Sampson

I’m not sure how you do grasp the nettle though. You saw what happened in France when they tried to raise the retirement age by just 2 years or the winter fuel allowance causing massive drops in the poll by the government here in the UK just a few months ago. The problem is if it gets to the stage where the average voting age is 60, you can’t really start doing things that financially harm this sector of society when there’s some populist who will scream to high heaven they’re giving all this money to other causes and taking it from the voting population. A decade ago it was assumed that you could increase immigration and import workers from abroad to increase tax payers, but the populists have successfully weaponised immigration so much that increasing immigration numbers is also becoming politically impossible. I dunno. We’re all working more now to deal with the impact of it and 60 hour work weeks will probably be on the agenda at some point sadly.

I don’t disagree with you on the first part. I’m not sure why you think I do. I was responding to someone moaning about how we spend money on defence and refugees but not on other areas. My point is populist politicians have long used things like spending on immigration and defence as scapegoats for populist ideas about “why isn’t your life better? We could spend elsewhere instead of on these things that don’t immediately affect you short-term”. Very few western economies have worked since the 2008 financial crisis in terms of making better lives for the working or middle class, that isn’t a UK specific problem, it’s as relevant in Japan, Australia and Germany as it is in the UK. The biggest problem facing western economies is population ageing, but immigration and defence spending become easy scapegoats, as population ageing is an inherently political impossible question to bring up. Western countries have still not really got to grips with this despite it being a known problem for decades. How we deal with it I have no idea, but falling for traps about “why do we spend on immigration and defence?” isn’t helpful and one of the reasons populism is winning at the moment in the west.

You don’t fix your economy by not caring about what happens in the rest of the world. And you certainly don’t reduce refugee numbers by doing it. Just look at the US economy tanking and food prices going through the roof as it tries to pull foreign aid and turn isolationist. Not to mention it will come back and bite you years later. You really think the US suddenly pulling aid from Jordan as it tries to build democratic institutions is not just creating a recipe for future attacks on the west or more refugees coming to the west from thieve countries in the future? Not to mention, due to its island nature with limited resources and climate options, UK’s economy is always going to be inherently dependent on having peaceful and economically thriving European neighbours. “Why are spending money on aid to Ukraine and refugees instead of at home” misses the point, you spend this money abroad so it doesn’t cause way more costs at home in the future.

What I’ll never understand is why so many conservatives get behind the likes of Trump and Farage when they are extremely radical leaders who are the polar opposite of conservatism i.e. conserving tradition and order and they are in favour of smashing it. Similarly, We are always told the Tories were “the party of law and order” but the likes of Trump and Farage are all about not caring about both international and national laws and order and trying to find ways to smash them or just flat out ignore them.

I never agreed with “Red Tories” when it came to Blair and especially Brown, but Starmer is clearly governing noticeably to the right of them. Think it’s interesting to see some people still claim Labour are “lefties” while they’re undertaking a brutal period of austerity. It’s hard not to think that Labour under Starmer is actually quite right wing economically, probably similar to the Cameron/Osborne Tories.

That kind of misses the point for me and is also a bit of a cop out. The point is that if you can even create a legal reason to deport a legal resident living married to an American because of protesting then that’s a pretty scary precedent to have and makes me feel uncomfortable. The right to protest should be one of the absolute pillars of democracy.

When I was growing up, I was always told that the reason democracy is better and we have freedom is that we have the freedom to protest against things we consider injustices and vote our governments we don’t like. Freedom to protest was drilled into me as one of the absolute fundamentals of democracy. Trump trying to deport a legal, permanent resident married to an American citizen for protesting makes me extremely uncomfortable. Not just uncomfortable because I feel for individual or others in similar situation, but it’s this continuation of using anti-immigrant rhetoric as a convenient excuse to gain more power for the president and to erode away the checks and balances of power that hold up democracy. It feels like the first step - make anti-protest laws against immigrants because most voters don’t care about them only to build in legal creep for prison time for anyone, who protests. Just feels like “first they came for the communists…” stuff.

Firstly, absolutely nothing to feel guilty about and you should absolutely post about it in this thread, don't think your feelings have less worth because they're not about grief or dealing with horrible situations that happen to you. I, and many others, often feel the same way about the monotomy of life too. I've often wondered whether humans are addicted to the chemicals released when you're in the "flight or fight" anxiety mode. Which is what makes boredom and the monotony of day to day life often such a struggle. Humans evolved not to feel happy but to survive after all. And the truth is, the happy and docile used to get eaten by tigers. Whilst those who were hype-anxious, replayed everything over and over in their heads, constantly on edge, more likely to be in "fight or flight" mode are much more likely to survive. Unfortunately, we're not in that world anymore, we've made a world of comfort where being eaten by tigers or knowing where the next meal is coming from (which is what human brains were filtered out to do over hundreds of millions of years), but overwhelming information does. I often wonder whether we're addicted to being in that "fight or flight" response, as it was much more useful for us in nature to be addicted to that than to be addicted to happiness. And boredom is sort of an emotional response to not being in that state enough. The human brain is a weird computer, and it wasn't filtered by evolution to be happy, nor to deal with our modern world, it was filtered by those humans and ancestors to humans surviving by being better built to survive by hunting and avoiding wild predators. I often wonder if that's why in the modern world, we get addicted to searching outrageous things in the news or online, because it gives us energy and puts us into that emotional state. I don't know, just pop psychology and speculation really. But more just a thought that you shouldn't blame yourself if you feel this way, and neither should you think that there aren't hundreds of millions of people out there who also struggle with the monotony of daily life.

Trump already does this. You really think they should just sit there while Russia drone attacks and not retaliate, because it might make Trump do what he’s already doing anyway? No offense, as I think you often make good points, but this one just doesn't really make sense to me. Ukraine shouldn't just sit there and take it.

Just read that. It’s quite heartbreaking

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/picture/2025/mar/07/please-let-mr-hitler-speak-the-trouble-with-hearing-from-both-sides-the-stephen-collins-cartoon

I know you should focus on things you can change and shouldn’t let the outside world affect you, but anyone else really struggling with the news atm? Just feels like the world is spinning out of control faster than anyone can wrap their heads round it. It’s the same kind of anxiety I had during most of 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic.

I wonder if Farage will get the hint.

Likely because he promises people things like power, money or erasing people’s mistakes in life.

We did Cape Verde a couple of years ago - was really good - it’s a great alternative to The Canaries or Egypt if you just want a packaged beach holiday - although one thing is the sea was too rough to go in being out much more in the middle of the ocean

Yeah remember Boris being well ahead of the polls in the early stages of the pandemic in 2020? But the world had changed so much by the next election. The world seems to moves way faster now than it did 10 years ago. We have no idea how the world will look in 2028 so i don’t know how we can rely on it anymore.

Be interesting how Farage the Patriot reacts to Vance calling Britain and France “nothing countries” - if he still continues to prioritise making excuses for his American and Russian idols over Britain and its European allies and neighbours.

Ok thank you. Yes this was the one

For some reason, a long dormant memory crossed my mind this morning of reading an old away match programme on the way home from an away game about 15-20 years ago (no idea which game) which gave facts about the away team (I.e. Leicester). One of the facts was about a fiction book (maybe science fiction set in the future) where Leicester had won the league and FA Cup multiple and even the World Cup to boot. They might not have necessarily been a Leicester fan, just that it was a weird aside to have in their book I guess. A quick google and I can’t find anything, so maybe this is a false memory. Does anyone know of this book? Has been made aware of this fact?

It already feels like 5 years. The world feels like it’s changed so drastically already. Feels like Feb-March 2020 with the same amount of society shifting shit firing off everywhere.

Even Pritti Patel seems to be calling him out tbf to someone whose politics I otherwise strongly dislike. It shouldn’t matter if your left right or centre on this, it’s clear Starmer is doing the right thing. The defence of the UK and its neighbours should always be the most important thing for the government.

They’re nuts. Even the Tories are backing Starmer over the weekend. It actually felt a bit like a wartime coalition with Labour and Conservatives realising the country’s defence is more important than squabbling. But Farage is still going on national radio, refusing to call out Putin, backing Trump and saying he doesn’t like Ukraine as a country. Don’t know how people see him as a “man of the people”. All Farage ever does is talk Britain and Europe down to try and sew division.

Yes but I do barely know her In fact she’s from northern Italy - Genoa?

I do think a lot of this is about optics and bringing Europe together for the future to try and created a united block. Russia and Trump want a divided Europe and I think a lot of this is as much a message to European nations that times have changed and we need closer ties. I’ve never known a time when so many Brits refer to “Europe” as a whole entity including the UK as I have in the past week or two. Part of it feels like a complete shift in the way we see ourselves in the world.

If that’s true fair enough . All I saw was on bbc saying he hadn’t made a statement yet