Sampson

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cgrk4rpxnx7t First signals of what Burnham "stands for" (quotations aren't meant to be demeaning here, just a reference to common discussion thar it was difficult to know what Starmer actually had as a political philosophy) seems to be devolution, decentralisation and regionalisation. Interesting to see the finer details, whether this means local councils get more powers or if we actually get more visible regional governments like they have in Scotland, Wales or theoretically Northern Ireland (even if the NIron one hasn't been functional for several years). So that we have like an East Midlands' regional government that can decide tax or health care policy in the East Midlands?

Tress of the Emerald Sea was really good, will have to read more Sanderson for sure. Next up, Traitor's Blade by Sebastian de Castell. The first in the Greatcoats series. Got this one out the library on recommendation of a friend.

In theory I would agree, but too much happens in 5 years that you have to allow a government some liquidity to change course from their original plans. Let's say for example, the government said it would invest in one type of energy and not another, but then there's great technological advancements in that 2nd set that it becomes cheaper, cleaner and would create more jobs - it'd just be bad governance not to change course there. Then there's also times where rapid technological chsnges (e.g. AI), wars (e.g. Ukraine), pandemics (e.g. covid, foot and mouth) natural weather or environment disasters (e.g.floods, low crop yields), manmade disasters (e.g, Grenfall), or changes in trade or international agreements (e.g. US tarrifs) force a government to have to do things not in their manifesto, The Lords already do kick back on quite a bit that gets passed in parliment saying it wasn't mandated for if it wasn't considered important enough to change course or there weren't adequate enough reasons for why there is that change - that's one of the main roles of the House of Lords. But I think if a government couldn't do things they didn't put in their manifesto it would cause so many unintended consequences I reckon, as no one can really predict the way the world will look in 3 or 4 years time,

Also, genuine question - but given that human brains are wired for pain as a defence mechanism to make you stop doing things - then why, from an evolutionary point if view, is that small pang of pain you get when you pull out a nose hair with a pair of tweezers so immensely satisfying and one of life's great small pleasures?

Just saw some of the earthquake footage in Venezuela. Can think of few things more terrifying given earthquakes are so hard to predict likr thunderstorms are and just comr from nowhere, one was in a festival, people just outside with friends and family enjoying music in the sun when it hit.

Time definitely flies by faster as you get older. Good luck with your son's future, buddy, any idea what he wants to do for the next few years yet - a levels, college, uni, apprenticeship etc.

Definitely should be Jerusalem, greatvpiece of music. But if we're also posting joke answers then it should be something where people happy to take the piss out of themselves in a good natured way, easy to sing along to, and also part of important institutional touch stone of British culture. In that case, I nominate this

Yeah one of my friends is doing the Stormlight Archives at the moment, he already loves Mistborn and a few of Sanderson's standalone novels. The Stormlight Archives are a big commitment hough, all of the books in it are between 1,000-1,300 pages each, so Mistborn seems like the much more accessible series of the 2 of them.

Starter Villain was good fun, short and easy to read. Next Up - Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson. Will be my first Sanderson novel. I have a couple of friends who are really big fans of his books, I do want to do Mistborn soon, but I'm waiting on some books, and this was a shorter one I can read in the meantime.

PR and AV aren't the same thing at all - AV is simply a different way of counting votes, but we'd still have the local constituency model and a party getting 100% of the power on less than 30% of the votes. PR means that the actual amount of votes a party gets across the country represents the actual amount of seats they get - it's not just about how votes are counted, its about the actual percentage of the votes you get representing the actual numberif seats you get. The problem is we still have this weird local MP model that comes from the late 1700s at a time where political parties didn't exist and you just voted for which one of you in your town would go on the 2 week journey from Northern Scotland to London on horseback once a year to represent your town tell them in London what was going on there. Obviously nowadays people have way more access to that and vote for parties for the most part not some independent Bob the Blacksmith down the road who you think would be good at going to London to say theres been a few extra sheep dying from a new disease the past year here in Herefordshire West. Our local constituency FPTP system was never designed as a party or factional system really and when it did, it only worked for 2 parties because factionalism splits votes. Once you're in the 5 or maybe 6 party system (depending on whether Restore are a Change UK style flash in the pan or staythe course) it just creates arbitrary results and isn't particularly democratic nor representative of voters, For the record, both Starmer and Farage were both big open proponents of PR in the past, both on record saying they believe its much more democratic, but of course, as soon as they get close to power they drop it.

I also suspect a lot of people who say they'll vote Green, Labour or LibDem will actually vote tactically to who is more likely to keep Reform out in their constituency in a GE. Saw that a bit with the Burnham vote as well with Greens and LibDems voting Labour.

Not really. Clegg said the same with Cameron and Brown, Milliband said the same with the SNP back in the day - party leaders always say they won't going coalition with anyone because we're trying to win ourselces - its standard politics speak - but when push comes to shove its obviously a different matter. I think politically, Badenoch is close enough to Reform that she'd happily prop them up when it came to it, however now they've started personally attacking her I think she's probably much less inclined to do so.

I'm a lot less convinced Farage will be pm that I was a few months ago tbh. In all this we seem to forget they're only a party polling 25%, roughly the same as the LibDems did at their peak under Kennedy and Clegg. I can't see them getting a majority, a few months ago I said it wouldn't have mattered because Badenoch is an American-style conservative like Farage is and she'd join him in a coalition in a heartbeat, but the way Reform and Farage have gone after her with this Henry Novak stuff is very silly from their perspective imo, because she's they're only real option to form a coalition and they've started going after her,

I bought a good £80 tower fan from John Lewis a few years back. Absolutely life saver sleeping with it in the heatwaves. Britain isn't a cold country these days, definitely need to start investing in stuff like this.

The problem is they've been spending too much time on twitter and listening to people who are never going to vote Labour anyway. You see it on here and everywhere - a lot of the people making out Starmer is the devil would never vote Labour anyway and will vote Tory or Reform. There's nothing wrong with those people saying that. I would never vote Reform either and voted Tory once many years ago but would never vote them now. I rant about Farage and Johnson too, it's natural. But the point is, Farage doesn't listen to people like me who would never vote for him anyway, he knows who his voterbase is, Labour have been listening too much to people who are never going to vote for them, If you listened to twitter and the papers, you'd think all of Labour's voters are northern former mining town baby boomers who go on about "the London bubble" and have swapped Labour for Reform because they see run down former industrial towns, but the polls are very clear that on average (of course there will be exceptions) those people haven't voted Labour in 20 years and Labour were voted in by younger gen z and millennial university-educated social liberalism voters who are very pro Europe and find the anti-immigration rhetoric a turn off and that Labour have lost far more voters to the Green and LibDems than they have lost to Reform. The kind of voters Labour are chasing hasn't voted Labour in decades and isn't going to vote for them just because they reduce immigration or try to shake this "two-tier Kier" thing - they aren't things put forward by people who are going to vote Labour in 2029, and the more they chase those people the more they lose their actual voter base to Greens and LibDems.

Finished Red Rising series (or what's released up until now), book 6 was really excellent, I think my favourite along with book 2. Next up reading Starter Villain by John Scalzi.

He's literally not eve put forward his leadership bid platform yet and people are already screaming where are the ideas or him having no plans? And you wonder why political discourse is broken in this country, people have decided before he's already even put forward his plans of what he'll do as leader,

I also think there's just general non-understanding of basic economic principles and there are a lot of voters who cannot get their head round that their own economic and social, beliefs are at odds with each other and will blame everything else than admit that. I see it all the time - people ln the right moaning about how there's so many of certain types of business popping up on the high streets, but then to stop that you actually have to vote for left-wing parties whose whole m.o. is greater government intervention in the economy, as right-wing economics is at its core about the government not getting involved in people's economic business. Of course when a left leaning government does regulate like that they scream "socialism is evil and takes away our freedom,s" Then on the converse, you have people on the left talking about regulating parts of the economy but then moaning constantly about beaurocracy - when beaurocracy *is* government regulation and how governments regulate markets and if you want less beaurocracy you have to vote for right-wing economics who want to deregulate the ecomony.

I think I agree with your final paragraph but I think that does seep out into everyday conversation though and you do find a lot of people have opinions about things they previously wouldn't have cared about 25 years ago. It's not just politics or conspiracy theories, it's art, culture, entertainment, sport, hobbies - everyone is a snob or says "ahhh... but I heard this book is bad" when they haven't read it or "this book I briefly started, didn't have time to finish so put down, I have to go out my way to make it my personality to have a go at people who like that book" these days in a way they weren't 25 years ago. Everyone has opinions about things they haven't or barely read/watched/played/partaken in and they are weirdly bullish about those opinions. I'm not saying I'm exempt from this btw, it's just part of the way people talk to each other nowadays.

I agree and I think 20 years ago it would've done, but there's been too much precedent set by both Labour and the Conservatives thatthey don't have to sadly. Brown made the mistake of not calling one when he should have when he was in his honeymoon period and ahead in the polls and May made the opposite mistake of assuming it'd be an easy win in her honeymoon period but people got a bit pissed off calling one so soon after the previous one. But I think there's a chance Burnham will call one within a year or becoming PM if he gets the honeymoon bounce in the polls. I've said all along - Labour's big mistake was their manifesto was too defensive, and all about what they won't do because they were too scared of being attacked by the Tories on anything. So Burnham is quickly going to find his hands are tied by Labour's defensive manifesto - If he actually wants to bring about some of the things he's hinted at - re-industrialisation, redistribution of wealth towards de-industrialised northern cities, PR, closer ties with Europe etc. then he's going to need a new election and a mandate to enact that stuff.

I'm surprised some would find it weird. I mean the Orange Book Liberals of Clegg, Davey and Cable have always been open Thatcher/Blairites, the Orange Book itself was largely all about a movement away from social liberalism and towards economic liberalism of small state, lack of government interference in the economy, privatisation and cutting taxes and the only time they ever got power was during probably the most brutally capitalist government in post ww1-British history during the austerity years of tge coalition government even if Clegg argues they would've been even more cutsto government sprnding without the LibDems (not saying it isn't true). Their last couple of elections have had a few bits about reversing a few high end tax but never really any ideas about raising income taxes ir re-nationalisation of industry and are still certainly a long way from their more social democratic ideals under Ashdown and Kennedy.

I don't think greens are a protest vote either. I think they're a clear voice that a certain proportion of the voters are a bit sick of the right wing economic system we've had pretty much unabated in the UK since 1979. While we of course don't know Burnham's policy the fact he's actually talking about more state intervention and you've got Tony Blair calling him far-left because he talked about inequality makes me think he's going to actually offer a more social democrat economic policy more akin to both Labour and the Tories largely believed in 1945-1979 and win back those Labour voters. I'm Portsmouth South and here we have a LibDem run council and usually have LibDem MPs and they're generally very popular here and many like what the LibDems do here on a local level. They swept up here at the locals, we did go Labour for a few years, but I think it'd be hard to shift the LibDems in many of these parts of the country. The Greens and LibDems actually have a 25-30% between them in all the polling. If Labour could win some of those votes back they could still win 2029 but i also dont think its as simple as them being protest votes either. LibDems especially are very popular in certain parts of the country because of their councils and local mps. What would be more interesting would be if Greens and LibDems formed some kind of voter pact either between them or with Labour. I mean there's definitely the votes there to easily beat Reform if they're distributed right. But I think it'd probably mean Labour and LibDems both giving up of the economic policy of Thatcher and Blair and re-finding their social democratic roots.

We didn't do the PR thing 15 years ago, we did a referendum for AV 15 years ago, theyre very different - AV is a different voting system - but the way seats are distributed would be the same, PR is a fundamentally different way we allocate MPs and seats across the country that is much more representative to the actual number of votes a party gets. And 15 years is a very long time ago (besides itd be 20 years after the 2029 election plus a year or so to plan it) nd our political system is in a very different, FPTP is designed for a 2 parry system, it has clearly broken down in our current age now we have a 5 or 6 party system, I do not see how it is healthy for democracy that any party can get 100% of the power on potentially 25% of the vote,

I've wondered the same with PR as well. I think PR and/or rejoining the European single market would probably the 2 big policies which both the Lib Dems and Greens would ask for from Labour to form a coalition or if the Lib Dems and Greens wanted to form an election pact between them they'd be their 2 big policies they'd agree on and both of which are popular amongst Green and LibDem voters even if they have different economic ideals.

You don't have to join the euro anyway in practice. Although you're supposed to join it once you meet certain criteria, countries like Sweden and Denmark deliberately just don't meet the criteria so they don't join the euro and the European commission has said they won't make those countries meet the criteria or sanction them for it,