Sampson

For years one of the biggest problems has long been the moderates and soft right doing the whole “you’re overreacting, Trump/Farage are just grifters, they’re not that bad, stop comparing them to Russia/China/1920s Italy” etc. Or even the “they’re just 90s Democrats” meme that was around for a while. Although there’s still some holding out, I do find most in the centre and centre-right have realised by now (although I fear they realised too late) that Trumpism/Farageism are authoritarian and fundamental dangers to democracy, peace, international order and they actively want the chaos, war and cruelty for the same reason producers of the Real Housewives programmes want constant fights and arguments - they’re reality tv stars in their heads and the more chaos, drama, death, destruction and insanity, the more people’s eyeballs are glued to them and that’s ultimately all they care about. If you approach Trump and Farage from the position that they are just like Real Housewives stars who just want to be the most famous people on earth, and don’t care whether that attention comes from good or evil, pretty much all of what they do makes sense.

I don’t share your optimism sadly. Reform will be packed with Maga style politics and probably have foreign money coming into them by 2029, and at that point where Farage won’t actually have to do much work and will just the face behind some massive authoritarian overhaul similar to Trump with Project 2025. Farage is a “reality tv” politician like Trump and would just revel in the chaos and spectacle of it all.

Just saw this, was a good video summarising it. Does feel like this could genuinely be the beginning of proof of life on other planets. I think we find life on other planets through a series of press conferences rather than a “great contact moment”.

It’s not that simple - not every country allows dual citizenship - and then you’re asking people to give up their right to go and visit their families in their country of birth to do so - not to mention citizenship is as an expensive process not everyone can afford.

Imagine telling people who’ve been living in the UK 50 years, worked here for decades and are drawing a pension, have been married to a British person for 45 years, have British children and grandchildren they suddenly have no right to be here as they don’t earn enough and have to leave the country and go and move back to a country they have no friends or family in, no pension, no money in their 70s. As Farage is obsessed with the “how would you feel if your daughter was…” meme when discussing immigration, I’ll use the same one and say. How would you feel if your daughter was married to a non-British person who’d been living in the UK for decades, working hard and paying tax and they had children (your grandchildren) and suddenly the government decided they no longer have the right to live here because they don’t earn enough or their pension isn’t enough? This is the kind of stuff that breaks up families.

Some great stuff here, plenty has already been said, especially in @Alf Bentley’s post but to add a couple more: 1. Get into board/card games. Whether it’s Bridge, poker, modern Euro games, classic diplomacy or wargames or just simple word and party games.There’s few better ways of being social with people you don’t know and making friends as you get older. And. in an age of screens forever being on they’re an amazing way to take you away from your screens and your mind off the world and just enjoy having fun with friends and family for a few hours. 2. Kind of related - but we get “play” coached out of us as adults and like we’re not supposed to just do things to have fun anymore. I’m sure if we have young children/grandchildren/nieces and nephews then we’ll all have experienced a time when they found some random object in the garden or street and you spent all day having a whale of a time with them as they made up some completely often nonsensical game that the whole family had to play with them but was just really fun. Then going home and realising you miss that childlike wonder of just having fun or spending time with loved ones. Try and make that happen more often and don’t lose that feeling of play as day to day adult life grinds it out of you. Took me too long to appreciate that actually me and my friends all missed the old weekend long games or tournaments of Poker, Cosmic Encounter, Dune, Diplomacy and Dungeons & Dragons we used to play in our 20s - as we got into our 30s and 40s, so we ended up starting them again and really helped us enjoy just playing and laughing with each other through the games and we saw each often way more often again. Wish we hadn’t neglected it for 15-odd years.

Just finished the GeoWizard one brilliant. When he’s going through the sewers was crazy. Always a great watch, love how casual he is doing all these lunatic adventures.

Yeah. Sadly I don’t think this is a sign that Belarus is starting to tire of Russia, that’s coming from an assumption that the US under Trump is still on our side. I think it’s more a sign that Trump at best doesn’t care and if he does he’s on the side of Russia/Belarus not the side of Ukraine/western & Central Europe.

Not really a skill but I’d love the ability to do and understand practice science - like physics or biology experiments for example. Be able to see and properly understand molecules or cells and understand what we actually are. For more practical things I wish I could properly build structures with my hands like carpentry or bricklaying while also understanding the engineering/architecture behind it. Would love to have said I built my own shed or something bigger.

To chime in on the debate about Farage’s policy, guessing at his manifesto etc. To me above all else, the reason I strongly don’t want him in in his language (albeit dressed up in a way that appeals to British people) is all the same as many other right wing populists like Bolsanaro, Erfogan, Orban, Trump etc. - it’s all about gutting the civil service, attacking institutions, the courts, the lawyers, the entire legal system etc. and it gets dressed up in “cutting through bureaucracy to get things done” but these are the check and balances and separation of powers that 1000s of years of European history have shown you need in a democracy to uphold it. When you see these leaders putting in their own judges into the Supreme Court who’ll just pass through whatever the party wants regardless if it is blatantly unconstitutional or not then it’s no longer a functioning democracy - it’s an authoritarian government that has the power to do what the hell they like without respecting the centuries long institutions the country is based on - individuals and governments should not have that much power in a democracy - the institutions should supersede them. One example where they’ve been pulled back from this was in Poland under ZP where they tried to install their own judges into their Supreme Court but the judges reported them to the ECJ and the ECJ stepped in threatening sanctions if the Polish government started these appointments in the courts so they reneged and one of the big checks and balances held - this is one of the reasons Farage wants to leave the ECJ and ECHR as highest priority when he gets in because unlike say the US or Brazil, there is no watchdog on upholding the legal system as there is in Europe. I also think that’s why he whips up immigration so much as the biggest issue and how he’s spent years weaponising the issue as a way to go after the ECHR and ECJ - notice how so much of his rhetoric around immigration is actually about why the ECHR and ECJ are stopping us doing anything about it - it’s mostly just a way that he can convince people to leave these institutions so that he can then follow through the tried and tested formula that Bolsanaro gave the blueprint for in 2014 of giving himself and his government the power to do what the hell they like restrained from the checks and balances of democracy and not having to care about the law and institutions that allow a country to still stand in a democracy where new parties ideologies can change tact. FWIW, it’s not just right wing populism as I think Corbyn (who I also strongly disliked) had a lot of the same tendencies and Corbyn and Farage and the populist right and left also have way more in common than they like to admit. To me it’s not really about left vs right atm, it’s about liberal democracy vs populist authoritarianism. Just my 2 pennies thoughts anyway.

100% agree with you on this. FPTP is designed for a 2 party system and we’ve now split into a European style 5 party system where you need it so every party gets represented so you end up with “blocks” - it’s not perfect and has its issues, but it’s surely better than everyone taking votes off each other and some party just randomly getting in on 20% of the vote just because of how their vote was distributed rather than who or how many actually voted for them.

Poland requesting to invoke article 4 now. With Isreal and Russia both attacking neutral territory the past 24 hours it does start to feel like one of these things is going to kick off World War 3 at some point tbf. Not time to stock up yet but the camel’s back surely can’t take too many more strands of straw

In Portsmouth where I lived for many years it’s the same too - they’ve tried to spruce up the centre with kids play areas and free table tennis and stuff in the empty shops, it looks ok but it’s also clear just no one goes shopping anymore so the old shopping mall is full of half empty shops and so many closed buildings that no one maintains. Since Covid all the night clubs are going the same way as it seems the students and youngsters aren’t interested in night clubs anymore either. Reality is internet shopping has meant no one goes out on a Saturday to go browsing shops anymore so most town or city centres are just slowly getting run down and full of half empty buildings. Many of the smaller shopping malls are now basically empty of shops and more like museum pieces to what people did in the 1990s.

Eh? Reform councils had it is one of their highest priorities when they came in to try and set rules to demand people to actively stop people flying LGBT, Ukraine and Palestine flags on government buildings. It went further than simply questioning the intent.

The civil service does not drive policy, they follow the law. The government changes that law after vetting through the House of Lords and the Minister can decide what to focus on within the law. The civil service is there as an important check and balance in democracy to ensure the law is followed and individual parties or ministers do not have the power to completely do what they want. The reason so many right wing populists want to gut the civil service is to give them the power to do what they like without pushback. It *should* be hard for ministers to do what they like and the civil service *should* have the expertise and right to tell a Minister what they can and can’t do in a democracy without legal changes through the proper vetting process.

I would’ve vehemently disagreed in the past, but I’m starting to come round to the idea the world was no worse off when different religions were a person’s main identity and the main model for governance instead of nation states and national identity. Even as a Athiest who could never understand why people believe the stories and thinks a lot of the ancient morals are repressive and weird, I’m starting to see the benefit of religion and the church as a binder of communities and bringing together different people every Sunday in a social space almost like a Meetup group for the local community - that part of religion has never been replaced. The lack of it feels like it’s making people more and more insular these days. And I think a lot of alienation about the world and people feeling lost comes from just how hard it is to make friends and meaningful social relationships after you leave school/university these days and the church used to provide that for people. I don’t know. Maybe thinking if there was more an activity day in every area people were compelled to go to every Sunday for fear of spending all eternity burning and wearing a Coventry City shirt instead.

I’ve got bored of it all tbh. The immigration and trans debates are so inane. I get they are problems for some people but they are such small fry compared to climate change, population ageing (in fact immigration is largely just a symptom of this) and the war in Ukraine and the fact the UK seems to be completely losing its mind over these issues just feels so out of proportion. Ive never been a fan of Starmer, but Farage is the most manipulative and anti-British politician I’ve ever known. All he ever does is go on about what a shithole the country is and exaggerates Britain’s negatives to get power. He waves a flag but never has an actual good word to say about the country. That said, I’ve accepted he’s getting into power in 2029 now. I’ve accepted he’s going to get us to leave the ECJ and ECHR and therefore give him full licence to plant his own judges in the Supreme Court, gut the civil service and therefore gutting the legal checks and balances that hold up democracy, centralise government departments and also destroy the ideas of the separation of powers that hold up democracy all in the idea of “getting things done” and “cutting bureaucracy” without having the pesky ECJ having the power to hold these balances as they did in Poland. And what’s worse is people will cheer it on because it will allow him to deport a few thousand extra people - people will cheer on the erosion of democracy and the rise of authoritarianism so they can deport more people. Probably worth just accepting it at this point.

This is why the Tories purging all the moderate MPs in their party under Boris Johnson to get Brexit through has backfired for them so massively. Reform gave firmly captured the right vote now and they’re never going to out-Farage Farage under Badenoch or Jenrick but there is a hole in the centre which a liberal Wet Tory party could’ve filled.

I’ve had it happen to me before. You make one mistake of clicking on some post about Trump on a completely different site and suddenly your YouTube feed is flooded with “10 times Jordan Peterson destroyed the libs” videos.

I think you’re confusing me with Bellend Sebastian. Which is understandable as I am a bellend but sadly not a pun on the excellent 90s and 00s Scottish indie pop band (although I have seen them live back in the day).

I suppose it’s what you mean by left if you’re grouping left and liberals together. As I was always taught liberals were centrists. I was always taught in politics class in school that socialists were left, social democrats were centre-left, liberals were centrists, conservatives were centre-right and reactionary conservatives were right. Not trying to cause an argument just interested in the theory behind the thing that people are using as their left:right ratios.

Tbh I completely lost my interest in watching football since we won the FA Cup. Just feels very little to get excited about anymore. Ended up getting into board games and tabletop RPGs after the pandemic and often do that on Saturdays now instead or go out with my partner. Only really watch Leicester if there's nothing else to do and have completely stopped watching games with other teams in as a neutral. I found board games/tabletop RPGs give me that same feeling of camradarie, competitiveness and scratch the same social itch in my brain that football used to.

Will never understand the number of people who complain about the state of the country but then complain if you say we might need to raise taxes in order to fix it. You can’t have your cake and eat it. If you want to fix public services, infrastructure; buildings, fix roads etc. then we all have to be prepared to pay for it.

In the latest weird turn of events in the UK political system since it turned from a 2 party system to a 5 party system (while it creaks under a FPTP voting system designed for 2 parties), it seems the real centrist dads are apparently the 18-25 years old, as the Liberal Democrats are now topping the polls in the youngest age group in the latest yougov poll.

Agree. Rory Stewart & Alistair Campbell did a good podcast series on him recently that’s worth a listen. I can’t work him out either, Vance was on record calling Trump a fascist back in 2016 and having some sympathy with immigrants and was more of a “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” type Conservative of the stop blaming everything on immigrants and circumstance go out and get a job type. His wife is also a 2nd generation Indian immigrant ex-Democrat who got birthright citizenship that the MAGA crowd are trying to stop. He is clearly smarter than Trump as said too. I do wonder whether he’s genuine MAGA or is just following the way to wind blows to get power - I also wonder whether he’s more of a “tech bro” Republican who just want a Libertarian economy and the ability to let their algorithms run free but deep down probably actually quite like the cheap labour of mass undocumented immigration.