Sampson

Luxembourg is fun

Australia is great fun

Yes, I’ve managed to do a long weekend trip with only underseat baggage and not had to pay for extra baggage with my Cabin Max a few times. It’s surprisingly roomy and you can fit 3-4 days of clothing in there. Never had it checked either and always fits under the seat in front.

With regards to cabin sized backpacks, I’d recommend the company Cabin Max. Their bags are all on Amazon. I’ve had this one for years (but they have loads of different designs and sizes), when it first arrived I thought it would be flimsy but it’s surprisingly strong. One of the clips for the handles broke a couple of years ago but I just emailed the company and they sent me a replacement clip for free. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cabin-Max-Manhattan-Underseat-40x20x25/dp/B0BNNT4MRZ/ref=mp_s_a_1_3_sspa?crid=3A9G1EV8VJT71&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.UAp4bISPmVqTxf4tS-aS3J_KCtPi1uE_V4Wq-P0Iv5UAPkqRi-dcTzRzokBTzUdrvTD6_DFx1ZJDqjX1okWQCWxFquzFolScVJL3u3AfjFNmMPNPml5HBlcGJ1WPfa1zkcHRYY3n_ECOikOtw_cmuM8IRRcEydNSNnG56IRNSG6PtAN8jWtfMyWoXRyu3iFDVFRtUuxKISCeQTxH64Kehdd_Ey2C0auEzc-3JRA4xehcrSNvyimWPYF8vwmiZeWWLdPiGs6bh_s2GgX18perRHlOWkliNUfGceekEfK3gCw.WaW1hNmxn9s2oyTbX1If1S9o5lsQjjeh-sgPwIa6g58&dib_tag=se&keywords=cabin%2Bmax&qid=1747295150&sprefix=cabin%2Bmac%2Caps%2C108&sr=8-3-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9waG9uZV9zZWFyY2hfYXRm&psc=1&th=1

I don’t think it’s “keeping up with the times” to get in a washed up pop star from the 90s who half of Europe have probably never heard of.

I think for a while in the late 90s/early 00s it got about friendly countries voting for each other, but that largely stopped being true in the 00s when they brought juries in. If it genuinely was all about political voting and voting for your neighbours then the same country would win every year. I’d say the stand out song usually wins, although the staging is also a big part of it.

Last night I enjoyed Albania and Switzerland. I do enjoy Sweden’s but thought the sound quality was out of whack and poor compared to what I’d seen on YouTube. So hope they improve it for the final

We get barely any points because we usually send in terrible and forgettable songs. 3 years ago we sent in a good song and came 2nd. Don’t know why some British people have to play the victim card that everyone hates us because our shit songs don’t get any votes. Our song this year is definitely better than the last 2 years though. If it has decent staging it could do alright.

Not today but last week I found out that elephants are really good swimmers. And they like to swim just under the water and use their trunk as a snorkel.

Honestly, Vardy at least got 9 goals. Yeah he’s past it but there’s still been no one better than him this season. im voting him anyway more as a lifetime achievement thing. And because he should have 2 anyway because of that season he was utterly bizarrely robbed of the award by Maguire when Vardy was basically a one man team under Puel.

Great for the update! Just hope you can keep up small steps to keep going in the better place

498 appearances and 199 goals for us now. One thing to look forward to in the last few matches is hopefully for him to get to 500 appearances and 200 goals.

Good luck to your daughter! Hope her hard work pays off.

Labour I 100% agree, same with LibDems. Tories purged all the moderates in their party under Johnson and so have only Reform sympathisers left. The likes of Badenoch and Jenrick are Farageists and Trumpists themselves in ideology, so won’t criticise him. Badenoch is openly offering to stand down against Reform in order to position the Tories to be a junior partner in a coalition with Reform.

What does population density have to do with our ability to build infrastructure for a few tens of thousands of people every year? From what I know the number of people coming in on small boats is not much bigger (if at all) than the number of people who leave the country every year, and make up a small percentage of all inward migration anyway

The Geneva Convention says you don’t need to claim asylum in the first safe country. That makes sense because otherwise you’d just get neighbouring countries resources overwhelmed (this is despite 77% of people claiming asylum in a neighbouring country). We take much less refugees than the other larger 60million+ European countries like Germany, France or Turkey. I personally don’t see why UK should be an exception and not take its fair share.

The issue here isn’t people growing older per se, it’s the fact that for decades people in the west suddenly started having way less children and so there is not enough workers to support them, general rule of thumb is you need around 3 workers per retired person for the pension and healthcare systems to function - and in most western countries we’re on course to reach the point where it’s like 1.5 workers for every retired person (or even 1:1 in some places). For years it was assumed we’d solve this problem by just importing workers, but the western world has obviously taken a sharp turn against this and being pro-immigration is becoming a more and more politically unelectable position.

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