularly worth solving on a cost-benefit analysis. It doesn't take very many plod-hours to exceed the value of the crime being investigated. Same for fare-dodging.
Doesn't mean it isn't the right thing to do, but it doesn't give ROI. And so, right now, of course it doesn't happen.
There are, though, segments of the crime stats where a teeny tiny bit of enforcement would have a massive chilling effect on motivation. Like car theft and shoplifting.
There is a view small scale petty crime is endemic and rampant - now, you might argue it always has been and that's also true to a point and public perceptions of the scale and intensity of this crime may not always mirror the statistics but that isn't the point either.
The right to walk down a street using your Iphone 15 and not have to worry about it being yanked out of her hand by someone on an e-scooter is something many people appreciate. My personal bugbear is fare evasion which costs Transport for London millions in lost revenue - presumably they can charge up the cattle prods from the line current ?
If you want order rather than disorder you need to have both the appropriate legislation but the appropriate street-level deterrent and that probably means more, better trained and better equipped Police operating out of better provisioned local Police stations, open 24/7 and responsive to local needs.
That needs to be paid for - the Police stations were sold off by Osborne (supported enthusiastically by Johnson) while Police operational methods were changed by Theresa May and our public safety was sacrificed on the altar of restoring the public finances without taxing the rich (and not so rich).
Rebuilding public confidence in the Police and the Police's capacity to adequately do their job are two different but not unrelated things.
Spot on. I don't feel any more at risk of being murdered or having my house broken into than I did ten years ago, but I do see shoplifting incidents every week (I never used to see any), graffiti and broken windows everywhere, aggressive beggars on the street who are genuinely intimidating to me as a 6ft tall bloke, cannot imagine how that is as a 5ft tall woman, or a senior citizen.
Broken window theory is nothing new, and we need to get back to it.
Certainly the last 14 years of Tory Home Secs have not done well. They haven't even left us enough places in nick, or staff to guard them, if we did want a crack down.
People like the smack of firm government until it either smacks them in face or in the wallet.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
I now believe we need a hard right government. Whether that's the Tories under a hard right leader, or Reform, or a new party entirely, who knows
It is needed, it is also inevitable. This shit is happening across Europe. Europeans can look at Dubai and Singapore and they can see that a no-fucking-nonsense government which strangles muggers and has a "tough" attitude to all crime especially imported migrant crime looks evermore appealing, and evermore prosperous
It will happen when white women, belatedly, swing Right. When they realise that this no-borders happy clappy multikulti bollocks means cities where they cannot safely walk the streets by day, let alone by night
"I now believe we need a hard right government."
Has any hard right government ever been a success?
Meloni's, arguably Reagan and Thatcher's and John Howard's
These are examples of the soft right. (Who knows how to define this). Governments that were economically stern, but also wildly accommodating in terms of rights etc. (For what it's worth they seem quite bang on to my own views)
Howard's and Meloni's were/are certainly harder line on immigration and all were socially conservative
My memories of 74 (I was 13) were power cuts for the first election, followed by some discussions between Heath and Thorpe. I remember being off school on the results day for October, watching the results come through.
It was during then when I realised how unfair the voting system was. Perhaps it was my naievity of age. It was after then that my affinity to the liberals started.
My recollection of those days was settling down to watch Thunderbirds, looked forward to all week, and shortly after it started there being a power-cut and a blank screen. Trauma off the scale.
Must have been enough to turn a whole cohort of 9 year olds into life-long Tories.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
I now believe we need a hard right government. Whether that's the Tories under a hard right leader, or Reform, or a new party entirely, who knows
It is needed, it is also inevitable. This shit is happening across Europe. Europeans can look at Dubai and Singapore and they can see that a no-fucking-nonsense government which strangles muggers and has a "tough" attitude to all crime especially imported migrant crime looks evermore appealing, and evermore prosperous
It will happen when white women, belatedly, swing Right. When they realise that this no-borders happy clappy multikulti bollocks means cities where they cannot safely walk the streets by day, let alone by night
"I now believe we need a hard right government."
Has any hard right government ever been a success?
Meloni's, arguably Reagan and Thatcher's and John Howard's
These are examples of the soft right. (Who knows how to define this). Governments that were economically stern, but also wildly accommodating in terms of rights etc. (For what it's worth they seem quite bang on to my own views)
Meloni's government isn't terribly popular.
Only 19% approve of her immigration policy and 23% her security policy:
There is a view small scale petty crime is endemic and rampant - now, you might argue it always has been and that's also true to a point and public perceptions of the scale and intensity of this crime may not always mirror the statistics but that isn't the point either.
The right to walk down a street using your Iphone 15 and not have to worry about it being yanked out of her hand by someone on an e-scooter is something many people appreciate. My personal bugbear is fare evasion which costs Transport for London millions in lost revenue - presumably they can charge up the cattle prods from the line current ?
If you want order rather than disorder you need to have both the appropriate legislation but the appropriate street-level deterrent and that probably means more, better trained and better equipped Police operating out of better provisioned local Police stations, open 24/7 and responsive to local needs.
That needs to be paid for - the Police stations were sold off by Osborne (supported enthusiastically by Johnson) while Police operational methods were changed by Theresa May and our public safety was sacrificed on the altar of restoring the public finances without taxing the rich (and not so rich).
Rebuilding public confidence in the Police and the Police's capacity to adequately do their job are two different but not unrelated things.
And, being totally brutal, a lot of this corrosive petty crime (and it is corrosive to morale and society) isn't particularly worth solving on a cost-benefit analysis. It doesn't take very many plod-hours to exceed the value of the crime being investigated. Same for fare-dodging.
Doesn't mean it isn't the right thing to do, but it doesn't give ROI. And so, right now, of course it doesn't happen.
That's an example of where it depends on how you frame the analysis.
It might not give ROI to solve a single case of shoplifting, if you look at it in terms of the losses from that single case. But if the criminal involved was doing it several times a day, every day, and that stops, then there's a large recurring saving. Similarly, if the message is sent out - as with the riots - that shoplifting invariably results in at least several months at His Majesty's Pleasure, then you also create a deterrence effect, and the benefit is much higher than when you looked at just catching a single criminal for a single crime.
This is the same sort of problem that we see from the Treasury model for calculating the economic benefit from infrastructure investment, and in all sorts of other areas. The analysis is always too narrow and unimaginative. It's why we end up with rubbish accounting-style "solutions" for zero carbon energy like CCS and biomass burning, instead of putting money into tidal or small modular nukes.
Britain does need to break free of that limited sort of thinking, but there's not much sign of Starmer's government doing so. We await the budget with increasingly forlorn hope.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
I now believe we need a hard right government. Whether that's the Tories under a hard right leader, or Reform, or a new party entirely, who knows
It is needed, it is also inevitable. This shit is happening across Europe. Europeans can look at Dubai and Singapore and they can see that a no-fucking-nonsense government which strangles muggers and has a "tough" attitude to all crime especially imported migrant crime looks evermore appealing, and evermore prosperous
It will happen when white women, belatedly, swing Right. When they realise that this no-borders happy clappy multikulti bollocks means cities where they cannot safely walk the streets by day, let alone by night
"I now believe we need a hard right government."
Has any hard right government ever been a success?
Meloni's, arguably Reagan and Thatcher's and John Howard's
These are examples of the soft right. (Who knows how to define this). Governments that were economically stern, but also wildly accommodating in terms of rights etc. (For what it's worth they seem quite bang on to my own views)
Meloni's government isn't terribly popular.
Only 19% approve of her immigration policy and 23% her security policy:
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
I now believe we need a hard right government. Whether that's the Tories under a hard right leader, or Reform, or a new party entirely, who knows
It is needed, it is also inevitable. This shit is happening across Europe. Europeans can look at Dubai and Singapore and they can see that a no-fucking-nonsense government which strangles muggers and has a "tough" attitude to all crime especially imported migrant crime looks evermore appealing, and evermore prosperous
It will happen when white women, belatedly, swing Right. When they realise that this no-borders happy clappy multikulti bollocks means cities where they cannot safely walk the streets by day, let alone by night
"I now believe we need a hard right government."
Has any hard right government ever been a success?
Meloni's, arguably Reagan and Thatcher's and John Howard's
These are examples of the soft right. (Who knows how to define this). Governments that were economically stern, but also wildly accommodating in terms of rights etc. (For what it's worth they seem quite bang on to my own views)
Meloni's government isn't terribly popular.
Only 19% approve of her immigration policy and 23% her security policy:
There is a view small scale petty crime is endemic and rampant - now, you might argue it always has been and that's also true to a point and public perceptions of the scale and intensity of this crime may not always mirror the statistics but that isn't the point either.
The right to walk down a street using your Iphone 15 and not have to worry about it being yanked out of her hand by someone on an e-scooter is something many people appreciate. My personal bugbear is fare evasion which costs Transport for London millions in lost revenue - presumably they can charge up the cattle prods from the line current ?
If you want order rather than disorder you need to have both the appropriate legislation but the appropriate street-level deterrent and that probably means more, better trained and better equipped Police operating out of better provisioned local Police stations, open 24/7 and responsive to local needs.
That needs to be paid for - the Police stations were sold off by Osborne (supported enthusiastically by Johnson) while Police operational methods were changed by Theresa May and our public safety was sacrificed on the altar of restoring the public finances without taxing the rich (and not so rich).
Rebuilding public confidence in the Police and the Police's capacity to adequately do their job are two different but not unrelated things.
Spot on. I don't feel any more at risk of being murdered or having my house broken into than I did ten years ago, but I do see shoplifting incidents every week (I never used to see any), graffiti and broken windows everywhere, aggressive beggars on the street who are genuinely intimidating to me as a 6ft tall bloke, cannot imagine how that is as a 5ft tall woman, or a senior citizen.
Broken window theory is nothing new, and we need to get back to it.
Certainly the last 14 years of Tory Home Secs have not done well. They haven't even left us enough places in nick, or staff to guard them, if we did want a crack down.
People like the smack of firm government until it either smacks them in face or in the wallet.
As to my earlier point, if Reeves wants to mug me for 39% on my investments, I'd like to be able to walk down the street without fear of getting mugged for a second time.
The problem is we're paying through the nose for a not great standard of living. I'm happy to pay more if I get more. The feeling is that I'm paying more and more every year but getting less and less.
There is a view small scale petty crime is endemic and rampant - now, you might argue it always has been and that's also true to a point and public perceptions of the scale and intensity of this crime may not always mirror the statistics but that isn't the point either.
The right to walk down a street using your Iphone 15 and not have to worry about it being yanked out of her hand by someone on an e-scooter is something many people appreciate. My personal bugbear is fare evasion which costs Transport for London millions in lost revenue - presumably they can charge up the cattle prods from the line current ?
If you want order rather than disorder you need to have both the appropriate legislation but the appropriate street-level deterrent and that probably means more, better trained and better equipped Police operating out of better provisioned local Police stations, open 24/7 and responsive to local needs.
That needs to be paid for - the Police stations were sold off by Osborne (supported enthusiastically by Johnson) while Police operational methods were changed by Theresa May and our public safety was sacrificed on the altar of restoring the public finances without taxing the rich (and not so rich).
Rebuilding public confidence in the Police and the Police's capacity to adequately do their job are two different but not unrelated things.
Spot on. I don't feel any more at risk of being murdered or having my house broken into than I did ten years ago, but I do see shoplifting incidents every week (I never used to see any), graffiti and broken windows everywhere, aggressive beggars on the street who are genuinely intimidating to me as a 6ft tall bloke, cannot imagine how that is as a 5ft tall woman, or a senior citizen.
Broken window theory is nothing new, and we need to get back to it.
Certainly the last 14 years of Tory Home Secs have not done well. They haven't even left us enough places in nick, or staff to guard them, if we did want a crack down.
People like the smack of firm government until it either smacks them in face or in the wallet.
As to my earlier point, if Reeves wants to mug me for 39% on my investments, I'd like to be able to walk down the street without fear of getting mugged for a second time.
The problem is we're paying through the nose for a not great standard of living. I'm happy to pay more if I get more. The feeling is that I'm paying more and more every year but getting less and less.
And that is the result of 14 years of Tory and Tory led government, not 3 months of Starmer.
There is a view small scale petty crime is endemic and rampant - now, you might argue it always has been and that's also true to a point and public perceptions of the scale and intensity of this crime may not always mirror the statistics but that isn't the point either.
The right to walk down a street using your Iphone 15 and not have to worry about it being yanked out of her hand by someone on an e-scooter is something many people appreciate. My personal bugbear is fare evasion which costs Transport for London millions in lost revenue - presumably they can charge up the cattle prods from the line current ?
If you want order rather than disorder you need to have both the appropriate legislation but the appropriate street-level deterrent and that probably means more, better trained and better equipped Police operating out of better provisioned local Police stations, open 24/7 and responsive to local needs.
That needs to be paid for - the Police stations were sold off by Osborne (supported enthusiastically by Johnson) while Police operational methods were changed by Theresa May and our public safety was sacrificed on the altar of restoring the public finances without taxing the rich (and not so rich).
Rebuilding public confidence in the Police and the Police's capacity to adequately do their job are two different but not unrelated things.
Spot on. I don't feel any more at risk of being murdered or having my house broken into than I did ten years ago, but I do see shoplifting incidents every week (I never used to see any), graffiti and broken windows everywhere, aggressive beggars on the street who are genuinely intimidating to me as a 6ft tall bloke, cannot imagine how that is as a 5ft tall woman, or a senior citizen.
Broken window theory is nothing new, and we need to get back to it.
Certainly the last 14 years of Tory Home Secs have not done well. They haven't even left us enough places in nick, or staff to guard them, if we did want a crack down.
People like the smack of firm government until it either smacks them in face or in the wallet.
As to my earlier point, if Reeves wants to mug me for 39% on my investments, I'd like to be able to walk down the street without fear of getting mugged for a second time.
The problem is we're paying through the nose for a not great standard of living. I'm happy to pay more if I get more. The feeling is that I'm paying more and more every year but getting less and less.
And that is the result of 14 years of Tory and Tory led government, not 3 months of Starmer.
On that, I strongly agree.
The stats suggest the UK never recovered from 2008, but, as you say, we have had 14 years out of the last 16 with the Tories in charge, mixing austerity with managed decline.
The trouble is we are in a hole. The problem is, Labour's first three months in government suggest their plan is to keep digging.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
I remember the 90s. People got mugged in broad daylight all the time. We look back on it as a golden age. People rioted regularly too. Your first paragraph is belied by data, including the BCS which is immune from crime recording biases.
Your later paragraphs - about the seeming economic death spiral we’ve entered, essentially ever since the 2008 financial crisis - are more on point.
People also forget that certain crimes - like burglary - have almost entirely disappeared in the last forty years.
They have?
So when I was woken up and went downstairs and found someone in my house whom I came face-to-face with before he ran out the back door (which had the key in it on the inside, he'd crowbarred open the kitchen window making a clattering noise which is what had woken me up) - what crime is that classed as?
I was guilty of exaggeration, for sure, but the stats from the BCS show a really dramatic decline in burglary levels - from 1.7 million in 1993 to 196,000 in the year ending in March 2023.
To what extent is that because people now carry their most expensive fungible items around with them (laptops and phones) where they are easier to grab?
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
Social mobility is likely a lot easier in Hartlepool than London because of housing affordability.
Similarly I walked past the Wath Holiday Inn a few weeks before one of the riots took place there - the whole area is much improved with new housing estates, nature reserves, leisure facilities and trendy bars.
I'm curious as to what you term by 'a career and decent salary' actually is. £50k, £75k, £100k ?
I do enjoy reading about the urban squalor though as it allows me to appreciate the comfortable affluence I, and most of the people I know, have.
There is a view small scale petty crime is endemic and rampant - now, you might argue it always has been and that's also true to a point and public perceptions of the scale and intensity of this crime may not always mirror the statistics but that isn't the point either.
The right to walk down a street using your Iphone 15 and not have to worry about it being yanked out of her hand by someone on an e-scooter is something many people appreciate. My personal bugbear is fare evasion which costs Transport for London millions in lost revenue - presumably they can charge up the cattle prods from the line current ?
If you want order rather than disorder you need to have both the appropriate legislation but the appropriate street-level deterrent and that probably means more, better trained and better equipped Police operating out of better provisioned local Police stations, open 24/7 and responsive to local needs.
That needs to be paid for - the Police stations were sold off by Osborne (supported enthusiastically by Johnson) while Police operational methods were changed by Theresa May and our public safety was sacrificed on the altar of restoring the public finances without taxing the rich (and not so rich).
Rebuilding public confidence in the Police and the Police's capacity to adequately do their job are two different but not unrelated things.
Spot on. I don't feel any more at risk of being murdered or having my house broken into than I did ten years ago, but I do see shoplifting incidents every week (I never used to see any), graffiti and broken windows everywhere, aggressive beggars on the street who are genuinely intimidating to me as a 6ft tall bloke, cannot imagine how that is as a 5ft tall woman, or a senior citizen.
Broken window theory is nothing new, and we need to get back to it.
Certainly the last 14 years of Tory Home Secs have not done well. They haven't even left us enough places in nick, or staff to guard them, if we did want a crack down.
People like the smack of firm government until it either smacks them in face or in the wallet.
As to my earlier point, if Reeves wants to mug me for 39% on my investments, I'd like to be able to walk down the street without fear of getting mugged for a second time.
The problem is we're paying through the nose for a not great standard of living. I'm happy to pay more if I get more. The feeling is that I'm paying more and more every year but getting less and less.
And that is the result of 14 years of Tory and Tory led government, not 3 months of Starmer.
On that, I strongly agree.
The stats suggest the UK never recovered from 2008, but, as you say, we have had 14 years out of the last 16 with the Tories in charge, mixing austerity with managed decline.
The trouble is we are in a hole. The problem is, Labour's first three months in government suggest their plan is to keep digging.
We just don't know that yet. Everything about the budget and spending plans is pure speculation still.
Not that I am looking forward to the budget as I am a top earner, and all as income that is PAYE so not easily hidden by tax dodges.
I do recognise though that much of the public realm is in a poor state. Money isn't the only thing needed, but is part of what is needed.
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
What on earth did he do that was treasonous ?
Try to prevent a democratic election result being declared.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
Social mobility is likely a lot easier in Hartlepool than London because of housing affordability.
Similarly I walked past the Wath Holiday Inn a few weeks before one of the riots took place there - the whole area is much improved with new housing estates, nature reserves, leisure facilities and trendy bars.
I'm curious as to what you term by 'a career and decent salary' actually is. £50k, £75k, £100k ?
I do enjoy reading about the urban squalor though as it allows me to appreciate the comfortable affluence I, and most of the people I know, have.
I'm sure these lads will tell you what a hotbed of social mobility and opportunity Hartlepool is.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
Social mobility is likely a lot easier in Hartlepool than London because of housing affordability.
Similarly I walked past the Wath Holiday Inn a few weeks before one of the riots took place there - the whole area is much improved with new housing estates, nature reserves, leisure facilities and trendy bars.
I'm curious as to what you term by 'a career and decent salary' actually is. £50k, £75k, £100k ?
I do enjoy reading about the urban squalor though as it allows me to appreciate the comfortable affluence I, and most of the people I know, have.
I don't think it true that Hartlepool has good social mobility, indeed the statistics show the opposite.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
Social mobility is likely a lot easier in Hartlepool than London because of housing affordability.
Similarly I walked past the Wath Holiday Inn a few weeks before one of the riots took place there - the whole area is much improved with new housing estates, nature reserves, leisure facilities and trendy bars.
I'm curious as to what you term by 'a career and decent salary' actually is. £50k, £75k, £100k ?
I do enjoy reading about the urban squalor though as it allows me to appreciate the comfortable affluence I, and most of the people I know, have.
I'm sure these lads will tell you what a hotbed of social mobility and opportunity Hartlepool is.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
I now believe we need a hard right government. Whether that's the Tories under a hard right leader, or Reform, or a new party entirely, who knows
It is needed, it is also inevitable. This shit is happening across Europe. Europeans can look at Dubai and Singapore and they can see that a no-fucking-nonsense government which strangles muggers and has a "tough" attitude to all crime especially imported migrant crime looks evermore appealing, and evermore prosperous
It will happen when white women, belatedly, swing Right. When they realise that this no-borders happy clappy multikulti bollocks means cities where they cannot safely walk the streets by day, let alone by night
"I now believe we need a hard right government."
Has any hard right government ever been a success?
Er, yeah
Many many times
But for today: look at the UAE and Singapore. Arguably the most successful nations on the planet, esp given where they came from
These are good examples, but they're small and very money rich states. I'm moving the goalposts, but the questions still stands.
Oh do fuck off. "Yes you're right but I still think you're wrong"
OK El Salvador
Brutally rightwing government
Now has possibly the lowest murder rate in the Western Hemisphere
Er, yeah, in a place as fucked as El Salvador (as was) it is GOOD if people are "scared" of the police
If we had a government like Singapore's it would take you about 5 minutes to start complaining about all of their intolerable intrusions into your personal liberty. They're not much more right wing than the CCP is. I went to a very convincing lecture that argued that the Chinese Communist Party learnt a lot of it's social control techniques from Singapore.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
Social mobility is likely a lot easier in Hartlepool than London because of housing affordability.
Similarly I walked past the Wath Holiday Inn a few weeks before one of the riots took place there - the whole area is much improved with new housing estates, nature reserves, leisure facilities and trendy bars.
I'm curious as to what you term by 'a career and decent salary' actually is. £50k, £75k, £100k ?
I do enjoy reading about the urban squalor though as it allows me to appreciate the comfortable affluence I, and most of the people I know, have.
I'm sure these lads will tell you what a hotbed of social mobility and opportunity Hartlepool is.
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
What on earth did he do that was treasonous ?
Try to prevent a democratic election result being declared.
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
What on earth did he do that was treasonous ?
Felonious, as adjudicated thus far. (And under US law, attempting to stage a coup isn’t treason.)
But his dealings with both Russia and Saudi Arabia are potentially treasonous.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
Social mobility is likely a lot easier in Hartlepool than London because of housing affordability.
Similarly I walked past the Wath Holiday Inn a few weeks before one of the riots took place there - the whole area is much improved with new housing estates, nature reserves, leisure facilities and trendy bars.
I'm curious as to what you term by 'a career and decent salary' actually is. £50k, £75k, £100k ?
I do enjoy reading about the urban squalor though as it allows me to appreciate the comfortable affluence I, and most of the people I know, have.
I'm sure these lads will tell you what a hotbed of social mobility and opportunity Hartlepool is.
Your posting only Trump biased polls is really pissing me off.
Trump may well win, but based on your input it appears more of a foregone conclusion than reality.
William was funny once. These days he is just a garden variety Trumpian shill.
He always has been, see 2016.
It's his about turn over the EU that has changed.
Oh indeed, but an amusing Trumpian. Now it’s just cherry-picked dubious polling. Not great on a betting site.
1. He's smarter than you, and occasionally rather amusing
2. This site has a RIDICULOUS anti-Trump bias. I don't just mean most here want Trump to lose, I mean people consistently and only post polls, news, insights, opinions - that favour Harris and the Dems and, even more, show what an abject eejit Trump is and how he is BOUND to lose, because of this that and the other and blah blah bleurgh
PB is ideally neutral, in toto, so people can draw conclusions and make bets. If @williamglenn is boosting Trump then he is providing a salutary counter-service to us all
Trump is a perfect arsehole, he should be in an orange suit. A real wrong un.
He will be in an orange suit. In an earlier age he would have been up for breaking rocks until he expired.
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
UK pop rose last year by about 650k. All of which was inward migration. This underpins growth and goes a long way to cure UK demographic problems but this large migration number is the driver of Reform. If LOTO Badenoch finds a way to peel off those votes she has a chance. If she doesn't, she doesn't.
It is ridiculous that we are relying on migration to cure our demographic problems. If it wasn't for immigration the country would be in an even greater mess.
If you look at GDP per capita, something has gone rather wrong since 2008 -
Population has grown from about 62.5m to 69.25m since 2008, and yet GDP per capita has remained stubbornly the same.
Which means we need to find extra housing, school places, doctors, dentists, roads, railways, prisons and all the rest for the extra 7m people (largely driven by immigration since 2008), which, given nobody these days can rent a house, get a GP's appointment, or buy a standard class ticket from London to Manchester at peak times without taking out a second mortgage, we have patently failed to do.
There is potentially a case to be made that we would be even worse off, demographically, without inward immigration. But the opposite is also true: young couples might have more children if they could afford to move out of their tiny (often rented) flats and into family homes.
Ultimately, as the population grows, our flatlining GDP per capita suggests that more and more people are competing for increasingly scarce resources, and importantly, do not feel any better off than they were 16 years ago.
We are gathering the ingredients for the perfect brew for a hard/far right government in about 2028/9
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the UK's goose is cooked.
This year I've had friends get mugged in broad daylight, seen spice addicts passed out in the street, seen people literally shitting in doorways. Graffiti and smashed windows suddenly everywhere. Shoplifters just walking in, taking what they like and walking out with impunity.
And that's London. The last place in the UK where it seems possible to have a career and earn a decent salary. That's to say nothing of the left behind places like Hartelpool that rioted over Summer. Places where you're born and die on the same sinkhole estate, while new arrivals on dinghies get put up in the Holiday Inn.
And Reeves wants to charge me 39% on my investments to live in this blissful utopia?
As you said earlier it feels like the country is in a bit of a death spiral at the moment, higher tax, more people leave, lower growth, even more people leave, etc.
It's worth remembering that even though Labour are awful a lot of this decline happened on the Tories watch. So as you say, when Labour make the spiral even worse, easy to see people turning to the hard right.
Social mobility is likely a lot easier in Hartlepool than London because of housing affordability.
Similarly I walked past the Wath Holiday Inn a few weeks before one of the riots took place there - the whole area is much improved with new housing estates, nature reserves, leisure facilities and trendy bars.
I'm curious as to what you term by 'a career and decent salary' actually is. £50k, £75k, £100k ?
I do enjoy reading about the urban squalor though as it allows me to appreciate the comfortable affluence I, and most of the people I know, have.
I'm sure these lads will tell you what a hotbed of social mobility and opportunity Hartlepool is.
Comments
All this shit is known to be "insoluble" so no one reports it, what is the point
https://x.com/atrupar/status/1844401999644852551
And before anyone goes fake stats, corruption, yada yada, Bukele was relected on 85% of the vote (up from 53% in 2019) in elections declared 'largely free and fair' (compare that to most small South American nations).
And yet the left wing media seethes and calls him a dictator. When in actual fact, locking up the murderers and the gangs who used to control every street corner has proven unsurprisingly popular with the vast majority of the law-abiding population.
Prison works.
Seems you desperate fucks can't handle the consequences of all the governments you've voted for. Maybe time to drop the idea you know how a country should be run.
I've met too many for it to be a coincidence
I met ANOTHER in Whistler, BC, Canada, a couple of weeks ago. Let's call her Elvita. She was from Ecuador. She was really funny, smart, nice - we bonded! - and she told me her life. How her family had been upended and impoverished by Ecuador's mad politics, a la Venezuela. She was a total Bukele stan
But her main thing was insecurity for women. How living in a leftwing society which tolerated street crime and bad shit *because left wing politics means do not be nasty to folk of colour* meant that daily life became intolerable. She was hassled all the time, she felt threatened all the time, in the end she left Ecuador. Maybe she was a fascist? Except her experience exactly mirrors what I heard from a young Aussie journalist who moved to the wrong part of London about 2 years ago. Daily hassle, constant threat, she soon moved
Our cities do not have to be like this. We can be as safe as Dubai or Singapore, once more (London used to be one of the safest cities on earth). But that requires being honest about racial issues and being super strict on migration
You're so poor at facts I could almost believe you were an "AI" chatbot.
FFS, you fucking twat
Or for execution after a trial for treason, if the USA legal system could have got itself out of a twist.
There is a view small scale petty crime is endemic and rampant - now, you might argue it always has been and that's also true to a point and public perceptions of the scale and intensity of this crime may not always mirror the statistics but that isn't the point either.
The right to walk down a street using your Iphone 15 and not have to worry about it being yanked out of her hand by someone on an e-scooter is something many people appreciate. My personal bugbear is fare evasion which costs Transport for London millions in lost revenue - presumably they can charge up the cattle prods from the line current ?
If you want order rather than disorder you need to have both the appropriate legislation but the appropriate street-level deterrent and that probably means more, better trained and better equipped Police operating out of better provisioned local Police stations, open 24/7 and responsive to local needs.
That needs to be paid for - the Police stations were sold off by Osborne (supported enthusiastically by Johnson) while Police operational methods were changed by Theresa May and our public safety was sacrificed on the altar of restoring the public finances without taxing the rich (and not so rich).
Rebuilding public confidence in the Police and the Police's capacity to adequately do their job are two different but not unrelated things.
As regards rape you're normally one of the first to rubbish women claiming not to have consented to sex, so I'm not taking any shit from you on the subject.
Try and answer without Googling
Robert Jenrick has vowed to lead the Conservative Party away from “needless drama” and avoid picking fights on Twitter, in a veiled criticism of Kemi Badenoch
Also
@SunPolitics
Macron is trying to PUNISH us for Brexit, blasts Jenrick in leaked letter row
But you’re silly. There’s nothing ridiculous about an anti-Trump bias; the guy’s an utter wanker. A dangerous wanker.
Doesn’t stop me posting polls which show Republicans winning in various states. As earlier today.
Are you sure you are in favour?
Broken window theory is nothing new, and we need to get back to it.
She needs to focus on Michigan. Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona as that is where the election will likely be won or lost and all those states are neck and neck
That's not say that Leon is right about a lot of the stuff he comes out with, a lot of which is wishcasting and a bit unsavoury during the far-right riots, but on crime - this is absolutely a thing.
It affects young people through sexual assaults on nights out (almost always by white men, it must be said), bicycle theft, assaults, and all the way down to pavement parking and littering. It may be perception only, but since the pandemic there is a sense that arseholes increasingly get away with being arseholes.
I think stuff like the Post Office scandal also contributes to this. Rots from the head, and people feel powerless - the police most of all, who seem run off their feet when I've spoken with them.
I remember power cuts, and it was the year I first met Ed Davey. I beat him to the form prize (never again), and he played El-ahrairah in Watership Down, and jumped off the stage at the end. Common interest was he had lived in the town where I live now, in a *very* nice house overlooking the best park, Sutton Lawn.
I also remember the General Election, as we had a mock one at school. The class vote was 2 Labour, 2 Liberal, 26 (by deduction from class size) Conservative - obviously mainly following parents at that age.
Doesn’t affect him. They’ll probably subscribe to the Knapper.
Yep, that’s Ted.
But some crimes are rising. In broad terms it seems that violent mugging is well down but teen mugging of iPhones is persistently high, burglary is down hugely but car theft of certain models has had a mini boom, bike theft is down but remains a problem, financial fraud and online scams are sky high and rising, alcohol related crimes like drunk driving and random fights at closing time are well down, drug dealing and use are steady as she goes, tax evasion, forgery, insider trading, bribery and corruption are still problems but less so than a few decades ago.
Edit: oh and shoplifting. Seems to be a fashionable crime these days.
Doesn't mean it isn't the right thing to do, but it doesn't give ROI. And so, right now, of course it doesn't happen.
People like the smack of firm government until it either smacks them in face or in the wallet.
Giant Aligators Tories
Only 19% approve of her immigration policy and 23% her security policy:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1489761/approval-rate-of-meloni-s-government-by-policy/
It might not give ROI to solve a single case of shoplifting, if you look at it in terms of the losses from that single case. But if the criminal involved was doing it several times a day, every day, and that stops, then there's a large recurring saving. Similarly, if the message is sent out - as with the riots - that shoplifting invariably results in at least several months at His Majesty's Pleasure, then you also create a deterrence effect, and the benefit is much higher than when you looked at just catching a single criminal for a single crime.
This is the same sort of problem that we see from the Treasury model for calculating the economic benefit from infrastructure investment, and in all sorts of other areas. The analysis is always too narrow and unimaginative. It's why we end up with rubbish accounting-style "solutions" for zero carbon energy like CCS and biomass burning, instead of putting money into tidal or small modular nukes.
Britain does need to break free of that limited sort of thinking, but there's not much sign of Starmer's government doing so. We await the budget with increasingly forlorn hope.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_Italian_general_election
Hassan is decent value, but otherwise, jeez. Trump adviser saying “character matters” lolololololol.
Long way to go. Watkins should have scored there.
The problem is we're paying through the nose for a not great standard of living. I'm happy to pay more if I get more. The feeling is that I'm paying more and more every year but getting less and less.
"YouGov
@YouGov
27% of Britons reckon that they could qualify for a sport at the 2028 Olympics, if they started training today
% saying they would definitely/probably qualify for...
10m Air Rifle: 15%
Archery: 13%
Badminton: 10%
Table tennis: 9%
Rowing: 7%
100m sprint: 6%
Road race: 6%
100m Breaststroke: 6%
Trampoline: 6%
Shot Put: 5%
Cycle sprint: 5%
Dressage: 5%
Fencing: 5%
Golf: 5%
Volleyball: 5%
Basketball: 4%
Football: 4%
Windsurfing: 4%
Triathlon: 4%
Water polo: 4%
Rhythmic Gymnastics: 3%
Artistic Gymnastics: 3%
Diving: 3%
Rugby Sevens: 3%
Skateboarding: 3%"
https://x.com/YouGov/status/1822224347584516143
The stats suggest the UK never recovered from 2008, but, as you say, we have had 14 years out of the last 16 with the Tories in charge, mixing austerity with managed decline.
The trouble is we are in a hole. The problem is, Labour's first three months in government suggest their plan is to keep digging.
Similarly I walked past the Wath Holiday Inn a few weeks before one of the riots took place there - the whole area is much improved with new housing estates, nature reserves, leisure facilities and trendy bars.
I'm curious as to what you term by 'a career and decent salary' actually is. £50k, £75k, £100k ?
I do enjoy reading about the urban squalor though as it allows me to appreciate the comfortable affluence I, and most of the people I know, have.
Not that I am looking forward to the budget as I am a top earner, and all as income that is PAYE so not easily hidden by tax dodges.
I do recognise though that much of the public realm is in a poor state. Money isn't the only thing needed, but is part of what is needed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40ZmP0w0l2Y
https://social-mobility.data.gov.uk/social_mobility_by_area/203_regions/hartlepool
0 - 1
But Pickford is having a nightmare
3 disallowed goals for Greece
Fascinating viewing nonetheless.
Scum are scum and there are scum everywhere.
What matters is whether the people who want to improve their socioeconomic status by improving their skillset and working hard can do so.
(And under US law, attempting to stage a coup isn’t treason.)
But his dealings with both Russia and Saudi Arabia are potentially treasonous.
Getting a skillset ?
Getting a job ?
Getting a house ?
Depending on what an individual wants opportunities vary from place to place.
You'll likely have more opportunities for a niche career in London but its unlikely that would give you the same opportunities to buy a house.