Sampson

Absolutely no one is saying the old are the problem - actually quite the opposite, people are saying the problem is that people aren’t having enough children so the older can’t be supported. No one is blaming the old or saying they should be happy to die or not be supported by the state, or that they haven’t paid into the system. The fact people are trying to spin discussions on population ageing and the demographic crisis as that is exactly one of the problems as to why populists get an easy win off it and why the political optics of the discussion are so difficult. You’re completely misunderstanding the debate. It’s simply undeniable fact that the older a person is, the more on average they cost the health service, claim disability benefits or pensions, these stats are publishers on the ONS every year and can be found on the government website each year, last I remember a retired person costs the UK government more than twice as much as a working age person every year on average in terms of healthcare, pensions and disability benefits. That is absolutely not a moral judgement on that or to say they didn’t “earn” that by working hard. The issue isn’t the old people, it’s that people in western countries are not having enough children so the population is becoming made up not just a small proportion of older people as had always previously been the case, but becoming a population of a majority of older people and there are not enough working people now to pay into the system to support the older people.

Even if you manage to get higher birth rates today (which no western country has still been able to do despite a myriad of different policies in different countries trying), it takes about a quarter of a century for anyone born today to be able to become a trained nurse or doctor for example and that if we really push for higher birth rates that likely even takes many parents, especially mothers out of the workforce for a few years whilst they’re caring for their children’s. So it’s not something you can solve anytime soon. You can increase retirement age of course, but even then many companies will simply not hire 68 year olds and it’s very difficult for older people to find work or they are unable to work for medical or health reasons, so in a lot of cases you’re just moving the public outgoings from pension to job seeker or disability benefits which doesn’t solve anything either. It’s also very difficult to even do this politically, as we saw with the fallout for the winter fuel allowance here or the riots in France for raising retirement age by 2 years - it’s an easy win for populists to rally against and claim is a disgrace etc. It’s something which no country seems able to solve and even if they knew how, the political optics of it are extremely difficult too. I think just our modern individualistic lifestyles are just not really compatible with high birth rates and everyone having 2.4 children tbh and there’s not really a lot wrong with that from an individual point of view, even if it’s a huge problem society has to face. No one owes their country children and we all only live once, more and more people and couples prefer to prioritise other things than spending their 30s and 40s raising 3 children, in that case I don’t know even if financial encouragement for having more children would really solve much.

It’s the same in every western country tbh and even many developing nations now too (see how China’s pension system is bankrupt in many regions for example) No country no knows how to deal with population ageing and no country has been able to successfully get the birth rate up. Meanwhile, no country has been able to deal with the political fall out of the immigration that’s needed to successfully deal with population ageing or the populists who are using endless anti-immigrant rhetoric for their own ends. Reality is, older people are naturally the ones who use the majority of public money - be it healthcare, disability benefits or pensions, and when most of your country is over 50, you don’t have enough workers to generate that public money and even the richest country isn’t going to be able to afford it.

But he was only good for about half a season before the injury. The season before that everyone thought he was out his depth and wanted him sold. So I don’t think it’s about the injury really. I think the reality is more that he’s been here about 5 years now, and he had one great half a season and 4 1/2 crap ones, but that was very much the exception to the role.

I’m not having any revisionism on Sunak. His campaigning during the election was vile, repeating outright lies about how much certain things would cost, demeaning trans people, treating international institutions like the ECJ as bogeyman. Just because he’s not as cruel as Jedenak or Badenoch or as weird as Boris or Truss, doesn’t make him still not an awful leader, and he is still incredibly weird and unrepeatable even for a billionaire politician

I don’t think Trump gives one hoot about Europe so I doubt it matters much what the UK does. The idea of “the west” being important with the US, Canada, Western & Central Europe have past now I think. The US cares a lot more about the goings on and trying to get on with Asia far more than Europe nowadays.

But do you ebleive it?

At 4:14, that’s clearly the trucks fault for pulling out on a roundabout without looking right, the Golf has clear right of way. Dunno why the commentator has a go at someone for going on a roundabout as intended and the car can’t just emergency stop on a roundabout, could cause a cascade of accidents, swerving round the truck is the safest thing to do in that situation.

Yeah and the US as an English speaking former colony helped prop up our economy through foreign aid and workers from the former British colonies in the Caribbean from the wind rush generation came to help rebuild the country in exchange for the promise and draw of lifelong residency in the UK. Not to mention UK forced labour camps existed still in for example Kenya long after WW2 ended. I think you’re being naive (somewhat deliberately I would guess, as I know you’re an intelligent person) if you can’t see how a a not insignificant amount of wealth for both the UK and other western nations came from and still continues comes from our place in the world built on former empires, colonialism and/or slavery - even if it comes through more nuanced soft influence such as selling romantic visions of our big cities to tourists built on resources which weren’t fairly compensated for to countries who had their resources directed away so the UK and other western nations could industrialise first. It takes 100s of years to build up a nation and an average British person has a lot more than an average person in sub Saharan Africa for example, there are many reasons why, but a percentage of it, which is certainly not a non-existent percentage, is undoubtedly down to empire building, colonialism and slavery. Of course it’s impossible to quantify so it will never happen, but I still have extreme sympathy for the nations who still are at the economic disadvantage caused by empire building and to say that the loot of empire doesn’t exist anymore is clearly just being wilfully provocative.

I think things like corruption, democratic backsliding and populism win in the end, bit by bit, over generations. Like, we saw how angry Labour and many Labour supporters were at the last Tory governments bills which let them revoke citizenship from people who have dual citizenship and to give the Home Secretary the power to shut down any protest they like and to send protesters to prison, but they’ve done nothing to indicate they’re planning on reversing these changes now they’re in power. These policies are likely in place for the long run now.

Except even Farage was selling campaigning as us becoming like Norway (who still have freedom of movement but not freedom of goods) in the lead up to the referendum and Boris campaigned saying UK citizens would still be able to go through the EU passport controls booths at airports after Brexit. I think it was yourself who said recently most of us seem to have blocked out what some of the pre-referendum campaigning actually was like (another one I remember were billboards about 80million Turkish people coming to the UK even though Turkey has zero chance of ever joining the EU while Erdogan is in charge). All the “Brexit means Brexit” stuff only came afterwards. In fact many of the leaver’s arguments even from the likes of Farage, Johnson, Gove and other big names of vote Leave during the referendum were that the plan was just to become like Norway, Switzerland or Iceland and probably still stay in the EEA if we left.

That’s why I said 33%+. I know people at the place I worked at the time who were not unintelligent people and who followed the news who just said they were voting leave because “we give them too much money” and didn’t understand what the basics of freedom of movement for goods, services and people even was or meant or the reasons why their passports didn’t get stamped or why they could buy alcohol and cigarettes or expensive clothes or their holiday in the algarve and no one at customs checked it

I don’t really see what reducing partner visas for international post-grad students does apart from drive away international talent though. They already couldn’t apply for bachelors students so these are masters and doctorate students which means highly specialised people that very likely aren’t taking any jobs away from your average Joe in the street. Closing out routes for visas for partners and children I guess are the easiest way to get numbers down but also the most inconsequential or retroactive type of immigration to go after. The whole point of those visas is they live with their partner/parent and they have to show they have adequate housing and resources to support them and they can’t claim benefits. So when people complain about immigration taking up housing or benefits getting these visas down are inconsequential. I think this is a big problem with the migration debate. It’s obsessed with numbers and so much of the media tries to equate all migrants with people claiming asylum rather than talking about the different categories of immigration based on the reason people come to live in the uk (I.e. work, studies, asylum, love, family reasons etc.)

What gets me is we left the EU, it’s clearly been a failure, all polls show the vast majority of British people think it’s clearly been a failure, but they still fall for the same thing just with the scapegoat being shifted onto another supra-national organisation. The depressing thing is, is the only reason Cameron called the referendum is because it was a pretty minor party level split at the time he thought would sort out, but it only tore his party and the country way wider apart: And despite all the rigmarole, Reform still got around the same voting percentage in 2024 as UKIP did in 2015 so it didn’t even help on the thing he hoped it would do of crushing the Farage vote. Yet Tories again trying to take on Farage with Jenrik and Badanoch, the 2 most populist and furthest right of the candidates in their leadership race. You’d have thought by now that they’d have learnt you can’t out-Farage Farage, he will always go one step further and will always try to create one bogeyman more that needs to be taken on to solve all our problems. After the EU it was the ECHR, after that it will be the world economic forum or the WHO or NATO or the UN or whatever else works as a handy scapegoat.

Said it before and I’ll say it again - I’d gamble good money that 33%+ of the people voting in the referendum didn’t actually know what the EU even was and what being in it actually meant to the UK.

Nah. It’s like 15-20% of the electorate but they have an enormously big voice in the media and are not particularly shy about their views so it seems like it’s more.

Quite normal? She’s Farage without the charisma who just tries to say immigration and identity politics are to blame for everything and offers easy answers. Remember in the last leadership election she was quoting Truss herself with the endless repetitions of “the zero sum game of identity politics” being her favourite catch phrase.

From the bbc: “In her Telegraph article, Badenoch sets out what she calls a "hard-nosed" policy on immigration. She calls for a complete overhaul of the system to ensure every public servant makes it a priority - not just the Home Office - and does not rule out leaving the European Convention on Human Rights.” This whipping of immigration as being the cause of all societies problems and trying to make it front and centre as a scapegoat for every single part of how society is run as if it’s the final boss of modern 21st century society is so depressing.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj04j2mnr6qo 10 years today since the Scottish independence referendum. How time flies.

Are we allowed to even mention the B-word given the 2 major parties seem to be pretending it doesn’t exist? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd988p00z1no Brexit deal impact in UK is worsening, warn economists

What? That was years ago

I wouldn’t bet on that. Guy will try everything in his power to change the law in his favour in that regard.

The way Starmer back peddled on a lot of things made me also think populism wins in the end through all these cycles. Think of the most populist ideas the post-2019 Tory government did - giving yhe home sec the total power to shut down any protests the government doesn’t like, making certain people into literal second class citizens and giving the government powers to revoke citizenship in the borders and nationality bill, making it much harder for British citizens to bring their foreign partners over, needlessly brutal hard Brexit - all the things the moderates hated and planned to reverse but as soon as they got in power and things you’d expect Starmer would never support. But things Starmer ended up talking himself out of and won’t change back because he got too scared of Sunak’s attacks during the election.

I think the opposite. I think it’s out of fear of the actual chaos which governs humanity and our lives. The reason conspiracy theories are popular if they give meaning and purpose and intelligence behind humanity. I remember a Dan Carlin podcast a few years back using the example of the Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory - is it not actually less reassuring and gives less security and less faith in humanity to believe one random pissed off man could just change history like that over that it was the planning of highly intelligent secret services at the top of world governments full of highly educated people with endless amounts of background information on everything going on? Is the fact that we are actually governed by the kind of careerist politicians your average person votes for actually less reassuring than there’s intelligent people at the top puppet mastering the whole thing? I think a lot of conspiracy theories are actually comforting to people because they give a sense of reassuring order to what is actually a cruel and chaotic world filled with world changing decisions by hideously underqualified people.