Sampson

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.

I think it’s more that, as has been the case over the past decade, that political crisis and events take over. I think Farage has got his base now and I don’t see those voters changing their mind regardless of what Labour do with the immigration and economy (and tbh I think a big problem is I think a lot of the issues people care about are opposed to how you grow an economy - I don’t see how you can fix an ageing population’s economy where the labour supply is buckling under those who need care and state support without immigration and/or making politically unpopular opinions like the cutting fuel allowance or raising the retirement age - but we saw the backlash Labour got for cutting winter fuel allowance on pensioners). In that way I think Farage is on course to win the election regardless of what Labour do because it’s a catch 22. However, the mitigation here is that the world over the past decade has swung violently from one political crisis to another and these end up taking control of the narrative so things like escalations/ending of the war in Ukraine, a natural disaster, another pandemic or war or such like can completely swing the public’s view. The world feels a very different place to me than it did 4 years ago and will no doubt do in another 4 years. But a lot of that is really out of the government’s control.

No one should ever consider themselves too cool for Queen or ABBA, not even should they be ever even be called a guilty pleasure. Both genuinely wrote so many amazing and catchy songs,

Nah let’s be fair, most people outside the British Isles know England, Scotland and Ireland (as in the island of Ireland) and think they are either 3 independent nations or just one big nation coving the entire British Isles. Most people outside of UK & Ireland couldn’t tell you what Wales, Northern Ireland or the Isle of Man are. It’s understandable though. Most Brits couldn’t tell you where Catalonia or Bavaria are either, most people just aren’t that interested in these things.

Tbh many British and Irish people can’t tell you the difference between the UK, Great Britain and England, let alone where stuff like the Isle of Man or the Channel Islands fit into it all. I don’t know why we expect people not from the British Isles to know.

Yeah there’s plenty of great things about British culture im proud of - modern parliamentary liberal democracy, the separation of powers and institutions that we modernised: industrialisation and engineering of the railway systems and bridges etc. we gave to the world, self-effacing humour, that we have a certain tongue-in-cheek attitude I don’t see from many other countries, and I’ve definitely become a fan of the monarchy and constitutional monarchy as I’ve got older in a way I would’ve scoffed at when I was younger. My issue isn’t the displaying of flags or being proud of your country. It’s when it spillls over into hiding behind patriotism and waving the flag and signing the national songs to actually attack your country and others to get what you want which is what Farage has spent the past 15 years doing, in that claims he is a patriot by flying the flag and signing Rule Britannia at the top of his voice, but he never has a good word to say about Britain and all he ever does is talk the country down and go on about what a shithole it is in order to argue only *he* can make it great by leaving x institution. This isn’t a uniquely British problem btw. It’s happening all over the west.

I’m not convinced at all that those things will stop people voting Farage tbh. Farage will always move the goalposts and always finds one more reason to talk Britain down or one more institution to go after.

The short and perhaps scariest answer (at least according to Rory Stewart) is much of our military equipment, our defence, including supposedly even our nuclear deterrent. That’s why Europe is having to be careful whilst it weens itself out the US bubble

May be confusing you with another user but haven’t you spent like 2 years saying sending our troops in would be a disaster? Feels a bit hindsighty to say it’s overdue, common thread of most has been we want to avoid direct conflict between NATO and Russia, as much as most of us have sympathy for Ukraine.

Sorry to hear that. It’s always a surreal experience when a close friend or family member dies. You never truly get over it but hope you can at least get to a place of living with the loss.

No you’re not the only one by a long stretch, most of us feel the same, but that’s also half the point. The flooding of information until people get ground down by it and switch off is a big part of the political strategy. Disenfranchising voters by flooding them with endless information about how the country and world is broken to get people feeling emotionally exhausted is kind of how populism ends up winning, and how the traditional parties are seen as not being able to fix every single minute problem with the world. The internet and social media has allowed that. It’s only a generation ago most of us just tuned in for 5 minutes a day to see the headlines on the 6 o’clock news and that was it, nowadays you can’t avoid it. I empathise with those who want to and can switch off to it, but I also feel that’s kind of the point, to make everyone feel fearful and exhausted. Truth is, it’s summer - you can go out in any town or city in the uk and see millions people drinking and eating and having a great time enjoying time with friends and family, which is ultimately what life’s about. The country isn’t anywhere near broken or as much of a shithole as Farage or Corbyn would like us to believe and neither immigrants nor the wealthy elite are really destroying it in a way that really affects most of our actual day to day lives.

I get people want to reduce immigration, but this is why you shouldn’t vote for protest parties who aren’t established enough so just scramble around trying to get whoever they can to fill numbers in council elections where they can’t do anything about the things at national and international level you’re protest voting against. Inexperienced teenagers have been put in control of 70% of Leicestershire County Council’s budget. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jul/05/nigel-farage-reform-uk-teenage-councillors-vital-public-services At Leicestershire county council, the Reform councillor Charles Pugsley, 19, has been made the cabinet member for children and family services. Pugsley’s elevation has caused particular concern, as has that of Joseph Boam, a 22-year-old who has been made the deputy council leader and handed the adult social care portfolio, despite having previously expressed the view that “depression isn’t real”. Their relative lack of experience has caused unease across the political divide. Deborah Taylor, a Conservative councillor and leader of the opposition who was the previous cabinet member for children and families in Leicestershire, questioned their qualifications to hold roles overseeing services that account for more than 70% of the council’s £616m budget.

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Our voting system isn’t really fixed for it though. Most European countries have PR. We have FPTP which was kind of kept because it kept the 2 party system up. Now we’ve become a 5 party system it means a party can get 100% of the power on less than 30% of the vote.