Sampson

Absolutely I would. I hate this wave of authoritarian populism much more than I care about left or right wing divide, I dislike both Corbyn and Farage for that same reason and I absolutely hate all this slow creep towards shutting down protests, I said it on here several times since the crime act got pushed through years ago - the right to peaceful protest should be sacrosanct in a democracy and all we’re doing by eroding away these freedoms is setting up laws and powers which if some populist does get into power will be so incredibly easy to abuse. If someone is not whipping up violence then of course I’d be saying the same if some peaceful right wing 89 year old was arrested for holding a placard that said “reduce immigration” or “cut funding to the nhs” or something - we should all hope those rights are protected in a democracy.

Someone posted about it being hard to hire new policemen and you have to wonder what’s going through the policemen’s heads when they’re forced to arrest an 89 year old woman sitting peacefully with a placard, no wonder people leave the force, they’d need to be not human to actually not have second thoughts about whether this is the right thing to do - and if they don’t then what kind of humans are we making in our police force? I always thought our police felt much more human and friendly than say US police for example, I don’t think it’s good for our society to try and change that and try and turn our police into mindless, inhuman drones. The government making the law don’t have to deal with the human contact on the ground like the police do - and history has shown that “I was just doing my job/following orders” is neither a legitimate legal nor moral excuse.

Nm.

Funny I used to be anti-royal when I was younger but the institution of it has grown on me more and more over the decades now and now I’m a fairly big fan of the monarchy as an institution, and I think constitutional monarchies are holding up against the rise of populism and democratic backsliding better than the republics are right now.

You’re having a separate conversation and one which has personal and emotional anecdotal evidence to you though and trying to try it together with things it shouldn’t be tied to which is exactly why I feel politicians have an impossible job to bring it up in a democracy. I’m talking about you stating your point is one of “balance”, saying “she’s not the only one” “not all old people are a drain on public finances” as a balance on the average costs of an ageing population and the increasing pension, health care and public service costs to the government and the shrinking ratio of tax payers and the shrinking ratio of people fit to do jobs which require taxing physical or mental labour or that require higher levels of concentration - I just don’t think it’s balance because it’s irrelevant to the discussion, but it’s a common logical fallacy used which make it a political impossibility to discuss. Saying the average older person objectively costs more and it will be unsustainable for the state to fund is not at all saying “all old people are a drain on resources”, so there is nothing there to “balance”. The ageing population, pension system, rising healthcare and public services becoming unsustainable as the average age rises is a profound challenge to all western economies round the world, probably the most profound economic challenge we will face in the 21st century. That isn’t saying “all old people are a drain on politics” and trying to argue emotional individual stories are somehow a balancing argument to that is exactly why no politician wants to discuss such profound changes to our society and way of living, which humanity has never faced before and no one really has much of a clue of what to do with it, with a bargepole As for the “nothing new” again, I think that’s intellectually dishonest and trying to deflect the conversation because demographic change like this *is* extremely new - humans have never faced a situation like this before where the birth rate has dropped way below 2.0 children per women for decades while increasing life expectancy. We’ve always had societies where a large number of younger and middle aged people support a very small relative number of older people before, we’ve never faced societies where a relatively small number of younger and middle aged people have to support a large number of older people before.

And this is the exact problem why politicians can’t do anything about it - because people “balance” individual stories against macro economic trends. It’s not a “balancing” argument providing one anecdotal example against government budgets or clear world trends. And it’s not just about care costs, another example being as people grow older they are less likely to drive and require more public transport which is funded by the tax payer while making them less likely to pay road tax, and there are loads of these other small examples that older people tend to use tax funded services more on average. The types of jobs that are done are also dependent on having enough younger people as part of a demographic - I would guess your mother-in-law does not do the kind of physically demanding work or work which requires hours of concentration of say care workers, nurses or bus drivers which an ageing population increases the need for. These are the OS’ own average findings of how much the average person contributes on tax drops as they get older but the amount they use tax payer funded goods and services in terms of benefits (I.e. pension and disability benefits) and public services (be they nhs, public transport or whatever) This isn’t personal against anyone and nor is it a slight on your mother-in-law who I’m sure works hard but she isn’t an average case spread across a 70million population and these are economic realities which politicians have kind of a political impossibility in talking about exactly because people start taking it personally and like it’s an attack on their elderly family members There is no “balance” to that. To use a Farage-ism - it’s just common sense politics - the older a population and the older the average age gets - the more that on average over a population of 70 million people- the more its working age people are going to struggle to support the older population. How do you sustain a population of seniors (which is the way it is going given no country has successfully been able to reverse birth rates being on the floor) both economically and in terms of just pure number and types of labour needed? https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/ageing/articles/howwouldyousupportourageingpopulation/2019-06-24

Yeah Imperial Japan’s forays into China were utterly brutal and dehumanising of the Chinese people and they killed millions. We overlook it often in the West concentrating on Germany but Imperial Japan were brutal. The bomb was also considered by some as just the next iterative step at the time. The Allies ratcheted up the attacks on Japan after the war had turned in 1944 and 45. Tokyo was completely carpet bombed only a few months before killing 100,000 people to try and get Japan to surrender in “Operation Meetinghouse” which supposedly killed more than Nagasaki or Hiroshima and they carried on. Not convinced Japan could’ve been contained if they got the bomb first.

I honestly think squabbling over whether the Tories or Labour screwed up the country’s economy is missing the point considering population ageing is crippling virtually every western economy. Well now it seems like there’s a good chance Farage will get into power in 2029 (albeit with the huge caveat that both national and world events and crisis take over and these crisis seem to happen with a ridiculous regularity in the modern world), I think a lot of his voters are going to be in for a rude awakening when it turns out there’s no magic money tree where they can just throw money at things to “get things done” and that the real albatross around the government’s neck is the ageing population and that the majority of government spend goes on more and more unsustainable pension, health and care systems because older people objectively cost a hell of a lot more to the state than younger or middle aged people and the ratio of older people to tax payers is becoming more and more out of whack (the pension system alone which was designed for a small proportion of the population to have a gift for 5 years after retirement and not for having 1/3rd of the population draw from it for 20-30 years costs more to the government than education, housing and defence combined). And this isn’t even mentioning the thing Farage is most responsible for that thing politicians aren’t allowed to mention anymore when Farage spent years whipping people up to vote away billions off the country’s economy and government’s income every year.

never mind, deleted a longer post because I just can’t be arsed with this Americanised culture war nonsense that Farage sells anymore. If you really need to go on tv to virtue signal about a company going bust over the most generic and inoffensive tv ad ever which most people in the real world will barely notice and have forgotten they’ve seen it 5 seconds later, it’s probably worth self reflecting on who the real snowflakes who get offended over nothing and peddlers of cancel culture are tbh.

Let’s not use generic AI slop talking with meaningless generality about “in many jurisdictions” I’m not saying you’re right or wrong but this is how AI can easily convince people with scary misinformation and is not a good habit to allow this stuff for the forum. You need to actually search specific legal precedent in the UK legal system.

Yeah but if you eat their shit you get mind reading powers. And we can sell their shit as a spice to control the world economy

Tbf I hate Farage and he’s proving once again that he is the biggest snowflake and cancel culture-er in parliament and the most likely to scream “that’s offensive”. I also think the irony is that he is the one most trying to promote a highly beurocratic (now there’s one word I can never spell) “papers please” big brother style government, but I think I’m with him on this one on this law being a mess waiting to happen and far too easy to bypass anyway.

It seems like it has potential huge data leak written all over it

I think that about a lot of music fashion and stuff, I get it until you’re about the age of 24. After that, it surely starts to feel a bit weird to follow music fashion and some of the lyrics? I dunno maybe just me. Same with some of the bands themselves. I’ve often wondered when you see these guys in their 40s still singing songs they wrote when they were 19 years old if they still think it’s a bit weird or not. Like a band like Blink-182 or Arctic Monkeys and the like who had very teenage-y lyrics. Must be weird now they’re all in their 30s and 40s and still having to play these songs on tour, they can’t have much connection with the lyrics anymore and must find some of them really cringey, I wonder how much deep down they hate a lot of those songs as they grow up. Let alone when some of the old members of Led Zeppelin or Rolling Stones still have to sing these 50 year old songs where they scream “baby” and “child” every other word now they’re all about 80 years old.

I would say though. Why I think it clearly does cause issues and people are right to feel that way, the reality is we *do* have to accept either mass immigration or raising of the pension age, things like winter fuel allowance being cut, less NHS treatment etc. That is just the reality of an ageing population, it’s going to be impossible in a few decades to have a population of a working population entirely working to fund a pension system otherwise and there’s not much the ruling parties can do when the electorate won’t accept either option. And populists are just saying “no you don’t need to accept either”, but then offer no explanation of what they’d do instead (because their isn’t an answer) other than blame the civil service and separation of powers as being slow beurocracy and scream “we’d get things done” by making the government overly powerful and removing the separation of powers that 2,000+ years of European history have shown us democracy needs to stop individuals being able to get too powerful and create authoritarianism.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2kz127pj3o Reform starting the ball rolling on taking down the civil service and checks and balances that hold up democracy. 4 years of chatting this stuff and his voters will get behind him trying to give the government more powers

Could you not get it to make Senß?

Tbh I really doubt I would remember something I said in a work meeting 7 weeks ago let alone 7 years ago either. Not saying he did or didn’t do it or if it’s right or wrong, but also don’t know how that kind of thing can be used as evidence years later for someone to lose their job if there’s no written proof? It definitely feels like BBC just want to publicly be shown to be resetting Masterchef after the Wallace stuff and he’s fallen as collateral damage but obviously I’m not privy to all the information

Yeah, I keep seeing this “Reform are popular amongst young men/generation Z who are all obsessed with social media bros” but whenever I see a poll of how people vote by age group it just seems like a complete myth. Reform are still very much appealing to older voters like the Tories used to and poll pretty squarely in 4th place behind Labour, LibDems and Greens amongst under 25s. If anything the most striking pattern by age is that the younger a person is so much more likely to vote Green. Edit: Here's the latest btw. Only 8% of 18-24 year olds would vote Reform, compared to 28% Labour, 26% Greens and 20% LibDems (and even 9% Tory - turns out I was wrong, Reform are actually in 5th place under 25s). Also worth saying that for all they are chasing Reform and we keep hearing how Labour voters are defecting to Reform and will defect back "if Labour fix the economy and immigration" - 15% of 2024 Labour voters say they'd vote LibDem and 11% say they'd vote for Green compared to the 6% who say they'd vote Reform, so they seem to be losing way more voters to the LibDems and Greens than Reform. Are the 26% of Labour voters who defected to Greens and LibDems really only defecting because they care so much about getting to net negative immigration (or whatever Reform's latest slogan is) and think Greens or LibDems are the parties to do that as the 6% they are supposedly chasing from Reform? Seems to be like its the 2024 Tory voters who have been defecting to Reform not the Labour voters and Labour should be chasing the LibDem and Green voters.

It's also much harder for Brits to move there now though for a reason that political parties won't let anyone mention.

I’m not particularly a fan either as I remember what I was like at 16. That said I don’t think it’s about the education system before 16, I think that is true in general of the population of all ages. Are civics/politics/society classes even mandatory in school in the UK? It’s a long time since I was in school but they never used to be. I think politics is an entirely optional class and unlike the US and many European countries where Civics is mandatory it doesn’t seem to really exist in the UK, and children are never really taught about the ascension of law, the houses of commons and Lords, the separation of powers, international institutions, the checks and balances of western democracies and the reasons behind them etc. I mostly just learnt that as an adult bit by bit over the years.

Ok thanks

Where have you seen that? Cant find it online.

To me it’s not a case of least bad political party, it’s more that the things that are needed to be done to help the low growth, stagnant economy that have existed basically all round Europe, the west and the westernised Asian economies which are caused a great deal by population ageing have become politically impossible for any party to actually do, be they a democratic one or authoritarian one. America has economically fared better the rest of the West, Japan, S. Korea etc. following 2008 but that’s largely been because of mass immigration (both documented and undocumented) and that has become politically impossible now there too and they are obviously enacting a sharp and brutal political pushback on that now. This is an interesting video on South Korea, a country I know you know Mac, btw. Which probably has the worst of these issues out of any because it’s fertility rate dropped so quickly and it’s always been much stricter on immigration than Europe, US, Australia etc.