Sampson

I don’t understand how you can still not take Trump for his word at this point. US already has the right to unlimited troops in Greenland, it’s part of NATO and Denmark already agreed to unlimited US bases. That deal you are talking Denmark has already said they’ve agreed to. This is about the US invading Denmark and Europe so they can annex land (and as a very coincidental side note own minerals important to building AI data centres). Trump is very clear about all this and as usual people want to bury their heads in the sand whilst he continuously shows us you should take him for his word.

Even Badenoch and Farage starting to turn anti-US and pro-Europe now, Starmer needs to do what 90% of the country wants and formally acknowledge our future is with Europe not the US.

I’m surprised people say they still see Derby as bigger rivals (referring to posts from the last page). That feels like it’s just repeated based on the club’s culture from 30 years ago, but hasn’t been genuinely true in years. It’s probably 20 years since the last time a game vs Derby felt like it actually had any bite to it. I get Forest games are important to a lot of fans and have more bite in the atmosphere etc. for sure, but games against Coventry have felt like they’ve had more importance and bite than games against Derby for about 20 years now. I mean that opening game 2 seasons ago felt like a proper derby match in the crowd, I haven’t been to a game vs Derby that didn’t really feel like just a normal game since the 00’s.

It’s not surprising. US is extremely open that they see us as its adversary and not its ally nowadays. Dunno why we would kid ourselves to think otherwise.

Thank you for clarifying. I didn’t understand you meant specifically the current government. I will watch the video you posted. But as said, I fundamentally disagree on what authorianism looks like in 2026 and how much power a government should have compared to institutions - and that’s why I dont fundamentally think Reform is the only choice - because I’m extremely sceptical about how all the language they use is reminiscent of other populists like Trump Balsanro and Erdogan but made in the context of British culture; and also very sceptical of the support coming in from all these foreign ultra-wealthy tech elite when we’re on the cusp of AI smashing apart our culture and job market.

Thank you for replying. I can do a longer reply at some point if you like, however I would like you to clarify your meaning first, because it seems to make 2 completely opposite points and I find it hard to respond to without fully understanding your argument. I might be misunderstanding context which is why I’m missing clarification. The first half of the post is about how institutions are not subservient enough to the government and stifle them which was your original argument about “the blob” as to why Reform are popular. Then the 2nd half of your post you say the exact opposite and say that people are voting Reform because the institutions are too subservient to the government meaning we are too authoritarian and the government has too much power. I’m not really sure what your argument means and how to respond to it because you simultaneously seem to be saying that people are voting Reform because the balance of power between institutions and the government is too much in favour of the institutions so governments are too hamstrung to do anything; and that people are voting for Reform because the balance of power between government and the institutions are too much in the favour of the government so the government has too much authority to do what it likes. I can respond the democracy/authoritarianism point though as I understand the point here - and I will just say I flat out disagree that’s how it works in 2026. That’s how it worked in the 1970s, but most authoritarian governments have elections nowadays - they don’t shut down elections; they instead just create a culture of fear about what happens if they’re not elected like in Belarus and Venezuela (to give both examples of populist right wing governments and populist left wing governments) - we saw what happened where people protested against Luchashenko’s victory in 2020 and how that caused the 2025 to be barely fought because people we’re realistically too scared to stand against him. And I strongly disagree that governments should be allowed to do what they like if elected because that’s how you lead to authoritarianism - governments can take full control of both the mainstream media and social media to control information, they can buy off judges to let them stay in power indefinitely otherwise - that’s why institutions exist to stop the government having the power to do what they like - this is why authorities are seperate from the government and why the civil service and legal system have to be separate from the government, because the government should be allowed to be taken to court or face legal challenges just as much as Joe Bloggs in the street should

I think s a lot of these ideas are applied retroactively and weren’t really that way at the time 2015 - was more the collapse of the LibDems who were at a higher % of the vote than any party is polling now back in the 2005 and 2010 elections. Also nowadays, now we’ve seen longer term effects of austerity, Cameron and Osborne’s policies are derided; but that wasn’t the case in 2015. And their general argument was that they’d stopped the short term rot since the financial crisis (now we know the trade off wasn’t worth it but that wasn’t the mood back then). 2017 was May gambling she could get a majority on a message of strong leadership that massively backfired as she didn’t have the personality for that campaign. Corbyn’s ideas were also surprisingly popular with the voters. 2019 was almost entirely a single issue election about Brexit. Corbyn went for a much much harder left campaign and tried to ignore the Brexit issue because everyone knew he wanted to leave when most of his voters didn’t. 2024 - Genuinely was a “we’re not the Tories” vote, but as many of us said at the time it was kind of a ridiculous campaign by Labour as their whole election campaign was “we won’t do this” and they completely backed themselves into a corner because it was obvious that the country needed mass changes and now if they do anything they just get a “turncoats, they said they wouldn’t raise taxes” stuff, when it was always obvious they needed to. As for the general culture of apathy, I mean that has happened in every democracy, and social media, the internet and 24/7 new media is certainly.a major reason as we’re now seeing every single bad thing in the country and world which we never did before - the fact the murder rates in London going down the other day for example is ignored for example. Farage profits because he’s a ferociously unpatriotic person who more than anyone has spent the last 15 years telling everyone what a shithole and how horrendous Britain is while pointing to every little thing. It’s literally the politics of exhaustion- Steve Bannon was very open about this 6 or 7 years ago - that it was an entirely planned strategy to flood the media with so much shit that people get exhausted by it and switch off and stop debating

Ok to give you the reasoning as to why I think Farage is way worse than any other option, which is what you asked for. I categorically disagree with you here. The civil service’s role is that it supposed to uphold the law and tell the government what they can and cannot do within the law, it is not supposed to serve the government - as you said, it should be impartial - that means being impartial against the government when the government is in conflict with the law. The civil service should be in conflict with the government and tell them what they can and can’t do by the letter of the law. We live in a democracy. A democracy is not simply about voting, otherwise North Korea, Russia and Belarus would all be democracies - a democracy is a form of government where the ultimate power is in institutions not individuals - the government should categorically not be allowed to do just what they like - that’s called authoritarianism. The civil service is one of the 2 most important checks and balances in a democracy along with the legal system. And this is exactly why populists go after both the civil service and the legal system as well as international institutions so they can dismantle democracy and institutions to give themselves power to do what they like - the populist playbook that Balsanaro and Erdogan popularised in 2014 that the likes of Trump and Farage both follow. This is why Trump goes after the legal system, the civil service and every international institution going - and Farage uses all the same language - this is why Farage’s #1 ambition is to leave the ECHR and ECJ because unlike the US we have supra-national institutions in Europe built after WW2 and designed to protect us from our own governments and the ECJ has already shown itself influential in Poland by stopping populist governments filling their Supreme Court with people who’ll just bend to their will (as Trump has successfully done). I would also add that it’s also very telling that all these foreign AI tech giants like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are also supporting these populist parties like Reform and Trump or the AfD because they know that taking down the legal institutions and getting in the pockets of people who want more power will let them have the freedom to run riot with AI. And that’s way scarier and going to do way more damage to both our culture and job market than immigration ever will. The law and civil service is there to protect us all as citizens. I understand people want to reduce immigration and don’t like cancel culture - but I really don’t think gutting the institutions that hold up democracy and giving the government the power to do what they like and gutting the civil service and legal systems which protect us is worth the trade off to do that - with the added bonus of all these foreign AI and social media tech bros also bring allowed to do what they like to our culture and job market, not by 100 fold. That is my main argument as to why Farage is so much a worse option than the others. I don’t think you genuinely want to live in a country where the civil service, legal systems and international institutions are subservient to the government., that is how it works in Russia and this is exactly how we end up with a system where we have no protections to standing against some nutjob in charge Look I was always told this - think about the systems you’re creating with the worst possible leader you can personally imagine being in charge of them. if you hate Corbyn and Sultana for example- then think about them in power with this kind of state you want to create with a gutted legal system and civil service and where we’ve got no supra-national protections from the ECHR or ECJ and they’re essentially given free roles to do whatever they hell they like.

Is Wes Streeting the “give it to Kingy til the end of the season” option?

You inferred his metabolic processes were now history, he’s off his twig, he’s kicked the bucket, he’s shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleeding choir invisible…

That’s probably only possible after another election where it’s in their manifesto or referendum though (and we remember the shitshow of the last voting system referendum 15 years ago).

Yeah the world changes so quickly nowadays, if you see just the graph I posted a couple of pages ago how quickly poll number changes nowadays. Plus huge society shifting once-in-a-century events seem to happen almost yearly nowadays. If anything happens in Greenland or Ukraine, another pandemic or another war in Europe, how AI affects the job market, if AI starts to get a bit scary, if Trump/Vance clearly try and obstruct elections in 2028 it might cause his “good friend” Farage to lose support etc.could all cause massive swings in the numbers. We saw how the realisation of what Trump stood for and the beginning of Project 2025 caused massive swings against the pro-Trump candidate in the Canadian and Australian elections last year for example. That being said, I still expect Reform to win, maybe even on only 20% of the vote, because our FPTP system is designed for 2 parties and has completely broken down in this new 5 party system.

Really not much of a surprise, he was always cringely just constantly vice-signalling on culture wars to try to out-Farage Farage. Actually could give the Tories a chance to not just be this pretty bizarre attempt to be Reform light and go back to being pro-business economic liberals again instead of constantly trying to one-up Farage in obsessing over culture wars.

Yeah Eric Idle still appears semi-regularly on The Infinite Monkey Cage science comedy show on Radio 4.

One of the most beautiful and nostalgic songs ever.

I think for people it’s too easy and you can usually get in in 5, by just going through pages of countries, how about some challenging ones that are tougher to do in 10: Geiger counter -> Revolutions of 1848 Cosmic Encounter -> Mountain Range In Rainbows -> Pauli exclusion principle pH -> Diplomacy (game) Bubonic Plague -> 2009 Leicestershire County Council election

Reform definitely seem to have peaked in the polls now, latest Yougov poll has them at 24% (also still only 10% with 18-24 year olds and only 19% with 25-49 year olds) which is their lowest in the polls since April. Mostly seems to be a lot of older voters switching back from Reform to the Tories who seem to be increasing again having bottomed out. We'll see whether Labour start doing the same after hemmoraging votes mostly to the LibDems and Greens.

That was always too easy though, as soon as you find a country you inevitably find Germany or WW2 on that country’s page.

I’m no historian but didn’t the Ottoman Empire as a kind of multicultural federation hold it together for hundreds of years despite different types of both Christianity and Islam being prevalent until it collapsed after WW1? Then it’s been a mess since then. Don’t know enough about that time in history or whether the Ottomans weren’t brutal themselves or anything.

I really wish people would not just post links without comment. I’m not clicking on a link to an Iranian website which a user has said makes them feel sick.

Yeah I had a feeling someone would have written in that the EFL Cup is sometimes dismissed as a mickey mouse cup (don’t necessarily agree for the record but thought it might be in there)

i got it in less Jon Rudkin -> Leicester City -> English League Cup -> Mickey Mouse

Yeah that’s fair, I think it worked for the LibDems last election to concentrate on local stuff. It’s also an easy way to attack Reform as their local record isn’t great. The problem is I guess people then don’t know what they stand for on a national level as happened with the LibDems.

Hopefully, but Badenoch and Jenrick need to go over to Reform for that to work then the Tories might be worth voting for again. While Badenoch and Jenrick are there they’re ultimately going to feel like Reform-lite and going after culture wars and the like. I actually think ironically the Tories best path to reemergence might be to go back to John Major/Ken Clark style conservatives and go pro-EU to try and win over the middle class, centrist dads, home counties and small business owners again.

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