Sampson

I’m not disagreeing with you tbh apart from the last bit, I think there’s plenty of Tories who come across as actual adults. But there is definitely something in her that seems like she feels like she has to massively overcompensate how strong and how much control she has, to the point it comes across as very silly and like someone who never grew out of their teenage emotions, like she’s desperately trying to fit in with secondary school cliques.

Agree with you 100%. There is a chance that if their numbers are way down and they need a big play come 2029 that Labour go all in on a pro-EU campaign but there’s an awful lot of things that will happen before then which will change the mood of the country. Not least with Ukraine and Russia, which has probably been the major factor driving British people away from America and towards Europe over the past few years.

The polls have been showing it for years. Sadly I think the political appetite from the Labour Party isn’t there. Starner bizarrely said the UK wouldn’t rejoin “any part of the EU or customs union or have freedom of movement… in his lifetime” despite the fact his parties voters overwhelmingly support it. It’s the reason he turned me off Labour I voted LibDem over Labour the last election. Fair enough in the short term it’s not going to happen but the guy is 61 and could live for another 30 years, to rule out moving even slightly back towards the EU within 30 years struck me as bizarre given his voter base - that’s a hell of a long time in geopolitics, I mean think about the difference in Japan or West Germany from 1945 to 1975 or the difference in the Baltic countries from post-recovering ex Soviet states in 1994 to some of the happiest and highest UN index countries in the world today. Russia and Turkey could’ve embraced democracy and have joined the EU by then for all we know.

Her interviews are just always so incredibly weird, it’s like something a 14 year old boy would say in the schoolyard to try and convince his friends he’s not gay. I’m pretty convinced by this point she is pretty strongly autistic, like she doesn’t seem to understand adult social conventions.

nevermind

Wasn’t it around 17mil Lab-LibDem-Green to around 10mil Tory-Reform last time round? That’s a huge margin. I think Labour could lose their majority but I can’t really see them being in a position where a Lab-Lib coalition is also gone. There’s too much ground for the Right in the uk to make up imo and LibDems are way closer to Labour than Tories nowadays unlike in 2010. Tories and Reform will split each others vote too much. Tories got power so often in the last because they had little competition and LibDems and Greens would split Labour’s vote.

The west is ****ed. Wonder if we’ll be able to hold out till the centenium of WW2 in 2039 before WW3. I don’t hold out hope. I do totally get the frustration and wanting to tear down society and start again. But voting Reform and turning everyone on immigrants to create an us vs them culture so they can anba international treaties designed to protect European citizens from their own governments isn’t the way to do that ffs. I’d have hoped they’d have learnt that Farage was a total snake oil salesman after his lifetime goal of Brexit solved nothing and only caused more problems, but still they keep going. It’s exactly the same thing, campaigning against something without actually offering what will happen afterward

I always heard it as laurel laurel kin

So you’re saying dodging taxes is a valid reason?

I think EU/EEC, Switzerland, UK and the non-EU Balkan states are probably going to need their own defence treaty if it’s clear Trump doesn’t care about NATO anymore. I think the Cold War idea of “the west” is probably nearing its end tbh.

Of course I agree with him that the Tories turned their back on the world but I think realistically we are going to have to choose between the US and EU if Trump starts an economic war and gives up on Ukraine. And to me at least the only logical option is the EU, not least simply because of our geographical location and Russia’s aggression on the borders of the EU. Geography matters a lot with regards to trade and geo-politics and your neighbours are always going to be the most important.

Yes I agree with you. What I meant is if all my loved ones are dead I’d be happier to go rather than just exist for the sake of it

Nah that’s not what I’m saying. I don’t think we should allow that. It was just a personal philosophical point on the question on whether death is worse than extreme pain, personally I think plenty of things are worse than death, but the thing that scares me about death is not getting to see my loved ones. Not for one second suggesting we should change the laws in that way but I do understand why some people say they’re ready to give up at the end if that makes sense.

I think it differs person to person. TBH I dread the end of my life if my family and friends are dead. I remember my grandma at the end. My granddad died 15 years before, all her friends died a few years before. She was too frail to really go out and meet new people, so just sat in the house and watched tv all day for the last 5 or 6 years of her life. It can’t have been much of a life. You’re know you’re going to die soon anyway at that point, what’s the point of living just to exist? I sometimes think about the the pain and boredom of the final few years and it fills me with dread tbh. Dying scares me like everyone, but mostly because I won’t be able to see my loved ones anymore, if they’re all dead or can’t live for themselves because they have to care for me, what’s the point if I’m in pain or can’t do anything?

Here was the final vote btw. I’m glad parties didn’t whip an issue like this

I mostly agree, with the exception of the ever eye rolling Robert Jenrick who had to chime in with the pretty despicable dog whistling that approving it “would be giving over the decisions to "activist judges in Strasbourg".” in an otherwise mature debate.

Interesting how non-party this issue seems to be. Yes and No votes from close allies in the same party and similar votes from people with different opinions in every other area of life. Here’s a list I saw of a few people voting for and against the bill: Yes: Keir Starmer, Rishi Sunak, Rachael Reeves, Lee Anderson, Ed Miliband, Liz Kendall, Layla Moran No: Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick, Jeremy Corbyn, Ed Davey, Nigel Farage, David Lammy, Angela Rayner

There’s a difference between not having time for people and having them decried and plastered all over the news so they can’t escape for the rest of their life from though. It’s that kind of public shaming and humiliation I really feel goes too far. If he quietly loses his job that’s warranted; but it’s the public humiliation is frightening to me, it’s the modern equivalent of putting someone in stocks in town so people can throw tomatoes at them, it’s a brutal punishment worse than prison in a lot of cases and it’s inhumane. I feel it plays a big part in the culture that has meant people have such horrible mental health nowadays, people are too scared to make mistakes nowadays because it can essentially shut them out from society. But everyone makes major life mistakes and ****s up in major ways at some point in their life. If you make a heap of all your winnings, risk it all on one game of pitch-and-toss, and lose, you should be allowed to start again at your beginnings.

I edited the domestic abuse bit out because I googled it and it turns out it’s not true.

I think chimney was American slang for a black eye. Or that’s the usual explanation anyway.

I think like a lot of Christmas stuff, it’s something to do/look forward to in the winter. I find the winter horrible to my mental health but Christmas and doing Christmassy things gives me something to focus on. Once it gets to January and February, after new years I always find it brutal.

There was a popular song in the 90s where the chorus was “what’s she gonna look like with a chimney on her?”

Amazing how many of the “you lost, get over it” types on a referendum nearly a decade ago are begging for another election after less than 6 months because they can’t handle that they lost.

I suppose that’s true, but people said the same thing about using UK weaponary at the start of the war. Plenty of Putin’s red lines have already been crossed and bluffs have been called, I’m not convinced we’d see our government overthrown if it happened. I suppose it depends on how much the west feel Putin is bluffing really.

I highly doubt it. The UK public is pretty staunchly behind Ukraine. It’s not like Iraq where a good proportion of the country was against it (and which still saw the government re elected anyway).