The Trump legacy, the UK chooses Europe over the open sea? – politicalbetting.com

Luckyguy1983 said:

Andy_JS said:

RefUK = 200,000 members.

https://www.reformparty.uk/counter

200,231.

Just rejoice at that news.

MoonRabbit said:

viewcode said:

Senator John Kennedy (the junior United States senator from Louisiana) has objections to the Chagos Islands deal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0FKJ1zyRSY

Thanks for that post, it’s fantastic. It confirms everything I have been explaining about this.

US are playing us as their bitch on Chagos - have been doing so all along. It’s there in all the things your man didn’t say and spun around - that as patriotic Britains in our interest, not theirs, things we need to be mindful of, to cut through any “spin” in the video. I’ll repeat them, yet again.

Take the key bit, where he talks about standing beside us as we take “a hit” at the United Nations. At least he was honest about the hit - many PB pirates claim there will be no such hit!

But US won’t be taking the hit. The UN assembly have passed motions for UK to cede sovereignty, their courts have found against us on the illegality on which we took the islands, and I agree we could say no, keep appealing against it - but do you concede we cannot do this stalling without at least some reputational damage, self inflicted hit upon a senior leader in the institution?

As we swallow their “just trying to save us from our own mistake” spin your video was 100% about: we know United States (and India) behind all the “we are your special friend” have never been fans but belligerent enemies of British Colonialism - hacking away at Britains Old Empire and influence for most last hundred years - whilst, where it suits them like this - using us to do the messy stuff for them, like ethically cleanse Chagos.

When he repeats Mauritius want £18B the same £9B over 100 years lease money, but inflation proofed, that came into us after newspaper reports about Mauritius government allegedly said the agreement was inflation proofed, but both parties in the negotiation clearly and consistently deny that’s any part of the package - like we can’t guess now who planted that in the press to support their argument - are you quite comfortable repeating £18B?

I still claim I have the British Foreign Office and Chatham House on my side - whilst you have a Populist UK press and the US Gentleman in the video coaching you. These are the key facts I think supporting my argument, that I am wary about facing down the UN on this, as MAGA want us to: How history got us here consists of US calling all the shots on Chagos since mid 60s, such as ethically cleanse the island, which we did for them. UK negotiated this new deal not independently from USA, but with the Biden Administration - who obviously liked it as they wrote it. And India likes it too.

To what degree do you sense you have been, and maybe still being played by the likes of the Gentleman in the video?

Luckyguy1983 said:

Andy_JS said:

RefUK = 200,000 members.

https://www.reformparty.uk/counter

200,231.

Just rejoice at that news.

kinabalu said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

Andy_JS said:

RefUK = 200,000 members.

https://www.reformparty.uk/counter

200,231.

Just rejoice at that news.

Corbyn Labour had 564,443 members.

Got walloped.

Leon said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

Andy_JS said:

RefUK = 200,000 members.

https://www.reformparty.uk/counter

200,231.

Just rejoice at that news.

This is becoming a genuine mass movement

Britain has Had Enough

kjh said:

Leon said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

Andy_JS said:

RefUK = 200,000 members.

https://www.reformparty.uk/counter

200,231.

Just rejoice at that news.

This is becoming a genuine mass movement

Britain has Had Enough

Meaningless unless they can get them out campaigning. Compare LD membership to Tory membership (particularly in the past when the Tories had mass membership) and then look at campaigning ability. Having said that Reform have said they want to copy LD campaigning and their literature has been good, but can they get these people active. I suspect most won't be.

FrancisUrquhart said:

kinabalu said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

Andy_JS said:

RefUK = 200,000 members.

https://www.reformparty.uk/counter

200,231.

Just rejoice at that news.

Corbyn Labour had 564,443 members.

Got walloped.

It was a genuine movement. Didn't get walloped first time around.

Leon said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

Andy_JS said:

RefUK = 200,000 members.

https://www.reformparty.uk/counter

200,231.

Just rejoice at that news.

This is becoming a genuine mass movement

Britain has Had Enough

Gallowgate said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

Andy_JS said:

RefUK = 200,000 members.

https://www.reformparty.uk/counter

200,231.

Just rejoice at that news.

Have they explained how they are going to fund all of their policies yet?

Leon said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Leon said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

Andy_JS said:

RefUK = 200,000 members.

https://www.reformparty.uk/counter

200,231.

Just rejoice at that news.

This is becoming a genuine mass movement

Britain has Had Enough

You're sounding like a Corbynite.

They used to boast about having over half a million members, didn't stop them losing two elections in a row.

Except this movement is mirrored across the west. The alt.right is on the march everywhere. If you want a hard right government in the UK - as most of us do - then you are cheered by the advances we are all making, from America to France to Italy etc etc

Leon said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Leon said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

Andy_JS said:

RefUK = 200,000 members.

https://www.reformparty.uk/counter

200,231.

Just rejoice at that news.

This is becoming a genuine mass movement

Britain has Had Enough

You're sounding like a Corbynite.

They used to boast about having over half a million members, didn't stop them losing two elections in a row.

Except this movement is mirrored across the west. The alt.right is on the march everywhere. If you want a hard right government in the UK - as most of us do - then you are cheered by the advances we are all making, from America to France to Italy etc etc

kinabalu said:

algarkirk said:

biggles said:

Leon said:

biggles said:

Eabhal said:

Leon said:

Daveyboy1961 said:

Leon said:

Does anyone else watch/listen to the “podcast” Uncanny?

The case of Hollymount Farm is one of the clearest examples of a haunting I’ve encountered. Still might be total bull, of course

Excellent series. The first is on iPlayer as well. You may think it's bunkum, but it's very entertaining.

Yeah it’s great. A lot of the stories are quite easily explicable (but still entertaining). A few stand out as Whoah

The Battersea Poltergeist was one. Also that terrifying Scottish bothy. And now Hollymount Farm. Brrrr

Danny Robbins is a very gifted presenter - likeable and plausible. Never sensational

Bothies can be deeply unsettling if you're by yourself, no signal and more than a day's walk away from civilisation.

It’s all nonsense. Good fun but nonsense.

The guy who presents Uncanny is fairly decent (although seeing him on tv makes me think of D:Ream); however for me to even vaguely consider the possibility of a ghost it would have to appear in front on me, in broad daylight, and consent to a range of tests in lab conditions. And even then my reaction would be “that’s a bloody good illusion”.

The story always involves someone in a dark, unsettling location, under psychological pressure and/or in search of an easy answer to explain a more profound trauma.

To summarise: I ain’t afraid of no ghost.

For me this is as ludicrously over-confident as someone who insists that QAnon is real

How can you know? How many people screen out jarring or bizarre visual evidence simply because it makes no sense? To their world view?

Check the gorilla on the basketball court - a famous experiment

Or think back to how many people dismissed the idea of a global Covid pandemic until the last moment - because it had never happened before and therefore could never happen

Read the actual words. I am applying sensible scepticism which used to be mainstream until the West started going weird (insert essay here about the death of mainstream religion having a bad side as well as a good one).

If you want me to develop the point, what I am saying is this: no matter how credible the individual seems, if they report that an object moved by itself or a person appeared and disappearing, there are many KNOWN explanations we can reach for before we toy with an unknown one.

I am scientist. I would love us to discover a new complexity to the universe. And as you say, in many ways we know nothing. But anything we discover must be measured and codified to prove that it is something new. Otherwise, we might as well go back to pagan gods.

Ghosts, in the sense of the dead speaking to the living, must also answer the same logic challenge as UFOs. Why do so cryptically and not in the open in front of everyone? If my grandparents could speak to me from beyond the veil, I am confident they would do just that. Politely knock on the door and come in for a chat.

If they are meant to be a sort of “psychic imprint” then why aren’t they everywhere?

Suppose there are realities that cannot be measured and codified. Take this proposition: "On planet earth torturing children for fun is always wrong". Now I think that is true, not because I think it and not because lots of people think it but because its a truth arising from the moral fabric of the universe. I accept I may be wrong. But I don't accept that it stops being true if lots of people stop thinking it or f I stop thinking it. I think it is objectively true. Which would make it as much part of total reality - what makes up the universe - as quarks and oak trees and the law of gravity.

That is exactly what I think, and it requires no extant divinity to think it, as Kant helpfully but not very simply pointed out in about 1790.

So you'll still think it's true even if you stop thinking it's true?

Leon said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Leon said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

Andy_JS said:

RefUK = 200,000 members.

https://www.reformparty.uk/counter

200,231.

Just rejoice at that news.

This is becoming a genuine mass movement

Britain has Had Enough

You're sounding like a Corbynite.

They used to boast about having over half a million members, didn't stop them losing two elections in a row.

Except this movement is mirrored across the west. The alt.right is on the march everywhere. If you want a hard right government in the UK - as most of us do - then you are cheered by the advances we are all making, from America to France to Italy etc etc

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Leon said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Leon said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

Andy_JS said:

RefUK = 200,000 members.

https://www.reformparty.uk/counter

200,231.

Just rejoice at that news.

This is becoming a genuine mass movement

Britain has Had Enough

You're sounding like a Corbynite.

They used to boast about having over half a million members, didn't stop them losing two elections in a row.

Except this movement is mirrored across the west. The alt.right is on the march everywhere. If you want a hard right government in the UK - as most of us do - then you are cheered by the advances we are all making, from America to France to Italy etc etc

Most of us ?????

MJW said:

Battlebus said:

Off topic slightly and something that puzzles me somewhat - why is there no party standing up for an English Parliament? Your could do away with the HoL and make Westminster the upper Chamber. If Reform were to suggest it, would that kill one-nation Conservatism.

Because it wouldn't work in that England really is too large an entity to have as one part of a federal style system. Plus, why would those places which feel disconnected to Westminster because it's remote from their interests want to replace it with one whose centre of gravity was tilted even more to London and the South East than the UK one?

It's a bad idea put forward every so often by those who think it would give their kind of English nationalism a whip hand in the UK, without thinking about regional differences and that federal type structures can only work with some balance between their composite parts.

algarkirk said:

kinabalu said:

algarkirk said:

biggles said:

Leon said:

biggles said:

Eabhal said:

Leon said:

Daveyboy1961 said:

Leon said:

Does anyone else watch/listen to the “podcast” Uncanny?

The case of Hollymount Farm is one of the clearest examples of a haunting I’ve encountered. Still might be total bull, of course

Excellent series. The first is on iPlayer as well. You may think it's bunkum, but it's very entertaining.

Yeah it’s great. A lot of the stories are quite easily explicable (but still entertaining). A few stand out as Whoah

The Battersea Poltergeist was one. Also that terrifying Scottish bothy. And now Hollymount Farm. Brrrr

Danny Robbins is a very gifted presenter - likeable and plausible. Never sensational

Bothies can be deeply unsettling if you're by yourself, no signal and more than a day's walk away from civilisation.

It’s all nonsense. Good fun but nonsense.

The guy who presents Uncanny is fairly decent (although seeing him on tv makes me think of D:Ream); however for me to even vaguely consider the possibility of a ghost it would have to appear in front on me, in broad daylight, and consent to a range of tests in lab conditions. And even then my reaction would be “that’s a bloody good illusion”.

The story always involves someone in a dark, unsettling location, under psychological pressure and/or in search of an easy answer to explain a more profound trauma.

To summarise: I ain’t afraid of no ghost.

For me this is as ludicrously over-confident as someone who insists that QAnon is real

How can you know? How many people screen out jarring or bizarre visual evidence simply because it makes no sense? To their world view?

Check the gorilla on the basketball court - a famous experiment

Or think back to how many people dismissed the idea of a global Covid pandemic until the last moment - because it had never happened before and therefore could never happen

Read the actual words. I am applying sensible scepticism which used to be mainstream until the West started going weird (insert essay here about the death of mainstream religion having a bad side as well as a good one).

If you want me to develop the point, what I am saying is this: no matter how credible the individual seems, if they report that an object moved by itself or a person appeared and disappearing, there are many KNOWN explanations we can reach for before we toy with an unknown one.

I am scientist. I would love us to discover a new complexity to the universe. And as you say, in many ways we know nothing. But anything we discover must be measured and codified to prove that it is something new. Otherwise, we might as well go back to pagan gods.

Ghosts, in the sense of the dead speaking to the living, must also answer the same logic challenge as UFOs. Why do so cryptically and not in the open in front of everyone? If my grandparents could speak to me from beyond the veil, I am confident they would do just that. Politely knock on the door and come in for a chat.

If they are meant to be a sort of “psychic imprint” then why aren’t they everywhere?

Suppose there are realities that cannot be measured and codified. Take this proposition: "On planet earth torturing children for fun is always wrong". Now I think that is true, not because I think it and not because lots of people think it but because its a truth arising from the moral fabric of the universe. I accept I may be wrong. But I don't accept that it stops being true if lots of people stop thinking it or f I stop thinking it. I think it is objectively true. Which would make it as much part of total reality - what makes up the universe - as quarks and oak trees and the law of gravity.

That is exactly what I think, and it requires no extant divinity to think it, as Kant helpfully but not very simply pointed out in about 1790.

So you'll still think it's true even if you stop thinking it's true?

That's imprecise but on the right lines. If the proposition I mentioned is true regardless of any personal opinion anyone might hold (which entails moral objectivity being true, a view held by many interesting people, for example Kant, Aristotle and Iris Murdoch) then I think it is the case that it is is true even in circumstances where I think it is false (as in me being an amoral teenager, a believer in the ethics of David Hume, when drunk, when suffering a psychotic episode, when I am the Southport killer etc). Hope that's clear.

Ie, I propose that 'Torturing children for fun is always wrong' is true, even even in contexts where everyone thinks it's false. It isn't mind dependent.

Sean_F said:

kjh said:

Leon said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

Andy_JS said:

RefUK = 200,000 members.

https://www.reformparty.uk/counter

200,231.

Just rejoice at that news.

This is becoming a genuine mass movement

Britain has Had Enough

Meaningless unless they can get them out campaigning. Compare LD membership to Tory membership (particularly in the past when the Tories had mass membership) and then look at campaigning ability. Having said that Reform have said they want to copy LD campaigning and their literature has been good, but can they get these people active. I suspect most won't be.

More members means more money, and a wider pool to choose candidates from.

I don’t doubt that in the right constituency, in by election conditions, the Lib Dem’s would out-campaign them.

But across a couple of hundred constituencies, and with their social media presence, Reform would probably do better.

Casino_Royale said:

Sean_F said:

kjh said:

Leon said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

Andy_JS said:

RefUK = 200,000 members.

https://www.reformparty.uk/counter

200,231.

Just rejoice at that news.

This is becoming a genuine mass movement

Britain has Had Enough

Meaningless unless they can get them out campaigning. Compare LD membership to Tory membership (particularly in the past when the Tories had mass membership) and then look at campaigning ability. Having said that Reform have said they want to copy LD campaigning and their literature has been good, but can they get these people active. I suspect most won't be.

More members means more money, and a wider pool to choose candidates from.

I don’t doubt that in the right constituency, in by election conditions, the Lib Dem’s would out-campaign them.

But across a couple of hundred constituencies, and with their social media presence, Reform would probably do better.

Yes, the Lib Dems campaigning ability is almost legendary but it's exaggerated.

They are very good at hypertargetting a handful of seats over a period of time or in by-elections.

But they are not a national movement.

Leon said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Leon said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

Andy_JS said:

RefUK = 200,000 members.

https://www.reformparty.uk/counter

200,231.

Just rejoice at that news.

This is becoming a genuine mass movement

Britain has Had Enough

You're sounding like a Corbynite.

They used to boast about having over half a million members, didn't stop them losing two elections in a row.

Except this movement is mirrored across the west. The alt.right is on the march everywhere. If you want a hard right government in the UK - as most of us do - then you are cheered by the advances we are all making, from America to France to Italy etc etc

bigjohnowls said:

Has Streeting been sacked yet?

Gardenwalker said:

Casino_Royale said:

Sean_F said:

kjh said:

Leon said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

Andy_JS said:

RefUK = 200,000 members.

https://www.reformparty.uk/counter

200,231.

Just rejoice at that news.

This is becoming a genuine mass movement

Britain has Had Enough

Meaningless unless they can get them out campaigning. Compare LD membership to Tory membership (particularly in the past when the Tories had mass membership) and then look at campaigning ability. Having said that Reform have said they want to copy LD campaigning and their literature has been good, but can they get these people active. I suspect most won't be.

More members means more money, and a wider pool to choose candidates from.

I don’t doubt that in the right constituency, in by election conditions, the Lib Dem’s would out-campaign them.

But across a couple of hundred constituencies, and with their social media presence, Reform would probably do better.

Yes, the Lib Dems campaigning ability is almost legendary but it's exaggerated.

They are very good at hypertargetting a handful of seats over a period of time or in by-elections.

But they are not a national movement.

Nor are the Tories, anymore, it seems.

bigjohnowls said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

bigjohnowls said:

Has Streeting been sacked yet?

Why ?

Because his Social Media posts are far worse than Andrew Gwynnes

kinabalu said:

algarkirk said:

kinabalu said:

algarkirk said:

biggles said:

Leon said:

biggles said:

Eabhal said:

Leon said:

Daveyboy1961 said:

Leon said:

Does anyone else watch/listen to the “podcast” Uncanny?

The case of Hollymount Farm is one of the clearest examples of a haunting I’ve encountered. Still might be total bull, of course

Excellent series. The first is on iPlayer as well. You may think it's bunkum, but it's very entertaining.

Yeah it’s great. A lot of the stories are quite easily explicable (but still entertaining). A few stand out as Whoah

The Battersea Poltergeist was one. Also that terrifying Scottish bothy. And now Hollymount Farm. Brrrr

Danny Robbins is a very gifted presenter - likeable and plausible. Never sensational

Bothies can be deeply unsettling if you're by yourself, no signal and more than a day's walk away from civilisation.

It’s all nonsense. Good fun but nonsense.

The guy who presents Uncanny is fairly decent (although seeing him on tv makes me think of D:Ream); however for me to even vaguely consider the possibility of a ghost it would have to appear in front on me, in broad daylight, and consent to a range of tests in lab conditions. And even then my reaction would be “that’s a bloody good illusion”.

The story always involves someone in a dark, unsettling location, under psychological pressure and/or in search of an easy answer to explain a more profound trauma.

To summarise: I ain’t afraid of no ghost.

For me this is as ludicrously over-confident as someone who insists that QAnon is real

How can you know? How many people screen out jarring or bizarre visual evidence simply because it makes no sense? To their world view?

Check the gorilla on the basketball court - a famous experiment

Or think back to how many people dismissed the idea of a global Covid pandemic until the last moment - because it had never happened before and therefore could never happen

Read the actual words. I am applying sensible scepticism which used to be mainstream until the West started going weird (insert essay here about the death of mainstream religion having a bad side as well as a good one).

If you want me to develop the point, what I am saying is this: no matter how credible the individual seems, if they report that an object moved by itself or a person appeared and disappearing, there are many KNOWN explanations we can reach for before we toy with an unknown one.

I am scientist. I would love us to discover a new complexity to the universe. And as you say, in many ways we know nothing. But anything we discover must be measured and codified to prove that it is something new. Otherwise, we might as well go back to pagan gods.

Ghosts, in the sense of the dead speaking to the living, must also answer the same logic challenge as UFOs. Why do so cryptically and not in the open in front of everyone? If my grandparents could speak to me from beyond the veil, I am confident they would do just that. Politely knock on the door and come in for a chat.

If they are meant to be a sort of “psychic imprint” then why aren’t they everywhere?

Suppose there are realities that cannot be measured and codified. Take this proposition: "On planet earth torturing children for fun is always wrong". Now I think that is true, not because I think it and not because lots of people think it but because its a truth arising from the moral fabric of the universe. I accept I may be wrong. But I don't accept that it stops being true if lots of people stop thinking it or f I stop thinking it. I think it is objectively true. Which would make it as much part of total reality - what makes up the universe - as quarks and oak trees and the law of gravity.

That is exactly what I think, and it requires no extant divinity to think it, as Kant helpfully but not very simply pointed out in about 1790.

So you'll still think it's true even if you stop thinking it's true?

That's imprecise but on the right lines. If the proposition I mentioned is true regardless of any personal opinion anyone might hold (which entails moral objectivity being true, a view held by many interesting people, for example Kant, Aristotle and Iris Murdoch) then I think it is the case that it is is true even in circumstances where I think it is false (as in me being an amoral teenager, a believer in the ethics of David Hume, when drunk, when suffering a psychotic episode, when I am the Southport killer etc). Hope that's clear.

Ie, I propose that 'Torturing children for fun is always wrong' is true, even even in contexts where everyone thinks it's false. It isn't mind dependent.

For all the obvious objections I have some sympathy with your thrust. It's a bit like (although not exactly like) the idea there are certain rights people have which exist (or should exist) over and above democratic politics. Meaning people should not be able to vote them away even if a majority want to. That's something I believe and it isn't a million miles away from what you're driving at.

TheScreamingEagles said:

Leon said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Leon said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

Andy_JS said:

RefUK = 200,000 members.

https://www.reformparty.uk/counter

200,231.

Just rejoice at that news.

This is becoming a genuine mass movement

Britain has Had Enough

You're sounding like a Corbynite.

They used to boast about having over half a million members, didn't stop them losing two elections in a row.

Except this movement is mirrored across the west. The alt.right is on the march everywhere. If you want a hard right government in the UK - as most of us do - then you are cheered by the advances we are all making, from America to France to Italy etc etc

The polls show more people will vote to Rejoin that would vote for Reform.

Cleitophon said:

Any ordinary person would be mad to prefer the US of the the eu.

"Trump’s acting chief of federal financial watchdog orders staff to pause activity...

The CFPB, which Congress created in the wake of the 2008 financial crash, supervises consumer-facing financial companies like banks, title lenders, mortgage originators and cash transfer services to prevent unfair, deceptive and abusive practices and other predatory conduct."


https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/09/trump-acting-chief-cfpb-russ-vought

The America that is coming into being now looks incredibly unpleasant and hostile to ordinary people... and I go there alot, I am married to an American and have many colleagues and friends there. Not ten wild horses could bring me to move there.

Casino_Royale said:

Gardenwalker said:

Casino_Royale said:

Sean_F said:

kjh said:

Leon said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

Andy_JS said:

RefUK = 200,000 members.

https://www.reformparty.uk/counter

200,231.

Just rejoice at that news.

This is becoming a genuine mass movement

Britain has Had Enough

Meaningless unless they can get them out campaigning. Compare LD membership to Tory membership (particularly in the past when the Tories had mass membership) and then look at campaigning ability. Having said that Reform have said they want to copy LD campaigning and their literature has been good, but can they get these people active. I suspect most won't be.

More members means more money, and a wider pool to choose candidates from.

I don’t doubt that in the right constituency, in by election conditions, the Lib Dem’s would out-campaign them.

But across a couple of hundred constituencies, and with their social media presence, Reform would probably do better.

Yes, the Lib Dems campaigning ability is almost legendary but it's exaggerated.

They are very good at hypertargetting a handful of seats over a period of time or in by-elections.

But they are not a national movement.

Nor are the Tories, anymore, it seems.

The Tories are facing extinction.

I think their failure to control migration during the last parliament might be terminal for them.

ColinR said:

algarkirk said:

Leon said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Leon said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

Andy_JS said:

RefUK = 200,000 members.

https://www.reformparty.uk/counter

200,231.

Just rejoice at that news.

This is becoming a genuine mass movement

Britain has Had Enough

You're sounding like a Corbynite.

They used to boast about having over half a million members, didn't stop them losing two elections in a row.

Except this movement is mirrored across the west. The alt.right is on the march everywhere. If you want a hard right government in the UK - as most of us do - then you are cheered by the advances we are all making, from America to France to Italy etc etc

I am wondering whether your support of what you call the 'hard right' movement - which seems to embrace Trumpism and Reform - might need firming up a bit in its principles if American Trumpism goes down the track of overlooking, countermanding and ignoring, if necessary by force, the rule of law as embodied in orders of courts.

On another point, I don't think Reform is especially 'right', hard or otherwise. It stands for something very like the 1950s social democratic welfare state deal + low migation (which in itself is neither left nor right) + populist nationalism + (of course) the costings and economics of the madhouse.

When I look at Trump's gangster oligarchy and ask 'Would he call in the troops to enforce defiance of a court order' I answer 'Yes.

Would Farage? No.

Intimidation is Trumps modus operandi. Make your enemies frightened for their safety and you can achieve a lot.

ColinR said:

Maybe Andrew Tate and Tommy Robinson will be the dreamtickets. Attacking the twin hydras of mass immigration and feminism simultaneously.

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ColinR said:

Maybe Andrew Tate and Tommy Robinson will be the dreamtickets. Attacking the twin hydras of mass immigration and feminism simultaneously.

That didn't take long

Luckyguy1983 said:

Cleitophon said:

Any ordinary person would be mad to prefer the US of the the eu.

"Trump’s acting chief of federal financial watchdog orders staff to pause activity...

The CFPB, which Congress created in the wake of the 2008 financial crash, supervises consumer-facing financial companies like banks, title lenders, mortgage originators and cash transfer services to prevent unfair, deceptive and abusive practices and other predatory conduct."


https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/09/trump-acting-chief-cfpb-russ-vought

The America that is coming into being now looks incredibly unpleasant and hostile to ordinary people... and I go there alot, I am married to an American and have many colleagues and friends there. Not ten wild horses could bring me to move there.

It is not a question of preference. One is a free trading arrangement with some compromises over trade, one is a nascent state that commands a membership fee, control over vast swathes of domestic law, and the supremacy of its own parliament over ours. What the US Government gets up to within its own borders has little to do with it.

HYUFD said:

Casino_Royale said:

Gardenwalker said:

Casino_Royale said:

Sean_F said:

kjh said:

Leon said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

Andy_JS said:

RefUK = 200,000 members.

https://www.reformparty.uk/counter

200,231.

Just rejoice at that news.

This is becoming a genuine mass movement

Britain has Had Enough

Meaningless unless they can get them out campaigning. Compare LD membership to Tory membership (particularly in the past when the Tories had mass membership) and then look at campaigning ability. Having said that Reform have said they want to copy LD campaigning and their literature has been good, but can they get these people active. I suspect most won't be.

More members means more money, and a wider pool to choose candidates from.

I don’t doubt that in the right constituency, in by election conditions, the Lib Dem’s would out-campaign them.

But across a couple of hundred constituencies, and with their social media presence, Reform would probably do better.

Yes, the Lib Dems campaigning ability is almost legendary but it's exaggerated.

They are very good at hypertargetting a handful of seats over a period of time or in by-elections.

But they are not a national movement.

Nor are the Tories, anymore, it seems.

The Tories are facing extinction.

I think their failure to control migration during the last parliament might be terminal for them.

If the Tories were facing extinction they would be under 10% not over 20% and even ahead of Labour and Reform on the latest MoreinCommon poll.

Not all Tory voters are that concerned by immigration anyway, plenty are just traditional One Nation types or small state on economics but relatively socially liberal otherwise.

Indeed the reason Labour is also now under 30% is many white working class traditional Labour voters are hardline anti immigration even if centrist on economics.

It is not as if the Tories did nothing on immigration last parliament either. Boris ended free movement from the EEA and Rishi tightened visa and wage requirements for non EU immigrants and their dependents

Stuartinromford said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ColinR said:

Maybe Andrew Tate and Tommy Robinson will be the dreamtickets. Attacking the twin hydras of mass immigration and feminism simultaneously.

That didn't take long

I'm sure six posts isn't a record, but it must be close.

Where's Norris McWhirter when we need him?

algarkirk said:

Gardenwalker said:

ColinR said:

Gardenwalker said:

It’s very confusing as to what, exactly, Musk and others are actually doing. The argument right now is about access to data and systems, but the counter argument I suppose is that they are authorised under presidential fiat.

Separately, one could argue that the shuttering of U.S. Aid and other entities like the Department of Education was promised by Trump on the campaign trail.

It’s all a bit messy and abstract to the average voter right now.

The judges are now trying to stop him with court orders. Still a mob with baseball bats turning up at the judges houses may concentrate their minds.

The other complication, of course, is that judiciary *is* politicised, by design.

So it’s v easy actually to write off the legal system as partisan.

America is going Peronist, or Orbanist, or Erdoganist.
I agree with poster earlier who suggested that of course elections will continue, just they will be engineered in favor of the Trump regime and dynasty.

Rigging elections is probably easier than rigging the entire judicial process. Pliant courts and court orders met and opposed by government force are open to the face of the world.

Gardenwalker said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ColinR said:

Maybe Andrew Tate and Tommy Robinson will be the dreamtickets. Attacking the twin hydras of mass immigration and feminism simultaneously.

That didn't take long

Quite right.
Surely the plural of hydra is hydrae.

algarkirk said:

kinabalu said:

algarkirk said:

kinabalu said:

algarkirk said:

biggles said:

Leon said:

biggles said:

Eabhal said:

Leon said:

Daveyboy1961 said:

Leon said:

Does anyone else watch/listen to the “podcast” Uncanny?

The case of Hollymount Farm is one of the clearest examples of a haunting I’ve encountered. Still might be total bull, of course

Excellent series. The first is on iPlayer as well. You may think it's bunkum, but it's very entertaining.

Yeah it’s great. A lot of the stories are quite easily explicable (but still entertaining). A few stand out as Whoah

The Battersea Poltergeist was one. Also that terrifying Scottish bothy. And now Hollymount Farm. Brrrr

Danny Robbins is a very gifted presenter - likeable and plausible. Never sensational

Bothies can be deeply unsettling if you're by yourself, no signal and more than a day's walk away from civilisation.

It’s all nonsense. Good fun but nonsense.

The guy who presents Uncanny is fairly decent (although seeing him on tv makes me think of D:Ream); however for me to even vaguely consider the possibility of a ghost it would have to appear in front on me, in broad daylight, and consent to a range of tests in lab conditions. And even then my reaction would be “that’s a bloody good illusion”.

The story always involves someone in a dark, unsettling location, under psychological pressure and/or in search of an easy answer to explain a more profound trauma.

To summarise: I ain’t afraid of no ghost.

For me this is as ludicrously over-confident as someone who insists that QAnon is real

How can you know? How many people screen out jarring or bizarre visual evidence simply because it makes no sense? To their world view?

Check the gorilla on the basketball court - a famous experiment

Or think back to how many people dismissed the idea of a global Covid pandemic until the last moment - because it had never happened before and therefore could never happen

Read the actual words. I am applying sensible scepticism which used to be mainstream until the West started going weird (insert essay here about the death of mainstream religion having a bad side as well as a good one).

If you want me to develop the point, what I am saying is this: no matter how credible the individual seems, if they report that an object moved by itself or a person appeared and disappearing, there are many KNOWN explanations we can reach for before we toy with an unknown one.

I am scientist. I would love us to discover a new complexity to the universe. And as you say, in many ways we know nothing. But anything we discover must be measured and codified to prove that it is something new. Otherwise, we might as well go back to pagan gods.

Ghosts, in the sense of the dead speaking to the living, must also answer the same logic challenge as UFOs. Why do so cryptically and not in the open in front of everyone? If my grandparents could speak to me from beyond the veil, I am confident they would do just that. Politely knock on the door and come in for a chat.

If they are meant to be a sort of “psychic imprint” then why aren’t they everywhere?

Suppose there are realities that cannot be measured and codified. Take this proposition: "On planet earth torturing children for fun is always wrong". Now I think that is true, not because I think it and not because lots of people think it but because its a truth arising from the moral fabric of the universe. I accept I may be wrong. But I don't accept that it stops being true if lots of people stop thinking it or f I stop thinking it. I think it is objectively true. Which would make it as much part of total reality - what makes up the universe - as quarks and oak trees and the law of gravity.

That is exactly what I think, and it requires no extant divinity to think it, as Kant helpfully but not very simply pointed out in about 1790.

So you'll still think it's true even if you stop thinking it's true?

That's imprecise but on the right lines. If the proposition I mentioned is true regardless of any personal opinion anyone might hold (which entails moral objectivity being true, a view held by many interesting people, for example Kant, Aristotle and Iris Murdoch) then I think it is the case that it is is true even in circumstances where I think it is false (as in me being an amoral teenager, a believer in the ethics of David Hume, when drunk, when suffering a psychotic episode, when I am the Southport killer etc). Hope that's clear.

Ie, I propose that 'Torturing children for fun is always wrong' is true, even even in contexts where everyone thinks it's false. It isn't mind dependent.

For all the obvious objections I have some sympathy with your thrust. It's a bit like (although not exactly like) the idea there are certain rights people have which exist (or should exist) over and above democratic politics. Meaning people should not be able to vote them away even if a majority want to. That's something I believe and it isn't a million miles away from what you're driving at.

The denial of ethical objectivism is filled with greater objections, to my mind insurmountable. Like the great ethicist Elizabeth Anscombe I just don't want to be in the same room as people who think that it is only an opinion that there is something wrong about the holocaust (or the Southport murders, or torturing children) and that other opinions have equal weight because there is no measure except our mutable
sentiments. That's David Hume's view when he says, incorrectly,

it is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger

ColinR said:

Casino_Royale said:

ColinR said:

Casino_Royale said:

Gardenwalker said:

Casino_Royale said:

Sean_F said:

kjh said:

Leon said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

Andy_JS said:

RefUK = 200,000 members.

https://www.reformparty.uk/counter

200,231.

Just rejoice at that news.

This is becoming a genuine mass movement

Britain has Had Enough

Meaningless unless they can get them out campaigning. Compare LD membership to Tory membership (particularly in the past when the Tories had mass membership) and then look at campaigning ability. Having said that Reform have said they want to copy LD campaigning and their literature has been good, but can they get these people active. I suspect most won't be.

More members means more money, and a wider pool to choose candidates from.

I don’t doubt that in the right constituency, in by election conditions, the Lib Dem’s would out-campaign them.

But across a couple of hundred constituencies, and with their social media presence, Reform would probably do better.

Yes, the Lib Dems campaigning ability is almost legendary but it's exaggerated.

They are very good at hypertargetting a handful of seats over a period of time or in by-elections.

But they are not a national movement.

Nor are the Tories, anymore, it seems.

The Tories are facing extinction.

I think their failure to control migration during the last parliament might be terminal for them.

Indeed. Fully deserved too. Thr future is in parties much further right unapolegetic about stopping immigration.

Although, I should say, I question whether they'd be any more effective in stopping it.

To do so would require a mixture of domestic legal reform and international cooperation, plus executive competence and ruthlessness with passive resistance in the public services.

I doubt Reform could package all that.

I agree. Likely not ruthless enough. We need a britain Trump. Perhaps Tommy Robinson.

Casino_Royale said:

Gardenwalker said:

Casino_Royale said:

Gardenwalker said:

Casino_Royale said:

Sean_F said:

kjh said:

Leon said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

Andy_JS said:

RefUK = 200,000 members.

https://www.reformparty.uk/counter

200,231.

Just rejoice at that news.

This is becoming a genuine mass movement

Britain has Had Enough

Meaningless unless they can get them out campaigning. Compare LD membership to Tory membership (particularly in the past when the Tories had mass membership) and then look at campaigning ability. Having said that Reform have said they want to copy LD campaigning and their literature has been good, but can they get these people active. I suspect most won't be.

More members means more money, and a wider pool to choose candidates from.

I don’t doubt that in the right constituency, in by election conditions, the Lib Dem’s would out-campaign them.

But across a couple of hundred constituencies, and with their social media presence, Reform would probably do better.

Yes, the Lib Dems campaigning ability is almost legendary but it's exaggerated.

They are very good at hypertargetting a handful of seats over a period of time or in by-elections.

But they are not a national movement.

Nor are the Tories, anymore, it seems.

The Tories are facing extinction.

I think their failure to control migration during the last parliament might be terminal for them.

And Brexit, which fatally weakened their support in southern shires. All roads lead to one Boris Johnson.

Yet, I expect to see him back before the next election.

No, it has nothing to do with Brexit.

StillWaters said:

bondegezou said:

StillWaters said:

bondegezou said:

StillWaters said:

bondegezou said:

https://www.wired.com/story/kash-patel-elite-depot-shein/

Trump's FBI pick, Kash Patel, won't divest himself of shares in Chinese company that represent a conflict of interest.

Why does it represent a conflict of interest per se?

“Hi, boss. Should we continue this investigation into Shein?”

*Then* it would be a conflict.

But how often does the FBI investigate companies rather than individuals?

https://x.com/highbrow_nobrow/status/1888
256986237526142

Fair point on corporate espionage

The usual way to do this is to have a blind trust. It’s not reasonable to expect a public servant not to invest. Alternatively he recused himself from anything that touches Shein

williamglenn said:

https://x.com/iapolls2022/status/1888590821953302593

CBS Poll: President Trump Approval

🟢 Approve: 53% (+6)
🔴 Disapprove: 47%

The highest approval rating for President Trump in CBS polling history
——
• Ages 18-29: 55-45 (+10)
• Ages 30-44: 52-48 (+4)
• Ages 45-64: 56-44 (+12)
• Ages 65+: 50-50 (=)

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Plymouth 1 - Liverpool 0

Full time

Wow