Sampson

But that is absolutely up to you because there’s clear moral limits and red lines we all have that we wouldn’t be prepared for the government to have. For example you say “deterred by any means possible” but I’m sure you don’t genuinely mean “any means possible” - we all have limits of where that line of acceptability is - I’m sure none of us would want the government to break international law or the Geneva convention, nor would we want the government to appoint people to kill or avoid rescuing drowning people trying to cross for example, especially when so many are children. I’m sure we all agree that no one deserves to die for trying to move country without going through the proper legal process: That’s why you have to know where your own limits are or aren’t, because you could end up electing a government who enacts mass murder if you genuinely dont care *how* a government does things.

Quite a wishy washy response yourself there tbf. What do you mean exactly by a harsher solution?

Again that’s emotive whataboutary which only tries to deflect from the actual problem, and the exact reason politicians refuse to even publicly approach the subject. Again, no one is saying older people are scroungers who don’t contribute to society: They are saying they objectively cost the state far more per person (and that state childcare does for the record) while contributing in taxes less.

I’m not disagreeing with you on thar. I’m talking about what a population with a median voting age of 60 will vote for. You’re missing my point as to why population ageing is a fundamental problem with democracy - because it’s the people who are causing the biggest financial burden to the state who are the plurality of voters. I certainly don’t see them voting for increasing the pension age when they are the ones voting.

That was what I meant by point 2, that’s just an extreme version of it. The last bit is my exact point, except that if voters are majority older than I expect the option for the extra burden to fall on workers with longer working hours to win out as most tolerable option in an election just by people in an older voting demographic voting in their own interest.

My argument about Japan and South Korea was simply that they will reach the population precipice a lot sooner because of their much stricter opposition to immigration compared to Europe. As far as I can see the alternatives to longer working hours to stop state bankruptcy in a population largely of seniors are (given we’re already past the point where increasing birth rates will make a difference before the bottleneck) 1. Large-scale immigration which is our current solution but becoming more and more politically impossible 2. Massively reducing state support for pensions and healthcare and inevitably reducing the life expectancy too Both of which also seem politically impossible atm.

We’ll see what happens in Japan and South Korea over the next few years as it will hit them first before Europe, but I’d bet decent money at this point that you’re sadly wrong and that as long as some populist who blabbers on amount immigrants and waves a flag does it, people will happily go with it.

And this is the exact problem in that it’s too emotional subject to approach because people will use these emotional anecdotal examples in their own life, that it becomes a political impossibility. It’s not saying *all pensioners are scroungers-* but it’s an objective fact reported annually by the ONS that people over 65 cost the state over twice as much per person than those under it in terms of healthcare costs and pensions (which are the 2 biggest areas of state funding), while over 65s as a whole objectively put much less money into the economy as tax payers than those under 65 as a whole . The older the population becomes and the smaller and smaller ratio to the working population there is the more and more unsustainable it comes to support. That isn’t a judgement on anyone, that isn’t saying your granny is a scrounger, it’s just the objective situation we are in

Especially when the majority of those voters will be the ones losing out. That’s the catch 22 of it all. I think we should all strap in for 60 hour work weeks and 1 day weekends in the not too distant future because that’s inevitably where it’s ending up.

I’ve said before - population ageing causes a massive threat to democracy for this reason. You essentially have to placate the demographic that objectively costs the most money for the state leaving them with decreasing spend in other areas. Until people get sick of it and vote for some populist who claims they’ll solve all their problems. The world has never really faced population demographics of mostly older people before so we still don’t really know how to deal with it.

According to yougov only 16% of uk people like Trump and 66% dislike him. Even in terms of pure numbers of Reform or Reform curious voters, that’s a lot more than those who like Trump https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/explore/public_figure/Donald_Trump Edit: Same in terms of this: Do you think the world is a better or worse place since Donald Trump came to power? (Poll in UK) Much better - 5% Slightly better - 6% Neither better or worse - 13% Slightly worse - 17% Much worse - 53% Don’t know - 7% https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2025/04/30/c5920/1

Tbf they want to leave the ECHR and replace it with their own constitution. One can only imagine what a Reform written constitution looks like. The Tories also shat out some pretty rotten laws which are primed for some populist to abuse about the home secretary being able to shut down any protest they like, and to be able to strip the citizenship off people. I also wonder whether the UK has less genuine protections against authoritarianism in terms of not having a constitution. The ECJ and ECHR offer us plenty of protection and the ECJ in particular was a very important check and balance in stopping Poland go full authoritarianism under their last government when the government were trying to go after their Supreme Court judges. However, Farage’s first port of call I image would be to leave the ECJ and ECHR. He’s even got Jenrick and Badenoch eating out of his hands in that regard in case of a coalition.

It’s baffling to me that neither Labour or the LibDems aren’t going after Farage being Trumpian with huge billboards of all his quotes fawning over Trump and Musk. It’s an age of populism, you have to fight dirty to fight it. But in the UK, all the other parties seemed so scared of Farage they just didn’t engage with him. Trump is deeply unpopular in UK polls and we’ve seen how being a right wing populist after Trump got elected completely reversed their fortunes in Canada and Australia after people got to see what all this means in practice.

I do wonder whether the tech bro billionaires like Bezos are regretting getting behind Trump yet.

He hasn't been good for like 4 or 5 years now though. Why would anyone pay £9mil for someone who was good half a decade ago? May as well pay £9mil for Marc Albrighton in that case.

The Simpsons in the 90s was great too.

I wonder who Trump is supporting

Yep it’s the same with Trump - destroying one institution is not enough. They’ll always be one more who is to blame on destroying the country that they need to go after - it’s the tried and tested route to authoritarianism and how populism crosses the line to fascism. These right wing populists feed on negativity and making out the country is completely broken and only they can fix it by taking on whatever the latest thing is that’s causing all the problems with the country. Therefore they always need one more thing to blame all the woes of the country on. Farage never has a single good thing to say about the country, he is ferociously anti-patriotic, but that’s also kind of the point. The fact most people (including Boris Johnson) never really understood what the EU actually was helped to. They can tie the ECHR together with it even though they are completely different things because they’re both European institutions. It helps them to make out Brexit wasn’t radical enough even though England, Scotland and Wales already left everything in the EU so you can’t really get a harder or more radical Brexit other than moving the Customs Union from the Irish Sea to the Irish border and therefore almost certainly starting the process of Northern Ireland ceding from the UK and creating a united Ireland.

And there we go. Farage 2029 is fully in motion now. Badenoch is Franz von Papen-ing it at a time Starmer is Neville Chamberlain-ing it.

I think he was fine. He was a 6/10 player who at least had the work rate. More than you can say for a lot of others.

Danny Ward is unquestionably the most damaging. In that he was expected to be a replacement for one of our greatest ever players and was League Two level and that and Rodgers’ blind spot to him and insistence on playing him was catastrophically bad for the club. If we had even a mediocre PL keeper then we easily stay up 2 seasons ago. Daka similar story. Was meant to be the marquee long term replacement for Vardy but looked out of his depth in the Championship.

Nothing but pure vice signalling.

Thanks I might give it a try

They haven’t even taken like a 1/3rd of the country’s landmass. How can you even call that a concession (?)