leicsmac

Oh, a smear job against a person that threatens the cushy status quo for certain sections of the media. I'm shocked.

And the difficulty with all of these highlight the flaws of short term democratic policymaking. That being said, a few other democratic nations appear (key word there) to be dealing with those issues better, so perhaps looking at the way they do things more closely might help?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2py6l78dxo Interesting article on the similarities (and differences) between the two major world players right now.

As much as Soulsby deserves a few pelters, policy on generating energy from an environmental perspective isn't an issue that can be overlooked for long. This year is already shaping up to be the warmest on record - again.

Oh, no disagreement there. I was thinking more in general terms about people acting in haste and then repenting at leisure, along with a lot of other people who didn't ask for those consequences at all. This is accurate, but just thought of an observation on the bolded: The ideology that Reform are into won't just cause economic instability. It will be across the board and it may well be absolute. The way they want to do things is simply incompatible with the way the UK and the world needs to move forward, if it's going to avoid some very, very nasty outcomes (much nastier than the present time).

Given the current state of the world and the importance of the decision being made, I'm inclined to think that sometime, this time, is not one of those times.

There isn't one. That's a point I've been making all along. All of the alternatives bar Burham are either apparently less competent or both more charismatic but also more malicious and harmful.

Agreed. The political environment in pretty much every democracy has shifted vastly in the last decade with the advancement of social media tech. Some places are handling it more robustly than others, but that may well be because they had or have a strong social contract in place in the first instance.

I absolutely agree that the whole meaning and debate is subjective and it's therefore likely best for no one to make objective claims about it.

I believe the best effort so far was 900-odd pages, but this one is taking a decent second place so far.

And thus we arrive at the point where how much (or little) people conflate Judaism and Zionism becomes rather key to the discussion. Of course, this topic has gotten threads like this nixed in the past, and we're 591 (and counting) pages in, so...

One interesting corollary of the two main parties losing their grip in reasonably quick succession is that perhaps there might be an opportunity for the UK to move away from FPTP as a means of deciding governments.

I'm sure that the Chinese will be gracious hosts and appeal to their guests sensibilities by removing any kind of actual flavour from the food and making sure the drinks have extra corn syrup in them.

In other news, a high level US delegation is heading to China this week. No doubt the McDonald's in downtown Beijing will be doing a roaring trade.

It's so ridiculously inane. Anyhow, everyone knows what the next move should be. Starmer stays on for long enough to allow Burnham to be eligible.

Does that appear likely at the present time?

That is the more likely scenario, yes. Shame the press regulator has either zero teeth or zero inclination or both.

I'm a bit concerned that the Daily Sexpress (once under the ownership of a porn baron) sees fit to imply that the government is somehow freely facilitating such arrangements with full consent and that it somehow has a platform to be morally virtuous rather than (yet again) massively hypocritical on such matters of morality.

Fair enough, goodness knows we could do with a better level of politician across all parties. Perhaps Burnham might at least help there.

Well, I'd rather that be whatever European or Scandic language you care to name, but... Judging by previous and current tone of contributions, permit me to disbelieve you there. It sounds like me denying my own distaste for the current US administration. That being said, in these days of perception overwhelming facts, appearances are important (unless you apparently have the charisma to lie and cheat to people's faces and get by with it, which people like Trump and Farage have and Starmer doesn't.)

And the private sector doesn't do the above? It's reasonably obvious you have an axe to grind here so go ahead and grind it, but please don't pretend this judgement is anything like objective. And the world has changed, vastly, in the last 10 years. The UK needs to align and collaborate with someone internationally, and that going to be either the US, the Chinese or the Europeans/Scandinavians/CANAUSNZ collection. A choice needs to be made. WRT immigration, @CornwallFox sadly appears to have it right in that it isn't an argument that can be "won". Some people simply want a white ethnostate, and they will raise hell until they have it.

Not really sure we can pretend the highest echelons of private enterprise are some kind of laudable meritocracy. Plenty of "golden parachutes" and jobs for the boys rewarding incompetence there, too. That being said, Burnham is the obvious move and I hope it's done soon.

I guess in that case it comes down to the geopolitical question of whether or not a person thinks the overall aims of China are scarier for the UK than that of the US and Russia at the present time or not. And that is clearly up to the beholder.

Sounds good to me. The world certainly needs more collaboration for the advancement of the species (as opposed to one small part of it) and less "jobs for the boys/relatives" corruption in whatever governments.

A draw at Parkhead would hopefully be enough for Hearts. Hopefully they can get it. This is far from done.