Sampson

Thanks for the forum Mark. Hope it lasts.

Genuinely made me laugh, but probably not the thread for this.

Absolutely. Which is primarily due to population ageing and the extremely low birth rates of British residents, as in all the western world (which no country had yet been able to solve birth rates) meaning we have way more older people per tax payer than we had in the recent past and this is only going in one direction and it ultimately requires immigration from non-western countries to fix anytime soon. Even if some country were to find a way to increase the birth rate back to the 2.1-2.4 needed tomorrow , it would take 20+ years until these children could work in the public services

Like Brexit, the views of immigration are very split by age (much more so than they are by class) accord to virtually all polls - it was by far the biggest age split at the last election, and like Brexit, because of population ageing, it ends up with politicians pandering to and legitimising the view of pensioners. Immigration was considered the biggest issue amongst 65+ last election but a minor issue amongst under 50s, you can just as easily argue this is because older people don’t want to take responsibility that it was their generation voting in Thatcher, privatisation, stopping public funds in building houses and hoovering up the houses to own several homes, turning them into houses of multiple occupancy and renting them out at extortionate prices who broke the housing market, not immigrants, and that immigrants are an easy scapegoat to these problems they’ve created. But that’s just one viewpoint. Older politicians might claim this is young working class people annoyed at immigration, but almost all polls show younger people are mostly pro-immigration and it’s the over 50s (I.e. the vast majority of politician fanning the flames who are the ones overwhelmingly anti-immigration). Make of that what you will.

We’ve been playing Wandering Towers a lot recently. Really fun game.

Absolutely. I often wrestle with the opposite too, that free will is the scarier option - that if it’s all pre-planned or random and the universe is so huge then we have no control over it and all our mistakes, no matter how huge, don’t even register on the universal scale and will all be forgotten within a blink of an eye after we die anyway so may as well make the most of the ride while we’re here and accept our mistakes and faults, no matter how big. But then if it’s free will, we have a conscious responsibility to society which we have to uphold, which is kind of scarier to live up to in a way. Kurzgestadt (the channel I posted which is a great science YouTube channel), also posted something similar about how sometimes feeling small and meaningless can help set you free

Interesting explanation which helps a topic I’ve always struggled to get my head around about how time is probably just a trick of the brain. The more I learn about how the universe works the more and more I’m convinced that it’s impossible for humans to have free will. Whether the universe is random or deterministic I don’t know but I can’t see a way how our brains aren’t just governed by the same forces as everything external to them are.

I feel you man. I disagreed strongly with what you said but these arbitrary banning are absurd. It hasn’t even stopped anyone. There’s others in the thread now having the exact same discussions and not getting banned.

Nothing against you personally, I’m happy to still have conversations with you, was more a dig at this new modding system where it seems all you have to do is flag someone you disagree with regardless of what they say and they get banned without having any previous warnings. Meanwhile others discuss exactly the same issues and don’t get banned. Even leicsmac has been banned from the news thread and he’s like the nicest and most understanding person on the forum Everything is political but they’re seems to be arbitrary distinction about what is and what isn’t politics and then they just ban people without prior warning for crossing this arbitrary line when they were never told what it was. Meanwhile the exact people they were quoting and discussing with when apparently crossing this line don’t get banned. It’s bizarre.

I got banned from the new news thread without a single warning when my only post in there was saying “never a good way to start a statement” quoting a post by Dr the Singh saying “I know some people, they’re not racist but…” then saying about how Muslims get preferential treatment by the police: Of course he didn’t get banned from the thread at all so I guess the mods here disagree.

I largely agree except the bit in brackets. This isn’t what the riots are about at all. It’s nothing to do with immigration, it’s about a bunch of lunatics wanting a pure white ethno-state and wanting to beat up non-white people regardless of whether they’re British born or raised or moved from another country. The kid in Southport wasn’t an immigrant, he was born and raised in Wales. The number of people trying to bend head over heels to legitimise these riots as “concerns over immigration” is frightening. These people are attacking mosques and taxi drivers. They don’t care about whether these people are immigrants or British, they just care that they’re not white,

Are you talking to yourself?

You surely jest? I think you can surely understand the difference of someone saying “Cov scum” about one of your clubs rival football clubs on a football forum and someone actually going round smashing up mosques because of what some kid from Wales with heritage from an evangelical Christian African country did? I would hooe you are intelligent enough to see that most people saying “Cov scum” in a football context would still perfectly happily get along with a person from Coventry and certainly not actually go round setting things iin Coventry on fire and rioting in Coventry because some guy from Daventry stabbed someone and they think that anyone from a city that ends in “try” is the same thing.

This country has gone to the dogs since David Cameron decided to start appeasing Farage over an issue that only 8% of voters said they actually cared about.

****ing hell. I know it’s easy to mock “both sidesism”, but this one takes the cake. It’s the lefts fault because a bunch of far right loonies are smashing up mosques and cities because a Christian boy from Wales stabbed someone.

All reminds me of that old joke: Hiw do you define being English? Being English is about driving home from work in your German car, to stop off at an Irish themed pub, drinking a Danish lager, then going home and otdering an Indian takeaway on your Korean phone to eat while sitting on your Swedish sofa and watch American tv shows on your Japanese tv. All the while remaining suspicious of anything remotely foreign.

That punchline cracked me up so much

Not fully true. As the Isle of Man and Channel Islands are also part of the British Isles but not part the UK. Having lived in Portsmouth and therefore not on mainland England for many years I’m inclined to be pedantic and say “Great Britain is the island” is also not always technically true as most of Portsmouth (Portsea Island) and the Isle of Wight (as well as hundreds of Scottish islands) aren’t on mainland Great Britain but are still considered part of Great Britain for political purposes. Great Britain just means England + Scotland + Wales.

May be wrong but isn’t Rwanda primarily a Christian country not a Muslim one?

It’s a vicious cycle though. I find it hard for people to say “I understand why the EDL do what they do as they feel out of control and vilified in society” but not also say “I understand why so many Muslims feel so isolated and vilified in society”. Absolute neither is an excuse for violence btw, let alone going round stabbing people, but regardless of which one “started it”, how exactly can you understand the EDL but not the same thing that Muslims have to put up with losing out on jobs and feeling treated as outsiders too?

An entirely hypothetical situation gives more weight to the opinion that multiculturalism is failing? What?

What does that even mean?

Unfair to play “bothsidism” on this when the far right are the ones smashing up towns in an anti-Muslim display. What exactly do the left have to do with any of this?

You can’t just overturn laws because a bunch of lowlifes are using it as a flimsy excuse to perform hate crimes.

Tommy Robinson, that great British anti-immigrant patriot who lives in Spain on his Irish passport.