CornwallFox

Any way of me watching this?

Back to Polanski as I'd genuinely be interested in exploring his policies with you to see what we think of we discuss them honestly. For transparency, it's no surprise I've been voting Labour in recent years but I've always kinda rooted for the greens to do better due to their environmental stance. I do like a lot of what Polanski is saying though, I'll likely vote strategically next time around but I like the cut of his gib, so to speak. We kinda had a go at the drugs issue. Pointing at Portugal's success with a similar policy apparently didn't carry much weight though. Do you tend to go with what makes sense to you - common sense, if you will - rather than empirical data or comparators elsewhere? What policy should we look at next?

I think he's probably intelligent but also incredibly lazy. So while he could use the intelligence wisely, his lack of knowledge due to laziness has always meant it being rather wasted. His 'character' was basically somebody that wanted to be PM. His backing of Brexit was very clearly designed simply to position him against Cameron, but I don't believe he really believed in it, as shown by the ashen face at the press conference the day after leave won. He played a large part in hugely undermining our economy, friendships across Europe, and the fabric of our society, just to play political games.

Oh absolutely he's an idiot. Tbh I saw the joke as more being about himself and his general views on languages, rather than the language itself but fair enough

As much as I don't like him the hoo-ha about Farage making a joke about Welsh speakers on a cameo is absolutely pathetic. It was actually a kinda funny off the cuff remark. I don't think this sort of thing looks good for the left.

Sorry to take us back 24 hours but I have a post limit I'd hit. You said greens or Polanski were offering crazy policies and gave a list. I took one of those examples, the drugs one, and gave some balanced information that could lean against it being crazy, but you haven't taken up the chance to discuss and instead simply moved to something else. This is a very 'now' way to discuss politics. Just ignore anything that disagrees with a point and move to a different point. On your new point, the reason we are all struggling as ordinary people is that since the 80s the share of GDP going to shareholders and CEOs has grown hugely, and fallen for workers. Workers are able to buy ever less with their wages while the richest have gone from being very very wealthy, c to being richer than entire countries. We're seeing people on course to be trillionaires. And they aren't making that money from work, they're making most of it because they can leverage financial systems and national policies designed to feed wealth. Polanski is absolutely right to want to target mega wealth.

Not sure whether it would help them or hinder them but it would certainly change the dynamic. Would it result in us going back (if we ever left) to a time of deep national awfulness, or would it fix that? If we went back in would any leaver ever accept it, would they be better or worse than remainers in the aftermath? Really don't know what to think even as an ardent remainer.

I think you'd probably need to have a sector by sector picture and narrative to really have anything meaningful to discuss on public sector jobs. Councils account for about 1.2m but that's 600k down since 2010-ish, which might reflect wholesale cuts to services as council budgets have become basically impossible and dominated by SEND provision and social care.

On the economics and policies which are you thinking of specifically? Picking up on one issue you raised, on the drug policy, their party policy is decriminalisation, although I think Polanski may have talked about legalisation. Both talk about an evidence based approach, citing problems we have like gang culture, county lines etc which the current system supports by criminalising drug users. Portugal decriminalised drug use and had seen HIV rates fall and drug related deaths have been slashed, so it's fair to say that's a debate to be had there. Not really insane.

Abandoned coal station set to house UK's first fusion power plant https://share.google/MLCCaC6cr3nL1QAvJ Attempt to use fusion in the real world

Always thought back in the day a labour government with a deal to bring in Caroline Lucas as environment secretary would be a quality ticket. Things have moved rather rightwards since then though!

Surely it couldn't be that they wanted us to jump in with both feet but it's looking like a clusterf***?

Interesting your first thought is to call him by a name that isn't used. Very droll. I'm a labour voter so currently a little intrigued by the green poll boost. Without mentioning hypnotism which is just silly, I'd be interested in your thinking about their policies specifically. Also is he more or less clown than kemi or Nigel and why?

Not sure I entirely agree. Starmar I maybe do agree about - he certainly doesn't seem to have any real narrative to his thinking, he certainly can't convey any grand idea for the country, which is a shame for me as I felt like he was what we needed. I think he is earnest, honest, actually it's doing some good stuff hidden from view, but he's not been able to communicate effectively with the country. Maybe where I disagree a bit is that, if you look at the polls, Farage and Zack Polanski are both proving much better communicators, while not being grey middle of the road and boring. It may be my left wing bias but I think Zack has a broader, more coherent vision, whereas Farage relies on blaming foreigners for basically everything, and his sole idea in life seems to be reducing tax and regulation on the rich and business, but it's not really a coherent structured belief system in quite the same way. Either way though, they are both pulling in people into their competing visions in a way starmar hasn't. Boris also reached PM by being a personality. I tend to think personality is actually playing too big a part in the success of individuals these days.

Have you only just started watching PMQs? It's been years since any leader answered actual questions - probably Cameron was the last and even then I'm not sure.

For labour to stand a chance they need to get cost of living under control. That doesn't just mean reduce inflation - it means increasing wages so cost of living starts to fall back again. Otherwise, all of us on the left are going to take to start making choices re lib Dems, greens maybe on a local level. Suspect strategic voting patterns will be quite important next time around.

Shall we have a handful of good news stories that nobody in the media is talking about? Not as big as wars etc, but sometimes small things at least show what matters to those in charge: - the government has set up a £10m fund to support families with the cost of travel to and from the 13 specialist child cancer treatment centres across the UK - GB energy has already installed solar panels on 100 schools, with another 150 expected by the summer, saving approximately £220m from the combined energy bills of those schools over the lifetime of the panels. - rail fares have been frozen for the first time since the 1990s. - junk food adverts banned before 9pm - 2025 showed a 10 year high in household solar panel installation. We even had a species previously considered locally extinct return to the UK!

https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/17/weather/heat-wave-west-records-climate-change Record heat for time off year expected across the US - summer like temperatures in march.

Very revealing who the landlords here are and the arguments they're using imo. Won't somebody think of the poor starving landlords.

I said less landlords creates less demand at the bottom end of the housing market allowing would-be buyers to actually own instead of rent. Landlords aren't doing a public service by housing tenants. They're the cause of many of those tenants not being able to buy.

Then do that. You presumably got into it for a profit, follow the money.

That's the difference between a business brain and stupidity though in fairness. If nearly 3m people hadn't decided to treat housing as investments rather than homes, expecting easy profits, we'd be in a much better place as a country.

There's zero risk. Any landlord using the rent to pay off a mortgage isn't losing money. They're getting a house paid for. Maybe that doesn't apply to you and there's no mortgage. I say this, I repeat, as a current wishing-i-wasn't landlord.

As it stands, I'm currently a landlord for a short period. But I recognise that landlordism is a poison for our housing market that has led to the bottom end being flooded with landlords buying everything, increasing demand and therefore prices. We need less landlords - there are 2.75 million in the UK, imagine the effect of that on prices - and more realistic house prices. Corporate landlordism should be banned. I'll be getting out of it solely because I don't believe in it but there wasn't much way around it with our specific circumstances. Landlords also moan continually about the lack of money in it. Rubbish. Somebody else literally buys the house for you by paying the mortgage. It's free money. Yep some landlords complain they have costs associated to this free money.

No offence my man, slightly tongue in cheek comment. I've been a lurker here for years before joining and the back 3 had been a regular refrain since MON, no matter the personnel we have available. I just find it a bit of a boring Leicester fans fetish! In seriousness I don't think we have the players for it and we'd end up with an even more limited attack.